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Comment by pudo | Hacker News Reader

It frightens me how literal this looks to be intended: that freedom is (almost exclusively) a function of infrastructure, rather than "the human layer". It's a dead-serious attempt to "hot-wire" politics by means of better crypto and smarter tech, to avoid having to engage in the constructive design and defense of laws which guarantee freedom.

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Our dependence on technology enables new vectors of control and I am not as optimistic about the ability of laws to guarantee these will not be abused. Trust in government as an agent of freedom is a very recent (not to mention regional) development. I say we err on the side of freedom and don't tempt government too much with opportunities for technology-assisted totalitarianism.

Yes, the name of the project is aspirational, but there's a bit of fallacy of relative privation in this argument, don't you think? Why can't technical specialists use their skills toward a common goal of greater freedom? Should they spend that time and effort faxing their congresspersons instead?

Eben Moglen is both technically and legally savvy (he's the one who wrote the GPL). He works on both fronts, and the FreedomBox project which he inspired is but part of his overall work.

Richard Stallman wrote the GNU GPL. Eben Moglen assisted in writing version 3.

Oh, I thought rms only wrote GPLv1 and got a lot of assistance from Moglen for GPLv2, but I suppose you're right, my bad, it was only until GPLv3 that Moglen had a big impact.

This is because 95% of the time throughout human history, true political freedom from authority is only ever won via extreme violence.

As nerds, we're neither inclined nor skilled in the ways of killing, and we enjoy our modern comforts, so we opt for technical workarounds instead.

> political freedom from authority is only ever won via extreme violence.

Eh, that's the most extreme end. Political freedom from authority is won by having more power, period. That power can come in many forms, but at its most primal can come from having the capability of lethal force. The power of a representative government is supposed to be in being able to vote out those that are destroying you, not in you having to take up arms to solve the issue.

For most of human history, political freedom was won by being too far away / hard to reach. A few miles of moderately rough terrain would do in many instances, or a modest slope.

Money and debt come via violence. ; not really freedom...except in the sense that it isn't slavery (which is directly related to debt and money).

I highly suggest people read Debt: The First 5000 Years. It's pretty life changing.

The FreedomBox Foundation is led by Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center (http://softwarefreedom.org/), which takes care of the human and law layer.

I think the Freedombox concept is the technical part of the two prong solution to the problem. EFF handles free speech and privacy. Freedombox deals with the just in case situation if/when EFF fails.

> defense of laws which guarantee freedom

Some powerful organizations are doing a lot of illegal surveillance for decades despite of those laws.

Shall we stop using HTTPS in the meantime?

I don't see where they claim that freedom is comprised almost exclusively of their project.

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