See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737171
Apple requested to shut down 3 Telegram channels used by the people of Belarus to expose the identities of their oppressors.
Apple requested to shut down 3 Telegram channels used by the people of Belarus to expose the identities of their oppressors.
It’s also rarely the case that when there is a transfer of power, for the police to all be fired, which you’d think would be the case if they were the oppressors who had just been overthrown.
Doxxing police may be an effective strategy, but it’s also true that social media driven mobs end up killing people, sometimes in error.
Standing up against oppression is necessary, but it’s also messy, and nobody really smells of roses.
The goal of fighting oppression this way is to drive the number of willing participants down and keep as many of those contracts open/unfulfilled. Quiting vacates 1.
However, given the high cost of such a decision, the desired benefit tends to be attained, as there is always sufficient numbers of willing participants to bid on those vacancies. Every year people graduate, separate from the military, migrate here.
Fighting labor market dynamics is unscalable. Changing labor markets via political mechanisms on the other hand is.
Theoretically, sure. You're going to do this in Belarus, the most openly totalitarian state currently? The problem is that politically changing the dynamics is nigh impossible until the existing power structure is neutralized.
I'll agree that losing a living wage is a large difficulty, but reducing totalitarian oppression to market dynamics is callous, or biased. The larger situation demands action beyond rational choices.
Don't equivocate between the people protesting for their votes to be counted and the people kidnapping and torturing them in response.
It seems like there are millions of people in Belarus who are equivocating in some way.
I’m not questioning whether the dictator should go.
I’m saying that for each person in the situation, whatever their role, the calculus of what action to take is not black and white.
For example, by all accounts Lukashenko is backed by Putin. It could be that people are less scared of the police, and more scared of what could happen if they overthrow Lukashenko, and Putin sends in little green men to restore order.
That’s just one example of what people might be considering. I’m guessing there are also a bunch of people who simply don’t have a clear idea of exactly what’s going on.
peaceably: inclined or disposed to avoid strife or dissension; not argumentative or hostile:
assemble: gather together in one place for a common purpose.
step 1: go to ddg step 2: type "define peaceably" step 3: hit "enter" step 4: read the first or second definition in the results step 5: ????? step 6: profit
It’s interesting because the dictionary.com definition is very constrained.
Avoiding dissention, and not being ‘argumentative’ seem like a stretch for describing most peaceful protests in the US.
> peaceably, adv.
> 2. Without being subject to disturbance or opposition; in peace, quietly; tranquilly, peacefully.
> 1375: Barbour Bruce v. 231 “It anoyis me.., That the clyffurd sa pesabilly Brukis and haldis the senȝory That suld be mine.”
> 1471: Fortescue Wks. (1869) 527 “Kynge Knoght kepte and occupied the same lande.., and died peasibly seased tharof.”
> 1593: Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, iii. iii. 25 “Disturbe him not, let him passe peaceably.”
> 1727: De Foe Syst. Magic i. iii. (1840) 71 “We come to desire your leave, that we may go peaceably, and do the duty of our worship.”
> 1824: Mackintosh Speech 15 June, “They saw the laws obeyed, justice administered,..and the revenue peaceably collected.”
> peaceably, adv.
> 1. With peaceful or friendly disposition, intention, or behaviour; amicably; so as to make for or maintain peace; without making strife, opposition, or disturbance; without quarrel or dispute.
> c1330: R. Brunne Chron. Wace (Rolls) 7300 “Ȝyf swylk be comen, & peysibly þe hauene han nomen, In pes lat þem take þer rest.”
> 1389: in Eng. Gilds (1870) 52 “Honestliche and peysiblyche to gon to þe forseyd chirch.”
> c1449: Pecock Repr. iii. xiii. (Rolls) 363 “Regniden in successioun euermore oon emperour after an other pesibili to gidere.”
> 1535: Coverdale Zach. viii. 16 “Execute iudgment truly and peaceably.”
> 1599: Shakes. Much Ado v. ii. 72 “Thou and I are too wise to wooe peaceablie.”
> 1599: Nashe Lenten Stuffe Wks. (Grosart) V. 228 “Not any where is..a warlike people peaceablier demeanourd.”
> 1709: Addison Tatler No. 96 2 “Good Subjects, that pay their Taxes, and live peaceably in their Habitations.”
> 1855: Macaulay Hist. Eng. xii. III. 190 “With assurances that the city should be peaceably surrendered.”
>peaceably, adv.
> 3. Comb.
> 1692: Wicked Contriv. Steph. Blackhead in Select. fr. Harl. Misc. (1793) 512 “Some other good and peaceably-minded man.”
> 1781: Cowper Conversation 90 “The clash of arguments and jar of words,..Divert the champions prodigal of breath, And put the peaceably-disposed to death.”
Or are the implications of this definition the issue?
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-17/belarus-torture-prote...
You don't doxx police officers and paste their IDs online. The chance you're taking, the certainty indeed, is that someone will follow through (perhaps even an agent provocateur) providing the justification for waves of ruthless revenge.
Nope, you bring your dossiers to a higher court and ask for Justice (EU, ICJ, UN.)
Edit: unless of course the situation has deteriorated so badly that the prospect of civil war with all its casualties and pain is on the table.
You seem to be confusing the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On the other hand, I think my point about national attacks on supranational institutions remains relevant.
The EU isn't a court, and European institutions (including European courts like the ECHR) are particularly not "higher courts" over police in the US. The ICJ hears only cases between state parties, not between states and their subjects, and the UN isn't a court at all, and, again, is only a forum for state parties, not for disputes between individuals and states, though sometimes you can get a state party to stand up for subjects of another state; but, that's not really much of a practical option if the offending state is the US, both because of its Security Council role (which Uniting for Peace, in theory, provides a route around through the General Assembly), and because of its hyperpower status (which means that there is, in practice, no way to enforce a decision against it, even if one was reached through UfP.)
It’s rarely that clean.
So no, I still don't feel bad about it, even if that cop needs the job to feed his family. Maybe they should fight the system that doesn't support their citizens in need (people with health problems, people who don't have money for food, people who don't have homes) instead of being willing participants against those fighting for a better government that actually serves the needs of its people?
You can't use that line on groups of people you don't like while also wanting privacy for groups of people you do like.
However in this case it's actually different, as police officers are meant to be public servants.
Just because someone does public work doesn’t mean they should be denied a private life.
Are you saying the goal of de-anonymizing is to punish the police?
Earlier it seemed like you were interested in trials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24862054
But that’s never the case. There is always a mixture of people with good motivations, people who just want to get into a fight. This is just as true for the protestors as it is for the police.
If it was so clear what was right, then it would be simple to overthrow the government since the vast majority of people would be in agreement.
Whether or not the court system is about retaliation is a completely separate debate.
I'm exiting this thread as you've shown no interest in listening to anyone that has disagreed with you.
Doxxing doesn’t equate to transparency or holding people accountable in court, and it certainly can mean retaliation.
That brings us back to my original point - if you believe in accountability you don’t necessarily believe in doxxing cops. It’s not that clean.
Honestly I'd prefer vigilante justice over that.
Dox the cops, 100%. I'd rather a cop be hurt unfairly in the line of duty than a protester fighting for what he believes in. This country was founded on overthrowing tyrrany. If the cops don't accept the risks of the job then they can quit. Cops need to be held to a higher standard, not lower or even equal. The government (and police) should fear the people, not the other way around.
So no. It is that clean.
Nobody said anything about the police policing themselves. That doesn’t mean the only alternative is doxxing. That is a false dichotomy.
It’s only ‘clean’ if you can only see two options, and think there are no alternatives.
It's clean because the police should be held to higher standards than the public, and they can quit if they don't want that responsibility.
Now it’s “angry mob” vs “no police accountability”.
Nobody else is talking about either of these.
I will always choose the people over the police, even if the people are violent. A public mob is better than a police mob.
Until the police are held accountable to the public, I feel no remorse for anything that happens to them.
As to making people “seem like they are anti-police”, why would I need to do that? I don’t think people have a problem with being seen as anti-police. Is there something wrong with being anti-police? It seems like an entirely valid position to hold.
Being anti-police as an institution doesn’t automatically mean being in favor of mob violence against individuals. You can be strongly against a structure, without hating the individuals who occupy the role.
It is possible to want to hold the police accountable without believing that the only way to do this is to dehumanize them, or to doxx them.
All you have done here is double down on an extremist position.
“The police” is a very large and diverse group of people. You have said you feel no remorse for anything that happens to them.
You have said that you are willing to completely dehumanize all police, and support violence of any kind against all of them and the killing of innocent people in the name of your cause, which is an unspecified ‘accountability’.
You are therefore a politically violent extremist, or at the very least someone who supports politically violent extremism if such a distinction can be made.
Can you find one other comment where I have labeled anyone anything? It should be very easy if I end every one of my comments like that.
Nobody else here has said they don’t care about innocent people dying. That is only you.
You keep twisting what people say only to respond with gotchas and try to wear down your opponents.
You are saying that you don’t care about police dying.
I could point out that police are people, so what you are doing here is to dehumanize anyone who you consider to be police.
However, I accept that you wouldn’t recognize that argument, because you then go on to say, that they can quit whenever they want.
I.e. they can avoid being killed by simply making the choice not to be Police.
This is the very definition of political violence - threatening the lives of people who support institutions you don’t like.
“I will always choose the people over the police, even if the people are violent. A public mob is better than a police mob.”
“Until the police are held accountable to the public, I feel no remorse for anything that happens to them.”
“the public needs to do it by whatever means necessary even if that harms innocent police officers”
Seems pretty clear what you are advocating. You don’t have to say things like this if they aren’t what you mean.
I choose to help the people, not the police.
“the public needs to do it by whatever means necessary even if that harms innocent police officers”
Advocating methods that knowingly include harming the innocent is advocating violence.
You are clearly advocating violence.
Why not just admit it?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874243
I think it’s reasonable to assume you won’t, because if you could have without resorting to denial and gaslighting, you would have done.
As I said before and you never addressed: if I say I don't care about you, does that mean I'm advocating violence against you?
Some of the participants in the brutalities called it a "mexican slaughterhouse" and several trials came to the conclusion that massive human rights violations have occurred.
Unfortunately the commanding officers have been promoted for not maintaining order and not exercising the authority over their men that their role demanded. They too loved it though and throughout.
Are you saying doxxing and random retaliatory violence equates to ‘accountability’?
This is why generally police are identified by badges with numbers, and rather than their names and addresses.
Are you suggesting that the home address, name, and photograph of all police officers should be made publicly available everywhere?
2. How do people know who the Belarusian police are in order to doxx them?
#2 if you can identity the police using ML, then you can use those identities for any legitimate purpose that a badge number would be used for, such as collecting evidence against them, and clearly doxxing is not the only thing you can do.
I’ve also personally witnessed a policeman on horseback in the UK striking a peaceful and stationary protester in the head with a baton resulting in profuse bleeding.
If it’s true in Belarus, then it’s also true in the UK, and US.
But, what isn’t clear is that a Telegram group doxxing officers is a clean way to deal with it.
How do we know which officers were doxxed and for what reason? How do we know what will happen to them? Would you feel comfortable if the officer in your video was killed?
Doesn’t seem clean to me.
Keep a dossier, have a trial.
Doxxing is not that. Indeed I could see it even being raised as a defense against future culpability.
“The officer was in fear for his life because he was being personally targeted by protestors.”
When? Your approach is to limit political autonomy to zero and offer an institutional solution that will probably not be available. What if the compilation or possession of such a dossier is treated as evidence of conspiracy to commit sedition?
If compilation of a dossier is treated as evidence of a conspiracy to commit sedition, then surely doxxing would be too.
Doxxing might well be used as evidence of a conspiracy to commit sedition, but by distributing the information widely it's strategically superior to holding it in isolation. It's easy to act with impunity against a lone individual, but if some unknown number of people are possession of the same information the marginal benefit of arrest is vastly reduced.
That is a straw man argument, undeniably so. It in no way represents my position.
I agree with you distributing information widely is superior to holding it in isolation, and I agree with you about reducing the benefit of arrest. Nobody said anything about just one person holding all the dossiers.
There are many ways to accomplish this which are not doxxing if the goal is real accountability.
When the oppressor only has the truly pathological cases to support them, it's a lot easier to know who to fight.
I know, the 'good' officers can be leveraged, hostaged, or any number of other coercive ways to make them do what the oppressor wants.
And I don't generally agree with the 'stay in the system and help fix it from within'. When you're having to take crappy orders from above, your only recourse is mutiny or other disobedience and it's a lot harder to manage in an already corrupt chain.
No it's not, not generally. When the police goes away, in a lot of places, society falls apart because the vicious prey on the rest without hesitation. Especially the good cops don't want that, because they're in it to serve and protect. "I'll just not go, lol" equals "some drug lord will take over the city and rape and pillage with impunity". They don't want that, and the super majority of citizens also doesn't want that.