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by ElevenLathe 1084 days ago
I agree generally, but we have to be realistic that decentralization/onion routing/public key encryption and all the other technical tricks at our disposal will only slow the corporations/the state down. Yes, it convenient for the FBI to have a web form to be able to get access to your gmail inbox or whatever, but they will happily just arrest you and beat you with a wrench until you give them your private keys.

The truth is that power (aka money) is heavily concentrated in global society. It's a worthwhile goal to break it up, and maybe there are some technical tricks to help people toward that end, but even if we woke up tomorrow with a perfectly decentralized and anonymous network culture, we would still be under the rule of oil interests/unelected bureaucrats/unaccountable intelligence agencies/the finance industry/your bogeyman of choice.
2 comments
wholinator2 1084 days ago
Yeah, i think we also have to be wary of defeatism when it comes to things like this as well. Of course they could just kidnap and torture you, they've always been able to do that. But this is about their ability to get information on millions of people simultaneously. It would be pretty unrealistic for the FBI to simultaneously kidnap and torture every member of an ethnic or political group. But if that data is all online then that information becomes easy and instant to get. So yeah, 1 person could be captured, that's not what this is about. This is about the simultaneous capture of _everyone_, which is wholly something outside the realm of possibility currently.

We shouldn't give up just because a bad thing already exists.

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jjav 1082 days ago
> Yes, it convenient for the FBI to have a web form to be able to get access to your gmail inbox or whatever, but they will happily just arrest you and beat you with a wrench until you give them your private keys.

Very unlikely on average, because they cannot (and are not interested) in arresting everyone. Internet surveillance, however, makes it easy to spy on everyone all the time.

This is also why it is vital to have approximately everyone using secure technologies.

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