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Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

> I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this

Do you mean like the historical racism and anti-black bias of the FBI, as mentioned in the article? I want it emphasized.

Like someone else said, a lot of people are fine with some authority they perceive as benevolent (or as fighting evildoers) to control every detail of their lives. They would answer your question with "yes, I don't have anything to hide." So it's important to remind them of examples of authorities grossly misbehaving while supposedly acting for the common good.

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I believe the point being made is that those points are effective at reaching people who need little to no convincing and who are already politically supportive. The same points about historical wrongs done to other people unlike them are more likely to alienate the readers who are not currently politically supportive.

To put it another way, preaching to the choir doesn't win you more votes.

But if preaching to the non-choir loses you votes, doesn't that just mean we should stop preaching 'it' altogether?

You're right! That's a very real and very reasonable concern.

That said, it's fairly uncommon that the choir actually walks away electorally. It tends to require something very dramatic, like Roy Moore. It's far more common that they grumble a bit and vote for whatever anyway, because you committed the sin of advocating for the policies they want while not centering the FBI's racist history.

Again, your concerns are quite reasonable. It's just perhaps possible that what it takes to lose those votes is more than might be guessed.

I understand the preaching to the choir thing. But a lot of people aren't even aware of the history of the FBI. This isn't even a detailed history, just mentioning some scary and relevant facts about the organization that not everyone is necessarily aware of.

I think that speaking in technical, generic and hypothetical terms isn't effective. You have to ground the conversation in actual misdeeds. Otherwise you're likely to get the "but I don't have anything to hide" response.

The trick tends to be grounding the conversation in the misdeeds of people to whom the person you're talking feels no affinity. If you're talking to an American, use the current Chinese government or the UK as an example of how face tracking can be abused.

Putting an organization that a person has faith in on trial in order to make a political point runs the risks both of getting distracted and of failing to convince in a way that backfires.

I think it's baked into a certain conservative mindset that they are the ones who don't have anything to hide, which makes sense because if you don't have many progressive opinions then you probably aren't chafing against authority too often.

And, I think authoritarians (many of them seem to march under the "conservative" banner these days) are fine with surveillance because they see it as a hallmark of an effective authoritarian government, and again they see themselves as members of the "in" group. They want those subversives who are hiding things to be found and punished.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of these people will be terribly moved by the fact that leaders of progressive social movements in the past or present have been targeted by surveillance. Their world-views are shaped by a perception that they will not be targeted by an overreaching government, and such movements are comprised of their explicit political enemies.

However, I think we stand to win over a lot of people with a libertarian bent who might be turned off by an anti-surveillance movement strongly associated with modern leftism. To what degree we risk alienating those leftists, I have no idea.

Thanks for the reply!

What about people who are not politically conservative but are naive and/or not particularly aware of the history of the FBI and similar organizations?

I think those people should absolutely be educated, but there's more to the issue and IMO high-level coverage should reflect that more as more than a footnote. I do agree that the history you're talking about ought to be a powerful factor for convincing certain groups that this matters.

In the end I'm just one person, in my bubble just like everybody else. I could be totally wrong. What I'm saying is just based on my own observations of how people respond to partisan issues, and unfortunately social justice is a partisan issue.

There are very few actual conservatives these days. You have religious fanatics and reactionaries focused on maximizing resource extraction.

The funny thing is that these folks who think they have nothing to hide are under a high degree of surveillance if they are a player of any kind. Lockstep compliance with the party platform is required.

But they aren't black. You really don't get this.

Which I think is the point.

As a white person the racism part doesn't resonate with me as well (even though I think it is shameful and I agree with what the ACLU is saying and the suggestion of making the FBI more accountable). But what the OP is saying is that most people aren't black. And that to really reel in the FBI -- and other agencies -- we need unilateral support. The messaging in the article won't resonate with right wingers at all. Even though personal liberty and privacy are fundamental rights to the conservative party (even if they don't always vote in that manner. But that's likely lack of knowledge, see several sibling posts pointing this out).

The article resonates with me because I care about my personal liberty and privacy. Because I believe that we are judged by how we treat the lowest of classes. Because they first came for the communists and I'm afraid no one will be left to speak for me. But that isn't directly said in the article. We've been fighting this uphill battle for awhile now and many are getting labeled as conspiracy theorists for suggesting the Orwellian nature of surveillance capitalism -- and how the government uses this to push a more authoritarian agenda (something right wingers are VERY afraid of).

I believe the OP is trying to suggest the latter should be highlighted because it reaches a larger audience and we need bilateral support.

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