[HN Gopher] Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opi...
___________________________________________________________________
Statement on EU-US Cooperation on Turning Public Opinion Against
Encryption
Author : pera
Score : 396 points
Date : 2023-04-24 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.globalencryption.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.globalencryption.org)
| bdg wrote:
| Can we force politicans to put their money in the first
| unencrypted bank for the first year as a dry-run of some wakened
| encryption future?
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| noelsusman wrote:
| >As we have stated in the past, there is no effective way to
| weaken encryption for some use cases such as law enforcement
| while keeping it strong for others.
|
| I've never been fully satisfied by this assertion.
|
| Apple has the ability to push whatever code it wants to whatever
| device it wants. They can make a version of iOS that bypasses
| encryption and restrict it to only run on devices identified by a
| warrant. They could post it on GitHub and it wouldn't matter
| because iPhones would refuse to run the code if it had been
| modified by somebody other than Apple to run on any device. You
| would need Apple's internal code signing keys to actually do any
| damage.
|
| Currently, the security of your iPhone is dependent on Apple's
| internal security. If that gets compromised then your phone can
| be compromised. In a world where law enforcement can get a
| warrant to force Apple to unlock a specific iPhone, the security
| of your phone is still dependent on Apple's internal security.
| Nothing changes for anyone not targeted by a warrant.
|
| You don't need to give law enforcement a universal backdoor key
| to enable them to execute warrants on devices. What am I missing?
| generalizations wrote:
| To the degree that they can do it, they can only do that
| because they own both the hardware and the software, and they
| are tightly integrated.
|
| You need hardware that can securely hold secrets; you need
| software to detect tampering and tell the hardware about it;
| you need software that the hardware trusts to communicate with
| apple servers. Without the whole integrated pipeline from local
| secrets cache to apple servers, protected because it's all
| owned and managed by the same secret-keeper, what apple does
| can't be done.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > They can make a version of iOS that bypasses encryption and
| restrict it to only run on devices identified by a warrant.
|
| Of course. Apple could absolutely do this and undermine any
| trust people have in them in seconds if they want to.
|
| Didn't they pass a law in Australia requiring corporations to
| do exactly what you describe? I remember reading news here
| about several corporations just moving off of Australia as a
| result of the inherent untrustworthiness of any system where
| the government can compel any party you're doing business with
| to ship you malware.
| rekoil wrote:
| > What am I missing?
|
| The fact that this is not how security on iPhones works at all.
|
| There are unencrypted partitions of the storage yes, which
| means the device can boot into iOS without any user password,
| but the ones containing user data are encrypted and an OS
| update can at best remove the limit on how fast or how many
| times you can attempt to unlock the user data (or rather the
| Secure Enclave which stores the actual key for the user data).
|
| Sure, if you have a 4-6 digit PIN code this is then quickly
| unlocked in that scenario you're talking about, but if you have
| an alphanumeric password you can make that attack completely
| infeasible.
|
| Bottom line is there is no way for Apple to make a version of
| iOS that completely bypasses encryption, encryption doesn't
| work like that.
|
| They could, I guess, make a version which silently checks if
| it's host devices serial number is in a certain list provided
| by e.g. law enforcement, and then silently removes the SEP
| encryption, IF the user unlocks the device AFTER that software
| is installed. But they would have to secretly add this code to
| the normal iOS releases which would severely compromise their
| customers data en masse if they did it this way, or create a
| way to push a specific build over the air to a specific device
| (which actually doesn't sound that far-fetched honestly, now
| that I'm thinking about it), without alerting the user that
| they are installing a backdoor for law enforcement.
|
| I don't think that's feasible either way, because it would
| quickly come out that they've done that and once the cat's out
| of the bag they are losing big bucks, and would be criminals
| will simply stop installing updates on their iPhones.
| tremon wrote:
| _an OS update can at best remove the limit on how fast or how
| many times you can attempt to unlock the user data_
|
| Wouldn't an OS update be able to store the user password in a
| plain text file on the non-encrypted partitions? I don't
| think those partitions are hardwired to be readonly until the
| rest of the system is unlocked?
| 2h wrote:
| great idea. while we are at it, we should also require that the
| police have a key to your house and vehicle, as well as your
| debit card pin number and, email password, and bank password.
|
| its necessary security, so you agree with this correct?
| lovecg wrote:
| In the current world Apple is not actually able to compromise
| your iPhone, warrant or not, by design (remember the whole FBI
| debacle?). Encryption is done through separate hardware on the
| phone that they can't remotely bypass. In the world you're
| proposing they would have to be legally compelled to engineer a
| weaker system. That's the problem.
| noelsusman wrote:
| I could be wrong but I don't remember Apple claiming it was
| literally impossible for them to open an iPhone. If that were
| true then Apple wouldn't have had to fight them at all. The
| government can't force you to do impossible things.
|
| Apple objected to being compelled to create the tooling to
| bypass an iPhone's security. That implies they can do it
| whenever they want, they just choose not to.
| rekoil wrote:
| They could create a build with unlock attempts removed,
| making it possible to brute-force weaker unlock schemes.
| That's what they didn't want to do because if they created
| something like that they would lose a lot of customers.
| acchow wrote:
| Are unlock attempt limits not built into the security
| chip?
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| You already can't sideload Signal on an iPhone. The Apple
| store is a single point of failure that's being ignored by
| too many.
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| I have no problem with the police hacking into devices. They have
| the right to use bugs and find exploits just like they have the
| right to pick a safe of force a door.
|
| But backdoors and unacceptable, that's like mandating that every
| house have microphones in every room connected to the police
| center
| layer8 wrote:
| This is problematic if, as is often the case, it leads to
| keeping vulnerabilities undisclosed, so that they can continue
| to exploit them. This gives bad actors more opportunity to find
| and exploit the same vulnerabilities, and it gives security
| companies that find vulnerabilities the incentive to sell their
| services to the police and to government agencies instead of
| informing the software manufacturer.
| rekoil wrote:
| There's a solution to this problem for the big actors. Bug
| bounty programs that pay as well or better than the likes of
| NSO group.
| layer8 wrote:
| This is limited by the "big actor's" perceived benefit of
| catching the bugs. They are already known to not be overly
| generous. Conversely, security companies can potentially
| monetize the same vulnerability over and over.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| 1984 was a warning, not a manual!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I finished reading the book yesterday. I truly believe Orwell
| was a time traveler. (joke) The parallels between Oceania and
| some nations of the world nowadays is infinite.
| [deleted]
| nullsense wrote:
| Now every time I see a war or natural disaster story on the
| 6 o'clock news I have the movie adaptation's voice in my
| head saying "Oceania is continually at war with East Asia"
| sroussey wrote:
| It's like having a computer in every car, connected to the
| internet. And the police asking who was speeding yesterday.
| dalbasal wrote:
| There comes a point where reasoning about rights by analogy
| loses its bite... imo.
|
| Digital rights, digital ownership, digital business models,
| privacy, security, speech, digital policing... they're all very
| different from their analog analogs.
|
| The differences between A & B are less pronounced in the
| digital realm.
|
| Police hacking into devices has more in common, practically and
| culturally, with signals intelligence than it does with
| ordinary policing.
|
| I don't disagree with you. I just don't agree that "it's very
| simple." We need to invent or adopt novel concepts, not insist
| that nothing has changed.
| codedokode wrote:
| What about banning end-to-end encryption while allowing client-
| server encryption like HTTPS?
| totetsu wrote:
| I was thinking about this today. Like we watch a moive about
| cold war times and see the gmen or the stasi doing some
| unbelievable intrusive surveillance and think wow what times
| they would have been to live in, and at the same time my every
| movement for the past 10 years when I had a cellphone in my
| pocket is in a database somewhere and I barely think about it.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| Or, we watch a movie like 24 where the protagonist is asking
| his agency buddies to hack random computers while straight up
| torturing people to get information - and we cheer for him.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I think the difference is that in those situations the people
| had no say in what was and wasn't acceptable and some of the
| things we take for granted as basic freedoms may have been
| outlawed and targeted. This is why you can feel comfortable
| with it but they could not: there's not a huge disparity
| between what you want to do or say and what you're allowed to
| do or say, and you feel the punishment for doing or saying as
| you shouldn't is acceptable.
| pmarreck wrote:
| "The Lives of Others" is a great movie about this. Apparently
| they used authentic early-80's-era spying gear in that movie.
| fatcat500 wrote:
| Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing
| our interests, but in shaping our interests. There exists an
| entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase
| compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory).
|
| The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run
| miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these
| kinds of tactics to increase compliance. For example, running
| talking points on the MSM works well. They run the talking points
| and in the next days, everyone is parroting what they heard on
| the news, as if it's their own views.
|
| But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with these
| tactics, such that they will become less effective (e.g. waning
| trust in the media). They are burning through the cultural &
| social capital which sustain these institutions (like the MSM or
| academia), and don't realize that once it runs out, they will no
| longer have these levers and buttons at their disposal.
|
| At that point, the only way to increase compliance is with force.
| And once you go down that road, it becomes extremely clear to
| those wielding that force, just how precarious their situation is
| (e.g. Maduro assassination attempts). That is how totalitarianism
| takes root, fear of the people.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| > Interesting how our leaders see their role not as
| representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.
|
| I mean that's what "leader" means at the end of the day. Of
| course, though, leader isn't the only way to refer to
| politicians. In German leader translates literally to Fuhrer
| ... which isn't really used since the ultimate demise of Herr
| Schickelgruber. We also use "Reprasentant" whose English
| counterpart is obvious. Also some people believe that
| politicians are supposed to know what's going on and what to do
| - even me - question is where a line is crossed.
|
| > But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with
| these tactics, such that they will become less effective
|
| I doubt that given those tactics have been continuously applied
| since ever.
|
| > e.g. waning trust in the media
|
| yes, but the result is simply new media channels and outlets
| which are supposedly more trustworthy. those abusive
| politicians we are talking about here will play those media
| entities like an instrument and simply switch where ever they
| expect to get the most attention.
|
| > They are burning through the cultural & social capital which
| sustain these institutions (like the MSM or academia), and
| don't realize that once it runs out, they will no longer have
| these levers and buttons at their disposal.
|
| They won't need those levers and button anymore. Abusive power
| hungry politicians belong to an elite whose end game is a
| totalitarian state for them to parasitize. At that point
| everybody has to believe or at least shut up ... or men will
| come and take them away.
|
| > At that point, the only way to increase compliance is with
| force.
|
| Exactly.
|
| > And once you go down that road, it becomes extremely clear to
| those wielding that force, just how precarious their situation
| is (e.g. Maduro assassination attempts).
|
| One can argue that most totalitarian states end badly but that
| can take a while. Criminals also do criminal things despite
| bleak prospects. One might argue they are statistically stupid
| for being criminal just to have a good time for a while. But
| that's just your sane point of view. For people who _are_ of
| criminal mindset (and I consider politicians with totalitarian
| inclination effectively to that group) really enjoy their life
| style.
|
| > That is how totalitarianism takes root, fear of the people.
|
| This and fear of the goverment.
| fwungy wrote:
| Historically once people recognize the media is not
| trustworthy they discount it. You see this in the former USSR
| countries. People don't take the media seriously like they do
| in the west.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Yes, and this is very exploitable by dictators and those
| wanting to become such. If you can't get people to buy into
| your propaganda paper you can at least get them to buy into
| nothing at all, detach themselves from any notion of
| objective reality, and accept all complicity with whatever
| war crimes the regime wishes you to commit.
|
| The most dangerous situation for a dictator is to be faced
| with multiple independent and competing sources of truth
| that all disagree with you, because they will propagandize
| your subjects away from you quite quickly.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Lol explain Fox news.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as
| representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.
|
| > I mean that's what "leader" means at the end of the day.
|
| I disagree with this sentence.
|
| Many minor leadership positions and a generation of parenting
| taught me that leadership is an act of service. My purpose is
| to help coordinate the fulfillment of others' needs. If I
| ever forget that, I will have lost my way.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| mrburnssama wrote:
| We saw a master class of this during the last 3 years of the
| "pandemic".
|
| I find it frightening how western liberal countries are
| becoming more and more like China, possibly in an attempt to
| beat them.
| davidjones332 wrote:
| Not quite, communism is both china and american woke
| morality. The same force is shaping and controlling both
| china and usa.
| Arnt wrote:
| Well, our leaders serve two goals: The voters' will and the
| fairness of the law.
|
| Nothing requires to vox populi of some issue to agree with its
| own opinion of five minutes ago, or its own current opinion in
| a similar issue. Your opinion as voter can be as fickle as it
| pleases you. The law requires fairness, though, and our leaders
| are the unfortunates whose job it is to tell the voters about
| the longer-term principles and try to shape people's opinions.
| To make them less fickle and more principled.
|
| Now, _which_ principle? I don 't mind if a particular
| politician or party tries to shape voters' opinions around the
| principles in that politician's or party's program.
| jameshart wrote:
| > There exists an entire subject in political science dealing
| with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators
| (see Nudge Theory).
|
| It's a very cynical view of the potential for human government
| that believes there is no way that the democratic will of the
| people affects what goals 'regulators' pursue.
|
| Consider the possibility perhaps that the point of government
| is to overcome the prisoner's dilemma and move people into a
| better collective equilibrium than they will naturally settle
| into. Nudges can be a useful tool for creating better outcomes
| for everyone.
|
| In theory, at least.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| I read this as "The government's role is to nudge people into
| what the government determines is better than the people's
| natural inclination."
|
| Did I understand that correctly? If I did, I don't think
| anyone would disagree... in theory. The problem is there's no
| standard way to measure and certainly no agreement on what
| that collective equilibrium should be.
|
| Until we figure that out--no thanks. I'll take my naturally
| not-as-optimized freedom without the government's input.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Your point of view falls apart when crime enters the
| picture.
|
| Criminal law is just another form of regulation. Somehow we
| decided that taking cocaine is a crime. And that pedophiles
| are criminals. And then government tries to ensure
| compliance with criminal law.
|
| People generally agree that it is fit and proper for
| government to act, through education and other means, to
| ensure most people aren't criminals.
|
| You might say: "well criminal law is different - but is it?
|
| Someone spent 8 years in jail for sending lobster in an
| incorrect container. Not a live lobster, a dead one.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I think the difference is criminal law seeks compliance
| with the laws as they are, but this manufacturing of
| consent seeks compliance on bills when the elecorate may
| well note vote in their favour otherwise. Does that make
| sense? In one case they do what the public has told them
| and in the other they're telling the public what to do.
| As public servants the first should be acceptable but the
| latter now.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am not sure the difference is as real as it seems
|
| No-one specifically voted for the patriot act, no one was
| elected on promices of passing it, yet it became law.
|
| In Britain they are considering a law to ban drivers
| under 25 from carrying any children in the car. Noone has
| ever voted for this.
|
| https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/company-car-tax-and-
| legisla...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Isn't that because we're manufacturing consent?
| majormajor wrote:
| Not everyone wants to follow criminal laws 100% of the
| time.
|
| If someone wants to punch you in the face just how
| "optimized" do you want their freedom to do so, without
| legal consequences, be? Aka how many "nudges" should be
| in place to make that harder to get away with? If you
| don't want to get punched, you want people to think
| there'd be consequences, that bystanders would tell on
| them, etc. All those "nudges" need to be stronger than
| the "snitches get stitches" and similar nudges from the
| other side.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Someone spent 8 years in jail for sending lobster in an
| incorrect container. Not a live lobster, a dead one.
|
| I feel this isn't a terrific example as it doesn't seem
| to be true.
|
| "The notion the case was about packaging is incorrect,'
| [the prosecutor] said. 'Packaging was the means by which
| the crime was concealed. It was the mechanism to conceal
| the extent of overharvesting."
|
| ref: https://web.archive.org/web/20210603000400/https://w
| ww.eenew...
|
| US Gov's overzealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz on
| behalf of major publishers (and major donors) might work
| better. That involves creating law and the exercise of
| gov power, both of which were granted to the copyright
| interests behind influential lobbyists.
| pintxo wrote:
| Guess the problem is, there is a whole other group of
| parties how are manipulating us to act towards their
| interests. And I would say it's clear that they are winning
| (see for example obesity, opioids).
|
| So I don't think we should handle this as a yes no
| question.
| 13415 wrote:
| I've had similar criticisms to nudging, that it's basically
| just the same as advertising exploiting human biases, and
| that it's not really conducive to insight and a better
| political culture. It is kind of paternalistic. However,
| most real-world applications of nudging I've seen were
| uncontroversially beneficial. As a typical example,
| markings on roads can be spaced and designed in ways that
| make drivers slow down in danger zones, thereby reducing
| accidents. I've been to a number of talks about nudging
| over the years and know people working in that area, and
| have never seen an example where the term was used for
| "shaping public opinions", let alone shaping political
| opinions.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > but in shaping our interests.
|
| The more educated you are, the more you realize people don't
| know that much. If everyone could see the consequences of their
| beliefs and actions, governments wouldn't need to exist. Public
| education/shaping interests _can_ be a good thing.
|
| Shaping someone's opinion of sugary food or smoking cigarettes,
| or the negative effects of various drugs or any other number of
| things can be good. Informing the public of foreign adversaries
| fomenting and supporting fascism via bot networks promoting
| hatred and division is a national security issue. Good faith
| information from places of intellectual authority is positive
| for society.
|
| The problem is not the government shaping interests, the
| problem is who is the government shaping interests _for_.
|
| In a democracy supposedly the government acts on behalf of the
| people, but we do not live in a democracy, the west is largely
| plutocratic. Governments represent billionaires (not literally
| billionaires, but the wealthy). That's why our government
| promotes socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
| Because the government works on behalf of those with money.
|
| This is not a casual statement. This is the product of our
| voting system. Before anyone gets to vote on any candidates,
| candidates must fund raise to win a primary. Before any person
| votes on candidates, money votes on candidates. So our
| government is responsive to money, because money votes first.
|
| So it is not the government shaping interests, but the
| government using force on behalf of the wealthy that is
| problematic.
|
| All political roads lead to a central problem: The rich are too
| rich and therefore cannot be bound by law and are able to
| coerce the government to act on their behalf.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I worry that the advent of an entirely mechanized military with
| robot infantry will be the end of the leaders ever being in a
| precarious situation
| staunton wrote:
| I really don't think that's necessary. So far there has never
| been a lack of people willing to commit atrocities when
| ordered to under the right conditions.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Interesting how our leaders see their role not as
| representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.
|
| Someone called it "Manufacturing consent". I think this name
| describes it pretty good.
|
| What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those
| law may turn against them at a later point in time.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| [dead]
| jruohonen wrote:
| Securitization is a common one too.
| vkou wrote:
| > What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that
| those law may turn against them at a later point in time.
|
| Those laws are _incredibly unlikely_ to be turned against
| elites and former elites, and if a situation[1] ever arose
| where they would be, a lack of these laws on the books would
| not save them.
|
| Populist uprisings are about the only things that elites are
| scared of, and these kinds of laws help prevent them[2].
|
| [1] That kind of situation would require a complete and utter
| breakdown of the elite social contract. Things would have to
| get unrecognizably bad before we are at that point.
|
| [2] Ever notice how, say, pro-gun politicians tend to want
| guns to be everywhere _except near them_? As a class, they
| aren 't interested in dealing with the consequences of their
| policies.
| PeterisP wrote:
| On the other hand, technical capabilities are highly likely
| to be used against elites and former elites; there often
| are situations where a country's police or intelligence
| communities are opposed to some political parties, so if
| there are backdoors in everyone's (including politicians)
| communications, they should rightly fear that their phones
| will be abused by their political opponents.
| lockhouse wrote:
| > Ever notice how, say, pro-gun politicians tend to want
| guns to be everywhere except near them? As a class, they
| aren't interested in dealing with the consequences of their
| policies.
|
| I've also noticed that anti-gun politicians tend to have
| armed security teams with them.
|
| I'm not giving up my guns until they do.
| vkou wrote:
| You're assuming that your guns will protect you from
| random acts of gun violence, which they won't. _It 's why
| those politicians have security teams, as opposed to
| personal guns_. What they are doing is completely
| rational in a country where it happens, frequently.
|
| Unlike their counterparts, they are actually trying to
| solve the problem, instead of hypocritically exacerbating
| it.
|
| If you're going to hold someone accountable, why not make
| your support of the pro-gun ones conditional on them
| providing _you_ with a security team?
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Today it is their problem. Tomorrow it's someone else's.
| That's basically how the US has been operating for at least
| my lifetime.
| csomar wrote:
| oh they understand that. They are just scheming to make sure
| they are on the right side. Politicians are hated all around
| but most of the time, they are people who are willing to take
| massive personal risks.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| or instantly. politicians are people and I'm pretty sure they
| use phones. if a backdoor is added it will almost instantly
| be used against them I'm sure. even well meaning apps are
| hacked.
| lockhouse wrote:
| This is where you're wrong. Inconvenient rules don't apply
| to them. They can engage in insider training and enrich
| themselves. They can disarm the public while they are
| protected by armed security. They will lay our secrets bare
| while maintaining theirs.
|
| They will use national security as an excuse to keep their
| encryption while taking ours away.
| quantum_state wrote:
| Progressively... politician has become the new used-car-
| salesman as a profession ...
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| It's a moral obligation to do this to those who impose
| restrictions like this on the public.
| ugurnot wrote:
| "Manifacturing Consent" is a book written by Edward S. Herman
| and Noam Chomsky. They discuss the propaganda model of
| communication in much broader sense.
| dekken_ wrote:
| Don't forget about
|
| > "The Engineering of Consent" is an essay by Edward
| Bernays first published in 1947,
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) is another
| important Bernays text.
| andrepd wrote:
| And he surely knows what he is talking about.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| "Inventing Reality" by Michael Parenti is another book on
| the subject.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| barthes mythologies
| gverrilla wrote:
| The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord
| hackandthink wrote:
| "Die vierte Gewalt - Wie Mehrheitsmeinung gemacht wird,
| auch wenn sie keine ist"
|
| https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/richard-david-precht-
| hara...
| sveme wrote:
| Richard David Precht is a poor caricature of a French
| public intellectual figure and loves to create outrage to
| stay relevant. He lives off the same mainstream media
| that he criticizes.
| fwungy wrote:
| The Century of Self is a BBC documentary about Bernays and
| his propaganda models. It's quite good and available on yt.
| JakeAl wrote:
| Watch everything by Adam Curtis. Century of the Self, The
| Trap and The Power of Nightmares specifically.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0193231/
| neo_matrix wrote:
| The term "Manufacturing consent" was coined by Noam Chomsky,
| American philosopher.
| herbstein wrote:
| It wasn't. Noam Chomsky readily acknowledges that it was
| coined by Walter Lippmann in 1922's "Public Opinion".
| acqq wrote:
| Indeed it can be found in the book "Public Opinion"
| (1921) by Lippman:
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.txt
| keester wrote:
| I agree with you, but nudging can be a good thing if it's
| meritorious. Lincoln, for instance, had to manipulate people to
| some extent to achieve his goal of emancipation.
|
| Similarly, I'd say some nudging is in order to tackle the
| obesity epidemic in the US and other places.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run
| miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these
| kinds of tactics to increase compliance.
|
| ...
|
| > But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with
| these tactics, such that they will become less effective (e.g.
| waning trust in the media).
|
| I though that too ~20 years ago. I live in a small country with
| elections every few years (usually less than the full term of
| the government) and a "one supposedly rightwing party" vs. "a
| bunch of supposedly left wing parties"... the mix of left wing
| parties slowly turned to "a new face + a bunch of old parties"
| recently.
|
| Every pre-election period we get a bunch of people advocating
| online and in person, that if "party X" got elected, they'd
| solve the "problem Y", because they can do it, and "current
| party" is blocking them... somehow those same people (and not
| just fresh 18yo going for their first election) forget, that
| party X has been in the government 3 years ago, and the
| government before that, and before that, and that the "problem
| Y" has existed for atleast 20 years (healthcare, housing,...),
| and they did nothing.
|
| People either forget or are gaslighted by the media.
|
| > assassination attempts
|
| This happens when problems get unsolved and worse and worse for
| years... bad healthcare, especially mental health, depression,
| drugs, save 10k, but the apartment you wanted is now 30k more
| expensive, average rent higher than average pension, etc.,
| create more and more people with nothing left to lose.
| csomar wrote:
| It's roughly the same thing with currency. The trick is to call
| it modern monetary theory instead of the printing press. of
| course, who doesn't want modern?
|
| But surely it can only run so long. The problem is that most
| people believe that their countries can't fall into
| authoritarianism because they are a democracy.
| majormajor wrote:
| Most people don't like littering and pollution. So we've passed
| laws against it.
|
| Yet if you don't have any trashcans or other ways of disposing
| waste around, and you don't have much social pressure _against_
| it, many people will eventually leave their waste behind
| somewhere.
|
| Much better to nudge them towards complying _in specific_ with
| the laws that they want _in general_
| uoaei wrote:
| That's not even nudging, that's just providing a necessary
| option. There is no coercion between "I want to throw
| something away" and "There's a trash can on the curb".
| majormajor wrote:
| "Not providing the option very frequently" is pretty
| indistinguishable to me from "nudging in the wrong
| direction"...
|
| but here's a much more explicit nudge example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Mess_with_Texas
| [deleted]
| chris123 wrote:
| Would be great if it's was that simple, but for every person
| who wakes up, two younglings replace him. It's a cycle from
| birth to "education" to wokester to actually opportunity your
| eyes. Welcome to the real world, Neo.
| heliodor wrote:
| You should call them representatives then. Leaders lead.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| For a case study in this phenomenon the UK made use of nudge
| theory during the covid pandemic and I think one of the
| outcomes is some people distrusting the organs of state in a
| way they didn't before. I think people remember the 'look them
| in the eyes' campaign along with other 'nudges' and associate
| it with a time they not only felt miserable and scared but also
| felt taken for mugs by the very politicians who were trying to
| increase compliance when things like Partygate and shady
| government contracts to friends of ministers came to light.
|
| I think anything that's not completely candid with the public
| is eventually seen as dishonest whether rightly or wrongly.
| Personally I think no matter how well-intended it's hard to see
| nudge theory as anything other than 'shady behavioural
| psychology tactics to induce compliance with government policy
| without personal consent or a democratic mandate' which is
| something I believe fundamentally breaks the social contract.
| ihatepython wrote:
| > Interesting how our leaders see their role not as
| representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.
|
| Not in shaping our interests, but the interests of the
| 'deplorables', the people who disagree and who they see as
| beneath them.
| carimura wrote:
| Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public had a pretty good
| explanation of this. Leaders used to be the gatekeepers of
| information, and thus maintained control. Now the Internet has
| lifted the curtain and opened the floodgates of information,
| causing a loss of control, thus pushing many leaders to double
| down on attempts at controlling the narrative. When control
| gets too strong, we see revolts.
| jruohonen wrote:
| I too love Gurri, but I don't think this is at all what he is
| saying. The Internet and particularly the social media have
| certainly something to do with it, but to my understanding he
| is talking about the erosion of knowledge-creation and the
| collapse of "elites". (Note also that everyone in this forum
| probably belongs to the latter category in a way or another.)
| His takes correlate with those from political scientists who
| talk about institutional decay and such things.
| 2devnull wrote:
| I had a nice dialog with GPT (davinci) that made me reconsider
| very similar reticence I felt about nudging. I think nudges can
| be done in ways that are transparent, ethical and long run net
| positive. But clearly it's a very complicated subject.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I don't understand the crusade against encryption. No ban has any
| chance of actually being effective at stopping criminals, they
| will just continue using open source software. All you end up
| doing is exposing law abiding citizens and corporations to an
| incredible amount of risk, because suddenly all their critical
| private data is secured with a common backdoor that can be abused
| by _anyone_ who finds it. Adding backdoors to commercial
| encryption is practically handing the Kremlin or CCP the keys to
| all our critical infrastructure.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _media reports state that senior government officials in the US
| and EU agreed to cooperate on measures_
|
| I'm having trouble with the link. How substantive is this
| allegation?
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Love how supposed privacy advocates will use patriot act
| arguments to justify violating financial privacy, then
| immediately turn around and play the other side when the same
| talking points are used against any other kinds of privacy.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Did these organizations do that?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > supposed privacy advocates will use patriot act arguments to
| justify violating financial privacy
|
| What are you talking about? I've never seen this. As far as I'm
| concerned, AML/KYS is just the financial arm of global mass
| surveillance.
| kibwen wrote:
| The logical conclusion to the war on general purpose computing
| (as currently perpetrated in the large by Apple, and spun even by
| people here as a worthwhile tradeoff for "security") is that
| computers will be replaced with appliances that can only run
| government-sanctioned, closed-source software. That is the only
| way these laws could be enforced.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. It started with silly things like copyright enforcement,
| slowly paving the way to ever greater oppression. As an AMD
| engineer put it, these days processors essentially come pwned
| from the factory. Computers are too subversive a technology to
| allow normals unrestricted access. Encryption is powerful
| enough to defeat nations.
| Spivak wrote:
| > as currently perpetrated in the large by Apple, and spun even
| by people here as a worthwhile tradeoff for "security"
|
| See this misses the more nuanced point. I bet my last cent that
| everyone who doesn't want Apple's ability to meaningfully
| control their platform eroded would change their tune
| immediately if we had a regulatory environment that had any
| teeth whatsoever when it comes to policing malicious software.
|
| People are currently backed into a corner where the only not
| incompetent regulatory body for software is Apple right now. I
| would love for iOS to be completely open but maligned actors
| who would use that against my interests need to be stopped and
| Apple being closed doesn't get in the way all that much.
|
| * You must be able to cancel subscriptions in one click with no
| human interaction and users must be able to choose an immediate
| cancel for a pro-rated refund even if they paid "yearly."
|
| * You must allow opt-out of all tracking and data collection
| without providing any disincentive for doing so.
|
| * All free trails must not require a CC and can only be
| continued after explicitly done so by the user.
|
| * Delete the concept of implied consent. By existing you
| consent to.. fuck off.
|
| * Establish a legal definition of dark pattern and make them
| illegal and reportable by users for a cut of the fine.
|
| * You must be allowed to purchase a completely ad free
| experience.
|
| * You cannot sell OS features like notifications or running in
| the background.
|
| * All digital goods must be able to be returned within x days
| of purchase.
|
| My wishlist could go on.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > I bet my last cent that everyone who doesn't want Apple's
| ability to meaningfully control their platform eroded would
| change their tune immediately if we had a regulatory
| environment that had any teeth whatsoever when it comes to
| policing malicious software.
|
| I definitely would change my mind. The complete lack of any
| effective protections against bad actors is the sole reason
| I'm willing to tolerate what Apple is doing with the iOS App
| Store.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > computers will be replaced with appliances that can only run
| government-sanctioned, closed-source software
|
| this is lacking imagination
|
| Most items around us will be smart withing 10 years.
|
| There are coffe machines that stop working without internet,
| dishwashers and washing machines that have wifi. You cant buy a
| TV and a Car without internet connectivity. Mac OS won't run an
| executable withour connecting to an apple server.
|
| All of them phone home.
|
| The government just needs to tap into the datastores assembled
| by these companies. Datastores in centralised datacenters,
| which are large regulated installations.
|
| They don't need to do any extra work. The police doesnt need to
| raid every house.
| stametseater wrote:
| Even if "normal computers" are left free, anti-encryption
| legislation could be enormously effective at the level of the
| general population even if it only manages to twist the arm of
| Apple, Google and force them to remove such software from their
| appstores.
|
| "Bad guys" could still use encryption of course, but the
| government would gain the ability to easily surveil most
| people, which is what they're really after.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I finished reading 1984 (the novel) yesterday, so my comments are
| under some influence.
|
| This global movement against encryption -- against citizen's
| privacy, really -- is all about power maintenance. Power groups
| want to have access to our conversations so when the election
| period approaches, they will be able to run sentiment analysis on
| the data collected from our conversations, and then fine tune
| their election campaigns accordingly. All the current excuses
| about fighting organized crime, violence to children etc. are
| well known excuses used for many years within different context
| to roll out surveillance bills.
| 93po wrote:
| I'd disagree. Democracy in the US is already extremely well
| controlled. You only have two realistic options, and the
| primary that led to those two options is fairly undemocratic.
| Between gerrymandering, citizens united, private control over
| corporate news, and a million other things, meaningful
| democracy may as well be dead (or perhaps never existed).
|
| Control over encryption is overwhelmingly about those in power
| keeping others out of power. If you have access to all of your
| opponent's communications because you're already the president,
| there's really nothing the opponent can do to balance things
| out. Any grassroots movement to displace you and your
| government would never get off the ground - they'd be arrested
| before they could even organize, since the entirety of your
| comms is available to the establishment.
| lovecg wrote:
| The cool thing about technology is it works both ways. If
| backdoors are mandated it's only a matter of time until all
| texts, location history, etc. etc. of those in power become
| public - we already learned that those people don't have the
| strongest opsec to begin with. This will lead to a backlash
| and an equilibrium of sorts.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Those in power will be allowed to use encryption due to
| "state security" or something stupid like that. Only us
| plebeians will be forced to reveal our dirty laundry to the
| world.
| Animats wrote:
| This is worth taking up with the congressional committees looking
| for overreach by the Biden Administration. Fill out this form, to
| start.
|
| [1] https://oversight.house.gov/whistle/
| rektide wrote:
| Nice of the White House to set up such a convenient reporting
| system.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If you think Republicans are against eroding privacy I have a
| bridge to sell you.
| redblacktree wrote:
| Indeed, the Patriot Act passed under a Republican House and
| Presidency. Where there was opposition, it came from
| Democrats in the House.[0]
|
| [0]: https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I wouldn't however consider that enough evidence to say
| Democrats "opposed" the Patriot Act. They aren't "Both
| sides the same", but on this issue, Democrat politicians
| largely buy into the law enforcement POV that "bad people"
| are doing things and there must be an easy way to stop
| them, instead of making cops do actual work to solve
| crimes.
| Animats wrote:
| You just have to mention how this could be used to find out
| who's talking about guns and what lobbyists are saying to
| elected officials.
| shmerl wrote:
| May be encryption can be declared as a right to privacy and then
| this issue will be gone for good.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| At least in the U.S., it's already covered:
|
| 1A: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of
| speech, or of the press."
|
| 4A: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
| seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue,
| but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
| particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
| persons or things to be seized."
| rnk wrote:
| In the US, there's not a right to privacy, or at best it's
| complicated. At least federalists or conservatives endlessly
| argue that doesn't exist, for reasons that I don't
| understand. If we had a right to privacy in the US, it
| probably wouldn't protect criminal communications, and the
| potential of illegal behavior is used as the justification
| for all kinds of quasi illegal investigations.
| codedokode wrote:
| What about banning end-to-end encryption while keeping
| client-server encryption (like Telegram or Apple does)? If
| people are not allowed to transfer money anonymously, why
| allow them communicate anonymously?
| CircleSpokes wrote:
| > If people are not allowed to transfer money anonymously,
| why allow them communicate anonymously?
|
| You can do that in the US though with cash. There might be
| some transactions that you can't do in physical cash but
| that is more of a practical/convince limitation and not a
| legal one.
| flangola7 wrote:
| That cash will not be anonymous for long once you deposit
| it, between mandatory reporting and serial number
| records.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| People are allowed to transfer money anonymously, vis-a-vis
| cash. Banks belonging to the Federal Reserve system are of
| course subject to a number of arbitrary regulations that
| are certainly debatable, but also not outside the realm of
| ordinary government regulation of interstate/international
| commerce.
|
| Wholesale banning of anonymous money transfers would also,
| in my opinion, be a violation of 1st and 4th amendments.
| But banning encrypted speech & communication altogether (or
| compelling an open-access backdoor) is clearly a violation
| of 1st & 4th amendment.
| dsign wrote:
| Here is the plan of our elected representatives:
|
| - Erode what resistance to total surveillance remains.
|
| - Practice total surveillance.
|
| Here is my plan to oppose that plan:
|
| - Rekindle Orwell's 1984 as a full literary/movie/video-game
| genre, where awful things happen to people when the government or
| an associated non-knocking variant of the Spanish Inquisition
| shows up because somebody committed wrong-think.
|
| I'm a little afraid that if we don't succeed in bringing this
| problem to the general's public attention via their binging
| habits, as a sort of social vaccine, we will end up with the
| disease.
| abdela wrote:
| Absolutely, this fight needs to be fought on the
| cultural/political battlefield. It can never be just a
| technological arms race or solution, because technology usually
| favors the rich.
|
| Culture eats strategy for breakfast, and mass culture of movies
| and video games is really the most effective way to teach the
| broader audience about these issues. Black mirror did a great
| job with some episoses, and also handmaid's tale has had a big
| impact in thinking about women's rights.
| rektide wrote:
| So, governments are actively colluding to obstruct Democratic
| ways of life. They're now in the actively propogandize phase,
| where they outlaw talking to other people in privacy. Weaponizing
| tech against the coremost nature of Democracy.
|
| And so are the tech bossess!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35653867
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-tech-bosses-are-lett...
|
| The tech-empires are letting whichever country wants to come in &
| start dictating terms, step all over people. We no longer even
| have the spine to call out journalism done in un-Free areas,
| we've decided Government-sponsored is too risky to even inform
| people about. https://rsf.org/en/index
|
| With online platforms being cajouled every which way, one would
| _hope_ the US Government could find some scant resemblance of a
| soul & do the right thing, which would be to help wage this
| culture war for a moral & ethical cause, to actually help our
| Democratic values, instead of psychological assaults on them. The
| government should be pushing back, demanding more encryption,
| more privacy, especially more privacy, privacy that even the tech
| bossess can't access much less the government.
|
| Alas instead of helping fight the good fight, here we see the US-
| EU is playing the jealous rival, trying to steal some of the same
| advantages the data-slurping panopticon totalistic information-
| societies.
|
| We need legal stands from governments to protect & advancing
| freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of ideas,
| freedom to think. We ought recognize & attend to open society &
| other essential liberty.
|
| It's been such a ride. A lot of people are pretty grimdark on
| what Social Media is & means & the fate of interconnectivity, but
| my word, how can anyone feel so jaded & old at this point? We are
| so young, we have explored so few & such narrow options for how
| we might gather & share & communicate across the internet & it's
| many sites. I can acknowledge that folks are unhappy, that we are
| scared of what lies beyond the now tarnishing gilded Creator age,
| and you're all right, but man, the internet is so phenomenal.
| This is such an amazing creative ability to create & connect, to
| explore thought, expands the Rhizomatic / Assembly theory
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(philosophy)) view of
| the world so deeply. There is so much to learn & figure out.
|
| If we can keep this democracy. If we can maintain a vector where
| we can keep creating new interconnection, new people-figuring-
| out-what-protocols-people-want-to-use between us. We can combat
| so much shallowness by owning our speech, by owning our relays,
| by opting into being our own more selctive amplifiers, picking
| for ourselves what is signal and what is noise, calling out the
| short fun & what has real lasting value. Keep making the world
| more seen, keep sharing & thinking ourselves out loud, in public.
| And together in private.
| exabrial wrote:
| I've come to the conclusion that Taxes are incompatible with
| Encryption and Free Speech. If we're ever going to progress as a
| civilization, something other than ancient and frankly barbaric
| practice Taxes has to designed and implemented.
|
| Every justification for usage or backdoor encryption is
| eventually rooted in monitoring financial transactions, or
| preserving the means in which a state can collect them. The "War
| on Terror" and "War on Drugs" are perfect examples of this.
| fleventynine wrote:
| Income tax is the problem. I wish governments solely relied on
| property taxes and user fees for funding, even if they had to
| increase them a lot to make up for the loss of income tax
| revenue.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| But that would mean the "pay your fair share" people would
| actually have to pay their fair share, which they will never
| support. We all know that the fair share is a percentage of
| someone else's income you feel entitled to and not a fee
| proportional to the amount of state services you use.
| dmbche wrote:
| Could you clarify who the pay-your-fair-share people are?
| Not a jab, I'm just unclear on what you mean.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| [dead]
| plandis wrote:
| > We all know that the fair share is a percentage of
| someone else's income you feel entitled to and not a fee
| proportional to the amount of state services you use.
|
| So a kid with cancer needs to pay the government for
| Medicaid? After all, they are the ones receiving the
| benefit.
| fleventynine wrote:
| You wouldn't necessarily need to shut down social programs.
| Rich people and their companies own lots of property,
| spectrum, water rights, intellectual property, etc, and the
| funding from these taxes can still be used to fund a social
| safety net.
|
| As a bonus, if property taxes (or better yet, land value
| taxes) were 5x what they are, we probably would fix the
| housing crisis as all the property hoarders unload their
| underutilized property onto the market.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Nobody said anything about shutting down social programs,
| you can still have those without forcing people that
| don't use them to pay for it. Like I said, pay your fair
| share. The USPS for the most part is an example of a
| government service that operates only off of voluntary
| funding from its users.
| fleventynine wrote:
| I'm confused, are you suggesting that malnourished kids
| should pay for their own lunch (or for that matter,
| education?). There are some services we have to
| collectively pay for to live in a stable society.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| I'm suggesting that someone not willing to pay their own
| fair share should not pretend others are not willing to
| pay theirs.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| But you aren't answering the question, if a program for
| people in poverty isn't funded by society as a whole, are
| you having the people in poverty fund it because they're
| the ones who use it? Your argument seems to break down
| under examination
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| I answered the question before it was asked. If you want
| such a program to exist, you pay for it. If your idea is
| to make me pay for it, you don't believe in paying your
| fair share. Whether or not it is practical to follow my
| rule to the absolute is a different question. I'm just
| tired of hearing the fair share people justify not paying
| their fair share.
| flangola7 wrote:
| > I'm just tired of hearing the fair share people justify
| not paying their fair share.
|
| I frankly have no idea who you are talking about. You're
| going to have to elaborate because right now it sounds
| like a cheap strawman.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| There are entire enterprises that operate by this
| principle. Private Insurance comes to mind first. The
| problem with insurance and with this philosophy in
| general is that there are a lot of catestrophic
| situations you can find yourself in for which you would
| likely purchase no insurance because you can't ever see
| yourself being there.
|
| The reason government steps in in cases like loss of job
| and provision of welfare is because nobody ever expects
| to be in those situations. But when you end up in those
| situations, having not bought insurance prior to being
| there, you will naturally find them pernicious. In order
| to prevent that from happening, government programs
| provide a kind of nationwide or statewide insurance
| policy that you are bought into by default just in case
| you should happen to need it some day.
|
| You're arguing that you never will, and that might be the
| case, but that's also strictly speaking a risky
| proposition if aggregated over the entire population of
| the US.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| No you haven't but what you have done is move the goal
| posts. Here is your previous statement:
|
| >Nobody said anything about shutting down social
| programs, you can still have those without forcing people
| that don't use them to pay for it
|
| Which implies that the people paying for them are the
| ones using them
| pessimizer wrote:
| As long as wealth is counted as property. Most people I hear
| suggesting this expect personal wealth to inhabit a magical
| class of things that are definitely owned but are somehow not
| property.
|
| edit: i.e. when wealthy people say this, it is usually just a
| euphemism for lowering their personal tax burden.
|
| Wealthy people require more protection (as they are excellent
| targets) and more scrutiny (because their financial affairs
| are complicated, and they can take advantage of criminal
| opportunities that require large amounts of capital), so
| taxes should rise with wealth.
|
| edit 2: When people believe that both income and wealth taxes
| should be discarded for taxes on consumption, you can be sure
| that they are wealthy with a high income.
| fleventynine wrote:
| Taxing financial assets has a lot of the same privacy-
| invading, subjective-enforcement, and loophole problems as
| taxing income.
|
| However, most corporations own a lot of other assets that
| are already registered with the government, or pay rent to
| other corporations that do: real estate, mineral rights,
| and intellectual property. If we can figure out how to tax
| these things, that could help.
| scythe wrote:
| A major argument for income tax is that it's naturally
| countercyclical, which means that governments tax more when
| incomes are high and less when they are low. The
| 'progressive' -- concave upwards -- income tax is even more
| so. Per Keynesian theory, countercyclical fiscal policy acts
| to stabilize the economy, and the US _has_ been more stable
| since the tax base shifted from property tax and tariffs
| towards income taxes. Tariffs, in particular, can be
| disastrously _procyclical_ -- a failure of a domestic
| manufacturer may lead to a decline in economic performance
| and an uptick in imports, which is then exacerbating. It
| might be possible for a land tax or property tax to be
| countercyclical, but this would likely depend on the
| centralized adjustment of valuations, since there is not so
| far any automatic technique for valuing real property other
| than immediately after a sale. History has taught us to be
| cautious about centralized economic micromanagement.
|
| The temporal effects of income tax are often lost in
| colloquial debates among non-economists who have the
| impression that they exist primarily for moral reasons --
| however, the wealthy, in practice, are very good at avoiding
| them.
| fleventynine wrote:
| > It might be possible for a land tax or property tax to be
| countercyclical, but this would likely depend on the
| centralized adjustment of valuations, since there is not so
| far any automatic technique for valuing real property other
| than immediately after a sale.
|
| Yeah, this is a problem that would need to be solved.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Agree that income tax is a problem, but do not agree with
| your solution using property tax.
|
| I believe consumption tax is a better approach, in my
| opinion.
|
| Consumption tax is immediate, indiscriminate at the time we
| spend the money, while property tax tends to be applied at
| various times throughout the life of the property.
| fleventynine wrote:
| Consumption taxes have a lot of the same privacy-invading
| problems that income taxes do. To enforce them, the
| government has to have the ability to audit the financial
| records of at least one of the parties in a transaction.
|
| If there are consumption taxes, they should only be for the
| raw materials and energy (as part of mineral rights).
| nobody9999 wrote:
| I'm with Oliver Wendell Holmes (or whoever actually said this)
| on that one:
|
| "Taxes Are What We Pay for Civilized Society."[0]
|
| [0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/13/taxes-civilize/
| wmf wrote:
| I don't think prohibitions on child porn and drugs have
| anything to do with taxes.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| A law prohibiting child porn would make child porn illegal,
| not monitor my transactions and prevent encryption. That's
| called the redistribution of consequences.
| tzs wrote:
| Generally merely declaring something to be illegal does not
| stop it. In most cases it also requires catching people
| that are doing it and successfully convicting them.
| smolder wrote:
| Invading random people's lives with dragnet spying to see
| if they have committed a crime was specifically forbidden
| by the fourth amendment of the US constitution for good
| reason, even if everyone in our government willfully
| forgot that amendment exists.
| cdiamand wrote:
| Can you speak more to why you think taxes are barbaric? Is
| there an alternative?
|
| They strike me as one of the cornerstones of civilization. I.e.
| the state builds things that are for the common good using
| those resources.
| leoh wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
| [deleted]
| masswerk wrote:
| Mind that we made one-time pads (like TAN sheets) pretty much a
| thing of the past, in favor of 2FA...
| jMyles wrote:
| > ...at the EU-US Senior Officials Meeting on Justice and Home
| Affairs, held in Stockholm on 16 and 17 March, the minutes of
| which are now available. The delegations "... concurred on the
| need to mirror privacy by design with lawful access by
| design...," apparent code language for mandating the undermining
| or removal of strong encryption practices.
|
| What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an
| educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the
| implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such
| scheme?
| pa7x1 wrote:
| Well, if you were to ask in this very same forum if the trade-
| offs of private and permissionless communication, as granted by
| cryptography, should apply to money. You would get a much
| different answer.
|
| So either a large part of HN has already been co-opted by this
| public campaign, or is uneducated/obtuse, or is able to trace a
| very different set of weights for what you can do with your
| expression but not your money.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| You won't get a different answer from me at least. KYC/AML is
| just the financial version of global surveillance and should
| be fought just as vigorously.
|
| Maybe HN just hates cryptocurrencies.
| flotzam wrote:
| The disconnect is wild. Spending magic money online can
| already feel like instant messaging, e.g. Zcash with its
| encrypted memo field for text messages is basically as if
| Bitmessage had an optional monetary payload
| [deleted]
| reaperman wrote:
| Most of our leaders are much less bright and much more self-
| centered than almost anyone would imagine. The evidence
| repeatedly validates this, but we're reluctant to believe it.
| Many do come from relatively elite backgrounds but their
| knowledge and morality have surprising gaps.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Experiments show that groups of humans pick as their leader
| the loudest and most confident of the bunch.
|
| You can imagine how this quirk of psychology affects power at
| all levels in our society.
| psychphysic wrote:
| They are overwhelmingly self servicing to the point that
| intelligence is not even worth commenting on.
|
| Smart or dumb, they are just in it to gain power.
| waboremo wrote:
| Part of the benefit that comes from being well traveled is
| sharing stories and experiences with locals, leaders don't do
| any of that. Generously, most of them are too busy to do so,
| and instead spend most of their time in a building that could
| be anywhere in the world in a similar looking conference room.
|
| Although you are right, it does take a certain level of
| intelligence to recognize when one is outside of their element
| and to seek proper expertise. Assuming no malicious intent.
| medellin wrote:
| "Lawful access" is the new soundbite for putting backdoors in
| all our software and hardware.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| They're malicious. It's not that they don't understand, or that
| some well worded essay will ever give them their "aha" moment.
|
| They want power over you, and this is just another means to
| that end.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's not even power over you. It's mostly power over their
| political opponents.
|
| You can read up on how Polish government used their access to
| Pegassus.
| jruohonen wrote:
| The PEGA committee reports are "hilarious" reading. The
| "best" situation seems to have been in Greece where
| ordinary politicians have spied other ordinary politicians
| and ordinary civil servants other ordinary civil servants.
| Must be fun to work in such a state apparatus.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| Ah, you sort of accidentally stumbled upon the very heart of
| the matter.
|
| For example: https://www.youtube.com/@OxfordUnion/videos
| The Oxford Union is the world's most prestigious debating
| society with a tradition of hosting internationally prominent
| individuals across politics, academia, and popular culture.
| Founded in 1823 at a time when The University of Oxford
| restricted students from discussing certain topics, The Union
| continues to uphold the principle of free speech through the
| exchange and debate of a wide range of ideas and opinions,
| presented by a diverse range of speakers - some inspiring,
| others controversial. As we celebrate 200 years of free speech
| during our Bicentenary year of 2023, we reaffirm our commitment
| to our integral values and also our belief that the discussion
| of complex topics should not only be encouraged but is an
| essential element of any free society.
|
| Now, click around a few of the videos, and observe if the above
| description, an honest self-image of the best and the
| brightest, I'm sure, comports with the actual reality on
| display.
|
| Make special note of the attitudes displayed by these bright
| young minds and the questions put to the speakers. Heck, might
| even notice the ever increasing pop-culture nature of the
| proceedings. I guess hearing from PSY about Gangam style is one
| of the most of all time.
|
| In short, a large chunk of these "elites" who go into politics
| are nepo babies governed by fashionable group think no
| different from their less monied peers. iPhones are the great
| equalizer. _Everybody_ is equally cringy. It is a different
| caliber of person now from the heyday and naturally trends
| towards authoritarianism.
|
| The exceptionalism is gone a long time ago already. It was
| perfectly lampooned half a century ago in shows like 'Yes
| Minister'. Lofty ideals, duty, intellectual curiosity, honesty,
| a sense of decency, long ago succumbed to mediocrity and farce.
| And that was the 80s. We are way past that stage where there
| was still a sense of shame, past the age of spin, hurling into
| cynical ambivalence now and soon complete forgetfulness.
|
| In short, the West really is in decline and has been for a long
| time. People who have a clue about why this is a bad idea are
| nowhere near the halls of power. And I don't mean intricate
| technical knowledge, these subjects go back centuries, the
| relevant ideas and ideals are at the very core of what made
| these societies great in the first place. Poof.
|
| You know why this is wrong instinctually, at your core, because
| you paid attention to the ship of state and still give a shit
| about something bigger than yourself. They don't.
|
| There's nothing outright wrong with them, they are just basic
| ordinary consumers. And the lessons of the past will have to be
| re-learned if we don't accidentally find ourselves this time in
| an unescapable permanent dystopia.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| They don't actually fucking know what they are doing. They get
| these righteous ideas into their heads and convince themselves
| they're doing what's good for us. They ignore the consequences
| even when it affects them, reacting with a literal child-like
| entitlement and self-importance "you can't read _my_ messages,
| just the _other_ people 's messages, I'm a special class of
| person, this is outrageous".
|
| There are people here on HN who say they actually met at least
| one of these politicians. Check out this thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656323
|
| These are the people imposing their silly laws on us. It's a
| joke. I wanted to respect them enough to think it's all some
| sort of master plan to oppress us more efficiently but could
| very well be that they are dumb enough to back this without
| understanding what encryption even is.
| codedokode wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with these people. Those in the power
| always want to have more power.
|
| There will be no implications if encryption is banned. People
| have been using unencrypted wired phones and unencrypted bank
| cards for a long time and the world hasn't collapsed.
|
| Also, there is no need to ban any encryption, client-server
| encryption protocols like HTTPS can stay, provided that the
| server would log all session keys for future lawful access.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Leadership positions (especially those in government) attract
| some of the worst people.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Power I guess, only because they can. But if you communicate by
| Cell Phone (txt, email...), encryption can be stopped by law
| only because they are closed systems. But I tend to believe
| Cell Phones already come with a backdoor, so laws do not really
| matter for those.
|
| If using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good
| luck stopping that.
| codedokode wrote:
| There is no need to ban encryption in client-server protocols
| like HTTPS. Just require that servers logs all session keys
| for future lawful access.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| That's a great way to have a central point of failure for
| bad actors to target
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > using gpg via email on an Open System (Linux, BSDs), good
| luck stopping that
|
| They won't engage us on those terms. They'll use their
| authority to pass laws saying use of cryptography strong
| enough to defeat them is evidence of guilt. Judges will
| instruct juries to assume there's CSAM in your encrypted hard
| drive.
| jruohonen wrote:
| Same I here: I don't really mind because I've never assumed
| smartphones to be secure. But maybe I have been wrong because
| they do seem to have problems in decryption of things like
| Signal or even the Meta's stuff. As for serious transnational
| crime, I really doubt whether these proposals will make any
| difference. After EncroChat, serious criminals have probably
| gone back to pencil and paper and whispering.
| kingkawn wrote:
| In part because they have full access to the classified info
| about the threats that are being disrupted regularly
| justinclift wrote:
| That's the excuse they use.
|
| Unfortunately, they've often been shown to _also_ be lying
| bastards in other matters, so why would we believe them for
| this situation?
| Zak wrote:
| If they're trying to influence public opinion and there
| really are a bunch of successes from surveillance programs
| that can be defeated with consumer-grade encryption, they
| could find ways to declassify statistics.
|
| I suppose there's the concern that a statement like "we
| prosecuted 2387 child molesters based on surveillance of
| unencrypted chat" would cause future offenders to stop using
| unencrypted chat, but I think that's a red herring. Any
| reasonably clever criminal would not be sending felonious
| content unencrypted today.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I find this much more likely than others' explanation that
| they're evil, that it's just about power, that there is a
| conspiracy among world leaders, etc.
| indymike wrote:
| > What is wrong with these people? How can anyone, let alone an
| educated, well-traveled leader, be so obtuse about the
| implications (and for that matter, the realism) of any such
| scheme?
|
| Never underestimate the appeal of making one's job easier.
| layer8 wrote:
| I believe it's difficult for nontechnical people to fully grasp
| the consequences of having so-called backdoors in the digital
| realm. It's different from the physical world, where something
| like a master key or the possibility of forceful entry isn't
| unreasonable. They probably think it must necessarily be
| possible to have something equivalent for electronic
| communication.
| hulitu wrote:
| If China (as the US claims ) does it, why not the US ? They
| don't want to lose the lead in this field. /s
| yafbum wrote:
| Contrarian opinion ahead. We live in a very unique period of
| history - a bubble really - in which governments are not able to
| intercept certain communications or decrypt certain records, even
| with the full force of the law behind them.
|
| While I recognize and appreciate, on a personal level, the
| freedom that this provides me, freedom exists only to the extent
| that there _is_ a government enforcing boundaries _on_ freedom to
| prevent it from turning into anarchy. I 'm afraid it's not going
| to be hard, over the years, to find enough pedophiles and
| terrorists to make a compellingly popular case for more
| regulation of encryption.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| This view doesn't seem to reflect the reality that Gov/LEO have
| access vastly more (direct and up-to-date) personal information
| about us than at any time in history.
|
| I find I am not in a hurry to hand over what little space is
| left.
| edrxty wrote:
| There's nothing inherently wrong with anarchy, but there are
| plenty of things inherently wrong with totalitarianism. I
| really don't care how many pedophiles we catch if we continue
| to expand the definition of pedophiles to "everyone we don't
| like". Similarly, I don't care how many terrorists we catch if
| we motivate everyone to _become_ a "terrorist" in the process.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| >freedom exists only to the extent that there is a government
| enforcing boundaries on freedom to prevent it from turning into
| anarchy
|
| No, it doesn't. Which is trivial to prove, considering we have
| had widely available encryption for two decades now with no
| anarchy or encryption fueled societal collapse in sight.
| Actually, countries without backdoor laws are some of the most
| prosperous and safe places on earth. And even western countries
| that have decided to chase after the encryption boogeyman
| (Australia, for example) didn't experience a drop in crime
| rates.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I'm afraid it's not going to be hard, over the years, to find
| enough pedophiles and terrorists to make a compellingly popular
| case for more regulation of encryption.
|
| You're going to oppress the world's entire population of human
| beings with warrantless global surveillance because of a few
| "pedophiles and terrorists"? What a tiresome argument,
| seriously. Go ahead and find us thousands of "pedophiles and
| terrorists". It won't matter how many you find because what
| you're proposing as the cure is the tyranny of a government
| panopticon.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The situation where governments can't (bulk) intercept
| communications describes basically our entire history, with as
| small weird exception towards the end. Prior to the invention
| of the postal service, most communications were verbal and
| privacy was (relatively) easy to ensure. Even up until _very_
| recently, communications interception required some
| extraordinary action like placing a durable wiretap on a line
| and listening to verbal communications, or else laboriously
| steaming open mail. It's only in the last fifteen years that we
| moved the bulk of our private, non-business communications onto
| electronic media that have long-term centralized storage and
| processing power to scan them. Coincidentally that's almost as
| long as encrypted messaging has been popular.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Relevant: Martin Fowler's essay "Privacy Protects Bothersome
| People": https://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-
| privacy.html
| FredPret wrote:
| Only technological innovation can stop this. Too many people
| really want to know everything about you. Only mathematical
| impossibility will stop them.
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