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by flangola7 991 days ago
You don't need to talk down to me, I'm well aware of the encryption wars.

This is not a problem that some upstart technology can handle, it requires a societal act, and society acts through its government. Maybe you are satisfied with defeatism but I am not.

1 comments

I'm not so sure about that, you don't seem to be aware of the fact that there is an incredibly long list of examples demonstrating that governments and corporations will regularly violate the law if they have the technical means to do so. The only way to prevent abuse from these bad actors is to make such abuse either technically impossible, or immediately detrimental to their own interests (keep in mind that these are amoral actors that are historically never held to account). So what is more likely to succeed: an upstart technology, or a fundamental rework of the incentives undergirding all social constructs? You really should be suspicious of anyone proposing such performative busywork with no hope of success, because they are worse than defeatists - they are actively protecting the status quo. If you are dissatisfied with the present situation, by all means - write your congressman... but if that is the extent of your corrective action, because you've deluded yourself into thinking "I'm really helping with this political act!", then you and everyone else are actually worse off for it.
So what is more likely to succeed: an upstart technology, or a fundamental rework of the incentives undergirding all social constructs

we have technical solutions. they are either not working, or are not being used. (or are misused so much that they get a bad reputation)

an upstart technology will not change anything if noone cares.

the only way to create lasting change is to make people care.

one person at a time.

You need to re-read my previous comment. It doesn't appear that you processed and internalized it at all.
Your account has unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and quite badly. Can you please stop doing that? We have to ban accounts that post that way, and I don't want to ban you.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

You're incorrect, you appear to be replying to the wrong user. Nothing in your link is relevant to what I've said.
You've been posting in the flamewar style, crossing into personal attack, calling names (in the sense that the HN guidelines use that term), and more. In fact you just did it again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37652835. We ban accounts that do these things, so please don't do them anymore.

I scolded the other user as well, but someone else breaking the rules doesn't make it ok for you to.

No, your comment is pretty easy to understand, I just categorically disagree with it - as your prescribed fix hasn't shown any success in living memory. Now compare that to the tangible hardening of the 1st, 2nd and 4th amendments thanks to technological fixes. If all goes well we might even end up fixing the infinite pain train of the monetary policy. Subversive technology has done this, not angry letters.