5 ms·

The NSA has reveled in the joy of invading our privacy, has undermined our ability to hold a secret (by intentionally weakening/undermining cryptography), paid

by spenvo 13y ago

The NSA has reveled in the joy of invading our privacy, has undermined our ability to hold a secret (by intentionally weakening/undermining cryptography), paid its employees outrageous salaries, and is a caricature of George Orwell's "Big Brother"[1] - surpassing even the Stasi of Soviet Russia in its pervasiveness. The Patriot Act (among others) needs to be repealed. Period. But that will never happen, because bureaucracy doesn't shrink. Period. This explains my libertarian-leanings --> laws aren't written by the people, they are written by those who stand to benefit most directly from their passing. And the devil of a bill is always in its details, which laymen (sometimes even the congressman presenting the bill) can't understand/decipher. Read the Pulitzer-prize winning biography "The Powerbroker" if you want a lesson in how to abuse the public's ignorance through the cunning drafting of legislation. There is no CTRL-Z in DC. There are movements, gaining traction, to introduce state-sponsored "internets" - because this is the path we have prescribed to the world. Yet such a profound outcome was not mindfully chosen by the people, it was incidental to the law. We therefore have forfeited the greatest invention of our time through our collective lack of understanding and/or vulnerable&reactionary mindsets. I'll be spending the rest of my life ruminating on this simple fact: the internet is sick, and my government is the disease. [1] - And now that caricature-metaphor has a literal face, drawn by one of NSA's own--if you ever wanted to know what Big Brother "looked like."

snitko 13y ago
Why do you describe it as libertarian leanings? What in the libertarian philosophy still makes you uncomfortable?
- nardi 13y ago
  I can't answer for spenvo, but for myself, I would be happy to call myself "libertarian," except that extremely limited government is bad at protecting the poor from the rich, and libertarianism places a little too much emphasis on individualism to the detriment of communities.
  - TelmoMenezes 13y ago
    Two points: - The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have. The rest is pure speculation. It could be that there is some hidden variable that makes the rich/poor gap and government grow at the same time, but it's not enough to just repeat some dogma; - I am for communities, but the only point of communities is to make the individuals that compose them happy. If a community is thriving by some metric but the individuals that compose them are unhappy, the community is pointless of even counter-productive.
    - IanCal 13y ago
      Really? I'm quite interested in that, do you have the research on it? The disparity in countries with barely functioning governments can be extreme, with a very small ruling class with most of the wealth. England, for example, has a much bigger government than it used to yet less of a gap between rich and poor (Victorian times -> now).
    - mattlutze 13y ago
      > I am for communities, but the only point of communities is to make the individuals that compose them happy. If a community is thriving by some metric but the individuals that compose them are unhappy, the community is pointless of even counter-productive. I think there has been a very pernicious, detrimental focus in recent history on ensuring "happiness." Life is not about being happy. Communities do not exist to make people happy. A thriving community is one that provides needed support to its members, "needed" and "support" being variables defined by those members. > The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have. Define "bigger". Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, all have governments that are significantly more activist in the daily lives of their citizens, and the wealth gap does not exist in those countries like it does the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA... I don't know many that would say, per capita, these governments are "smaller". But they do actively redistribute wealth, a large part through social health care, higher education and retirement systems.
Qom 13y ago
A libertarian anarchy will simply lead to another hierarchy being set into place. You can't have a society where there is no ruling class. It's unnatural.
- dantheman 13y ago
  This is a completely ridiculous statement. The lack of something doesn't imply it can't or won't exist, it just doesn't exist yet. The idea of liberty is relatively new and we're still learning. Up until recently you could have made all sorts of arguments about the rights of women or minorities and how another form of segregation will settle into place -- because it's "natural"
  - Qom 13y ago
    People have tried building such societies many times: all have failed. The problem is that you've got ambitious humans and less ambitious ones. So how is it ridiculous to claim that a leader caste automatically appears in every situation? It doesn't have anything to do with gender or race. It's the simple fact that we are not born equal and have different abilities.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    If you throw a bunch of mammals in a shared space, then generally a hierarchy and a 'ruling class' emerges. That is testable (and tested), and it is natural, literally, part of our nature. Now, wether it's unavoidable is a a different question, and wether its morally good is a yet different one; but it certainly is the natural order of things.
    - X4 13y ago
      Orly, seriously? Find me the study that proves that for a group that is larger than a few million! Please just prove this point. It is sooo naive to just assume, "hey I saw 5 chick sand a hen, the hen ruled them, I think hundreds of millions of americans must be ruled by one hen too". Clever, clever... I am writing a scientific paper and just believe me (as you seem to believe easily, without proof) that Hierarchy is natural in small groups only, remember small groups. Absolutely NOT scalable! I am sorry for my tone, sir. I didn't want to educate you or spray my opinion in your face. But please understand me, it drives me mad when people still believe that it's natural that the World, the Country, or the Cities must be ruled by one leader. To me it's as if somebody is truly believing that the earth is flat and want's to convince everybody else about that.
spenvo 13y ago
To update the above comment ('edit' is disabled) -- to the "And the devil of a bill is always in its details..." line, I just saw this article headline on Techmeme: "Feinstein Releases Fake NSA Reform Bill, Actually Tries To Legalize Illegal NSA Bulk Data Collection" [1] Pretty shameless on her part. Here's the HN item: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653190 [1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131031/12394625090/feinstein-releases-fake-nsa-reform-bill-actually-tries-to-legalize-illegal-nsa-bulk-data-collection.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131031/12394625090/feinst... -- Websites like Reddit and HN are extremely vulnerable. Hijacking my comment here to talk about a big concern of mine. This EFF article argues that there's a place for Anonymity on the Internet [2], and I think most of us agree. Especially if we emphathize with those in Iran, China, Syria, and the like. But anonymity is also the key to websites like Reddit and Twitter (including HN). These websites represent breakthroughs in sociology: memes; open, real-time, transnational, popular (upvote/downvote, retweetable) discourse. It's not an understatement to say that Reddit, Twitter, even H.N. are some of the greatest manifestations of the Internet-age -- look at the impact they have had on mainstream media and raising the bar for popular discourse. (Ex.1: I would argue that the Snowden revelations would not have persisted in the public conscious nearly as long if it hadn't been for Reddit's continued rage. Ex.2: As it is, news outlets hawk Reddit/HN for story-material, and build the story's narrative with Twitter.) But what HNers must realize is that: The mainstream Internet __can not become__ the Tor-visited Dark-Net that many believe is inevitable -- WITHOUT losing its positive sociological impact. Yet without the perception of anonymity, sites like Reddit will stop flourishing. Reddit's culture thrives on anonymity, throwaway accounts, and people being themselves without representing themselves. There are two issues at play. Now obvious: 1.) Reddit usernames can be mapped to people's actual identity. Not as obvious: 2.) Users up and down votes can also be mapped to their identity. Reddit as a dev-team has retreated from the idea of providing HTTPS for its voting/web API, so people's actions (aside from comments) can be mapped as well. I tried to raise this point 5 months ago [3]. I know there's an argument to be made that SSL/HTTPS is useless anyway (just use Tor!, they say), but the bigger question remains: Can a mainstream community like Reddit exist in tomorrow's Internet? People and the press are paranoid about Facebook/Google privacy because its users identify themselves explicitly, but the reality is no different with sites like Reddit - just the perception. Just think about how much more is shared on a site like Reddit by its members because of their pseudonyms! Few people aside from the avid Tor users have realized this. Reddit is the internet "as we know it," and I feel the Internet is about to change. In hindsight - Google's initial "no pseudonyms" policy for Google+ was prescient -- though the company eventually capitulated to popular demand for them. [4] Perhaps they wished to save each of us the unsavory realization that aliases exist in name-only (pun intended). :/ [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity-not-only-trolls-and-political-dissidents https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity-not-o... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit_needs_fullsite_https/ http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit... [4] http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames-pseudonyms-aliases-399584 http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames-pseudonyms-...
volkadav 13y ago
Minor nitpick: Stasi was East Germany, not the Soviet Union.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
mempko 13y ago
I find it most ironic that when the Internet was owned by the public (government) it was decentralized and more free. When it was given to private business in the mid 90s it became what it is today. You may want to consider the economics of why the Internet has turned out the way it is. Why do these companies feel they need to collect so much personal information that it can be abused? I think the answer is clear. There is no money to be made from a decentralized and free Internet by Silicon Valley...

by spenvo 13y ago

snitko 13y ago

Why do you describe it as libertarian leanings? What in the libertarian philosophy still makes you uncomfortable?

nardi 13y ago
I can't answer for spenvo, but for myself, I would be happy to call myself "libertarian," except that extremely limited government is bad at protecting the poor from the rich, and libertarianism places a little too much emphasis on individualism to the detriment of communities.
- TelmoMenezes 13y ago
  Two points: - The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have. The rest is pure speculation. It could be that there is some hidden variable that makes the rich/poor gap and government grow at the same time, but it's not enough to just repeat some dogma; - I am for communities, but the only point of communities is to make the individuals that compose them happy. If a community is thriving by some metric but the individuals that compose them are unhappy, the community is pointless of even counter-productive.
  - IanCal 13y ago
    Really? I'm quite interested in that, do you have the research on it? The disparity in countries with barely functioning governments can be extreme, with a very small ruling class with most of the wealth. England, for example, has a much bigger government than it used to yet less of a gap between rich and poor (Victorian times -> now).
  - mattlutze 13y ago
    > I am for communities, but the only point of communities is to make the individuals that compose them happy. If a community is thriving by some metric but the individuals that compose them are unhappy, the community is pointless of even counter-productive. I think there has been a very pernicious, detrimental focus in recent history on ensuring "happiness." Life is not about being happy. Communities do not exist to make people happy. A thriving community is one that provides needed support to its members, "needed" and "support" being variables defined by those members. > The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have. Define "bigger". Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, all have governments that are significantly more activist in the daily lives of their citizens, and the wealth gap does not exist in those countries like it does the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA... I don't know many that would say, per capita, these governments are "smaller". But they do actively redistribute wealth, a large part through social health care, higher education and retirement systems.

Qom 13y ago

A libertarian anarchy will simply lead to another hierarchy being set into place. You can't have a society where there is no ruling class. It's unnatural.

dantheman 13y ago
This is a completely ridiculous statement. The lack of something doesn't imply it can't or won't exist, it just doesn't exist yet. The idea of liberty is relatively new and we're still learning. Up until recently you could have made all sorts of arguments about the rights of women or minorities and how another form of segregation will settle into place -- because it's "natural"
- Qom 13y ago
  People have tried building such societies many times: all have failed. The problem is that you've got ambitious humans and less ambitious ones. So how is it ridiculous to claim that a leader caste automatically appears in every situation? It doesn't have anything to do with gender or race. It's the simple fact that we are not born equal and have different abilities.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  If you throw a bunch of mammals in a shared space, then generally a hierarchy and a 'ruling class' emerges. That is testable (and tested), and it is natural, literally, part of our nature. Now, wether it's unavoidable is a a different question, and wether its morally good is a yet different one; but it certainly is the natural order of things.
  - X4 13y ago
    Orly, seriously? Find me the study that proves that for a group that is larger than a few million! Please just prove this point. It is sooo naive to just assume, "hey I saw 5 chick sand a hen, the hen ruled them, I think hundreds of millions of americans must be ruled by one hen too". Clever, clever... I am writing a scientific paper and just believe me (as you seem to believe easily, without proof) that Hierarchy is natural in small groups only, remember small groups. Absolutely NOT scalable! I am sorry for my tone, sir. I didn't want to educate you or spray my opinion in your face. But please understand me, it drives me mad when people still believe that it's natural that the World, the Country, or the Cities must be ruled by one leader. To me it's as if somebody is truly believing that the earth is flat and want's to convince everybody else about that.

spenvo 13y ago

To update the above comment ('edit' is disabled) -- to the "And the devil of a bill is always in its details..." line, I just saw this article headline on Techmeme: "Feinstein Releases Fake NSA Reform Bill, Actually Tries To Legalize Illegal NSA Bulk Data Collection" [1] Pretty shameless on her part. Here's the HN item: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653190 [1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131031/12394625090/feinstein-releases-fake-nsa-reform-bill-actually-tries-to-legalize-illegal-nsa-bulk-data-collection.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131031/12394625090/feinst... -- Websites like Reddit and HN are extremely vulnerable. Hijacking my comment here to talk about a big concern of mine. This EFF article argues that there's a place for Anonymity on the Internet [2], and I think most of us agree. Especially if we emphathize with those in Iran, China, Syria, and the like. But anonymity is also the key to websites like Reddit and Twitter (including HN). These websites represent breakthroughs in sociology: memes; open, real-time, transnational, popular (upvote/downvote, retweetable) discourse. It's not an understatement to say that Reddit, Twitter, even H.N. are some of the greatest manifestations of the Internet-age -- look at the impact they have had on mainstream media and raising the bar for popular discourse. (Ex.1: I would argue that the Snowden revelations would not have persisted in the public conscious nearly as long if it hadn't been for Reddit's continued rage. Ex.2: As it is, news outlets hawk Reddit/HN for story-material, and build the story's narrative with Twitter.) But what HNers must realize is that: The mainstream Internet __can not become__ the Tor-visited Dark-Net that many believe is inevitable -- WITHOUT losing its positive sociological impact. Yet without the perception of anonymity, sites like Reddit will stop flourishing. Reddit's culture thrives on anonymity, throwaway accounts, and people being themselves without representing themselves. There are two issues at play. Now obvious: 1.) Reddit usernames can be mapped to people's actual identity. Not as obvious: 2.) Users up and down votes can also be mapped to their identity. Reddit as a dev-team has retreated from the idea of providing HTTPS for its voting/web API, so people's actions (aside from comments) can be mapped as well. I tried to raise this point 5 months ago [3]. I know there's an argument to be made that SSL/HTTPS is useless anyway (just use Tor!, they say), but the bigger question remains: Can a mainstream community like Reddit exist in tomorrow's Internet? People and the press are paranoid about Facebook/Google privacy because its users identify themselves explicitly, but the reality is no different with sites like Reddit - just the perception. Just think about how much more is shared on a site like Reddit by its members because of their pseudonyms! Few people aside from the avid Tor users have realized this. Reddit is the internet "as we know it," and I feel the Internet is about to change. In hindsight - Google's initial "no pseudonyms" policy for Google+ was prescient -- though the company eventually capitulated to popular demand for them. [4] Perhaps they wished to save each of us the unsavory realization that aliases exist in name-only (pun intended). :/ [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity-not-only-trolls-and-political-dissidents https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity-not-o... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit_needs_fullsite_https/ http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit... [4] http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames-pseudonyms-aliases-399584 http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames-pseudonyms-...

volkadav 13y ago

Minor nitpick: Stasi was East Germany, not the Soviet Union.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

mempko 13y ago

I find it most ironic that when the Internet was owned by the public (government) it was decentralized and more free. When it was given to private business in the mid 90s it became what it is today. You may want to consider the economics of why the Internet has turned out the way it is. Why do these companies feel they need to collect so much personal information that it can be abused? I think the answer is clear. There is no money to be made from a decentralized and free Internet by Silicon Valley...