Comment by captainbland
15 days ago
Given recent polling, we have to assume that what is MI5's today will be Reform's tomorrow. We have to ask what our government and judiciary are doing putting our privacy in the hands of the far-right.
15 days ago
Given recent polling, we have to assume that what is MI5's today will be Reform's tomorrow. We have to ask what our government and judiciary are doing putting our privacy in the hands of the far-right.
I never understood this kinds of arguments... both sides want to read your private data, but it's bad if 'the other side' does it? It's your current MI5/government that wants access to apples data.
My interpretation is that it is an argument against trust in authority in privacy discussions.
A: Privacy matters! B: Why should you care if you have nothing to hide? A: If you have nothing to hide, then give me the password to your Facebook. B: I don't trust you with that, but I trust my governments and relevant authorities.
The point is that B's faith in authority is flawed as the "powers that be" are an eternally shifting target. By agreeing to government surveillance, you place trust in every subsequent government, even the ones you would rather not.
I always look at this from the other side...
Side A abuses (legal, governmental) power, and instead of "lynching" them for that, we turn the issue into "this will become bad only because of side B will do the same". To me it looks like someone supports side A, and wants to limit the "badness" of whatever they did, but still can't support the thing, so they find the way out by claiming that the other side will do something bad with that data, as if the collecting the data (chats,...) isn't bad enough by itself.
I understand your analogy with friends and facebook, and explaining that stuff to your grandma in this way would probably work... maybe even better if you used "your neighbor Sally works for the government, she could read your chats too, do you really want that?"... but on a technical "forum", it (to me) gives off very politically biased vibes.
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Exactly this. What I'm talking about is just a specific instance of the generalised rule you've stated.
That shifting target can also shift immediately it doesnt need an election.
One is bad in principle and the other is also bad in practice. Both are very bad but the latter is more likely to move people to action.
Generally speaking it is worse if a party who is ideologically inclined to do something bad to you reads it, yes.
One side wants to purge large parts of the population and the other one doesn't. Yes, all parties can abuse data, but their policies do actually matter.
I think if you value privacy this isn't the right place to be making distinctions between parties. This only serves to alienate people and isn't the core argument.
I think it's more likely to get broad support when framed as us vs. them where "us" is normal working people regardless of political affiliation and "them" is our government elites trying to spy on us.
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The other one isn't even voted in yet, hasn't done anything yet, and the current one already wants the data, that they shouldn't get.
The current ones are already abusing their power, and the other one might hypothetically do something, if and when and if at all.
This is like Alice making it legal and then punching you in the face and instead of you "punching back", you say "this is fine, but Bob is bad, because if he gets voted in, he'll punch harder".
Does it matter who has access to the data? It’s the principal not the actor
If there were a way to magically ensure that only the good guys had access to the information, I'd be way less concerned about these measures. (There are only a few things that I care about being secret for the sake of secrecy, and I can easily keep those off of computers.)
Every encryption backdoor is a huge vulnerability. Even if we somehow ensure that the powers-that-be remain entirely trustworthy (something that, historically, we can't even manage for a century), they're not the only people who'll have access to the backdoor. It's not possible to make an encryption backdoor that only authorised parties can use: as they say, the laws of mathematics do not respect the laws of Australia.
The actor informs the principal
It’s a Labour government, not a “far right” government.
I see from your history you may have knee jerked this one. I am referencing the far-right Reform party's current polling success and how this may be reflected in our government in the future.