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I love the cognitive dissonance on display within the federal government. One arm: "everyone is a criminal; spy on everyone" Other arm: "hey you shouldn't rea
by ryanisnan 2y ago
I love the cognitive dissonance on display within the federal government.
One arm: "everyone is a criminal; spy on everyone"
Other arm: "hey you shouldn't really harvest all of that data"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bitwize 2y agoAnd it's not just here. The EU: Unlike the barbarians across the pond, we actually protect people's privacy rights. Also the EU: ChAt CoNtRoL
- ryanisnan 2y agoThe problem seems deeply fundamental to what it means to be a human. On one hand, there's a lack of clear leadership, unifying the societal approach, on top of inherently different value systems held by those individuals. It seems like increasingly, it's up to technologists, like ones who author our anti-surveillance tools, to create a free way forward.
- whimsicalism 2y agothis view presupposes the state as “just another actor” as opposed to a privileged one that can take actions that private actors can’t
- Karunamon 2y agoThose privileged actions are mostly irrelevant when discussing mass surveillance. Doubly so since they can just buy or acquire the data from corps.
- lupusreal 2y agoIn the matter of corporations vs governments, if you tally up number of people shot it's clear which of the two is more dangerous. You would think Europe of all regions would be quick to recognize this. I don't like corporations spying on me, but it doesn't scare me nearly as much as the government doing it. In fact the principle risk from corporations keeping databases is giving the government something to snatch.
- whimsicalism 2y agobecause the government has a monopoly on violence. i would much prefer that to corporations being able to wage war themselves
- lupusreal 2y agoWho is arguing for corporations to wage war? What an absolutely insane strawman. What I am arguing against is letting governments grant themselves the ability to spy on their own populations on an unprecedented scale, because governments "waging war" (mass murder) against their own people is a historically common occurrence.
- immibis 2y agoThe EU has multiple parts. One part keeps asking for chat control, and another part keeps saying no.
- jlarocco 2y agoThe cognitive dissonance is in the voters and users. Even right here on HN, where most people understand the issue, you'll see conversations and arguments in favor of letting companies vacuum up as much data and user info as they want (without consent or opt-in), while also saying it should be illegal for the government to collect the same data without a warrant. In practice, the corporations and government have found the best of both worlds: https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-senate/ https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-purchase-location-data-wray-... Profit for the corporation, legal user data for the government.
- spacemadness 2y agoHN is filled with folks that wrote the code in question, or want to create similar products. And they hate to have it pointed out that these tools may cause harm so they thrash around and make excuses and point fingers. A tale as old as this site.
- mrmetanoia 2y agoI often have to remind myself who hosts this board and that I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring techno-robber-barons.
- sabbaticaldev 2y ago> I am hanging out on a site for successful and aspiring techno-robber-barons. that’s how we first arrive here (all of us). Time pass tho and most around fail then we become proper people capable of reasoning
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoComplete with egotistical and ironic appropriation of the word hacker.
- singleshot_ 2y agoExplaining that modern technology is user-hostile and destructive to the society is nowhere else more on-topic than Paul Graham’s ego blog. While it might be true to say the site is “for” robber barons, There are a lot more users here than the ones you described.
- whimsicalism 2y agoIt seems entirely reasonable/consistent that we would allow some capabilities among publicly sanctioned, democratically legitimate actors while prohibiting private actors from doing the same. In fact, many such things fall into that category.
- daedrdev 2y agoI would be worried if the state was conscious of what it itself was doing as a whole
- kiba 2y agoThere are different organizations with different opinions. The government isn't a monolithic entity.
- bee_rider 2y agoIt isn’t cognitive dissonance, the state does lots of things we’re not supposed to do. Like we’re not supposed to kill people, but they have whole departments built around the task. Should the state do surveillance? Maybe some? Probably less? But the hypocrisy isn’t the problem, the overreach is.
- cvnahfn 2y agoThe FTC is under the president's authority. This is election pandering, same as Zuckerberg's backpedaling on government censorship. This is for getting votes from the undecided. Everything will be back to normal (surveillance, data collection and censorship) after the election.
- singleshot_ 2y agoBegs the question of agency authority which is manifestly not resolved. You will find that the elections’ results will effect the eventual resolution of the question of the unitary executive quite dramatically.
- munk-a 2y agoI don't know if you've been watching but the FTC has actually been extremely proactive during this cycle. Lina Khan is an excellent steward and has pushed for a lot of policy improvements that have been sorely needed - including the ban (currently suspended by a few judges) on non-competes. It is disingenuous to accuse the FTC of election pandering when they've been doing stuff like this for the past four years consistently.
- srndsnd 2y agoAnd has sued Amazon for their use of anti-competitive pricing. This is just what Kahn's FTC does.
- OkeyDokey2 2y ago[flagged]
- layer8 2y agoThe FTC is bipartisan, no more than three of the five commissioners can belong to the same party. The present report was unanimously voted by all five.
- layer8 2y agoSince the federal government isn’t a single mind (nor a hive mind), a cognitive dissonance can only be meaningfully located on the observer’s side.