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Comment by dahwolf | Hacker News Reader

Software is flexible which seems to result in our human rights being equally flexible.

Imagine the police regularly raiding your apartment without announcement. The post office opening all your mail. Storage box companies searching your unit.

You wouldn't be OK with that. You're innocent until proven guilty and a search requires a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing and an approved warrant. Private communication is private and absolutely nobody else's business. It's a crime to open somebody's mail.

In the digital domain, we're fine with all of these illegal searches, either we don't even know they happen or we do know yet let it pass, as it feels "invisible" and not intrusive. Plus, you're a standup citizen so all is good.

And that's how one day you end up as a bankrupted outcast for having insulted the king.

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I 'm actually shocked that people are OK with that. People in countries that have had dictatorships recently probably remember that. Snitches everywhere, the police raiding houses again and again for no reason, with no recourse and people were just accepting it.

Many struggle understanding consequences unless it's happening directly to them at that very moment. Until then, the problem ceases to exist for them.

As a Russian student studying in Paris, it was a terrifying realization that the mayor can, apparently, prohibit any and all mass protests by simply issuing a decree, no higher authority needed. (This was in 2018 IIRC.) This is apparently part of the anti-terrorist law or something? I dunno, and nobody seemed to care except for the participants of the protests that were happening at the time.

Compared to the constant, unceasing reminders by Russian activists that the de facto prohibition on protests in Russia is a legal sham and the actual thing would require the president declaring a state of emergency (that only happened in 2022 and then not fully), the silence in an established democractic society was deafening.

The tired “freeze peach” responses on HN evoke similar feelings, as do the “private businesses can deny anything to anyone”. (Never seen a less-than-loyal artist’s concert cancelled the day before because the venue received a suggestion—not a command, mind you, a suggestion—from a city official’s phone? Have I got news for you.)

It cannot. It can refuse an organized protest, and ask the prefect to deploy the police at particular location, but cannot prohibit protests.

Actually, Paris' mayor is the mayor with the less executive power, as they don't have a municipal police. Paris prefect, on the other hand, is the most powerful prefect in France.

But prefects in France have too much power. It would be fine if the legislative and judiciary branch acted as they should in a healthy democracy, but the legislative power is subordinate to the executive, and different presidents over tim choose to reduce the judiciary power. The fact that Macron and ex-Sarkozists claim Erdoğan is going too far with his judicial reform is a joke. A bad one.

The prefect was also involved at some point, I might well have mixed that up. The structure honestly seems quite convoluted from the outside, but the responsible party seemed to be a part of the executive. (I tried to check whether a tribunal of some sort belonged to the judiciary, because it looked like it didn’t, and gave up. No deep knowledge here, sorry.)

> [The mayor] can refuse an organized protest [...], but cannot prohibit protests.

What’s the practical difference? I’m not sure I see one, having seen years of “oh no you can’t have your rally here, there’s extremely unfortunately some other thing nobody’s heard about happening in your primary location and renovations at your alternate one and you’ll have to move to a place two hours from city centre and by the way we sat on your notification for a month and the deadline to resubmit was two days ago”.

(Legally, the Russian system is that of affirmative notifications, not of requests for permission, so you have to manufacture a conflict or a threat to public safety of some sort to really refuse, as well as offer an alternate location. The ECHR had a field day dismantling those excuses with about a decade’s latency, before Russia was drummed out of the Council of Europe to widespread cheering and activists were left to maybe possibly write to the OHCHR in the godsdamned UN and hope it works? I heard they’ve literally sent out more complaints now than the office has handled over the entirety of its pre-2022 history. I guess even the UN needs to have its joints greased from time to time.)

I would point out that Russian system failed entirely and totally when it comes to keeping it "free". Meanwhile, I see French having actual rather big protests all the time. Meanwhile, I see Russia actively exporting authoritarianism with full revert back to bad times.

I think that one big reason is that there is practical difference in the two systems ... and that practical difference is favoring the French system.

The issue isn't with CURRENT government.

The issue is that with such huge loopholes, FUTURE one might exploit them on a bigger scale than what happens in Russia.

And being constantly vigilant and opposed to such laws, is what keeps the society sane and working.

The protest in France could be officially banned, but it wouldn't stop the protesters. Whereas current Russia would bring in the army to forcefully stop protests.

I did not said that current government is somehow better then other governments. I said that French system is superior regardless of government. Because it produces better outcome systematically over the years, even as this or that government don't want it to happen.

I am saying that looking toward Russia laws is bad place to take lessons from. The in book laws in Russian system mean literally nothing. Wagner is illegal in Russia too, actually. Post-socialist human right activists lost and failed.

> The protest in France could be officially banned, but it wouldn't stop the protesters. Whereas current Russia would bring in the army to forcefully stop protests.

First part yes. Latter part, actually, no. Russia don't bring army within Russia for that nor need to. They have cops and secret service for that and both have enough power. But the lack of democracy in Russia did not happened because the army would systematically suppress Russian protests. (It successfully suppressed Belarusian protests and made Chechnya into vasal state. But in Russia itself, it is not the threat of army that is preventing protests.)

The "affirmative notifications" is doing absolutely nothing for democracy in Russia.

It's not just future governments - think about Canada trying to debank the Convoy protesters, etc. People cheered, because stomping on people they don't like feels good.

Sorry, had other stuff to do hopefully you'll see this message.

In fact, I was wrong, I thought the mayor had some interdiction power, they have none. the mayor cannot 'not allow' a protest, the prefect can. When Paris' mayor is not on the same political side 1s the government, it can lead to weird stuff (like what's happening now).

It is absolutely authoritarian. I think France was ranked as one of the most authoritative democracy, on par with Russia, turkey,a bit less than Egypt.

Those interdiction weren't used offensively until Macron though. You have to limit the area of the interdiction (can't be the whole city) and pre-2017 were easely accessible 48h before they were effective, and could be challenged in court.

In 2018-2019 they tested putting the interdiction up at the last moment, it worked, so now it's even worse, they draft the interdiction as active immediately and put a copy on the prefecture doors, do not make them available on the internet then fine everyone.

The most egregious was one that took effect at 17h but wasn't put on the door until 17h30.

What's funny is that people voted macron 'against fascism' twice, not realizing that his way is a fascism too (in this case, I mean fascism as a catch-all for ideologies coming from Cesarism/Bonapartism, as defined by Krondstadt butcher himself, Trosky, terrible man but accurate critic of his time).

In Sydney you need to apply for a permit to stage a protest.

Citation needed.

Is that permit to "stage a protest" or a permit to block traffic and do otherwise illegal actions?

https://www.nswccl.org.au/right_to_protest

"Civil disobedience" has always entailed paying the consequences of lawvreaking to send a message.

You have to do the same in Croatia too. So no wonder nobody protests.

Hell, I had to apply for a same permit to organize a very small LAN party in one of the college's classrooms.

> As a Russian student studying in Paris, it was a terrifying realization that the mayor can, apparently, prohibit any and all mass protests by simply issuing a decree, no higher authority needed. (This was in 2018 IIRC.) This is apparently part of the anti-terrorist law or something? I dunno, and nobody seemed to care except for the participants of the protests that were happening at the time.

That's because the governments actively work to and encourage the fracturing of their population and cultures and the breakdown of trust in society. If you hate or fear your neighbor, you will be okay with the state trampling their rights.

It’s to easy to explain away this stuff as merely gov deception fooling people. But I’ve seen far too many well educated people on HN making arguments in favour of this stuff. They always have their pet emergencies that are unlike other times in history requiring compromise now and a naive trust in the good intentions of local politicians, who often do care about some real present issue, but lack the capacity to see the longer term consequences and wider picture.

The fact they are more often religiously promoted by people often from EU countries or wealthier cities in the US is a signal but that doesn’t mean they were merely fooled by bad actors in gov hiding stuff. They could just as often see a consistent positive stability in their own local community, then immediately rationalize/correlate that to the popular mantras of the well intentioned local politicians… regardless if such that positive state is a stagnated legacy of prior success, claiming issues in other regions that their country/community never really experienced is because x gov policy (ie, using the absence of negatives to rationalize some norm, regardless if it’s been tested IRL), or merely positives happening in spite of their own govs policies.

Gov policy making / promotion is far too complex and multilayered to dismiss it outright as intentioned manipulative and planned.

The "well educated people on HN" are some of the most meekly subservient to government authority and blind cheerleaders of its power I've ever encountered, and there is a strong scorn and open hatred for lesser "deplorable" classes of society with incorrect opinions who they need government protection from.

It has come to my attention as well that the more higher educated people in my circles are more blind to the power grab that is happening by government here. Topics around housing, energy, immigration, covid, EU policy, nitrogen ect are blindly followed by whatever the authority is saying and without any desire to think for themselves.

It has come to the point where debating any of above Topics is impossible and gets you stamped as "crazy, outlier".

And on a lot of these topics, the messages from government that have been sent were plain wrong, but no corrections have been made, thus the cycle continues.

Where the more 'poor' people around me seem to think more for themselves and with common sense. Those are the people that wonder why the riots in Paris are nowhere to be found in our mainstream media (Netherlands).

I wonder why this is the case and if this is unique to me. One explanation could be that the wealthier group has more to lose when going 'out of favor'. Thoughts?

There certainly seems to be class hatred and division behind it. I don't know if there are any rational elements to it like the higher classes having more to lose, or it is purely driven by propaganda from the ruling class to cement their power.

That people are irrational or willfully ignorant about things is not surprising. People can become irrational and blind to truth through their own self-delusions or through propaganda. Being "educated" or having more money doesn't change that.

Am I misreading, or are you arguing that people are more free to protest in Russia than in Paris?

No, I’m not. What I’m saying is that as long as laws on protests are being followed in full (which in the case of Russia means we’re... somewhere in the late 90s, probably? early 00s at most), the authorities in Paris seem to have much wider latitude to stop people from protesting than would be allowed by the Russian constitution, and that latitude was exercised as recently as 2018.

That doesn’t mean the French system doesn’t work right now (certainly there’s a lot of protesting in Paris), but from my paranoid viewpoint it seems extremely exploitable, and it’s chilling to see people shrug at government actions that would have every post-Soviet human rights activist up in arms. I don’t know how else to put this; it just seems fundamental that the government must not (have the ability to) start to prohibit protests, because sooner or later it won’t stop.

Maybe I’m just too unwilling to believe in a reasonable government, I don’t know.

Thank you for the clarification.

The core of the issue is that the law itself matters less than how the people with big guns behave -- they can choose not to enforce the law or they can break the law with impunity, so what matters is what the government / police actually do, and what they actually prevent people from doing.

Despite the "bans" on mass protests, the French still protest plenty.

> "Maybe I’m just too unwilling to believe in a reasonable government, I don’t know."

Even if somehow there were a genuinely benevolent socially minded government willing to put society above all of their personal interests (including, even getting elected) - it would be unwise to support potentially oppressive powers. Because sooner or later, that government will be replaced by one that will be happy to exploit those powers for wrongful purpose.

> every post-Soviet human rights activist up in arms

there don't seem to many RUSSIANS of this description around at the moment (not that i would blame them).

> people shrug at government actions that would have every post-Soviet human rights activist up in arms

Post-Soviet activists did accepted quite a lot ... and post soviet societies are quickest to fall into authoritarian. There are not that many activists in the first place and activists are looked down upon by too many people.

My point here is that generally, people on the west are massively better at keeping things democracy.

Yes, the people who lived under the Stasi remember it vividly

And vote AFD or even the neonazis.

Democracy is one bad week away from turning into a dictatorship. We've gotten complacent and forgot that fact. Democracy is not the natural state of society.

When the encumbents ignore the populace then populists get elected, yes.

If you don't want people voting for extremist parties then get the more mainstream ones to stop ignoring concerns about the current policies.

> People in countries that have had dictatorships recently probably remember that.

Yeah, but also, people in countries that have had dictatorships recently are waaay more likely to support dictatorships.

And the gameing of horrific incentives to snitch.

Chinese traffic laws come to mind, were reporting somebody overtaking on the right got you a small monetary reward. So folks were creeping on the left side, forcing others to overtake on the right, photos were made, the incident reported, rewards were rept.

Similar things can happen fast on the internet. Bait somebody into breaking the law and report it for a reward. Can even automate it. Piracy and porn comes to mind.

Lots of places don't have strong constitutional protections, for anything.

Not that long ago, the government in Canada started freezing citizen's bank accounts on suspicions they donated small amounts to a certain peaceful organization organizing protests the government didn't like. They just decided to suspend the constitution (because that's a thing over there?).

But what's interesting to see is people from Europe and Commonwealth nations voting with their feet and deciding that they too want more constitutional protections (which they are entitled to!). Here in the Bay it seems there's a constant interest from EU nationals to move to America (judging by the volume of applications we get). But I've never heard anyone interested to do the reverse.

Top destination for EU nationals in Academia was... right here in the US [0].

Interesting to speculate what impact the policies imposed by these non-elected EU bureaucrats will have on this demographic. More brain drain? Is it the intended goal?

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

I hate to break it to you, but there's plenty of Americans living all over Europe. Here in London there's loads.

Maybe people are voting with their feet for constitutional protections. Maybe it's because the USA is significantly richer and pays more, there's likely to be a whole range of reasons.

I work with several US nationals who have relocated to the EU.

The UK doesn't even have a constitution

Also, as a European living in the Bay, part of it is for the higher salaries. If I can take my Bay rate and bring it back to Europe I'm going to do that.

Yes it does. It doesn't have a Constitution, but that's not the same thing as not having a constitution.

Okay to put it another way the constitution is uncodified and weak - parliament can change constitutional laws at a whim due to no separation of powers and no-one could sit down and write it out anyway. So it's a pretty weird constitution if you can call it that, and many legal scholars argue it isn't one.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/764688

$51 is an expensive citation.

https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.jstor.org/stable/764688

UK operates on the notion of parliamentary supremacy, which makes any constitution, formal or informal, largely meaningless, since the Parliament can always override anything in it with simple majority vote:

"It is often said that it would be unconstitutional for the United Kingdom Parliament to do certain things, meaning that the moral, political and other reasons against doing them are so strong that most people would regard it as highly improper if Parliament did these things. But that does not mean that it is beyond the power of Parliament to do such things. If Parliament chose to do any of them, the courts would not hold the Act of Parliament invalid."

> The UK doesn't even have a constitution

It doesn't have a single written document titled “the Constitution”; but it has a constitution.

"peaceful" is absolutely not the word I'd use for 18-wheeler trucks blaring their horns around the clock in a city center.

Of course not, "peaceful" is reserved for burning buildings and cars.

I remember the good old days when people could be against riots regardless of their politics without getting canceled. But those days are long gone.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-BLM. I’m not a racist or anything.

I remember the good old days when you could be pro-riots and still agree that the behavior was illegal, because "burning the system down" was a position taken with honesty.

When US "peacekeepers" invade a foreign country, that's illegal too.

Nah, that’s just enhanced liberation techniques.

Careful, if any HN folk reside in Ottawa they’ll be all over you implying that honking horns is psychological torture and that everything is the fault of the RCMP and Provincial government for not shutting down protests first.

Hey, post your street address online here. Me and some buddies will camp outside your house honking horns all night long for a month or two, all in completely harmless good fun as we all agree it’s simply free speech.

Did they honk horns at night? I seem to recall explicit calls to not do that.

Sleep deprivation is recognized as torture everywhere.

> certain peaceful organization organizing protests the government didn't like.

When you go beyond defending behavior, to go out of your way to avoid saying what you are talking about, you discredit yourself.

> Here in the Bay it seems there's a constant interest from EU nationals to move to America (judging by the volume of applications we get). But I've never heard anyone interested to do the reverse.

Plenty of Americans do just that, a friend of mine got his USA certificate of un-citizenship last week

Canada has a clause in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms that literally allows the legislature of any province to pass laws in direct contradiction to most of the Charter - specifically, the sections on fundamental rights. They just have to explicitly point out which parts of the Charter they found inconvenient when invoking this clause. Quebec is notorious for abusing this power (mostly for its language laws), but other provinces have also found it useful on occasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

> Private communication is private and absolutely nobody else's business. It's a crime to open somebody's mail.

I thought we were talking in the context of the EU? It's not a crime for them if the government is doing it (or asking for it). They don't have rights like that.

I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. The EU law will need to be implemented by national laws and at least in Germany, there is Art 10 GG (the 10th paragraph of the constitution) which protects one’s rights to private communication (specifically also against the government; this is the whole point of constitutions!).

Granted, the paragraph also contains a provision for lawful exceptions, but in general, our highest court has ruled that such exceptions need to be reasonable in scope. I have some hope (but less than I’d like) that this will happen here, as well.

It's definitely illegal to open letters not addressed to you in Sweden. I'm not sure what makes you think we don't have rights like that. I think an issue here might be that a lot of jurisdictions have privacy laws specific to post, and the law system hasn't been able to keep up with the technological development.

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