the Australian government made the usual argument that metadata needs to be retained for long periods in order to fight terrorism and serious crime—even though the German experience is that, in practice, data retention does not help
Which only goes to show that it's not about fighting crime, but supporting it on the highest levels. Civil rights and the rule of law are obstacles to the coming rule of institutionalised crime, so they have to be abolished.
That's rather closed minded of you. If you don't want to be bothered by differing perspectives, there are plenty of echo chamber outlets for you to choose from so we can further distance and alienate ourselves from each other.
Homophobia, racism, politics - everything gets better when we share openly.
Tempodox's phrasing may seem a little out there, but there are plenty of arguments that could be in line with his reasoning.
For example, was the Bush administration's lies about the CIA report a crime? [1]
I don't think Hanlon's Razor applies here. While calling it institutionalized crime may be inflammatory, valid, (or even distracting), it's quite clear that those in power pass laws to perpetuate their power. This is in line with the iron law of oligarchy. [2]
The state is increasingly controlled by the hyper-wealthy individuals and corporations that fund politics, and its policies and propaganda increasingly reflect their interests. Standard totalitarianism, by contrast, is where the corporations are controlled by the state.
As to whether it's new, I suspect it's just today's manifestation of the same shit that's always been going on, where the wealthy and powerful oppress the poor using whatever technologies are available.
The interesting bit for me is how technology will change people's reaction. It's always been the case that powerful people can manipulate mass media to control the narrative. However, it's only recently that we have developed tools that make it possible for one person (e.g. Snowden) to undo billions of dollars of secrecy by leaking more documents that one could physically carry if they had been printed on paper, then distributing them to millions at zero cost. I think this tips the balance in favour of the citizens. I suspect that we are just seeing more of the efforts to control us exposed in the media than we normally would be aware of.
It kind of brings to mind the recent spate of child abuse revelations in the UK. I don't for a moment think that that sort of stuff only started happening a decade or two ago. Far more likely that it has always been present and only now do we have technology and media that makes it near impossible to hide, so it all comes out.
I wonder what other technologies will emerge that allow us to surveil the powerful in new ways for the first time in history, whether they like it or not.
>The state is increasingly controlled by the hyper-wealthy individuals and corporations that fund politics, and its policies and propaganda increasingly reflect their interests.
The root problem isn't money in politics, but alienation of voters from the the real business of government, a business people must understand if they are to hire (elect) the right people to run it. Political money just fills the void of that ignorance. That business is fundamentally an allocation game that starts with accumulation from taxes, fines and fees and ends with a set of spending decisions over time. This "spending decision set" represents a much greater degree-of-freedom than the traditional, policy-obsessed "how a bill becomes a law" narrative from school would imply. One key part is the appointment game, where an elected executive leader assigns arbitrary people to run major government departments, who themselves get wide discretion with "operational policy", policies that have the most impact on tax payers and yet get the least attention.
So, yeah, let's start focusing on government as a hierarchy of allocation and policy decisions.
> The state is increasingly controlled by the hyper-wealthy individuals and corporations that fund politics, and its policies and propaganda increasingly reflect their interests.
>However, it's only recently that we have developed tools that make it possible for one person (e.g. Snowden) to undo billions of dollars of secrecy by leaking more documents that one could physically carry if they had been printed on paper, then distributing them to millions at zero cost.
I've often wondered what has been said, or what kind of policies have been changed, or implemented, etc. in the NSA since Snowden came to the public forefront.
I wonder what they've done internally to try to ensure that this doesn't happen them again.
They would have said "weather the storm". To deny would ha e been folly.
They also locked down IT so that no one person had access to everything.
They may also have increased scrutiny of materials they could bring onsite/take offsite.
Australia is basically a mining province of China these days. I don't mean this in some conspiracy theory sense, simply in a practical one: you can see that the exchange rate, GDP growth etc are functions of what happens to the Chinese economy.
This has been true of Australia for decades. The corporate elite have been using Australia as a proving-ground for their strategies for a long time now, since Australia is one of those western nations where heinous, fascist behaviour, has been permitted for centuries. The colonial/imperial systems used to rule Australian society - and destroy its previous occupants - have been refined and enhanced for application in the modern era, without much hindrance alas.
Most of your other comments are fair about Audtralia. This one is not.
Australia has always been apathetic - "she'll be right" was our catch cry. Until recently (the last 20 years or so), we maintained that casual attitude.
Since then, we have culturally become Americanised through TV and movies. With it has come a callousness and a higher level of sophistication and a greater sense of entitlement.
I would suggest two points. It's a combination of apathy and self-focus that are driving our indifference to draconian policy. The second point is that the crimes you accuse Australia of are typical throughout the west. While I don't like to see what Australia has become, other western countries are no better.
Does anyone remember the blue ribbon campaign about free speech from the 90s? I went into all of the Australian IRC channels before the news hit. I called for my fellow Australians to rise to protect their freedoms. I don't think I've been attacked so viciously by so many people before or since that day.. That was and still remains Australia's apathy.
Like you, I feel we are in the minority in Australia. Social consciousness and concern for others rights is not on the landscape.
Your argument amounts to a "look over there!" style distraction, when there are instead many foul and vicious actions to be observed in the contemporary Australian stage which have only been possible as a continuing set of crimes against humanity, precisely because the distraction argument has been made over and over again.
It is time for Australians to fess up to the facts - we cannot continue to say "but, 'they' do it too!' as a justification for the criminal acts that we, as a nation, allow to continue - even today in the 21st century - which have roots in the 19th century and beyond.
Look at what the British imperial government did to the Australian native population - up until the 1970's and even early 80's; racist programs of discrimination and vile hatred were enacted to prevent the Australian people from earning their rightful place in the nation. White Australia has much to answer for: Racial cleansing/genetic engineering of the most heinous forms, even still echoing through the native population today, tearing peoples lives apart and rendering them, quite literally, infertile and barren - as a culture, and as human individuals.
It is essential that contemporary Australian culture rise to the challenge of admitting the heritage of its racist nation, and address the real issue - and, even more vital, attempt to redress the wrongs that are even still today being committed in the name of White Australia. The detention centers - essentially micro-concentration camps - must be closed. We must allow ourselves the dignity of admitting into this great land those who seek sanctity and safety from the wars which our Western Powers have wrought upon the world. We must, as Australians, insist that we be represented by people who will accept the duty of making amends for the criminal acts that Australian generations have performed, in the broader human sphere, in our names. It is essential, because if we do not do something about it now, it will continue - there is much evidence of this in our history, which we must acknowledge or face even worse consequences, as time marches on, and our culture continues to sweep under the rug the heinous nature of our heritage.
Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
(He's not directly responsible for the law, as it is in the purview of the Attorney General, but the Minister for Communications is a minister of the government.)
Sure, because there's NO POSSIBLE WAY for Skype to get a subpoena, right?
But that's exactly the point!!
Subpoenas and warrants require due process and probable cause (especially in the case of Skype, which is cross borders). The data retention regime - for the most part - removes that and requires nothing more than a (possibly automated) request.
"We have classified your service (Skype, whatever) as 'telecommunications' and unless you give us this stuff without a warrant we're going to start arresting your folks in-country and work on extraditing your executives"
What happened in the last few years to allow our civil rights in the most forward thinking countries to unravel so easily? And why do citizens not care? How is it possible that all countries have elected such a group of corrupt, nearsighted politicians to the point where freedom is an inconvenience over them consolidating practically dictatorial power? And again, why does no one care?
It's a combination of unprecedented wealth (let's be honest, modern poverty in industrialized countries is nothing like it was back in the '50s) and the continuous rise of asymmetric warfare randomly deployed by psychopaths. In Sydney, the "cafe kidnap" attack is still fresh in everyone's mind. We've had bombs in London and Madrid, plus a number of other scares, and when a population feels threatened, they'll typically hand power to the first dictator with a minimum of skill. As long as we're free to buy porn and videogames, most people just don't care.
Did they react this way during the Troubles? I don't think they did. I was in London in '92 and there was a bomb threat called in at the tube station one stop over. It delayed the train for a bit, but that was it and everyone continued on like normal.
This time the US freaks out because the world came to their doorstep and they flip out because they have no idea how to handle it. The leaders flip out causes the population to freak out and they trun around and grant legal weight to every stupid idea that comes flying out of polititians mouths.
It seems the UK learned from this, so when there is a little bomb plot in London, the leaders go full retard, the people get scared and do the same thing.
It's like everyone figured out the best way to get more power is to act like you've been caught with your pants down so that you're the one who scared the population, not whatever actually happened. After everyone has finished running around like a chicken with it's head cut off and the dust settles, the government finds itself with all these extra powers.
This technique was first theorized and practiced by CIA in Europe (and likely KGB elsewhere) during the Cold War. In Italy they called it "Tension Strategy", as in "keeping people tense" with fear of attacks and bombs so they will allow the government to get and maintain illiberal powers or even allow a Chilean-style coup d'état.
During the Troubles, the UK had its fair share of "freaking out", banning public bins (only recently re-introduced), criminalizing the Irish community, and basically allowing police and military to do whatever they wanted in Northern Ireland (with lots of abuses being recognised and pursued only today). A famous Irish comedian joked a few years ago that he loved all Muslims, because they've now replaced the Irish as standard bogeymen ("... and now us Irish are just those funny people from Riverdance!").
> banning public bins (only recently re-introduced)
They were banned in train stations and other similar areas, for the fairly sensible reason that they'd been used to hide bombs in those locations in the past.
The "Tension Strategy" was an allegation made by Italian Communist Party, which was unhappy with the influence of American political ideas in Italy post-WWII. Trying to pass it off as accepted historical fact, as you have done, is dishonest.
I understand that the British government did a lot during the Troubles. For one, the right to remain silent was weakened. Special counterterrorism units were created ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Reaction_Force ), which were accused of committing several crimes. And, although it wasn't an official policy, businesses added enough closed circuit television cameras that it became impossible to pull off anonymous attacks in London.
Did they react this way during the Troubles? I don't think they did
Mainland UK was left largely alone, although the news was subject to bizarre censorship (Gerry Adams having to speak through a proxy, for example) and they took all the bins out of railway stations.
Northern Ireland was subject to military occupation, with overt armed checkpoints, occasionally military firing on civilians (although not with the same level of impunity as US police), secret police and informants running around, and widespread street violence.
This kind of thing was rampant in the 1910s and 1960s (with the communists and anarchists in the earlier case and various disaffected and political groups in the later). They were also periods of high growth in wealth.
Decadence. People don't care about civil rights, because those rights don't seem to have anything to do with the lifestyle cults that people are involved in. In Australia, particularly, where the idea of having 'a great lifestyle' trumps all other civic involvement, it should be no surprise that nobody cares - as long as you can drive to the new mall on the weekends for a bit of air-conditioned consumer protection, can watch all the latest crap from the UK/USA on television every day, and can generally just kick back and relax and enjoy 'the good life', who cares what rights are taken from you? As long as "I've got mine", where "mine" is variously defined by corporate masters whose marketing-mind-control rules every aspect of that lifestyle, in an ultimately feudal system, nobody really gives a shit ..
I wonder if this is what you really believe, or if you're a shill paid to perpetuate this line of thinking to discourage/disillusion people who care about their rights.
Sure, some people don't care and are blissfully caught up in a manufactured world of consumerism, but that does not generalise to the rest of the population.
I'm an Australian who is quite disappointed with his culture - call it cultural-cringe, if you will - and who finds the never-ending encroachment of strip-mall/parking-lot/tract-houses across the beautiful Australian landscape a real travesty. The cookie-cutter homes, the non-stop "New Thing™" to which the Australian Now-generation are endlessly upgrading, and so on. This is all very disappointing to have observed over many decades now.
So .. no .. I'm no paid shill, mate - I truly think that Australia is a dystopian nightmare society, caught in a trance of consumption and lifestyle, and which I find less and less appealing as I get older. I'd love to see Australians care more about their rights - maybe you can enlighten me as to where and when that is happening? All I see is loss of interest, and a desire to simply keep calm and carry on, while it all gets eroded towards the feudal master-plan: Sell the resources, keep the change, and don't .. at any cost .. acknowledge the failure of modern Australian civilization to address the wrongs enacted on the natives, newcomers, and boat people.
The fact that you can post here and complain proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't live in "a dystopian nightmare society". If you were North Korean or Burmese, and you said that about your country, you'd be dead or in a labor camp in a heartbeat.
All I see is a bitter person spreading FUD because you don't approve of how other people live their lives.
Oh, I for sure think that North Korea and Burma are also terrible countries. If you want to talk about that, we can do that.
But, staying on the subject .. please, enlighten me: how are the Australian people not losing their rights due to their own ignorance? So far, all I see is disinterest in the subject. Total surveillance: this is okay with you?
The right to live one's lifestyle is by far and above the most important right anyone can have.
I'm a transgender lesbian. I live in a city with comprehensive LGBT protections. I live the kind of life I want. I have far more rights protected now than I did ten years ago. The rights I actually care about are protected.
It's no coincidence that the people who complain the loudest about "corporate masters" and make stuff up about how the west has become "dystopian" and "totalitarian" are the exact same people who want to get rid of LGBT protections. All this complaining about your "rights" being taken away is just code for whining that people in groups you don't belong to are having their rights protected for the first time.
I'm sick and tired of this anti-consumerist circlejerk.
It's hard for the public to care when there is no concrete evidence of harm. The government knows this and is working hard to make sure that any harm done by mass surveillance is hidden using parallel construction.
What is an interesting and useful game is to imagine a scenario which would trigger massive public outrage over the use of mass surveillance. What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? To be honest, I don't think a single major mistake with a citizen would do it (e.g. killing someone based on mass surveillance). Too many apologists would make the case that this is cherry picking and that it's just an exceptional case. A pattern of mistakes would perhaps be better (putting thousands of people on the no fly list for no reason), but these kinds of stories tend to be too cerebral for the general public to focus on (although people like Colbert and John Oliver are really good at solving that problem!)
I think the only thing that might do it would be a Watergate style scandal where one group of powerful people use the machinery to mess with another group of powerful people. Consider how much more seriously Feinstein took the CIA when it became clear they were spying on her and her staff during the torture investigations. Or Angela Merkel's reaction to her cell phone being tapped. So, unfortunately have to wait for the machinery to be wielded against the powerful because it's (clearly) easy to get away with wielding it against the rest of us.
What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power?
If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. I'm sure Australians can point to similar abuses of government power that are not considered a problem going forward, because, hey, we're all progressives here, right?
People are funny. We won't build nuke plants on the grounds that there is a small but finite chance of something going wrong and killing a lot of people, but we'll cheerfully let our politicians put the mechanisms of 1984 into place for our "safety." And we don't even get electricity in return.
If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will.
Oh come on - how many people did Hoover kill? There isn't even a number. Not because he was a great guy, but because the abuses of government power that have taken place in the US are quite mild in historical terms, when compared to the excesses of colonialism and various dictatorial regimes around the world.
This is the real mystery. I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with smart people that just don't seem to care. After the PATRIOT ACT was passed I was livid and knew it would be used for non-terrorism things. As we know now, it's mostly used for non-terrorism. People would look at me like I had some tin foil on my head. It couldn't even get people to talk about it. (Lest readers think I'm sort of conversational pariah, I don't recall any other subject that causes this effect.)
What does "care" mean in your mind? You say were you livid and you expressed your lividity by talking to people? I think a lot of people "care" they are just not given anything actionable to do. Expressing impotent rage on FB is not really helping AFAICT.
And yet, all you did is talk. That is the parent's point. You talked. Maybe you voted for the other puppet of the elites that is ideologically 0.3% different from the current puppet. Maybe you convinced your interlocutors to do the same.
But participation in the farce of modern democracy is exactly what you're intended to do. You somehow feel like your talking or voting matters. It doesn't.
I'm no different, of course. Our lives are too comfortable. There is only one form of political action that ever works to depose despots, and it's a form that's not worth interrupting our comfortable lives to engage in.
At the end of the day, you need to either take real action, or accept that you're too comfortable with your affluent life to risk losing your comforts, and enjoy these comforts without complaint. You've chosen this path, as have I, as have we all.
A lot of issues are met with the mindset of "It would never happen to me". Terrorists blowing something up make the front pages, so people think it might happen to them (even though the odds of it are tiny). Slow erosions of civil liberties usually do not make the front pages, so people don't pay much attention and assume that only bad people are going to be arrested, denied due process, shot, or otherwise the victim of a resulting injustice.
A lot of issues related to freedoms and civil rights also take second place to much more immediate practical concerns, particularly in an economic downturn, like whether your kid has a good school to go to, or whether your parent gets looked after properly at hospital. The old "It's the economy, stupid" line is as true in politics today as it ever was.
To be fair, it is also true in the West today that just as the risk of being a victim of terrorism is low, so the risk of being a victim of government abuse or incompetence in applying these anti-terrorism measures is also low. A rational and objective citizen looking at the practical reality right now might consider that neither issue is that significant and there really are much more important things to worry about.
The strongest arguments for promoting civil liberties and reducing government powers are generally those of equality (just because something bad is unlikely to happen to you, it doesn't mean it's unlikely to happen to someone equally innocent but in a less fortunate position) and long term risk (just because today's governments and security services and police forces don't routinely abuse these capabilities and legal powers on a wide scale, that does not mean tomorrow's won't, and history shows that the risk of such abuse is real and the consequences can be catastrophic).
I think a lot of it is a kind of learned desensitization. The constant bombardment of advertising from a young age, and 24-hour news cycles conditions a natural response of cynicism and numbness to certain kinds of alarming messages. Our brains are already saturated with the kind of "buy this and you'll be happy" and "the world is scary and falling apart" messages that we develop categorical methods of dealing with all messages of that form. It is a painful act to care about something and be let down later, and it is painful to care about things that you feel like you can't do anything about. Add in a generally accepted (if thinly veiled) terrorism narrative and a socially acceptable practice of "let's not talk about politics" and you get the kind of response you've been getting.
Unravel relative to what? The 1990s representated the tail of an unprecedented 30-year expansion in civil rights. We're in the middle of a conservative retrenching as of late, but the Overton window has shifted and it's not in the direction people on HN assume. The kind of abuse that routinely happened in the legal system in the 60's and 70's would be unthinkable today.
It is happening at a pace that doesn't force people to think about it. If something big and bad happens suddenly, then people are forced to notice. But if the same big and bad thing happens slowly, one step at a time, most people don't notice. And those who notice are aren't able to do much as they are in a minority.
Also, many people are more idealistic in their youth - before they have families, careers etc and before putting food on the table becomes a bigger priority. That is why it is easier to protest as a college student, than as a 40 year old with a mortgage and two kids. But that is also getting harder these days - student loans, getting a record etc
And above all else, it is easier to numb ourselves these days than ever before with internet, video games, porn, TV, ebooks ("mental porn") etc. Why go out and do something (like protest) and put ourselves at risk, when we can watch Netflix comfortably at home? We are quickly becoming a species that values convenience over everything else, including privacy and civil rights :(
Edit: There is another thing - most people genuinely believe that bad things won't happen to them, as they haven't done anything wrong. While that is cute, we know it is not true but most of us have trouble accepting it
I think you're correct in everything you've written, but I guess I go back to OP's question "why is this happening" and focus on who is driving this and why?
Sure, we understand why people are going along with it quite well at this point, but who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties is the more interesting component to this issue in my mind.
Agreed, that is a very important question. But, it has always been like this, no? Except may be for brief periods in history. A small group of people have always tried to control the majority - kings, clergymen, military, businessmen etc. We are just more aware of it these days than a few hundred years ago, but other than that what has changed?
If anyone has any resource on this topic, please post - this (and environment) might very well be the most important issues of our time.
I would agree with you that this has been the default state of human history with since the rise of agrarian and pastoral societies. I tend to believe that previous to that in our hunter-gatherer days we were forced to live in a less hierarchical structure, despite probably having a well defined hierarchy of duties even then. Maybe more consensus building among everyone rather than simple blind obedience to the group?
I think it's no one and for no reason. We're living in a hierarchist society (as opposed to an anarchist one). This hierarchy is naturally establishing itself in the greatest invention of our time: the internet and our computers.
> who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties
There's no master plan, if that's what you're getting at. I think this general drift is the result of a few different things, most of which are older than we'd like to admit:
• A lot of people like authoritarianism
• People blame government by default for any problem that doesn't have any more obvious perpetrator (see point 1)
• The massive mismatch in military strength between western powers and elsewhere that results in oppression of weaker nations and resultant terrorism
In case you doubt the appeal of authoritarianism just go look at the popularity of Stalin in Russia, or the readership of the Daily Mail in the UK, or the overwhelming political support for the NSA / the PATRIOT Act. Lots and lots of people want to live in a highly authoritarian society and it's worth reflecting on why that is, and whether those people have valid reasons.
I was recently in a former communist country, and took a tour of one of the cities. The tour guide mentioned that a lot of older people weren't so sure that democracy/capitalism is better than communism. Sure, in the communist era people got executed for merely making rude comments or jokes about political leaders, but at least there was working social security, pensions, everyone had a job etc. Whereas post-USSR, often life got harder and the old certainties dissolved.
Authoritarianism is popular because it presents people with a simple deal: support the regime no matter how shitty it gets and in return the government will take care of you - and as long as they have absolute power, if something bad happens to you then it's the government's fault. That government tends to have simple, easily understood solutions for things that appeal to people's animal instincts, like picking someone to blame for something and then executing them. Additionally you will get a comforting story about how by simply being born in this society you are one of the good guys, as opposed to "them" who are the bad guys. All you have to do is not have strong opinions, not be weird, or gay, or a Jew, and fit in with whatever other random biases the leaders have and life will be, if not good, then at least straightforward. And how hard is that, really? Almost by definition most people find it easy to meet that criteria, because they're in the majority.
Contrast with the civil libertarian utopia: if something bad happens to you, it's probably your own fault. You have nobody to blame but yourself. It's not clear what you're supposed to do or how to be a success in life. The government is small and generally refuses blame for things, even if the population is under attack. There is no black/white good vs evil story to hold on to. All around you are people who aren't like you, who don't think like you.
That's just my guess. I would really like to read a well thought out book on the appeal of authoritarianism. I feel like it's an underexplored topic (at least in the modern era).
"In case you doubt the appeal of authoritarianism just go look at the popularity of Stalin in Russia, or the readership of the Daily Mail in the UK, or the overwhelming political support for the NSA / the PATRIOT Act. Lots and lots of people want to live in a highly authoritarian society and it's worth reflecting on why that is, and whether those people have valid reasons."
This is a really salient point and one that comes off as heresy to the standard conspiracy-esque narrative. The reality is that to some extent our slide into authoritarianism is democratic.
Look at the "Arab Spring" -- they got a little democracy and mostly elected totalitarian theocrats. In that case many people want totalitarian enforcement of social norms.
Another place you can see a strong preference for authoritarianism is at a local community level. Many people prefer communities with strong zoning regulations, regulations on the appearance of buildings, and (often indirect) mechanisms for excluding 'undesirable' residents. Without those things you get sprawling, ugly, and sometimes crime-ridden places that just don't feel safe and are not aesthetically appealing.
Yet another is the clear preference many people have for authoritarian computing platforms like iOS. It's the most restricted platform in the history of computing, yet it offers superior user experience and a lack of malware precisely for that reason. The fact is that there's classes of problems that can be easily and simply solved by authoritarianism that are not easily addressed in a freer society.
The Arab spring was largely crushed with the help of American largesse. We ignored Bahrain, we never stopped funding the Egyptian military and said nothing when they reestablished control.
People are unwilling to oppose government control, and when they are they get crushed by outside forces. People in American continue to work for the government, it's even considered prestigious.
We can't even prosecute torture. People who believe in the government are dangerous idiots.
"People who believe in the government are dangerous idiots."
That might be true, but that's still my point-- it is to some extent democratic. If more people were genuinely and strongly opposed to torture, we'd be getting somewhere prosecuting it. I'd say a majority are weakly opposed and a minority are strongly opposed. If a majority or super-majority were strongly opposed something would be happening.
(Being weakly opposed is basically meaningless.)
In some ways all societies are democracies. A totalitarian society is where the majority either supports the totalitarian regime or at least doesn't dislike it enough to invest the energy and risk required to rebel against it. There's a minimum threshold of support that any regime must have in order to maintain control. At the very least you must have sufficient support among a society's wealthy and powerful (money), those who wield weapons (military and police), and those who control key infrastructure (operations). If those sectors of support fail, kings get deposed.
Great comment! I certainly wasn't thinking of some secret cabal sitting in a smokey room, but more a bit along the lines of what you have written. I guess I wonder about the specific people agitating/pushing society in this direction, as most people are pretty passive. I guess there are some among the pro-authoritarian crowd who are capable of agency and independent activity and can harness their more passive fellows in the direction they believe in.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this as pro-authoritarian thinking is so foreign to me.
You're assuming that if everyone did notice, they would just naturally agree with you, but too many of them are 'sheeple' - lured into passivity by entertainment, economic conditions and so on.
I'm sorry, but this is a delusion on the part of many people on the left - the idea that people act against their interests because they just don't understand, and if only they could be brought to see the truth, they'd vote/protest/whatever. The reality is that many people understand the left position just fine, they just don't agree with it. There is a large contingent of people (maybe 30% in the US; hard to gauge in other countries, but you have surely noticed the rise o reactionary political parties in many countries in recent years) who are entirely comfortable with the proposition that people of other races and social classes are inferior and should be institutionally discriminated against, who do not believe in the rehabilitation of criminals, who think pillage is a superior policy to stewardship, and who generally have a completely zero-sum outlook on life.
In some cases they simply believe the strong are entitled to subjugate the weak, and that if we run out of resources in home countries that sooner or later (their notion of) common sense will prevail and the world will return to a colonial model with the strong nations just taking over the territories of weaker ones and putting the people there back in their place. In some cases, they're religiously motivated, believing that the world was ordered a certain way by their God and that they should thus be in charge of things, and/or they consider the world itself a transient distraction from some greater spiritual truth, so any signs of long-term unsustainability are treated as validation of apocalyptic views. This is why very conservative Christians in the US are intensely interested in the Middle East, for example; for them it's not just another geopolitical theater with a complex strategic and resource calculus, but the site of Armaggeddon, the final battle between good and evil.
For example, the rise of the 'Islamic State' over the last year was greeted with considerable enthusiasm in US conservative circles - not approval, but very enthusiastic disapproval - because it seemed like the emergence of a clear ideological opponent who fits in neatly with western eschatology, and the extremist positions of the Islamic State itself evidence a similarly ideological consciousness.
>Also, many people are more idealistic in their youth - before they have families, careers etc and before putting food on the table becomes a bigger priority. That is why it is easier to protest as a college student, than as a 40 year old with a mortgage and two kids. But that is also getting harder these days - student loans, getting a record etc
Unfortunately many people feel like these are things that they must do. People who lead interesting and fulfilling lives without "settling down" are just to gawk at on TV and wonder what it must be like. Pursuit of the typical "American dream" causes people to neuter themselves in order to fit in.
Lots of people do care. However, lots of other people are assholes, and support this sort of behavior. I hestiate to be political, but it's almost universally acknowledged that Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is a conservative ideologue (his party is named the Liberal party, but in the economic rather than the social sense; it's broadly center-right) - broadly pro censorship, dislikes immigrants, seems a bit racist towards aboriginals, hostile to expanding women's rights, and famously disbelieves int he idea of man-made climate change and has dismantled Australia's carbon tax. There's a large constituency that supports this sort of thing and who are quite happy to tolerate heavy-handed security measures.
Because a lot of people are assholes, thinking they'll be better off by keeping people of whom they disapprove in an inferior position. I apologize for stating my views so crudely, but I think it's politically naive to assume that other people don't care because they don't understand or haven't thought through the long-term consequences. In many cases, they understand just fine,; they don't care because they are selfish and want others to be forced into compliance with their views by the power of the state.
The old world order is being seriously challenged and the old elite countries can't keep their ideals and their place at the same time. The citizens of course, demand both of their leaders. The leaders are trying to sacrifice liberties in the most subtle and strategic of ways, and the minimal amount possible. But globalized media, (white) propaganda, and availability of information makes this fairly transparent.
Citizens do care - this is a sentiment I hear a lot from a lot of people.
The politicians are sometimes nearsighted but are also more often than we think imbued with some sense of long term tradeoff.
Not sure why were downvoted here. It does seem that there is some plausible deniability about having a picture on your website that may or may not have anything to do with warrants that could still convey information to those looking for it.
Lawyers aren't idiots. Judges aren't idiots. Lawmakers aren't idiots. If a law says you cannot disclose a government request, then trying to get around the injunction by playing games isn't going to do anything for you.
That depends. Using absurdly simple means to point out the absurdity of someone else can be effective. Remember how PGP was printed in book form to circumvent export controls? Or how about DeCSS on a T-shirt? How about those magic flags that encode an illegal number in the hex codes of the colors? No, I think it's worth asking if it is now illegal to put an image of a canary on a web page in Australia. If the answer is "no" that says a lot.
Thing is though, this and stuff like "hand over the keys to that encrypted data" are really easy ways of getting just about everyone into prison.
I could for example argue that you, by changing the profile picture on your blog, have used a warrant canary too. Do you have any way of proving that you didn't? You certainly can't argue that you don't need one (this would imply you haven't receive a NSL which would be a warrant canary statement in itself), you can still argue that you haven't used your profile picture as one, but then we're back to square one, with them saying "You have!"
If the government wants you in prison, they'll find a way.
>> If the government wants you in prison, they'll find a way.
The issue isn't that they want people in prison. The issue is that they don't want people to know what they're doing, and they're resorting to the threat of prison to keep people quiet. It's actually perfectly reasonable to try to prevent the "bad guys" from knowing what they're up to or what their methods are, but that is getting to be more and more in conflict with peoples desire for transparency and in some cases peoples explicit rights - to free speech and privacy in US for example.
This raises an interesting question to me, as I see similarities in many other places where conflicts of different types tend to escalate to absurd levels. Do people just default to yelling louder, pushing harder, more of whatever? Why does this keep happening?
Cool. So, if I was to publicly announce "I have never been given a warrant demanding I hand over data by the Australian government", then I will have committed a crime attracting a two year prison sentence, and I should never visit the country?
Australia has interesting laws in that case, and they're not very good:
>Australia does not have explicit freedom of speech in any constitutional or statutory declaration of rights, with the exception of political speech which is protected from criminal prosecution at common law per Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth. There is however an implied freedom of speech that was recognised in Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation[48]
Someone should make a website where you can check off a list of countries you want to be barred from, and then it sends out an illegal tweet for each country.
Australia is officially the only place in the world where the laws and technological restrictions make me never want to go there. Bandwidth is capped, porn is filtered, videogames cost a ridiculous amount. I know the country was founded by criminals, but I didn't realize they still ran the place.
I'm honestly surprised they had to make a law against it. It has always seemed to me that warrant canaries would not survive their first contact with the judicial system; it's a clear attempt to circumvent the intent of the law through a technical loophole. Judges aren't stupid and they tend to not look very kindly on such legal "hacks".
The warrant canary is not a solution to the problem of secret legal actions. It's merely a protest.
As we see the warrant canary idea institutionalized - with companies like Apple and Twitter adopting them to a certain degree, and cataloguing them on sites like canary watch[1] we are falling down a rabbit hole of speech about speech (and speech about speech about speech, etc.).
The real issue is NSLs and other secret warrants. These are older than you might think. Look up PRTT (pen register trap and trace, for telephones, which can be served with a gag order) or the All Writs Act. This is what we need to be working against, and this is what falls to the background as we find new and better ways to run our warrant canaries.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadWhich only goes to show that it's not about fighting crime, but supporting it on the highest levels. Civil rights and the rule of law are obstacles to the coming rule of institutionalised crime, so they have to be abolished.
Homophobia, racism, politics - everything gets better when we share openly.
For example, was the Bush administration's lies about the CIA report a crime? [1]
I don't think Hanlon's Razor applies here. While calling it institutionalized crime may be inflammatory, valid, (or even distracting), it's quite clear that those in power pass laws to perpetuate their power. This is in line with the iron law of oligarchy. [2]
[1]https://news.vice.com/article/the-cia-just-declassified-the-... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
The state is increasingly controlled by the hyper-wealthy individuals and corporations that fund politics, and its policies and propaganda increasingly reflect their interests. Standard totalitarianism, by contrast, is where the corporations are controlled by the state.
As to whether it's new, I suspect it's just today's manifestation of the same shit that's always been going on, where the wealthy and powerful oppress the poor using whatever technologies are available.
The interesting bit for me is how technology will change people's reaction. It's always been the case that powerful people can manipulate mass media to control the narrative. However, it's only recently that we have developed tools that make it possible for one person (e.g. Snowden) to undo billions of dollars of secrecy by leaking more documents that one could physically carry if they had been printed on paper, then distributing them to millions at zero cost. I think this tips the balance in favour of the citizens. I suspect that we are just seeing more of the efforts to control us exposed in the media than we normally would be aware of.
It kind of brings to mind the recent spate of child abuse revelations in the UK. I don't for a moment think that that sort of stuff only started happening a decade or two ago. Far more likely that it has always been present and only now do we have technology and media that makes it near impossible to hide, so it all comes out.
I wonder what other technologies will emerge that allow us to surveil the powerful in new ways for the first time in history, whether they like it or not.
The root problem isn't money in politics, but alienation of voters from the the real business of government, a business people must understand if they are to hire (elect) the right people to run it. Political money just fills the void of that ignorance. That business is fundamentally an allocation game that starts with accumulation from taxes, fines and fees and ends with a set of spending decisions over time. This "spending decision set" represents a much greater degree-of-freedom than the traditional, policy-obsessed "how a bill becomes a law" narrative from school would imply. One key part is the appointment game, where an elected executive leader assigns arbitrary people to run major government departments, who themselves get wide discretion with "operational policy", policies that have the most impact on tax payers and yet get the least attention.
So, yeah, let's start focusing on government as a hierarchy of allocation and policy decisions.
Looks like a standard definition of Faccism.
I've often wondered what has been said, or what kind of policies have been changed, or implemented, etc. in the NSA since Snowden came to the public forefront.
I wonder what they've done internally to try to ensure that this doesn't happen them again.
It is time for Australians to fess up to the facts - we cannot continue to say "but, 'they' do it too!' as a justification for the criminal acts that we, as a nation, allow to continue - even today in the 21st century - which have roots in the 19th century and beyond.
Look at what the British imperial government did to the Australian native population - up until the 1970's and even early 80's; racist programs of discrimination and vile hatred were enacted to prevent the Australian people from earning their rightful place in the nation. White Australia has much to answer for: Racial cleansing/genetic engineering of the most heinous forms, even still echoing through the native population today, tearing peoples lives apart and rendering them, quite literally, infertile and barren - as a culture, and as human individuals.
It is essential that contemporary Australian culture rise to the challenge of admitting the heritage of its racist nation, and address the real issue - and, even more vital, attempt to redress the wrongs that are even still today being committed in the name of White Australia. The detention centers - essentially micro-concentration camps - must be closed. We must allow ourselves the dignity of admitting into this great land those who seek sanctity and safety from the wars which our Western Powers have wrought upon the world. We must, as Australians, insist that we be represented by people who will accept the duty of making amends for the criminal acts that Australian generations have performed, in the broader human sphere, in our names. It is essential, because if we do not do something about it now, it will continue - there is much evidence of this in our history, which we must acknowledge or face even worse consequences, as time marches on, and our culture continues to sweep under the rug the heinous nature of our heritage.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/australian-govern...
The guy says "just use skype" because then the telco doesn't know who you're calling, just that you called skype.
Sure, because there's NO POSSIBLE WAY for Skype to get a subpoena, right?
(He's not directly responsible for the law, as it is in the purview of the Attorney General, but the Minister for Communications is a minister of the government.)
But that's exactly the point!!
Subpoenas and warrants require due process and probable cause (especially in the case of Skype, which is cross borders). The data retention regime - for the most part - removes that and requires nothing more than a (possibly automated) request.
"We have classified your service (Skype, whatever) as 'telecommunications' and unless you give us this stuff without a warrant we're going to start arresting your folks in-country and work on extraditing your executives"
Due process averted.
(Actually, Skype would be under the telecommunications act if they were Australian anyway. See http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/9.%20Overview%3A%20Impac...)
Did they react this way during the Troubles? I don't think they did. I was in London in '92 and there was a bomb threat called in at the tube station one stop over. It delayed the train for a bit, but that was it and everyone continued on like normal.
This time the US freaks out because the world came to their doorstep and they flip out because they have no idea how to handle it. The leaders flip out causes the population to freak out and they trun around and grant legal weight to every stupid idea that comes flying out of polititians mouths.
It seems the UK learned from this, so when there is a little bomb plot in London, the leaders go full retard, the people get scared and do the same thing.
It's like everyone figured out the best way to get more power is to act like you've been caught with your pants down so that you're the one who scared the population, not whatever actually happened. After everyone has finished running around like a chicken with it's head cut off and the dust settles, the government finds itself with all these extra powers.
We had certain other reactions that were themselves troubling. Such as this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...
During the Troubles, the UK had its fair share of "freaking out", banning public bins (only recently re-introduced), criminalizing the Irish community, and basically allowing police and military to do whatever they wanted in Northern Ireland (with lots of abuses being recognised and pursued only today). A famous Irish comedian joked a few years ago that he loved all Muslims, because they've now replaced the Irish as standard bogeymen ("... and now us Irish are just those funny people from Riverdance!").
They were banned in train stations and other similar areas, for the fairly sensible reason that they'd been used to hide bombs in those locations in the past.
Mainland UK was left largely alone, although the news was subject to bizarre censorship (Gerry Adams having to speak through a proxy, for example) and they took all the bins out of railway stations.
Northern Ireland was subject to military occupation, with overt armed checkpoints, occasionally military firing on civilians (although not with the same level of impunity as US police), secret police and informants running around, and widespread street violence.
Sure, some people don't care and are blissfully caught up in a manufactured world of consumerism, but that does not generalise to the rest of the population.
So .. no .. I'm no paid shill, mate - I truly think that Australia is a dystopian nightmare society, caught in a trance of consumption and lifestyle, and which I find less and less appealing as I get older. I'd love to see Australians care more about their rights - maybe you can enlighten me as to where and when that is happening? All I see is loss of interest, and a desire to simply keep calm and carry on, while it all gets eroded towards the feudal master-plan: Sell the resources, keep the change, and don't .. at any cost .. acknowledge the failure of modern Australian civilization to address the wrongs enacted on the natives, newcomers, and boat people.
All I see is a bitter person spreading FUD because you don't approve of how other people live their lives.
But, staying on the subject .. please, enlighten me: how are the Australian people not losing their rights due to their own ignorance? So far, all I see is disinterest in the subject. Total surveillance: this is okay with you?
I'm a transgender lesbian. I live in a city with comprehensive LGBT protections. I live the kind of life I want. I have far more rights protected now than I did ten years ago. The rights I actually care about are protected.
It's no coincidence that the people who complain the loudest about "corporate masters" and make stuff up about how the west has become "dystopian" and "totalitarian" are the exact same people who want to get rid of LGBT protections. All this complaining about your "rights" being taken away is just code for whining that people in groups you don't belong to are having their rights protected for the first time.
I'm sick and tired of this anti-consumerist circlejerk.
What is an interesting and useful game is to imagine a scenario which would trigger massive public outrage over the use of mass surveillance. What would really drive the point home that this is a truly dangerous amount of power? To be honest, I don't think a single major mistake with a citizen would do it (e.g. killing someone based on mass surveillance). Too many apologists would make the case that this is cherry picking and that it's just an exceptional case. A pattern of mistakes would perhaps be better (putting thousands of people on the no fly list for no reason), but these kinds of stories tend to be too cerebral for the general public to focus on (although people like Colbert and John Oliver are really good at solving that problem!)
I think the only thing that might do it would be a Watergate style scandal where one group of powerful people use the machinery to mess with another group of powerful people. Consider how much more seriously Feinstein took the CIA when it became clear they were spying on her and her staff during the torture investigations. Or Angela Merkel's reaction to her cell phone being tapped. So, unfortunately have to wait for the machinery to be wielded against the powerful because it's (clearly) easy to get away with wielding it against the rest of us.
If the abuses of Hoover's FBI weren't enough to make the American people (and especially their Congressional representatives) say "Never again," nothing will. I'm sure Australians can point to similar abuses of government power that are not considered a problem going forward, because, hey, we're all progressives here, right?
People are funny. We won't build nuke plants on the grounds that there is a small but finite chance of something going wrong and killing a lot of people, but we'll cheerfully let our politicians put the mechanisms of 1984 into place for our "safety." And we don't even get electricity in return.
Oh come on - how many people did Hoover kill? There isn't even a number. Not because he was a great guy, but because the abuses of government power that have taken place in the US are quite mild in historical terms, when compared to the excesses of colonialism and various dictatorial regimes around the world.
This is the real mystery. I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with smart people that just don't seem to care. After the PATRIOT ACT was passed I was livid and knew it would be used for non-terrorism things. As we know now, it's mostly used for non-terrorism. People would look at me like I had some tin foil on my head. It couldn't even get people to talk about it. (Lest readers think I'm sort of conversational pariah, I don't recall any other subject that causes this effect.)
Very nice straw man. I didn't mention FB. And these were conversations in person.
But participation in the farce of modern democracy is exactly what you're intended to do. You somehow feel like your talking or voting matters. It doesn't.
I'm no different, of course. Our lives are too comfortable. There is only one form of political action that ever works to depose despots, and it's a form that's not worth interrupting our comfortable lives to engage in.
At the end of the day, you need to either take real action, or accept that you're too comfortable with your affluent life to risk losing your comforts, and enjoy these comforts without complaint. You've chosen this path, as have I, as have we all.
Life is too good to meaningfully rock the boat.
A lot of issues are met with the mindset of "It would never happen to me". Terrorists blowing something up make the front pages, so people think it might happen to them (even though the odds of it are tiny). Slow erosions of civil liberties usually do not make the front pages, so people don't pay much attention and assume that only bad people are going to be arrested, denied due process, shot, or otherwise the victim of a resulting injustice.
A lot of issues related to freedoms and civil rights also take second place to much more immediate practical concerns, particularly in an economic downturn, like whether your kid has a good school to go to, or whether your parent gets looked after properly at hospital. The old "It's the economy, stupid" line is as true in politics today as it ever was.
To be fair, it is also true in the West today that just as the risk of being a victim of terrorism is low, so the risk of being a victim of government abuse or incompetence in applying these anti-terrorism measures is also low. A rational and objective citizen looking at the practical reality right now might consider that neither issue is that significant and there really are much more important things to worry about.
The strongest arguments for promoting civil liberties and reducing government powers are generally those of equality (just because something bad is unlikely to happen to you, it doesn't mean it's unlikely to happen to someone equally innocent but in a less fortunate position) and long term risk (just because today's governments and security services and police forces don't routinely abuse these capabilities and legal powers on a wide scale, that does not mean tomorrow's won't, and history shows that the risk of such abuse is real and the consequences can be catastrophic).
Also, many people are more idealistic in their youth - before they have families, careers etc and before putting food on the table becomes a bigger priority. That is why it is easier to protest as a college student, than as a 40 year old with a mortgage and two kids. But that is also getting harder these days - student loans, getting a record etc
And above all else, it is easier to numb ourselves these days than ever before with internet, video games, porn, TV, ebooks ("mental porn") etc. Why go out and do something (like protest) and put ourselves at risk, when we can watch Netflix comfortably at home? We are quickly becoming a species that values convenience over everything else, including privacy and civil rights :(
Edit: There is another thing - most people genuinely believe that bad things won't happen to them, as they haven't done anything wrong. While that is cute, we know it is not true but most of us have trouble accepting it
Sure, we understand why people are going along with it quite well at this point, but who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties is the more interesting component to this issue in my mind.
If anyone has any resource on this topic, please post - this (and environment) might very well be the most important issues of our time.
There's no master plan, if that's what you're getting at. I think this general drift is the result of a few different things, most of which are older than we'd like to admit:
• A lot of people like authoritarianism • People blame government by default for any problem that doesn't have any more obvious perpetrator (see point 1) • The massive mismatch in military strength between western powers and elsewhere that results in oppression of weaker nations and resultant terrorism
In case you doubt the appeal of authoritarianism just go look at the popularity of Stalin in Russia, or the readership of the Daily Mail in the UK, or the overwhelming political support for the NSA / the PATRIOT Act. Lots and lots of people want to live in a highly authoritarian society and it's worth reflecting on why that is, and whether those people have valid reasons.
I was recently in a former communist country, and took a tour of one of the cities. The tour guide mentioned that a lot of older people weren't so sure that democracy/capitalism is better than communism. Sure, in the communist era people got executed for merely making rude comments or jokes about political leaders, but at least there was working social security, pensions, everyone had a job etc. Whereas post-USSR, often life got harder and the old certainties dissolved.
Authoritarianism is popular because it presents people with a simple deal: support the regime no matter how shitty it gets and in return the government will take care of you - and as long as they have absolute power, if something bad happens to you then it's the government's fault. That government tends to have simple, easily understood solutions for things that appeal to people's animal instincts, like picking someone to blame for something and then executing them. Additionally you will get a comforting story about how by simply being born in this society you are one of the good guys, as opposed to "them" who are the bad guys. All you have to do is not have strong opinions, not be weird, or gay, or a Jew, and fit in with whatever other random biases the leaders have and life will be, if not good, then at least straightforward. And how hard is that, really? Almost by definition most people find it easy to meet that criteria, because they're in the majority.
Contrast with the civil libertarian utopia: if something bad happens to you, it's probably your own fault. You have nobody to blame but yourself. It's not clear what you're supposed to do or how to be a success in life. The government is small and generally refuses blame for things, even if the population is under attack. There is no black/white good vs evil story to hold on to. All around you are people who aren't like you, who don't think like you.
That's just my guess. I would really like to read a well thought out book on the appeal of authoritarianism. I feel like it's an underexplored topic (at least in the modern era).
This is a really salient point and one that comes off as heresy to the standard conspiracy-esque narrative. The reality is that to some extent our slide into authoritarianism is democratic.
Look at the "Arab Spring" -- they got a little democracy and mostly elected totalitarian theocrats. In that case many people want totalitarian enforcement of social norms.
Another place you can see a strong preference for authoritarianism is at a local community level. Many people prefer communities with strong zoning regulations, regulations on the appearance of buildings, and (often indirect) mechanisms for excluding 'undesirable' residents. Without those things you get sprawling, ugly, and sometimes crime-ridden places that just don't feel safe and are not aesthetically appealing.
Yet another is the clear preference many people have for authoritarian computing platforms like iOS. It's the most restricted platform in the history of computing, yet it offers superior user experience and a lack of malware precisely for that reason. The fact is that there's classes of problems that can be easily and simply solved by authoritarianism that are not easily addressed in a freer society.
People are unwilling to oppose government control, and when they are they get crushed by outside forces. People in American continue to work for the government, it's even considered prestigious.
We can't even prosecute torture. People who believe in the government are dangerous idiots.
That might be true, but that's still my point-- it is to some extent democratic. If more people were genuinely and strongly opposed to torture, we'd be getting somewhere prosecuting it. I'd say a majority are weakly opposed and a minority are strongly opposed. If a majority or super-majority were strongly opposed something would be happening.
(Being weakly opposed is basically meaningless.)
In some ways all societies are democracies. A totalitarian society is where the majority either supports the totalitarian regime or at least doesn't dislike it enough to invest the energy and risk required to rebel against it. There's a minimum threshold of support that any regime must have in order to maintain control. At the very least you must have sufficient support among a society's wealthy and powerful (money), those who wield weapons (military and police), and those who control key infrastructure (operations). If those sectors of support fail, kings get deposed.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this as pro-authoritarian thinking is so foreign to me.
I'm sorry, but this is a delusion on the part of many people on the left - the idea that people act against their interests because they just don't understand, and if only they could be brought to see the truth, they'd vote/protest/whatever. The reality is that many people understand the left position just fine, they just don't agree with it. There is a large contingent of people (maybe 30% in the US; hard to gauge in other countries, but you have surely noticed the rise o reactionary political parties in many countries in recent years) who are entirely comfortable with the proposition that people of other races and social classes are inferior and should be institutionally discriminated against, who do not believe in the rehabilitation of criminals, who think pillage is a superior policy to stewardship, and who generally have a completely zero-sum outlook on life.
In some cases they simply believe the strong are entitled to subjugate the weak, and that if we run out of resources in home countries that sooner or later (their notion of) common sense will prevail and the world will return to a colonial model with the strong nations just taking over the territories of weaker ones and putting the people there back in their place. In some cases, they're religiously motivated, believing that the world was ordered a certain way by their God and that they should thus be in charge of things, and/or they consider the world itself a transient distraction from some greater spiritual truth, so any signs of long-term unsustainability are treated as validation of apocalyptic views. This is why very conservative Christians in the US are intensely interested in the Middle East, for example; for them it's not just another geopolitical theater with a complex strategic and resource calculus, but the site of Armaggeddon, the final battle between good and evil.
For example, the rise of the 'Islamic State' over the last year was greeted with considerable enthusiasm in US conservative circles - not approval, but very enthusiastic disapproval - because it seemed like the emergence of a clear ideological opponent who fits in neatly with western eschatology, and the extremist positions of the Islamic State itself evidence a similarly ideological consciousness.
Unfortunately many people feel like these are things that they must do. People who lead interesting and fulfilling lives without "settling down" are just to gawk at on TV and wonder what it must be like. Pursuit of the typical "American dream" causes people to neuter themselves in order to fit in.
Because a lot of people are assholes, thinking they'll be better off by keeping people of whom they disapprove in an inferior position. I apologize for stating my views so crudely, but I think it's politically naive to assume that other people don't care because they don't understand or haven't thought through the long-term consequences. In many cases, they understand just fine,; they don't care because they are selfish and want others to be forced into compliance with their views by the power of the state.
Citizens do care - this is a sentiment I hear a lot from a lot of people.
The politicians are sometimes nearsighted but are also more often than we think imbued with some sense of long term tradeoff.
I've left Australia. I don't really plan to go back. Most of my friends are doing the same.
I could for example argue that you, by changing the profile picture on your blog, have used a warrant canary too. Do you have any way of proving that you didn't? You certainly can't argue that you don't need one (this would imply you haven't receive a NSL which would be a warrant canary statement in itself), you can still argue that you haven't used your profile picture as one, but then we're back to square one, with them saying "You have!"
If the government wants you in prison, they'll find a way.
The issue isn't that they want people in prison. The issue is that they don't want people to know what they're doing, and they're resorting to the threat of prison to keep people quiet. It's actually perfectly reasonable to try to prevent the "bad guys" from knowing what they're up to or what their methods are, but that is getting to be more and more in conflict with peoples desire for transparency and in some cases peoples explicit rights - to free speech and privacy in US for example.
This raises an interesting question to me, as I see similarities in many other places where conflicts of different types tend to escalate to absurd levels. Do people just default to yelling louder, pushing harder, more of whatever? Why does this keep happening?
Converted using inkscape from http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AA%E3%...
At least, that is how it reads. We will have to see how it gets enforced.
>Australia does not have explicit freedom of speech in any constitutional or statutory declaration of rights, with the exception of political speech which is protected from criminal prosecution at common law per Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth. There is however an implied freedom of speech that was recognised in Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation[48]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#A...
The head of state is still an inherited position
Obviously, the current Australian government is a disaster in many areas, but there are a large number of places which are considerably worse.
Or maybe the Australian people could aim a little higher?
Yes, but it's a lot of currency/cost of living differences as well.
(Related: http://xkcd.com/1494/)
As we see the warrant canary idea institutionalized - with companies like Apple and Twitter adopting them to a certain degree, and cataloguing them on sites like canary watch[1] we are falling down a rabbit hole of speech about speech (and speech about speech about speech, etc.).
The real issue is NSLs and other secret warrants. These are older than you might think. Look up PRTT (pen register trap and trace, for telephones, which can be served with a gag order) or the All Writs Act. This is what we need to be working against, and this is what falls to the background as we find new and better ways to run our warrant canaries.
I am guilty of this.[2]
[1] https://canarywatch.org/
[2] http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
Well, except for the one that devastated central Manchester (which was called in, and backfired spectacularly, but was still extremely significant).