
Four fears for authoritarians - wlj
http://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/four-fears-for-authoritarians/
======
scrrr
Yep, see what happened in the Arabic countries (and some other countries
outside of the Islam-sphere). People organised to protest using the Internet.
People get educated using the Internet. In Cuba they exchange information
using thumb drives. And every bullshitter (= our governments) should be afraid
of it. They are, of course. And surveillance is their reaction.

What will help is if everyone finally realises that it's NOT about
pornography, that it's NOT about terrorism, that it's NOT about drugs, that
it's NOT about whatever reason they name..

~~~
andreasklinger
What if everyone already realised that it's not about terrorism but doesn't
know how to act and therefore falls into cynicism?

If anyone knows what to do please step up and lead I am happy to follow.

~~~
snitko
Kinda simple. We finance this bullshit by paying taxes. Why do we pay them?
Because they force us to and convince us it's a good idea. What do we do about
it? Use any form of money that is problematic to track and tax: cash, gold,
Bitcoin. Pretty sure it's possible to live just on that - would be a little
uncomfortable, but certainly less so than some violent action. And it would be
a major blow to the government if the majority of people started doing it.

Also, if you're serious about doing something - don't just throw the usual
"but who's gonna build the roads and help the poor". Think and find solutions
that don't involve government. Don't just say it's impossible. Nothing is
impossible and certainly not this.

~~~
Cakez0r
That would be impossible in the UK. Salary is paid directly into one's bank
account and tax is deducted before it even gets there.

~~~
snitko
Ask your employer if he can pay you in cash or Bitcoin off the record. If
you're a business, sell for bitcoins and give discounts, certainly pay
employees in Bitcoin if they ask you to. As far as I know, there's currently
no law that requires you to pay taxes on bitcoins earned. Even if there was,
it'd be prohibitively expensive for government to track everyone's Bitcoin
addresses (data mining on the blockchain is certainly possible, but a great
deal more difficult than reading your emails, I suppose).

~~~
swombat
As a UK employer, that'd be a straight ticket to an HMRC investigation and
severe penalties, possibly jail. Employing people illegally, "off the books",
is treated as a serious thing here.

~~~
snitko
Ok, got it. Then just keep your savings in gold or Bitcoin. Even if half the
population did just that, the government would be shitting bricks already.

~~~
Cakez0r
But as long as it passes through your bank account, the tax has already been
paid. I could convert all my savings to gold or bitcoin, but the government
has already had their slice by the time that happens, which wouldn't be much
of a protest at all.

EDIT: To clarify for non-UK residents (I'm not sure how it works in other
countries), everything in the UK is fundamentally tied to your bank account.
Your wages go directly to your bank. Your bills come directly out of your bank
account via payment agreements that are set up with your bank and the 3rd
party (see Direct Debit). There's no real way you can be paid in cash and pay
your bills in cash.

The essence of fraud is finding loopholes that allow you to move cash outside
of the system. Those loopholes are intrinsically not common knowledge,
otherwise they'd be closed.

~~~
snitko
_> the tax has already been paid_

Not so. Inflation is yet another tax you'll be paying if you keep your money
in a bank. Inflation is a huge thing for governments. Without inflation,
they'd be out of so many opportunities to finance various things and the
fraudulent financial system governments run would be instantly exposed.

Then you would also have to remember that if you keep your savings in Bitcoin,
you can pay for other products and services with them directly. And taxes
would be paid only by a company that at some point decides to convert Bitcoins
to fiat. That is, if you are A then your bitcoins may be in a chain of
payments A -> B -> C. Obviously A (you) paid taxes, C would also have to pay
taxes when he converts them to fiat. But because B decides to spend bitcoins
earned from you directly by purchasing things from C, taxes are not paid from
that deal.

~~~
swombat
Bitcoin has a lot of volatility. I'd rather take a steady 2-4% cut every year
than an unpredictable swing that could take out 95% of my savings overnight.

~~~
snitko
Ok, but the question was how to change things, not how to minimize risk.

------
jstalin
I'm reminded of a George Washington quote:

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a
dangerous servant and a fearful master."

In other words, government is, at its bare naked minimum, the monopoly of
force. It must be contained, mistrusted, and treated as a necessary evil.

Despite the USA being screwed up in so many ways, I still thank my lucky stars
for the anti-federalists, who gave us the bill of rights. Without them, we
would be much worse off today than we are.

~~~
presidentender
Hamilton argued that the very existence of the bill of rights invited the
expansion of government into all those areas not expressly forbidden therein,
but one might question Hamilton's motivations.

That Washington 'quote' cannot be found before 1902. I agree with the
sentiment, but false attribution does nothing to help our credibility.

~~~
jstalin
Sorry if it's an apocryphal quote.

I see what's happening in the UK, where people are prosecuted for speech and
there is no limit to parliament's power (other than watered-down EU treaties
and such) and I'm glad we have the first amendment, which prevents prior
restraints and criminalizing unpopular speech.

~~~
hahainternet
> I'm glad we have the first amendment, which prevents prior restraints and
> criminalizing unpopular speech

Then why is it that the US ranks lower than the UK on the Press Freedom Index?
How exactly has allowing the most vile and offensive hate speech protected you
or improved your nation?

~~~
lloyddobbler
Because back in the 1960's, someone speaking out about giving black people
equal rights could have been called "vile" and "offensive." That which the
majority considers "hate speech" one day might be considered good the next.

Long story short: if you stifle the speech of anyone - say, if they're
objecting to an overzealous monarch who demands taxation without
representation, OR objecting to puritanical standards that don't allow for
interracial marriage - progress will not happen.

------
talktime
Expat Brit here. Quite frankly I'm frightened to pass through UK ports now to
visit family after reading about Schedule 7 powers.

My reading of it is that passing through a UK port means I enter a legal
limbo. If stopped by an inquisitor, I'm likely to assert my right to silence.
This may mean I'm detained and intimidated for 9 hours. At the end of this I
can be arrested and charged with 'non-cooperation', this may involve further
detention and/or fines all for simply remaining silent.

Leaving the UK is worse, as I'll likely miss my flight, and have the expense
of re-booking.

This is just if the border agents are acting within 'the law'.

Virtually every UK citizen passes through a port at sometime during the year -
the inquistors can simply wait there for anyone they are interested in. It
effectively means the right to silence is dead.

Foreign visitors should be aware they can be legally forced to give up their
Gmail/Facebook passwords. Hope Big Ben is worth it.

I wonder what the plans are for Julian Assange when he eventually leaves the
UK - almost certain to be detained under Schedule 7.

~~~
radio4fan
> Quite frankly I'm frightened to pass through UK ports now to visit family
> after reading about Schedule 7 powers.

I'm not going to worry about it too much, myself. The statute is quite clear
that you can only be questioned to establish whether you appear to be a
terrorist. The law has been broken in the case of David Miranda. I hope he
will sue -- as he has threatened -- so that Special Branch know that they
can't get away with breaking the law in this way.

Chapter and verse:

Schedule 7, 2 (1) An examining officer may question a person to whom this
paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a
person falling within section 40(1)(b).

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/7](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/7)

...

40 Terrorist: interpretation.

(1) In this Part “terrorist” means a person who— (a) has committed an offence
under any of sections 11, 12, 15 to 18, 54 and 56 to 63, or (b) is or has been
concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/40](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/40)

If you're worried about this, perhaps you should also be worried about
entering the US -- including in transit -- in case you are declared to be an
unperson and sent to Gitmo with no trial or legal recourse. It's a bit worse
than a maximum of nine hours of pointless tedium and handing over your
Gmail/Facebook passwords which -- let's face it -- the spooks will have if
they want them anyway.

As for Assange, if they get their hands on him, they will ship him to Sweden.
He's spent the last year holed up in one room: I doubt another nine hours
would bother him too much.

~~~
talktime
>If you're worried about this, perhaps you should also be worried about
entering the US -- including in transit -- in case you are declared to be an
unperson and sent to Gitmo with no trial or legal recourse.

Quite.

>It's a bit worse than a maximum of nine hours of pointless tedium and handing
over your Gmail/Facebook passwords which -- let's face it -- the spooks will
have if they want them anyway.

I think you missed my point. Asserting your right to silence is a crime in
this situation. You can be further detained, charged, prosecuted, jailed
and/or fined for asserting a basic right.

------
tlarkworthy
If anyone knew the most effective way for us UK citizens to stop our
government from making irreversible constitutional mistakes I would be highly
grateful for the information.

~~~
gnerd
Well I suppose we could start by having a written constitution rather than a
uncodified constitution, otherwise, it seems to me, once they bring in legal
measures as acts and statutes and then the public gets used to an idea, it is
not long before it gets baked into case law and then we're as good as fucked
once it is accepted as common law.

Other than that, I suppose we could cross our fingers and hope for the best,
like we did in the days before we had a constitutional monarchy, we would
cross our fingers and hope we wouldn't get a shitty king. Well we don't need
protection from our monarchs (as far as I can tell), we now are in dire need
of protection from our government (and other "friendly" governments by
extension).

Our customs and traditions have done well for us, its amazing to me we got
this far, but maybe its time to get a bit more serious about our protections
of rights and have them baked into common law.

I suppose there is a bit of irony that the protections we now seek from those
who govern us are actually baked into the EU, but our country seems to be half
in and half out (I'm a little angered I have to have cookie warnings on my web
properties because of EU directives and yet my basic little right to privacy
my grandparents generation helped put into the UN is not even taken seriously,
never mind the EU equivalents).

~~~
JulianMorrison
We could start with having a constitution written by rebel political idealists
in the 19th century, rather than written by exactly the same kind of
government insiders we'd want it to protect us against in the 21st.

If they wrote a constitution now, it would suck (they did, it's the EU
constitution, and it sucks).

~~~
gnerd
You're not wrong.

In my opinion, all constitutions suck. They are, after all, the proverbial
horse designed by committee. But its better than nothing right?

South Africa probably has the most liberal constitution in the world, that
makes sense, it was drafted in modern times so takes into account modern
problems like fairness and equality of homosexuals or transgender people. But
in practise, I would personally doubt the same constitution is enforced to the
same standards as say, Iceland (also a country with a modern constitution).

The US, must have the gold standard of constitutions and there are arguments
over if the right to bare arms meant semi-automatic weapons or just muskets.
Does the 4th amendment just apply to physical property and letters or digital
communications too?

There is no perfect constitution, it is impossible. I don't agree with
everything in the EU standards of law, but that's the sad thing, it is better
than what we have now. The Germans have more protections than I do, for
standards of rights our country authored and pushed on the world (with the US
of course) in response to things like WW2. Its unacceptable, I would
personally rather have dog shit protections than none at all.

------
c2prods
Very good article, I think it got everything right. It's a well-known fact
that fear always leads to dark outcomes for democracy (it's been very well
covered through many films and books, from Yoda to Orwell :p). Yet, for the
first time, local governments try to shut down a global network. This paradox
might be what saves us. At any rate, the least we can do is to raise awareness
about this topic.

------
tokenadult
I seem to be part of a small minority of HN participants who have actually
lived through a transition from

1) an authoritarian regime with pervasive surveillance, direct governmental
control of all mass media organizations, secret police who tortured and killed
peaceful dissidents--even dissidents based in other countries, and a ruling
party organized essentially as a terrorist organization

to

2) a government constrained by rule of law with broad protection of individual
civil liberties, a free press, judicial and legislative oversight of the
police, and multiple political parties based on voluntary participation.

I have tried to tell the story before here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720)

of what life was like under the dictatorial regime, and I have repeatedly
recommended experience-tested tips for freedom-fighters

[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html)

about how people around the world can, and do, organize to overcome
authoritarian repression.

It's up to everyone here on Hacker News to decide whether or not to pay the
price to organize to secure liberty. I know what the cost is, and I know what
the reward is, of a successful freedom-fighting movement. I don't know whether
or not Hacker News participants will mostly set aside their desires for
comfort and entertainment to struggle successfully for freedom, but I will
watching meanwhile, and I am always willing to help when dare to take a
consistent stand for freedom.

------
personlurking
"Once the filters are built, the terms upon which they can filter can be
(indeed will be) modified."

This and every law on the books. A law is like ground being broken on a
particular location (realm of life), something will be built upon it down the
line. Much fuss might be made over the specific law but it is all slight of
hand.

------
goleksiak
This is about control - but control for what purpose? The short-term financial
gain of elites? Maybe. To satisfy elite paranoia?. Maybe.

Maybe this is control for stability.

The government creates models of the future and with more and more data about
climate change pointing to disaster in the next few decades, those models must
be focusing more and more at that point. So instead of government "holding its
people back from a bright future", they are pragmatically laying the
foundations for the control structures that will be necessary in the
unavoidably dark future.

How can stability be maintained when society is radically altered by climate
change?

Answer: Control

------
asgard1024
I have come to conclusion that more radical thinking is needed. American
constitution (or other derived documents, such as EU Charter on Human Rights,
I am EU citizen), as it stands, is not going to cut it.

The thing is, the extremes of keeping things hidden we see in the government
are just a tip of a long tail of many, many people trying to keep things
hidden in other, more mundane, institutions. For existential fears, people who
could point out these problems stay silent. We accept this as a necessary
acts, because of "competition". But aren't wars and such just another result
of this thinking, really? (For an interesting take on morality of speaking
truth, see also Sam Harris' book Lying.)

Here's a couple of ideas:

1\. Can democratic state do without any secret service at all? I don't mean
not to have "operational" security. You need to keep secret where you have
troops, keys etc. But; maybe it should just release all the secrets after 5
years, about operations they did. Likewise, their operations should be made
public, just like courts are. In other words, the default position should be
to release, not keep secret. I am on a fence regarding technology plans -
would really world be a better place if Russians couldn't make the bomb? The
point is, we take position "secret service is needed" for granted; I don't
think it is.

2\. There should be no blank exceptions to free speech, just like in the above
case. It should be right applied to everybody, not just US (or other state)
citizens. Private sector shouldn't be an exception - you should have right to
publicly criticize your employer. There should be no contracts preventing you
from disclosing information about what you don't like, or about what happened
to you.

3\. I envision a platform that would allow anonymous publishing of unreliable
information, which then could be collectively analyzed and the reliability of
sources assessed, without revealing them. Kind of inversion of classical
journalism, where you have a limited number of people (editors) accessing
unreliable information and only publishing if you can reasonably prove it to
be true; here you would publish indiscriminately things, that are not true,
and only later, via some algorithm that would connect the sources somehow yet
retain their anonymity, the correctness of the information would be proved. It
should allow to connect very small leaks from many people. This would require
a cultural change in how we understand media, but it could be done in
incremental way.

I am not completely advocating all of what I just mentioned; I would just like
to see some discussion about that. Maybe everything about institutional
behavior in the past, older than 5 years, let's say, should just be fair game
to publish. This rule would nicely exclude all the technical and operational
plans.

~~~
mseebach
> Can democratic state do without any secret service at all? I don't mean not
> to have "operational" security.

The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other
kinds. The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a
legitimate operation, and especially the asymmetrical nature of defining it
(only the people know a secret can reason about it, and they are rarely the
best people to make the decision).

> There should be no blank exceptions to free speech

You're confusing "free speech" in the constitutional sense with something
else, which seems to amount to outlawing private agreements to not divulge
certain information. Your definition of free speech would cover my right to
post the root password to my employers servers on 4chan and my employer having
no recurse against me.

Constitutional free speech _exclusively_ concerns the governments right to
decide what you can say. A newspaper or website deciding you can't "speak" on
their property is not a free speech issue in the constitutional sense.

> I envision a platform

Your envisioned platform is essentially wikipedia. You have a somewhat naive
notion of "truth" \- the truth in any half-way juicy issue have a very high
number of facets and nuances that frequently allows honest and well meaning
people to disagree on fundamental issues, which means compromises will have to
be struck where those disagreements can't reasonably co-exist. This is a
feature, not a bug, in a pluralistic society.

~~~
jnbiche
>The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other
kinds.

Are you seriously saying that all of today's classified documents relate to
ongoing operations? They still classify stuff from WWII. And huge amounts of
material relating to technologies unrelated to any operations imaginable (like
CRM systems) are classified. I urge you to read the Washington Post's series
on government secrecy from a few years ago to learn about what kinds of things
are classified in today's government: [http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-
secret-america/](http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/)

~~~
mseebach
No, I'm saying that the people who decide that things should be and/or remain
classified will say that it's for operational reasons. WWII was definitely an
operation, although it's a long time ago, and it's hard to imagine what might
still be relevant to keep classified. If an intelligence organisation procures
a CRM for keeping track of operations, and the public tender document says
that it must be able to handle 250 operations a month, then they've leaked
some potentially sensitive information.

The definition certainly appears to be applied too broadly, but you're not
going to achieve less secrecy by limiting secrecy to "operations".

~~~
asgard1024
"the public tender document says that it must be able to handle 250 operations
a month, then they've leaked some potentially sensitive information"

Maybe you could elaborate on how exactly this is sensitive? (Then we can have
discussion about whether or not it's worth to divulge it publicly.) I mean,
how does it help criminals to know that your police force has X million
policemen? They will have to deal with it anyway.

Unless you are in state of war, and have a single enemy, then such information
is not of much help to anyone. However, it can show if the money are spent
efficiently. We can look at cases resolved/worked on during the previous time
period and compare it with spending.

I claim savings due to these records being public will outweigh an advantage
of any enemy knowing things like these. Just like democracies with all the
public information about government spending economically beat dictatorships
keeping these things secret.

------
batemanesque
meaningless reification of 'the internet'... the current secrecy debate is no
more about the internet than Watergate was about tape recorders

------
001sky
Don't forget...

 _Facebook CEO Admits To Calling Users 'Dumb Fucks'_

[http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-
ims...](http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-
help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5)

~~~
gfosco
People say a lot of dumb stuff when they're 19.

~~~
clicks
That's not a good enough excuse. I'm frustrated that you trivialize intentions
to hand over people's e-mails, addresses, pictures like it's nothing, "oh, but
he was _just_ 19!". I was 19 once too, did a lot of stupid stuff, but even
then I was never willing to hand over pictures/private details about thousands
of people to my friends (I could have -- I was the owner of a fairly popular
forum when I was 16 which had roughly 10k users).

What irks me about the quote is how specific and self-assured he sounds:

    
    
        Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
        Zuck: Just ask.
        Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
        [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
        Zuck: People just submitted it.
        Zuck: I don't know why.
        Zuck: They "trust me"
        Zuck: Dumb fucks.
    

It is very difficult to buy that he's since then done a complete 180 degree
turn. He is of course aware that he can't hand his friends private information
of FB users because there'll be consequences (like FB going down, his wealth
going down, his reputation going down), but what the chat message tells us is
what Mark is really like, what his conscience is truly like: if he's willing
to put being thought of as cool and hip to his friends (or whatever was the
guiding motive behind his willingness to release private information of
students) above privacy of others, he's probably willing to put profit above
privacy and well-being of others. But of course that's already been made clear
by his many other actions since then.

I am also saddened that pg time and again praises him for being an example of
a good founder. The hacker community should continue giving him as much hell
as possible (as most of it does, thankfully), refuse to promote its business
(don't put 'Like' buttons on your stuff), don't use Facebook Connect, don't
have a FB profile, do not disclose bugs to FB, etc. Don't reward individuals
who lack basic conscience.

~~~
dylangs1030
Again: people do a lot of dumb stuff when they're 19.

I'm assuming you've never met Mark Zuckerberg. All you have to go on are his
portrayals in the media.

Have you ever said anything racist? Sexist? Discriminatory, widely insulting?
Have you ever joked about things you would do to take advantage of other
people?

How would you feel if any one of those things were held against you by
everyone years later? I've personally said worse things, and I've later
regretted them. I'd be mortifed to have them follow me for a decade. The man
is turning 30 soon. It was literally a decade ago. Let it go.

~~~
clicks
I haven't met Mark but I know people who knew Mark in his Harvard days. None
of them have very nice things to say about him.

The age argument is not good enough. _You 're still trivializing his
willingness to release private information about thousands of students at his
university without their permission_.

------
batemanesque
and describing all this as the same 'agenda' is grossly simplistic &
undermines attempts to reinforce civil liberties. there may be broad trends
but they're not driven by a unified entity, and given that the scope of NSA
surveillance was known before Snowden his leaks hardly give credence to the
possibility of taking conspiracy theories seriously

~~~
pessimizer
Calling something a conspiracy theory is not an argument, and I'm not sure
what the scare quotes around 'agenda' are supposed to communicate to me.

