Hacker News Reader

Comment by shmageggy | Hacker News Reader

> If you don't trust judicial review, then there's no hope left for you to function in a normal society filled with other people.

This is an extreme statement and a false dichotomy. I think there's plenty of room between "completely trust government" and "unfit for society". If I'm uncomfortable with the potential for abuse of monitoring (which has already happened plenty of times), that means what exactly? I should remove myself from public discourse?

View on HN

Right, which is why we have Judicial review of communications monitoring, since we don't trust the executive branch (a political entity) with that power alone.

So you're suggesting that the sole legitimate check on governmental power is the government itself? And that anyone outside the government attempting to challenge abuses of power is by definition unfit for society?

The ultimate oversight is the voter.

And the voters have decided that the courts should be trusted.

But the voters are being purposefully misinformed by that very same government. It's literally circular reasoning.

Your argument would hold more weight if the people voting were actually well informed and educated about what the implications of their votes would be. If the government came out and said "everything you do, say, click and load will be saved for latter analysis" do you think they would vote the same way?

The argument would also carry more weight if the voters actually had a chance to vote on this issue orthogonally to everything else, rather than picking a candidate and hoping.

(Not that I'd accept building a backdoor just because 50%+1 people wanted access to my users' data, either, but at least then the argument made in the post you replied to would have any meaning at all.)

What exactly are they being "purposefully misinformed" about?

The US government has three independent branches for a reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com