There are many reasons for people deciding to commit crime. One of the most pervasive is not because they are disadvantaged and need to commit crime to put food on the table but because of the want to be the best in how others see them; to be the best in the neighborhood in terms of being visibly prosperous; showing off, as a way of having apparent power. That will never be solved by making everyone’s life being made better. The ones who want more will continue to commit crime no matter what. Those kinds are the Mafia and cartels. There is no social solution for that.
I was in error on including the last 70 (shouldn’t be writing until I’m fully awake, obviously).
But the last 40 years the United States Empire has taken up the slack of killing people where the Commies dropped off.
The FICTION wasn’t a basis for an argument, it was an analogy. Changing the underlying meaning of what another says is incredibly dishonest argumentation.
My understanding of @StevenR’s analogy as being deployed as an argument against “fairness” at the nation-state level.
My understanding of @dnarby’s response is that game theory and nation-state diplomacy are not analogous.
I see no dishonesty on either actor’s part.
The whole dialogue is really amusing. We have one mental model firmly informed by 1960s era thinking and viewpoints of the world. And another informed by more modern moral relativism. The sparks flying are quite natural. We’re literally seeing adults use words like, “bad guys”. This is so great!
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I don’t understand. Don’t most criminals already have privacy? Order seems to be holding up fine despite this.
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By most quantitative measures, the United States is living in one of the most “orderly” (in the criminal sense) eras in our history. I tend to agree with your assessment. That’s why when the FBI rolls out the crocodile tear show, the latest of which is William Barr’s jousting session with Apple, I tend to roll my eyes. I would imagine it may have something more to do with the 5 Eyes’ stated agenda as reported here and here:
- https://www.lawfareblog.com/five-eyes-statement-encryption-things-are-seldom-what-they-seem
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/3301353/five-eyes-threatens-to-force-encryption-backdoors-says-privacy-is-not-absolute.html
Who writes that shit? I don’t know but the published memo was certainly noted by many.
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I don’t understand. Don’t most criminals already have privacy? Order seems to be holding up fine despite this.
It is not about criminals only, which are a minority by the way.
Do we want to impose rules on us because of a mislead minority? I don’t think so.
The question is about which kind of devious acts we are talking about.
There will always be some people who do not have any emotions or inkling about emotions, aka psychopath, which is a disease. Let’s put those aside.
We have the drug problem. We have theft. We have murder because of greed, envy or some other basic motives. These are in my point of view clearly social problems and won’t be solved by cutting away privacy rights.
Or are we talking about the assassinations, suicide bombers etc. Which is an entirely different beast.
Are we talking about USA or Europe or Asia. Again totally different issues.
I cannot believe that everything or rather anything will be solved by having transparent citizens. Especially in our kind of economy. Because don’t do evil is a lie for companies. The only thing a company is interested in is how to survive and make more financial gains. Morality is totally out of scope for those.
Sorry but I am only scratching the surface here. In the end giving up privacy is the worst solution and even not a solution at all to fight crime. It is simple propaganda and the worst part is me saying this puts me right into the corner of conspiracy theorists and automatically makes me non-credible. Which is also very sad.
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well yeah assuming you were referring to big-tech-companies … but the way you worded it > “totally” is a bit extreme … not all companies are created equal … yes, as an extreme the most evil are also the largest most influential for-profit-companies because they maximize share-holders-profits not favoring social/public gain as a whole …
but … that places all the blame solely on the company … what about the people ? what is our stake in all of this ?
am i forced by anyone to play Doom-Eternal on the M$ platform rather than seeking some other forms of more ethically viable intellectual distractions ? or who forces me to plan a building in AutoCAD when i could do it ALL in Blender (it would be more painful and more time-consuming though … ) ? my company ? my friends ? my spouse ? or is it just because i’m too LAZY ?
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In any case “morality” does impact on financial gains - if immorality (unethical behaviour) sees the light of day. You can lose customers and lose revenue and lose profit, if people are sufficiently disgusted.
So even a company that is 100% focused on maximising profits should still consider how their behaviour will be perceived outside the context of the legal system.
do you think M$ will ask for your opinion on how they will use the 10 billion $ they got for the JEDI project recently from the DOD ???
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North Korea or Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, it is also true for other guys: Europe, China, Russia, and US, and any other governments who might have some.
If North Korea wants to nuke somewhere, so does the US. If North Korea will do evil with incredible power, so will the US.
However that is not how the world is running. We have permanently lost the opportunity to prevent the evil guys from nuclear weapons. However, we still have the chance to fight with them in the cyber space.
So, what you call privacy, is not sth that you should ever consider to give up. That is one of the most powerful weapons of you to fight against the evil governments.
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is what i call limitation of surveillance in the IC community. surveillance should ONLY be executed on criminals within a confined procedure …
Yeah it was extreme to say all company are the same which is not true, granted.
Well I am not blaming companies as such, because people are working for companies thus they make the culture. But as we all learned some things get to be “alive” after they reached a certain level. And only with diligence and care can we steer it back to something worthwhile. But as long as people can earn 5 billions a year. E.g. Mozilla (https://joindiaspora.com/posts/8e90b4701a2301384b70002590d8e506
) who tells it loves “free” and open source Software but has to kick out 70 people because there is no money 
You see, free Software has ethical implications, which you can ignore but what is left then?
But in the end we delude ourselves very well and simply stick to topics we can grasp. Restrict privacy as the weapon for crime. E-Cars for pollution as THE solution. Let’s not eat meat, but okay let’s switch to fish and so on and on and on.
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That might be a good idea.
However, if they/we have the ability to do that on someone, we have the ability to do that on everyone.
Or, if some of us have the ability to totally get rid of surveillance, so do the others.
As a result, it is all or none. The government might claim there is a confined procedure. However, they have the ability. The bad news is, if they can, they will.
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And in our history we never saw it going sideways, right 
It’s always the same. Take freedom, sell it somehow to be something good. Let people get used to it, take another piece and well you get the drift.
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I am sorry, but it is completely terrible for me.
You consider yourself right, you think you “free citizens” are “better” than others, you think the “government from your guys” are much better than all the others ones, as a result it should check the world.
Or, what you really mean, it should rule the world. It cannot monitor everything without being the ruler of the world.
Have you ever doubted about that ?
Are you born better than the other guys ?
Why can you claim you are right, why can you claim your political opinions should rule the world ?
Do you know how we call it ?
Maybe your words are just out of pride and prejudice. It makes no difference to me though.
Because he has maybe the strongest and surly the most modern army behind his back. Ultimately it all comes down to the brute force.
I look forward to the day 21st century people are actually disgusted enough to bring a huge company down, or better yet, an entire practice, like DRM. Maybe this has happened at some point already? I’m not sure. Perhaps Purism exists (as does Raptor Engineering) only because people were motivated to seek out alternatives, but Purism is still very niche, as every good thing tends to be, and the free hardware movement is just barely getting to the point of being able to make its own CPUs, currently still not being able to make anything very powerful. I lost a lot of faith in humanity when the original Talos crowdfunding failed, but now at least there is Talos II, which I hope to buy, someday, when I have more money than I do now…
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the us government can NOT claim such a thing after Snowden happened …