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by falcolas 3096 days ago
WRT "just get the government to do it" US federal legislation, specifically not that driven by "terrorism" or "protect the children" (and we don't want any legislation under either label) tends to take years to go from initial idea to law. That doesn't count the years which would be added for compliance. Or the charter and formation of the "central authority".

If we started today, we might get such a law in action sometime in the mid-2020's, at which point ISPs would have switched to IPv6 just to avoid the legislation. You know, maybe it would be a good idea after all /s

My "idealism" is probably better called "pessimism", and is based off a couple of decades watching well-meaning legislation be mangled beyond repair by politicians and corporations, at the city level.

People are complicated and irrational. People in politics are even more complicated and seemingly irrational, since even the best politicians have to balance the wants and needs of thousands of people and the businesses who employ those people. Politicians at the federal level are even more complicated, since they have 50 states, a number of territories, and gigantic corporations to consider.

Even influencing a completely honest political group to do what everyone agrees is the right thing takes a significant amount of time, money, and effort. And if we're honest, they aren't all completely devoted to their constituents, and won't agree that it's the right thing to do.

1 comments

Okay, I get that complexity, I think.

But then the question shifts to: maybe your country is too large to govern effectively - if you can't make changes like this quickly, something is wrong, I think.

Think about this...

Take any smart phone. No SIM card. Connect it to someone's wifi network, like a coffee shop. Now you can abuse 911 world wide in a completely untraceable manner.

What can possibly be done to prevent this that won't screw people desperately in need of help? It doesn't matter if your government is responsible for a town of 100 people or a country of 1.2 billion. It can't put an owner to each of the billions of smart phones floating around and that's not going to change any time soon.

Not going to answer this because

a) I already answered a very similar question of yours in a separate thread

b) you hijacked a subthread that was particularly talking about the politics involved