[dendory]

It's all fine and good to point out how insecure SMS is, and various ways that 2-factor auth may have been improved, but I think the bottom line is that when your adversary is the government, police and telecom provider working together, the means you use to protect yourself are irrelevant, if they really want to bring you down, they will. The solution is in democratization and lobbying for proper laws to be passed.

[snitko]

The solution is to make it extremely difficult/costly for them. It is never democratization and lobbying, because for a person to see any kind of change in the direction he wishes, it may take years. And even then it's just asking your masters for permission. Technology gives us a quick way to bypass government, make it irrelevant.

[dcposch]

No, we need both politics and technology.

First, we need an organized and determined political movement to defend civil liberties in general and our right to privacy in particular. To an extent the EFF and ACLU fill that role, but I think we can do better.

Check out the NRA for example--I happen to oppose its mission, but I am still impressed by its effectiveness. The NRA can literally decide which political campaigns get funded. If a congressperson supports real gun control, suddenly they have a well funded opponent in the primary. We need that level of organization.

When our own ancient and tech illiterate congresspeople here in California try to ban encryption, we need to be organized so we can get together and replace them.

Second, we need technology that provides privacy by default. For example, WhatsApp for messaging. E2E encryption is not magic, but it does make mass surveillance a lot harder, because there's no central database of everyones conversations. It does a lot to protect ordinary citizens from fishing expeditions.

Deprecating plain HTTP, making HTTPS ubiquitous for the web, is also a huge win and is already underway.

Both parts go together. We need to work on the politics and on the technology of freedom at the same time.

[snitko]

I really don't understand people who think politics is something we need. Why? Why do you need a select group of people to tell the rest how they should live their lives?

[dcposch]

If you want no government control whatsoever, move to northern Somalia.

If you want good governance that respects individual freedom, you have to work for it. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

---

And re: crypto making government "irrelevant", to use your word, that's not how it works.

https://xkcd.com/538/

[snitko]

The problem with your suggestion of moving to Somalia: if you want government, move to North Korea. Do you see the absurdity?

> And re: crypto making government "irrelevant", to use your word, that's not how it works.

It makes it irrelevant by making it more costly for government to remain in control, not by making physical extortion impossible. If you can't easily tax people by just looking into their bank account and finding out whether they owe you tax money, then you need to physically send a police officer to each household to check for Bitcoin wallets or gold or whatever represents value. That's costly.

> If you want good governance that respects individual freedom, you have to work for it. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Work != voting and believing in democracy with all its bells and whistles. Work means respecting other people's freedom and being able to protect your own. Thinking only government is able to protect people's freedom is like thinking only a slaveowner can provide food and shelter for the slaves.

[golergka]

Because there are people who want to do that. And if you will refuse to decide on this group of people democratically, you'll get a group of completely different people get into that position via violence.

[throwaway2048]

Politics is something that effects you even if you don't it to, it takes only one side to make a war.

[mvid]

Sounds more like you aren't trying to understand it.

[snitko]

No, I'm just a bit exhausted from talking about it. Yes, I think government and democracy in general are bad concepts. Yes, i think people would be much better off without both. If you want to explore the idea, you just need to start asking yourself the right questions and if the only answer is "nope, can't be done without government" you're not thinking hard enough.

[johnchristopher]

Your stand is not clear. Are you in favour of a complete lack of governing bodies or an enlightened tyrant or something else ?

[e12e]

> Technology gives us a quick way to bypass government, make it irrelevant.

If you actually could do that, it's very likely that said technology would be illegal. Just as it illegal pretty much everywhere to own your own tanks and fighter bombers.

Just because you ignore politics, doesn't mean politics ignores you. And puts you in indefinite detention, or execute you.

[snitko]

Perhaps temporarily, yes. You can outlaw cryptography, but the more governments resist it, the faster it will take over.

[e12e]

Take over what?

[snitko]

Oh, and you're more likely to end up in jail for political activism than for inventing things.

[enraged_camel]

>>The solution is to make it extremely difficult/costly for them.

You realize that it's you who pays for it in the end, right? It's called taxation.

[snitko]

Yes. And that's why things like Bitcoin make it more costly for governments to collect said taxes. Less money collected means less funding for another round of collection and the cycle continues.

[fauigerzigerk]

>The solution is in democratization and lobbying for proper laws to be passed

I'm not sure that's very helpful advice for an activist who is working towards the democratization of his country and for proper laws whilst being thwarted by an undemocratic government.

[frozenport]

Why are we trying to make it easier for them to bring people down? In this case they started monitoring the person, and got his contacts in under an hour. In a previous time they would have needed a team of people to find where he was staying and search his home.