What the World Can Learn from Hongkong [video]
media.ccc.de
media.ccc.de
In reality, government makes the laws. They're an expression and codification of the ruler's will.
This is civics 101: There is no "one ruler". There are parliaments, with multiple, opposing fractions. Then, there are administrations (te "executive branch"), which are separate. Then, also separate: the judiciary.
Of course you already knew that, yet you chose to double down on OP's cynical take declaring democracy dead and asking people to stop trying to save and/or improve it. Why vote, if law has no power? And, for the odd politician that happens not to be corrupt: why bother, when your constituents are just going to spit and yell conspiracy theories in your face, with absolutely no attention being paid to your actual work?
Laws also survive governments; subsequent governments have at times tried to remove existing laws, and been shot down in the attempt. While there's a clear link twixt government and law, they're not (in many places) the same thing; they are separate.
I used "government" as meaning all branches of government as a whole. I don't disregard the advantages of dividing power between executive, legislative and judicial branches. That dilution of centralized power is important.
But at the end of the day, when the branches has come to agreement, it's still a sovereign entity that does whatever it wants.
To categorical discount the value of the rule of law, and to apparently consider that idea to be so obvious that just about half a paragraph of argumentation is given for it, strikes me as... just scary?
There are quite a few established democracies that have seen steady improvements in civil rights over their existence. There have been setbacks, such as World War Two. And the last five to ten years may well be similar. But it's still obviously true that "the long arch of history bends towards justice".
And, fwiw, technology alone is not capable to guarantee any meaningful rights when your own government is your adversary. The internet was praised as the killer tool to empower the individual against censorship. And yet there still is no technology that makes accessing Wikipedia in Shanghai as easy as it is in Billings, Montana. Bitcoin was hailed (by the conspiracy-minded) as a tool to overthrow democratically-established institutions. But, as it turned out, regulators were far less interested in shutting down Bitcoin than expected, and did not even break a sweat implementing KYC nad similar regulation across the cryptocurrency universe when needed.
I’d be interested for you to cite specific example of this. During the Cold War, the threat of the Soviet domination pushed some countries in the direction of greater equality and equanimity. But they seem uniformly in retreat following its collapse, and retreating on the basis of ever shoddier premises (first the War on Terror, now ethnonationalism). While it’s true that the ranks of the elite have diversified, the material reality and civil rights protections of almost everyone beneath them have worsened in many of these countries.
Taiwan? US-backed autocracy during the Cold War, now vibrant democracy with some issues.
In terms of steady improvement, while you're right that there have been some recent setbacks, I think you discount just how authoritarian Western governments were during the Cold War. This is a very difficult thing to summarize in a forum comment, so I suggest you look at something like Freedom House's reports (and yes, I know they aren't completely neutral, still think they're reasonable enough to be worth reading). Here's one:
The Civil Liberties Implications Of Counterterrorism Policies: https://freedomhouse.org/report/todays-american-how-free/civ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House
Eastern Europe is complicated because of the kleptocratic influence of both the US and Russia in the region, various civil conflicts, again rising ethnonationalism. Taiwan’s local trajectory is better from the KMT days, but is largely premised on elite exploitation of workers and resources in mainland China, which has put the country on a deeply unstable economic and political trajectory. Still not seeing a great record of progress versus reversion here.
And then you could rage about how these stupid people are ruining everything by not understanding privacy, but then again, "Stupid people are ruining my beautiful society!" has been a refrain since the days of Marx, probably earlier.
99% of people won't even understand PKI, ever. They have jobs and other things to worry about. You should structure your society with that assumption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jobckq4USM
TBH myopic analysis that doesn't acknowledge subsequent protests from around the world have tried to incorporate HK tactics are getting crushed left and right. Military intervention, hundreds dead, media and internet black outs, to the utter indifference of western media or public sentiment. There's a slide acknowledging other protests at 1:25:30, "If you care any of these things, then you should care about it in more than one place". But we know this is demonstrably not true.
Operationally, there's not much to learn except that HK police and the mainland has been forced to be extremely lenient and permissible (by most relative standards) due to structural factors like HKs unique geopolitical position, the geographic strengths of a city state, or other political constraints that put comprehensive crackdown off the table for HK. The operational lessons, which this talk is about, will be clearer over the next few years. I surmise the the government will be able to exploit the massive data collection on the ground after things settle down. Retaliation will come in a variety of ways i.e. employment opportunities and other algorithmic biases. Multinationals in HK are already reluctant to hire locals because it may jeopardize their operations in the mainland (like Cathay).
True, the deadliest enemies are invisible.
I bet that at this moment at least 10 universities in mainland China are using the massive surveillance data being collected (security cameras, phone location data, ...) to figure out how to track protestors back.
And even if there is no true leader, surely there are a bunch of people who are more lider-ish than the rest. Some networking analysis, like NSA pioneered surely can be applied here.
China has the time advantage, Hong Kong is not going anywhere. A brutal Chinese intervention would be the worse possible mistake for China to make, it will be hard for the West to ignore that. But keep the policing relatively low key, and the other countries don't have an in angle.
I don't think they usually add translations after the talk, but I guess they wouldn't outright reject it if someone provided a Mandarin translation.
If you do know Mandarin, you can help out if you want to.
How are you going to defend against SWAT teams with whatever guns you have?
Organize a militia? Then how do you defend against the army?
Even if you are right, that would imply that the US would enter a protacted civil war that would impoverish everyone. I have a feeling popular support would swing away from the millitias very quickly, just how long do you think millenials will survive without their avocados, yoga classes and fair trade locally brewed artisanal beer.
Maybe in a failed state like California or New York, but that's not the entirety of America.
I'm not sure why you started with this. Your odds are way better if it's against your own military, especially in the West. There's going to be a ton of defectors. Have you met anyone from the South? Those same people who are extremely anti government are usually vets. This isn't just speculation either, there's very clear examples.
But something people constantly forget is that you can't rule the dead. People are a resource. You need them to produce your economy, make your food, tax, etc. But there's also an argument here on the converse side, to make your people rich to make your ruling class even richer. But short term thinking...
ROFL. You most likely meant IEDs.
Don't people have the right to die trying to win their freedom?
a bunch of people with rifles inside a building can be pretty hard to deal with if the government isn't willing to level the place. a large scale revolt of armed citizens could never "win" against the us military, but the conflict wouldn't leave much left worth controlling.
decisions are made in the margins. it is much less risky for a government to impose unpopular laws on an unarmed populace.
(That I can do even without understanding any German)
Edit: I'm totally serious, even Signal barely manages to exist, is blocked from federating for reasons of the preservation of the developers' personal safety and has publically been compared to the KKK by FBI officials. It's not a fun or bright situation but it is how things are right now.
Then, it'd be great if privacy-focussed platforms would show a commitment to find privacy- and freedom-preserving ways to tackle the very real problem of these platforms overflowing with actual, self-marking Nazis.
As an analogy: if the cryptocurrency community can find ways to curb problems such as scams or the waste of energy with technology, it can avoid the regulation to that effect it so much fears. But every time some cryptobro opines that people really deserve to be scammed if they did not go through each single line of source code their bitcoin wallet depended on, the idea that these communities are sticking up for some larger values and not feeling quite ok with scammers and Nazis loses a bit more of its legitimacy.
What you're really proposing, IMO, is this:
Privacy and anti-censorship advocate (PA): I think we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater when we're trying to curb extremism by requiring messaging services to police their users. The problem is real, but the methods being used to address it are completely antithetical to the fundamental principles of free societies. I want to let people talk to each other on-line without anyone listening in on them or stopping them from saying whatever they want to say.
You: OK, you can do that if you can make sure no Nazis can use your service to further their agenda.
PA: That seems impossible, given the goals I've stated. Furthermore, this is precisely what I meant with "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
IOW, I don't think there's a technical solution to be found here. This is a fundamental ideological divide, and needs to be dealt with as such.