[HN Gopher] Oppose the Earn IT Act
___________________________________________________________________
Oppose the Earn IT Act
Author : joeyespo
Score : 963 points
Date : 2020-07-01 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (foundation.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (foundation.mozilla.org)
| justinyan wrote:
| The act itself seems to revolve around limiting section 230
| protections
| (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:...)
| to those who pass a checklist of TBD requirements determined by a
| TBD bureaucracy.
|
| I've struggled a bit to find resources helping to describe what
| section 230 protections are actually for, however. Many of the
| examples explaining section 230 protections seem to revolve
| around things like defamation in Youtube comments or product
| reviews, but I'm having trouble making the leap from that to why
| messengers are so concerned about this bill. Why do tools like
| messengers need section 230 protections to begin with? AFAICT
| they still have to submit to things like national security
| letters, so what does section 230 buy, say, Whatsapp or Signal?
| sailfast wrote:
| I reached out to my representatives on this when the Act was
| first proposed. I'm confused about the changes that have happened
| since that time and the post does not say anything about what has
| changed. What does "Advancing" mean in this case? If I have
| already contacted all of my legislators about strong encryption
| and opposition to this bill, what is the latest change that
| requires re-engaging?
| programmarchy wrote:
| Thankful for Mozilla and EFF, but have any tech elites spoken out
| against this or put money into defeating it? Thiel, Musk, Altman,
| Graham... hello? Should we assume SV is complicit?
| Klonoar wrote:
| Not even touching on those individuals, it's been bothering me
| that it feels like mostly silence from Google, Apple, Facebook
| (who this would presumably _really_ hit at), etc.
|
| I'd really love to be missing something. It feels like this is
| just fading into the background... and while I can acknowledge
| the idea that you might just try to fight this as
| unconstitutional after it passes, that feels inherently risky
| given this administration (if not downright stupid).
| foolfoolz wrote:
| because apple, google, facebook already comply with this.
| they have built ways for the government to access their data.
| any company with an important enough set of information is
| going to get this request and you can't say no
| jedieaston wrote:
| At least for Apple, they claim the iPhone (at least devices
| post-checkm8) has not been compromised. iCloud is required
| to comply with records requests, but the data isn't in
| iCloud the feds can't get it. Even with checkm8, the Secure
| Enclave still has not been compromised.
|
| If they were in bed with the feds, the FBI/NYPD wouldn't
| keep asking them for keys that Apple doesn't have.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I know what you're saying, but where do you think you are?
| Please have enough common sense to assume I asked the
| question knowing how that works.
|
| The primary thing with this bill that the companies seem
| explicitly quiet on is the fact that the use case it opens
| up for the government (sidestepping user
| privacy/encryption) coupled with the level of power it more
| or less places in the Attorney General's hands.
|
| I can't in good faith assume that these companies are
| comfortable with this, and I'd like to know why they're not
| speaking up.
| google234123 wrote:
| Warrant-proof encryption is not compatible with a society that
| accepts the principle that we are accountable to the law. There
| is nothing sacred about your cell phone.
| snazz wrote:
| Encryption that can only be unlocked by the "good guys" is
| fundamentally not how encryption works.
|
| 'JoshTriplett explained it better than I did:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23704928
| darkarmani wrote:
| That's a very bold claim. We already have warrant-proof toilets
| for flushing drugs down. Why do you think crypto should be
| illegal because old-technology warrants don't work very easily
| with it?
|
| We've had warrant-proof encryption for a long time now in our
| society (at least 20 years?).
| chejazi wrote:
| Obviously this sucks as a proposal but... how do we stop the
| child porn?
| gspr wrote:
| I don't know. But I _do_ know that it 's not a technology
| problem.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Just a thought, but maybe we should arrest people who make
| child porn.
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| What about those outside the country?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Why not send a SEAL strike team? It would be cheaper than
| the overall effect of banning strong encryption.
| hvis wrote:
| Why not bomb the shit out of them?
|
| Or finally dispense with the desire to police the residents
| of other countries, and contact the local authorities.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Serious answer:
|
| - Undercover police work and informants, which is how most
| large busts already happen now. The worst offenders are not
| swapping child porn on Facebook or Dropbox
|
| - Encourage marriage and remove benefits penalties for two-
| parent households, as children are substantially more likely to
| be abused when their biological father is not in the household
|
| - Institute the death penalty for child sexual abuse and make
| sure it is performed swiftly and publicly
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This sounds like the start of a false dichotomy.
| tzs wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| These bad bills keep coming up in an effort to address
| serious real problems, like child porn. People are going to
| keep proposing bills to address these problems until
| something passes.
|
| By just concentrating on shooting down bad bill after bad
| bill without devoting any effort to getting good bills
| proposed the next bill after each defeated bad bill will be
| another bill from the same general set of people. Maybe the
| new one will address some of the issues in the prior ones but
| the chances are good that it won't address all of them.
|
| Just telling everyone else what is wrong with their approach
| to solving a problem instead of also offering up your own
| better solutions tends to not work well in the long run.
| bcassedy wrote:
| Child porn is a serious problem in that it is abhorrent.
|
| I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious problem
| in that it has significant impact at a societal level.
|
| These bills are not being introduced to significantly
| reduce child porn. They're meant to further enhance
| surveillance powers or earn easy political points. Any
| actual effect on crime is a side benefit.
|
| Let's not forget that the same people that propose these
| bills are the ones hanging out at Epstein's private island.
| krapp wrote:
| >I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious
| problem in that it has significant impact at a societal
| level.
|
| >Let's not forget that the same people that propose these
| bills are the ones hanging out at Epstein's private
| island.
|
| The implication in the last sentence of your comment
| would seem to contradict your initial premise.
| bcassedy wrote:
| There are only a few hundred people in Congress. Even if
| all of them were partaking this still wouldn't be a
| societal impact level issue.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Just telling everyone else what is wrong with their
| approach to solving a problem instead of also offering up
| your own better solutions tends to not work well in the
| long run.
|
| How would you think the introduction of a competing bill
| would fare, if it still needs the support of the first bill
| proponents? Wouldn't they believe that anything short than
| the original bill is not worth supporting?
|
| I don't think the issue is that there are no better ways to
| deal with, say, child porn. I do believe that many
| politicians, if not most, refuse to acknowledge that there
| are better solutions out there, and for that there are
| several factors.
| darkarmani wrote:
| > to address serious real problems, like child porn
|
| Can you quantify the size of this problem? It sounds like
| military defense spending during the cold war. "You just
| have to take our word for it that child porn is a massive
| problem affecting 1 out of 4 children, so we need to crush
| the tech industry."
| antepodius wrote:
| Have a mandatory bodycam implanted in everyone's right
| eyesocket, that livestreams to government servers 24/7.
|
| This is an obvious short-term mitigation tactic until they
| develop brain implants that can pre-emptively moderate harmful
| thoughts.
| zelly wrote:
| Make possession carry the death penalty.
|
| Before you think that's too harsh, consider that the other
| options are to ban encryption or to not try to stop it at all
| (quasi-decriminalization).
|
| I don't think anyone would oppose a bill to make CP carry the
| death penalty. The problem is they won't ever make this law
| because then they won't be able to milk the cow anymore.
| darkarmani wrote:
| A modest proposal would suggest killing all of the children.
| What did you have in mind?
| lisper wrote:
| Does anyone where know where this bill is at in the legislative
| process? Should we be leaning on senators or congresscritters or
| both?
| mkskm wrote:
| FFTF has a campaign on this now as well that routes a call to
| each representative: https://www.noearnitact.org. The bill is
| voted on tomorrow, so today's the last day to get your voice
| heard.
| einpoklum wrote:
| After years of ever-deepening privacy violations in the US, I'm
| surprised that this hasn't passed yet.
|
| I mean, the government already legally demands that all the large
| corporations make them a copy of all of your communications that
| pass through them. So why should it be legal for you to encrypt
| any of it without them being able to decrypt it? How are they
| supposed to spy on you effectively with just the meta-data, you
| know?
| 7ArcticSealz wrote:
| Many years ago, I read an article about some proposal to creating
| and using alternative dns root zones. Organizations certainly do
| this but how feasible would it be to maintain a 'separate'
| internet?
| freeqaz wrote:
| I took the opportunity to donate to Mozilla as well. I'd
| encourage you to do the same! They are one of the "good guys" on
| the internet and they need our support to stay alive.
| gonational wrote:
| The only true government is newly-formed.
|
| In the span of many decades, perhaps centuries, all manner of
| governments evolve into their final form: tyranny.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| We need to vote out the people pushing for backdoors. They seem
| to want backdoors at any cost, without any technical
| understanding of why its a terrible idea. Vote them out!
| linuxftw wrote:
| Just like we needed to vote out the people that voted for the
| bailouts and the Iraq war.
|
| Politics keeps moving on. I'm still on the Iraq war. I'm not
| interested on any other issue until we solve that one.
|
| Edit: s/bailouts of/bailouts and/
| the-dude wrote:
| What are "bailouts of the Iraq war" ?
| djsumdog wrote:
| Maybe OP means both the bailouts in 2008 plus the Iraq war
| in 2003? Or the fact that the US is still actively involve
| militarily in predator bombing seven nations?
| linuxftw wrote:
| I meant "and" as you guessed (I think?).
|
| Everyone vowed to vote out the representatives that
| bailed out Wall Street and left home owners holding the
| bag. Then whatever came along and poof, that didn't
| matter.
|
| Same (and more importantly) with the Iraq war. IMO, you
| voted for it, you're out. Doesn't matter why, doesn't
| matter what you believed at the time, you're out.
|
| There's been zero accountability on death and destruction
| on the grandest scale this century, so I don't expect
| anyone to remotely lift a finger about some IT bill.
| ipnon wrote:
| If you give up, then the powers that be win by default.
| djsumdog wrote:
| In American politics, voting really doesn't make a difference
| as much as just having opinions alighted with those of the top
| 10% of income earners[0]. Making noise and protests are more
| effective in some ways, but the sad reality is that most of
| senate/congress is not beholden to the selectorate of all
| voters, but rather the smaller selectorate of influences that
| control the advertising and narrative that allows them to
| continue to be re-elected.
|
| [0]: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-
| make-a-...
| cevn wrote:
| Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) - vote for Jamie Harrison on
| Nov 3 in SC
|
| Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) - term ends in 2022*
|
| Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) - 2024
|
| Dianne Feinstein (D-California) - 2024 as well... good luck
| with this one
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Been working on that last one for years. At least I'm likely
| to out live her.
| cevn wrote:
| I believe you. I've never understood how she garners so
| much support in progressive Cali of all places.
| granitDev wrote:
| She's got money and power and a D in front of her name,
| she'll get voted in every time in California. Vote Blue
| no matter who, remember?
| coldpie wrote:
| > Vote Blue no matter who, remember?
|
| I mean, yes. Feinstein is better than the alternative in
| the General. The Primaries are the way to get rid of her,
| I can't believe no one has booted her out yet.
| nuclear_eclipse wrote:
| The most recent general election was Dem vs Dem (due to
| the unique way that CA primaries work). Feinstein still
| won a strong majority of the statewide vote. :|
| trsohmers wrote:
| You don't seem to understand the California
| Jungle/Blanket primary system... All candidates from
| any/all parties run against each other in the primary,
| and the top two are the contenders for the general
| election. Recently this has led to two Democrats always
| being facing each other in the general election.
|
| In her 2018 race, Feinstein faced another Democrat, who
| lost by 10 points in the general with Feinstein winning
| the vast majority of the vote in densely populated areas:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_e
| lec...
| jedberg wrote:
| California is not as progressive as you might hope. The
| cities are full of progressives, but outside the cities
| is very conservative. You have to be fairly moderate to
| win statewide office.
|
| Newsom was a reaction to Trump, but sort of an
| aberration. More than half of our governors have been
| Republicans, including Regan, who went on be President
| and a paragon of the GOP.
|
| Since the 80s 14 out of 30 years has been Republicans,
| and Jerry Brown was 10 of the remaining 16 years, and
| he's pretty moderate as far as Democrats go.
| newen wrote:
| Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco. I don't think you
| can call even the cities progressive.
| jedberg wrote:
| Pelosi has power and will never be voted out no matter
| how far she strays from the people she represents.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Anyone have a template for opposing this bill?
|
| Needs elaboration, but I see two major points:
|
| 1. It puts our national security at risk. It opens up American
| cyber-security at large to nation states like China, Russia, and
| Iran, as well as more sophisticated terrorist groups.
|
| 2. It hampers innovation and competition in the tech industry.
| Compliance will increase costs, especially for startups,
| especially in a Covid19 environment, and the global market will
| not be able trust the cyber-security of American networks.
| blintz wrote:
| I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus
| on is destroying strong encryption.
|
| I guess I'm biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood,
| but this is crazy, right?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| We have bipartisan consensus[1] that tech companies have acted
| badly and that Section 230 should be repealed or significantly
| amended. I think EARN IT will probably kill Section 230, not
| strong encryption, so I think EARN IT is pretty great. Tech
| companies probably should be coming to the realization by now
| that it's only a matter of time (probably 4-8 years) before we
| close the 230 loophole: So if they're given a choice, they
| should choose to protect strong encryption, and forego Section
| 230 protection, since it's going away anyhow.
|
| [1]Kind of, Democrats think tech companies got Trump elected,
| Republicans think tech companies are suppressing conservative
| viewpoints, but either way, they agree on the problem.
| unreal6 wrote:
| Can you clarify what you mean by the "230 Loophole"? Many
| believe that tech companies should be fully responsible for
| anything said on their platforms. If this were the case, I
| believe this would have an extraordinary chilling effect on
| speech.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| There are already extraordinary chilling effects on speech
| -- try criticizing Black Lives Matter on any major social
| media, for example, and you will likely be censored,
| doxxed, and even receive death threats.
|
| Up until now, major social media (FB, Twitter, Youtube
| etc.) have been free to suppress conservative voices in the
| name of opposing racism and white supremacists. The tech
| platforms have been shielded from lawsuits by 230. Once 230
| is suspended or repealed, they will no longer be shielded
| from lawsuits.
|
| As a result, someone gets doxxed, fired from his job,
| threatened with violence etc., he now has the wherewithal
| to go after the platform that facilitated the cancel mob.
| plokiju21 wrote:
| So imagine 230 is repealed. Facebook can now be sued for
| what crazy people say on their platform. Do you think
| this will be better or worse for free speech on the
| internet?
| granitDev wrote:
| For how much free speech is suppressed by social media?
| It could only get better, because the one sided free for
| all isn't doing anyone any good.
| mindslight wrote:
| To the extent that a cancel mob was created by the
| editorialization of a company (eg promoting specific
| posts), they can already sue the company for its part -
| section 230 does not apply to the data that the company
| itself publishes. And to the extent that the cancel mob
| organized itself organically, attacking a company for
| providing a conduit is a direct attack on free speech.
|
| That said if this does pass, we can only hope that the
| attractive nuisances of webapps will fall out of fashion.
| User-advocating client software is the real anti-
| censorship future. Of course what will likely happen is
| the frog will slowly continue to boil, and the censorship
| regime will be extended to p2p communications as well.
| mulmen wrote:
| Tech companies have the right to suppress speech on their
| platforms, just like everyone.
|
| Section 230 just makes the courts more efficient. There
| is no loophole.
|
| Sorry to keep posting this link but the Section 230
| misconception is very dangerous.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/he
| llo...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| TechDirt/Copia Institute is funded directly by Google,
| and should be interpreted as paid lobbying.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok, here it is from Ken White:
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2019/08/29/make-no-law-
| deplatformed/
| djsumdog wrote:
| It dangerously goes two ways. Twitter tried to claim
| their banners on Trump's (and other public officials
| Tweets) were allowing because of 230! They're trying to
| have it both ways and it's a very very dangerous game to
| play. Viva Frei, a Canadian litigator, does a great
| breakdown of 230:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4XJHX_pNOc
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Twitter tried to claim their banners on Trump 's (and
| other public officials Tweets) were allowing because of
| 230_
|
| I doubt it (though feel free to link to a statement),
| because they aren't "allowed" to put labels on tweets
| because of Section 230, they're allowed to do so by the
| first amendment.
| darkarmani wrote:
| You are suggesting a technical solution to a cultural
| problem.
|
| Speech is supposed to have consequences. How else could
| it be?
|
| > Up until now, major social media (FB, Twitter, Youtube
| etc.) have been free to suppress conservative voices in
| the name of opposing racism and white supremacists.
|
| I guess nazis can be seen as conservative voices by
| definition. But isn't that the same thing as Fox in the
| other direction? Corporations suppress viewpoints they
| don't like. Have you read the ToS?
|
| > As a result, someone gets doxxed, fired from his job,
| threatened with violence etc., he now has the wherewithal
| to go after the platform that facilitated the cancel mob
|
| So newspapers will be unable to report the news because
| people might lose their jobs? People lose their job all
| of the time when newspapers report on their
| crimes/actions.
|
| Cancel cultural is a bad cultural phenomenon. We need to
| develop a healthier culture to fix this problem.
| Hamfisted Federal laws are not going to make a
| significant difference here without causing significant
| harm.
| paulgb wrote:
| > Cancel cultural is a bad cultural phenomenon. We need
| to develop a healthier culture to fix this problem.
| Hamfisted Federal laws are not going to make a
| significant difference here without causing significant
| harm.
|
| I started writing a reply to parent before I saw yours
| but I stopped when I saw this sentence because there's no
| way I could put it better.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Honest question, why do you think that Section 230 should be
| repealed?
|
| I myself believe that companies should be doing a better job
| at moderating the contents they host in their websites, but
| also that by repealing such provision, smaller ventures with
| not enough money to enforce the rules, would either go
| bankrupt or simply suppress any third party content to avoid
| issues with the law enforcement.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Tech companies don't just host harmful content: They make
| money off of it. The fact that Google and Facebook _take a
| cut_ off malware, scams, and fraud perpetrated over their
| advertising platforms, while bearing no responsibility or
| liability for them gives them an incredible disincentive to
| shut down bad actors.
|
| A huge portion of Google Ad income is malicious content,
| and as long as they can't be sued or indited for it,
| they're going to continue to automatically approve and
| profit off criminal activity.
|
| The problem with Section 230 isn't about one guy who posts
| something bad, the problem is with systemic abuse on
| platforms which are financially motivated to allow the
| abuse to continue.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > A huge portion of Google Ad income is malicious
| content, and as long as they can't be sued or indited for
| it, they're going to continue to automatically approve
| and profit off criminal activity.
|
| Citation needed.
|
| Also, wouldn't this also apply to broadcasting companies?
| Say, potentially harmful commercials airing on prime
| time.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I was going to challenge you to find me a company selling
| malware on CBS or NBC, but then I remembered Google runs
| TV ads, so fair point. /s
|
| And importantly, broadcast television doesn't get Section
| 230 protections, and does just fine. A great example of
| why tech companies don't need immunity. Broadcast TV ads
| are sold on a smaller scale, such that humans are
| involved in the process and bad actors are caught early.
|
| > Citation needed.
|
| The general problem here is that Google is the only one
| with meaningful data, and obviously they're very
| motivated not to reveal how big a market illegal activity
| is on their platform. Note that even in legitimate
| verticals, scams push the bidding higher for advertising
| on their platforms. So not only does Google make money
| directly off scammers, they also make more money off
| legitimate advertisers because the bidding was higher.
| Google both claims that there's no data proving their
| business is illegitimate, while keeping all the data
| secret. So we _have_ to rely on the evidence we can see.
|
| A great example is what The Verge uncovered in 2017 with
| rehab scams:
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-
| me-go... where they found some insane CPCs: "If you're in
| Arizona, and you click on the top ad, you'll cost that
| advertiser around $221", and Google was actively
| soliciting business in this extremely valuable market:
| "The search giant actively courts treatment centers, both
| online and off. In May, a Google "digital ambassador" was
| a featured speaker at the Treatment Center Executive &
| Marketing Retreat". They had multiple people directly
| focused on cultivating business in this particular
| market. Scammers were both harming consumers directly,
| and also pushing the CPCs up to insane levels for real
| drug rehab centers, hurting consumers indirectly as well.
|
| You can also see an interesting way Google helps bad
| actors stay hidden here: "The 800 number was ephemeral.
| ...Google offers advertisers unique "tracking" phone
| numbers that forward to a company's phones, so they can
| understand which ads are bringing in the most clients.
| The phone numbers only stay up as long as the ad does."
| So you can't even meaningfully trace out a phone number
| on a scam ad back to the company that pays for it.
| Everything is laundered through Google accounts.
|
| After this piece, of course, Google finally acted and
| more or less shut down their entire drug rehab vertical
| for a while, and retooled it. I'm sure it's drastically
| less profitable now. But the problem is, they got to keep
| the millions and millions of dollars profit they got from
| engaging in a business practice that was directly harmful
| to people.
|
| My long time example, which Google still refuses to
| address, is searches for "mapquest". MapQuest is a top
| search term for seniors, who don't realize that other
| directions sites exist. To it's credit, MapQuest is still
| pretty decent. Problem is, Google sells ads for "Maps
| Quest" that look like the real site, but redirect you to
| sites that require you install browser-hijacking add-ons
| in order to proceed (add-ons hosted in the Chrome Web
| Store, I might add). No matter how many times I've
| attempted to report them, these sites are allowed to
| continue doing this. A Googler actually had them removed
| once, and Google re-enabled the same sites' ads within a
| couple of hours.
|
| Another fun part of this, is that if MapQuest wants to be
| presented above those malicious ads, MapQuest has to
| outbid them... for it's own trademarked brand name! Ad
| squatting is another way Google rakes in massive revenues
| via essentially blackmail: Pay us or we'll let scammers
| place higher than you for your own name.
|
| I wouldn't hazard a statistic, because it'd be a guess,
| but I imagine if Google were forced to disclose
| advertisers and spends, you'd find a substantial portion
| of Google's profits were ill-gotten gains.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This doesn't address my question though: is it true that
| a significant percentage of Google's Adsense revenue
| comes from such ads?
|
| I'm not denying that Google profits from these, that
| would be silly. My point is that broadcast companies run
| morally questionable ads all the time, yet it seems that
| we should be holding Google for a higher level of
| accountability.
|
| Take for example drug commercials. If you are concerned
| about scams targeting seniors, then you must have
| reservations about these, since the way they portray drug
| positive effects, and downplay the adverse ones, is
| clearly misleading. Or, say, political ads. Facebook is
| taking a lot of flak because of these, but local TV
| stations have been running misleading and often
| borderline hateful commercials for ages, e.g.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-met-jeanne-
| ives-b...
|
| https://www.kcur.org/show/up-to-date/2016-07-25/asian-
| americ...
|
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/10577284453865
| 390...
|
| None of the broadcasters involved in playing these
| commercials faced any sort of legal consequences.
| Shouldn't that change, too?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > This doesn't address my question though
|
| I did address it, though the answer is disappointing:
| Only Google (or someone with Google's private business
| data) could give you that number. But it's absolutely
| much higher than they'd like you to believe. I just can't
| tell you if it's 30%, 60%, or 90% of their revenue, the
| public doesn't have access to that information. I'm
| confident that how ever much you believe it is, it's
| higher.
|
| > yet it seems that we should be holding Google for a
| higher level of accountability
|
| On the contrary, repealing Section 230 would place Google
| on the _same_ level of accountability as broadcast
| companies. Section 230 carves out a special immunity to
| prosecution and lawsuit that only applies to online
| platforms. Broadcast companies are already held to all of
| the laws and risks that Section 230 is protecting Google
| and Facebook from.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > I did address it, though the answer is disappointing:
| Only Google (or someone with Google's private business
| data) could give you that number. But it's absolutely
| much higher than they'd like you to believe.
|
| Well, that's pretty much wishful thinking.
|
| > Broadcast companies are already held to all of the laws
| and risks that Section 230 is protecting Google and
| Facebook from.
|
| Are they now.
|
| Let's put it this way: section 230 protects Facebook from
| being held accountable for the anachronistic opinion
| about Jewish people, and violent tendencies derived from
| it, of a random user. Such random user, as a TV show
| guest, could spout a call to arms to an audience of 2,5
| million spectators, and the broadcaster would not suffer
| any legal consequences.
|
| Repealing section 230 _without_ a reasonable alternative
| would indeed held Google for a higher level of
| accountability than, say, Fox News.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > Repealing section 230 _without_ a reasonable
| alternative would indeed held Google for a higher level
| of accountability than, say, Fox News.
|
| Under what law? Section 230 is a special exemption for
| tech companies. Without it, Google is indeed subject to
| the same laws as Fox News. Now, it's possible those laws
| aren't strong enough... but they'd be equally not strong
| enough upon both Google and Fox News.
|
| Currently, Fox News is held accountable poorly, and
| Google is not held accountable at all whatsoever.
| darkarmani wrote:
| What is the problem here? Having federal interference in tech
| is a terrible idea as any laws are usually overbroad and
| stifle large amounts of innovation that we haven't imagined
| yet as an unintended consequence.
|
| What multiuser system would survive a libel-law attack from a
| highly unfriendly jurisdiction? Email, forums, comments, and
| other forms of posting opinions would immediately cause any
| small operator to shutdown.
|
| You just need a friend to make libelous comments on discus
| and then sue any site you want. 230 isn't a loophole, it's
| essential for speech on the Internet.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Then the platforms that host social media need to stop
| suppressing speech.
|
| The President wants to kill 230 because Twitter is
| censoring his tweets. His response was to suspend their
| protection from liability lawsuits under 230.
|
| It's politics; everything's always about politics. Whether
| this will be good for the industry and society is another
| question.
| darkarmani wrote:
| > Then the platforms that host social media need to stop
| suppressing speech.
|
| They clearly state in their ToS that speech is limited on
| their platform.
|
| > His response was to suspend their protection from
| liability lawsuits under 230.
|
| Well, his response was to state he was "looking to see if
| he could suspend their protection". There is nothing to
| be worried here, because anyone can tell him that the
| answer is that he can't suspend their protection.
|
| It was just infantile bluffing that in most other
| situations would cause the person bluffing to lose face,
| but not in the current political reality. In most
| situations, it's best to not state orders that you can't
| possible enforce and that reveal your weakness.
| mulmen wrote:
| They have a right to suppress speech on their platform.
| If I show up at your house and demand to install campaign
| signs in your yard because of my first amendment rights
| what are you going to say?
|
| I suspect "get off my property".
|
| Twitter and Facebook and everyone else have those same
| rights.
| mulmen wrote:
| You seem to be misinformed about Section 230. This link
| provides a better description than I can.
|
| Summary: there is no loophole.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello.
| ..
| xwdv wrote:
| I can. I have one administration in particular that I think can
| be blamed for this massive expansion of the surveillance state
| in the past 10 years.
| jmspring wrote:
| There was a huge push for backdoors and weakened crypto during
| the Clinton years. It's not a right/left thing, it's government
| control thing.
| didip wrote:
| It's not crazy. The class war between the super rich and
| everybody else has been happening forever. It just becomes more
| blatant now.
|
| Not sure what is the solution here, the popular people's choice
| couldn't even get elected.
| asdkhadsj wrote:
| I'm most curious on when they'll be knocking on the door of
| open source projects next. Notably, anyone who uses any crypto.
|
| As much as I hate it, I can at least understand the back door
| argument from a [ignorant] lawmaker perspective. If I pretend
| and say their intentions are noble, I understand.
|
| What concerns me though, beyond the obvious backdoor problems,
| is the who is next? Because I doubt big corporations will
| satisfy their greed for power and information. Especially since
| anyone who has anything to hide or cares about security will
| move into open source.
|
| As a developer with a passion for developing distributed,
| encrypted software - when are they going to threaten me? Worse
| yet, the software I write I purposefully do not have control
| over. So am I going to be held liable for the fact that I
| literally cannot help them?
|
| No matter what they threaten me with, the best I could do is
| break the application for future users. So what are they going
| to do to control these distributed systems? Especially ones who
| truly aim to be distributed, P2P & self hosted by every user?
|
| As terrifying as the current anti-encryption behavior is, I'm
| oddly more concerned about the move after this.
| treis wrote:
| >I guess I'm biased since this is essentially my whole
| livelihood, but this is crazy, right?
|
| There's clearly a valid argument from the other side. For
| example:
|
| >Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which
| last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4
| million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material,
| according to people familiar with the reports.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...
|
| It's not clear how many of those lead to convictions but even a
| tiny fraction of a percent represents a significant number of
| children being rescued. Encrypting Messenger, as an example,
| will stop 3/4s of abuse reports and make it much safer and
| easier for paedophiles to exchange images. There's a pretty
| direct line from that decision to an increase in abuses like:
|
| >"inserting an ice cube into the vagina" of a young girl, the
| documents said, before tying her ankles together, taping her
| mouth shut and suspending her upside down. As the video
| continued, the girl was beaten, slapped and burned with a match
| or candle.
|
| >"The predominant sound is the child screaming and crying,"
| according to a federal agent quoted in the documents.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption
| will put an end to the abuse itself? I'm actually convinced
| that all this does is reduce the sharing of such material,
| e.g. what people are outraged with is usually not only the
| act in itself but the fact that some sickos get off on this
| material. but I wouldn't think for a moment that because of
| some law less kids will be abused.
|
| I'm actually fine with some kids biting the dust (yes
| literally being killed) to prevent the greater evil which is
| that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society
| (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy
| more lives. I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice
| but more power to cops never solves anything (especially in
| poor volatile countries where cops are in fact part of the
| problem and happy to look away ...)
| treis wrote:
| >as horrible as this is do you think that banning
| encryption will put an end to the abuse itself?
|
| No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the level of
| abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse.
|
| >prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of
| mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is
| already) which will ultimately destroy more lives.
|
| Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2E
| encryption. I have not noticed lives being destroyed but
| perhaps you can share examples?
|
| >I'm not saying these kids don't deserve justice but more
| power to cops never solves anything
|
| Here's one that comes to mind:
|
| https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-
| fb...
|
| Facebook helped develop a zero day exploit that the FBI
| used to catch a predator that abused dozens of girls. In
| this one specific case clearly more power to the cops
| solved something.
|
| I can't cite any numbers, but it seems the majority of
| convictions I've read have some variation of evidence being
| found on phones, computers, or from sites like Facebook. It
| stands to reason that if we saw default E2E encryption
| across the board it would be a lot harder for the police to
| get evidence and would lead to a lot fewer convictions.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the
| level of abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse.
|
| call me old fashioned but every time I look at porn
| (which is very rare these days) I am disgusted by the
| meta-data that is added to these videos. It shows that
| people love to click on videos that read "stepdad and
| stepdaughter ..." and similar taglines. America has a
| problem with the whole "call me daddy" fetish. I never
| understood what this is about. It's deeply pedophelic
| imho and it's the main reason why I hate porn. It looks
| like it's hard to find videos where some form of
| domination (rough sex) isn't part of it. the way women
| are treated is IMO the gateway which normalizes violence
| first against women (even pretend rape is a genre here
| pushed by pornhub & co). why do people get off on this
| and why do porn companies get away with it ?? <- my
| opinion is to start the crackdown on this type of
| messaging here and before even cracking down have a
| discussion about wtf is wrong with people? why do they
| have to strangle each other during sex?
|
| > Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2E
| encryption. I have not noticed lives being destroyed but
| perhaps you can share examples?
|
| the problem with FB is mostly that it many countries FB
| _is_ the Internet. Myanmar (the Rohinga's) would be a
| fitting example. Also the Philipines where the Duarte
| government is currently using it on their brutal war on
| drugs. If there would be justice Zuck and anyone working
| at FB would be rotting in jail even before we discuss
| pedophelia. thousands in the Philipines have been killed
| thanks to Duarte's messaging. FB literally kills and gets
| away with it.
|
| FB agreeing to develop 0days to crack down on a few cases
| doesn't make them the good guys. I believe the world
| would be better off if FB wouldn't exist at all.
|
| Vice is also known to push a pro-cop pro-LE agenda. I
| stopped watching their videos and reading their content
| when they showed how cannabis production in Albania hurts
| Europe (wtf) ... they are a pro-cop & ultra-conservative
| outlet. Screw vice and screw cops.
|
| > I can't cite any numbers, but it seems the majority of
| convictions I've read have some variation of evidence
| being found on phones,
|
| I know security companies love to cite their work with
| law-enforcement and how they help fight crime. when I had
| an interview with the biggest Swiss security company few
| years ago they bragged about their work with Interpol and
| how they help fight the bad guys. But nobody ever
| mentions that the software companies like NSO, Gamma,
| HackingTeam makes doesn't just allow LS to compromise
| phones (people assume it's read-only) when reality is the
| features are always read-write. Putting things on these
| devices is possible because from an engineering pov why
| would you limit a feature and not allow write access ...
| I know enough cops who brag about how they abuse their
| power . So why would I trust them not to plant shit on
| these phones (especially when they're convinced that
| they're dealing with a bad guy).
| Dahoon wrote:
| > America has a problem with the whole "call me daddy"
| fetish. I never understood what this is about. It's
| deeply pedophelic imho
|
| It is impossible to have a discussion on this topic when
| some people use the word Pedophilia to cover "babies and
| small children" and others are using it to cover zero to
| eighteen year olds. While it might be immoral or illegal
| if a 55 year old is having sex with a 16 year old it
| isn't pedophilia. A Daddy kink is incest, again not
| pedophilia. Please use the correct terms. Otherwise it
| muddies the discussion until no one can discuss it at
| all.
|
| >why do they have to strangle each other during sex?
|
| Okay, now it smells like SJW and white-knighting. Many
| women fantasize about being raped, dominated and
| strangled. There's nothing bad or wrong in living out
| those fantasies. It doesn't normalize violence or cause
| rape.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > It stands to reason that if we saw default E2E
| encryption across the board it would be a lot harder for
| the police to get evidence and would lead to a lot fewer
| convictions.
|
| I am firmly-albeit-reluctantly OK with this, if the
| alternative is widespread surveillance of what should
| logically be private correspondence/communication among
| private citizens.
|
| I value the privacy of the hundreds of millions of the
| citizen population over a slight increase in the
| conviction rate of the tens to hundreds of thousands
| predators.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Agreed. Making encryption the boogeyman is the wrong way,
| too broad. Ensuring the _easily accessible comm channels_
| are accessible to law enforcement, seems like an OK
| compromise. What those channels are should be the focus
| of the discussion imo.
| mttddd wrote:
| This is my issue with the act, it doesnt spell out who
| would be subject to this rather leaves it up to the DOJ
| to spell out the rules later.
|
| I am probably in the minority here on HN but I think
| bundling together encryption with platforms like
| Facebook/IG is a bad idea given how easy those platforms
| make it for bad actors to meet/identify potential
| victims. Signal/whatsapp etc I am ok with since they dont
| provide that same ability.
| [deleted]
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Your government _is an Advanced Persistent Threat_.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > we have bipartisan consensus
|
| > we
|
| "It's a big club and you ain't in it" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0
| snarf21 wrote:
| Fear-mongering is strong. Look at all the freedoms we lost
| after 9/11. Pedophiles and terrorists and porn are always the
| scapegoats.
|
| It is also a very electable sound bite. Everyone is against the
| "bad people". Re-election at any cost is the goal. We have
| government of the people and by the people but we stopped being
| _for the people_ long long ago.
| pphysch wrote:
| Don't forget the communists, the OG once-and-future
| scapegoats.
| [deleted]
| krapp wrote:
| But pedophiles and terrorists _are_ 'bad people' and 'the
| people' are overwhelmingly in favor of stopping them.
|
| It's only in libertarian/ancap bubbles of places like HN
| where pedos and terrorists are treated like noble antiheroes
| in the eternal war against fascism and political correctness.
| If you're going to talk about government "for the people" you
| need to remember who "the people" actually are and what the
| majority of them want.
| jedberg wrote:
| Of course everyone wants those bad people stopped. But
| every law that claims to be "to stop the bad people and
| save the children" end up not actually getting used to that
| end, but instead to further harm the people. They all have
| far more collateral damage.
|
| I used to investigate computer crime. You know what would
| have made my job really easy? Unlimited access to all
| computers worldwide.
|
| Luckily I had to learn alternative investigative methods
| because we value privacy more than we value catching
| criminals, which is a good thing. I'd rather a criminal go
| free once in a while than a complete loss of privacy.
| carapace wrote:
| > Unlimited access to all computers worldwide.
|
| Isn't that more-or-less what the NSA have already?
|
| What I mean is, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA
| already have most criminals' dirty laundry. The only
| thing keeping the law from rolling 'em up wholesale is
| the Overton window around parallel construction.
| cntblvntbtr wrote:
| I can't really believe the shock.
|
| Have you noticed routine protest and informed debate occurring
| throughout the US for oh say 30 years to be generous?
|
| Political reality isn't logical, it's on the nose. There's no
| engagement to prevent this, and decades of flag waving as
| enforcement funding is cut.
|
| That has an impact.
|
| The generation that still holds the most seats in government
| has no idea how any of this works.
|
| Giving them the benefit of the doubt it's ignorance not
| informed malice their intuition is nevertheless "expand police
| state."
|
| I'm sure we'll all take a break from HN and debating flat or
| skeuomorphic to tell them piss off
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan
| consensus
|
| Hawkish foreign policy would be another one.
| cloudier wrote:
| Do you remember the bipartisan consensus on SOPA/PIPA?
|
| "This bill, COICA, was introduced on September 20, 2010, a
| Monday. And in the press release heralding the introduction of
| this bill, way at the bottom, it said it was scheduled for a
| vote on September 23 -- just three days later.
|
| And while of course there had to be a vote -- you can't pass a
| bill without a vote -- the results of that vote were a foregone
| conclusion. Because if you looked at the introduction of the
| law, it wasn't just introduced by one, rogue, eccentric member
| of Congress. It was introduced by the chair of the committee --
| and co-sponsored by nearly all the other members -- Republicans
| and Democrats. So there would be a vote, but it wouldn't be
| much of a surprise, because nearly everyone who was voting had
| signed their name to the bill -- before it was even introduced.
|
| I can't stress enough how unusual this is. This is emphatically
| not how Congress works. I'm not talking about how Congress
| should work, the way you see on Schoolhouse Rock. I mean the
| way it really works. I think we all know that Congress is a
| dead zone of deadlock and dysfunction. There are months of
| debates and horse-trading and hearings and stall tactics.
|
| ...
|
| Whoever was behind this was good."
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/how-aaron-swa...
| (excerpt from talk at
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqriFtr2k-k -- FWIW the
| lobbyist behind sopa/pipa was Chris Dodd, https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Chris_Dodd#Motion_Picture_Asso...)
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| I can. Our representative government represent corporations and
| the deep state, in the original Peter Dale Scott sense of the
| term (as opposed to the more recent abuse of it), and not the
| people.
|
| They have continually made moves like this, in a boiling frog
| fashion. Until we the people wake up from the two party divide
| and conquer system, very little will change, excepting very
| rare circumstances of pressure exerted en masse (SOPA/PIPA is a
| good example outlier).
|
| I've thought about solutions to this problem for a long time,
| and my conclusion is the things needed are the following (in
| order to prevent a long term overton window shift as has been
| happening):
|
| 1. Renewed participation in local politics and elections,
| especially at the state level, but also county, city, etc.
|
| 2. Once that is achieved, voting in ranked choice voting
| initiatives. This will enable the next step.
|
| 3. Stop voting for anyone based on party, in particular the
| main power structure is based on the majority rule in the house
| and senate... the end goal would be to take away the majority
| from both parties. This is a huge undertaking, so I'm not
| saying it would be easy, or even possible, but I think it is
| what is required. I think those paying attention enough and not
| enured to the tribalism of the parties understands they cannot
| be reformed from the inside. They are simply too entrenched,
| and have too many mechanisms to get rid of those who seek to do
| so. The point is that we don't need to gain a majority with
| this new coalition party of independents and third parties, we
| simply need to take the majority away from the two main
| parties. To get this done though, [1] must be done, because
| many of the state laws have been manipulated by the duopoly to
| prevent third parties and independents.
|
| 3.1 To avoid fracturing of the coalition, there should be some
| very rudimentary and base document that all persons running can
| agree on. This is also difficult but, since all congresspeople
| swear an oath to the constitution (5 U.S. Code SS 3331),
| something that reaffirms the principles of the constitution
| would be the best start. If they violate this, the coalition
| should work to remove them immediately. (something similar to
| Gingrich's "Contract with America")
|
| 4. Currently, and many don't know this, congresspeople have to
| sign an affidavit (5 U.S. Code SS 3333) confirming their oath.
| I think we should then work towards enforcement of the laws
| against violation thereof, the primary one being perjury, or
| something similar (18 U.S. Code SS 1918, 5 U.S. Code SS 7311).
| For example, how many people have straight up lied to congress
| and had no action taken against them? (Clapper is one of the
| more egregious ones that comes to mind, but the point is
| congress is in dereliction of duty in enforcing perjury laws)
|
| This would give the people a real opportunity to start passing
| laws that represent the people (such as term limits), but are
| still constitutionally sound.
|
| The legislative is the branch closest to the people, and this
| is why it should be the focus. From a cleaned up legislative we
| can begin to resurrect the separation of power between the
| branches that has been egregiously eroded, primarily by the
| executive. The current checks and balances system is crumbling.
| A huge part of this erosion is the surveillance system, which
| enables compromise of congresspeople by the executive and the
| MICC. We must fight for privacy, both encryption and anonymity,
| as a fundamental part of protecting the checks and balances
| system.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Well, nsa mass surveillance and legalized torture were never
| repelled by any side.
|
| In fact, the patriot act has been prolongued 5 times, no matter
| the administration, and is still in effect.
|
| As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| american people's interest in mind.
|
| Fighting for either seems so futile from here.
|
| Of course, we have similar problems as well so I'm not going to
| pretend I have a solution.
| wtn wrote:
| Some of the programs originally from the USA PATRIOT Act
| expired in March 2020.
| ancarda wrote:
| Do you happen to know which ones?
| yonaguska wrote:
| Section 215 is the major one. Allows government to obtain
| secret warrants for surveillance via a secret court
| system(FISC, FISA).
|
| Lindsey Graham(R) tried to extend this- but Trump has
| been somewhat vocally against this extension due to his
| own allegations that the FISA courts were misused to spy
| on him.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| I believe it was the far-reaching section 215, which
| allowed bulk collection of phone records and other data.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_summary_of_the_Patr
| iot...
| nitrogen wrote:
| Maybe the growing obsolescence of the legacy telephone
| network is why those provisions lapsed, and now we are
| seeing the fight for a replacement.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Nope they lapsed bec trump was upset that they were
| illegally used against him and he didn't want anyone else
| to suffer the same fate.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| As an American, I don't see any country in the world that
| doesn't have exactly the same problems.
|
| The EU has been considering similar anti-encryption
| legislation for years. Primarily supported by France, UK and
| Germany. The main opponents to it in the EU have been NGOs,
| which mirrors the American experience on this issue.
|
| The cynic in me speculates the reason the EU parliament
| hasn't pushed the issue further is simply because it's
| waiting for it's influential members states (or the US) to
| pass the legislation required to gut these services, so that
| they won't have the potentially unpopular task of doing so
| themselves.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Trump threatened to veto the Patriot renewal bill, which
| includes the FISA court, despite bipartisan support. The bill
| is now withdrawn pending rewrite.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| american people's interest in mind.
|
| To be fair, us Europeans have the same issues with our
| politicians, with the exception of socialists, communists and
| Greens. Just look for the article13 fiasco.
|
| We're all being fucked.
| ollo wrote:
| The socialists voted in favour of Article 13.
| raverbashing wrote:
| S&D was 50/50 more or less (other left-wing groups had
| less pro votes) https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/
| 8wayjf/infographic_...
|
| So, not really.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| S&D are not socialists, they're social democrats. _Big_
| difference.
| glenda wrote:
| Exactly, we need way more political parties with direct
| representation. However, power seems to do a great job of
| consolidating itself so that won't be an easy task.
| ericd wrote:
| First past the post voting tends toward a two party system,
| because there are strong incentives for smaller parties to
| consolidate to get to a majority.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Since this is a subject I find fascinating, I'll add this
| link that I first encountered here on HN long ago:
| http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
|
| It's a mathematical model and accompanying explanation
| that shows that simple plurality (first past the post)
| voting produces bi-polarization, while other voting
| methods like approval voting do not. It also shows that
| the instant-runoff voting method that people are trying
| to replace FPTP with is non-monotonic, meaning that
| gaining a few points of support can actually hurt a
| candidate.
| smichel17 wrote:
| I don't like that this page links to Arrow's
| impossibility theorem, because it's kind of misleading.
| https://rangevoting.org/ArrowThm.html
| thayne wrote:
| > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| american people's interest in mind.
|
| As an American, I don't see any party that has my interests
| in mind. Elections always seem to be having to choose the
| lesser of two evils.
| lukifer wrote:
| Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't
| inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system.
|
| https://www.fairvote.org/rcv
|
| https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives
|
| Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in
| court; 49 to go.
| Press2forEN wrote:
| Let's say the US had 5 parties and all 5 supported 5
| variations of the EARN IT act, what then?
| jonhohle wrote:
| start over?
|
| > to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
| among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
| the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
| becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
| People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
| Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
| organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
| most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness
| z3c0 wrote:
| Then we're choosing the lesser of five evils, except now,
| none of the evil parties alone have a strong enough
| electorate to squash any sixth party that emerges from
| the disenfranchised of the other five. That's completely
| unlike the current two-party system, where no third party
| can gain any traction due to not having a sizable enough
| electorate to take on "the big kids".
| godelski wrote:
| I want to push back against this, and specifically fair
| vote.
|
| - What they are referring to as RCV is called Instant
| Runoff Voting (IRV). IRV is a RCV, but RCV isn't IRV.
| Think "Rock and Roll is The Beatles" vs "The Beatles are
| a Rock and Roll group."
|
| - IRV isn't that great when it comes to Voter
| Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE)[0]. There's even other RCV
| methods like Ranked Pair[1] that are exactly the same for
| the voter. Essentially IRV is a 6% improvement upon
| plurality (what we currently use) but RP is a 15%
| increase from plurality. So I ask, why go to IRV when we
| can do twice as good? (or better! Keep reading)
|
| - Fair Vote claims that IRV has a high resistance to
| spoiler candidates (a candidate that takes away votes
| from another similar candidate). This is actually why the
| distinction from RCV and IRV is important and why Fair
| Vote is misleading. While RCV is better than plurality in
| this respect, some RCVs are better than others. IRV
| doesn't adequately solve this issue (but there are other
| RCVs that do!). IRV fails when two candidates are similar
| in positions and similar in popularity. [2] This is
| specifically the kind of spoiling that we are trying to
| prevent. We're trying to prevent a candidate like Sanders
| from spoiling Biden (or vise versa) not Jill Stein
| spoiling Biden. IRV prevents the latter, but not the
| former. I am specifically upset with Fair Vote because
| they are misleading in this context. Because they claim
| IRV := RCV, they take all the things different RCV
| methods solve and claim IRV solves them. This is simply
| not true (and why I make the first bullet).
|
| - There are just better methods besides ranking (also
| called "ordinal" methods). There's a class called
| Cardinal[3], that is actually simpler. The simplest is
| called approval. An example of approval is Netflix's
| rating system (binary). It does pretty well. Better yet
| is range/score voting. This would be the old Netflix
| system where you rated out of 5 stars. The difference in
| ranked vs cardinal is that you rate each candidate or
| policy independent of the others. This allows you to be
| more precise/honest (you may actually like two candidates
| equally!). It also reduces complexity because a common
| accident in ranking is rating two candidates the same. In
| ordinal systems this is a bug, in cardinal this is a
| feature.
|
| - I want to specifically mention STAR voting[4]. While
| STAR isn't perfect, it much better handles various types
| of spoiler candidates, has a high VSE (similar to that of
| RP), and handles strategic voting well. The last is the
| major reason you should choose STAR over RP (and there's
| no reason you should choose IRV over RP, because RP is
| strictly better). While all three systems encourage
| honest voting (in a single agent scenario) strategic
| voting is always an issue. Under no circumstance is STAR
| worse than IRV because STAR handles strategic voting.
| Specifically the most important kind is the "1-sided
| strategy"[5] which is arguably very common.
|
| - Lastly, I want to appeal to authority. Kennith Arrow
| (who you may be familiar with from Arrow's Impossibility
| theorem and Gibbard's extension) is a Nobel Laureate and
| said cardinal systems are "probably right."[6] And I
| think many of us know science speak into the confidence
| that conveys. That link is a full interview with him from
| Election Science. It is a good read/listen.
|
| TLDR: We want a good voting system, use STAR, not IRV.
|
| [0] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse.html
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs
|
| [2] https://www.electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-
| effect/
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting
|
| [5] https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/
|
| [6] https://www.electionscience.org/commentary-
| analysis/voting-t...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Most of what you write is good, but I want to point out
| that non-ordinal methods suffer from a problem that is at
| a level more fundamental than most analyses address, to
| wit, that there is no objective question about
| preferences that they ask, and thus no clear "correct"
| honest ballot marking given a set of voter preferences.
|
| There are conditions which resolve this (e.g., when
| ballot markings in a method like score voting represent
| the amount of some valuable resource the voter commits to
| paying if the given choice is elected, or where markings
| in approval represent a binding commitment to not
| participate if an non-approved option is chosen and/or to
| participate if an approved options is chosen.) But these
| resolutions are typically not available or desirable in
| most public elections.
| godelski wrote:
| Thank you. I'd like to respond in kind
|
| > that there is no objective question about preferences
| that they ask
|
| I don't see this as an issue. I also don't see it as a
| problem to specifically non-ordinal, but to _every_
| system. I like to try to explain a STAR05 ballot simply
| to people with a forum they are very familiar with. A
| ballot might look like below
|
| How do you feel about ___x___ candidate?
|
| Very Unfavorably, unfavorably, neutral, favorably, very
| favorably
|
| Those are your 5 options. Yes, this isn't exact, but we
| can't have an infinite score. But as we understand
| distributions, we know that the fluctuations won't matter
| much. If a group of people have an "honest" opinion that
| a candidate is rated "favorably" (or a 4) we'll see a
| distribution around this (a fairly tight distribution).
| So you'll get some 3's and 5's, but most people will give
| 4's and the average will be 4. So it isn't an issue.
| Similarly, if you are ranking people and view two
| candidates equally 50% of people will put candidate A in
| front of B and vise versa (well real world there'd be a
| bias for things like: who is listed first, "nicer"
| sounding name, familiarity, etc. But still, that's not
| too big of an issue because at the end we get pretty
| close to the optimal efficiency that the system can
| provide). You have to remember that there is no perfect
| system, Arrow and Gibbard showed that. But the question
| is if we statistically come close to the optimal (that
| the system can provide).
|
| I want to point out that simple approval voting is _VERY_
| effective, even though it is low precision. You 're
| literally choosing "like" and "dislike." Analysts aren't
| that concerned with the lack of objectivity in the
| difference between a 4 and 5 or a 3 and 4 because it is
| much more refined. If this is a major concern, then
| extend the expressiveness by increasing the range, e.g.
| 0-10.
|
| I would also encourage you to listen to that interview
| that I linked. Arrow briefly discusses this topic. He
| makes some criticisms of score voting but also says it is
| the option he would push (question is which he'd advocate
| for). Remember, there is no such thing as a perfect
| voting system. There's always a trade-off. We're just
| trying to minimize the trade-offs.
|
| And personally, if someone made RP popular I would gladly
| advocate for it. But because we're trying to trade one
| shitty system (plurality) for something only slightly
| less shitty (IRV) I am going to be vocal about the issues
| and lying that is happening. I don't really have an issue
| with RCVs, but specifically IRV. This is why I wanted to
| make a clear distinction between the two. Because when
| the discussions come up we end up using different
| languages, using the same words to describe different
| things. This may have been a smart move by Fair Vote, but
| we're on Hacker News and there's an expectation of more
| nuance than we'd have in other places like Reddit or in
| person.
| _hl_ wrote:
| This was extremely informative, thank you for taking the
| time to write it up!
| godelski wrote:
| Social Choice has been a hobby of mine ever since I saw
| the CGP Grey videos back when it first came out
| (2011!!!). The issues I have are that when you dig deeper
| you realize how much was lost.
|
| So I am happy to try my best to answer questions and
| provide more resources. If you like game theory, this is
| a great subject to learn and has clear and immediate
| applications (even outside of elections).
| lukifer wrote:
| Thanks for your post, I'll dig into your links. I hadn't
| heard of STAR in particular.
|
| Two counterpoints:
|
| - I'm aware of Arrow, but I file it under "perfect being
| the enemy of the good". :) Whatever the flaws of IRV, it
| still represents an order of magnitude improvement over
| FPTP at capturing political preferences. (We suffer so
| much status quo bias, it takes a lot of activation energy
| just to communicate to the average voter that better
| options exist at all!) But I happily cede the point: IRV
| is not the best choice of all the available options.
|
| - My favorite is actually Approval, and I don't always
| bring it up because it has lower mindshare and is less
| self-descriptive / "sticky-branding" compared to Ranked
| Choice. My reasons for the preference:
|
| (a) There's no nitpicking over counting methods: whoever
| gets the most votes wins.
|
| (b) Easy to explain to voters (including the counting
| system), and degrades gracefully for those who still want
| to vote for only one candidate. (I've heard objections
| that some voters hit a cheater-detection trigger, that
| "some people get more votes than others"; this can be
| solved by reframing as "Y/N" per candidate, so X
| candidates = X Y/N votes per voter).
|
| (c) I believe it largely sidesteps Arrow by redefining
| the success condition: rather than attempt to perfectly
| measure ideal preferences, it definitionally represents
| "Consent of the Governed": not who's your favorite, but
| who are you willing to live with? This would make it more
| difficult for bolder and more unconventional candidates,
| but at the benefit of rewarding coalitions and consensus-
| building. Polarization and sowing distrust would cease to
| be a viable strategy.
|
| (As an aside, in a perfect world, a blank ballot would be
| counted as a meta-vote for "None of the Above"; and if it
| wins, a whole new election of all-new candidates must be
| held.)
| godelski wrote:
| > I file it under "perfect being the enemy of the good"
|
| This is 100% how you should think about it. But what I'm
| trying to say is that we already have substantially
| better methods, so why not use them? Perfect is the enemy
| of good, but if I have the choice of eating acid, a bowl
| of oatmeal, and chocolate pudding, I'm going with the
| pudding. Perfect is the enemy of good when we don't
| already have the choices sitting right in front of us.
|
| > [IRV] still represents an order of magnitude
| improvement over FPTP at capturing political preferences
|
| And here's where I'm disagreeing, but only slightly. It
| is definitely better, but not an order of magnitude.
|
| > Approval voting
|
| I love approval voting. It is great because of its
| simplicity. That's why they use it in systems like
| Netflix. Easy to collect and gather results from.
| Honestly I use it all the time. It is how I solve the
| "where do you want to eat" problem with friends. You just
| list things until you get a unanimous vote or if you
| exhaust your list you just take the most approvals.
| Simple and easy.
|
| The reason I don't like it for elections is that it makes
| tying easy and I do not believe it has enough precision.
| The interview I linked Arrow talks about this so I'll
| deffer to him (he's clearly smarter than me). In
| elections you need a clear winner.
|
| Why I like score voting (and Condorcet methods, like RP,
| which is again RCV) is because I actually hate party
| systems, but I recognize that they can't be destroyed.
| But these methods drastically reduce their power (I don't
| think IRV does).
|
| And I highly encourage you to dig more into the subject
| and am happy to provide links. I also highly suggest
| looking deep into everything that the Fair Vote chart
| discusses, mainly because I believe you will be as
| frustrated as me (and others, like Condorcet proponents)
| when you learn what each of those topics are. Everyone I
| know that is well read in the subject is frustrated by
| Fair Vote's mischaracterizations.
| qchris wrote:
| Just a quick reminder that in California, a bill allowing
| statewide ranked-choice voting in all cities (not just
| charter ones) was passed by both the state assembly and
| senate by a wide margin, before being vetoed by Gov.
| Newsom last year.
|
| [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-
| Newsom-ve...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Lesser evils aren 't inevitable; they're a product of a
| bad voting system._
|
| Other countries with other systems don't really do much
| better.
|
| The fundamental problem is that the people who want this
| sort of power are the last ones who should ever be
| allowed to wield it. When people are willing to spend
| hundreds of millions of dollars to get a job that pays
| $500K a year, you have to wonder what's really going on.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Does "select a president [senator, etc] uniformly at
| random from the voting population" count as a voting
| system? I feel like that's about the only way to fix
| things at this point.
|
| (I'm partial to approval voting (vote "yes" or "no" for
| each cantidate separately and if the winner doesn't have
| at least 50% "yes", the office is vacant until the next
| election), but I suspect the party line would immediately
| become "you're a traitor if you approve anyone but the
| Party's candidate".)
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Does "select a president uniformly at random from the
| voting population" count as a voting system?
|
| Not voting, but it is a real election system, known as
| Sortition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It
| was used in ancient Athens.
|
| Also, yes, approval voting is a great approach and we
| should absolutely use it. We'd still get people who vote
| party-line, and it'd take a while for people to truly
| internalize that they can safely vote for other
| candidates they like, but it'd be a massive improvement.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > known as Sortition
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition). It was used in
| ancient Athens.
|
| I vaguely remembered that, but not the name, thanks.
| cavanasm wrote:
| Major this. Also plug for CGP Grey's "politics in the
| animal kingdom" video series that explains exactly why we
| have that 'lesser of two evils' problem, and how exactly
| RCV and Alternative vote systems resolve that problem, in
| a very simple, understandable way.
|
| https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom
| gspr wrote:
| What I, as a European from a country that elects
| proportionally (which isn't perfect, but anyway), cannot
| understand is the blank stare Americans give me when
| people point out that the two-party system and FPTP are
| _the_ things that need to be fixed for the US to have a
| democratic future. It 's like so many of them _cannot
| wrap their heads around something being fundamentally
| broken_. The same goes for Canadians and UKians.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Using terminology like FPTP may be the problem, I had to
| look it up, and still feel the description doesn't match
| the term.
| baddox wrote:
| Americans are deliberately and explicitly indoctrinated
| from a very young age to believe our system is the best
| system in every way: most democratic, most free, etc.
| It's not surprising that even the slightest challenge to
| those beliefs would be met with blank stares by many
| Americans.
| non-entity wrote:
| Heh, blank stairs if you're lucky. In my experience
| you're more likely to be called a traitor or god forbid a
| communist.
| Taek wrote:
| We've literally been brainwashed from birth to believe
| that we have, by far, the best government that's ever
| been built. It's a major part of the school system.
|
| Cognitive dissonance around the idea that there is room
| for improvement is inevitable.
| gspr wrote:
| I'm surprised that this attitude survives along side the
| attitude of "the government sucks at everything and it
| should be made as small as possible" that seems to be so
| pervasive in the US.
|
| And I'm surprised that I get the same blank stares from
| Americans that have lived for a decade in Europe. It's
| like they've never contemplated any other way of
| electing. Of course it's not true about everyone. I'm
| generalizing a lot here, but it still surprises me.
| baddox wrote:
| Most people who believe the "the government sucks at
| everything and should be as small as possible" probably
| still worship the Constitution and "the forefathers" and
| believe it's completely compatible.
| syshum wrote:
| Well I guess I am not part of most people, as I believe
| Government is inherently inefficient, and should be
| microscopic..
|
| I also believe that "whether the Constitution really be
| one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has
| either authorized such a government as we have had, or
| has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is
| unfit to exist." -- Lysander Spooner
| baddox wrote:
| Lysander Spooner is not taught in public schools civics
| courses, as far as I know.
| syshum wrote:
| Probably not, but he should be
|
| No Treason should be required reading
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| To be fair, the UK did have the "Alternative Vote
| Referendum" where we got the _second-worst voting system_
| proposed as an alternative to the worst voting system
| (FPTP). That might explain why nobody thinks
| "alternative voting systems" are any good; they just
| think of instant run-off.
| gspr wrote:
| Interesting! Was this done on purpose to discredit the
| voices for change, or was it just incompetence or a
| compromise or something like that?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Incompetence or compromise, I think. Hanlon's razor.
| godelski wrote:
| This frustrates me to no end. IRV has a 6% improvement of
| VSE over plurality. But STAR and RP have 15%
| improvements. Not only that, but both are strongly
| resistant to spoiler effects and the trend to two
| coalitions dominance (in the States that's the two party
| system, outside the states that's two major parties being
| the dominant ruler over their coalitions).
|
| The conspiracy theorist in me thinks it is because IRV
| doesn't effectively change things. The realist in me
| thinks it is just trendy.
|
| For others: See me other comment (it is large, you can't
| miss it) explaining these topics in more detail (with
| links!)
| godelski wrote:
| The problem with Fair Vote and the CGP Grey videos, while
| I like them for an introduction to the subject, both have
| two very misleading points.
|
| 1) When they say RCV they _specifically_ mean Instant
| Runoff Voting (IRV). There are _many_ other, and better,
| RCV methods.
|
| 2) They overclaim IRV's ability to solve the spoiler
| effect (see my other comment for links). While other RCV
| methods have strong resistance to spoiler effects, IRV
| has a weak resistance. CGP actually hints to this when he
| talks about that IRV doesn't prevent a trend towards two
| party systems.
| elihu wrote:
| I think when people talk about RCV (in the context of
| single-winner elections), they're almost always talking
| about the same thing as IRV.
|
| "Ranked voting" is the more general term.
|
| > Ranked voting is any election voting system in which
| voters use a ranked (or preferential) ballot to rank
| choices in a sequence on the ordinal scale: 1st, 2nd,
| 3rd, etc. There are multiple ways in which the rankings
| can be counted to determine which candidate (or
| candidates) is (or are) elected (and different methods
| may choose different winners from the same set of
| ballots). The other major branch of voting systems is
| cardinal voting, where candidates are independently
| rated, rather than ranked.[1]
|
| > The similar term "Ranked Choice Voting" (RCV) is used
| by the US organization FairVote to refer to the use of
| ranked ballots with specific counting methods: either
| instant-runoff voting for single-winner elections or
| single transferable vote for multi-winner elections. In
| some locations, the term "preferential voting" is used to
| refer to this combination of ballot type and counting
| method, while in other locations this term has various
| more-specialized meanings.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting
|
| I share your frustration with FairVote and CGP Grey (and
| recently an episode of Patriot Act) painting an
| unrealistically rosy picture of RCV/IRV as the solution
| to our voting problems.
|
| There are some other systems that aren't ranked voting at
| all that I think would be significantly better than IRV,
| such as approval voting, range voting, and STAR voting
| (which is basically range voting with an immediate runoff
| between the top two).
|
| For some reason, FairVote persists in claiming that in
| approval voting (which is like traditional first-past-
| the-post voting except that you can vote for more than
| one candidate), you somehow maximize your voting
| influence by voting for only one candidate. They call
| this bullet voting. I don't know what possible reason one
| could have for believing this.
|
| This manifests in their comparison chart:
|
| https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives
|
| They show "resistance to strategic voting" as "high"
| under RCV and "low" under approval voting. This is
| somewhat subjective, but I think they've got it
| backwards. Under approval voting, strategic voting and
| honest voting are basically the same: you vote for as
| many of the candidates as you can tolerate, and maybe if
| there's a candidate you really don't want to win you vote
| for everyone but them. Under RCV, it's only safe to put
| you first choice first if they are either clearly in the
| lead or so far behind they have no hope of winning. If
| the outcome is in doubt, it's possible to cause your
| first place candidate to lose by putting them first.
| (That's a weird problem for any voting system to have.)
|
| For this reason, I don't trust FairVote; I don't think
| they're presenting their preferred voting system or the
| alternatives honestly. They're more of an advocacy/PR
| organization that's pushing their chosen solution out of
| a sense of inertia or something.
|
| The Center for Election Science is a smaller, less-well
| funded group that advocates for approval voting (and
| similar methods) that I donate to from time to time. They
| had a successful campaign to convert Fargo ND to approval
| voting back in 2018.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm basically agreeing with literally everything you are
| saying, I just want to expand on certain things.
|
| > RV vs RCV
|
| These terms are too similar and really just confuse
| people, which is why I push back against it. I try to use
| "ordinal" a lot, but it is best for places like HN but
| not when I'm discussing with family. RCV makes people
| think that this is the only way you can rank people.
|
| > STAR
|
| Anyone who is advocating for STAR has my approval. It is
| the preferred system in my mind. I want to plug my longer
| post that has a lot of links and expands on all the
| topics you described
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23705413
|
| > Fair Vote frustration
|
| I think this is a style of argument that is increasingly
| becoming more common and is destructive. Pushing the your
| argument past the point of validity in an effort to make
| it stronger. Their use of broad classes is a gross
| mischaracterization. When they discuss Condorcet methods
| they discuss several types, lumping together the worst
| features from different ones. But they ignore the good
| methods like RP and Schulze. The comparisons are unfair.
| But then again, they aren't trying to appeal to people
| that are informed on the subject, they are trying to
| appeal to the masses which are completely unfamiliar with
| the subjects. But I do not think this justifies the
| outright lying and mischaracterizations.
|
| > Spoilers and Strategy
|
| In my other post I actually link an example of where IRV
| fails, and it is the specific type of spoiling that we
| are about: when similar candidates spoil (e.g. Bernie and
| Biden, not Stein and Biden). IRV doesn't solve this (but
| FV claims otherwise).
|
| For strategy, this is the argument that I get into with
| the Condorcet camp (though we're clearly on the same side
| and these are nuanced friendly arguments not hostile). To
| me STAR is good because its range of VSE is more compact
| (i.e. resistant to strategies). The Condorcet camp claims
| that there is enough dis-incentivization to not vote
| strategically therefore just maximize VSE (VSE is only
| slightly different between STAR05 and RP). So for anyone
| listening on the sidelines, this is really what we're
| arguing, minutia. I'm certain everyone in the Condorcet
| camp would vote for STAR and everyone in the
| STAR/Score/Approval camp would vote for Condorcet
| (specifically RP) if given the chance.
|
| > Center For Election Science
|
| I'd also like to mention Equal Vote, which advocates for
| STAR. https://www.equal.vote/starvoting
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I'm certain everyone in the Condorcet camp would vote
| for STAR and everyone in the STAR/Score/Approval camp
| would vote for Condorcet (specifically RP) if given the
| chance.
|
| Eh... I'm in the STAR/Score/Approval camp and I would be
| somewhat inclined to vote strategically against
| Condorcet, because it's worse than what I want and once
| it was implemented it would be even harder to dislodge in
| favor of STAR/Score/Approval than the status quo.
|
| It's also a false compromise because the opponents aren't
| generally people who benefit from the worse voting
| method, only people who haven't yet understood why it's
| worse.
|
| Of course, if we were using STAR/Score/Approval to vote
| on which voting system to use then I could express my
| preferences more accurately.
| godelski wrote:
| > Eh...
|
| This is fair and I won't really push back against it.
| This is the reason I push so hard against IRV. Because
| once IRV is the status quo it will be hard to continue
| moving forward. After all, we already have the
| capabilities. If you have to chose to eat acid, plain
| oatmeal, or chocolate pudding you don't eat the oatmeal
| then the pudding, you just jump straight to the pudding.
|
| > It's also a false compromise because the opponents
| aren't generally people who benefit from the worse voting
| method, only people who haven't yet understood why it's
| worse.
|
| While I'm in this camp I do think it is unfair to
| completely rule out Condorcet methods. The interview I
| linked to with Dr. Arrow I think expands on this well. If
| asked to advocate for a system, advocate for score
| (STAR). But that isn't to recognize that there's so much
| uncertainty in Social Choice Theory that we can trust
| theory alone. There's smaller experiments that have been
| done, but nothing on the scale we are advocating for. Of
| course we expect the theory and experiments to be
| relatively accurate, but we must acknowledge the lack of
| empirical large scale data. Frankly, you can only get
| that by doing it.
|
| > Of course, if we were using STAR/Score/Approval to vote
| on which voting system to use then I could express my
| preferences more accurately.
|
| ;) For me
|
| STAR 5, Score: 4 (4.5), Approval: 4, RP: 3 (3.8),
| Schulze: 3, IRV: 1 Plurality: 0
| dllthomas wrote:
| > Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a
| bad voting system.
|
| It's made much worse by the bad voting system, but it's
| perfectly possible that I simply disagree with enough of
| my fellow citizens that any compromise we can reach will
| be some "lesser evil".
| lukifer wrote:
| I think that's probably the case. Nonetheless, I would
| claim "lesser evilism" would be greatly reduced due to
| RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences:
| you get to vote for your favorite option, _and_ against
| your least favorite option.
|
| I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would
| shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away
| from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent
| coalition building, to appeal to the greatest quantity of
| left, right, center, and independent. That does mean
| compromise, and likely policy concessions; but i think
| that would be a huge improvement over (a) taking turns at
| obstructionism, and (b) a de-facto one-party system
| regarding corporate interests, the military-industrial
| complex, etc.
| dllthomas wrote:
| Yeah, my comment was intended narrowly - in no way was I
| endorsing FPTP. :)
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval)
| being better at capturing preferences
|
| The problem is that IRV/RCV _doesn 't_ capture your
| preferences, because it ignores all your preferences
| except your top choice, until your top choice is
| eliminated. IRV is reasonably good at making sure that
| third-parties can't prevent first-parties from being
| elected, but very bad at actually allowing third parties
| to actually be elected even if they have widespread
| approval.
|
| Approval is a good compromise, and fully ranked systems
| (e.g. Condorcet) would be even better but much harder to
| enact. I would happily support universal adoption of
| Approval.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| While I'd take approval voting over FPTP, to me it
| exacerbates the issue of voting being highly tactical.
| Checking approve on someone I believe to be more popular
| than my favorite candidate lowers the chance my favorite
| candidate wins. If there's someone I believe to be an
| existential threat to the country on the ballot, my best
| choice might be to check everyone other than them even if
| that means checking the box of someone I dislike.
| Essentially, you again have to choose how much you care
| about voting for your favorite option vs voting against
| your least favorite option. If I truly did check the box
| for anyone I was okay with being President then approval
| voting would be okay, but that would never be the right
| way to vote on the ballot given my preferences. In this
| way I prefer IRV, despite it's shortcomings.
|
| That all said, full ranking systems are definitely the
| superior option, and I'd certainly take approval over our
| current state.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval
| would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape
| away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent
| coalition building, to appeal to the greatest quantity of
| left, right, center, and independent.
|
| I think most people wildly overestimate the popular
| appeal for compromise. Only about 20% of the population
| would support an opposite-side moderate over a near-side
| extremist. A true centrist party is doomed to lose in any
| system that knocks out unviable candidates, since it's
| the first choice of almost nobody.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| It's almost as if you didn't even imagine what a "no
| 'opposite side' per se" would even look like.
|
| I think there's a LOT more room for nuance than "this" or
| "that" even among the ignorant and/or unengaged. Just
| look at sports-team divides in the US for evidence.
| techntoke wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it is designed that way on purpose. Nothing
| will ever change as long as both sides are fighting each
| other and no one is willing to fight the system.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The two major American parties have more in common than
| not. They agree on most political issues, particularly
| defense and economics, and make a big show of arguing over
| a tiny corner of issues in order to desperately try to
| differentiate themselves.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on indefinite
| detention of American citizens on US soil.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on domestic
| spying, dragnet-style data collection and warrantless
| wiretapping.
|
| The two parties do not differ on their support for
| backdoors in encryption.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on allowing
| extra-judicial targeted killings.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on the use of
| unmanned drones, either for combat or domestic
| surveillance.
|
| The two parties both support pre-emptive "cyber" war and
| non-defensive hacking.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on their
| support for continuing the War On Terror and War On Drugs.
|
| The two parties both support maintaining US military bases
| around the world.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on favoring
| Keynesian economics.
|
| The two parties support delegating monetary policy
| decisions to the Federal Reserve, including support for
| quantitative easing.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of
| earmarks and pork barrel spending.
|
| Neither of the two parties have (recently) proposed plans
| for balancing the budget.
|
| Neither of the two parties plans to significantly cut
| defense spending.
|
| The two parties both favor taxpayer-funded foreign aid.
|
| The two parties are largely backed by the same corporate
| sponsors and special interest groups, with a few key
| differences.
|
| The two parties both backed TARP and in general favor
| bailing out companies too big to fail.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on their
| general support of "economic stimulus" as a tool to prop up
| the economy.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on their
| support for and allegiance to Israel.
|
| The two parties both favor and continue sanctions on Iran.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of
| super PAC funding and their support of unlimited spending
| from corporations and special interest groups.
|
| The two parties do not significantly differ on their use of
| gerrymandering to gain political advantage.
|
| The two parties oppose any measures that would strengthen
| the viability of a third party.
| spurgu wrote:
| So what you're saying is that the US is doomed until a
| revolution happens?
| ollo wrote:
| > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| american people's interest in mind.
|
| As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| european people's interest in mind.
| gspr wrote:
| > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| european people's interest in mind.
|
| Really? What country are you in, if you don't mind me
| asking?
| gabrielfv wrote:
| > As a european, I don't see any party that actually have
| american people's interest in mind.
|
| As a human, I don't see any party that actually have
| regular people's interest in mind.
| techntoke wrote:
| Apparently caring about people more than money is a bad
| thing.
| pphysch wrote:
| Define "regular people's interest". American values?
| Health and security? There are governments that are pro-
| people (as opposed to pro-money) but they are generally
| not big global players, or if they are, they are
| designated Enemies of the West and it is enormously
| politically incorrect to discuss critically about them.
| ollo wrote:
| there is no such thing as "regular people's interest".
| everyone's interest is a little bit different.
| Forbo wrote:
| Not even the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
| Dahoon wrote:
| There are lots.
|
| Also, we don't vote EU wide so it is apples to oranges.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Sure, but I think the U.S. even worse. It's basically
| right-wing (Democrats) and off the spectrum (Republicans).
| wz1000 wrote:
| https://diem25.org/
| coffeemaniac wrote:
| You're correct, in the US we have two fundamentally right-
| wing parties, which allows them to effectively consolidate
| power by offering a controlled "resistance" party which
| disagrees on petty issues mostly regarding representation but
| which agrees on all major issues including those you
| mentioned, healthcare, military, foreign policy.
| wnevets wrote:
| Its being framed as a way to prevent terrorism and child sex
| abuse, it's really hard for a politician to come out in against
| preventing those things.
| ypcx wrote:
| It is worse than just crazy. Government is made of people, and
| people are corruptible. If the encryption backdoor key leaks
| from the government to a bad actor, it will create a "national
| security" issue of magnitude never seen before. If this line of
| reasoning is correct, then proposing an encryption backdoor is
| akin to committing an act of treason in itself, because it is
| purposely weakening the technological infrastructure of the
| businesses and people in the country and thus the country
| itself. Attempts like these are either doomed to fail, or they
| will doom the country to fail.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They don't even have to be corruptible. People are
| _fallible_. Someone could just make a mistake. No bad actors
| needed. (Bad actors exist, and make the problem worse. But
| the problem exists even without bad actors.)
| slavik81 wrote:
| The TSA used essentially this system for luggage locks. You
| could have a lock on your luggage, but the TSA had a master
| key that could open any luggage lock.
|
| The master keys became available on 3D printing sites after
| the TSA allowed a photo of them to be published in a news
| article:
| https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-
| lugg...
| 83afnpj wrote:
| It's just bad, real bad, only made worse by the LAED bill they've
| recently introduced.
|
| Rianna Pfefferkorn wrote a in-depth analysis about EARN IT which
| is really good to read:
|
| https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/01/earn-it-act-how-b...
|
| I also wrote a smaller high level article about it if you're
| interested in a briefer read:
|
| https://medium.com/@console.blog/action-tell-your-representa...
| apeace wrote:
| If you want to convince your friends they should support
| encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide"
| argument.
|
| Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have
| anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all
| conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes
| in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming.
|
| We still don't "have anything to hide". We're just having a
| conversation. But the conversation used to be private--that's
| normal. Now it's not private, which is not normal.
|
| Whether or not you feel like you have to "hide" anything during a
| bar conversation is not the point. It's whether you think we
| should make changes to our society where having a private
| conversation is never allowed.
|
| This kind of analogy, in my experience, helps people understand
| that the "nothing to hide" argument assumes that privacy is only
| for evil people, when in reality it's the very normal default of
| daily life. The parable posted in another top-level comment is
| also great.
| cgrealy wrote:
| If someone says they have nothing to hide, just say "cool, how
| much do you earn?"
|
| Or if you can do it with a straight face "when was the last
| time you masturbated?" :)
| cortic wrote:
| My _nothing to hide_ argument is a little different;
|
| Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from
| who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and
| predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con
| artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves..
| Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or
| your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney problems..
|
| we don't know who are any of these things. So we should protect
| ourselves from all of them, in effect we have everything to
| hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.
| kulahan wrote:
| The best argument I ever heard was:
|
| "Would you give up your right to free speech just because you
| have nothing important to say? No? Then why would you give up
| your right to privacy just because you have nothing to hide?"
| jason0597 wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, it was Edward Snowden who said this.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I like that.
|
| It raises the important point: of course you don't care about
| privacy now while you have nothing to hide. You should care
| about it because _one day you might_.
|
| It might be a stalker, a corrupt government official or
| policeman, someone at work who is competitive with you, you
| might be a whistleblower or learn a family secret that would
| damage your reputation (lets say, your father is a pedophile)
| .... all these things happen to completely "regular" people
| who until that point had "nothing to hide" and they end up
| needing or wishing to hide them in at least some
| circumstances.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| not sure who to attribute but I like the "privacy is not
| secrecy. You close the door to the toilet even though we all
| know what you're doing in there"
| thelittleone wrote:
| Another argument is that a conversation we are having today
| (nothing to hide and between friends) may be used against us in
| the future. It could also be used against your children.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I think the key here isn't broadcasting, it's storage. In the
| future (?) we might think we can detect Parkinson's or MS very
| early through voice/video/typing characteristics.
|
| Your conversations were recorded, the data leaked to or
| purchased by a fly by night company hired by your bank, and now
| suddenly despite your excellent credit history you can't get a
| 30 year mortgage, you try to find a new job but companies are
| only offering 6 month contracts, etc.
|
| It's hard to prove a database doesn't exist, better to encrypt
| the content beforehand and make it harder to create.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > In the future (?) we might think we can detect Parkinson's
| or MS very early through voice/video/typing characteristics.
|
| We probably won't.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Whether it works is irrelevant. If anyone buys it, the time
| between belief and disbelief will be longer than the time
| it takes to screw up individuals' lives.
| beckingz wrote:
| Want to see if we can get 10M in VC money to try?
| tribeca18 wrote:
| Oddly specific, but this is such a great plausible example
| that I'm going to use from now on.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Thanks, just to be clear I made it up after clicking reply!
|
| If you want to make more of them I just combined a
| plausible data analysis project with some of the creepiest
| insitutional aspects from previous surveillance scandals.
| shay_ker wrote:
| I like the speeding analogy.
|
| "I have nothing to hide"
|
| "Have you ever sped on the highway?"
|
| "Well, yes"
|
| "Imagine if the government reveals it's been tracking
| everyone's speed, and has decided to write everyone tickets for
| speeding."
|
| "That's insane, the government can't do that!"
|
| "Exactly"
| golem14 wrote:
| I say, no need to look at hypotheticals. Just sit back and
| watch what the Chinese government likely has done with the
| social media posts from people in Hong Kong, who are now in a
| desperate rush to obliterate them. Tough look, those have
| already been crawled and indexed. It's not quite the same,
| because these social media posts weren't meant to be private
| at the time, but it illustrates the point what can happen
| when 'data is out there'.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Americans have a sense that what happens in China (or Nazi
| Germany, or any other place you'd care to name) can't
| possibly happen here--even if it is currently happening
| here.
|
| Gone are the days during the Cold War where you could say,
| "What is this, Soviet Russia?" and have anyone squirm at
| the comparison.
| esrauch wrote:
| I don't know, tracking everyone's speed to issue tickets
| doesn't sound nearly as bad as having a recording of 100% of
| all remote conversations.
| [deleted]
| manfredo wrote:
| While this is on the right track, one would point out that
| these conversations wouldn't be public they would only be
| visible to government authorities.
|
| I think the due process argument is more compelling. Part of
| preventing abuses and corruption by law enforcement is ensuring
| they can only surveil people with reasonable suspicion. _Yes_
| there are people who should be under surveillance. But it 's
| crucial that this gets approval from the courts to prevent
| agencies from snooping on people not for law enforcement but to
| gain leverage and power. Your privacy helps us prevent the next
| J Edgar Hoover even if you have nothing to hide.
| newfeatureok wrote:
| I'm not really sure this is a good argument at all. In your
| scenario, if the two people have nothing to hide why would they
| care?
|
| You're better of appealing to things that they _normally_ might
| want to hide, like an embarrassing act or things that are said
| that are questionable out of context, etc.
|
| A person who truly has nothing to hide, by definition, would
| not care about privacy. The entire point of privacy is that
| there are things that we do not want to share, for whatever
| reason.
| apeace wrote:
| People tend to feel attacked when you argue that they do, in
| fact, have something to hide. Even when you come from the
| perspective that everyone has something to hide, mostly small
| things.
|
| I've had the best success with the argument I posted. It
| helps people understand that privacy isn't "hiding", it's
| normal. What's not normal is guaranteeing your government can
| see everything you do all the time, and we should think about
| whether that's what we want.
| _AzMoo wrote:
| For those who aren't convinced by this argument, you can take
| it a little further by introducing a hypothetical situation in
| which their political opponents obtain power and criminalise
| criticism of government or other powerful "common-good"
| entities. Now your recorded conversations could become evidence
| of sedition, and even if it wasn't criminal at the time it
| could certainly be used to show evidence of previous behaviour.
| arafa wrote:
| I like to tell people about programs like "LOVEINT"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT). Where there is
| personal information available to others, it can and will be
| abused in ways you won't approve of. Privacy might seem like an
| abstract concern until you or someone you know is being
| stalked, etc.
| grawprog wrote:
| >here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument.
|
| Personally I like to just remind people if we had nothing to
| hide, nobody would wear clothing, own curtains, or care about
| peeping toms.
| serf wrote:
| >Personally I like to just remind people if we had nothing to
| hide, nobody would wear clothing,
|
| you must live in a nice climate.
| grawprog wrote:
| Nah, I live in bc, but I mean we do have a nudist beach
| here that's pretty popular like 2 months a year.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm stealing your analogy but I'm also ready for people to
| smugly proclaim that they would have no issue with
| livestreaming their entire life since they have nothing to
| hide.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Or worse, the one's who smugly say you have no expectation of
| privacy while in public anyway.
| apeace wrote:
| That's the best part. Remind them that it's not about _you_.
| It's about whistleblowers and journalists who need to protect
| their sources, and lawyers who need to communicate with their
| clients. That tends to bring the ego down a peg ;)
|
| But honestly, it's best not to be aggressive. Some people
| don't care much, and you won't convince them.
|
| FWIW, all my non-technical friends use Signal with me, and
| they know about verifying safety numbers! It can be done.
| fiblye wrote:
| People who actually think this is fine tend to hate
| journalists and especially lawyers. They might walk away
| thinking this is a great idea.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| > ... It's about whistleblowers and journalists
|
| They'll say the media is the enemy and whistleblowers are
| traitors who should be shot on site. I'm not even kidding;
| they'll say this.
| smegger001 wrote:
| Have you been to my family reunion because I think that
| may constitute a direct quote. Of course four years ago
| they espoused the opposite standpoint toward whistle-
| blowers because obviously the other-side was bad-wrong
| and this administration is right-good.
| godelski wrote:
| I mentioned something about this yesterday in another thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693298
|
| Basically it isn't about having anything to hide but the
| instability of democracy and what power bad actors have.
|
| Do I have anything to hide from Google? Not really. But do I
| want that same data that Google has to be in the hands of
| someone like Putin? No. I don't even want it in the hands of
| the NSA. The issue is that if we say that ads can manipulate
| people to buy things, why can't they manipulate people to do
| things like vote or divide. Russia's strategy since the Cold
| War has been to divide and prod The West, to sow disruption.
| That disruption has caused consolidation of power but also
| makes it difficult for coalitions to get things done.
|
| It is clear that anger generates more clicks, so why is it
| unrealistic to think bad actors can use that data to better
| divide us and sow discontent?
|
| The next factor is that democracy relies on a distribution of
| power. Data collection is a means to consolidate power. There's
| the term "turnkey tyranny" that's thrown around. The reason
| isn't because we think a tyrant is going to come to power and
| destroy our way of life, but rather that we recognize that such
| a thing is possible and want to ensure that such actions would
| be infeasible if a malicious actor gained power. In democracy
| power is distributed. This has pros and cons. But the point of
| distribution is so that consolidation is difficult and we can
| never have a monarch or tyrant.
|
| So it has never been about having something to hide (which btw,
| do people know they are referencing Goebbels?), but about
| stability in democracy. Distribution of power that was inherent
| to the system in the past is no longer built in. Technology has
| changed and enabled things we never previously imagined.
| dcow wrote:
| Sadly I've come to the conclusion that people don't really
| actually care about the stability of democracy so long as
| they have food on the table and a warm bed at night. No
| matter the fact that a stable democracy free from the
| tyrannical rule of a monarch is what gave rise to their
| entire lifestyle as they know it. But people forget so
| quickly what we sacrifice for democracy. It's almost
| irrelevant, though. Our once pristine western democracy has
| been slowly eroded by the forces free markets. So I don't
| know who's crazier, the people who seem to care less about
| the values required to maintain a democracy, or the people
| who still think we participate in one...
| godelski wrote:
| I believe you are right. In fact, I think China serves as a
| perfect example of this (so does 1930's Germany, but I
| don't want to draw too much parallelism there). When
| there's massive growth and you're substantially better off
| than your parents, who cares what the government does?
| Clearly you're doing better, so they must be doing good.
| Right?
|
| I think part of the unrest we have is that we're NOT better
| off than our parents. But another key component is that
| covid made it so that we have to worry about food on our
| table and we have an abundant amount of time to worry.
|
| At the same time this is a great opportunity to talk about
| democratic stability. Discussing things like why privacy
| matters and not just to bad guys or with the silly "you
| wear clothes" analogies. It is also a great time to talk
| about structural reforms like switching to better voting
| methods, such as STAR (see my comments for rants on why you
| should not use IRV/"RCV"). At this time people have the
| time to think and research, but there is also the drawback
| that it is hard to think when you are worried about food
| and future. But this time to also talk about solving
| problems while they are small. If the Great Depression
| taught us anything it is that those people learned a lot
| about frugality but their children forgot. Luckily it
| appears that each time we do this we get slightly better
| (think like a damped harmonic oscillator). So don't give up
| hope, help the dampening coefficient.
| andrepd wrote:
| There's other ways. Ask them for their passwords, ask them to
| hand their phone and riffle through their conversations and
| photos. If I know they won't be offended them I'll ask them to
| send me nudes or if they would let me put a camera in their
| shower.
|
| After all, if you're have nothing wrong you have nothing to
| hide, so why should you close your shower curtain?
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| Why does this matter? The US government can force you to give
| them your keys, and gag you so you can't say anything...
| gspr wrote:
| Yes, but at least when they do that they don't have to
| _fundamentally break crypto_. Not that it 's OK. I'm just
| saying.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Because what you're describing is a method for violating the
| rights of one person, and they know it's happening. What's
| described in the article is a method for violating the rights
| of anyone, and they won't even know.
| ipnon wrote:
| The primary impediment to combating child sexual abuse material
| is the scarcity of law enforcement agents relative to the scale
| of offenders.[0] Law enforcement agencies are already at the
| limit of how many offenders they can prosecute because offenders
| are primarily detected by agents who are posing as offenders or
| by agents who are posing as victims.
|
| The solution proposed by the researchers in the referenced
| documentary is to create AI agents that can automate the work of
| posing as offenders or posing as victims. This solves the scaling
| problem of the law enforcement agencies.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCj1zNpKoM
| darkarmani wrote:
| So, create some dog-and-ponies AI start-up for this in the
| districts of the most influential lawmakers, with stated job
| counts (for AI-mechanical turk work that hires lots of people).
|
| Tie the "correct" solution to their real political motivations
| and it will get done in a heartbeat. It has to be something
| they can sell to their base though.
| ipnon wrote:
| We don't need to be cynical. We can demand that our
| government guarantees our rights to safety and privacy
| because they are not mutually exclusive.
| darkarmani wrote:
| Well, it's being realistic. The politicians aren't choosing
| the best choice for us, they are choosing the choice that
| looks like the best choice for the hordes weighed against
| the interests of their powerful lobbyists.
|
| If privacy (as partially defined as crypto) looked
| important to the hordes of people and/or the lobbyists, we
| wouldn't have anything to worry about. Think about the
| children is a much easier platform to get elected for
| though.
| ajzinsbwbs wrote:
| That scares me. If that entrapment-at-scale is legal, it could
| be deployed to throw huge numbers of people in jail for buying
| drugs or supporting terrorism.
| ipnon wrote:
| Note that the AI is used to automate the work of the law
| enforcement agents, not the work of the judges and juries.
| The AI collects evidence that prosecutors use to build cases
| against defendants. The defendants still have the right to
| public trial in a court of law in front of a human judge and
| human jury.
|
| edit: It seems there is a misunderstanding of what the AI
| does. It simulates human traffickers in text or video chat in
| order to find people who try to exchange money with them, and
| it simulates children in text and video chat in order to find
| people who try to groom them. It does not simulate child
| sexual abuse material or proliferate child sexual abuse
| material.
| ajzinsbwbs wrote:
| Here are some examples of the types of prosecutions I'm
| worried about.
|
| High schooler sold drugs to undercover cop who pretended to
| be his girlfriend:
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/457/what-i-did-for-
| love/act...
|
| Legal study on failures of the entrapment defense in
| post-9/11 terrorism cases:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-
| inqui...
|
| Most people will make a plea deal when faced with
| prosecution, so there's never an adversarial process in
| front of a judge and jury.
| bzb3 wrote:
| If I emailed you and offered you to share pictures of naked
| 13 year olds, would you accept?
|
| If I texted you and told you I'm 13 years old, would you
| start hitting on me?
| xondono wrote:
| If I hit reply to tell you to go to hell, did I just
| participate in the exchange of pictures of minors? (since
| _your_ pictures will be quoted in my email)
| ajzinsbwbs wrote:
| No I wouldn't, but legal precedents that get set in these
| cases will carry over to prosecutions of other crimes.
| pphysch wrote:
| The gap between ideation and action is significant, and
| approaches like this are getting firmly into "prosecuting
| thought crime" territory.
| [deleted]
| luc_ wrote:
| I trust the Mozilla foundation has good reason to oppose this, as
| likely do I, but I'm sad to not see a "learn more" button on this
| page to add your name to some opposition list. I'd certainly like
| to learn more about what I'm signing up against, and I can do
| that myself, but I feel as if they would also have a
| responsibility to further educate if they're asking for my
| support.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| One of the groups that signed on for updates on such laws sent me
| a link over SMS. It automated calling 22 senators to ask them to
| reject Earn IT. I spoke to staff or left messages with 20. Two
| had full voicemail. One of this was my local rep, Feinstein.
| Figures.
|
| http://noearnitact.org/call
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Earn It act is adorable little attempt at institutional police
| state policy.
|
| One would argue that terrorists will simply use other inventive
| ways to get around lack of main stream encrypted tech (and they
| will). Or that a back door for the govt is a back door for anyone
| (which is true). Both are logical points.
|
| I posit that this is known among backers of Earn It - they're not
| that dumb. Therefore, this isn't about child porn or terrorists,
| its about _dissenters of established institutions_ (government,
| corporations, media, etc). That 's the move - the "party of
| Davos" sees the populist wave from both left and right (AOC,
| Bernie, BLM, Trump, Bannon, etc) and this how they think they
| will stop it.
|
| The next AOC, BLM, or any populist movement will be labeled as
| threats to the established order, maybe as domestic terrorists.
| With Earn It, you can see who they organize with, when they meet,
| how they strategize, etc. This is COINTELPRO with smart phones
| [1]. Very slick, very effective. It's what I would do in their
| shoes.
|
| The only flaw is that it is poorly marketed. It's so transparent,
| it's cute.
|
| J Edgar Hoover is smiling somewhere in the after life.
|
| Do yourself a favor, treat your phone and email like CIA
| recording device. We'll be fine.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%....
| jimiljojo wrote:
| Privacy aside, even if they "ban" it, people cannot just stop
| using it the next day. Almost every company has encrypted
| information, like passwords etc. This is what I LOVE about
| technology. They cannot stop it unless they want to bring entire
| systems down - some of which run govt business (like aws). So how
| are they really going to stop / enforce it?
|
| It has been used encryptions and ciphers have been used for a
| long time, you cannot stop people from using a math function.
| It's like DO NOT USE multiplication from now on.
| slugiscool99 wrote:
| Wish we could see how many people signed maybe paired with a goal
| for the number of signatures
| chaostheory wrote:
| Doesn't this weaken security for everyone and not just consumers?
| zelly wrote:
| This is the consequence of companies like Discord letting child
| predators run rampant on their platform and doing nothing about
| it. There are two sides to every story. You can imagine how the
| government would react after seeing hundreds and hundreds of
| cases coming out of Discord, Snap, even FB.
|
| Reading the actual bill[1] rather than sensational headlines, you
| can see this is mostly about creating a tip line and bureauracy
| for reporting CP. Ctrl+F "encrypt" 0 results. Me no care. Deal
| with it Discord. Pass it.
|
| [1]
| https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3398/BILLS-116s3398is.pd...
| markkanof wrote:
| I initially thought you couldn't possibly be right about this,
| but what you stated does seem to be the case. After skimming
| through the full text, the main point of this seems to be about
| setting up a committee that will come up with "best practices"
| that online service providers can follow to reduce/eliminate
| the exploitation of children on their platform. Can someone
| explain how this "creates a threat to strong encryption".
| sgillen wrote:
| The bill also offers legal protections for companies that
| follow those best practices. It's not hard to imagine that 1.
| The best practices include not using strong encryption, 2. An
| environment with lots of lawsuits directed at companies not
| following those practices .
| kinghajj wrote:
| If they determine that "best practice" no longer includes
| secure end-to-end encryption that a service provider can't
| decrypt independently of the user, they'll use that as
| political leverage. "See, our self-selected panel of experts
| said that this isn't a best practice, yet Apple and Facebook
| are still doing it anyway!"
| qppo wrote:
| To Californians, Dianne Feinstein is one of the cosponsors of the
| bill in the Senate. It really grinds my gears seeing our senior
| leadership from California take actions that directly harm our
| interests, both towards our peoples' freedom and our businesses.
|
| I feel vindicated for voting against her in 2018, because I
| thought she'd be out of touch with our interests as a state.
| choppaface wrote:
| Send her an e-mail in 2 minutes telling her to stop supporting
| EARN-IT
| https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
| hedora wrote:
| Writing Feinstein is a total waste of time.
|
| She'll send a smarmy response about how you're clearly an
| idiot for thinking it has anything to do with encryption, and
| how she's proud to be a co-sponsor.
|
| She's been completely ignoring voter complaints for decades.
| Before open primaries, it was essentially impossible for her
| to lose an election, and she knew it.
|
| I'm extremely liberal, but if the "recall governor Newsom"
| crowd went after Feinstein instead, I'd sign on in a
| heartbeat.
| jedberg wrote:
| Been there, done that. Her office sends back a letter that
| boils down to, "We know better than you, please be quiet".
| eindiran wrote:
| I can confirm this, having been a recipient of such a
| letter from her office a few times.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I've done that many times over the years - she stopped
| responding and refuses to consider the opinion of encryption
| experts.
| coldpie wrote:
| Feinstein is easily the worst Democratic Senator. It's
| absolutely bonkers to me that a state where tech is as
| important as it is keeps re-electing her. Surely there's
| someone out there who wants to primary her?
| qppo wrote:
| CA has a blanket primary, which means that all candidates
| from all parties take part in the primary and then the top 2
| compete in the general election, regardless of party
| affiliation.
|
| Feinstein wiped the floor with everyone in the primary in
| 2018. She took 44% of the vote, and the next leading
| candidate (Kevin de Leon) took 12%. When they ran against
| each other, de Leon lost by a fairly large margin but turnout
| kind of sucked.
|
| de Leon wasn't a good candidate by any means, and I voted for
| the guy. He always struck me as a bit of a smarmy huckster
| who didn't stand for anything but reelection. But I knew that
| Feinstein was probably running for her last term and only
| cared about serving the national party's interests, and not
| our state. I'll take the guy that wants my next vote over
| someone that probably won't live long enough to get it.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Getting to the point you were responding to: in fact
| Feinstein won on the back of a bunch of "republican" votes,
| cast strategically in a "blue" state where a traditional
| candidate wasn't likely to win. Which is to say:
| nonpartisan voting did _exactly what it was advertised to
| do_ and resulted in the election of a centrist candidate.
|
| Obviously there are other externalities to consider
| (Feinstein is very senior), etc... But I don't know why
| anyone is so upset that she's the "worst democrat". She'd
| be the "worst republican" too.
|
| You want consensus-building nonpartisan elections, you get
| candidates that reflect social consensus and not your
| particular party's priorities.
| mindslight wrote:
| Calling a democrat that won't even pretend to support
| blue team freedoms the "worst democrat" makes a lot of
| sense.
|
| What is called "centrist" is nowhere near the center, but
| is actually straight up _authoritarianism_. If you look
| at both the blue team 's and red team's grassroots
| messages, individuals are not happy with how much control
| the government exerts over us. Each political team
| markets a half-libertarian message and lures individual
| voters in by focusing on those gripes. They then channel
| their supporters' energy into going after the "other
| team", and "compromise" by enacting the fully
| authoritarian policies their sponsors paid for.
| newacct583 wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. In
| general, a "centrist", in common usage, is a person who
| broadly supports existing social structures. So yes,
| they're going to support law enforcement over privacy,
| the media industry over public access concerns, etc... So
| to anyone who cares deeply about some issue of social
| change, a centrist is going to look "just as bad as" the
| "other side".
|
| But calling them (sigh) "authoritarian" isn't helping
| your case when they come back at you to persecute a
| (sigh) "revolutionary" or "extremist". Work with people.
| Centrists aren't idiots. Their constituency is real, and
| has concerns too.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _a person who broadly supports existing social
| structures. So yes, they 're going to support law
| enforcement over privacy, the media industry over public
| access concerns_
|
| We already have a word for this - _conservative_. And I
| do agree that conservatives have consistent and valid
| points, even if I do not agree.
|
| I don't know what other word to use besides
| "authoritarian" as in the two-dimensional political space
| with red-blue on one axis, and authoritarian-libertarian
| on the other.
|
| To me "centrist" implies some middle of the road. I do
| not agree that someone who supports (this bill, the
| patriot act, elective wars, drone strikes, etc) deserves
| the label centrist, as they're nowhere near the entire
| libertarian half of the political spectrum. Allowing this
| to be called centrism is privileging and cloaking
| authoritarianism.
| qppo wrote:
| > fact Feinstein won on the back of a bunch of
| "republican" votes, cast strategically in a "blue" state
| where a traditional candidate wasn't likely to win
|
| Except de Leon carried the red districts. Not Feinstein.
| hedora wrote:
| She will be 91 the next time she is up for re-election.
| Hopefully she'll finally retire instead. I've been hoping for
| that for over a decade.
|
| Feinstein could not have been re-elected if it weren't for
| overwhelmingly strong support for her in Silicon Valley.
|
| If she is up for re-election again, please vote for the other
| candidate (who will probably also be a Democrat!). Also, tell
| your friends.
|
| She wants to ban encryption. Her voting record is further to
| the right than many republicans. She votes according to Trump's
| wishes more than any other Democrat in the senate.
| shpongled wrote:
| Why would you be surprised? California has a long history of
| stepping on people's freedoms and rights
| cpascal wrote:
| If this is passed, I'm waiting for the inevitable data breach of
| US elected officials' personal/private data.
| president wrote:
| Has anyone considered that maybe there are actually people in
| this world that want to be able to catch criminals and
| terrorists? Even if the bill does result in adding backdoors
| (which is all based on speculation anyway), you don't think
| people and technology would recalibrate itself to overcome issues
| caused by backdoors? I find it insane that people think
| technology is so much more important than the potential for
| saving human lives.
| pphysch wrote:
| I'm all for _benevolent_ authoritarian governance.
|
| Problems start to arise when the government pretends they _are_
| the former and pretends they _are_not_ the latter.
| antepodius wrote:
| It's Liberty vs. Security.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Alternately, we could recalibrate the methods used to catch
| criminals and terrorists so that we did _not_ have to yield up
| all of our information to the gov, as well as every script
| kiddie with an internet connection.
| danboarder wrote:
| Where are my elected representatives that represent my privacy
| rights on bills like this? Maybe I need to run for office since I
| care about end2end encryption, free software, and the rights of
| free people and information to freely travel around the world...
| yummypaint wrote:
| You should call their offices. Give your qualifications and
| make their staff listen to you explain all the reasons why its
| a terrible idea. It can move the needle if enough people do it.
| If you have the energy to run for office then you should start
| by lobbying for these issues, it's good practice
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Awkwardly enough the only Senator I have even the smallest
| amount of respect for these days did add a bunch of amendments
| to try and fix parts of it....but I think its a shit bill from
| top to bottom and I expect him to vote against it anyway.
|
| Perhaps instead of supporting politicians who "say" they're
| going to do X, Y, and Z we should support politicians who have
| a track record of doing exactly X, Y and Z regardless of how
| politically convenient it is to do something else.
|
| More laws will not fix the problem of having too many bad laws,
| in my opinion.
| YetAnotherMatt wrote:
| In Europe quite a few "pirate parties" popped up about a decade
| ago. None of them were too successful as far as I know, at
| least in The Netherlands they didn't mention to gain a single
| seat (out of 150).
| mikestew wrote:
| You can run, and with that platform your opponent will
| conveniently turn it around into "my opponent supports child
| molestors and terrorists". Because if you think you'll simply
| walk up to the podium talking about something most folks could
| not give a working definition for, boy, are you going to be in
| for a shock when your opponent "dumbs it down" for the
| audience.
|
| Which is how we end up with stuff like the EARN IT Act that one
| would reasonably think would be shot down immediately, but
| isn't.
| sailfast wrote:
| "My opponent supports the attorney general having access to
| your porn habits. I support your privacy" is a pretty
| straightforward simplified riposte to your above
| oversimplification.
| hvis wrote:
| Let's take it a step further:
|
| "My opponent supports giving all law enforcement officers
| unrestricted access to your children's chats, photos and
| calls."
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| A bit further: "The NSA can and does see your nudes and
| those of your family."
| techntoke wrote:
| The media will only show the perspective of their masters
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > that one would reasonably think would be shot down
| immediately, but isn't.
|
| EARN IT looks like a compromise compared to this: https://cyb
| erlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/06/there%E2%80%99s-n... which is
| I assume why it was pushed only a few days ago.
| danboarder wrote:
| In that case we need to provide working definitions
| advocating for privacy and information freedom that the
| average consumer can appreciate and support. I'm open to
| ideas. One approach is to explain that without private
| encrypted communications your information cannot be free:
| instead it will be monitored and censored by the many parties
| that believe we should not see or say one thing or another.
| Privacy enables freedom.
| Shared404 wrote:
| For what it's worth, if you happened to run on this
| platform in an area where I had a vote, you would probably
| get it.
| crusso wrote:
| "information cannot be free"
|
| You're talking about an electorate that has been shown the
| abuses of its data by Google, Facebook, and others time and
| again and couldn't care less.
| djsumdog wrote:
| > my opponent supports child molestors
|
| The ruling elite have a monopoly on this. They publicly
| opposite it via bills like this and use media giants to crush
| 'conspiracy theories' involving people like Epstein and all
| the people he was closely associated with in Washington and
| Hollywood.
|
| I think if we actually got evidence and leaks on how bad
| child abuse within politicians are, Americans would be
| absolutely horrified by the straight up hypocrisy.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Indeed, but think about who is running those blackmail
| ops... the three letters, well, how is it that Schumer put
| it, "you take on the intelligence community, they have six
| ways from sunday at getting back at you..."
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/6OYyXv2l4-I?t=52
|
| We need a new Church committee.
| darkarmani wrote:
| My reply: "Government is trying to spy on every aspect of
| your life. There are more government employees that can spy
| on your children than there are child molestors in the
| country."
|
| Do you want creepy gov't contractors spying on your kids?
| muddythrowaway wrote:
| Bill Maher may be right -- you have to fight fire with fire.
| Once mud has been thrown your only option is to throw more
| mud back. Point out the Cosbys, Epsteins, Trumps, warmongers,
| etc. "The untouchable elite are the terrorists and molestors"
| [deleted]
| eindiran wrote:
| I am not sure if someone else already posted this in the comments
| here or not, but the EFF has a form letter available, as well as
| a way of finding your representatives/senators:
|
| https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-b...
|
| Just enter an address in the box on the right and it will find
| your representatives/senators for you, select the right options
| for contacting them and then present you an editable form letter
| for sending to them.
|
| Note that your senators and representatives may abuse your email
| address and phone number if you provide it: after having sent
| letters to Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris' offices this way,
| I've received a lot more political spam calls and emails.
| justin66 wrote:
| In one sense, the anti-crypto forces are not yet being as crazy
| as they have been at certain times in the past. People often
| forget that the federal government wanted to put Phil Zimmerman
| in prison over PGP in the nineties. [1]
|
| In another sense, this is _much crazier._ There wasn 't much at
| stake commercially in the nineties, but today, legislatively
| screwing up crypto could compromise _trillions_ of dollars worth
| of commercial transactions if something goes wrong.
|
| https://philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PRZ_case_dropped.html
| rammy1234 wrote:
| "Earn IT" is going to help someone. Dont ask why, but ask who.
| Who is going to benefit out of this? Ask more Why's. What was the
| missing piece that they are trying to put together by passing
| this ACT. How we were at disadvantage so long that now passing
| this ACT is going to empower us.
| surround wrote:
| "A Parable" by Perry E. Metzger (1993)
|
| > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in
| Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that
| grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people
| had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-
| tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of
| wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100%
| see through...
|
| > One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your
| house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at
| will...
|
| > Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes
| have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After
| all", they said, "with this new development crime could run
| rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police
| get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one."
| [...]
|
| https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html
|
| (I recommend reading the full parable.)
|
| ----------
|
| clock.org homepage (c. 1998)
|
| > Some agencies of the United States Government (notably the
| Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), want to prevent the
| deployment of encryption technology. They want either encryption
| so weak that just about anyone can break it, or they want a copy
| of every key used with strong encryption.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/19980113124617/http://www.clock....
|
| Sound familiar?
|
| ----------
|
| Mujahedeen Secrets (first release: 2007), Al-Queda's own
| encrypted messaging software. Those developers aren't going to
| respond to a US court order.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahedeen_Secrets
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The people who want a skeleton key to open all electronic doors
| are the same people who compiled a blackmail database on their
| own high-clearance employees and failed to keep it safe (the
| OPM data breach).
| chillacy wrote:
| > This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front
| doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just
| in case he has to search the house).
|
| To be accurate though that's not exactly true. The sheriff
| doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a
| warrant and bust your door down.
|
| This is a town where your house is indestructible and un-
| enterable without a key.
| surround wrote:
| I included the clock.org homepage because I found it
| surprising how closely it describes the EARN IT act, despite
| being published before 1998. It's a warning from over 20
| years ago.
|
| I agree that their analogy isn't particularly strong, so I
| removed that part from my comment.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Where the "bad guys" can build their own indestructible and
| un-enterable house themselves, without having to give the
| sheriff a key.
| granitDev wrote:
| There's another good reason for term limits, how many of these
| VERY OLD people don't even understand what encryption is and
| couldn't possibly understand the concept that this is like
| passing a law demanding that you leave your house key at the
| local police station, unless you let them search your house every
| second Tuesday.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Analogies to physical security are not helpful, because they're
| easily countered with "but you support someone getting into a
| house with a warrant, right?". Encryption is _nothing like_
| physical security. There is no analogue to busting down a door.
| Correctly built encryption has _no way_ to get in without the
| key; anything else has fundamental, unfixable security flaws.
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