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Comment by joemazerino | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

> privacy

ICE is literally buying all your data right now, paying surveillance contractors to rapidly install vastly more CCTV cameras than we've ever seen before, purchasing malware to target citizens, and filling secret watchlists with thousands of innocent people. And you're sitting here angry that EFF is opposing exactly what they've been against this whole time.

You stopped donating to EFF because you stopped caring about mass surveillance, because your ideological allies wanted it. Keep on folding like a lawnchair.

This may be a weird take for some but I don't care if cartel members or fraudsters get the right to privacy. That's not why I've been following and donating to the EFF since the mid 90s.

Making sure I get unfettered access to the OS I run and devices I buy is a good cause. Defending criminals (many violent) or directly interfering with law enforcement doing it's job is not.

ICE hasn't gone after cartel members or fraudsters in the past year. ICE does not conduct fraud investigations at all. It's a complete lie. The goal is to attack innocent people, while freeing actual drug traffickers and dangerous people. You've been duped by a modern Nazi movement.

There's no such thing as privacy for innocent people and no privacy for bad actors. Logically how is that supposed to work? Predictive policing?

Governments that feel justified in thuggery and murder will also engage in violations of privacy and freedom.

Federal agents taking photos of your face while you are minding your own business, to upload them and compare them against a database of “citizens” is quite a privacy concern in my books

And to demonstrate their devotion to the cause, the EFF will take a day off from advocating against these behaviours? This makes no sense to me; why should a watchdog participate in a strike like this?

They're trying to call attention to it. This thread is one example of how taking that action is helping to accomplish that task.

That may be the intention, but to me it looks like the EFF is just giving its employees a paid day off. Also, you're not really striking if your employer approves of it, and pays you for it.

There actions are to raise awareness. People reaching out to them on Friday or going to the website will see a shutdown notice. Meanwhile, employees are available to strike, document the day, or do whatever they wish.

yeah it may not be helpful, but at least it's starting a conversation. most people aren't even aware yet, and there's no way to raise awareness without a vacation. for example none of our web designers knows how to put a message on the website without shutting it down. and none of our managers knows how to shut down a website without taking a vacation.

This is right-wing authoritarian virtue signaling IMO.

it's crypto-fascist misogynoir!

Solidarity.

All I can come up with is virtue signaling. Seems like their backlog work is low and they are making a strategic choice to try and get a funding boost by attending the protests (their message says nothing about this. It doesn't say much of anything, actually).

It is strange when unrelated topics get lumped together, almost forcing people to have to take sides they don't want to take. It creates animosity beyond what's at stake.

There is a paramilitary force murdering people with impunity in the streets of America, commanded by a demented pedophile conman. What do you think is beyond those stakes?

In retrospect, it turns out that in the 90s we had a paramilitary force murdering people with impunity in the streets of America, commanded by a demented pedophile conman, and it went down quite smoothly.

It's fascinating how a rectal-caudal interface can be so effortlessly implemented.

I stopped donating in 2020 .

Then you don't get a say. By your own choice.

Are you also one of those people who doesn't vote, then complains about how lousy the politicians are?

What voting are you talking about? By not giving funding it's exactly that. A vote. A choice. I also stopped donating to the EFF when they showed they are shifting more political (non-tech space) than privacy focused etc. Does the EFF hold an annual vote I missed as a sponsor?

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