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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> how can we work against this on a technical level?

As the saying goes, you can't use a technical solution to fix a social problem.

One way to fix the social problem is to vote politicians out of office when they make bad decisions--not just about surveillance, but in general. People who don't have to pay a cost for bad decisions have no incentive to make better decisions.

Another way is to not give powers like this to governments in the first place. If politicians don't have decision making power at all over something, they can't harm the rest of us by making a bad decision.

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> One way to fix the social problem is to vote politicians out of office when they make bad decisions--not just about surveillance, but in general.

In an ideal world that would be the way to go, but I'm not so sure in this one. Those people are masters at fooling voters using the same old tricks: "collecting data helps fighting terrorists", "only those who haven't anything to hide ...", "anonimity helps pedophiles, please think of the children!" etc. So to me that battle is a lost one. Until the day they actually outlaw and prosecute the use or even mere possession of countermeasures (encrypted disks, communication protocols and connections, etc.) I think we're to the point it's time to first implement them and then maybe attempting to solve the social problem the usual ways. Hopefully someone will prove me wrong.

> One way to fix the social problem is to vote politicians out of office

I think this kind of reactive view of the problem oversimplifies the issue. Many times it's a magnitude bigger problem to undo something than doing it in the first place.

> Another way is to not give powers like this to governments in the first place. If politicians don't have decision making power at all over something, they can't harm the rest of us by making a bad decision.

It is generally impossible for a parliament to pass a law that forbids a future parliament from repealing it.

That is not generally true. Countries with codified constitutions have special rules on constitutional amendments (examples include Australia and Switzerland which require a public vote on constitutional amendments, and even the US requires 75% of state legislatures to approve amendments). Even New Zealand (which doesn't have a codified constitution) has passed laws -- such as the Electoral Act 1993 -- which restrict the power of future parliaments from passing certain legislation.

The constitutional convention you mentioned basically only exists in any significant form in the UK, though the concept does exist in a lesser extent to procedural rules (standing orders) in Commonwealth-descended parliaments around the world.

> It is generally impossible for a parliament to pass a law that forbids a future parliament from repealing it.

Not giving powers to governments in the first place would be something at a higher level than parliamentary. In the US, it would be something like a Constitutional amendment.

I agree that no such action, at any level, can ever be completely irreversible, in the sense that future citizens would never have to worry about the issue again. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

And who adds or repeals constitutional amendments? The government.

> who adds or repeals constitutional amendments? The government.

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that Constitutional amendments usually impose some limitation on the government (Federal, and in many cases State as well). And once such an amendment is passed, it's much harder to repeal than an ordinary statute (only one US Constitutional amendment has been repealed, the one imposing Prohibition, and it's relevant that that amendment was not one that imposed a limitation on the Federal government--it gave the Federal government more power, and it got repealed).

> and it's relevant that that amendment was not one that imposed a limitation on the Federal government--it gave the Federal government more power, and it got repealed).

This is a bit off-topic, but I would like to point out that if the Federal government wanted to re-instate prohibition tomorrow, it could trivially do so without a constitutional amendment. It would do so by tying highway funding to states enforcing prohibition.

Not sure why you're getting down-voted. Yes, constitutional amendments are repealed by the government. A very challenging majority of government officials, yes, but the government.

This is not true in the United States, unless you conflate all the governments within the United States as "the government" and ignore the federal system.

In the United States, either Congress or the States may adopt a proposed amendment with a 2/3 vote. However, and importantly, only the States can ratify the amendment with a 3/4 vote. This means that, in the United States, at least, "the government" itself cannot repeal amendments. It requires the approval of at least (at this time) 38 other governments.

State, federal, it's still the government.

The difference is that in the US, while the common man's ability to influence the federal government is basically zero, their ability to influence state and local governments is much stronger. Much of California's social, economic and political landscape is a result of political activism over the past few decades (setting aside whether one agrees with those policies, my point is how they came about).

Which means that for things like amendments, people have alot more power than they do even over Congress.

A single Norwegian or Canadian has a lot more influence on their federal government than a single Californian on their state government.

And ease of influence is not actually the metric you want to optimize for in this sort of thing.

No, not when state or county governments disagree with or refuse to enforce federal government laws. Haven't 37 US states legalized (to some extent) marijuana, while the federal government still has prohibition laws/rules in place? Or county/city governments that have countered executive orders from their respective state governments regarding COVID-19 (Orange county in Florida, or the Pennsylvania country York PA is in)?

> Haven't 37 US states legalized (to some extent) marijuana, while the federal government still has prohibition laws/rules in place?

I mean, that's a bad example because if you admit you've done drugs to a border guard (even while in a state where it's 'legal') you'll get deported. It's not really legal anywhere in the US, there's just a bunch of people doing illegal things. At best this is a case of "it's not illegal of you don't get caught" even if that's because the locals are intentionally trying not to look.

This is an example of dysfunction, not successful function, and an abject failure of federal policy and leadership.

I agree that it should be a states rights issue.

And yet another is to run for office.

You cannot vote someone out of office, you can only vote for someone else. Who do you vote for when every somewhat popular candidate doesn't even know how to change their WLAN password?

> As the saying goes, you can't use a technical solution to fix a social problem.

True, but the law is so slow that you can continue to outpace it with technology.

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