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When are we going to see substantive legislation advancing digital rights instead of chipping away at them? For the US, we need a new bill of rights, a bill of
by failbuffer 2mo ago
When are we going to see substantive legislation advancing digital rights instead of chipping away at them?
For the US, we need a new bill of rights, a bill of digital rights that constitutionally protects right of repair, right to root our own devices, right to be free from dragnet surveillance, right to general purpose computing, and the right to access speech without government-mandated age or identity checks.
With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen?
- mcsniff 2mo agoBecause libertarians generally want fewer laws, not more.
- dexterdog 2mo agoAnd there are far too few of them elected to have any real impact.
- jambalaya8 2mo agothat doesn't mean they don't want some of the 'right laws'. otherwise they would be anarchists and communists not libertarians.
- jagged-chisel 2mo ago> … why can't we make that happen? Greed. More money to provide the tools of oppression via government contracts.
- Cider9986 2mo agoThomas Massie introduced the best privacy bill I have seen. I know nothing about political strategy but i would think a democrat would have been a better cosponsor. Will it even get voted on if the house speaker doesn't want it? https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com/ https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com/ >Warrant required Government must go before a judge to access your metadata, location, or financial records — just like searching your home. >No Data Shopping Agencies can no longer simply purchase data from brokers to bypass the warrant process. >Face recognition banned Warrantless facial recognition and AI biometric surveillance in public spaces is prohibited. >You Can Sue Private right of action means if the government violates your rights, you have legal recourse. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8470/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8470...
- SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago>i would think a democrat would have been a better cosponsor Why? Where is any equivalent measures coming from the US left? It is because that’s how people identify as Democrats want them to behave? There seems to be a rift there.
- wbl 2mo agoBecause Congress doesn't work if an issue becomes partisan.
- iamnothere 2mo agoMassie and Wyden are both anomalies in their respective parties. There’s not really any “privacy caucus” at a national level right now, to my dismay. There were more people willing to stand up for privacy after 9/11 during the “with us or against us” GWOT, which really says something.
- Cider9986 2mo agoAnd Massie was kicked out after the most money was spent in any house primary and Trump heavily campaigned for the puppet candidate. It's a super Trump-loving district with mostly elderly turnout, kind of crazy they had Massie for so long, him being a good guy and smart and all.
- brandon272 2mo agoThe effort to erode privacy is so much greater than the effort to preserve it. Governments around the world are like a dog with a bone when it comes to increasing surveillance. An apathetic and ill informed public doesn’t help matters.
- WarmWash 2mo agoI think it's because there hasn't been a widespread reckoning moment for the privacy apathetic yet. For the average person, 20 years of data profiles and tracking has given them tons of services that they have never paid a penny for. Something totally non-existent 30 years ago when you needed to pay money for everything. So to them, they are getting free services, and the worst that has come of it is seeing the same Dawn ad four times a day.
- watwut 2mo ago> With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley Those are pro-surveillance, pro-repair-prevention, pro-fascism. Libertarianism is about your freedom to restrict others, if you are rich and powerful.
- HPsquared 2mo agoFreedom to put whatever you want in the EULA.
- Cider9986 2mo agoWhereas traditional Democrats and Republicans are all protecting privacy? Thomas Massie is a wealthy libertarian and introduced a bill to protect privacy.
- zetsurin 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network, he's part of it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie, it's just protecting self interest by deregulation. recommend reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book) there's a netflicks documentary by the same name that is NOT a substitute for the book.
- watwut 2mo agoThe millionaires libertarians consistently support republican party. They are the ones ahifting it to the right and towards fascism.
- inigyou 2mo agoWhoa whoa whoa whoa. You can't just call everyone you disagree with a fascist.
- watwut 2mo agoI dont call "just anyone" I disagree with that. I call it a specific libertarian millionaires and republican party as is now. Because they fit the definition. And have fascist goals. I disagree with many other people who dont happen to be like that.
- olyjohn 2mo agoBecause they're not libertarians. They're greedy narcissists who what to do whatever they want to anybody and just say that it's libertarian.
- nostrademons 2mo agoThe libertarian technologist space specifically prefers technological solutions because they don't depend upon fallible and corruptible humans implementing the laws. This is the ideological wing that gave us the PC, encryption, the Gnu project, free software, the Internet, P2P filesharing, Bittorrent, social media, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, Freenet, Mullvad and other VPNs, Monero, etc. When it comes to laws, libertarianism faces an internal contradiction. A libertarian believes that they shouldn't be able to control other people; therefore, if a company wants to make an unrepairable unrootable surveillance device and the population consents to using it, the libertarian believes that it is not their right to interfere. The only thing they can do is create a better repairable rootable device, which is how we got GCC, Linux, Ubuntu, Firefox, Graphene, etc.
- inigyou 2mo agoAnd yet the company can afford to spend an extra $0.10 per sale on marketing, which quickly drives the free option to the fringes because marketing drives almost all purchasing decisions.
- nostrademons 2mo agoSad but true. Many libertarian options are comfortable being on the fringes, though, and just build for other libertarians. They lack economies of scale, but software's natural economies of scale (zero cost of reproduction, combined with diminishing returns to complexity) can often make this economical anyway as long as your audience doesn't mind not having the absolute highest level of UX polish possible.
- inigyou 2mo agoAnd then when a libertarian option finds itself getting mainstream, it quickly gets co-opted by authoritarian market forces, because they are so powerful. See how Git got coopted by GitHub, and half the stuff AWS does.
- iamnothere 2mo agoSome left libertarian positions support collective action to dismantle hierarchical power systems. It’s just difficult (impossible?) to maintain this sort of group orientation at scale; it inevitably devolves into factional power seeking/domination politics.
- Teever 2mo agoAs a Canadian user of HN it's really frustrating to see a rare post about a Canadian subject be immediately dominated by a thread about American politics. Twenty words into your post and you've pivoted to the US. What mechanism or discussion can we have to encourage the users to show some restraint on this?
- firefax 2mo agoDo you have any thoughts on the bill? One thing we can do is try to upvote the citizens of the country being discussed. Or calls to action -- who does someone who's Canadian call to complain about this? (Their MP I presume?) I'd also be curious, given you have a multiparty system and not our peculiar two party one, why you struggle so hard to get candidates from NDP elected who would probably not push such terrible legislation?
- Teever 2mo agoIt’s a multiparty system that was recently in a minority configuration but through a fairly interesting series of floor crossings and by elections to fill open seats the Liberal party under PM Mark Carney has obtained a majority which more or less allows them complete dominance over the legislative process. An explanation as to why the NDP fail to gain any substantial power could fill an entire book but imho the overarching reason comes down to the demographic distribution of Canada and dominance of the Bloq Quebecois has over Quebec preventing the establishment of any lasting NDP influence in such a densely populated part of the country. As for the subject at hand, I wish it would be so easy as to just call an elected official, but as I said above, with the Liberal control of parliament for the remainder of their term and their high support in the polls there’s nothing that will Make them backtrack. And this speaks to what Waterluvian mentioned in another thread. Too often with these kinds of surveillance laws the drive for them doesn’t seem to be originating by from the electorate, and it feels like this kind of stuff has an exogenous source and is meant for a whole different audience or player in the game.
- 1over137 2mo ago>dominance of the Bloq Quebecois has over Quebec It's "Bloc". The NDP did well in Québec not long ago, when they had a candidate that the electorate liked.
- firefax 2mo ago>With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen? Maybe because they're full of shit? (Sorry to swear, but I'm struggling for a better way to phrase this.) I ran into a lot of open source projects that needed donations that would be considered tiny in any other nonprofit space, but despite all their talk about cipherpunk stuff, they don't seem to put their money where their mouth is. The "lolbertarians", as I like to call them, seem to want a world where the state has a monopoly on violence and a monopoly on data -- and if you get on their radar, they're just being neutral. (Forgive me if I roll my eyes so hard my retinas nearly detach.)
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mindslight 2mo ago> With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley As a libertarian myself - these people are fake libertarians, actually better described as crypto-authoritarians. So called "right" libertarianism is fertile ground for this, as it's based on an axiomatic/reductionist framing of rights wherein when someone violates a precondition, their rights then become irrelevant. The philosophy is supremely attractive to authoritarians who go down its rabbit hole - finding a whole bunch of reasons to reject appeals to other people's rights while convincing themselves they are advocating freedom. Whereas in reality, the "freedom" they believe in is merely the freedom for themselves to oppress others - witness how these billionaires have chiefly made their money with centralized proprietary web apps/services based around removing choice away from users (at the edge) in favor of "take it or leave it" top-down monolithic offerings, slowly made worse over time (ie enshittification) to extract value after sticky network effects have been achieved. There are of course exceptions - some use their wealth to attempt to pivot to making libre software. And I'm sure there are many more who become disillusioned with the "freedom" they thought they were making, and merely check out. But as the general rule this is why you don't see much actual support for freedom from the rich Surveillance Valley types.
- declan_roberts 2mo agoWe don't need a "new" bill of rights. If they don't respect the first one why do you think they'll respect the next one? There's a different remedy for the current situation.
- PunchyHamster 2mo agoWhen people working for corporate interest will stop being voted in. Good luck
- tokioyoyo 2mo agoFrankly? Never. And the root cause is because majority of people have access to the internet now. The small voice of people who care about some stuff is completely overshadowed by billions of people scrolling through YT Shorts / Reels / TT.