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Comment by ktallett | Hacker News Reader

Lawmakers in general have less than one percent knowledge on what they make laws on. I look forward to them all logging in remotely after the ban.

The key change is needed with things such as meshtastic and lora. Taking things out of the hands of regulators is key

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As a rule, criticism of the ruling elite will never be tolerated in the long term. The Internet was free and unrestricted until the masses shifted their attention to it, at which point, the ruling elite cracked down on it in order to maintain their hegemony by maintaining the ignorance of the masses, which they see as cattle to be herded and milked and sacrificed ritualistically from time to time for their internal social bonding purposes.

They actually act perfectly rationally. Media post articles about how easy it is to bypass the law using VPN, mock the government, and what the law author should feel reading this? "Ok let them break the law"? Of course, the reasonable response is to close the loopholes.

The issue is tech isn't as simple as that, vpn's are key in many jobs, are they banned? It is the same issue when they ask for backdoors in every messaging app. It is rational if you don't think any deeper than surface level but once you dig an inch deep, it is clear why it isn't rational.

Some company would surely jump in and get an exception written for certain corporate VPNs. But if not, it can be that those who contribute to the right people get exceptions and those who don't, don't. Rational or logical consistency just....don't have to apply

The companies using VPN for work can file an application for an white list exception, if they provide an application with a list of employees having access. I think this is how it works in my country. You are making an elephant from a fly (proverb meaning exaggerating minor issues).

For better security, a signed obligation to observe law might be collected from every employee, and an access log kept, with records signed by company's digital signature.

And it’s amazing you think this is okay.

> they ask for backdoors in every messaging app

Being a devil's advocate, you already entrust the government to register your property, issue your money, prosecute you for wrongdoing (including death penalty) and send you to the war. Your data is already collected and sold by thousands of data brokers. What are you losing by having a backdoor that would be used only in strict accordance with the law (laws being created by your elected representatives) and only for legal purposes? You must comply with the law anyway, no matter if the government can or cannot see what you are doing.

If you truly believed in democracy and rule of law in your country, you would have no doubts and volunteered to install the backdoor yourself.

The issue being that governments in the west have repeatedly demonstrated they will implement blanket surveillance and not follow due process in using it.

Further those who do wish to break the law could still utilize cryptography to avoid backdoors so this would only really apply said surveillance to those not breaking the law.

Perhaps this is also different for digital activities due to the history of the digital space and the scale/ease at which if allowed it can be surveilled.

I think they know exactly what they are doing. This isn’t the nineties anymore. Which makes it even worse.

But our gerontocracy is still living in the nineties (if we’re lucky).

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