Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Going Dark: The war on encryption is on the rise. Through a shady collaboration between the US and the EU. (web.archive.org)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

I never said the US was perfect. It is far from it.

However, I do think freedom of belief and freedom of speech are very important. You also need some good journalism somewhere in the mix.

I find it kind of concerning that Russia, a large powerful country, is now being run by a man who is set on keeping power and restricting access to information. Russia now has its own Wikipedia that is heavily censored because the government is scared that Russians might start not liking the current government. I don't know if you are in Russia or somewhere close but I would personally refuse to accept censorship. Using Tor is a must now to find out the truth. Draw your own conclusions and be mindful of bias and blatant propaganda. I find that news sites like the BBC tend to be fairly trustworthy although they are UK left leaning.

I also think "East vs West" is a cold war type settlement shared by leaders in both Russia and the US. In reality the cold war didn't do much other than cost a lot of time and money. It did jump start space travel.

I am sorry if I am being a bit harsh. It just annoys me at the level of blinders people have. I'm sure I have my own set of blinders.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It's pretty clear that access to information has very little to do with what the government actually does or whose interests it represents. For example, here's what a study analyzing many decades of US policy had to conclude

What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

US gives people the right to scream into the void while any tangible freedoms they had have been stripped away long ago. The public has no agency within the political system, and their interests aren't represented. Everybody knows this, and nobody can do anything about it. The US is an open dictatorship of capital, but you get this intangible free speech that can't actually be translated into any meaningful action. And when people do try to use their speech to effect change then the government murders them as seen with MLK, Fred Hampton, Assange, and many others.

If you think this is a better model for society than what China is doing, I really don't know what else to tell you. At least in China the government demonstrably works in the interest of the working majority. I'll take that over free speech absolutism any day.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

In China you can't even protest without being arrested. I can confidently say I'm glad not to be in China.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Wrong. Article 35 http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/content_1372964.htm

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