zlacker

>>syness+(OP)
I have two unrelated thoughts.

"Chilling effect" has always been a profound term for me, because I imagine the "cold" (numbness really) sensation a human body often senses when something truly awful (disembowlment/dismemberment) occurs. The body's way of protecting itself is to go "cold", and in many ways that's exactly the effect taking place here, as well.

There's also an undeniable part of this conversation that rarely gets addressed simultaneously, and I'd like to see it sussed out more in concert; what about the folks who are doing Evil in these private channels? It's unacceptable to me that TOR gets used for child pornography, and it's unacceptable to me that my government finds out I'm gay before I come out to my family.

I don't want to provide those who would do Evil any safety or quarter. I also want to give people a powerful shield to protect themselves against judgement and persecution from the public and sometimes the law.

We should talk about achieving both of these goals, but we generally don't.

>>Laaw+5a
what about the folks who are doing Evil in these private channels?

Evil is agnostic of location. Your question is of no significance. You might as well be perturbed over "Evil" people living in houses or eating food. Unsurprisingly, evil people are people and will tend towards the same activities people generally engage in.

>>vezzy-+ya
Yours is a defeatist attitude, I think, and there is plenty of evidence that Evil can be stopped/averted in many cases. It's beyond obvious that there is no complete solution for Evil, but if you keep ignoring this question/problem, then people will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option over your "Evil/privacy" alternative, which is ultimately devastating to everyone.

We need to talk about how to create "no Evil/privacy", or at least how to approach something of that kind, even if an absolute version doesn't exist.

>>Laaw+Sa
I'm really curious what you think evil is since you keep capitalizing and speaking of it as some spiritual essence that can be eradicated.

You have not established the slightest bit of an operational definition, and resort to pathologizing neutral transmission channels as hosts of "Evil". This is a complete non-starter and not worthwhile to deliberate. "Evil uses Tor" is as useful as "Evil uses paper".

>>vezzy-+kb
Maybe not worthwhile for you, but there's a set of people out there who all agree on what Evil actually is (generally, obviously it's difficult to be exact), and we'd like to try and figure out how to limit its ability to act, while maintaining the shield of protection for the persecuted.

>>Laaw+gd
Many groups agree within themselves. But they disagree with other groups. Who can judge which group it right? What are the odds that it happens to be the group you're in, not all the others that previous generations were in or people in other cultures are in.

Quick test - is looking at a photo of a naked child evil?

>>Nutmog+Jv
Quicker test - do you have a point, or are you just trying to bog down this conversation about privacy with a defeatist "we have to let murders/rapists get away with it" argument?

>>Laaw+iB1
I'm concerned that you seem to have made a clear distinction between good and evil when really there is none. Certainly we can apply our own society's general ideas, but it's not black and white in any way. Even murder is acceptable in many cultures. For example killing of soldiers during a war.

>>Nutmog+GR6
It's a placeholder, and talking about it is distracting from the point (the "point" being maybe we can have both privacy and safety, and that the dichotomy is false). There is undeniably some activity that we can both agree is evil, and therefore we can talk about Evil without having to figure out exactly what that activity is.

Or rather, we could if you were being intellectually honest.

Most people, if given the choice, will nearly always pick safety over privacy. It's simply not enough to say you can't have both, because privacy will eventually get thrown out by the electorate, of any country.