16 ms·

Thoughtcrime

344 points by panarky 11y ago

nodata 11y ago
I COMPLETELY missed what Cameron said the first time. Like, completely: "For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'." Obeying the law is no longer enough. Great.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  I've actually gotten depressed at the results of the election. I was scheduled to go back to the UK in a few months, but decided to move to another country instead. Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years.
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    Can anyone share why exactly the Liberal Democrats, who seem to have been against this sort of stuff, got crushed at the recent elections? Was it because of some unpopular positions or were there many "scandals" that appeared regarding their candidates (perhaps about personal issues?).
    - ghostberry 11y ago
      As the smaller party in a coalition, they got blamed for every unpopular decision and got no credit for anything popular.
    - binocarlos 11y ago
      I think one of the reasons was tuition fees which the Lib Dems were very much against. The moment they got into power (2010) - fees were hiked to £9k per year and many people treated that like a broken Lim Dem promise
    - Ygg2 11y ago
      One theory I've heard is the way votes are counted. I've heard that UKIP had around 3.881.129 votes and got only one seat, Green party with 1.157.613 won a single seat and Scottish national party had 1.454.436 votes and got 56 seats. I'm not sure it's plausible, but it could be a valid explanation.
      - EliRivers 11y ago
        There was no change to the way votes were counted that I'm aware of. This is a FPTP political system in action. There was a referendum to move to a more grown-up voting system, but the majority voted against it. Depressingly, many of those who voted against were too stupid and too uninformed to actually know what they were voting against. I could only weep as someone left the polling station proud to have taken a stand against proportional representation. I suppose they could have been balanced by people who voted in favour who were too stupid and too uninformed to actually know what they were voting for, but I suspect that is less likely.
        Ygg2 11y ago
        Ah, ok, updated post to reflect that. Ouch. That is quite depressing.
        ZeroGravitas 11y ago
        The AV system we voted on wasn't actually PR, any kind of PR got veto'd by the conservatives, and the Lib-Dems were perhaps foolish to try to continue with such a meagre reform, as it now gets used as an excuse to not implement PR in future as "the country voted against it" (except of course they didn't, as it wasn't one of the two options they were allowed to vote for).
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        I find it very sad this referendum was basically what the Lib Dems traded tuition fees for.
        11y ago
    - learnstats2 11y ago
      My personal opinion: The Liberal Democrats did extremely well at implementing some of their policies (notably increased personal allowance), obsoleting that part of their manifesto. I think they are right to be proud of that record, but it means that some of their strongest policies are now irrelevant. The Liberal Democrats did extremely poorly at implementing some of their promises (notably tuition fees), going back on their word and making themselves non-credible in these respects, obsoleting the other part of their manifesto. The Liberal Democrats were not observed to take any position that would contradict the two major parties during the election campaign. They were criticised for being "blank tiles", easily able to meld with either of the major parties in coalition. A vote for the Liberal Democrats could easily be a vote for the worse of two evils, whichever side you think that is. And many (former?) Liberal Democrats would think that the worse evil would be their coalition partner. The major parties and UKIP have been very effective in pushing an anti-immigrant and anti-human rights agenda with the help of the press. The Liberal Democrats did not appear willing to stand openly against this in the election campaign. During the election debates, the Green Party, Scottish Nationalist Party, and Plaid Cymru made a convincing claim to stand for human rights. The Liberal Democrats did not.
      - alextgordon 11y ago
        I'll add that anybody who actually believed in what the Lib Dems were offering in 2015 (a centrist party) knew that after the election the Lib Dems would probably revert to being a left-wing party anyway. So they managed to alienate both their prior left-wing vote and their new centrist vote. Quite an achievement!
    - dghf 11y ago
      In the run-up to the 2010 election, they promised to oppose any rise in tuition fees, then reneged on this in government. On its own, that's probably not that significant, but it appears to have helped cement their reputation as untrustworthy, not least among those who thought they were voting for a party more left-wing than Labour have become in recent years.
      - djpowell 11y ago
        But... they came last out of the three main parties, so it is hardly surprising that they weren't able to implement the entire of their manifesto. The conservatives reneged on many of their manifesto pledges too. I suspect it is more that the conservatives have much stronger support by the media.
        po8crg 11y ago
        It wasn't that we (I was a Lib Dem candidate in the election) promised it in the manifesto; it was that individual MPs made a personal promise to vote against an increase in tuition fees, and then voted for it.
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Thank you for standing.
    - evgen 11y ago
      In addition to the "got blame but no credit" answer that others have offered I would also suggest that they have previously been the preferred "none of the above" response for people who wanted to express dissatisfaction with either Tories or Labour depending on who happened to be the more popular party in their riding; by being somewhat between they two major parties they picked up a lot of votes from dissatisfied by somewhat engaged voters. Once they were a part of government they were a part of 'the establishment' and so the protest votes went ukip or green depending on the voter's base political preference.
      - anomie 11y ago
        Speaking personally, I voted lib dem in 2010 on the basis that they were a party broadly of the left, but distinct from the Labour party of the time in a number of positive ways. To then form a coalition with the party of the right and support a number of measures that I think were quite regressive did not match with the party I thought I voted for. Of course after seeing 10 days of government without the lib dems to moderate I'm starting to re-evaluate how positive an influence they likely were...
    - lmm 11y ago
      In the run-up to the previous election, many Lib Dem candidates made personal pledges - above and beyond their manifesto - that they, personally, would never vote to raise tuition fees. And then did so (and not because they were required by the coalition agreement - the party made it a free vote). That was how they lost my vote and those of others I know.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        A shame. They did a lot of good during their time in government as well as the bad.
      - learnstats2 11y ago
        And yet it seems that MPs who kept this pledge were burned just as badly, if not worse, than those who didn't. How they voted in 2010: 28 For, 21 Against tuition fee increases (as promised), 8 absent Remaining MPs in 2015: 4 For, 4 Against.
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Most people don't vist http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ and check how their MPs vote on a given issue.
        learnstats2 11y ago
        I used http://publicwhip.org.uk http://publicwhip.org.uk here because it was easier to get rebellion data.
    - Ntrails 11y ago
      Allow me to take a shot. - In the election 5 years ago there was no clear winner, the Lib Dems chose to go into a coalition government with the party who received the largest proportion of the vote. - This coalition meant compromising on several key issues, for example tuition fees for university, in exchange for getting through other policies (raising the free tax allowance for the lower paid). - The lib dems failed to properly communicate their achievements as a liberal/progressive force within government, and spent their time apologising for every compromise. - Scotland moved strongly to a nationalist party, hurting a traditional source of seats. - The polls looked as though there would be another coalition, and the people who previously voted lib dem were damned if they were going to vote effectively for another coalition in which they felt the party betrayed its values tl;dr they got burned for doing the "right thing". As I've said before on HN, people here seem to think that security is a huge issue. Surveillance, police state etc. In all of the election content I saw, it was mentioned maybe once or twice and barely scrutinised. The people of the UK did not care about it, and the politicians left it in the manifestos. As for the GP comment suggesting something about dictatorship, it's probably the most ridiculous thing I've read in some time.
    - rmc 11y ago
      Because they were a small party in a coalition with a larger party that did some horrible things. Their core voters deserted them, since they were in government when things were brought in that their core didn't like. Always the way with small parties in coalition.
  - teh_klev 11y ago
    As someone living in Scotland I am rather hoping this will expedite our eventual independence.
    - netcan 11y ago
      Come join Ireland. BYO NHS.
    - mr_sturd 11y ago
      Come annexe Northumberland, when you do.
    - gadders 11y ago
      As someone living in England, so am I.
    - vanderZwan 11y ago
      Have you seen this? A campaign to make Manchester part of Scotland has gathered momentum after a surprising 72 per cent of respondents voted in favour of secession. The results of an online poll conducted by the Manchester Evening News revealed that thousands of people want the city to be ruled from Edinburgh, rather than London. A Twitter campaign with the hashtag #TakeUsWithYouScotland is being used on social media, and a Change.org petition has already been signed by 17,000 people. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/manchester-set-to-become-part-of-scotland-10250453.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/manchester-set-to-becom...
  - RobertoG 11y ago
    Good luck in your new country but this looks like a global trend to me.
    - mercurial 11y ago
      Pretty much. I'm not sure how many western countries are left which have not succumbed to the dark side of global surveillance and "security at any price", if any. Maybe Iceland?
      - yellowapple 11y ago
        IIRC, Iceland is indeed pretty privacy-conscious as a whole. If it were easier for me to move there (which would be difficult to do right now both financially and because I'm not already in Europe), I probably would.
  - petercooper 11y ago
    Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years. A lot of people said that about Bush in 2004. People are alarmist. Status quo is generally maintained with only minor changes in course - that's what our political systems are designed to do.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      The US has direly changed since 2004 and not for the better. The UK is a much, much smaller country than the US; what do you think will happen to it on the same time scale? I'm not saying Cameron will start WW3, but I really am afraid of what will happen.
      - petercooper 11y ago
        Well it's only my dumb opinion but Cameron merely comes in second place to ISIS for this year's entry on the things the media want us to be scared of - previously populated by CJD, Y2K, anthrax, avian flu, worldwide economic collapse, swine flu, Eurozone collapse, North Korea and Ebola.
      - bzbarsky 11y ago
        > The US has direly changed since 2004 and not for the better. It's complicated. Since 2004 we're finally getting to the point where some of the insanity put in place in the aftermath of 2001-09-11 is starting to go away. On the flip side, the ways some of that is being done (see TSA PreCheck, put in place in 2011) are quite odious... but I have a hard time blaming Bush for a policy put in place in 2011. While I agree that the changes from 2004 to 2008 were fairly negative, the ones from 2008 to 2012 were just as negative if not worse. All of which is to say that the two major parties were quite happily marching in lockstep toward creating a security state for a while there. I'm glad to see that at least the electorate and the judiciary are now moving in the opposite direction.
    - fiblye 11y ago
      I'd dare say most Americans think the US is worse today than it was before Bush. While the US isn't under the rule of a dictator, an increasingly large number of people are wary of if not fearful of the government. People may be alarmist, sure, but when an ever-growing number of people worry about governmental actions, there tends to be some reason for it.
  - gadders 11y ago
    Well, a very large proportion of the population is pleased at the results of the election. I think that things would be much, much worse if the hard-left Milliband Labour Party had won the election.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  I am not sure of the context in which Cameron's quote came from, but societies and governments interfere all the time in activities that are legal. Take smoking tobacco for example, totally legal yet there is tremendous effort put into discouraging this activity.
  - restalis 11y ago
    "societies and governments interfere all the time in activities that are legal" Actually, societies and (especially) governments are the ones defining what is or isn't legal.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Some context: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/counter-terrorism-bill-extremism-disruption-orders-david-cameron http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/counter-terro... Smokers are still left alone. We discourage smoking by limiting where it's legal and making it more expensive, but smokers are still totally free to do what they like within the law. Cameron seems to be saying that people who don't share his values will be harassed somehow.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
paganel 11y ago
> I'm afraid you can't buy a copy of the Glorifying Terrorism SF anthology (it's out of print, and not going to be reprinted or published as an ebook any time soon, because of the ongoing VATMESS headache) I wonder if in this day and age a 500-year old book like "Vindiciae contra tyrannos" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos) would land his/her author in jail. I suppose it would. And I cannot remember the exact title, but there were books similar with this one, written at about the same time, which were advocating for even more drastic measures: i.e. the assassination of the tyrant/king. Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say "I want to kill the President of the United States of America" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY), the UK had remained one of the few countries where a liberty of speech "loophole" was still in place. Sad to see it gone.
- declan 11y ago
  > Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say Note the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this threat against the life of a sitting president was protected by the First Amendment: "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." Here's the text of the opinion; it's a famous 1A case: http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html
Radle 11y ago
I thought I'm fucked in my country, guess what, this has blown my mind.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
I've been moving more and more to the notion that freedom of speech is an all or nothing proposition. On a technical level when dealing with systems that protect the transfer of information such as encryption, this is an absolute, because the technology that provides the security (and thus freedom) cares not the content and any backdoor would destroy all integrity regardless of how it is used. But there has been a notion that laws, rights, and duties do not have the same requirement. We can build compromises in the laws, so we should be able to create a system where only the stuff that should be banned is banned and all other speech is free, no? But now I doubt that, as any ban sacrifices the integrity of the entire system. Maybe in theory it is still possible, but as many of us have seen time and time again, theory and practice differ far more in practice than in theory. From this, I've moved to adopting an ever stricter view of all speech as being free. I will not say it is perfect as it does have flaws. But the flaws are a small price to pay to ensure one of the axiomatic rights is defended. For without free speech, we lose the power to criticize, to discuss, to be democratic. While I know the author isn't regarded quite as highly in the UK and the US, I think the following passage captures the importance of the exchange of information being free. >The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
- collyw 11y ago
  I thought that it was fairly obvious that it is an all or nothing. "Freedom of speech, except you can't say that" isn't freedom of speech.
  - hahainternet 11y ago
    What utter nonsense. "Freedom of speech, except you can't harass rape victims". It's still freedom of speech.
    - AcerbicZero 11y ago
      I'm not sure how you jumped from free speech, to harassing rape victims. Last I checked, harassment requires something more than just freely speaking an opinion once or twice.
thewarrior 11y ago
Ah the irony of this happening in George Orwell's own country. I think Orwell intended it as an extreme dystopian vision meant to serve as a cautionary tale for future generations. Instead it seems that our leaders are using it as a blue print for a technological panopticon that could way beyond what even Orwell imagined.
- contingencies 11y ago
  Yes. Fun fact: Orwell lived in a cheap hostel in Whitechapel known as Tower House, Stalin was another occupant. At the time it was next to a Jewish synagogue, these days that's closed down and it's behind London's largest mosque, next to a very well regarded (by Londoners) Indian restaurant. Later the building was abandoned and gained a reputation for drugs and violence... people used to throw themselves off the upper storeys to effect a quick suicide. Later on it was fixed but by a Cypriate real estate investor and carved up in to cheap units. I had a go at living there, and successfully sublet a room to a guy on the interest rate committee of the Bank of England. Hosting this social mobility in a hundred years ... not bad for a building on a backstreet!
  - EthanHeilman 11y ago
    More details on the Stalin, Orwell, Whitechapel connection. Jack London visited it as well. Stalin "fetched up in London in 1907, living in a Jubilee Street tenement flat – the future home of Golda Berk."[0]. "Tower House was immortalised in 1933, when George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, praised it as the 'best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms'."[1] "Jack London, the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1] [0]: http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-east-end/ http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-ea... [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy.books http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...
- gress 11y ago
  I'm not sure that Orwell had much faith that he was writing an extreme cautionary tale, rather that he was just exposing what he saw as real forces acting in politics.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
I would encourage UK based people to join the various pressure groups and political organisations (e.g. the Liberal Democrat party, the Open Rights Group etc) that campaign (and in the case of the LibDems actually vote in the commons against) against the sort of Stasist legislation that Cameron's government is trying to push through. Do remember that the UK's informal version of a constitution does not allow the Lords a lot of scope to change or reject e.g. the Snoopers charter. (It is convention that the Lords doesn't oppose things that were in the ruling party's manifesto..) Therefore there is not a lot of time to act on these issues.
vdaniuk 11y ago
So, is V for Vendetta still legal in UK?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  We are not there yet. When one boils a frog one must increase the temperature slowly.
- dghf 11y ago
  Never mind V for Vendetta, what about Robin Hood? Hard-left propaganda glorifying armed robbery and violence against public officials under the guise of wealth redistribution. In the eighties series Robin of Sherwood, the Sheriff does at one point describe Robin and his gang as terrorists.
  - gadders 11y ago
    That's strange, as Robin Hood is a right-wing hero, fighting against excessive taxation and oppressive government.
    - harel 11y ago
      I've never thought of him like that. That makes a lot of sense!
    - rmc 11y ago
      Depends on your branch of right wing. Some right wing governments (e.g. Nazis) have ben very in favour of the government being able and duty-bound to oppress people.
      - gadders 11y ago
        That would be the National Socialist party, right?
        dghf 11y ago
fweespeech 11y ago
A second foreign policy adviser to Mr Romney said: “Cameron’s contacts with Republicans are really quite limited, and have been going back to when [George W.] Bush was president.” The adviser added: “In many respects Cameron is like Obama.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9427438/David-Cameron-angered-US-conservatives-with-unprecedented-election-year-embrace-of-Barack-Obama.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/94274... I think we need to be honest with ourselves and realize: A) The US and the UK are basically operating under the same "security at any cost except raising taxes" mindset. B) The logical conclusion of that mindset is to take away freedoms, minimize restrictions on law enforcement, minimize restrictions on espionage, and maximize government's ability to control the message to avoid "leaks". The only real difference is the US was attempting to do it domestically under the radar with tactics like parallel construction that allowed them to bypass the firewall between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence. It seems Cameron has decided to take the opposite approach and say "Fuck it, we are doing this openly and publicly." We'll hack machines, we'll suppress speech of anyone we consider a danger, and anything else we have to. The really sad part is there is a large segment of both country's populations who will go along with it just because it promises to make them "safer" and ignores the fact terrorists are as dangerous as lightning strikes with pre-9/11 procedures and funding. Is it really worth giving up freedom to reduce the risk of a threat that is fundamentally less dangerous to the population at-large than lighting strikes or bee stings? Especially given that to do so we are removing safeguards that protect the general population from law enforcement whom kill more people (particularly in the US, in the UK the numbers are much closer) than terrorists? http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed-police-officer-terrorist http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-ki... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9359763/Bee-stings-killed-as-many-in-UK-as-terrorists-says-watchdog.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9...
- collyw 11y ago
  Yet its tops the UK's list of fears. The western propaganda machine is working well. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/europe-europeans-fears-terrorism-unemployment-pandemics http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/europe-european...
mark_l_watson 11y ago
A friend of mine, a very smart local restaurant owner, had a long talk broadly on this subject yesterday. We both believe the same thing: 1) the US government and other major governments have been negotiating and executing for a long time on a smooth as possible transition from the US dollar being the world's reserve currency to using special drawing rights (SDRs) as the reserve currency. 2) This will badly effect the economy of the USA for several years and the economies of other countries for a much shorter readjustment period of time. 3) A lot of moves to reduce privacy and rights is an attempt to make sure that society remains civil during this transition. 4) It is crazy to not be at least a little prepared by having 3 or 4 weeks of water and food in your home just in case there are supply disruptions. We also talked about the normalization bias of most people we know - people are so uncomfortable talking about this that they simply deny the possibility of this happening. Best thing: do a little prep work, try not to take on new debt, and after preparing live life and don't worry about the future.
- oskarth 11y ago
  Could you provide some pointers on where to read more about this? Both objective information as well as why your interpretation is reasonable.
  - mark_l_watson 11y ago
    I subscribe to Katherine Austin Fitt's solari.com report - she and her guests usually seem very well informed. She was the under secretary of HUD in the George H. Bush administration, but got it some trouble for publicly speaking about how US government finances work. She claims that Dick Cheny tried to ruin her life. I also like James Rickards' two books "The Currency Wars" and "The Death of the Dollar."
- mikeash 11y ago
  Can you explain what SDRs are and what the implications of such a move would be, in particular why it would be disruptive and why major governments would want it?
- jchrisa 11y ago
netcan 11y ago
Absolutes are a powerful thing, in rules, in law, in communication and in all sorts of other ways. Absolutes make all sorts of things easier. Laws deal with them easier. Technology too. Compromises and caveats are trickier. That's kind of what rights and freedoms are supposed to be, some abstract fundamentals we can all agree on that don't need much detail or qualifications. The pursuit of absolutes (or ideals) is a problem though. Trying to stick them where they don't fit is a problem.
panarky 11y ago
This is all about unintended consequences. During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters. This is not a new problem. There's a bunch of literature about this, starting with Robert K. Merton's 1936 paper The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposeful Social Action [1]. Maybe the best way to counteract the perverse outcomes of feel-good social policy is to acknowledge these mistakes and teach future policy makers how to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of their actions [2]. Stross shows this in his hypothetical Labour Party communication: The party recognizes that that our own legislative program of the late 1990s and early 2000s established the framework for repression which is now being used to ruthlessly suppress dissent. [1] [PDF] http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/TheoryClass/Readings/MertonSocialAction.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/T... [2] [PDF] http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_miller.pdf http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_mil...
- mercurial 11y ago
  > This is all about unintended consequences. > During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters. In France, the currently in power socialist party seemed well aware of the "unintended consequences" when the conservatives were voting their own think-of-the-terrorists laws. One has to think that they either think this doesn't apply to them, or that they in fact don't really care.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Never let a crisis go to waste
Tomte 11y ago
It will be impossible to really discuss free speech issues on a venue that is predominantly American. America has a very idiosyncratic view of free speech, embodied in their constitution. Good for them. Unfortunately they usually categorically deny that any other variant of free speech, other than their own specific formulation, can ever be free speech at all. That ties in with the general feeling in America that the US constitution is the best constitution there is and could ever be, to the point where the Founding Fathers are venerated beyond belief, and changes to the constitution are next to impossible. To make a tangential point: America often criticizes Germany for not having the right flavor of free speech. While having more than just influenced our constitution. So basically they approved our constitution (after demanding a few changes), especially the parts that were designed to counter Nazism. Understandable, after World War II. Unsurprisingly that ran counter to the American view of free speech, but that was intended at the time. Decades later everyone is surprised...
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  Your attempt to pin the blame on the Americans is quite tortured. Absolving the governments who actually pass the laws leads to much worse laws.
  - peterfirefly 11y ago
    No, Tomte just knows more about the German Constitution (Grundgesetz) than you do. Insulting your betters is bad form.
- adventured 11y ago
  Starting out your comment by intentionally insulting most of your audience is an even better guarantee of not being able to have a good discussion about free speech issues.
Singletoned 11y ago
More and more, I'm starting to think that free speech and privacy are opposed to each other.
- adventured 11y ago
  Quite the opposite, free speech and privacy demand each other and cannot exist without each other. Consider these two scenarios, taken to the extreme to elaborate a point. Unfettered free speech, with zero privacy. Total privacy, no free speech. Both examples are impossible in a human society (maybe in a robot society). In scenario one, there can be no free speech if you have no right to privacy. The concept of chilling comes into action. If humans were robots, one might say that zero privacy would encourage and illuminate perfect speech because there would be greater total information and understanding. However that is not how people function. When faced with zero privacy, people will always self-censor, often dramatically. We can see this in practice time and time again, in numerous countries throughout just the last century. In scenario two, if you have a government enforcing zero free speech, there's no chance they're going to simultaneously grant their people complete privacy (they can't, they have to constantly monitor speech). The point of these examples, is to show that one can't exist without the other, not in actuality. As one erodes, the other will go with it. A government willing to use extreme violence (which is what it would take) to stop all privacy, is not going to give you free speech. No such contradiction can exist for long. Any government willing to use violence to stop your freedom of speech, is not going to respect your privacy because they'll need to monitor you constantly to check against your speech (not to mention a violent government in reality simply isn't going to respect individual rights anyway).
unwiredben 11y ago
...and here in the US, a major party candidate for president just said "If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State], I’m not gonna call a judge, I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/wonkbook-lindsey-grahams-comments-on-drones-were-very-blunt/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/w... Hearing that made me sick to my stomach.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  Even by Republic standards, Lindsey Graham is on the crazy end of the spectrum. Luckily, there's almost zero chance anyone would put him anywhere near any power.
  - lhc- 11y ago
    Other than, you know, a position in the US Senate.
- mikeash 11y ago
  There's a big difference between somebody saying that who will never be given the chance to act on his promise, and somebody saying that who has actually been elected and is talking about what he plans to do with the power he has.
gadders 11y ago
I think the main upshot of all this is that drawing the line on freedom of speech is hard.
shrektillian 11y ago
http://i.imgur.com/xcOWZZL.png http://i.imgur.com/xcOWZZL.png i made this today, theres possibly a link to mental illness and mercury, just thought i would share.
burritofanatic 11y ago
HBO has a documentary on the so called called Cannibal Cop, who was convicted for conspiracy, a so called "thought crime". He never really acted out on the underlying criminal act in question, and it's difficult to say if he conclusively took a substantial step in furtherance of the crime with someone else. Though, much of the evidence that did stack instead him included chats and search queries from Google. I always thought that the crime of conspiracy was ahead of its time, but I really don't know how it fits in today's context where everything can be tracked. Not that conspiracy shouldn't exist, but that the world has finally caught up to the law.
dbpokorny 11y ago
Western civilization would be better off if David Cameron resigned. He just doesn't understand what he needs to do to lead. Sad really.

344 points by panarky 11y ago

I COMPLETELY missed what Cameron said the first time. Like, completely: "For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'." Obeying the law is no longer enough. Great.

scrollaway 11y ago
I've actually gotten depressed at the results of the election. I was scheduled to go back to the UK in a few months, but decided to move to another country instead. Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  Can anyone share why exactly the Liberal Democrats, who seem to have been against this sort of stuff, got crushed at the recent elections? Was it because of some unpopular positions or were there many "scandals" that appeared regarding their candidates (perhaps about personal issues?).
  - ghostberry 11y ago
    As the smaller party in a coalition, they got blamed for every unpopular decision and got no credit for anything popular.
  - binocarlos 11y ago
    I think one of the reasons was tuition fees which the Lib Dems were very much against. The moment they got into power (2010) - fees were hiked to £9k per year and many people treated that like a broken Lim Dem promise
  - Ygg2 11y ago
    One theory I've heard is the way votes are counted. I've heard that UKIP had around 3.881.129 votes and got only one seat, Green party with 1.157.613 won a single seat and Scottish national party had 1.454.436 votes and got 56 seats. I'm not sure it's plausible, but it could be a valid explanation.
    - EliRivers 11y ago
      There was no change to the way votes were counted that I'm aware of. This is a FPTP political system in action. There was a referendum to move to a more grown-up voting system, but the majority voted against it. Depressingly, many of those who voted against were too stupid and too uninformed to actually know what they were voting against. I could only weep as someone left the polling station proud to have taken a stand against proportional representation. I suppose they could have been balanced by people who voted in favour who were too stupid and too uninformed to actually know what they were voting for, but I suspect that is less likely.
      - Ygg2 11y ago
        Ah, ok, updated post to reflect that. Ouch. That is quite depressing.
      - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
        The AV system we voted on wasn't actually PR, any kind of PR got veto'd by the conservatives, and the Lib-Dems were perhaps foolish to try to continue with such a meagre reform, as it now gets used as an excuse to not implement PR in future as "the country voted against it" (except of course they didn't, as it wasn't one of the two options they were allowed to vote for).
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        I find it very sad this referendum was basically what the Lib Dems traded tuition fees for.
        11y ago
  - learnstats2 11y ago
    My personal opinion: The Liberal Democrats did extremely well at implementing some of their policies (notably increased personal allowance), obsoleting that part of their manifesto. I think they are right to be proud of that record, but it means that some of their strongest policies are now irrelevant. The Liberal Democrats did extremely poorly at implementing some of their promises (notably tuition fees), going back on their word and making themselves non-credible in these respects, obsoleting the other part of their manifesto. The Liberal Democrats were not observed to take any position that would contradict the two major parties during the election campaign. They were criticised for being "blank tiles", easily able to meld with either of the major parties in coalition. A vote for the Liberal Democrats could easily be a vote for the worse of two evils, whichever side you think that is. And many (former?) Liberal Democrats would think that the worse evil would be their coalition partner. The major parties and UKIP have been very effective in pushing an anti-immigrant and anti-human rights agenda with the help of the press. The Liberal Democrats did not appear willing to stand openly against this in the election campaign. During the election debates, the Green Party, Scottish Nationalist Party, and Plaid Cymru made a convincing claim to stand for human rights. The Liberal Democrats did not.
    - alextgordon 11y ago
      I'll add that anybody who actually believed in what the Lib Dems were offering in 2015 (a centrist party) knew that after the election the Lib Dems would probably revert to being a left-wing party anyway. So they managed to alienate both their prior left-wing vote and their new centrist vote. Quite an achievement!
  - dghf 11y ago
    In the run-up to the 2010 election, they promised to oppose any rise in tuition fees, then reneged on this in government. On its own, that's probably not that significant, but it appears to have helped cement their reputation as untrustworthy, not least among those who thought they were voting for a party more left-wing than Labour have become in recent years.
    - djpowell 11y ago
      But... they came last out of the three main parties, so it is hardly surprising that they weren't able to implement the entire of their manifesto. The conservatives reneged on many of their manifesto pledges too. I suspect it is more that the conservatives have much stronger support by the media.
      - po8crg 11y ago
        It wasn't that we (I was a Lib Dem candidate in the election) promised it in the manifesto; it was that individual MPs made a personal promise to vote against an increase in tuition fees, and then voted for it.
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Thank you for standing.
  - evgen 11y ago
    In addition to the "got blame but no credit" answer that others have offered I would also suggest that they have previously been the preferred "none of the above" response for people who wanted to express dissatisfaction with either Tories or Labour depending on who happened to be the more popular party in their riding; by being somewhat between they two major parties they picked up a lot of votes from dissatisfied by somewhat engaged voters. Once they were a part of government they were a part of 'the establishment' and so the protest votes went ukip or green depending on the voter's base political preference.
    - anomie 11y ago
      Speaking personally, I voted lib dem in 2010 on the basis that they were a party broadly of the left, but distinct from the Labour party of the time in a number of positive ways. To then form a coalition with the party of the right and support a number of measures that I think were quite regressive did not match with the party I thought I voted for. Of course after seeing 10 days of government without the lib dems to moderate I'm starting to re-evaluate how positive an influence they likely were...
  - lmm 11y ago
    In the run-up to the previous election, many Lib Dem candidates made personal pledges - above and beyond their manifesto - that they, personally, would never vote to raise tuition fees. And then did so (and not because they were required by the coalition agreement - the party made it a free vote). That was how they lost my vote and those of others I know.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      A shame. They did a lot of good during their time in government as well as the bad.
    - learnstats2 11y ago
      And yet it seems that MPs who kept this pledge were burned just as badly, if not worse, than those who didn't. How they voted in 2010: 28 For, 21 Against tuition fee increases (as promised), 8 absent Remaining MPs in 2015: 4 For, 4 Against.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Most people don't vist http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ and check how their MPs vote on a given issue.
        learnstats2 11y ago
        I used http://publicwhip.org.uk http://publicwhip.org.uk here because it was easier to get rebellion data.
  - Ntrails 11y ago
    Allow me to take a shot. - In the election 5 years ago there was no clear winner, the Lib Dems chose to go into a coalition government with the party who received the largest proportion of the vote. - This coalition meant compromising on several key issues, for example tuition fees for university, in exchange for getting through other policies (raising the free tax allowance for the lower paid). - The lib dems failed to properly communicate their achievements as a liberal/progressive force within government, and spent their time apologising for every compromise. - Scotland moved strongly to a nationalist party, hurting a traditional source of seats. - The polls looked as though there would be another coalition, and the people who previously voted lib dem were damned if they were going to vote effectively for another coalition in which they felt the party betrayed its values tl;dr they got burned for doing the "right thing". As I've said before on HN, people here seem to think that security is a huge issue. Surveillance, police state etc. In all of the election content I saw, it was mentioned maybe once or twice and barely scrutinised. The people of the UK did not care about it, and the politicians left it in the manifestos. As for the GP comment suggesting something about dictatorship, it's probably the most ridiculous thing I've read in some time.
  - rmc 11y ago
    Because they were a small party in a coalition with a larger party that did some horrible things. Their core voters deserted them, since they were in government when things were brought in that their core didn't like. Always the way with small parties in coalition.
- teh_klev 11y ago
  As someone living in Scotland I am rather hoping this will expedite our eventual independence.
  - netcan 11y ago
    Come join Ireland. BYO NHS.
  - mr_sturd 11y ago
    Come annexe Northumberland, when you do.
  - gadders 11y ago
    As someone living in England, so am I.
  - vanderZwan 11y ago
    Have you seen this? A campaign to make Manchester part of Scotland has gathered momentum after a surprising 72 per cent of respondents voted in favour of secession. The results of an online poll conducted by the Manchester Evening News revealed that thousands of people want the city to be ruled from Edinburgh, rather than London. A Twitter campaign with the hashtag #TakeUsWithYouScotland is being used on social media, and a Change.org petition has already been signed by 17,000 people. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/manchester-set-to-become-part-of-scotland-10250453.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/manchester-set-to-becom...
- RobertoG 11y ago
  Good luck in your new country but this looks like a global trend to me.
  - mercurial 11y ago
    Pretty much. I'm not sure how many western countries are left which have not succumbed to the dark side of global surveillance and "security at any price", if any. Maybe Iceland?
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      IIRC, Iceland is indeed pretty privacy-conscious as a whole. If it were easier for me to move there (which would be difficult to do right now both financially and because I'm not already in Europe), I probably would.
- petercooper 11y ago
  Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years. A lot of people said that about Bush in 2004. People are alarmist. Status quo is generally maintained with only minor changes in course - that's what our political systems are designed to do.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    The US has direly changed since 2004 and not for the better. The UK is a much, much smaller country than the US; what do you think will happen to it on the same time scale? I'm not saying Cameron will start WW3, but I really am afraid of what will happen.
    - petercooper 11y ago
      Well it's only my dumb opinion but Cameron merely comes in second place to ISIS for this year's entry on the things the media want us to be scared of - previously populated by CJD, Y2K, anthrax, avian flu, worldwide economic collapse, swine flu, Eurozone collapse, North Korea and Ebola.
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      > The US has direly changed since 2004 and not for the better. It's complicated. Since 2004 we're finally getting to the point where some of the insanity put in place in the aftermath of 2001-09-11 is starting to go away. On the flip side, the ways some of that is being done (see TSA PreCheck, put in place in 2011) are quite odious... but I have a hard time blaming Bush for a policy put in place in 2011. While I agree that the changes from 2004 to 2008 were fairly negative, the ones from 2008 to 2012 were just as negative if not worse. All of which is to say that the two major parties were quite happily marching in lockstep toward creating a security state for a while there. I'm glad to see that at least the electorate and the judiciary are now moving in the opposite direction.
  - fiblye 11y ago
    I'd dare say most Americans think the US is worse today than it was before Bush. While the US isn't under the rule of a dictator, an increasingly large number of people are wary of if not fearful of the government. People may be alarmist, sure, but when an ever-growing number of people worry about governmental actions, there tends to be some reason for it.
- gadders 11y ago
  Well, a very large proportion of the population is pleased at the results of the election. I think that things would be much, much worse if the hard-left Milliband Labour Party had won the election.
danieltillett 11y ago
I am not sure of the context in which Cameron's quote came from, but societies and governments interfere all the time in activities that are legal. Take smoking tobacco for example, totally legal yet there is tremendous effort put into discouraging this activity.
- restalis 11y ago
  "societies and governments interfere all the time in activities that are legal" Actually, societies and (especially) governments are the ones defining what is or isn't legal.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Some context: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/counter-terrorism-bill-extremism-disruption-orders-david-cameron http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/counter-terro... Smokers are still left alone. We discourage smoking by limiting where it's legal and making it more expensive, but smokers are still totally free to do what they like within the law. Cameron seems to be saying that people who don't share his values will be harassed somehow.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

paganel 11y ago

> I'm afraid you can't buy a copy of the Glorifying Terrorism SF anthology (it's out of print, and not going to be reprinted or published as an ebook any time soon, because of the ongoing VATMESS headache) I wonder if in this day and age a 500-year old book like "Vindiciae contra tyrannos" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos) would land his/her author in jail. I suppose it would. And I cannot remember the exact title, but there were books similar with this one, written at about the same time, which were advocating for even more drastic measures: i.e. the assassination of the tyrant/king. Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say "I want to kill the President of the United States of America" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY), the UK had remained one of the few countries where a liberty of speech "loophole" was still in place. Sad to see it gone.

declan 11y ago
> Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say Note the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this threat against the life of a sitting president was protected by the First Amendment: "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." Here's the text of the opinion; it's a famous 1A case: http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html

Radle 11y ago

I thought I'm fucked in my country, guess what, this has blown my mind.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

I've been moving more and more to the notion that freedom of speech is an all or nothing proposition. On a technical level when dealing with systems that protect the transfer of information such as encryption, this is an absolute, because the technology that provides the security (and thus freedom) cares not the content and any backdoor would destroy all integrity regardless of how it is used. But there has been a notion that laws, rights, and duties do not have the same requirement. We can build compromises in the laws, so we should be able to create a system where only the stuff that should be banned is banned and all other speech is free, no? But now I doubt that, as any ban sacrifices the integrity of the entire system. Maybe in theory it is still possible, but as many of us have seen time and time again, theory and practice differ far more in practice than in theory. From this, I've moved to adopting an ever stricter view of all speech as being free. I will not say it is perfect as it does have flaws. But the flaws are a small price to pay to ensure one of the axiomatic rights is defended. For without free speech, we lose the power to criticize, to discuss, to be democratic. While I know the author isn't regarded quite as highly in the UK and the US, I think the following passage captures the importance of the exchange of information being free. >The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

collyw 11y ago
I thought that it was fairly obvious that it is an all or nothing. "Freedom of speech, except you can't say that" isn't freedom of speech.
- hahainternet 11y ago
  What utter nonsense. "Freedom of speech, except you can't harass rape victims". It's still freedom of speech.
  - AcerbicZero 11y ago
    I'm not sure how you jumped from free speech, to harassing rape victims. Last I checked, harassment requires something more than just freely speaking an opinion once or twice.

thewarrior 11y ago

Ah the irony of this happening in George Orwell's own country. I think Orwell intended it as an extreme dystopian vision meant to serve as a cautionary tale for future generations. Instead it seems that our leaders are using it as a blue print for a technological panopticon that could way beyond what even Orwell imagined.

contingencies 11y ago
Yes. Fun fact: Orwell lived in a cheap hostel in Whitechapel known as Tower House, Stalin was another occupant. At the time it was next to a Jewish synagogue, these days that's closed down and it's behind London's largest mosque, next to a very well regarded (by Londoners) Indian restaurant. Later the building was abandoned and gained a reputation for drugs and violence... people used to throw themselves off the upper storeys to effect a quick suicide. Later on it was fixed but by a Cypriate real estate investor and carved up in to cheap units. I had a go at living there, and successfully sublet a room to a guy on the interest rate committee of the Bank of England. Hosting this social mobility in a hundred years ... not bad for a building on a backstreet!
- EthanHeilman 11y ago
  More details on the Stalin, Orwell, Whitechapel connection. Jack London visited it as well. Stalin "fetched up in London in 1907, living in a Jubilee Street tenement flat – the future home of Golda Berk."[0]. "Tower House was immortalised in 1933, when George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, praised it as the 'best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms'."[1] "Jack London, the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1] [0]: http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-east-end/ http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-ea... [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy.books http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...
gress 11y ago
I'm not sure that Orwell had much faith that he was writing an extreme cautionary tale, rather that he was just exposing what he saw as real forces acting in politics.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

I would encourage UK based people to join the various pressure groups and political organisations (e.g. the Liberal Democrat party, the Open Rights Group etc) that campaign (and in the case of the LibDems actually vote in the commons against) against the sort of Stasist legislation that Cameron's government is trying to push through. Do remember that the UK's informal version of a constitution does not allow the Lords a lot of scope to change or reject e.g. the Snoopers charter. (It is convention that the Lords doesn't oppose things that were in the ruling party's manifesto..) Therefore there is not a lot of time to act on these issues.

vdaniuk 11y ago

So, is V for Vendetta still legal in UK?

JupiterMoon 11y ago
We are not there yet. When one boils a frog one must increase the temperature slowly.
dghf 11y ago
Never mind V for Vendetta, what about Robin Hood? Hard-left propaganda glorifying armed robbery and violence against public officials under the guise of wealth redistribution. In the eighties series Robin of Sherwood, the Sheriff does at one point describe Robin and his gang as terrorists.
- gadders 11y ago
  That's strange, as Robin Hood is a right-wing hero, fighting against excessive taxation and oppressive government.
  - harel 11y ago
    I've never thought of him like that. That makes a lot of sense!
  - rmc 11y ago
    Depends on your branch of right wing. Some right wing governments (e.g. Nazis) have ben very in favour of the government being able and duty-bound to oppress people.
    - gadders 11y ago
      That would be the National Socialist party, right?
      - dghf 11y ago

fweespeech 11y ago

A second foreign policy adviser to Mr Romney said: “Cameron’s contacts with Republicans are really quite limited, and have been going back to when [George W.] Bush was president.” The adviser added: “In many respects Cameron is like Obama.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9427438/David-Cameron-angered-US-conservatives-with-unprecedented-election-year-embrace-of-Barack-Obama.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/94274... I think we need to be honest with ourselves and realize: A) The US and the UK are basically operating under the same "security at any cost except raising taxes" mindset. B) The logical conclusion of that mindset is to take away freedoms, minimize restrictions on law enforcement, minimize restrictions on espionage, and maximize government's ability to control the message to avoid "leaks". The only real difference is the US was attempting to do it domestically under the radar with tactics like parallel construction that allowed them to bypass the firewall between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence. It seems Cameron has decided to take the opposite approach and say "Fuck it, we are doing this openly and publicly." We'll hack machines, we'll suppress speech of anyone we consider a danger, and anything else we have to. The really sad part is there is a large segment of both country's populations who will go along with it just because it promises to make them "safer" and ignores the fact terrorists are as dangerous as lightning strikes with pre-9/11 procedures and funding. Is it really worth giving up freedom to reduce the risk of a threat that is fundamentally less dangerous to the population at-large than lighting strikes or bee stings? Especially given that to do so we are removing safeguards that protect the general population from law enforcement whom kill more people (particularly in the US, in the UK the numbers are much closer) than terrorists? http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed-police-officer-terrorist http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-ki... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9359763/Bee-stings-killed-as-many-in-UK-as-terrorists-says-watchdog.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9...

collyw 11y ago
Yet its tops the UK's list of fears. The western propaganda machine is working well. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/europe-europeans-fears-terrorism-unemployment-pandemics http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/europe-european...

mark_l_watson 11y ago

A friend of mine, a very smart local restaurant owner, had a long talk broadly on this subject yesterday. We both believe the same thing: 1) the US government and other major governments have been negotiating and executing for a long time on a smooth as possible transition from the US dollar being the world's reserve currency to using special drawing rights (SDRs) as the reserve currency. 2) This will badly effect the economy of the USA for several years and the economies of other countries for a much shorter readjustment period of time. 3) A lot of moves to reduce privacy and rights is an attempt to make sure that society remains civil during this transition. 4) It is crazy to not be at least a little prepared by having 3 or 4 weeks of water and food in your home just in case there are supply disruptions. We also talked about the normalization bias of most people we know - people are so uncomfortable talking about this that they simply deny the possibility of this happening. Best thing: do a little prep work, try not to take on new debt, and after preparing live life and don't worry about the future.

oskarth 11y ago
Could you provide some pointers on where to read more about this? Both objective information as well as why your interpretation is reasonable.
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I subscribe to Katherine Austin Fitt's solari.com report - she and her guests usually seem very well informed. She was the under secretary of HUD in the George H. Bush administration, but got it some trouble for publicly speaking about how US government finances work. She claims that Dick Cheny tried to ruin her life. I also like James Rickards' two books "The Currency Wars" and "The Death of the Dollar."
mikeash 11y ago
Can you explain what SDRs are and what the implications of such a move would be, in particular why it would be disruptive and why major governments would want it?
jchrisa 11y ago

netcan 11y ago

Absolutes are a powerful thing, in rules, in law, in communication and in all sorts of other ways. Absolutes make all sorts of things easier. Laws deal with them easier. Technology too. Compromises and caveats are trickier. That's kind of what rights and freedoms are supposed to be, some abstract fundamentals we can all agree on that don't need much detail or qualifications. The pursuit of absolutes (or ideals) is a problem though. Trying to stick them where they don't fit is a problem.

panarky 11y ago

This is all about unintended consequences. During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters. This is not a new problem. There's a bunch of literature about this, starting with Robert K. Merton's 1936 paper The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposeful Social Action [1]. Maybe the best way to counteract the perverse outcomes of feel-good social policy is to acknowledge these mistakes and teach future policy makers how to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of their actions [2]. Stross shows this in his hypothetical Labour Party communication: The party recognizes that that our own legislative program of the late 1990s and early 2000s established the framework for repression which is now being used to ruthlessly suppress dissent. [1] [PDF] http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/TheoryClass/Readings/MertonSocialAction.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/T... [2] [PDF] http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_miller.pdf http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_mil...

mercurial 11y ago
> This is all about unintended consequences. > During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters. In France, the currently in power socialist party seemed well aware of the "unintended consequences" when the conservatives were voting their own think-of-the-terrorists laws. One has to think that they either think this doesn't apply to them, or that they in fact don't really care.
ams6110 11y ago
Never let a crisis go to waste

Tomte 11y ago

It will be impossible to really discuss free speech issues on a venue that is predominantly American. America has a very idiosyncratic view of free speech, embodied in their constitution. Good for them. Unfortunately they usually categorically deny that any other variant of free speech, other than their own specific formulation, can ever be free speech at all. That ties in with the general feeling in America that the US constitution is the best constitution there is and could ever be, to the point where the Founding Fathers are venerated beyond belief, and changes to the constitution are next to impossible. To make a tangential point: America often criticizes Germany for not having the right flavor of free speech. While having more than just influenced our constitution. So basically they approved our constitution (after demanding a few changes), especially the parts that were designed to counter Nazism. Understandable, after World War II. Unsurprisingly that ran counter to the American view of free speech, but that was intended at the time. Decades later everyone is surprised...

happyscrappy 11y ago
Your attempt to pin the blame on the Americans is quite tortured. Absolving the governments who actually pass the laws leads to much worse laws.
- peterfirefly 11y ago
  No, Tomte just knows more about the German Constitution (Grundgesetz) than you do. Insulting your betters is bad form.
adventured 11y ago
Starting out your comment by intentionally insulting most of your audience is an even better guarantee of not being able to have a good discussion about free speech issues.

Singletoned 11y ago

More and more, I'm starting to think that free speech and privacy are opposed to each other.

adventured 11y ago
Quite the opposite, free speech and privacy demand each other and cannot exist without each other. Consider these two scenarios, taken to the extreme to elaborate a point. Unfettered free speech, with zero privacy. Total privacy, no free speech. Both examples are impossible in a human society (maybe in a robot society). In scenario one, there can be no free speech if you have no right to privacy. The concept of chilling comes into action. If humans were robots, one might say that zero privacy would encourage and illuminate perfect speech because there would be greater total information and understanding. However that is not how people function. When faced with zero privacy, people will always self-censor, often dramatically. We can see this in practice time and time again, in numerous countries throughout just the last century. In scenario two, if you have a government enforcing zero free speech, there's no chance they're going to simultaneously grant their people complete privacy (they can't, they have to constantly monitor speech). The point of these examples, is to show that one can't exist without the other, not in actuality. As one erodes, the other will go with it. A government willing to use extreme violence (which is what it would take) to stop all privacy, is not going to give you free speech. No such contradiction can exist for long. Any government willing to use violence to stop your freedom of speech, is not going to respect your privacy because they'll need to monitor you constantly to check against your speech (not to mention a violent government in reality simply isn't going to respect individual rights anyway).

unwiredben 11y ago

...and here in the US, a major party candidate for president just said "If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State], I’m not gonna call a judge, I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/wonkbook-lindsey-grahams-comments-on-drones-were-very-blunt/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/w... Hearing that made me sick to my stomach.

zimpenfish 11y ago
Even by Republic standards, Lindsey Graham is on the crazy end of the spectrum. Luckily, there's almost zero chance anyone would put him anywhere near any power.
- lhc- 11y ago
  Other than, you know, a position in the US Senate.
mikeash 11y ago
There's a big difference between somebody saying that who will never be given the chance to act on his promise, and somebody saying that who has actually been elected and is talking about what he plans to do with the power he has.

gadders 11y ago

I think the main upshot of all this is that drawing the line on freedom of speech is hard.

shrektillian 11y ago

http://i.imgur.com/xcOWZZL.png http://i.imgur.com/xcOWZZL.png i made this today, theres possibly a link to mental illness and mercury, just thought i would share.

burritofanatic 11y ago

HBO has a documentary on the so called called Cannibal Cop, who was convicted for conspiracy, a so called "thought crime". He never really acted out on the underlying criminal act in question, and it's difficult to say if he conclusively took a substantial step in furtherance of the crime with someone else. Though, much of the evidence that did stack instead him included chats and search queries from Google. I always thought that the crime of conspiracy was ahead of its time, but I really don't know how it fits in today's context where everything can be tracked. Not that conspiracy shouldn't exist, but that the world has finally caught up to the law.

dbpokorny 11y ago

Western civilization would be better off if David Cameron resigned. He just doesn't understand what he needs to do to lead. Sad really.