[FirmwareBurner]

There's nowhere to go, since it's a constant game of whack-a-mole. Small island countries in the Caribbean can brag about super lax laws that aid privacy and evasion but none of them will ruin relationships with US or the EU just to protect a small 10 person privacy focused tech company when a warrants comes from abroad.

For reference, Switzerland had to change their banking secrecy laws decades ago due to pressure from the US, Germany and France, so you can guess how well other weaker countries will fare against such pressure. And let's not forget the famous Crypto AG scandal in Switzerland, so I'm not buying the famous "Swiss privacy" marketing fluff at all anymore as much as I like the country. Just like Crypto AG, every tech company is, or will be, infiltrated by alphabet agencies by cooperation or by force. If you want real privacy you have to self host, that's the only way.

Plus, I feel like we're focusing at the wrong issue here. Do we really want lawless places on this planet to exist where companies and individuals can escape the courts and law enforcement of their own nations? Something that will be exploited mostly for nefarious purposes than protecting privacy of law abiding people.

The real solution is holding powerful governments accountable against invasions of privacy by their voters, not creating lawless zones where companies and powerful individuals can go and hide to avoid laws they dislike. If laws are bad, just change the laws, don't normalize law avoidance. If you normalize law avoidance about one thing, why not about other things as well like theft, taxation, human trafficking etc? The whole point of developed western nations is democratic representation, the strong rule of law and fairness of the court system. Write to your representative.

[zarzavat]

> Do we really want lawless places on this planet to exist where companies and individuals can escape the courts and law enforcement of their own nations?

Yes. If the alternative is a worldwide police state.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Yes. If the alternative is a worldwide police state.

Being held accountable for crimes is your definition of a "police state"? Interesting.

What you're trying to hint at is political persecution, and there is the possibility of asylum for that. But let's differentiate between persecution and running away from crimes, and not muddy the waters. Not all crimes are the result of persecution.

Otherwise what's stopping anyone form breaking into your house, murdering your family to rob you and then fleeing abroad on asylum to avoid legal repercussions? If that was the status quo, you probably wouldn't exist anymore right now.

The "police state" is the one ensuring your family's safety. In our modern societies, we have outsourced the monopoly on violence to the police state, so that we can focus on work and hobbies, and that comes at the expense of trusting the state and holding it accountable through democracy.

[K0balt]

I don’t think op meant that at all. Your response reads a lot like “if you don’t have anything to hide…” arguments against privacy and encryption. Liberty always comes with a cost. It is de-facto a lack of control by the state. It is precisely this lack of control that creates value in liberty.

The state will always go through cycles of opinion, witch hunts, political interference, and other malfeasances of power. It will probably be corrected, only to temporarily careen off the rails again. This is -the best case scenario- for a healthy democracy.

The only way to limit the effect of this meandering pathfinding on individuals is to place some things intentionally out of reach of the state. To abuse their power, then they must break the law. This triggers the correction that brings democracy back towards the just path. Without limits to break, the state will careen so far off the path that it may have a hard time righting itself.

We must force the state to use open coercion when it wants to stretch the limits of its reach. This is a critical element for democracy to function… its reach must have well defined limits that stop well short of any legal activity, even if it means criminals and deviants will face less obstacles. This is the cost of freedom.

[FirmwareBurner]

> Your response reads a lot like “if you don’t have anything to hide…”

That's not what I said.

>We must force the state to use open coercion when it wants to stretch the limits of its reach.

That's exactly what I said.

>even if it means criminals and deviants will face less obstacles

Curios how liberal you'd be with the criminal who'd wronged you. Mercy towards criminals is a crime towards their victims.

[4bpp]

> Curios how liberal you'd be with the criminal who'd wronged you. Mercy towards criminals is a crime towards their victims.

Most societies that we would consider worth living in hold up the principle that matters of justice should be decided by the impartial and uninvolved. If the victim's feelings should determine the punishment, what would stop any petty theft and spicy insult (for the vast majority of countries where those are considered crimes) from being answered with the death penalty?

[FirmwareBurner]

>Most societies that we would consider worth living in hold up the principle that matters of justice should be decided by the impartial and uninvolved

Please, don't twist my words, I never said the victim should be the judge. I asked how would the victim feel if criminality had safe spaces where they could avoid justice because they feel like the law is unfair with them.

>If the victim's feelings should determine the punishment

In "most societies that we would consider worth living" as per your words, the victim's feelings are always taken into account in court that determines sentencing. Case in point, men and women get disproportionate sentences in the west for the exact same crime, like sexual abuse for instance.

[spwa4]

> Curios how liberal you'd be with the criminal who'd wronged you. Mercy towards criminals is a crime towards their victims.

Of course, reality is that whether justice is forthcoming is dictated by economic interests, not law, and certainly not your idea of law. In other words, whether you criticize China's treatment of Uighur, or point out how gigantic the scale of pollution the CCP is responsible for, or which economic disaster they caused this week, will get you in hot water more than committing a (scammer) crime will. Whether you criticize India's rich, Thailand's or Saudi Arabia's royalty and actually get some attention (which, as has been demonstrated, will make them get diplomatically immune embassy staff kill you. Perhaps that's not legal, but they cannot legally be punished for that, not even financially). And if you either insult or otherwise pose a problem to western copyright interests (e.g. make a tutorial about LibreELEC) you'll get the hammer put down on you:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/tags/libreelec

Of course, it will remain trivial to sabotage judicial proceedings if you're outside of the jurisdiction of that court (and because second/third world courts simply side with scammers against victims), the stated reason of the argument is NOT something you can do in practice, and whether the law is on your side? It is already on your side if you go after scammers! It is impossible to use local laws to go after scammers. What protects scammers, as everybody knows, is less anonymity than it is third world states and attitudes, especially their total lack of respect for international treaties they signed, combined with the reach FANGs, incumbent Telco's and Banks give to scammers. Given that one of FANGs, TikTok (in practice even if not in theory) runs from within the third world even that option is fast disappearing. This law does nothing about that.

Even within the west, there's an expression from the legal profession: "you cannot get blood from a stone". It is meant to illustrate the problem that scams and most fraud are committed by people who are "on the margin" and have no money or options (almost all fraud is committed by tenants). On the margin means that while they aren't poor, even a 1000 euro judgement would make them destitute for 6 months or more. You will not get a judge to convict these people. It doesn't matter how much you legally are in the right, the justice system will refuse to destroy their lives, make them homeless, instead they will correctly point out that will achieve nothing, and leave you hanging. This is another thing you can't change. (yes, with the current attitudes if the criminal is an immigrant you may get them removed. But you still won't get your money back)

And to follow your accusatory style: is this what you want to achieve? Support scammers to advance the interests of extreme rich third-world autocrats? Because that's what you're doing.

[beej71]

The only way to definitely hold everybody accountable for all crimes is a police state.

Like Franklin said, he'd rather 100 guilty people go free rather than a single innocent person jailed. He was definitely willing to not hold some people accountable for their crimes because that was a requirement for a free state.

You said earlier that the solution was to change the laws, and this is what we're saying right now. Change the laws so that VPNs are allowed and cryptography is allowed so that we can avoid the police state.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Like Franklin said, he'd rather 100 guilty people go free rather than a single innocent person jailed.

What does this have to do with anything? All jails now have innocent people in them due to process failures. How does quoting Franklin make them feel better?

>He was definitely willing to not hold some people accountable for their crimes because that was a requirement for a free state.

If by "free sate" you mean a high crime rate state where toothpaste needs to be locked up in CVS due to criminals being let free, then yeah.

[4bpp]

> The "police state" is the one ensuring your family's safety. In our modern societies, we have outsourced the monopoly on violence to the police state, so that we can focus on work and hobbies, and that comes at the expense of trusting the state and holding it accountable through democracy.

My family is approximately infinitely more likely to be considered a "perpetrator" of a crime internet deanonymization will be used to prosecute (piracy, bad opinions, dealing in the wrong kind of crypto coins, ordering the wrong kind of chemicals from India) than to be a "victim" in our own estimation, so at least in this particular domain the "police state" is only ensuring the interests of some others, at the expense of my family's safety (which they could and would directly compromise using the violence they have monopolised).

[modzu]

if democracy ever threatened to change anything, it would be banned

[rubit_xxx20]

How about Sealand?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

[viridian]

Sealand is a fake country, a state without a nation. Even a nation without a military like Costa Rica can muster a defense via its people. Sealand on the other hand exists solely because no one cares to even acknowledge its existence. If Russia cut a deal to garrison troops there, that wikipedia page would see every "is" replaced with "was" before the day's end.

[AStonesThrow]

> Sealand on the other hand exists solely because no one cares to even acknowledge its existence.

In the Infocom-produced Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the player must enter his/her own brain and navigate a maze, in search of the Common Sense Particle, finding where it is lodged in this brain, and get rid of the blasted thing.

Then the player may return to the Heart of Gold and, without hindrance of Common Sense, hold “No Tea” and “Tea” simultaneously in inventory.

But that is just a computer game!!!

[volemo]

What about Sealand? They can be all for privacy and freedom, but it’d all amount to nothing if they don’t have Internet connection, and connection is a two way consent, so Sealand is even worse for this purpose than island micro nations.