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Question to Chinese citizens on HN: do you feel oppressed by your government? Do you feel that rule of law exists in China? The notion of encrypted private com
by kubb 1y ago
Question to Chinese citizens on HN: do you feel oppressed by your government? Do you feel that rule of law exists in China?
The notion of encrypted private communication didn't exist a couple of decades ago and people are talking about it as necessary for rule of law.
There's a missing logical link in there somewhere.
- nerdsniper 1y agoOne of the founders of the United States Thomas Jefferson was a pretty big encryption enthusiast. He invented[0] his own disk cipher that is on display in the National Museum of Cryptography. The concept of Americans sending encrypted messages had been normalized since before the United States existed. People have always been able to send each other handwritten letters securely encrypted with OTP's / etc. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_disk
- kubb 1y agoYeah, they could. -- You've changed the contents of your comment. I don't adhere to the American Civil Religion, so I don't need to consider opinions of the founders of the project.
- SoftTalker 1y agoAnd still can.
- alejoar 1y agoI think you are mixing two separate things: rule of law vs privacy. Sure, we didn’t have encrypted communication a couple decades ago, but we did have an expectation of privacy: letters, phone calls, even in-person conversations. Encryption is just the modern way of preserving that same right in a digital context.
- kubb 1y agoAm I mixing it, or is Germany's Minister of Justice?
- jonathanstrange 1y agoThis comment is an irrelevant distraction. Why should the feelings of Chinese citizens have any relevance for a discussion of the democratic values of EU policy? China is a de facto a dictatorship. Xi Jinping's thoughts have been made part of the Chinese constitution.
- heinternets 1y agoPeople in China have every packet inspected and injected with a malicious payload if it doesnt suit their government. They may get a knock at the door if they say something bad. It also restricts free access to information. They dont just “feel” oppressed, they are.
- igor47 1y agoFeel vs is oppressed is a two-by-two matrix and people exist in every square.
- ok123456 1y agoChina is a country with a population of 1.4 billion people. Where is their Stasi to enforce this surveillance state? Many people use VPNs and use overseas services. The primary purpose of the "Great Firewall" appears to be erecting a technological barrier to entry, protecting the culture of average people who don't require that sort of access for business.
- fragmede 1y agoIf ICE is going over everything I post online to see if I'm making fun of Trump and I'm gonna get a visit for not being white enough, I'm not sure we're not also on the way to being oppressed.
- sph 1y ago> The notion of encrypted private communication didn't exist a couple of decades ago Nor was pervasive monitoring of our every action, nor were our actions and daily lives conducted on a digital system that makes data storage trivial.