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Comment by lawl | Hacker News Reader

I will, however, as I see it, the problem is no one seems to really care here.

Ask some random stranger here and pretty sure they have never even heard of BÜPF. So I try to educate as many people as possible but all I hear is that I should go wear my alu-hat and that we have good privacy protection laws and they don't have anything to hide anyways.

And by the way, to be even able to vote against this crap, you need something like 50'000 signatures (on paper!) within 100 days. Which might not be too easy considering that the petition website only has 8k-ish as of now and it's been on for quite a while. As I said, no one seems to care.

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The indifference is a worldwide phenomenon.

And it's problematic because indifference is what gave Hitler the chance to become more powerful, indifference helped him identify minorities and it helped him build 45 concentration camps, ... the list goes on and on. You all know what happened next.

Would Hitler have been a problem if it wasn't for our indifference ? Would the technology that build the internet have been used against us if it wasn't for our indifference ?

Indifference is probably more dangerous than those who have "evil" intentions. And I don't have a solution. I don't know what we can do about it, other than educating people on it but it's clearly not working and it needs to happen now because the problem is getting bigger by the day, imo.

It's our indifference that gets us into a lot of trouble. Time and time again.

It's much more difficult to get people to react to a hypothetical problem than something immediately tangible. (See also: environmental issues). But once the problem has materialized, it's an order of magnitude more difficult to solve.

I wish I knew of a solution to this. Patient, steady education is about all we've got.

> It's our indifference that gets us into a lot of trouble. Time and time again.

Actually, I think the inverse is true. If apathy wasn't the defining human characteristic, we'd have had WW3 through WW9 by now, and people would be killing each other in the streets with hammers.

"Fuck it" is a survival trait.

Well, then the ones doying the spying are lacking a good dose of apathy? Your logic just doesn't add up.

Sure, but who do you think signs up to be military intelligence in the first place?

Remember, NSA is less than 50k out of 300M+.

The same thing is happening in Norway.

A law was just passed that allows private law firms to monitor IP addresses participating in file sharing networks (BitTorrent etc.). After gathering IP addresses a law firm can retrieve the name and address of any "suspects" from their respective ISPs, and then proceed with filing lawsuits.

The law firms usually act on behalf of the larger organizations such as MPAA, RIAA, BREIN and others.

Most people don't care though. Even the majority of younger people, who often pirate popular TV shows and movies, seem indifferent.

Good! Keep on educating people! More knowledge means more responsibility. Don't forget that we have the social network effect on our side, today. Things may suddenly go very fast. If people are unaware of the dangers, send them links to the recent news. There's enough to see that total surveillance and therefor manipulation of the People and corruption within government is about to become the new "normal".

EDIT: And if there's 1 law about democracy, it's this: "Every single vote counts!" There is no "my vote wouldn't change anything". If you ever only think that, then you can kiss democracy goodbye for real.

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