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[return to "Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach"]
1. flower+x6[view] [source] 2025-12-18 12:16:41
>>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.

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2. gbil+Bl[view] [source] 2025-12-18 13:56:29
>>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!

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3. pksebb+ml1[view] [source] 2025-12-18 18:25:59
>>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.

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4. tt24+AX1[view] [source] 2025-12-18 21:18:48
>>pksebb+ml1
Pretty incredible ability to make something so clearly about government overreach into some pet cause about “corporations” or whatever
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5. dns_sn+B42[view] [source] 2025-12-18 21:52:45
>>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.
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6. tt24+5b2[view] [source] 2025-12-18 22:29:58
>>dns_sn+B42
They’re very obviously independent and are not an extension of one another. This is leftist single lens / unidimensional silliness.
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7. dns_sn+KJ2[view] [source] 2025-12-19 03:07:58
>>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.
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8. tt24+4q4[view] [source] 2025-12-19 17:20:54
>>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.
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9. alsetm+EEf[view] [source] 2025-12-24 01:38:05
>>tt24+4q4
I strive to live in a version of the USA half as nice as the one you think we live in. We definitely didn't overthrow legitimate governments in the name of big business in South America, the Middle East, or even Hawaii. /s

I remember when I found out that a highly intelligent friend believed the earth was six-thousand years old. But at least he had the excuse that his idiotic religion was pushed on him since birth. Intelligent people on this site are sometime incapable of basic media literacy and I find it wholly depressing.

Keep voting against your interests while others of us fight you tooth and nail to try to make the world better for everyone (rather than just our own teams), even including you.

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10. tt24+r3g[view] [source] 2025-12-24 06:40:09
>>alsetm+EEf
Sorry but voting in favor of the 1% is very much in my interest. A good chunk of HN will be able to relate to this as SWEs in the SF bay area.
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11. alsetm+pGh[view] [source] 2025-12-24 21:18:36
>>tt24+r3g
> Sorry but voting in favor of the 1% is very much in my interest.

Which is why people like me have to fight people like you tooth and nail. Despite having a very privileged life, probably similar to yours, I still want the best for everyone, not just my team. I pointed this out in my prior comment. You've now confirmed that you're too selfish to vote against your interests for the betterment of humanity. And you apparently have no sense of shame about it. Have a great holiday.

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12. tt24+5Nm[view] [source] 2025-12-27 03:54:45
>>alsetm+pGh
Correct. I have zero shame for voting in favor of the interests of myself and the people that matter to me.

Have a good holiday as well!

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13. pksebb+f3V[view] [source] 2026-01-07 18:44:50
>>tt24+5Nm
Seeing this thread again scrolling through my comments, and after the holidays feeling perhaps calmer than when it was current. I'd like to make a case, invite you to look at things from a different angle, because I think we might have more common ground than it appears otherwise.

> I have zero shame for voting in favor of the interests of myself and the people that matter to me.

...and you shouldn't. It's better than fine to do so and you ought to work towards things that benefit you. This is something a lot of people seem to misunderstand when I talk about anything political, and it's likely a failing in how I communicate. I don't think that people should sacrifice themselves for the common good just because "it's the right thing to do". It isn't and that's never what I'm driving at.

When I (and perhaps others who share part of my worldview) talk about governance and lobbying and similar stuff, it's not out of a sense of pure morals or ethics - these are issues of ecosystems. Some shapes of systems are healthy and robust and others are self-destructive. Mesh networks are strong, centralized (and unreplicated) control systems are fragile - as an SWE you know this to be true.

What I'm arguing here is that it's in your interest to exist in an environment that:

- prevents an accumulation of power or control too tightly, to avoid single points of failure in decision and governance

- avoids recursive loops which have a habit of wastefully consuming resources and starving critical systems

- maintains flexible responsiveness to environmental conditions due to being reactive to the state of all constituent stakeholders / subsystems / individuals

The issue with the top 1% of the top 1% having too much power is that it breaks all those safeties, and is actually bad for those people too. What will happen in this kind of a situation is that the excessively empowered will desiccate the environment for everyone - including themselves.

You already see it playing out in the form of crumbling infrastructure, ballooning homelessness, economic shocks, and the empowerment of bad actors who take advantage of the disenfranchised masses. This is bad for you, too.

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