I have to concur that Agenda Item 109[1] (Countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes), is vague as feck.
I'm looking forward to the report from the Secretary-General, to get a better understanding on the scope of their intent: Unlawful as per the UN or unlawful as per the member nations.
It means if there’s a violation, a bunch of bureaucrats and guys in blue helmets show up and form committees to decide what color paper should be used to send a very strongly worded letter.
The future looks more and more bleak as more and more authoritarianism is applied to technology which is supposed to be, to many, as a frontier of freedom.
The most probable thing to me is that we'll sooner or later have it as bad a what's currently happening in China: spying via heavy use of face recognition, pre-crime, citizen score, etc. etc.
It doesn't look like people are alert/tough enough to hold on to freedom, governments will continue to slowly take it away from us until we have none.
The Internet is really a tool. It can be used to track people, spy on them, censor free speech, spread propaganda and fake news or to organise protests like the yellow vest movement in France, which reminds me of the French Revolution and another tool, the printing press.
There are 2 conflicting forces at work. On the one hand you have politics trying to take control of the internet, monitor everything, and censor what they don't like. On the other hand you have people developing decentralised, anonymous, and censorship-resistant technology like Tor and IPFS.
The more work politics puts in to trying to control the internet, the more incentive there is to develop tools to work around politics.
Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins.
There are and there will be tools to counter governments' attempts at censoring or controlling the internet, but most people will never find out nor be able to use those tools. Most people use the tools that came with their phone by default.
In addition, as those efforts gain more popularity propaganda from the government will increase, and will make the regular Joe feel like cryptography is for terrorists.
> Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins.
In the end, force wins. Irrefutable mathematics are just a tool. Every right we have has been won through struggle. Sometimes that struggle is non-violent, sometimes it's less so, but it's always a struggle. A lot of people tend to forget that and think that technology will magically solve things. Or if not technology, something else or someone else will do it.
Didn't seem to have been a problem in USSR (especially with a brainwashed population) and still isn't a problem in China, Venezuella & others dictatorship.
The Syrian people were armed, that turned out well.
Your AR-15 isn't much use against the Airforce's F15. The world has moved on since 1776, local militias can't cope against national military - even one as an expedition force, and in the U.S specifically entire countries can't cope against the U.S. military as an expidition force, what hope does a local militia have against a U.S. based military?
The most you'll get is a guerilla war and terrorism, and that always works out well./sarcasm
Then why hasn’t the mighty US military been able to defeat a bunch of Afghan rebels armed with AKs? You vastly underestimate the power of guerilla war. See also Vietnam, Iraq, and Syria.
And if the US military ever turned against its own citizens on US soil, you can bet a huge number would defect and hell would break loose.
Well if your end goal is to reduce your country to the state of Iraq or Syria, with suicide bombers and destruction of entire cities a daily occurance, that's fine, I guess it's the price you have to pay for having weekly school shootings.
Just lovely - that's exactly what world needs: a bunch of countries that can barely run themselves, let alone innovate, making decisions on policing innovation and going for virtual land grab!
The only hopeful thing is - it's UN, the biggest bureaucracy in the world! It will take them 3 years just to duke out the name of the Committee and the titles of the bigwigs on it.
Human rights was originally conceived of as negative rights, e.g. you have the right to pursue happiness in the same way as I do. Negative rights is a sign of freedom, and positive rights are a sign of the opposite because they infringe upon others freedom by obligating them to fulfill your rights.
The UN has expanded this greatly to positive rights where someone can obligate someone to do something as a right, e.g. you have no right to offend my beliefs.
In general this development is a step towards more centralization, and it is a sign of the central weakness of any centralized system which is that its limited in what it can express by the biological limitations of people that run it.
.. if you want to convince people of this, I suggest you review your use of 'positive' and 'negative' .. anyway, its not nearly as clear cut as you make it out there.
> The UN has expanded this greatly to positive rights where someone can obligate someone to do something as a right, e.g. you have no right to offend my beliefs.
that's obliging inaction - it obliges someone to not say or do something which offends you - so it is a negative right
You're wrong. Enforcing someone to refrain is exactly what he's talking about. You are asking someone to do something if you are asking them to refrain from speaking, as it's their liberty to speak.
> Enforcing someone to refrain is exactly what he's talking about
and is exactly the definition of negative rights. right there. that's the definition. that's it.
Now, you're saying that because "right to not be offended" is a bad idea, and you don't agree with it, that makes it a positive right. But your opinion of it does not matter to the definition.
The definition of "positive right" would be requiring someone else to, say, stand when you enter the room, or always address you as "sir" because you're knighted.
Let me also clarify that I very much dislike any "right to not be offended" and also that these definitions of "positive rights" and "negative rights" is clearly not very useful.
The reason why the right to not be offended is a positive right is that I am obliged to find out what might offend you, which is impossible when speaking to a large crowd, and if there is a need to express something along the same ideas I am forced to express it as you would or not at all. Eg if you believe everything is a social construct I can’t express what I think is influenced by biology if it offends your beliefs.
However, you are correct that the line can be blurry and right in general should be granted with great caution.
Negative rights also “infringe” on others freedom in the same way you describe: they limit what others can do. The “oblige others to inaction”. The trade off is they (usually) get the same protections.
Yeah. There's something right about this line of thought, I think, but it could use a bit more development.
A big part of the conceptual problem is that the distinction between positive and negative rights is much less clear than people often assume. GP highlighted a pretty good example: "you have no right to offend my beliefs." It's a positive right if you call it a "right to go through life without being offended" but negative if phrased as "you have a right not to be the object of offensive conduct." And often, preventing something from happening (i.e., enforcing a negative right) may impose some sort of affirmative obligation, or impose seemingly objectionable restrictions, on others.
One somewhat fruitful way to untangle this can be to add another distinction between acts of the state and acts of private citizens. Thus, under the U.S. constitution, for example, one typically has negative rights against some state action or other (e.g., :"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech.")
"you have a right not to be the object of offensive conduct." is not a negative right, because the one that has to oblige to act upon it is not the one with the right. Not only that, for you to have that right the other person is obliged to figure out what might offend you which is quite an impossible requirement when speaking to a large crowd.
I don’t have to do anything to figure out if I should murder you or not. It’s just wrong and there are only two options. However, I have to do something active to be obliged to not offend your beliefs as there are as many sets of beliefs that might offend as there are people. And what offends one might please another. Big difference.
Totally correct! But this doesn't have to do with whether these are positive or negative rights. It just highlights the fact that some negative rights are more easily understood and applied than others.
However countries like the U.S. have restrictions on those rights -- e.g. shouting fire in a crowded theatre, because society accepts that actions have consequences, and there's always a balance. You have the right to swing your fist, but not to hit me. You have the right to eat food, but not if it's in my cupboard. You have freedom to move, but not across private land (or borders).
> Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadI'm looking forward to the report from the Secretary-General, to get a better understanding on the scope of their intent: Unlawful as per the UN or unlawful as per the member nations.
[1] - http://undocs.org/A/C.3/73/L.9/Rev.1
> Opposition to the resolution came mainly from Australia, Canada, the European Union and the US.
If the quality of initiatives is as bad as the compat for migration, we're pretty much fucked.
The most probable thing to me is that we'll sooner or later have it as bad a what's currently happening in China: spying via heavy use of face recognition, pre-crime, citizen score, etc. etc.
It doesn't look like people are alert/tough enough to hold on to freedom, governments will continue to slowly take it away from us until we have none.
The more work politics puts in to trying to control the internet, the more incentive there is to develop tools to work around politics.
Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins.
In addition, as those efforts gain more popularity propaganda from the government will increase, and will make the regular Joe feel like cryptography is for terrorists.
I mean not to be pessimistic, but... :-D
We're seeing quite a lot of episodes of deplatforming lately.
It seems as if payment processors are pressuring everyone down below to comply, but it start with them.
In the end, force wins. Irrefutable mathematics are just a tool. Every right we have has been won through struggle. Sometimes that struggle is non-violent, sometimes it's less so, but it's always a struggle. A lot of people tend to forget that and think that technology will magically solve things. Or if not technology, something else or someone else will do it.
Not always. At some point, the cost of enforcement becomes too high and unfeasible.
An example of what I’m talking about is the black market for dollars and the use of bitcoins by Venezuelans to illegally dodge currency controls.
Thanks for the 2nd Amendment :-) Force doesn't have to be privatized by Governments.
Your AR-15 isn't much use against the Airforce's F15. The world has moved on since 1776, local militias can't cope against national military - even one as an expedition force, and in the U.S specifically entire countries can't cope against the U.S. military as an expidition force, what hope does a local militia have against a U.S. based military?
The most you'll get is a guerilla war and terrorism, and that always works out well./sarcasm
And if the US military ever turned against its own citizens on US soil, you can bet a huge number would defect and hell would break loose.
The only hopeful thing is - it's UN, the biggest bureaucracy in the world! It will take them 3 years just to duke out the name of the Committee and the titles of the bigwigs on it.
China made their own version of the internet to imprision their citizen’s communication; let the rest of the world manage the real internet.
The UN has expanded this greatly to positive rights where someone can obligate someone to do something as a right, e.g. you have no right to offend my beliefs.
In general this development is a step towards more centralization, and it is a sign of the central weakness of any centralized system which is that its limited in what it can express by the biological limitations of people that run it.
How is it different?
that's obliging inaction - it obliges someone to not say or do something which offends you - so it is a negative right
and is exactly the definition of negative rights. right there. that's the definition. that's it.
Now, you're saying that because "right to not be offended" is a bad idea, and you don't agree with it, that makes it a positive right. But your opinion of it does not matter to the definition.
The definition of "positive right" would be requiring someone else to, say, stand when you enter the room, or always address you as "sir" because you're knighted.
Let me also clarify that I very much dislike any "right to not be offended" and also that these definitions of "positive rights" and "negative rights" is clearly not very useful.
However, you are correct that the line can be blurry and right in general should be granted with great caution.
A big part of the conceptual problem is that the distinction between positive and negative rights is much less clear than people often assume. GP highlighted a pretty good example: "you have no right to offend my beliefs." It's a positive right if you call it a "right to go through life without being offended" but negative if phrased as "you have a right not to be the object of offensive conduct." And often, preventing something from happening (i.e., enforcing a negative right) may impose some sort of affirmative obligation, or impose seemingly objectionable restrictions, on others.
One somewhat fruitful way to untangle this can be to add another distinction between acts of the state and acts of private citizens. Thus, under the U.S. constitution, for example, one typically has negative rights against some state action or other (e.g., :"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech.")
However countries like the U.S. have restrictions on those rights -- e.g. shouting fire in a crowded theatre, because society accepts that actions have consequences, and there's always a balance. You have the right to swing your fist, but not to hit me. You have the right to eat food, but not if it's in my cupboard. You have freedom to move, but not across private land (or borders).
What about communism ?