4 ms·

Truly, I believe we live in the medieval era of the technological adoption curve. Such laws should be seen as barbaric by future governments.

graemep 3y ago
> the medieval era You mean the era in which we got things like the Magna Carta, rights of due process, habeas corpus, the gradual abolition of slavery (at least in western Europe), the gradual transfer of power from monarchs to parliaments etc. I think our direction of travel is a lot worse now!
- jjgreen 3y ago
  ... we got things like the Magna Carta Did she die in vain?
  - sandbags 3y ago
    Brave Hungarian peasant girl that she was.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Magna Carta, which was about the relationship between a king and his own feudal lords, which was violated by both sides and annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War — one of the many UK civil wars besides the one commonly known by the title "The" Civil War? > the gradual abolition of slavery (at least in western Europe) Even with that caveat, didn't that really only happen after the medieval era?
  - graemep 3y ago
    > Magna Carta, which was about the relationship between a king and his own feudal lords. Among other things. Some important bits applied more widely, such as the right to a fair trial which applied to any "free man". It was a also a recognition of existing law that had developed earlier. > Even with that caveat, didn't that really only happen after the medieval era? No, slavery declined in medieval times, and was abolished in England by the Normans around the 11th/12th century. Serfdom continued but serfs were not chattel slaves (they could not be traded) and has rights. European participation in the slave trade revived in early modern times, in and between colonies. Slaver was not revived in Europe itself.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > things like the Magna Carta, rights of due process, habeas corpus I think Habeas Corpus is one of the few clauses of Magna Carta that still has legal effect (the former is part of the latter). And remember that Magna Carta was a deal between the "barons" and King John; the rights that Magna Carta purported to confer, only applied to barons (landowners, basically). In the time of King John, the law as most ordinary people encountered it was simply the local baron. I think it wasn't until Henry II that there were royal courts set up, to deliver the same law everywhere.
  - graemep 3y ago
    > I think Habeas Corpus is one of the few clauses of Magna Carta that still has legal effect I am not sure if it has effect because of the Magna Carta, but right to a fair trial is another right that still exists and applied to any "free man". > I think it wasn't until Henry II that there were royal courts set up, to deliver the same law everywhere. Yes, but that was still medieval. Yes, it was not one huge improvement. The Magna Carta was a step in a process that started centuries earlier and went to for centuries afterwards.
bluescrn 3y ago
It's not just about tech. People simply don't care about freedom or privacy any more. They're happy to give it all up if it means that an ever-expanding nanny state will care for them and protect them from all harm, whether it be international terrorism, cigarettes, or insults being hurled online. The campaign to brand freedom ('freedumb') as a far-right ideal certainly isn't helping.
- ben_w 3y ago
  The UK's left/right split is very different to that of the US. In particular, surveillance is extremely popular with both of the big UK parties. Well, I say "big", we'll see if the Tories even manage to win a single seat at the next election — I think they're currently expected to get just under 100 seats, but they're so dysfunctional that total disintegration is absolutely possible between now and then.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  People simply don't care about freedom or privacy any more. I don't believe that's true. Our younger generations are way more savvy about those things than our older ones. What I do see is a sense of hopeless inevitability. People don't feel they can escape the surveillance and other technological dangers because everyone is at it. Both of our major political parties are generally supportive of the police and surveillance state and no-one else has any realistic prospect of forming a government at national level. Unless you give up a large part of modern life and decide not to participate in large parts of our society you have little real choice but to pick your poison from the big tech firms as well. So people resist in less obvious ways like moving between services and creating new accounts frequently with false details. People from younger generations hardly ever commit to any single account on any service the way their parents or grandparents did. They have no time for terms and conditions that require real identities. (Or the service will do what exactly? Terminate the account they didn't really care about or expect to use for long anyway?) I imagine a lot of young people already know how to use a VPN and probably more will start doing so over time. I wonder how many phones the average teenager really has today. Of course this attitude creates other problems of its own. With modern tech but little personal accountability we see issues like cyberbullying becoming real problems for our schoolkids for example. Unfortunately the only answer the politicians can seem to think of to deal with a problem like that is trying to be even more authoritarian. We need to do better than that.
linearrust 3y ago
> Such laws should be seen as barbaric by future governments. Only because future governments will have far better methods of surveillance and population control.

graemep 3y ago

> the medieval era You mean the era in which we got things like the Magna Carta, rights of due process, habeas corpus, the gradual abolition of slavery (at least in western Europe), the gradual transfer of power from monarchs to parliaments etc. I think our direction of travel is a lot worse now!

jjgreen 3y ago
... we got things like the Magna Carta Did she die in vain?
- sandbags 3y ago
  Brave Hungarian peasant girl that she was.
ben_w 3y ago
Magna Carta, which was about the relationship between a king and his own feudal lords, which was violated by both sides and annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War — one of the many UK civil wars besides the one commonly known by the title "The" Civil War? > the gradual abolition of slavery (at least in western Europe) Even with that caveat, didn't that really only happen after the medieval era?
- graemep 3y ago
  > Magna Carta, which was about the relationship between a king and his own feudal lords. Among other things. Some important bits applied more widely, such as the right to a fair trial which applied to any "free man". It was a also a recognition of existing law that had developed earlier. > Even with that caveat, didn't that really only happen after the medieval era? No, slavery declined in medieval times, and was abolished in England by the Normans around the 11th/12th century. Serfdom continued but serfs were not chattel slaves (they could not be traded) and has rights. European participation in the slave trade revived in early modern times, in and between colonies. Slaver was not revived in Europe itself.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> things like the Magna Carta, rights of due process, habeas corpus I think Habeas Corpus is one of the few clauses of Magna Carta that still has legal effect (the former is part of the latter). And remember that Magna Carta was a deal between the "barons" and King John; the rights that Magna Carta purported to confer, only applied to barons (landowners, basically). In the time of King John, the law as most ordinary people encountered it was simply the local baron. I think it wasn't until Henry II that there were royal courts set up, to deliver the same law everywhere.
- graemep 3y ago
  > I think Habeas Corpus is one of the few clauses of Magna Carta that still has legal effect I am not sure if it has effect because of the Magna Carta, but right to a fair trial is another right that still exists and applied to any "free man". > I think it wasn't until Henry II that there were royal courts set up, to deliver the same law everywhere. Yes, but that was still medieval. Yes, it was not one huge improvement. The Magna Carta was a step in a process that started centuries earlier and went to for centuries afterwards.

bluescrn 3y ago

It's not just about tech. People simply don't care about freedom or privacy any more. They're happy to give it all up if it means that an ever-expanding nanny state will care for them and protect them from all harm, whether it be international terrorism, cigarettes, or insults being hurled online. The campaign to brand freedom ('freedumb') as a far-right ideal certainly isn't helping.

ben_w 3y ago
The UK's left/right split is very different to that of the US. In particular, surveillance is extremely popular with both of the big UK parties. Well, I say "big", we'll see if the Tories even manage to win a single seat at the next election — I think they're currently expected to get just under 100 seats, but they're so dysfunctional that total disintegration is absolutely possible between now and then.
Silhouette 3y ago
People simply don't care about freedom or privacy any more. I don't believe that's true. Our younger generations are way more savvy about those things than our older ones. What I do see is a sense of hopeless inevitability. People don't feel they can escape the surveillance and other technological dangers because everyone is at it. Both of our major political parties are generally supportive of the police and surveillance state and no-one else has any realistic prospect of forming a government at national level. Unless you give up a large part of modern life and decide not to participate in large parts of our society you have little real choice but to pick your poison from the big tech firms as well. So people resist in less obvious ways like moving between services and creating new accounts frequently with false details. People from younger generations hardly ever commit to any single account on any service the way their parents or grandparents did. They have no time for terms and conditions that require real identities. (Or the service will do what exactly? Terminate the account they didn't really care about or expect to use for long anyway?) I imagine a lot of young people already know how to use a VPN and probably more will start doing so over time. I wonder how many phones the average teenager really has today. Of course this attitude creates other problems of its own. With modern tech but little personal accountability we see issues like cyberbullying becoming real problems for our schoolkids for example. Unfortunately the only answer the politicians can seem to think of to deal with a problem like that is trying to be even more authoritarian. We need to do better than that.

linearrust 3y ago

> Such laws should be seen as barbaric by future governments. Only because future governments will have far better methods of surveillance and population control.