Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway892238 | Hacker News Reader

Years ago, when I interviewed at places that did USG-related work, the stuff I heard about that I didn't have to sign an NDA to hear, scared me enough that I knew Snowden-scale stuff was entirely within the capabilities of the US Govt. I didn't realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though.

I think the lesson I learned from the Snowden leaks is, if the government can do it, the government will do it - if not now, one day soon. That's... kind of a value-changing, life-changing realization. That no law will stop a government from doing what it wants. We can't stop it. But what we can do is install enough peep-holes (transparency) that when it happens, we're more likely to find out about it, so we can do something about it.

View on HN

Transparency is the key. Governments love secrecy because that allows them to do whatever nasty stuff they want while pretending to be righteous at the surface.

Just look at past secrets that have been disclosed recently and think: should those things really be secret? I say absolutely no.

The mentality of keeping things secret to hide your real intentions, or to not upset people too much (or they will panic!), or to keep other governments on their toes so you're ready to take them by surprise in the event of a conflict (how has that worked so far? The real threat actors will know anyway what naughty stuff you're doing to make sure they'll be the losers if the need arises - like when you just urgently need more cheap oil) is something we, all peoples of the world, need to overcome as soon as possible.

You may argue the situation in the world right now proves that governments need to be ready for conflict all the time, and secrecy gives them more power to take enemies by surprise... but you're mistaken, it's exactly the opposite! The whole China/Russia animosities are due to the West patently doing things, like keeping military bases in every weak country[1] that will let them around China and Russia, that clearly shows they have every intention to escalate to a war with them at the earliest sign of trouble, yet we lie without hesitation about it... like we're the peaceful people who keep trying to convince evil governments to change their belligerent ways. Perhaps if we stopped putting weapons pointing right at them, right at their neighbourhood, they would be better persuaded that war is not a possibility?

We do the same with climate change by the way... we want everyone else to change, or we won't do it alone, forgetting that we're the ones who pumped 90% of the CO2 into the atmosphere over the last 200 years of industrialization, while some countries that are now considered "climate villains" have been on it for only a couple of decades... hypocrisy at its worst.

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/where-are-us-and-russian-military-ba...

I think you completely misinterpret the situation with Russia and China.

Russia and China have the objectives of their own. For Russia it is to expand their empire that in their own mind rightfully belongs to them. They didn't attack Ukraine because of US actions but because they seriously believe that they have some kind of right over Ukrainians lands, or even more seriously, that Ukrainians don't exists.

If US would have been in Ukraine, or moved in rapidly when the situation became dangerous, there wouldn't be war at them moment. We see this clearly play out in far east, where China has ambition to overtake Taiwan (what they like Russia with Ukraine believe to belong rightfully to themselves). They clearly would have already attacked if it wasn't clear that US will prevent them doing so.

I'm certain that they would have done it, had US backed away from Ukraine. I'm also certain that what led Russia to believe that they could pull off Ukrainian invasion, was the US departure from Afghanistan, not that they did it but how they did it by letting Taliban completely humiliate them without any response. Russia believed that US is weak, not interested, and it would possibly have been like that, had Ukraine not managed to pull off very strong response.

US is there to fill the vacuum. If it was not US, it would be China (or it could Russia possibly). If not today, then eventually it would be one of them. I prefer US because it is more predictable and rule based and in the long run more favorable for the people.

No, you're misrepresenting it. Your rationale is that Russia is an evil empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory, and that's why it attacked Ukraine... a primary school level of simplification.

You ignore that Russia's number one fear after the collapse of the USSR was for another military invasion from the West, as had happened several times over the last few centuries... that Russia's border with Ukraine is its most "porous" border, easy to cross for whatever purpose, including a military invasion... that NATO's whole purpose since it was founded has always been to counter Russia, so the Russian's fears that NATO is an enemy are absolutely correct... that Ukraine's Euromaidan revolution caused Ukraine to go from a neutral country (or a buffer country as most people call it) to being actively hostile against Russia, which was the trigger for the Crimean invasion in 2014... that the US and UK, as guarantors of the Budapest Agreement with Russian and Ukraine, should have immediately intervened to defend Ukraine when that happened, but did absolutely nothing, giving Russia confirmation that it would be able to keep Ukraine out of NATO by force, which is really what it is trying to do currently... and finally, that every country has its motivations to do the things it does, a lot more complex and subtle than "being evil and wanting more land", and perhaps trying to understand what those motivations are, why their culture has evolved the way it has and how it is likely to react to your actions, would go a very long way to avoiding stupid conflicts like this. But yeah, it's so much easier to keep parroting the news and thinking of the whole story as a black-and-white, villain VS hero story.

You can both be right at the same time. It is true Russia was invaded several times over the last few centuries. It is also true that Russia have invaded and annexed many countries over the last few centuries. Evil empires also get invaded once in a while.

Sometimes, when everyone else is hostile to you, it can make sense to consider that maybe... just maybe... you might be doing something that triggers their anger. Like, what possible reason might the countries of Eastern Europe have to hate Russia? What possible reason might Ukraine specifically have to hate Russia? Does "Holodomor" ring a bell?

It is ironic that the countries of Warsaw Pact were more likely to be invaded by Warsaw Pact than by NATO.

> trying to understand what those motivations are, why their culture has evolved the way it has and how it is likely to react to your actions

But when we do exactly this, you call it "parroting the news".

> Sometimes, when everyone else is hostile to you

Anthromorphizing, just another symptom of the human mind’s inability to really comprehend things as complex as geopolitics. We’re not meant for this, people! Technology has complexified our simple and beautiful world.

We understand the "geopolitics" very well. We also understand that pretender, that Russia is, always has been and always will be.

We’re not meant to understand any of that. It doesn’t mean a few people devoting their lifes to it can be familiar with a fraction of the actual depth of such complex subjects.

https://youtu.be/o1vX03h7w9c

It's much simpler. People in Ukraine, and everwhere in Eastern Europe compare the future that Russia offers them, and the future the West offers them. I'm sure some are swayed by high minded theoretical ideas, but not many.

They choose the West. We all know why. Money you could say, but it's more something like "a better life". And yes, the Holodomor is part of this. That came from the east. Something else starting with "Holo" also came, but from the West.

But if Maidan proved anything, it's that the West offers Ukrane a better life, in the mind of Ukranians, a better Future. It's not really about history. And, of course, this government will not let that go.

You can say the same about everyone from Estonia to, really, even Turkey (I mean, at this point they're seriously insulted by the West ... but not nearly insulted enough to choose Russia's side).

And Russia is afraid. They're "locked in" with impossible to defend borders. They're not friends with the West ... and they're not quite insane enough to imagine China is their friend either. So the idea that Putin initially defended, that without a "buffer zone": countries that will fight or at least obstruct the west, Russia cannot avoid losing large amounts of territory very quickly if it comes to an open conflict, from either side. And they cannot really project power over the sea, without approval from either Europe or China either (or if the Arctic melts, with US agreement). They're fucked, or at least, you have to admit there's a logic there.

You could have made your point without accusing anyone of parroting „the media“. Russia has agreed to the borders of Ukraine in 1993 and from then on 2 more times. They have onesidedly broken the agreement and attacked a peaceful neighbour, no commitment to not joining NATO has been granted. These are facts you can easily look up, no need to come up with made up security concerns which have been no problem a decade earlier.

It's worth noting that the agreements that guarantee Ukraine's borders also guarantee Russia's access to their black sea military bases in the Chimera.

Nothing like this has been granted to Russia. It was a time limited lease, like HK from China. Russia also unilaterally broke these agreements in 2014.

"Russia's number one fear after the collapse of the USSR was for another military invasion from the West[...]"

Nice, Russia is just defending itself. Excuse me i need to go laugh out loud somewhere

Yes, Russia is not expanding, it's defending it's borders. I'm well familiar with the endless bullshit that is coming from Russia including this one.

Well, Russia is an evil empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory. If you haven't understood this by now then it's not meaningful to continue this discussion with you.

Even if we adopt the moral relativism and stop calling Russia "evil"... still, the fact remains that it is an empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory.

Well, they are evil, we just can't ignore that. If calling to murder millions of people is commonly tolerated public discourse then what else are they?

Your rationale is that Russia is an evil empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory, and that's why it attacked Ukraine... a primary school level of simplification.

Disagree. Replace "evil empire" with "Old-school imperialist power" and you have a 90 percent approximation to the essential truth about that country (or its current leadership, in any case). For all its banality.

Though "evil" of course is not a misplaced word to use either, in regard to its actions.

You are completely right and I highly recommend to watch "The Putin interviews" by Oliver Stone to those who disagree. America is trying to drive Europe and Russia away, just to defend a collapsing empire. The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline ($10B) began long before it was blown up and the Ukraine war has deep roots and consequences to Europe. The EU is just one of the Sauron's rings of power, it's not Europa.

You are full of you know what and so is Oliver Stone. What next, you quote Steven Seagal? I'm sorry, but Russia is a genocidal Nazi state. If you have not realized this by now then you haven't paid enough attention.

There are many, many explanations for i.e. why didn't China attack Taiwan (yet) and while the U.S. finger in the region helps in some ways, supporting Taiwan proclaiming independence for example may actually not be helping to prevent war there. It seems to me like China is much more reluctant than Russia is to go to such a war, probably because apart from facing domestic nationalistic pressure to do so, there's little actual reason and China does not really want to have its (in Chinese memory) recent expansion of the middle class stopped by facing isolation. Even the Chinese government responds to popular pressure by simply adjusting its policy more often than deploying tanks.

With regards to Russia, Putin, (being a Russian neocon), is using the example of how Russians are sometimes treated in former Soviet countries with regards to citizenship, speaking Russian etc., as well as Ukraine say banning Russian language books or the Russian flag being banned at sports events, which actually helps his cause domestically. If we were actually interested in weakening his grip, we'd strongly oppose such policies imo.

Chinese are extremely risk averse. They will eventually invade Taiwan but only when the odds are extremely in their favor. The Russian invasion of Ukraine showed them that they need to prepare better. I wouldn't be surprised if their economy collapses/stagnates before this day even comes.

> I wouldn't be surprised if their economy collapses/stagnates before this day even comes.

As predicted every year for the past 15 years.

"as well as Ukraine say banning Russian language books"

Russian language, and Russian books are not banned in Ukraine. Some anti Ukraine books were removed from public libraries.

Banned, no. But thanks to the 2019 law they are suppressed in the public sphere to a significant degree.

What does “suppressed in the public sphere” mean in this context? The books are either banned or not. People are free in Ukraine to read and posses Russian books. You can sit in a coffee shop in Kyiv with a Russian book, while speaking Russian to a friend and be perfectly fine.

What does “suppressed in the public sphere” mean in this context?

Information about the law is very easy to find. If the topic interests you it may be worth your while to have a look.

The books are either banned or not.

Or there's a greyscale. Like you know, most things in life.

Again, do yourself a favor and look into the law and what it does. I could explain, but you need to at least do some of the work yourself here rather than just speculate into the air about the state of things in some far away country.

I'm not being snarky. It just seems weird to me that, having been given perfectly sufficient context to answer the question all by yourself ("2019 law") -- the only impulse you seem to have is to sit back and speculate.

You have made a lot of incorrect assumptions about me, so I will stop participating in this discussion. For anyone else reading this please know that if you visit Ukraine you can bring with you a book in Russian or in any other language. Furthermore feel free to walk into a local bookstore and purchase a book in Russian.

And from where does this isolation come from? I think you are contradicting a little with yourself here.

It comes from it attacking Taiwan unprovoked, but there's no need for large U.S. presence for that to already not be attractive as it would be a huge blow for China in the economic realm and even include the Global South. On the other hand, Taiwan declaring independence on U.S. encouragement for example could be spun by China as protecting its stated red lines and acting out despite U.S. presence in the region.

You may not know this, but Russia enjoys some sympathy in the Global South because they see the situation as being at least partly provoked by the U.S. The same could happen over Taiwan, but it doesn't have to if cooler heads prevail.

Not from "what" but from "where" is the question. If there was no Western opposition to the attack, there wouldn't be no isolation.

The fact that Russia has received some sympathy shows how important is to express the situation correctly - Russia was not provoked by anything. They would have attacked either way because they consider these lands theirs and the people who live there at best as nothing. The thinking goes - those countries they attack will greet them as liberators or they are the worst enemies that must be eliminated (e.g. Nazis).

Now I can understand that some countries have strong anti-US sentiment, but reason for the whole war has a very little to do with US despite Russia's huge effort to make it appear to be the cause.

Why is there 'anti-US sentiment' in the Global South?

Why is there for example anti-US sentiment in Russia? Because it's beneficial for its leader(s) to cultivate and magnify it.

I am sure this is the case and that US history of coups in countries of the Global South has absolutely nothing to do with any potential sentiments there.

Thinking non-Westerners can't think for themselves isn't helping sentiments there either I'd imagine.

And these things had nothing to do with Russians sticking their noses everywhere and trying to implement their communist genocide over all the world? How many victims of communism is there? I mean, how many millions, sorry, tens of millions is there?

See also this columnist's take on secrets:

"Biden’s classified leak isn’t the problem. The government shouldn’t have secrets in the first place."

https://cinchnews.com/2023/01/26/bidens-classified-leak-isnt...

Sadly, this seems to be the case. Which means we the people, have lost control of our government.

I wonder if historically governments were ever controlled by the people. It seems democracies that can somewhat control the government are extreme outliers in human history.

Like it's said in Russia - government is controlled by the people, and we know who these people are.

Democracy via elected representatives is a lie. "Extreme outliers" may even be too much. Is there even a handful of examples?

It's not even a lie. It's just not democracy.

The whole point of democracy as it got invented was that the people can directly vote on any government issues. No direct voting on every day do day policy, no democracy. Simple as that.

"It would not be possible in practice" is the actual lie. We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody.

I'm not saying that everything would be perfect if people could decide about their fate in an actually democratic way. The majority is dumb on average. That's a sad truth. But I'm not sure it would be really worse than what living in our current lie is. Given some fundamental rules (like human rights), which couldn't be overruled easy by simple majority voting, such a system could work, imho.

The "only" question is how a society could arrive at a true democracy. Given for example into what the french revolution culminated I have no high hopes that creating a bigger democratic society is even possible.

Pure democracy as you describe it, even if technically feasible, would still result in tyrannies and terrible outcomes. The biggest problem isn't lack of influence on the laws, it's lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy. And that problem exists whether it's x number of people influencing the outcome, or 1,000,000x. Every negative influence that politicians are open to, the masses are also open to (though scale may vary e.g. wrt corruption). The overwhelming evidence across the globe is that people are easily fooled, easily misled, easily manipulated, prone to illogic, prone to responding emotively, prone to selfishness, and can be corruptible, destructive and suicidal. They routinely will sacrifice advances to their own cause in order to exclude, punish and exorcise others.

No, technically direct democracy would lead to no better outcome, though I'm sure at some point in our history we'll try it.

See Switzerland. Yes most of the time new ideas are not easily heart, but the whole population gets to hear it and vote on it.

Yes more often than not Revolutionary or forward leaning ideas don't get a yes on the first glance.

But at this point the whole population talked about the topic.

And here comes the magic. A few years later a new idea arises better than any idea before and suddenly people get it.

We talk and vote about topics and not politicians.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Swiss model of lots of referenda, very strong regional (canton) govt and a seven person executive, but also.. Swiss women didn't get the vote at federal level until 1991. Some changes are hard to pull off through referenda, others less so.

> Swiss women didn't get the vote at federal level until 1991

To be pedantic it was one Canton (Appenzell Innerrhoden) that the supreme court finally forced to let women have full voting rights, as in the rest if the Cantons, in 1990 [0]. So it was part of the state forcing this rather than through their direct democracy, which makes the issue even more interesting.

The other states were still slow at granting universal suffrage, Vaud being the first in 1959.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...

That is interesting - as you can tell I only had a shallow knowledge of it. I'll read more about how it works. Thanks!

That's the other side of the book I guess. There are plenty more examples like this.

Imagine getting only men to vote yes to lose 50% of their voting power. Imagine getting a million farmers and their family's to vote for a drastic new way in ecological farming. Same issue, different times.

And yet, the Swiss women pre-1991 were probably more free than women in some communist country who technically had the right to vote decades earlier... but they were only allowed to vote for the Communist Party, because there was no other option on the ballot.

There is at least 1 place where it works in some extent for 800 years - Switzerland. Public votes few times every year on basically anything enough people decide to vote on (100k signatures needed in 8m population and you have a public vote). You want to ban mosques, or join Nato or have 6 weeks of paid vacation? Have a say. Also weak central government, and strong cantonal ones with their own rules and laws. THAT is true freedom in the hands of people, to decide on your lives, to have freedom to improve it or mess it up.

Every effin' politician knows it, yet they conveniently ignore it, or even outright attack it when they are spewing words like freedom and democracy. It doesnt matter if EU or US or any other place.

As another poster pointed out: Swiss women couldn't vote in national elections until 1991. Democracy isn't a perfect system, it is just that having a system with some democracy in it is the best we've come up with so far.

Any minority will never truly have a say. It doesn't matter if you can vote if you don't have enough numbers to make a difference. Your best bet would be that folks tire of voting on these - but that's only if you can get enough signatures. Hope you can work and get signatures at the same time and that you aren't in too poor health to do this.

It isn't 'freedom', it is just another way to be tyrannical and claim there is "freedom". It isn't like folks born in a country/region can just move somewhere else. Heck, folks fleeing actual war have some issues with this.

This so much. It works for us and there is no reason it wouldn't work for others.

Politicians here have a completely different role in society. They ain't hero's, they ain't badman's the are just smart people doing their democratic jobs.

And society talks about concrete topics and not politicians.

It is not working there also. See the Covid vaccine theater.

You've just made an anti-argument to your own claim.

As people are people, real democracy would not be worse than the status quo as we're already ruled by people with lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy.

But you can't for example corrupt the majority of all people. So real democracy would be at least in this point better.

By no means worse, but better in some regards is a clear win imho!

> lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy.

I'd love to agree with you but people in general are easily manipulated on mass.

Currently the majority are too I'll informed to make appropriate decisions about anything, making them even easily to manipulate. I'll include myself in this.

For real democracy to work it's more than giving all people the right to vote on all things. They need to all be informed about all the issues in an impartial way in a way that those people can fully understand. That I'd say is impossible.

The point of democracy is not that everybody is perfectly informed to come to the logically best outcome. The point is that it gives a people agency over their own future. If they choose to be ill-informed and pick bad candidates, they own the consequences. Democracy does not lead to the best outcome, but to the most fair one.

The only real value I can see with democracy is in being able to pull the lever and get a new set of dice to role if things go bad.

Beyond that it seems to be mostly mythology and nonsense. You either have smart good rulers or you don't. At least if we don't they only have so much time to do damage and we try again.

The idea democracy gives people agency over their future I would put in the category of mythology.

> they own the consequences

No. We own the consequences.

> the most fair one.

The most fair, yes, probably. The fairest? No. Though I’ll admit I’m stumped (though in good company I suspect) as to how to possibly achieve the fairest outcome. I suspect it’s a platonic ideal, barring a Star Trek reality coming to life.

Not having the solution ready doesn't mean it wouldn't exist at all.

Humans are very diverse in their abilities and society needs to account for that. Division of labour is key here.

Not everybody needs to decide on or be informed about everything. What is necessary is transparency, accountability and the resulting trust in those responsible.

Our societies are so messed up in that regard, we don't even consider that being possible anymore. But it is.

That's certainly what's wrong with democracy.

People?

No. None of this stuff works without people. There's a reason we have representative democracies instead of true democracies. Why we elect people to make those decisions.

I'm not saying it's working but I don't think true democracy would work any better either because the underlying issue with democracy is you're relying on ill informed people, people who don't understand either the issue upon which they vote or the consequences of a vote either way, to make decisions.

People easily manipulated by social media filter bubbles and ridiculous slogans. Or in our current democracies just money.

I think democracy is probably the best we've had to date but it's showing its flaws.

> I'd love to agree with you but people in general are easily manipulated on mass.

It's even easier with single persons or small groups… Just given them a little bit money or alternatively aim with a gun at them or someone they love. This method wouldn't scale to a whole society.

> Currently the majority are too I'll informed to make appropriate decisions about anything […]

> They need to all be informed about all the issues in an impartial way in a way that those people can fully understand.

And you really think the "decision makers" are anyhow better informed, smarter, more altruistic and don't just think about their own well being most of the time? That's a very naïve stand, to be honest.

> And you really think the "decision makers" are anyhow better informed, smarter, more altruistic and don't just think about their own well being most of the time? That's a very naïve stand, to be honest.

At no point did I say anything of the sort, and I'm not sure how you've extrapolated that from what I've said.

I keep saying that what we are currently living through is a surprisingly accurate reflection of how democracy began. In the city state of Athens, all free men had the vote. The definition of "free man" just happened to exclude approximately 97% of the population.

Our governments have since figured out that you can merrily hand out the privilege, as long you remain in control of what is allowed to be put on the vote in the first place. I'm not alone with my view, btw. Lessig has made the same point in his "Country of Lesters" talk.[0,1]

0: https://www.politicallawbriefing.com/2013/04/a-lester-whats-... (overview, writeup)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g (recorded talk)

"We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody."

Electronic voting machines and vote counting machines are hackable. Technology is the disease here, not the cure.

I wouldn't trust anything other than hand-counted paper ballots.

> Electronic voting machines and vote counting machines are hackable.

Sure. And elections in general aren't malleable? In a lot of cases that's even simpler than hacking a distributed cryptographic system.

The problem with electronic voting is not the security. It's "just" the secrecy. That's the only hard problem.

> I wouldn't trust anything other than hand-counted paper ballots.

So you should stop trusting in any decision made in most parliaments on this planet. Almost all of them are made by primitive and completely nontransparent "press the button" electronic voting, which can be trivial hacked. But "voting" in parliaments is anyway just show for the dump masses. All the decisions are pre-made behind closed doors, of course.

Provided of course you trust the person counting those ballots.

"I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how."

Direct democracy scares me more than a corrupt government. I can imagine a group of americans voting for $2,000 a month basic income, not realizing that the total is greater than our GDP. I can see racism creap in, denying entry to the US to foreign natioals.

Watching the UK vote on "Brexit", without an understanding of what that actually 'means' or if it's possible, shows the failure of democracy.

Whose corruption is better? Whose corruption is worse? The collusion of bureaucrats, politicians, media, corporate elite is WORSE than any corruption whatsoever resulting from direct democracy: in the case of brexit, people who voted for it face the consequences themselves. In the case of collusive elite, normal public (except bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, corporate elite) bear the brunt. Definitely, people don't mind taking their own medicine, than the ones prescribed by the collusive elite.

In 2020, the Presidential election voter turnout was the highest it's been in three decades, at just over 60%. But that's still 40% of eligible voters that didn't "lose" their voice in government, like losing their car keys. 80 million people decided to give up their voice.

In other countries, people really do lose their voice in government. Plenty of countries are under the jack-boot of totalitarian regimes that will torture and execute whoever steps out of line. We live in a country that is so far away from that, that all we have to do to change our government is mail in a form. And we still can't be bothered to do that. So any lack of government control is completely our own fault.

The government's still gonna do whatever it wants to do. But we also have the power to bring it to heel. The thing is, you have to actually do something with that power.

Same with corporations, too:

https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...

https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169

I think your takeaway is wrong. It isn't the government doing naughty secret things but the government doing so with support from a plurality of the people. The patriot act is a non-partisan issue that gets renewed every administration. Snowden and Assange should be locked up accroding to a majority of americans.

Your takeaway should be that a democracy would always reflect the will of the people with or without any law because that is what the rulers must do to continue to get elected.

You worry about privacy and laws, they worry about answering for even a relatively small terrorist attack.

The people gave away their freedoms out of fear.

> The people gave away their freedoms out of fear.

Where do you think that fear comes from? It can be fabricated using real or fake events anytime the government wants to pursue a political or financial goal. Modern media is a government mouthpiece, even in apparent liberal democracies, and is used to sway public opinion in any direction.

This mechanism is also exploited by political enemies, to sow dissent and social unrest, crippling democratic systems.

The original fear of terrorism was very real, but they sacrificed theirs and their childrens freedoms for temporary security. The cowards let the terrorists win.

We live in the most information accessible time in history and in the US most people can read and write and are capable of researching topics on the internet. If someone is falling for fake information, it is not the media's fault, they can fact check any media themselves. It is because their ears are hearing the lies they crave. Even when you debate with people these days on many political topics they basically plug their ears and scream "fake news". They are more interested in winning culture wars than the truth. The immigrant family down the streer driving down home prices or having to attend diversity meetings at work is a greater concern than the FBI monitoring all their comms.

There have always been media and politicians that want to use fear to control the people. Why is now and why is the US special?

> There have always been media and politicians that want to use fear to control the people. Why is now and why is the US special?

The US certainly isn't special. We see the effects of disinformation in all countries. Increase in social tensions and belief in conspiracy theories, elections swung by social media campaigns, the radical right gaining power, Brexit, etc. These are all orchestrated in part by companies like Cambridge Analytica, foreign and local propaganda, troll farms, etc.

None of this is really new. What's made it special _now_ is the internet. It has given both local and foreign agents the reach and power to influence public opinion on an unprecedented scale.

> If someone is falling for fake information, it is not the media's fault, they can fact check any media themselves.

Really? Fact check it where, on the internet? If all sources of information are polluted to the point where it's either impossible or very difficult to discern fact from fiction, can we really blame people for believing what they read, hear and see?

But you're right that the average person won't even make an effort to doubt the information they're provided from whatever source they already align with. So, yes, education and critical thinking are crucial, but this is exactly what disinformation agents know how to exploit. Psyops and information warfare work, and they work better today than ever before.

> The people gave away their freedoms out of fear.

The modern state is far more freedom-restricting than any other type of state which came before, and this is due to technology. Historically there were many slaves who were freer than the “free” man of today. You’re also right that fear is the predominant feeling/force that maintains order in a modern state. See the book Technological Slavery: https://archive.org/download/tk-Technological-Slavery/tk-Tec...

> a democracy would always reflect the will of the people with or without any law because that is what the rulers must do to continue to get elected

Except that's never been how democracies work. Going back to the first democratic greek city-states, to now, they all tend to operate on a number of different motivators, the last of which is law-makers changing what they do to fit the public interest.

Landed gentry and the aristocracy get priority, followed by merchants, and then the rest of the government gets its say, which often competes/clashes with other parts of the government. For the most part, anyone who gets elected got there through political savvy, money, and being exceptionally good at convincing people to trust them and give them power. So they're quite good at doing what they want despite what the people might want.

I agree that the people are often quick to give away their rights to secure their safety (or desires). But with transparency in government, people will notice the things they don't like (despite what they've given away or sold, including their principles) and can become outraged enough to reverse their previous acquiescence. You actually see this outside of democracies in most nations where people see enough bullshit that they eventually revolt.

I'm reading your comment as saying that if I don't think Snowden/Assange should be pardoned and set free, I'm implicitly supporting mass surveillance.

I wanted to provide a counterbalance to that view. Snowden is a complicated case - in my view it isn't as simple as 100% hero or 100% villain - but Assange is in my view relatively clear.

Wikileaks and Manning appear to have leaked anything they can. I don't support such a scattergun approach. Also, while some of their leaks pertain to surveillance (the vault 7 ones) most of them do not.

Then there's Assange. He was facing extradition to Sweden under a European Arrest Warrant for rape alleged to have taken place there, but instead skipped bail on the pretext it was all some US conspiracy. Until extradition was approved he was free on bail. Likely had he been extradited to Sweden he would also have been free on bail, and the burden of proof would have remained on prosecutors. I'm sure he would have had a fair trial.

Instead he made it to the Ecuadorian embassy and stayed until he made himself unwelcome. At which point he was arrested by the UK for skipping bail and has since been subject to the very extradition procedure that was his pretext.

I'm British, although I no longer live there. If you are the US government and you want to extradite someone legally I can't imagine a friendlier jurisdiction than the UK.

I'm also mildly irritated that the UN torture experts keep sounding off that this is torture. Not at all. Assange chose to enter the Ecuadorian embassy and in doing so chose to break the law by not attending court. He chose to remain there for a considerable time, making labelling him a flight risk so obvious as to be automatic. When he came out of the embassy, he was convicted and jailed of that crime. He has also remained there because he's currently subject to extradition proceedings and no judge is going to grant him bail. I'm certain living in a confined space in the embassy wasn't pleasant, but that was a choice. I'm certain prison isn't pleasant either (no matter what UK tabloids say) but that is a consequence. This is a far cry from what, say, the Syrian regime does.

I support encryption and anything that frustrates mass surveillance because I believe fundamentally that private citizens have a right to a private life and that invasion of that privacy should be specific and justified, including when it comes to electronic communications. I accept that law enforcement will sometimes be faced with a situation in which they cannot decrypt communications between two almost certain criminals and this may make their job harder, and I'm happy with that trade-off. In the end, all a pervasive backdoor does is target law abiding citizens, as criminals by definition won't feel bound to put their keys in escrow or whatever. They're already developing their own handsets and the police have shown themselves capable of targeting them (encrochat).

At the same time, if Assange is extradited to the US tomorrow then good riddance. I don't see that I have to support him in any way in order to object to mass surveillance, pervasive monitoring and mandated backdoors.

I kind of had this realization when reading about things the government did in the past, like air-drop LSD onto soldiers, agent-orange, psychic experiments, and other nonsense.

My first instinct was 'wow, those wacky 60's', but then it slowly dawned on me 'what's changed?'. Nothing, nothing has changed.

I wonder what they are doing today.

> we're more likely to find out about it, so we can do something about it.

How does that help? For me the lesson of the Snowden affair has been that it does not matter whether we know what the government is up to, because they will do what they want to us regardless; there is nothing we can do about it.

> I didn't realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though.

They didn't. You interpreted the Snowden revelations incorrectly. The government actually cares a LOT about civil liberties.

This is what proponents of small government fear, and by extension why creating more organizations where a small group of people deciding for a large group is bad, because they can be corrupted. See for example any union that has existed for more than 10 years and how they are called "corporate unions", in an intentionally blind case of "no true Scotsman".

Also one of the reasons communism doesn't work - the mechanisms needed for it to be implemented centralize even more power to a central committee than with other systems of government.

I agree, the world-view really changes once you realize this.

Transparency and a strong and independent investigative press is our best defense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com