zlacker

>>donoho+(OP)
> He warns that developers of apps like Signal and WhatsApp could technically fall within the legal definition of "hostile activity" simply because their technology "make[s] it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications.

Sounds like Let's Encrypt would also fall under that.

This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the streets they walk on. I walk on them too. And don't use CP as a catch-all argument to insert backdoors.

Their big problem here is that previously, it was hard to find people with the same opinion as you. If you couldn't find someone in the same village who wanted to start a rebellion, it probably wouldn't happen. Today, someone can post a Telegram group message and make thousands of people rally to a town square. I see the dangers, and I see why governments think they are doing this to protect the people. No one wants civil war. That is still not a strong enough reason to call road construction a hostile activity.

I'm back in Sweden after 12 years abroad. Time to read up on which parties are sane and which aren't when it comes to technical infrastructure.

>>flower+x6
Curtains should also fall under the same category because they do make it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor suspect activities. Then of course you also have walls...

The argument is so fundamentally stupid that they should be embarrassed just putting it down in writing!

>>gbil+Bl
This cuts to one of the critical issues with governance globally in this era. For a really long time, we relied on social norms and mores to keep governments in check - and astonishingly it worked at least a little. Embarrassment was a good proxy for well constituted rules of representation.

What right-wing institutions have noticed all around the world is that you can just kind of ignore all that shit now. Centrists are flailing around begging for an explanation for "how this could happen" and folks on the left, marginalized for years in favor of free markets, are just kind of facepalming and saying we told you so.

You need to put it in writing somewhere that there's a limit on governmental authority and enforce the hell out of it. You need to do the same to clamp down on the power of special interests and corporations. More than anything, you need robust mechanisms that make government representatives vulnerable to the voting public. The people need to be the ones that they scramble to please and when we get mad that should be dangerous and difficult for those holding the reins of government. Their existence needs to depend on the mandate of the public.

>>pksebb+ml1
Pretty incredible ability to make something so clearly about government overreach into some pet cause about “corporations” or whatever

>>tt24+AX1
Are you under the impression that corporations and governments of capitalist countries are somehow independent? The ultimate goal of both of them is to have the greatest amount of power over the greatest number of people. They're an extension of one another more than they are independent entities.

>>dns_sn+B42
They’re very obviously independent and are not an extension of one another. This is leftist single lens / unidimensional silliness.

>>tt24+5b2
You my friend must live in an alternate reality where political leadership isn't obviously enmeshed with corporations to a pathological degree - without a revolving door of people circling between them, without lobbying, without corruption, without special deals to the benefit of the biggest corporations, where private corporations aren't abused to bypass restrictions on government powers, and vice versa.

>>dns_sn+KJ2
Lobbying is a tiny industry in the United States and corruption is basically a nonissue. With the exception of the current president I haven’t seen any evidence for widespread corruption in the United States - at most it’s a collection of isolated low impact and rare incidents.

>>tt24+4q4
I can only speak for the U.S., but I know a lot of large instances where lobbying was a direct result or sibling of corruption. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Bosch all combined their efforts to kill grey market imports into the U.S. starting in 1994 after a campaign they initiated in 1988. This effectively killed imports from Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Italy and severely shrunk the market for luxury sedans and coupes in the U.S., which backfired as the Japanese were faster to manufacture and took up the slack. Oshkosh created a system to undercut AM General in order to push the L-ATV design over competing JLTV designs. They repeated this tactic in 2021 to ensure they got the contract for the mail delivery vehicle despite not matching the statement of objectives paper as well as Mahindra or Workhorse. Verizon and Comcast combined forces to kill net neutrality, each whittling away at it with targeted campaigns since 2011 until it was finally ended in 2017 and barred from reimplementation this year. Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Doordash, and other "disruptor" companies collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bypass classifying their workers as employees and to excuse themselves from taxation. Even now they're still trying to reverse the legal landmark that those workers are employees and can form unions. Blue Cross Blue Shield spent tens of millions of dollars cutting off parts of the Affordable Care Act they didn't like. Currently license plate reader manufacturers are lobbying to get contracts with local governments at the city and county level to install facial recognition cameras everywhere they can, and they're lobbying the federal government to allow this breach of privacy in exchange for access to the databases.

Lobbying is only tiny if you look at the individual amounts. Most lobbyists only put forth $5-10,000 at a time because they're not doing it at a national level. But it's the fact that so many do it in so many different places that makes it a threat. Somebody running to be on the city board can have their entire campaign financed by a single donor. A mayor can have their entire income for the year matched by two lobbyists laying the groundwork for a national campaign. One Senator or House member having seven to eight lobby sponsors can almost match their guaranteed salary for that year. There are entire divisions of the finance departments of companies that are dedicated to budgeting for lobbying over the fiscal year. It's a massive force, composed of nearly $4,000,000,000 in "contributions" in 2024 alone.