Hillary Clinton announces tech platform
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Maybe this really can be the year of the 3rd party.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/hillary-clinton-w...
Regardless of whether you support Hillary or not (or for that matter Trump or not), it will never be the year of the 3rd party due to the US (and UK's) use of First-past-the-post electoral system [1]. The Spoiler Vote [2] is a real thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect
Also, a third-party capturing a large portion of the vote would be a signal in future elections potentially prompting even more third party votes in later elections so even if they don't win this year there is always next term.
Likewise a strong third party vote sends a strong signal to whomever is elected as to what the voters want.
One of my least favorite things is when people say they won't vote third-party because they are throwing away their vote. If everyone who said that voted third-party the world would be a different place.
Which, pretty much invariably, they do.
> Libertarians for instance can appeal to both Democrat and Republican voters.
The U.S. Libertarian Party is basically right-libertarian, and most of its supporters are closer to the Republican Party than the Democratic Party (there are left-libertarians in the US, but they mostly aren't in the Libertarian Party.)
> Tea Party
Isn't actually a political party, its a mostly republican grassroots (optimistically) or astroturf (cynically) organization.
> or Green Party on the other hand...
I've personally encountered more people who were on the fence between the Green Party and the Republican Party than between the Democratic and Libertarian Parties; I'm not saying that's representative, but, I think the Green Party isn't substantially more exclusive in which major party it effects than the Libertarian Party.
> Also, a third-party capturing a large portion of the vote would be a signal in future elections potentially prompting even more third party votes in later elections
We've seen unusually strong and noteworthy independent or third-party results in major elections in the US (usually around strong personalities, e.g., H. Ross Perot as an independent in 1992, and still unusually strong, but weaker, as the Reform Party candidate in 1996); they nearly invariably are not signals that prompt even more third-party votes in later elections, either for third parties generally or for the particular third-party with the one-time strong showing.
> Likewise a strong third party vote sends a strong signal to whomever is elected as to what the voters want.
They send a strong signal as to which voters you can safely alienate without increasing your major opponents vote total. The cost to a major candidate of losing someone who is willing to vote third-party rather than for the major opponent is 1/2 what it is to lose them to the major opponent.
I think the two party system is bad for this country and I would love to see an end to it. So this is probably just me being wishful thinking.
And even if you could somehow get encryption that maintains security and allows government investigation, there is no stoping people from just using software written outside the law.
And that is assuming that you don't consider the government itself or any person who works for it as a potential bad actor.
That whole idea is all sorts of bad. It makes law abiding citizens less safe while doing almost nothing for our security.
If it involves trying to get people to use compromised systems, that won't work out well.
> a national commission on digital security and encryption.
"This commission will work with the technology and public safety communities to address the needs of law enforcement, protect the privacy and security of all Americans that use technology, assess how innovation might point to new policy approaches, and advance our larger national security and global competitiveness interests,"
She wants to find a middle ground between encryption and intercepting communications without a backdoor solution. The thing is, there really isn't a balance here. You can't have secure encryption and allow access to outside parties. She'll have to make the choice between them, and it's very clear, even from your quote that she'll choose "our larger national security".
Given the response from Silicon Valley to the "Manhattan-like Project" on compromising digital privacy, the most political salient piece of those "imperatives" -- which has been announced previously, though some of the other elements may not have been -- its not at all surprising that she chose to announce the "tech platform" somewhere else.
This alone is enough to win my support.