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I don't follow this stream of logic. If you have to build technical systems, the sole purpose of which is to sidestep laws, in order to be good then aren't the

I don't follow this stream of logic. If you have to build technical systems, the sole purpose of which is to sidestep laws, in order to be good then aren't the laws at fault here? I find the acceptance that governments will do whatever this wants, we will just use end to end encryption , TOR and Bitcoin defeats the purpose we have regulated currencies, governments and democracies. If there is an action item on the list, it should be to change unjust laws not to circumvent them. The latter is both defeatist and useless. Because if you are not keeping a check on the government they will keep bringing in more laws that hinder your sense of justice and your technical system keep moving its architecture like a fugitive.

betterunix 13y ago
"If you have to build technical systems, the sole purpose of which is to sidestep laws" Nobody is talking about sidestepping laws. You are not breaking laws, nor breaking the spirit of the law, if your users cannot store many years of their personal communications on your server. Encouraging people to delete mail would have the effect of limiting the government's surveillance power, in an entirely legal fashion. "aren't the laws at fault here?" It is not that simple. The relevant laws were written at a time when mail quotas were commonly measured in megabytes, when people had to delete their mail in order to stay under the limit. Back then, if a few personal messages happened to be on the server when a court order was received, it was not such a big deal; those messages probably pertained to very recent things anyway. Now, when a court order for "all of Joe's email" is received, that will very likely include messages dating back years, long before whatever crime Joe is suspected of was even committed. The laws have not been updated in light of these new privacy implications. "If there is an action item on the list, it should be to change unjust laws not to circumvent them. The latter is both defeatist and useless." Why not do both? Why should we suffer while we wait for the deliberately slow wheels of government to turn? Neither action excludes the other, you can both circumvent unjust laws and work to take those laws off the books.
- magicalist 13y ago
  > "Nobody is talking about sidestepping laws" > "you can both circumvent unjust laws..." and > "aren't the laws at fault here?" > list of reasons why the laws are at fault... you have a point in there (work to fix laws while protecting yourself), but you're being weirdly (and ineffectually) contrarian in this thread.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    It is not contrarian, I was replying to two separate points. The first was the claim that I was saying that Google should have set up its system to circumvent the law; the is not what I was saying. The second was the claim that we must either circumvent laws or change them; my point was that the choice is not exclusive. As for the point of the laws being faulty, what I was saying was that the laws were designed with a particular communications model in mind. Google's system is designed very differently from that model, but despite Google's popularity and despite other services adopting a model similar to Google's the law has not changed. Just saying that the law is at fault is too simplistic; the laws may have good reasons behind them and may have made sense at the time they were passed (and had technology not changed, the laws might still make sense now).
- mayanksinghal 13y ago
  > You are not breaking laws, nor breaking the spirit of the law I wasn't suggesting that either. Sidestepping is avoidance not evasion. > The laws have not been updated in light of these new privacy implications. ... the deliberately slow wheels of government to turn? So change the law. And speed up your justice system. Don't elect individuals who slow down progress deliberately. > you can both circumvent unjust laws and work to take those laws off the books. And fight the laws and its usage, which is what Google does. It was also the entity that disclosed the original order in this particular case, so that the person in question can also take some action if possible. It also publishes transparency reports and it was the first one to do that, which gives you an idea about how frequent usage of the unjust laws are so that you, as a community, has more information about what your government is doing. If I am not wrong, there have been 2 elections since the FISA was passed and the voting population of US was aware of the broad surveillance since the first election (Obama based some of his campaign on it). If he hadn't acted on it, then it should have become a point of debate in the reelection. But it was celebrated on Hacker News as much as anywhere else, without a single mention of his inability of reducing the scope of such laws. So guess what? Overboard surveillance didn't seem to be a priority for most of the people here and Google has been more transparent and more vigilant about it since longer than the PRISM episode. The gist is that it is easy to transfer blame in this case, but the root cause it solely the astoundingly broad laws and the undoubted trust that voters put in the current government that used them instead of removing them as it had promised.

betterunix 13y ago

"If you have to build technical systems, the sole purpose of which is to sidestep laws" Nobody is talking about sidestepping laws. You are not breaking laws, nor breaking the spirit of the law, if your users cannot store many years of their personal communications on your server. Encouraging people to delete mail would have the effect of limiting the government's surveillance power, in an entirely legal fashion. "aren't the laws at fault here?" It is not that simple. The relevant laws were written at a time when mail quotas were commonly measured in megabytes, when people had to delete their mail in order to stay under the limit. Back then, if a few personal messages happened to be on the server when a court order was received, it was not such a big deal; those messages probably pertained to very recent things anyway. Now, when a court order for "all of Joe's email" is received, that will very likely include messages dating back years, long before whatever crime Joe is suspected of was even committed. The laws have not been updated in light of these new privacy implications. "If there is an action item on the list, it should be to change unjust laws not to circumvent them. The latter is both defeatist and useless." Why not do both? Why should we suffer while we wait for the deliberately slow wheels of government to turn? Neither action excludes the other, you can both circumvent unjust laws and work to take those laws off the books.

magicalist 13y ago
> "Nobody is talking about sidestepping laws" > "you can both circumvent unjust laws..." and > "aren't the laws at fault here?" > list of reasons why the laws are at fault... you have a point in there (work to fix laws while protecting yourself), but you're being weirdly (and ineffectually) contrarian in this thread.
- betterunix 13y ago
  It is not contrarian, I was replying to two separate points. The first was the claim that I was saying that Google should have set up its system to circumvent the law; the is not what I was saying. The second was the claim that we must either circumvent laws or change them; my point was that the choice is not exclusive. As for the point of the laws being faulty, what I was saying was that the laws were designed with a particular communications model in mind. Google's system is designed very differently from that model, but despite Google's popularity and despite other services adopting a model similar to Google's the law has not changed. Just saying that the law is at fault is too simplistic; the laws may have good reasons behind them and may have made sense at the time they were passed (and had technology not changed, the laws might still make sense now).
mayanksinghal 13y ago
> You are not breaking laws, nor breaking the spirit of the law I wasn't suggesting that either. Sidestepping is avoidance not evasion. > The laws have not been updated in light of these new privacy implications. ... the deliberately slow wheels of government to turn? So change the law. And speed up your justice system. Don't elect individuals who slow down progress deliberately. > you can both circumvent unjust laws and work to take those laws off the books. And fight the laws and its usage, which is what Google does. It was also the entity that disclosed the original order in this particular case, so that the person in question can also take some action if possible. It also publishes transparency reports and it was the first one to do that, which gives you an idea about how frequent usage of the unjust laws are so that you, as a community, has more information about what your government is doing. If I am not wrong, there have been 2 elections since the FISA was passed and the voting population of US was aware of the broad surveillance since the first election (Obama based some of his campaign on it). If he hadn't acted on it, then it should have become a point of debate in the reelection. But it was celebrated on Hacker News as much as anywhere else, without a single mention of his inability of reducing the scope of such laws. So guess what? Overboard surveillance didn't seem to be a priority for most of the people here and Google has been more transparent and more vigilant about it since longer than the PRISM episode. The gist is that it is easy to transfer blame in this case, but the root cause it solely the astoundingly broad laws and the undoubted trust that voters put in the current government that used them instead of removing them as it had promised.