Look at W Social. The governments will team up with anyone, no matter how shady, as long as they promise to try to restrict free, unattributed speech. They'll team up with absolute sharks, as long as those sharks are gonna help sack and battle the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584497
derektank · 2026-06-29 04:06:56 UTC
Disliking data centers, illegal immigration, or taxes is not a crime in the United States, nor is posting inconvenient messages about politicians, nor is getting a little too rowdy in a group chat. And none of these things are likely to be made illegal any time soon.
I always find this form of argument in favor of privacy (which is valuable in its own right to be clear) so roundabout. If you’re concerned about the government impinging on your freedom of speech, then why not write an essay arguing for expansive freedom of speech protections? That seems like a much more direct solution to the problem presented in this essay.
I’m not exactly sure how an abuse of power occurring at a public event relates to the question of privacy or freedom of speech. The law did not allow the officer to arrest the man for the content of his speech so he retaliated by enforcing a different law unjustly. This kind of selective enforcement of the law can be a violation of federal law and the man likely has standing to sue.
derektank · 2026-06-29 04:53:16 UTC
For reference, a similar case of selective enforcement against an outspoken critic of the local government in Texas resulted in the critic receiving a settlement of $500k following an unjust arrest
it's an example of the government silencing people for speech
charcircuit · 2026-06-29 05:44:34 UTC
No, it's an example of someone being told to leave, not doing so, and then being arrested for trespassing.
nephihaha · 2026-06-29 09:14:47 UTC
For being five seconds over? Not even minutes.
charcircuit · 2026-06-29 10:52:37 UTC
He was asked due to his actions he took after he was told to stop. If he had just stopped talking after being told his time was up he would not have been asked to leave.
nephihaha · 2026-06-29 14:54:27 UTC
Five seconds is nothing. It's shorter than it took to type this message.
charcircuit · 2026-06-29 18:56:28 UTC
I don't get your point. Going over by 5 seconds didn't get him in trouble. The court can tolerate such minor mistakes as long as people are willing to behave themselves.
derektank · 2026-06-29 12:17:55 UTC
It’s an example of someone being arrested for violating a law, in this case a law restricting how long you are allowed to present at a city council meeting.
This could be a case of selective enforcement, a deliberate attempt to retaliate against the man for his previous speech, which would be illegal under federal law (see Gonzales v. Trevino).
It’s also possible that this is not a new thing and the municipality in question just regulates city business very strictly. This is bad in its own right, it grants too much power to the state which can be abused, but would not be a free speech question.
triceratops · 2026-06-29 04:08:18 UTC
"Don't let them win. Don't verify your age. Don't give up your identity. If you absolutely must, find one of the numerous age verification services and pay in Monero."
Better yet, how about - "call your representatives"?
Some nerds, for lack of a better term, think crypto and cryptography are the answers to every privacy problem. The only way to fix society and the law is by engaging with those things. Not sidestepping them with cryptography, an unscalable approach in any case.
I'm deeply pessimistic about the future. The only group competent enough to oppose identity verification has its head in the sand.
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 04:15:25 UTC
Have you been to a city council meeting lately ? Ever?
I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck.
Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly.
It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show.
So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all
triceratops · 2026-06-29 04:17:53 UTC
> Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck
That just means not enough people did it.
> So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all
Until they make that illegal. What'll you do then?
It. Doesn't. Scale.
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 20:01:10 UTC
> That just means not enough people did it.
Indeed. When enough people call that when they switch the meeting time and change the voting rules. ( we suing for that )
They still don't give a fuck. They really want to have more surveillance. Its like their is a vested interest ?
> Until they make that illegal. What'll you do then?
OK, let's make numbers illegal. Land of the free!
Also, what does "making encryption illegal" entail, exactly? Does that encompass HTTPS?
What does not scale exactly about using encryption at rest and point to point ?
triceratops · 2026-06-29 20:13:30 UTC
> Its like their is a vested interest ?
By whom? This is veering dangerously close to a "democracy doesn't work" argument which makes me less sympathetic and likely to believe everything else you say.
> Also, what does "making encryption illegal" entail, exactly? Does that encompass HTTPS?
Something like "we have to be able to read one of the ends of the pipe". HTTPS satisfies that definition already.
> What does not scale exactly about using encryption at rest and point to point ?
The fact that everyone has to use it for it to work everywhere. If the government tells big businesses "You can't use it" most of their users are automatically left unprotected for most of their activity.
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 21:07:30 UTC
> By whom?
By the company selling the product our cities are buying. In 2026, skydio DFR drones are a common example of blurry boundaries. Flock is another. Elected official "retiring" in the private sectors is common.
I'm engaging in the Democratic process. Are you ? Beside voting once a year ?
> If the government tells big businesses "You can't use it" most of their users are automatically left unprotected for most of their activity.
Absolutely. That's our near future. What does not scale in concern citizens and encryption hobbyist still choosing to use encryption from end to end?
If the US government make THAT illegal and actually enforce it.( djb style, like in the 90s ) Then I hope that technical folks would recognized that the Rubicon has been crossed.
rockskon · 2026-06-29 04:47:36 UTC
Not every lawmaker is the same and there's more than one way to get a lawmaker's attention.
Get more people with you. Or convince a group that's previously established trust in your jurisdiction to join you in speaking out. Or find out what causes the policymakers do care about and think of a compelling way to frame arguments against age verification in those terms. Heck - if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.
There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
pessimizer · 2026-06-29 18:02:24 UTC
They'll just do that trick where they ignore you while the government starts investigating your tax history and some private contractor starts investigating and reframing your romantic history.
Despite this, and despite the fact that all of your communications are monitored, you manage to get a crowd of people to a meeting - where you are allowed to "comment" (i.e. speak, while nobody is obliged to listen to you or react), your crowd makes a lot of joyful noise which is never broadcast on television news, and is deleted within minutes from Tiktok, Facebook, and Youtube for vague policy violations (your third appeal on youtube is accepted, and the video returns to the web a month and a half after it was filmed.)
This protest really energizes you all until the vote, when the bill you were protesting passes unanimously. Afterwards, three out of the nine people on the committee lose their seats (the other six weren't up for election that year.) One of them gets a new appointment to a more-powerful higher-paying government job; the second joins a venerable contractor that immediately starts lobbying the state for the contract; and the third, a moron, didn't realize the others were being controlled and ends up assistant manager at a local car dealership. Everything is forgotten by the next election cycle, especially because all of the leaders who showed up at meetings and wrote their representatives were smeared in the media as bad parents with questionable tattoos, and eventually moved away due to loss of employment, housing, and shortly later banking and insurance coverage.
There's a real childishness in these 50s-propaganda style views of civics. The only way something gets accomplished like that is if there is no money against it, and your "activism" makes the politician thinks that there might ultimately be money (or money-equivalent) in taking your side.
But e.g. $10M is pocket lint to people and organizations pushing this stuff. They can go around like fairies changing everyone's lives who are willing to sell out, and politicians are already pre-configured for that. They've been dreaming all their lives of selling out. Your angry letters to the manager notwithstanding.
The reasons these are eventually getting passed have nothing to do with people not speaking up or not getting their lawmaker's attention. They have to do with power, who has it, and who doesn't. It's not about whose the most virtuous and persuasive. The case for age verification is not persuasive, to anyone, and barely makes an attempt to be - they just go immediately into calling people alt-left Chinese pedophile terrorists. It's not because they're dumb.
> There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
Going to town hall meetings, sending emails, and making phone calls is already an enormous amount of work. It is also simply advisory to lawmakers who are not obliged to listen to you or care; trying to get daddy to understand is a good tactic only because daddy loves you.
What real politics consists of is threats. You can't threaten somebody who has backing from somebody with a hundred million dollars and an opportunity for more if they get a few votes to go the right way. Even a well-framed argument is a tool to make people who ignore it feel threatened by people who are convinced by it. Where is the threat?
There's no political way to stop this. I absolutely believe that the only reason they move even this slowly is because powerful people feel like they could be in personal physical danger if they were near the center of particular decisions or particular acts based on those decisions. It's a waiting and boiling game, where the media and government messaging gradually change public perceptions and attitudes until doing things like age gating the entire internet seem safe to do.
godwinson__4-8 · 2026-06-29 21:26:43 UTC
This has always been true buddy. No line suddenly emerged in this respect in the 50s. Politics and power are practically synonymous. Sorry you have to try harder before getting to play out your personal physical danger fantasy.
Just remember the threat works the other way around. History is riddled with people like you, so ready to get the chance to flip the table over until they realize flying cutlery comes in both directions.
We also live in a time were increasingly what one might call the "prevailing order and norms" are being challenged successfully. As of yet this has not been the result of overt threats to the personal safety of those they displaced. The end of history is now satire, and so on. Candidates that would have been considered fringe are increasingly mainstream. Really if anyone is humorously out of date here, it's you.
Pessimizer would be more interesting if you weren't so transparently pessimistic. Nice schtick though.
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 20:07:31 UTC
I should have clarify, I'm part of a local group, itself part of a network of groups.
We don't do politics, we do privacy and security advocacies. It means we work with DSA, MAGA, Libertarian.
Allies that normie would known: ACLU, EFF. I talk with those folks weekly. (they talk a lot, themselve )
>There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
I should have clarify that I despite those circus so much that its our last resort. Its when we need to get them on the recort saying something. 1on1 meeting are always more productive.
> if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.
I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.
rockskon · 2026-06-30 02:01:38 UTC
> I should have clarify, I'm part of a local group, itself part of a network of groups.
Which is great! Though my understanding is a big weakness of the ACLU/EFF/etc... crowd is that they typically pigeonhole themselves. The ACLU immolated its hard-earned partisan-but-principled reputation in the past decade and the EFF has a reputation of keeping non-lefty-libertarians at a very long arm's length away.
Beyond that - those groups tend to be sclerotic in their coalition membership. That inflexibility isn't always great!
Take the (largely) Progressive-funded Effective Altruist movement - in particular the Center for AI Safety. They are single-minded in their political goals, going so far as to enlist the help of Glenn Beck and Steve-Bannon-associate Joe Allen. They have spun off additional organizations to cater their pro-AI-regulation framing and messaging to different audiences: conservative and biblical messaging to evangelicals, fighting social media disinformation and fascism to progressives, and a hefty dose of civic grassroots rhetoric for their social media presence.
They have goals and are willing to make unsavory temporary alliances if it means enacting regulation.
I do not see such an appetite to influence politics from most of internet civil liberties organizations.
> I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.
And? Corporate lobbyists do this lobbying-by-proxy crap with decent regularity. Heck - Nintendo is known to have laundered some of its lobbying through NCMEC years back and credit card companies and banks have long laundered their wishlist through various LEAs. Turns out if you get a bureaucrat to convince FBI leadership of the importance of your pet cause and the nexus it has to their agency, legislative pushes in Congress tends to follow.
That all said - it works both ways and not necessarily with any negative connotations. The DoJ and FTC in administrations-past have had representatives come to hacker conventions to describe the collaborative efforts they've had with members of the community - to include lobbying congress for legislative change.
Getting government agencies on your side as a partner in affecting policy change is relevant only if the change is seen as relevant to a given agency's mission.
godwinson__4-8 · 2026-06-29 05:22:25 UTC
Of course the system has a rather obvious remediation for that. You could also run for office or find a kindred spirit to support.
Trying to one to one with a representative or a council just sends them a signal to not care. You're one of n constituents. Showing up to the city council meeting without bringing an exponential curve of people with you over a short enough amount of time in support of your cause simply confirms to your representatives your cause is marginal.
If you are already cutting clips you might as well bite the bullet and run for office. Best of luck with your foray in democracy!
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 19:53:00 UTC
You are cute.
I'm part of org working with ACLU, EFF and actual more important and active orgs that would would not know about.
When I go to city council, its with 50 other peoples and 4 or 5 other speakers.
Its when we need to have our representative on the record.
Me and other folks in that loose network of org have forced our city to pass regulations, have our police force admit they use surveillance without oversifht, and expose their poor security practice overall.
Good luck in your comfort that your country is not broken
godwinson__4-8 · 2026-06-29 21:09:37 UTC
You're cute too.
So you accomplished all these things and yet the country is broken?
I'm confused. Did you not get everything you wanted fast enough? How sad :(
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 21:34:05 UTC
It's my hobby! some people like 3d printing or trolling on the internet.
I like to prevent my city council to implement more surveillance and expose how cosy they are with the companies selling said surveillance.
>So you accomplished all these things and yet the country is broken
Yes. Those things are meaningless in the face of 3 letter agency capability or broad stroke regulation like FISA (recent big win by the folks at RT4 there, normies have not heard of it but those people did a great job at influencing republican politician )
> Did you not get everything you wanted fast enough? How sad :(
I mostly want privacy, for myself and the people who seek it.
I don't find that too much to ask in a country that is fast to point the finger at China "dystopian level of surveillance"
10 years is a sizeable slice of life. Their was some progress and wins. And those days the zeitgeist is on our side.
But its sad yes.
godwinson__4-8 · 2026-06-29 21:58:50 UTC
If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Sadness is part of life. I actually respect the work you do, your own obvious condescension aside ("normies" and so forth). I guess we can allow it given this is probably a typical attitude of those who are deeply enmeshed in these issues while others just go on about their lives.
I simply ask you to consider the counterfactual to your original articulation in this thread.
If one or a handful of people showing up could simply change the law or the prevailing order by the force of their minority stamina alone that would not be a desirable society, now would it? As someone who has been to more than a few city council meetings you have surely encountered some of these people. In your case, I would too wish the path was easier. But if you could get everything you wanted right away then doing so would open the door to any crackpot. There is normative value in making change hard, even if in specific cases, this comes across as cruelty, corruption, and so forth. We could do a lot worse. Government in large part exists because people favor corruption over bloodshed. Are you any different? What is today your hobby was something some ancestor of yours doubtlessly lost their lives over. It is fine to be a little demoralized now and again, but let us not spread the gospel of the needlessly catastrophic. Such an outlook is highly disrespectful to the reality of our collective situation and our history.
If you have an alternative formulation to govern man, which is somehow neither resistant to your own ideas, nor any opposition of your neighbors, please describe it.
Until then:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-29 23:14:00 UTC
Oh,there is a constitutional basis to what we're doing.
The 4th amendment regulate searches and seizure.
I would like the government bodies that have to follow the constitution to respect that.
When Flock track movement at scale, when skydio film with uncanny accuracy, when Leonardo build a unique id from your devices. This is infringement. ( See : kyllo vs USA )
I'm playing by the rules of democracy here. And yet you want to explain to me that democracy is hard and compromise frustrating.
Yes, I know! And I'm not asking for another system. I'm asking for accountably, transparency in decision, and actual representation of the voters.
--
I've talk a lot. Do you think there is a problem in 2026 with local laws enforcement buying military grade surveillance services from private company without oversight ?
Or is it normal ? Maybe I should just chill and pick another hobby. Who care after all? Our leaders know better, I should trust them, their will be no abuse! Not here.
godwinson__4-8 · 2026-06-29 23:28:43 UTC
The only thing I am pushing back against is your exhortations to fatalism. Let's be clear about how you started this thread. Walking your critique back to something more reasonable is appreciated.
Best of luck in the councils to come.
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-30 02:21:45 UTC
Where do I exhort to fatalism?
That would mean : "there is nothing to be done, why bother"
Let's not turn the table here, I'm the one with a hobby of parsing system logs from surveillance system to prove that police forces are abusing it.
That's not exactly the definition of "letting fate decide". I'm taking action to support my beliefs . To both society and the legal system of our country.
What you might have confused with fatalism is my bleak view on our elected officials. I do have low esteem of them.
But I don't think that all elected official are bad. I think they mostly stay too long in power and end up clinging to it, and, yes, getting corrupted in the process.
That last part often bring gasp and shock. But we have to come to term with it: as you stated, no humans are angel, and our elected official have problems.
Nothing that could not be fixed with the right amount of accountability.
godwinson__4-8 · 2026-06-30 02:39:12 UTC
That is certainly not how you came across earlier.
To answer the question in your first sentence, allow me to quote you:
Have you been to a city council meeting lately ? Ever?
I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck. Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly. It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show
and later:
Good luck in your comfort that your country is not broken
I am glad to know after this back and forth that you have a more sensible position. Perhaps I misread you, perhaps you could have articulated your original points with more subtlety. Perhaps we both have something to learn here.
Anyway, one more quote of your's I wish to highlight:
You are cute.
:)
dopidopHN2 · 2026-06-30 03:18:04 UTC
My original quote use active verbs like "pushing", and is describing action I'm taking. That does not fit the definition of fatalism
And yeah, I found you cute in your naive view of how politics work."just get in there man"
But I take it back, you are mostly repeating thing back at me and not engaging in this conversation. Not cute, boring.
Conversation is about swapping ideas. And I've been waiting for those, I'm still unclear on where you stand. Beside sounding vaguely offended? Maybe ? Hard to tell via text.
Anyhoo. Have a good evening
rockskon · 2026-06-29 04:40:19 UTC
Law alone cannot fix it. Tech alone cannot fix it.
If we wish to preserve the values we grew up with, we need both.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 05:31:46 UTC
Law can fix 90% of it. Tech can fix 10%.
rockskon · 2026-06-29 05:42:00 UTC
As cynical as it sounds given its frequent use in marketing and often inappropriate use in legal circles, securing what data is collected is important too.
Raise the bar for a data breach. It has value. Much more value if the law did a much better job of restricting what is collected in the first place and its dissemination.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 06:21:14 UTC
Punishing companies for data breaches will solve more data breaches than any amount of encryption.
rockskon · 2026-06-29 06:36:29 UTC
I find that particularly unrealistic that we can arrive at a good place solely by fining companies for data breaches.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 09:13:01 UTC
Seems to mostly work in Europe. Did you know that a European person's advertising tracking data is the most expensive because it's so hard to get?
technol0gic · 2026-06-29 12:30:59 UTC
hear hear
wuyuan · 2026-06-29 04:10:31 UTC
You're right. Many countries use the protection of minors as an excuse, but in reality, they just want to strengthen the regulation of speech.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 05:31:17 UTC
We should actually protect minors, then they won't be able to use it as an excuse. Right now it works as an excuse because minors are being harmed by the unrestricted internet, mostly by social media.
m0unta1ntube · 2026-06-29 07:17:56 UTC
They will always bring up a fringe matter to prove that statement wrong, no matter how much you will protect minors, someone else will still harm them and that is enough to justify these actions
microgpt · 2026-06-29 18:05:11 UTC
So why bother ever doing anything at all
jorisw · 2026-06-29 08:52:05 UTC
> they just want
Because you know their motivations. You've spoken to 'them'.
sixsupersoup · 2026-06-29 04:11:23 UTC
Automated fines, like traffic radar control for free speech, will also become a norm as they won't be able to put everyone in jail.
But I'm not sure the liberal anarcho-tyranny power will be indefinitely immutable. Speech control might be one their last try to keep control in the west. They will crumble like soviet union.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 05:28:59 UTC
They have this in Germany for copyright. If you torrent, you automatically get a fine letter in your email. If you don't pay, you get a court summons in the post. If you take it to court, you will lose that case and also have to pay court fees.
Nursie · 2026-06-29 05:42:10 UTC
It's funny how this played out in different countries.
In Australia there is no chance of anything happening, because the courts ruled that payouts were limited to provable incurred losses. You pirated a movie? The maximum awarded at the end of a court case is going to be about $20, and as you can't buy very much lawyer-time for $20, it's never taken to court and the copyright-holders have effectively stopped pursuing people here.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 06:21:36 UTC
I imagine they still go after prolific totrenters
threeshells · 2026-06-29 05:45:12 UTC
Imagine a machine mounted on the wall that prints you a ticket every time you swear
thomastjeffery · 2026-06-29 04:12:00 UTC
That, and it defines children as perpetrators instead of victims. What right could a citizen ever claim in a world where even children are guilty?
There is a huge difference between protecting children and prosecuting/punishing children. Age verification can only be an implementation of the latter.
onion2k · 2026-06-29 04:12:13 UTC
If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spotting causal links between parts of a system, and people who are good at it exploit that.
ElProlactin · 2026-06-29 04:21:07 UTC
> If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin.
But why would we do that?
If we taught people how to think, they wouldn't sit their toddlers down in front an iPad for 8+ hours a day to entertain (read: keep them occupied and quiet) them with YouTube videos, sign them up for a Facebook account before they could wipe their own butts, etc.
The sad irony of this age verification thing is that if we had a decent society and parents with common sense, age verification wouldn't even be a topic.
dozerly · 2026-06-29 04:26:57 UTC
Parents with common sense comes from teaching children common sense. You have to fix the child education issue first, a lot of adults are too far gone to educate at this point.
Synthetic7346 · 2026-06-29 04:44:48 UTC
How can you fix the child education problem without fixing the parent education? School is but a few hours a day, and kids spend more time with parents and learn from them. I was lucky that my parents liked to read and encouraged me to read, but my friends didn't have the same exposure that I did and never liked to read books.
pfannkuchen · 2026-06-29 05:12:02 UTC
What? School is basically the same hours as a full time job. How is it but a few hours a day? Did you time travel from the 1800s?
samplifier · 2026-06-29 05:36:03 UTC
Indeed, and then after school care because both parents are still working until 6 pm, quietly eat dinner, watch cocomelon, and then to bed. Horror.
johnny22 · 2026-06-29 04:43:52 UTC
I don't get why you would start there. Their parents probably didn't have youtube or ipads and they and/or their parents are the ones pushing it.
lyu07282 · 2026-06-29 04:58:33 UTC
Uhh imagine you know about countries other than the US that implement age verification. Like the UK, Brazil, Australia, France, Spain, Italy and dozens of other countries with vastly different educational systems. Then perhaps you could begin to understand the magnitude of your own ignorance of actual power and political ideology. Instead of embarrassingly trying to reason yourself a political education from first principle.
Uh dumb law I don't like. Cause people dumb. If people not dumb, no dumb law. Uhh I am very smart. "Systems thinking" oh fucking hell stfu
roenxi · 2026-06-29 04:41:20 UTC
In fairness, the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political circles more than popular belief it is a good idea. I expect that if the measure itself went to a general vote, the majority would be against it once they have to deal with a specific proposal. It takes repeated pushes by the authoritarians looking for an opportunity to get things like speech controls or privacy violations through and the politicians mysteriously give up trying to roll it back no matter what the public pressure might be.
That being said, any expectation of thoughtfulness at all makes politics frustrating. Even basic things like why people keep making small random changes when most of these problems and solutions haven't changed in more than 2 millennia. And there is a pretty easy consensus to come to about what works. The repeated failures of authoritarianism to get to a good place are so consistent it is wild that people keep trying it.
chii · 2026-06-29 04:51:10 UTC
Stupid things like brexit was put to a vote, but really important things such as age verification and mass surveillance are never put to any vote.
But Brexit was a vote, by the people. Yes, the pro-leave campaign lied to no ends, but people still made a choice on their own and the majority for leave was quite slim.
This is very different to age sniffing here. Age sniffing is not being queried via public votum - lobbyists push it through without any resistance. It's amazing how this works.
This whole argument is why we do not have more direct democracy. The people in power and people who benefit from the status quo do not want the hoi polloi taking the "wrong" decisions. We might end up nationalising things or taxing big business effectively or all sorts of terrible things. Better to just give people the illusion of choice by letting them choose between two "neo-liberal" parties.
graemep · 2026-06-29 15:58:24 UTC
That should read for 2017-18
teiferer · 2026-06-29 09:11:17 UTC
In what way was Brexit a stupid thing? It was an extemely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything then isn't that what it should be? You might not like the outcome (I don't) but I consider the question of Brexit important.
epihelix · 2026-06-29 09:59:40 UTC
Should we also have a referendum on reducing the tax rate to zero? It would also be an extremely important decision, directly affecting everybody's life. If asking people about anything, then isn't that what it should be?
Not all referenda that might win a "yes" vote are sensible to propose.
ben_w · 2026-06-29 10:04:06 UTC
Analogy:
Cancer surgery is an extremely important decision, directly affecting many people's lives.
What happened with Brexit was a analogous a bunch of salesmen on TV saying "that mysterious ache you have, don't listen to doctors who say it's fine, call our surgical team today! It's cancer! We can fix this quickly and you'll be back to your old self within a week!" for two decades, then the country agreeing, going to surgery, and waking up to find they'd had half their liver removed, the post-surgical biopsy results said it was fine and not cancerous at all, it took 6 months to recover and they could never drink alcohol again. And the ache was still there.
If it had been an honest "we know it will cost X, we are willing to spend this because otherwise what is the point of money", that would have been totally fair.
Instead, problems that weren't caused by the EU were blamed on it for decades, while the benefits of membership were treated as the natural state of the world to the extent that talk of losing them was equated with "being punished".
> The referendum was originally conceived by David Cameron as a means to defeat the anti-EU faction within his own party by having it fail.
After that, another issue is that the leave campaign was heavily based on lies and misleading the British voters.
Couple that with a extreme form of policy lock-in / hysteresis: you need just to form a small margin in a majority at a single point of time. After that point of time, the popular opinion doesn't matter anymore because getting back to EU isn't as easy as leaving. So the misinformation campaign need to work just once. By the time voters realize what happened, it's too late.
This situation is a critical failure of democracy. Not just direct democracy, representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either.
beezlewax · 2026-06-29 06:30:41 UTC
I emailed my local TD minister in Ireland about the inherent dangers of chat control. They had some lacky respond with an email that framed the conversation in a way that made it look like I was interested in the illegal content and not privacy/control or nefarious future governments.
monssooon · 2026-06-29 06:41:53 UTC
This is what I fear the most. It is gas lighting and just manipulation. The idea of privacy will become associated with crime.
Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble
ShinyLeftPad · 2026-06-29 08:17:25 UTC
Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to.
The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways.
Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
But chat control and age verification are different things.
teiferer · 2026-06-29 09:08:32 UTC
> Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.
ShinyLeftPad · 2026-06-29 09:47:24 UTC
Tons of people use IG and I think they pretty much know that it's them, the other guy and whatever number of contractors monitoring chats. They just don't care.
Maybe one of the most helpful parallels is with mail. I think US and other countries have strict laws about mail communication privacy. Someone can in theory open your mail but it's strictly regulated and not done in a total way.
Also I do think talking about future malicious government prosecuting people based on what was collected previously is actually a good one. But just talking about privacy may be a little too vague.
speff · 2026-06-29 14:05:22 UTC
I suspect a lot of people don't mind/care that the list is expanded to those groups. That's really a big part of the issue. It's better framing, regardless though.
AgentOrange1234 · 2026-06-29 14:23:05 UTC
More than that. Who cares if the state can read your chats/etc, when you believe you aren't the kind of people the state wants to persecute. Why deny the state ever more tools to go after people, as long as you think it's going to use them against the people you want it to go after.
vladms · 2026-06-29 15:34:05 UTC
I would add though that the opinion is not entirely irrational.
For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions). Then why do you care about another way to label you, if you think they already do it, but randomly.
I feel that the privacy discussions do not acknowledge at all there are many other structural society issues. Sure it would make an evil-intelligent government have a harder time, but will not improve at all life with an evil-idiot government, and to me it seems those are a bit more prevalent (note: idiot = implementing solutions that will not solve the problems they claim they do, while them honestly thinking they do solve them)
drtgh · 2026-06-29 10:34:35 UTC
> But chat control and age verification are different things.
Although they appear to be different different things at first sight, they share the same agenda and objective, mass surveillance and identification of the citizens. Once the door is opened, it can be expected that things will not end there; Politicians and their patrons will exploit this data under "committees" (and of course be excluded from such surveillance as an aggravating factor).
Nowadays it's needed a court order to access legally to the privacy of citizens, and this must be done by the Police or the Interpol, nevertheless someones want to break this.
If they were really worried by the citizens security, they would increase the number of police and judges working in this digital divisions, among other things related to this.
ShinyLeftPad · 2026-06-29 15:22:57 UTC
Well, here's a case when police did their work. A massive international bust happened because the police was able to trick gangs to use an app that was not actually e2ee. And chances that it happens again are almost zero.
AnimalMuppet · 2026-06-29 15:38:35 UTC
I have some faith in the lack of wisdom of (most) criminals. Most of them aren't geniuses, aren't super sophisticated, aren't good at following technical rules with 100% discipline.
So it's likely to work again - not as often as a law-abiding citizen would like, but not never.
pidgeon_lover · 2026-06-30 12:36:55 UTC
Smart criminals go into politics
wartywhoa23 · 2026-06-29 16:24:30 UTC
And yet another notorious international bust just didn't happen recently despite the fact that the island loungers not only didn't use e2ee but actively made their crimes abundantly obvious to the public.
ShinyLeftPad · 2026-06-29 17:54:41 UTC
True. They didn't trade drugs and I guess the legal system doesn't look at their crimes with the same strictness...
eimrine · 2026-06-29 12:21:17 UTC
How is it possible to be that level of biased, to not observe that the government is a product of mass violence?
And e2ee/cryptography/bitcoin is just the implementation of free speech which supposed to be guaranted?
It is like saying that killing people is OK but storing photo of oneself nudes is a crime - and keep pretending to be not idiot.
monssooon · 2026-06-29 13:38:35 UTC
I think the below comments answer rather well for me. But of course you are rigth that criminals use technology... I just don't see it as the main issue here.
I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash... But maybe some use crypto yes. And maybe criminals use e2ee. And Marybe you are rigth that it is a problematic thing for law enforcement. That is not the point though.
The point is criminalizing ordinary people for something completely reasonable like wanting to have the ability to talk in private. And talk in private about what they think of the current leadership...
ShinyLeftPad · 2026-06-29 15:11:26 UTC
> I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash
It doesn't scale as well. Can't go cross-border easily etc.
I agree that it's wrong but I'm talking about common people (and lawmakers who care about) perception. Until they get burned they won't care and might not take your side like that.
monssooon · 2026-06-29 15:50:41 UTC
Millions and millions of euro and dollars are being "talen" in white washimg scemes for organised crime ever year. It is a crime-business in it self.
greenleafone7 · 2026-06-29 13:45:41 UTC
"Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room"
buellerbueller · 2026-06-29 14:30:12 UTC
>Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down.
And none of these things were ever made illegal.
>Ordinary people do not care about e2ee.
I am an ordinary person, and I care about the right to be secure and private in my communications. The founders of the United States put it in our Bill of Rights. Mail in America can't just be read without a warrant; it is protected by the 4th Amendment.
Comments
> Everything you say CAN and WILL be used against you.
Especially when what you said has already been recorded and tied to your identity before you faced the authorities.
Edit: from last week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632269
I always find this form of argument in favor of privacy (which is valuable in its own right to be clear) so roundabout. If you’re concerned about the government impinging on your freedom of speech, then why not write an essay arguing for expansive freedom of speech protections? That seems like a much more direct solution to the problem presented in this essay.
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2025/10/15/i-feel-like-i-can...
This could be a case of selective enforcement, a deliberate attempt to retaliate against the man for his previous speech, which would be illegal under federal law (see Gonzales v. Trevino).
It’s also possible that this is not a new thing and the municipality in question just regulates city business very strictly. This is bad in its own right, it grants too much power to the state which can be abused, but would not be a free speech question.
Better yet, how about - "call your representatives"?
Some nerds, for lack of a better term, think crypto and cryptography are the answers to every privacy problem. The only way to fix society and the law is by engaging with those things. Not sidestepping them with cryptography, an unscalable approach in any case.
I'm deeply pessimistic about the future. The only group competent enough to oppose identity verification has its head in the sand.
I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck. Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly. It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show.
So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all
That just means not enough people did it.
> So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all
Until they make that illegal. What'll you do then?
It. Doesn't. Scale.
Indeed. When enough people call that when they switch the meeting time and change the voting rules. ( we suing for that )
They still don't give a fuck. They really want to have more surveillance. Its like their is a vested interest ?
> Until they make that illegal. What'll you do then?
OK, let's make numbers illegal. Land of the free!
Also, what does "making encryption illegal" entail, exactly? Does that encompass HTTPS?
What does not scale exactly about using encryption at rest and point to point ?
By whom? This is veering dangerously close to a "democracy doesn't work" argument which makes me less sympathetic and likely to believe everything else you say.
> Also, what does "making encryption illegal" entail, exactly? Does that encompass HTTPS?
Something like "we have to be able to read one of the ends of the pipe". HTTPS satisfies that definition already.
> What does not scale exactly about using encryption at rest and point to point ?
The fact that everyone has to use it for it to work everywhere. If the government tells big businesses "You can't use it" most of their users are automatically left unprotected for most of their activity.
By the company selling the product our cities are buying. In 2026, skydio DFR drones are a common example of blurry boundaries. Flock is another. Elected official "retiring" in the private sectors is common.
I'm engaging in the Democratic process. Are you ? Beside voting once a year ?
> If the government tells big businesses "You can't use it" most of their users are automatically left unprotected for most of their activity.
Absolutely. That's our near future. What does not scale in concern citizens and encryption hobbyist still choosing to use encryption from end to end?
If the US government make THAT illegal and actually enforce it.( djb style, like in the 90s ) Then I hope that technical folks would recognized that the Rubicon has been crossed.
Get more people with you. Or convince a group that's previously established trust in your jurisdiction to join you in speaking out. Or find out what causes the policymakers do care about and think of a compelling way to frame arguments against age verification in those terms. Heck - if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.
There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
Despite this, and despite the fact that all of your communications are monitored, you manage to get a crowd of people to a meeting - where you are allowed to "comment" (i.e. speak, while nobody is obliged to listen to you or react), your crowd makes a lot of joyful noise which is never broadcast on television news, and is deleted within minutes from Tiktok, Facebook, and Youtube for vague policy violations (your third appeal on youtube is accepted, and the video returns to the web a month and a half after it was filmed.)
This protest really energizes you all until the vote, when the bill you were protesting passes unanimously. Afterwards, three out of the nine people on the committee lose their seats (the other six weren't up for election that year.) One of them gets a new appointment to a more-powerful higher-paying government job; the second joins a venerable contractor that immediately starts lobbying the state for the contract; and the third, a moron, didn't realize the others were being controlled and ends up assistant manager at a local car dealership. Everything is forgotten by the next election cycle, especially because all of the leaders who showed up at meetings and wrote their representatives were smeared in the media as bad parents with questionable tattoos, and eventually moved away due to loss of employment, housing, and shortly later banking and insurance coverage.
There's a real childishness in these 50s-propaganda style views of civics. The only way something gets accomplished like that is if there is no money against it, and your "activism" makes the politician thinks that there might ultimately be money (or money-equivalent) in taking your side.
But e.g. $10M is pocket lint to people and organizations pushing this stuff. They can go around like fairies changing everyone's lives who are willing to sell out, and politicians are already pre-configured for that. They've been dreaming all their lives of selling out. Your angry letters to the manager notwithstanding.
The reasons these are eventually getting passed have nothing to do with people not speaking up or not getting their lawmaker's attention. They have to do with power, who has it, and who doesn't. It's not about whose the most virtuous and persuasive. The case for age verification is not persuasive, to anyone, and barely makes an attempt to be - they just go immediately into calling people alt-left Chinese pedophile terrorists. It's not because they're dumb.
> There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
Going to town hall meetings, sending emails, and making phone calls is already an enormous amount of work. It is also simply advisory to lawmakers who are not obliged to listen to you or care; trying to get daddy to understand is a good tactic only because daddy loves you.
What real politics consists of is threats. You can't threaten somebody who has backing from somebody with a hundred million dollars and an opportunity for more if they get a few votes to go the right way. Even a well-framed argument is a tool to make people who ignore it feel threatened by people who are convinced by it. Where is the threat?
There's no political way to stop this. I absolutely believe that the only reason they move even this slowly is because powerful people feel like they could be in personal physical danger if they were near the center of particular decisions or particular acts based on those decisions. It's a waiting and boiling game, where the media and government messaging gradually change public perceptions and attitudes until doing things like age gating the entire internet seem safe to do.
Just remember the threat works the other way around. History is riddled with people like you, so ready to get the chance to flip the table over until they realize flying cutlery comes in both directions.
We also live in a time were increasingly what one might call the "prevailing order and norms" are being challenged successfully. As of yet this has not been the result of overt threats to the personal safety of those they displaced. The end of history is now satire, and so on. Candidates that would have been considered fringe are increasingly mainstream. Really if anyone is humorously out of date here, it's you.
Pessimizer would be more interesting if you weren't so transparently pessimistic. Nice schtick though.
We don't do politics, we do privacy and security advocacies. It means we work with DSA, MAGA, Libertarian.
Allies that normie would known: ACLU, EFF. I talk with those folks weekly. (they talk a lot, themselve )
>There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
I should have clarify that I despite those circus so much that its our last resort. Its when we need to get them on the recort saying something. 1on1 meeting are always more productive.
> if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.
I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.
Which is great! Though my understanding is a big weakness of the ACLU/EFF/etc... crowd is that they typically pigeonhole themselves. The ACLU immolated its hard-earned partisan-but-principled reputation in the past decade and the EFF has a reputation of keeping non-lefty-libertarians at a very long arm's length away.
Beyond that - those groups tend to be sclerotic in their coalition membership. That inflexibility isn't always great!
Take the (largely) Progressive-funded Effective Altruist movement - in particular the Center for AI Safety. They are single-minded in their political goals, going so far as to enlist the help of Glenn Beck and Steve-Bannon-associate Joe Allen. They have spun off additional organizations to cater their pro-AI-regulation framing and messaging to different audiences: conservative and biblical messaging to evangelicals, fighting social media disinformation and fascism to progressives, and a hefty dose of civic grassroots rhetoric for their social media presence.
They have goals and are willing to make unsavory temporary alliances if it means enacting regulation.
I do not see such an appetite to influence politics from most of internet civil liberties organizations.
> I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.
And? Corporate lobbyists do this lobbying-by-proxy crap with decent regularity. Heck - Nintendo is known to have laundered some of its lobbying through NCMEC years back and credit card companies and banks have long laundered their wishlist through various LEAs. Turns out if you get a bureaucrat to convince FBI leadership of the importance of your pet cause and the nexus it has to their agency, legislative pushes in Congress tends to follow.
That all said - it works both ways and not necessarily with any negative connotations. The DoJ and FTC in administrations-past have had representatives come to hacker conventions to describe the collaborative efforts they've had with members of the community - to include lobbying congress for legislative change.
Getting government agencies on your side as a partner in affecting policy change is relevant only if the change is seen as relevant to a given agency's mission.
Trying to one to one with a representative or a council just sends them a signal to not care. You're one of n constituents. Showing up to the city council meeting without bringing an exponential curve of people with you over a short enough amount of time in support of your cause simply confirms to your representatives your cause is marginal.
If you are already cutting clips you might as well bite the bullet and run for office. Best of luck with your foray in democracy!
I'm part of org working with ACLU, EFF and actual more important and active orgs that would would not know about.
When I go to city council, its with 50 other peoples and 4 or 5 other speakers.
Its when we need to have our representative on the record.
Me and other folks in that loose network of org have forced our city to pass regulations, have our police force admit they use surveillance without oversifht, and expose their poor security practice overall.
Good luck in your comfort that your country is not broken
So you accomplished all these things and yet the country is broken?
I'm confused. Did you not get everything you wanted fast enough? How sad :(
I like to prevent my city council to implement more surveillance and expose how cosy they are with the companies selling said surveillance.
>So you accomplished all these things and yet the country is broken
Yes. Those things are meaningless in the face of 3 letter agency capability or broad stroke regulation like FISA (recent big win by the folks at RT4 there, normies have not heard of it but those people did a great job at influencing republican politician )
> Did you not get everything you wanted fast enough? How sad :(
I mostly want privacy, for myself and the people who seek it.
I don't find that too much to ask in a country that is fast to point the finger at China "dystopian level of surveillance"
10 years is a sizeable slice of life. Their was some progress and wins. And those days the zeitgeist is on our side.
But its sad yes.
Sadness is part of life. I actually respect the work you do, your own obvious condescension aside ("normies" and so forth). I guess we can allow it given this is probably a typical attitude of those who are deeply enmeshed in these issues while others just go on about their lives.
I simply ask you to consider the counterfactual to your original articulation in this thread.
If one or a handful of people showing up could simply change the law or the prevailing order by the force of their minority stamina alone that would not be a desirable society, now would it? As someone who has been to more than a few city council meetings you have surely encountered some of these people. In your case, I would too wish the path was easier. But if you could get everything you wanted right away then doing so would open the door to any crackpot. There is normative value in making change hard, even if in specific cases, this comes across as cruelty, corruption, and so forth. We could do a lot worse. Government in large part exists because people favor corruption over bloodshed. Are you any different? What is today your hobby was something some ancestor of yours doubtlessly lost their lives over. It is fine to be a little demoralized now and again, but let us not spread the gospel of the needlessly catastrophic. Such an outlook is highly disrespectful to the reality of our collective situation and our history.
If you have an alternative formulation to govern man, which is somehow neither resistant to your own ideas, nor any opposition of your neighbors, please describe it.
Until then:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...
I would like the government bodies that have to follow the constitution to respect that.
When Flock track movement at scale, when skydio film with uncanny accuracy, when Leonardo build a unique id from your devices. This is infringement. ( See : kyllo vs USA )
I'm playing by the rules of democracy here. And yet you want to explain to me that democracy is hard and compromise frustrating.
Yes, I know! And I'm not asking for another system. I'm asking for accountably, transparency in decision, and actual representation of the voters.
--
I've talk a lot. Do you think there is a problem in 2026 with local laws enforcement buying military grade surveillance services from private company without oversight ?
Or is it normal ? Maybe I should just chill and pick another hobby. Who care after all? Our leaders know better, I should trust them, their will be no abuse! Not here.
Best of luck in the councils to come.
Let's not turn the table here, I'm the one with a hobby of parsing system logs from surveillance system to prove that police forces are abusing it.
That's not exactly the definition of "letting fate decide". I'm taking action to support my beliefs . To both society and the legal system of our country.
What you might have confused with fatalism is my bleak view on our elected officials. I do have low esteem of them. But I don't think that all elected official are bad. I think they mostly stay too long in power and end up clinging to it, and, yes, getting corrupted in the process.
That last part often bring gasp and shock. But we have to come to term with it: as you stated, no humans are angel, and our elected official have problems.
Nothing that could not be fixed with the right amount of accountability.
To answer the question in your first sentence, allow me to quote you:
Have you been to a city council meeting lately ? Ever? I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck. Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly. It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show
and later:
Good luck in your comfort that your country is not broken
I am glad to know after this back and forth that you have a more sensible position. Perhaps I misread you, perhaps you could have articulated your original points with more subtlety. Perhaps we both have something to learn here.
Anyway, one more quote of your's I wish to highlight:
You are cute.
:)
And yeah, I found you cute in your naive view of how politics work."just get in there man"
But I take it back, you are mostly repeating thing back at me and not engaging in this conversation. Not cute, boring. Conversation is about swapping ideas. And I've been waiting for those, I'm still unclear on where you stand. Beside sounding vaguely offended? Maybe ? Hard to tell via text.
Anyhoo. Have a good evening
If we wish to preserve the values we grew up with, we need both.
Raise the bar for a data breach. It has value. Much more value if the law did a much better job of restricting what is collected in the first place and its dissemination.
Because you know their motivations. You've spoken to 'them'.
In Australia there is no chance of anything happening, because the courts ruled that payouts were limited to provable incurred losses. You pirated a movie? The maximum awarded at the end of a court case is going to be about $20, and as you can't buy very much lawyer-time for $20, it's never taken to court and the copyright-holders have effectively stopped pursuing people here.
There is a huge difference between protecting children and prosecuting/punishing children. Age verification can only be an implementation of the latter.
But why would we do that?
If we taught people how to think, they wouldn't sit their toddlers down in front an iPad for 8+ hours a day to entertain (read: keep them occupied and quiet) them with YouTube videos, sign them up for a Facebook account before they could wipe their own butts, etc.
The sad irony of this age verification thing is that if we had a decent society and parents with common sense, age verification wouldn't even be a topic.
Uh dumb law I don't like. Cause people dumb. If people not dumb, no dumb law. Uhh I am very smart. "Systems thinking" oh fucking hell stfu
That being said, any expectation of thoughtfulness at all makes politics frustrating. Even basic things like why people keep making small random changes when most of these problems and solutions haven't changed in more than 2 millennia. And there is a pretty easy consensus to come to about what works. The repeated failures of authoritarianism to get to a good place are so consistent it is wild that people keep trying it.
This is very different to age sniffing here. Age sniffing is not being queried via public votum - lobbyists push it through without any resistance. It's amazing how this works.
This whole argument is why we do not have more direct democracy. The people in power and people who benefit from the status quo do not want the hoi polloi taking the "wrong" decisions. We might end up nationalising things or taxing big business effectively or all sorts of terrible things. Better to just give people the illusion of choice by letting them choose between two "neo-liberal" parties.
Not all referenda that might win a "yes" vote are sensible to propose.
Cancer surgery is an extremely important decision, directly affecting many people's lives.
What happened with Brexit was a analogous a bunch of salesmen on TV saying "that mysterious ache you have, don't listen to doctors who say it's fine, call our surgical team today! It's cancer! We can fix this quickly and you'll be back to your old self within a week!" for two decades, then the country agreeing, going to surgery, and waking up to find they'd had half their liver removed, the post-surgical biopsy results said it was fine and not cancerous at all, it took 6 months to recover and they could never drink alcohol again. And the ache was still there.
If it had been an honest "we know it will cost X, we are willing to spend this because otherwise what is the point of money", that would have been totally fair.
Instead, problems that weren't caused by the EU were blamed on it for decades, while the benefits of membership were treated as the natural state of the world to the extent that talk of losing them was equated with "being punished".
> The referendum was originally conceived by David Cameron as a means to defeat the anti-EU faction within his own party by having it fail.
After that, another issue is that the leave campaign was heavily based on lies and misleading the British voters.
Couple that with a extreme form of policy lock-in / hysteresis: you need just to form a small margin in a majority at a single point of time. After that point of time, the popular opinion doesn't matter anymore because getting back to EU isn't as easy as leaving. So the misinformation campaign need to work just once. By the time voters realize what happened, it's too late.
This situation is a critical failure of democracy. Not just direct democracy, representative democracy can't work in a post-truth world either.
Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble
The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways.
Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
But chat control and age verification are different things.
It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.
Maybe one of the most helpful parallels is with mail. I think US and other countries have strict laws about mail communication privacy. Someone can in theory open your mail but it's strictly regulated and not done in a total way.
Also I do think talking about future malicious government prosecuting people based on what was collected previously is actually a good one. But just talking about privacy may be a little too vague.
For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions). Then why do you care about another way to label you, if you think they already do it, but randomly.
I feel that the privacy discussions do not acknowledge at all there are many other structural society issues. Sure it would make an evil-intelligent government have a harder time, but will not improve at all life with an evil-idiot government, and to me it seems those are a bit more prevalent (note: idiot = implementing solutions that will not solve the problems they claim they do, while them honestly thinking they do solve them)
Although they appear to be different different things at first sight, they share the same agenda and objective, mass surveillance and identification of the citizens. Once the door is opened, it can be expected that things will not end there; Politicians and their patrons will exploit this data under "committees" (and of course be excluded from such surveillance as an aggravating factor).
Nowadays it's needed a court order to access legally to the privacy of citizens, and this must be done by the Police or the Interpol, nevertheless someones want to break this.
If they were really worried by the citizens security, they would increase the number of police and judges working in this digital divisions, among other things related to this.
So it's likely to work again - not as often as a law-abiding citizen would like, but not never.
And e2ee/cryptography/bitcoin is just the implementation of free speech which supposed to be guaranted?
It is like saying that killing people is OK but storing photo of oneself nudes is a crime - and keep pretending to be not idiot.
I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash... But maybe some use crypto yes. And maybe criminals use e2ee. And Marybe you are rigth that it is a problematic thing for law enforcement. That is not the point though.
The point is criminalizing ordinary people for something completely reasonable like wanting to have the ability to talk in private. And talk in private about what they think of the current leadership...
It doesn't scale as well. Can't go cross-border easily etc.
I agree that it's wrong but I'm talking about common people (and lawmakers who care about) perception. Until they get burned they won't care and might not take your side like that.
And none of these things were ever made illegal.
>Ordinary people do not care about e2ee.
I am an ordinary person, and I care about the right to be secure and private in my communications. The founders of the United States put it in our Bill of Rights. Mail in America can't just be read without a warrant; it is protected by the 4th Amendment.