Senator Blumenthal Mad That Zoom Not Offering the Encryption His Law Will Outlaw
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What they want is encryption that only the American government can tap.
Zoom is susceptible to the Chinese government. They don't want that at all.
That's an awfully broad brush he is painting with there. If the third party I choose to share information with is telling me that the data will be private, then of course I have a reasonable expectation of privacy. If the site's TOS claim to have rights to everything that you upload to the site, then they also cannot claim the content to be private. You can claim in TOS that by uploading, you grant rights to interact with the data to make it work within the site (making multiple versions of images etc) but it can still be private. If the TOS says by uploading content, I grant them the right to do anything they can with the data including researching how to offer better experience on said site, that content is no longer private.
https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/394215-gorsuchs-di...
For the locked up, Gorsuch's dissent starts on page 99/119: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
I don't know if that makes them psychos or not, but they definitely are not clueless.
And, remember this next time she's up for re-election; this isn't her first time. She also co-sponsored PIPA [1] along with Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand, for the many of y'all in New York. You get who you vote for.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/339...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/968...
At either extreme—no rights or complete anarchy—society breaks down. Everything in between is a society trying to find the most workable compromise.
"I am above the law, you are not" and
"every law applies equally to us all, no exceptions."
You can infringe rights; that's not the same as taking them away. There is a clear difference between having the power to do something and having the right to do it. There is nothing unusual about having the right to do something but lacking sufficient power to accomplish it. A right does not disappear merely because one lacks the power to prevent it from being infringed.
As the name implies, rights are fundamentally about right and wrong: they are expressions of how one ought to act, or respond to another's actions. Saying that a right exists is the same as saying that your own actions ought not infringe that right for others. Practicality is irrelevant. The "theory" (or rather, philosophy) you've casually dismissed is the entire point of the exercise.
Of course one needs power also, if only for self-defense, but power—or lack thereof—does not dictate right and wrong. Power merely expands the range of options available to you. Your rights—the things that it would be right for you to do—are the same whether you are powerless or omnipotent.
So what exactly are your rights? Well, that's for you to decide. Even true omnipotence wouldn't be enough to grant anyone else the power to make that decision for you.
This is handled by the old common law saying, "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." Countries that operate on common law systems (like the US) are a lot better at handling rights than statutory law countries like the UK, which have to decide all of these things in advance. In the US system there is really not anything tort law cannot handle.
at neither of those extremes does society necessarily break down. in both cases, it simply aligns along the new gradients of power. an actual extreme for breaking down society is apocolyse/genocide.
with "no rights", we're slaves, and social structures are completely subservient to the whims of the overclass rather than broken down.
with "complete anarchy", society reconfigures around "might makes right" (more tribal social ties), as in the romanticized old west rather than mad max. extreme resource constraints, not simply lawlessness, typically define (imagined) dystopias; many are excessively lawful.
The Senators know that with The Bay and LA there is zero percent chance a Republican can take it and as long as they keep their donors happy, they figure they're impossible to primary and the reality is right now they're probably right.
It's kind of why I support the run at Pelosi's seat. I don't exactly love Buttar, but having one of the OGs lose, or at least barely hold her seat, would probably do wonders to refocus various incumbents on what their constituents want.
She is definitely punching above her station.
But part of the reason that’s possible is because the various legislatures get to choose their own electorates, and the lack of run off elections when no one exceeds 50%
Where are you getting this information? Senators serve six year terms and must be re-elected by their constituents.
As Yuval Noah said, we are in the middle of the worst modern crisis this world has seen and we have global leaders that can't inspire, organize and finance a coordinated global response.