Comment by palata
2 days ago
> it still won't change the fact that the entire population is digitally surveilled 24/7
I agree that we are, I disagree that we are because all politicians are corrupt. Surveillance capitalism is the result of the private companies that built it, who could because they became so big, because of the lack of antitrust and stuff like the DCMA (and the equivalent that the US forced every other country to adopt).
Did all politicians collude in order to get there? I don't think so. The fact is that many people thought it was great to have powerful US companies taking over the world.
> It's boilerplate fallacious logic that makes any criticism against anything sound illegitimate.
I don't think so. You are saying "they must be corrupt, otherwise they would agree with me". I say that it sometimes happens, in all good faith, that other people don't agree with you. They may have different opinions, or they may be uninformed, incompetent, or simply wrong. There are many, many reasons to disagree that are not corruption.
You gave Snowden as an example: most politicians were not aware of what the NSA was doing. I think only the President (and maybe someone else) did, outside of the NSA.
People who say "the politicians want X" don't understand how politics works. Especially in the EU, where they are elected by the people of 27 very different countries.
I brought up the Snowden disclosure because it's significant. What governments along with the tech sector did behind our backs is a major violation of human rights and undermines the very foundations of the rule of law. After Snowden, politicians have no plausible deniability. We were all made aware what the consequences of our policies are, and it's only getting worse. Yet, instead of dismantling these illegal programs all together, politicians continue to expand its scope with laws like we're discussing here.
According to the dictionary, corruption is "dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers)." If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corruption
Also,
> I disagree that we are because all politicians are corrupt.
I repeat, I never said this. There are politicians like Ron Wyden or Bernie Sanders that oppose digital surveillance and control.
There are tons of politicians in many countries that oppose it.
It's too easy to blame "the politicians" for everything. In democracies, politicians are elected. People just have to vote. You wanted facts? The US people chose not to elect Bernie Sanders, and also chose to re-elect Trump.
Is the US people corrupt? I don't think so. They voted for what they thought would be best. Maybe they were wrong, maybe they were uninformed, maybe they were incompetent. But I wouldn't say all the voters had to be corrupt, there is no other explanation.
> politicians continue to expand its scope with laws like we're discussing here
And my point is that when we discuss such laws here, it is pretty obvious that many "tech-savvy people" have no idea about how it works and complain about the politicians not understanding either. All they know is that they are against it, and yell at it with many incorrect arguments. I find it a bit rich: politicians who are in favour of it do exactly the same thing: they don't understand how it works but they know that they are in favour, based on their limited understanding.
So those many people who are against could not inform the politicians, because they don't know themselves. What happens then? Politicians, who don't understand, are yelled at by people who disagree and mostly don't understand either. If a "good" politician tries to listen to some of those complaints, most likely they will see that the complaint is wrong, and then it would make sense for them to ignore it, wouldn't it?