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I think we (everyone who participants here on Hacker News) have to learn how to be smart freedom fighters who can use nonviolent methods to overthrow dictatorships if we are to have any hope of reversing these trends

I'd settle for the HN crowd stopping scooping up gobs of data under a "it's different when I do it" copout. But even that much won't happen. (por exemplo the inevitable rationalizations in reply to this comment)

I don't think it's necessarily the scooping up of data that's scary. If you use a service, the service has a right to collect certain data about you. It only becomes an issue when the company behind that service has its hand in many pies and correlates all of the related data, or worse, if they share or sell that data to other entities.

If you collect data, your government can quietly collect it from you.

If you collect data (and create a walled garden around it through various superficial methods increasingly easier to bypass at scale, so that "only" you can access/leverage it to the fullest without having to go through such artificially erected barriers), your government can quietly collect it from you (and access/leverage it to the same extent).

If you collect data, and it was made accessible to everyone to access and leverage to the fullest if they choose, … ?:

"Information Asymmetry and Power in a Surveillance Society" http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53109/1/MPRA_paper_53109.pdf

"This paper has engaged in a wide ranging discussion around the issues of information asymmetry in contemporary life. We have examined the relationship between such asymmetries and how power is ineluctably interrelated to such imbalances. Within this, we demonstrated how key technologies and techniques have been, and continue to be, employed to deepen and widen the information gap.

Unsurprisingly, we note that there are marked differences between those who inhabit the opposite banks – we are witnessing an entrenchment of power and information within a small, exclusive group on one side while the general population bears the weight of evermore intrusive surveillance.

One potential,and possibly democratic, move would be to ensure that knowledge is spread more equally and transparently.[…]"

If you collect data, and it was made accessible to everyone to access and leverage to the fullest if they choose, … ?:

Then the government can still use the data.

The point is not that any database has on you it's what you get when you combine the public and private history of everyone. So, suddenly a joke taken out of context or an angry x and your on the next 'no fly list'. The more information someone has the easier it is to find something they dislike even if it's simply being to normal.

It's the lost of anonymity that's important not your drunken photo's.

public and private history of everyone

That is the case now, however under the scenario that I'm putting forth (and what general societal trends are moving towards), what we call "private" today is increasingly becoming "public".

So now that joke everyone can make can still be taken out of context by everyone, but how one ends up on a no fly list or any list anyone is free to see/compile/disregard will no longer be the black box event it is now, especially if the information about people who decide (human biases involved in such decision making will be increasingly open to see for all) how one get's placed on such list becomes increasingly public or theoretically everyone would be on a no fly list because of some aspect social behavioral norms people will violate at least once in their life or because anyone is capable of making such jokes, it will become meaningless to compile such lists in the first place especially if how one becomes on such lists and those who enforce such lists are available to such potential scrutiny by everyone else.

It's the lost of anonymity

I suggest that people/organizations/governments are coming to terms that it's the lost illusion of anonymity/control over what information propagates, that was never an inherit property of the universe, but merely local maxima we have constructed from prior limitations/experience that we were (and increasingly less) constrained to for our relative existence, that now has become (and become increasingly more) something we're able to see beyond and challenge now on multiple levels now that our capabilities have shown us that our constructed ideas of reality and how things are not nearly as absolute as we have conditioned ourselves to be.

That's not to say that anonymity can not exist to any degree, even now, I think people will gain anonymity in other forms like from apathy to sifting through all the information that is increasingly more available about everyone and everything else.

Your treating privacy as a binary thing.

Classified information for example has never been completly private, but the vast majority if it is reasonably well protected.

How so? When I say "private" information is increasingly becoming "public", you assume I'm treating privacy as a binary thing?

Whether one declares information as classified or public isn't an inherit property of the information itself, and as everyone has increasingly similar access (relative asymmetry approaches 0 on a scale from 0 to 100) to information (which seems to be the direction of our collective behaviors, especially if we compare to prior times in human history), trying to classify any information in either state or on a spectrum, seems increasingly like an exercise in futility/irrelevance (to me) in the face of what we are seeing take place and the capabilities on the horizon.

The "private" vs. "public" divide is less binary than your suggesting.

Individuals, corporations, low level government workers, and the government as a collective all have differing access to different types of information. Also, it's not just pieces of information but also the ability to deal with that that's restricted. For example you might look at a few tweets, but twitter rate limits you without paying them a lot of money.

Edit: (removed redundant crap).

Sure, Russia got copy's of the design for both the first Atomic and Hydrogen bombs. So, every country with nuclear weapons can trace their designs back to those same researchers. Yet, even after 10's of thousands of people have seen them (or a derivative design) and 70 years good luck finding detailed documentation on Google.

Sure, but you would think the way you hear the media going on and on about people getting access into "types" of information they shouldn't have access to (banks pretty much consider electronic hacks apart of the cost of doing business these days), using the same tools as the people who construct such systems, its not hard to think otherwise compared to say hundreds of years ago. I mean, anyone could easily look up as list of free proxies and crawl twitter to get around the ip rate limits (or any site for that matter, people do this all the time), increasingly more than ever, people have the ability to access such information (and vasts amounts of it) more than before. Whether they feel compelled to is a different story. Same goes for the fission and fusion weapons: the physics behind it is pretty much available in every university in the world (and their online lecture notes), I just think not many people just want to build such things. And all this is pretty much within a century. Took much longer if one looks back throughout human history for knowledge of information to even propagate throughout different cultures.

Beyond that, I don't really know what to say beyond that things change. A lot of the social constructs that we are born into may be totally irrelevant in our lifetime regardless of our opinions about them, some people can adapt to such, and some people will go to their grave with cognitive dissonance of such change clinging to their memories of a world that was but will never be again.

I could simply snap at you with "so said the dictator"... but I don't feel like burning away karma with a cheap shot.

Instead, I will point out that most dictators in the world rationalize their actions as necessary to ensure a greater good that will ultimately outshine whatever it is they know they should not be doing. I don't have the time or interest to provide a peer reviewed article about how this pattern repeats over the last 5,000 years of World history, but I will provide an example form my home country. You may google for other examples if you feel it's due.

Porfirio Diaz came to power in Mexico in 1876, under the platform of "no reelection" due to the recurrent problem of 19th century Mexican politicians running for office multiple terms (last example was Benito Juarez, who died during his 4th term, but there are others). After this he:

1. Appointed close friend, Manuel Gonzalez, as successor in 1880 election. 2. Amended the constitution to allow a non consecutive 2nd term reelection. 3. Came back to rule in 1884. 4. Extended the presidential term from 4 years to 6 years (which remains the norm in the country to this date). 5. Removed all restrictions to reelection and remained in office through electoral fraud and assassination of political rivals for the next 27 years. 6. In 1908, he claimed that Mexico was "ready for democracy" and organized an election that allowed other candidates for the first time in two decades. 7. However in 1910, he had the other candidate, Francisco I. Madero, put in jail. Then the election was carried on, and he claimed to have won by "overwhelming advantage". 8. This fact triggered the civil war know as the Mexican Revolution, which forced him to flee to France in 1911, leaving behind a country drawn in open warfare for 6 more years (and in the ballpark of 25 years of instability and low intensity conflict).

> If you use a service, the service has a right to collect certain data about you.

I think this is the crux of the problem. The reality is that no, a service does not have a right to collect data about you. The service provider may ask that you provide certain data to use the service, but that collection is not a right.

> It only becomes an issue when the company behind that service has its hand in many pies and correlates all of the related data, or worse, if they share or sell that data to other entities.

The notion that one has a right to collect data from users of a service is the same notion that says the service provider has ownership of that data. But this is faulty, the data is not owned by the service provider, it was merely collected and stored. This distinction is important: if you feel you own the data, you feel that you should be able to sell it. If you feel you are a custodian of data, then you are defaulting to protecting that data from others that a user never agreed to give it to in the first place.

"The notion that one has a right to collect data from users of a service is the same notion that says the service provider has ownership of that data."

Last year my family went to have a family portrait taken by a professional (service provider or portraits) photographer. The photos (data) that were produced from the photo shoot belonged to the photographer. That photographer was more than happen to sell me family portrait, but the law is fairly clear that he in fact owns the data (all photos that were taken), i.e. he has copyright over the data.

The law isn't actually clear at all. Commissioned works (such as a private portrait session) can very often be considered "works for hire," depending on the exact wording of the contract.

>That doesn't take violence.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Blanket declarations of nonviolence are one of the surest ways to neuter a revolutionary movement before it has even begun. For every successful nonviolent movement, there are a dozen failures.

For an alternative to your readings, I suggest this excellent book:

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-...

I appreciated you sharing a link with a differing perspective (and correspondingly upvoted your comment). I'm wondering if the verdict of history and actual experience will be as kind to the position advocated in that writing as I think it will ultimately be to the writings on the Albert Einstein Institution website, which are based on some real-world cases that are quite amazing.

It's not like violent revolutionary movements have an outstanding success rate by comparison.

I am amused to see you arguing this just minutes after asserting on another thread that the best response to bullying is to not allow bullies to make you feel bad about yourself, though.

I never actually said that was the best response to bullying, just one possible response. It's what worked for me, and I think it can work for others as well. Sometimes breaking a bully's nose will make them leave you alone, sometimes it will just escalate the problem.

I think it's unwise to universally swear off any tactic when dealing with an oppressive situation, from simple bullying to an authoritarian government. You have to determine on a situational basis which tactics are going to be most effective, and then follow through with them.

Voters are willingly accepting authoritarian rulers though. They want the heroic leader who fans the flames of sectarianism, uses nationalistic football club support songs in campaigns and wears a shiny uniform. When the economy dives the tried and true solution is the standard scapegoating of whatever visible minority to offset the blame of decades of mismanagement and corruption. Look at all the extreme authoritarian movements taking off in Europe right now. Those are going to appear in a country near you very soon. It's like they don't even need to hide it anymore, these new regimes can openly campaign on a promise to restrict rights and bring back the glory days of yore and get a standing ovation. The reaction to mass surveillance here has been "only illegal immigrants need to worry or criminals".

If a government invites immigrants and then puts them in exclusive neighborhoods with no prospects of integration then don't be surprised when the integrated kick those politicians to the curb. The left is to blame for the rise of the right. Life isn't some fucking fairytale.

I think a non-violent approach is unrealistic. History tells us that tables only turn when soldiers refuse to shoot citizens on order of the government and turn the guns back against them.

The best interim approach is to destroy all means of facilitating the dictatorship. In this case that means destroying the tools by which we work, destroying the banks, the commerce regimes and the communication and logistic platforms muck like the Russians did when they pulled out of the Eastern Bloc. No one has to be hurt to do that but people will go hungry, jobless and penniless. This will however open their eyes to the situation.

I'm not advocating this as a solution nor would act upon it but I'm without a better option in my mind.

Edit: to the down voters. This is not reddit. Don't down vote because you disagree, down vote because it's not relevant. This is relevant discussion.

> people will go hungry, jobless and penniless.

This is why you are being downvoted. It seems unlikely you have kids, but you must have parents and grandparents. Are you willing to see them suffer for your anarchist pipe dreams? If you are then how are you any better than the privacy violators?

I have three children so your assertion is incorrect.

If it means that the world is a better place afterwards for them, some hardship for us all is not a bad thing. That includes me and my family. It's not an anarchist pipe dream. It happens when the government sends your country to war as well don't forget.

I talk to a lot of people from the rather war-torn bits of Eastern Europe and they'd do it again to be free from opression.

You write,

I talk to a lot of people from the rather war-torn bits of Eastern Europe

but it seems to me that if you had a comprehensive sample of people from eastern Europe of my generation you would come to the conclusion that what I said is the way to go. The countries in eastern Europe that have the brightest prospects now are those whose transition from dictatorship was via a nonviolent people power protest movement, while those that really just traded dictators in palace coups are still very lousy places to live. But don't take my word for it--look up some examples and some principles of how to win freedom with people power, nonviolently.

http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/

>Are you willing to see them suffer for your anarchist pipe dreams? If you are then how are you any better than the privacy violators?

What complete and utter nonsense. Someone willing to pay a price now for a better future tomorrow is the same as corrupted governments prying into the private lives of their citizens. What a brilliant comparison you've drawn.

It's this fear of change and desire to protect the status quo that has our societies in the rotting state that they're in, by the way, so while you may take comfort in knowing your parents and grandparents are ok now, and that your pockets are moderately protected, that it's your choices in protecting this status quo that is making the future look very bleak for our children.

The future does not look bleak. For fuck sake progress is accelerating. That may not jive with your doomsday bullshit but that hardly matters because foolish ideas like yours are going fucking nowhere with honest decent people who will tell you to take a flying fuck. If you want to induce suffering on some questionable moral stance you will be crushed under a stampede of reason.

> Don't down vote because you disagree, down vote because it's not relevant. This is relevant discussion.

Upvoted to compensate even though I don't agree with your opinion as being the best interim approach. As you said, downvotes are for irrelevance, not for disagreement.

Surely, if you push people to the point of starvation they'll grab arms and force change. But I'm not so sure that in the end this will bring a liberal democracy, rather than another dictator taking over and fixing things short-term.

downvotes are for irrelevance, not for disagreement

The site founder has said otherwise on more than one occasion. About 2341 days ago he wrote,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

"It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that."

Downvotes are, of course, especially appropriate when a comment is BOTH uninformative in the context of the discussion and uncivil besides. I'm happy to upvote comments I disagree with (as a factual matter) if those comments prompt me to think about an issue I haven't thought about before, or if the comment contributes to the discussion being more nuanced in other ways. But there appears STILL to be no general rule in the Hacker News Guidelines[1] prohibiting downvoting to express disagreement. Submissions of course cannot be downvoted by anyone (they can be flagged) and no submitter or commenter can downvote child comments to what they have just posted. It's the overall sense of onlookers that determines net karma of a comment.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Whatever they're for, I think downvoting for a comment should only become available after replying to the offending comment.

Downvoted you before replying.

I might even agree with you, but in the context of the thread, I'm afraid if I don't exercise my downvote, I might lose it.

It has been shown (for example in Altemeyer's research on authoritarianism) that violence increases authoritarian tendencies among population, while violent attacks against nonviolence decrease those tendencies.

This is where American Founding Fathers got it wrong, with the 2nd amendment. The reason why soldiers refuse to shoot against citizens is because they are unarmed and have moral upper hand. Once that happens, the powerful people have to give up, because they themselves can only rely on other people to stay in power.

>This is where American Founding Fathers got it wrong

They got it right in 1776-1783 when they put their lives on the line, and fought for their independence. Britain never would have "given up" their North American colonies peacefully.

Except for the part where they did. In the Statute of Westminster, 1931. And we do not know how a non-violence independence movement would have gone.

What made the American Revolution succeed through violence were the facts that (1) it was a war of attrition against a foreign, remote power, and (2) it was bolstered by another foreign, rival remote power. Due to its far-flung nature, it cost British Empire a LOT of money to keep the war effort going, and moreover at a time when they were hurting for cash (since this was just after the Seven Year's War with France). The Americans and French were able to make it too costly for Britain to continue to hold on to the colonies.

Britain also tried to take America back in the War of 1812, but was again thwarted by the costs of maintaining a war abroad (and the war had come to a stalemate by 1814).

Unlike most revolutions we see today (which are revolutions at home, and become civil wars if they turn violent), the American Revolution succeeded through violence because it was against a foreign adversary and because the Americans were able to make it too costly for Britain to maintain their war effort. These preconditions do not apply to local revolutions, where no side has an economic incentive to stop fighting until the other sides are crushed. Each factions' lives are on the line, largely eliminating the cost consideration. It's not like King George III or the members of Parliament were in danger of losing their lives, families, and lands if the Americans won.

> "This is where American Founding Fathers got it wrong, with the 2nd amendment. The reason why soldiers refuse to shoot against citizens is because they are unarmed and have moral upper hand."

This is a cute theory, but history provides countless examples of soldiers not refusing orders and shooting unarmed citizens. It's been happening in the Middle East for the past few years. It happened prior to the American Revolution (events such as the Boston Massacre likely contributed to the 2nd Amendment). And it will happen again over and over again.

Soldiers have several things to weigh when contemplating orders to fire on fellow citizens. The "moral upper hand" is one of them, but history has shown it's often not the strongest motivator. The 2nd Amendment is an amendment firmly grounded in reality and written by people who had seen government at its worst. Americans have lived in a relatively peaceful country for a long time and have largely learned to love Big Brother by now, so they are more worried about the 1/1e12 chance of a terrorist attack than the chance of their own government oppressing and spying on them. The 2nd Amendment establishes a firm deterrent that, in the limit, discourages how far and how fast the government can exercise its various forms of abuse.

I think (and I implied) that non-violence is a necessary, not sufficient condition for non-shooting.

And I haven't frankly seen much evidence that 2nd amendment is effective deterrent. First, it's a bit of a fantasy - in the U.S., you hardly see gun owners among the revolutionaries. For a good reason - it's a bit naive to expect people go with handguns against tanks or drones. And U.S. government seems pretty oppressive compared to many countries which don't have equivalent of 2nd amendment.

Second, most people consider violent revolutionaries to be terrorists (e.g. compare how we view Unabomber and Martin Luther King), which actually supports the theory. The same is actually true in islamic countries - for example here: http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-e...

The United States was certain the Muslim world would "open its eyes" to Western style democracy if only we overthrew their governments and destroyed their infrastructure and just kept killing whoever disagreed with us until we were welcomed as liberators with flowers in the streets. It didn't work, though maybe we just need to keep killing until it does?

I think it's irrational, albeit probably a common bias in revolutionary thinkers, to assume that the likely result of such violence will be the people viewing you as their liberator rather than their oppressor. Which is of course why such revolutions typically require purges and secret police, and spawn violent counter-revolutions of their own. I don't see how one form of oppression is better than the other.

I was impressed by what you wrote above, but then read this on your HN profile:

My most controversial (gauged by variance in karma as downvotes and then upvotes rolled in) ever comments were about the issue that has been most discussed on HN since early June 2013, namely Edward Snowden's disclosure of NSA documents and Snowden's role in today's world. I'd be glad to see NSA surveillance programs under much more strict legal scrutiny and oversight by Congress. But I think it's more significant than many people notice that Snowden traveled first to the territory of China and then to Russia as the documents were disclosed, so I can't count him a hero any more than I can count Kim Philby as a hero. Both were misguided and ultimately unhelpful to the world in some of the same ways.

How can you make such a radical (I mean that as a compliment) case for non-violent freedom fighters yet you don't consider Snowden a non-violent freedom fighter (which is implied by you considering him a non-hero).

I'm not so eloquent today, so I'm going to have to let this comment stand as it is for now. Hopefully many readers can see for themselves the contradiction that is so obvious to me.

I'm not eloquent today either, because I have pressing work matters to attend to, but to keep this in context, I'm very glad that the freedom fighters in Taiwan were careful NOT to be collaborators with the regime or any of the agents of the Communist Party of China. I wish Snowden had taken the same care to not give comfort to other dictators while decrying conditions in his own country. Thank you for asking.

There is zero evidence that Snowden has "collaborated". The articles you link to in your profile are purely opinion pieces.

Are you as harsh in your judgement about the "freedom fighters" of Taiwan who ended up putting into power rather corrupt DPP politicians? That would be unfair, just as your condemnation of Snowden for purely circumstantial connection to China and Russia. He did not give "comfort" to those regimes. You're showing an excessive bias against anyone who shows any association with the regimes of China or Russia. I lived in Taiwan for 5 years so I understand where it is coming from, but it is built on blind hate, it clouds your reasonableness.

I agree with some of your perspectives, but sorry I have to agree with the criticism here. Your opine on this is really disgustingly nationalist. I, too, know to an extent people who were in Taiwan in the 1970s and onwards, those who organize protests in Hong Kong (including those who have just finished jail terms for the same), etc. Unfortunately, that doesn't change reality. It just informs on one past reality.

Also, for someone who constantly adds links to the Albert Einstein institute... something established after he died, I wonder how you reconcile your US nationalist, anti-Snowden views with my favourite Einstein quote: Nationalism is an infantile disease; the measles of mankind?

As long as we're all firmly in the "the problems are global" camp - as per the UN Human Rights commissioner's comments - can't we just agree to drop the ridiculous hat tips to nationalism already?

I'd be happy to see a people power democracy movement bring freedom to people in any country. Freedom belongs to everyone. But a hard-headed realist about winning freedom for people everywhere from all of humanity will recognize that some national regimes today are more harmful to the cause of spreading freedom than others.

Err, "the cause of spreading freedom"? Forgive me if I'm lax in my 'meri-rhetoric, but isn't that the same one where we're either with you or against you? Doesn't seem to have turned out so well for recent victims of assistance, now does it? (Iraq, Afghanistan...)