Probably, and if they did, it would be just as wrong.
The difference is that a lot of Republicans have lost total faith in institutions and the media because they feel they are largely coordinated at this point.
> The difference is that a lot of Republicans have lost total faith in institutions
Oh, they love institutions when they're doing what they want (cracking down on black people/poor people/Hillary Clinton's email servers), but when they're investigating Trump, _now_ the Republicans want to defund law enforcement.
Definitely. I know there are a lot of republicans who are happy to put their foot down if they are in power. It is fucking wrong and we need to oppose it whenever someone does this. Otherwise it is all just who whom all the way down. It's kind of sad that a lot of people were anti-FBI/CIA/etc but now that these organisations have been colonized they are suddenly pro-FBI/CIA/etc.
As an outsider, what it looks like to me is that USA needs some kind of law to severely restrict people from circulating freenly between these environments.
A huge amount of people in the media are ex-intelligence or ex-law enforcement, lots of people in big tech worked for democratic party and vice-versa.
Or the secretary of defense that works for Raytheon...
As an outsider it looks to me that USA really wants to top all other countries and be first place in the world in amount of conflict of interest, nepotism and industry inbreeding.
Regulators aren't much better, for example Boeing employees that analyze the Max on behalf of regulators or Twitter that are just verbally interviewed about their security practices without providing any proof.
I bet someone, somewhere, want the SEC to start to use same style of regulation when regulating insider trading. "Did you insider traded Mr. Senator?" "No I didn't. The laws that I passed that helped the company I founded are only coincidence." "Ah of course, carry on."
The current head of the FBI was appointed by Trump. Are you arguing that the FBI head has no power or that he's secretly a stooge of the Democratic party?
On the other hand, a former CIA director or something is on Amazon board of directors now, who kicked out a pro-Trump network (Parler, if memory serves me right) not long ago.
The fact that there's no word for the Educational/Military/Techno-Industrial complex is somewhat telling. You're not really allowed to notice it exists - watch this story ONLY be carried by the Post and the Daily Wire.
In a few years it will be covered by the Grey Lady - just like the Hunter Biden laptop stuff.
They were brusque in voicing it, but the criticism is fair. We all know the exact atmosphere and quality of discussion that follows comments like these and that it is characteristic of the toxicity found on reddit and facebook.
Yeah, HN is not a general news and politics site or general purpose forum. Not once until today have I seen "democrats this" and "republicans that" bullshit. Yes, there are political discussions but they always follow the implied rule of applied criticial thinking and a well thought out opinion, not repeating some propaganda vomit you heard somewhere or party line tribalism. This just isn't the place for it.
However, if they can't find the right place you can come up with a site or app and do a "Show HN" post!
> "I am proud to announce Christopher as my choice as the Director of the FBI. During his previous service at the Department of Justice, Christopher was the leader of major fraud investigations, and was a key part of the team overseeing the Justice Department’s actions in the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks," said President Trump. "He is an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI."
Yet apparently, he's now a tool of the Democrats! Seriously bro?
America is an exceptional country. Tyranny is outsourced to 'private' industry, freeing the public sector to do victory laps over how great the First Amendment is, and stuff.
Companies like Facebook go out of their way to try and show that they are protecting their users privacy. For example Facebook has a transparency report disclosing requests from governments: https://transparency.fb.com/data/government-data-requests If they are actively sending data to governments without a forced legal request then this is very much a story.
I mean, this is an issue with tech companies while Trump and his pile of paper documents has nothing to do with tech? If it makes you feel any better, talking a lot about Trump--even saying negative things about him--probably only helps him anyway.
> Half this article is about how it was targeted against election deniers/MAGA die hards. But of course, even that is spun as being bad in this article. From the article: ‘None were Antifa types’
It is a bad thing, because the law protects our disagreement with the election deniers/MAGA diehards only as much as it protects their disagreement with ours. Having the same opinions as people who did illegal things isn't and shouldn't be grounds for targeted surveillance.
The pendulum will swing the other way eventually, and they'll be digging into the messages of people that talk about defunding the police because "antifa" took control over part of Portland for a while. Or target abortion activists because they caught a few people trying to assassinate Supreme Court justices.
Trusting that government overreach will only affect the other side usually backfires.
> It is a bad thing, because the law protects our disagreement with the election deniers/MAGA diehards only as much as it protects their disagreement with ours.
[Citation Needed]
I'll assume you mean the first amendment and that only applies to the government not to private business (i.e. Facebook). It definitely does not apply to a webpage that told you in their T&C that they're scanning the content you post.
The article may quote “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” but it wouldn't be worth the ink it's printed on. Time and time again it's been shown that if a third party (i.e. facebook) wants to willingly give information to the government a subpoena is not needed.
The 4th Amendment is at issue here. This is just a neat end-run around the 4th Amendment; it doesn't apply if you can put enough soft pressure on businesses to have them report on their own users.
You're right that it's legal under the current interpretation of the laws. It just means the 4th Amendment isn't worth the paper it was printed on, and it'll get relegated to the "stuff people used to care about category" like the 3rd.
That's a very different situation. For one, that's a first party request; I can refuse (in some states, in some circumstances). A license also can't contain private information; it's a physical manifestation of information that a person willingly surrendered to the government.
There's a huge difference between a cop asking a single person for their ID, and dragnet surveillance of people with a particular viewpoint.
I think his point is there's a similar distinction between monitoring a group of people who attacked democracy, and dragnet surveillance of the entire population.
It is your bias to see only two sides and to see your side as morally superior whose transgressions are justified. There is plenty of utter horriblenesses coming from both “sides”.
Antifa didn't do it, but a lot of people were negatively affected by refusing to get vaccinated. This administrations policies booted a lot of people from their jobs.
And all these bitter conservatives are going to turn around and use this as justification to force women to carry to term. And they're not going to listen to any reason, because they feel like you (not you specifically, the royal "you") threatened their livelyhood.
In a sense the lefty types literally made a rod for their own back.
One has very little to do with the other besides having to do with body autonomy. Also, people were never forced to get vaccinated. I would always be against that. Women are being forced to come to term.
It's unfair to women for a bunch of nerdy guys to rhetorically equate the two. And by going after abortion, looks like GOP might have made a rod for THEIR own back. We'll see.
People are not forced to get vaccinated the same way women are not forced to be fertile. We live in a world of IUDs, morning after pills, and birth control. Why not just not be pregnant? (Yuck)
But this is a disgusting line of logic to go down - and whether or not they are truly equivalent doesn't matter because the political opposition believes that they are.
Bodily autonomy is about to be sacrificed to government whims, just like privacy was, and assuming we can just put the cat in the bag is naïve.
I hope our rights become further enshrined, but I don't think it's in the cards.
Fair enough. But I have to say - your first line makes no sense. Two of the three things you mentioned, I assume you know, don't work 100% of the time. And IUDs are a giant lol from me, many dudes don't even like putting on condoms and you want women to stick this plastic thing in their vagina? So it's all on the woman, and then if she gets pregnant, its STILL all on her, and all decided by a bunch of 'religious' white guys.
Is your argument women just shouldn't have sex?
Besides the point I agree, but goes to show since this argument was introduced by you as blow back against vaccines and the politics of the current conservatives, that maybe 'their' political rhetoric is a bit wonky. That's the asymmetry I was pointing out in my original comment.
No I don't really agree, I don't see everything from two sides, and notice I said: 'asymmetries of the 'two sides' in your hypothetical', i.e. it was the two sides from the other guy's hypothetical, not mine.
The sides are a construct largely pushed by media, and somewhat by people in power as a convenient device for keeping power. But Q-Anon and all that shit - the rich eat babies, etc. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwdkng6ZGp8) - isn't a side for me, it's an illness, and it makes sense that the FBI wants to monitor it. I'm for it.
Agreed that there aren't only two viewpoints, but there's only two that really matter, due to the construct that you mentioned.
> it makes sense that the FBI wants to monitor it. I'm for it.
I still think this is short sighted. E.g. the FBI in it's early days was heavily involved in monitoring and trying to break up the Civil Rights Movement. They were spying on people protesting the Vietnam War, people in the Women's Rights Movement, the list goes on.
When we let the FBI do dragnet surveillance, it doesn't stop at people with outlandish opinions. It has, and will continue to, impact important political groups and ideologies.
Honestly, from the history, it's far more likely to impact liberal groups than conservative ones. The only real controversy around the FBI and conservatives that I can think of is Ruby Ridge, which was more of a libertarian/anarchist thing than anything else.
Agreed, it's not optimal. I've been thinking about this alot lately actually, I think there's always going to be friction of this sort. You could argue it exists at all levels, for example when fighting infections your body often damages/kills it's own cells. Ofc. you can die from an overactive/badly tuned immune system, but more often, people die from not having a strong enough one! But we're not cells, are we.
We all know, or should know, that all big tech companies violate privacy in one of myriad ways. Facebook, Google, et al are a criminal cartel, selling its users’ data to the highest bidder. When a foreign country or an individual does what these companies do, it’s hacking and considered a crime. When Big Tech does it, no big deal.
Man, it's been a long, long time, since the Qwest CEO stood up to the Feds on a hunting expedition[1]... I don't think anyone has had the guts to say no since then, although Apple put up some pretense when asked for access to iPhone data. Coincidentally, of course, as things are wont to happen, the CEO subsequently got caught up in inside trading...
I live in the USA so when the DMV or cops engage in the market of personal data, that's just Tuesday. I am all for legislation & enforcement which destroys the entire personal data market.
Facebook and Google don't sell user data. They sell ad impressions, leveraging user data to decide which ads to show, but it's not like you can just buy a user's data from them. In fact, they've gotten much stingier with ways to get their users' data. You used to be able to get a ton of user and connection data for free just by using Facebook's API (with the user's permission) but it's much harder now and for some types of data, it's no longer available at all.
Not a criminal cartel, just an extension of the intelligence services in the US.
Surveillance, censorship, propaganda, behavior modification,
globally over billions of people.
The govt outsources to private parties that which is illegal for it to do directly. Some Italian dude coined a term for this sort of merger of corporate and government power in the early 20th century....
It feels like a deliberate conflation of what a "private message" means.
Many FB users assume "only me and the recipient(s) can see". Similarly, "private group" on social media platforms. "Private" - you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. :)
These are all misnomers, and more non-E2EE people need to recognize and understand it. In as much as I dislike the dismissive nature of the saying, it is true - "I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you."
Occurrences like these will make understanding happen.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadThe difference is that a lot of Republicans have lost total faith in institutions and the media because they feel they are largely coordinated at this point.
Oh, they love institutions when they're doing what they want (cracking down on black people/poor people/Hillary Clinton's email servers), but when they're investigating Trump, _now_ the Republicans want to defund law enforcement.
It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so damn sad.
As an outsider, what it looks like to me is that USA needs some kind of law to severely restrict people from circulating freenly between these environments.
A huge amount of people in the media are ex-intelligence or ex-law enforcement, lots of people in big tech worked for democratic party and vice-versa.
Or the secretary of defense that works for Raytheon...
As an outsider it looks to me that USA really wants to top all other countries and be first place in the world in amount of conflict of interest, nepotism and industry inbreeding.
Regulators aren't much better, for example Boeing employees that analyze the Max on behalf of regulators or Twitter that are just verbally interviewed about their security practices without providing any proof.
I bet someone, somewhere, want the SEC to start to use same style of regulation when regulating insider trading. "Did you insider traded Mr. Senator?" "No I didn't. The laws that I passed that helped the company I founded are only coincidence." "Ah of course, carry on."
In a few years it will be covered by the Grey Lady - just like the Hunter Biden laptop stuff.
However, if they can't find the right place you can come up with a site or app and do a "Show HN" post!
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/pr...
> "I am proud to announce Christopher as my choice as the Director of the FBI. During his previous service at the Department of Justice, Christopher was the leader of major fraud investigations, and was a key part of the team overseeing the Justice Department’s actions in the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks," said President Trump. "He is an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI."
Yet apparently, he's now a tool of the Democrats! Seriously bro?
How would you feel if all the news media only said positive things about Trump, and reported on Bidens crimes.
That seems implausible.
they are Facebook's favorite users after all
It is a bad thing, because the law protects our disagreement with the election deniers/MAGA diehards only as much as it protects their disagreement with ours. Having the same opinions as people who did illegal things isn't and shouldn't be grounds for targeted surveillance.
The pendulum will swing the other way eventually, and they'll be digging into the messages of people that talk about defunding the police because "antifa" took control over part of Portland for a while. Or target abortion activists because they caught a few people trying to assassinate Supreme Court justices.
Trusting that government overreach will only affect the other side usually backfires.
[Citation Needed]
I'll assume you mean the first amendment and that only applies to the government not to private business (i.e. Facebook). It definitely does not apply to a webpage that told you in their T&C that they're scanning the content you post.
The article may quote “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” but it wouldn't be worth the ink it's printed on. Time and time again it's been shown that if a third party (i.e. facebook) wants to willingly give information to the government a subpoena is not needed.
You're right that it's legal under the current interpretation of the laws. It just means the 4th Amendment isn't worth the paper it was printed on, and it'll get relegated to the "stuff people used to care about category" like the 3rd.
There's a huge difference between a cop asking a single person for their ID, and dragnet surveillance of people with a particular viewpoint.
And all these bitter conservatives are going to turn around and use this as justification to force women to carry to term. And they're not going to listen to any reason, because they feel like you (not you specifically, the royal "you") threatened their livelyhood.
In a sense the lefty types literally made a rod for their own back.
It's unfair to women for a bunch of nerdy guys to rhetorically equate the two. And by going after abortion, looks like GOP might have made a rod for THEIR own back. We'll see.
But this is a disgusting line of logic to go down - and whether or not they are truly equivalent doesn't matter because the political opposition believes that they are.
Bodily autonomy is about to be sacrificed to government whims, just like privacy was, and assuming we can just put the cat in the bag is naïve.
I hope our rights become further enshrined, but I don't think it's in the cards.
Is your argument women just shouldn't have sex?
Besides the point I agree, but goes to show since this argument was introduced by you as blow back against vaccines and the politics of the current conservatives, that maybe 'their' political rhetoric is a bit wonky. That's the asymmetry I was pointing out in my original comment.
You can't just 'both sides' everything blindly.
This will be the line when people start suing their employers over vaccine injuries. "It was always voluntary. You could have just let us fire you."
The sides are a construct largely pushed by media, and somewhat by people in power as a convenient device for keeping power. But Q-Anon and all that shit - the rich eat babies, etc. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwdkng6ZGp8) - isn't a side for me, it's an illness, and it makes sense that the FBI wants to monitor it. I'm for it.
> it makes sense that the FBI wants to monitor it. I'm for it.
I still think this is short sighted. E.g. the FBI in it's early days was heavily involved in monitoring and trying to break up the Civil Rights Movement. They were spying on people protesting the Vietnam War, people in the Women's Rights Movement, the list goes on.
When we let the FBI do dragnet surveillance, it doesn't stop at people with outlandish opinions. It has, and will continue to, impact important political groups and ideologies.
Honestly, from the history, it's far more likely to impact liberal groups than conservative ones. The only real controversy around the FBI and conservatives that I can think of is Ruby Ridge, which was more of a libertarian/anarchist thing than anything else.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying
Many FB users assume "only me and the recipient(s) can see". Similarly, "private group" on social media platforms. "Private" - you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. :)
These are all misnomers, and more non-E2EE people need to recognize and understand it. In as much as I dislike the dismissive nature of the saying, it is true - "I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you."
Occurrences like these will make understanding happen.
I think I am OK with that.