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I really like this passage:

>It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security.

> But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

I think the security/liberty tradeoff is actually often a false promise. You can end up trading away liberty for nothing at all. I don't like buying into this, even to say "liberty is better, we should do that instead" because it implicitly concedes that you would really get the security on the other side of the bargain.

And if you don't get the security you were promised, it's too late to do anything about it.

> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -- Benjamin Franklin

The key phrase is "a little temporary safety". 250 years ago people understood that the "security" gains were small and fleeting, but the loss of liberty was massive and permanent.

FWIW, the context of the Franklin quote is him defending the ability of the legislature to tax a family that was trying to bribe/lobby the governor to do otherwise.

The quote is in defense of the government: WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

That context didn't change the meaning at all for me.

Probably because Franklin most certainly thought himself to be writing on behalf of the people and was making a direct appeal that they assert their right to govern themselves rather than letting powerful private interests do as they wished.

That's not equally relevant everywhere the quote gets used, but it seems pretty relevant here, no?

I feel like that would only change your opinion of the quote if you originally equated it to "Government bad!", which is a thoughtless thought.

the phrase fits the modern usage, even if it's been decontextualized. kinda like "who watches the watchmen?" originally being about cheating wives bribing the folks keeping her locked up in the house.

Too bad Franklin didn’t just quote Spock:

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…”

(/s)

Thanks for educating us!

This dynamic always happens with quotes and attempts to deploy the founding fathers in arguments. Most of the founding fathers (except Thomas Paine) were terrible, horrible, no good people. I’d have been a loyalist in that era.

Maybe I'm just America Pilled but I'll support almost anyone against a hereditary monarchy. The idea should be fundamentally disgusting to any self-respecting human being.

There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy, nor any so effective at destruction as a malevolent one.

If our democracy is sufficiently broken, if supermajority voter policy preferences continue to be dismissed by both parties, it might be that we just cannot survive under the old Constitutional order. The Right's open move towards a post-democratic future, and the proceduralist Center's continued failure to fully utilize their popular mandate to fix things that need fixing, implicitly authorizes a Left to develop that is more obsessed with expression of the popular will and with good governance, than it is with a 250 year old bureaucratic structure and "norms". Norms of restraint are a consensual exercise, and cannot persist unilaterally.

The way things are going, the trajectory, make even most 20th century hereditary monarchies look pretty decent. Especially ones that devolve most power to parliamentary bodies.

  > There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy

The world is so complex that a single person or group can adapt and develop fast enough. We've seen what happens to planned economies. Their ineffectiveness is not due to malevolence.

Distribution of power not only serves as a protection to autocratic takeover but allows the system to be more flexible. The concentration of power can make some things more efficient but you trade flexibility.

> There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy

Autocracies have lots of issues around eg building a sufficiently capable bureaucracy that isn't too corrupt to do things. It can make it harder, not easier. Democracy can lean on democratic legitimacy, constitutional traditions, and a history of allowing power transitions without anyone losing their heads or launching a civil war over it. Those are all really useful things that autocracies have to cope without. It's not like it's easy mode.

Aside, the original meaning of Franklin's words are less-inspiring but perhaps more-interesting.

He's saying the local democratic legislature must not give up its "freedom" to pass laws taxing the powerful Penn dynasty which almost owns Pennsylvania.

He wants to reject a deal offered by the Penns: A big lump of money for temporary military security now, in exchange for an agreement that they can never be taxed ever again.

That's not an aside. The quote is pernicious because of its attribution to Ben. People invoke it without ever asking themselves if its true because they think of it as the hard won wisdom of a great man.

> The quote is pernicious because of its attribution to Ben.

It's not pernicious for any reason because it's absolutely true in general, Franklin was simply using a general piece of wisdom to justify particular government actions.

Yes, using it that way was an improvisation and a bit of a stretch, but the real issue here is why he needed to resort to it - that's a rabbit hole that pretty much goes to the bottom of today's problems which we're handling in a much worse manner than him back then.

What do you consider "absolutely true" or "in general" to mean?

I don’t find that to be less inspiring

Well, quite. And in an American Revolution context it's not like the colonies were notably less secure places to live after they gained independence.

basically the patriot act was a big piece of temporary safety that never produced any.

When you've given up all liberty, there's nothing left to stop the security being used against you.

If you assume that the security side of the equation is a false promise, then you are not making a decision at all: choosing between liberty with no security, or no liberty plus no security (because it's fake).

And for me, it seems somewhat disingenuous to imply that a decision is being made when your premise belies that.

It's not that security is fake, it's that giving up liberty doesn't naturally produce more security, and pursuing greater liberty doesn't necessarily erode security either.

It's not like pre-Revolutionary America was a notably secure place that inevitably see-sawed into a freer but insecure place afterwards.

We concurrently see failures on both the "attempts to preserve liberty" and "attempts to preserve security" front, so let's stop arguing about abstract principles.

Quotes are pointless, discussion should be limited to what's happening on the ground. For any given thing that happens, do we think that it, specifically, is helpful or harmful.

It's trivial to reverse that quote: we can, and have, pushed to keep the US population armed with increasingly-advanced personal weapons (in the name of liberty) without actually gaining any protection against authoritarian styles of government use of force or surveillance as a result. While just making civilian-on-civilian violence easier and more lethal.

> discussion should be limited to what's happening on the ground

Does anyone actually have any idea what's actually happening "on the ground?"

> without actually gaining any protection against authoritarian styles of government use of force

There are three weapons for every man, woman, and child in the USA. You may enjoy more of this protection than you realize.

> While just making civilian-on-civilian violence easier and more lethal.

80% of murders happen after an argument. More suicides happen by firearm than murders by a factor of 2:1. States with lower population densities like Alaska have 6x the suicide rate of states with higher densities like New York. There's a reason people aren't given these statistics.

> More suicides happen by firearm than murders by a factor of 2:1

According to https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-..., this is true (if you squint) for 2023 (actually in 2023 murders were 38% of gun deaths, suicides and "others" add up to 62%, so 1.6 to 1), but the ratio varies widely for other years. According to the graph https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-..., murders and suicides were much closer together in 2021 - after that, the number of murders has dropped, while the number of suicides kept increasing.

> There's a reason people aren't given these statistics.

What do you mean by that? You just gave people those statistics and they are widely available if people would want to look them up afaik.

Who should give other people statistics?

> You may enjoy more of this protection than you realize.

Americans are not safer then people in other comparable countries. They get shot more often.

In particular, they are much more likely to be shot by cops. And one of the hardest thing a layer can do is to prosecute a cop for it - they are simply untouchable unless stars align just right.

> It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

While I agree with Henry, and intend for _my_ life and social impact to fall there, "where the U.S. was intended to fall" is a misnomer here. That quote was one man's opinion. The U.S. is millions of living beings who, if they have liberty, should get to do whatever they want with it (which in itself is an oxymoron).

For those unfamiliar it's worth learning about Blackstone's Ratio. Blackstone was extremely influential to the writers of the US constitution.

I think it should come natural to engineers because I see it as similar to failure engineering, but for the legal system. When you engineer a bridge, building, or even a program you build failure modes into them. Not to cause them to fail but to control fails. A simple version is "fail open" vs "fail closed". A bank safe that fails, fails closed. It is locked and you need to drill it open. Same with an encrypted harddrive but no drill... But a locked door in a public building will typically want to fail opened, least you trap people inside during a fire. A more complex example is the root of a conspiracy. When a tall building collapses you tend to want it to fall in on itself so it doesn't take out neighboring skyscrapers...

So Blackstone's Ratio (and Franklin's recounting) is similar. It asks "which mode of failure is better? That innocent man are condemned or that guilty men go free?" This is a question we must all ask ourselves least we back ourselves into a corner. There's no perfect solution. We don't want failure, we should reduce it as much as possible, but if/when it fails, which outcome do you prefer?

I'll link the wiki but the topic is so famous you'll find a million and I'm pretty sure it's taught in every law school in America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

>giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security

When the check and balance got tipped over, all this promised "security" will only surface when it benefits the regime.

I'm still amused by a certain ccp propaganda video my parents consumed that boast about how quickly the cctv networks helped catch a thief who stole a foreign tourist's phone, yet those cameras would also conveniently stop working at a specific day whenever a highschooler went missing in the campus.

All the prerequisite for a similar dystopia is already in place in the US and there is may be one more chance to fix it, although I wouldn't hold my breathe.

I think part of the problem is a temptation to believe that we can have out cake and eat it too.

If the people on charge of deciding when to use the cameras were morally perfect, we have all the upside and none of the downside.

The problem is we live in a fallen world and that will simply never work.

Nevertheless it is a siren song that causes us to repeatedly make the wrong trade

"we live in a fallen world"

derp

> “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

No, that's a gross misrepresentation of what he said and meant. Patrick Henry was referring exclusively to political liberty from British colonial rule. There is no sense whatsoever in which he was referring to civil liberties against domestic rule. It didn't have a single thing to do with "security".

> But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile.

Also totally false. This is the core premise of libertarians in the West, who are, and always have been, a minority. It is not, and has never been, the "core premise" of the West or the US. Or else, quite obviously, we wouldn't have the constant tension between these liberties and the need for security. The idea that "those trade-offs are never worthwhile" is not a core American idea. We make those tradeoffs every single day. And continue to argue about them, e.g. over what degree of gun control is proper after each school shooting that happens.

we could have liberty and privacy and security if the people in charge wanted us to. But they don't and they've convinced enough people that they don't either.

It's not liberty if you can only have it if the people in charge want you to.

I agree

If the police actually did their job, took property crimes seriously and would bother with the suspicious guy high on fent looking into kids bedroom reports seriously, then we really wouldn't have to be setting up our own surveillance to make up for lacking local government services. But here we are, I'm not sure why libertarians think we don't have a right to defend ourselves (using new tech to make up for a lack of policing) when the city won't?

I frankly see it as a liberty to be able to use this tech, and it would be tyranny to prevent us from using it.

> and would bother with the suspicious guy high on fent looking into kids bedroom reports seriously

Wuh? I was a paramedic who probably has responded to nearly 1,000 fentanyl abuse patients.

I've never seen one who is all busy-beavering looking for homes to surreptitiously spy in kids bedrooms.

Symptoms of fentanyl use include: extreme drowsiness, poor responsiveness, nodding off, profound confusion and inability to focus on even simple acts, delayed reactions, poor body control.

The idea of a bunch of fent users sneaking around neighborhoods trying to be pedophiliac perverts seems far more right-wing fearmongering than anything based in reality.

I live in a dense neighborhood, and my kid's bedroom is on the bottom floor. So when they are scalking around looking for something to steal sot hey can buy more drugs, it happens anyways. I'm sure that stealing things is their actual focus, its just an accident of house construction that they wind up at my kid's bedroom window.

> The idea of a bunch of fent users sneaking around neighborhoods trying to be pedophiliac perverts seems far more right-wing fearmongering than anything based in reality.

This is why I hate the far right and the far left. The far left is like "we should just let the fent users steal all of our stuff because they are humans to! Let them poop freely on the sidewalks!", the far right are like "Those are all illegal immigrants lets deport them to El Salvadore". As a moderate, I hate both sides. It is just too bad that Trump is in power right now so the far left gets a huge electoral boost in local elections.

I would like it a lot better without the mention to the "West", which, as usual, is a code word for: "I want to pretend my point extend outside the USA but I have absolutely no knowledge of how true that is. I don't intend to do any research because that would demand efforts from me so bear with my casual imperialism". Queue the purely American historical lesson following.

If we're nitpicking, is it queue or cue?

I guess it's cue like on cue but it's late on a Sunday. You will have to excuse my brain.

It wasn't a nitpick by the way. I deeply resent American using "the West" like if my own country and culture was somehow fungible in their experience. They are not. We don't have that much in common. That doesn't include a legal tradition, or a conception of what freedom of speech should be, neither does it include values or history.

Edit: Enjoy downvoting me. It doesn't make what I said any less true. If you think the various European countries can be grouped with the US in a coherent whole, you are deeply deluding yourselves. They can't even be lumped together.

It would probably help if you made a more specific point rather than just ranting in very vague terms.

Grouping terms like "the west" can be broad enough to include over half of all living humans or so narrow that it applies to a small village.

It is, admittedly, not a particularly useful term, but it's not like americans are reaponsible for it.

Where have you seen it used outside of Americans pretending their culture is somehow a standard and NATO apologists? The world doesn't even exist as such in my own language. It's a staple on Hacker News and nearly always for the bad reasons. I'm supposed to politely nod and shut up when people are casually erasing my culture?

What even is a "nato apologist"???

> Where have you seen it used outside of Americans

Well, there was this minor thing called "the western roman empire" for a few years, so that might be a starting point.

I am fascinated to learn how a claim that westerners "prefer liberty over security" is somehow erasing your culture though.

The Western Roman Empire has nothing to do with "the West". I think it's fascinating that that's even suggested.

I lived in Germany for a while. Germany is definitely a part of "the West", have been the defining border with "the East" in the Cold War. Germans do not share a cultural viewpoint about liberty and security with the USA. So claiming that westerners "prefer liberty over security" while also including Germans (and others) in the definition of "the West" is absolutely erasing their culture.

> The Western Roman Empire has nothing to do with "the West". I think it's fascinating that that's even suggested.

I got that bit from wikipedia, it amused me.

As for germans, if they do not share such a viewpoint (and now I want evidence either way), the claim about the west is merely wrong, not "cultural erasure".

French have fairly serious differences against USA too.

I mean, at some level, every single human is different, at another level we're all the same. I'm not sure what we're proving here.

The original claim was something about liberty and security and no one in this chain seems interested in bringing in any actual specifics about who thinks what where.

I (British/Australian) use it, but not in a cultural sense. I use "the West" when talking about military or economic matters.

I generally prefer the term "Anglosphere" to refer to only the bits of "the West" that share that cultural viewpoint when I'm discussing cultural matters. It's not perfect, but it's useful.

Given the widening gap between the USA and Europe (and Canada) in economic and military matters, I'm not sure how much longer "the West" is going to be useful.

What are you talking about? Nobody is erasing your culture except for maybe you because you aren’t even talking about your culture. You’re just ranting about Americans.

Greek philosophy did not happen in the USA and actually predates it quite a bit.

Universal human rights is a very widespread belief and concept, extending to all continents and many, many cultures. It's not hard to understand why.

If you'd said "isn't just a western thing" I would have definitely agreed, but this claim seems a bit unlikely.

Just look around the world; they are the norm: East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China - Taiwan, Hong Kong, June 4 on the mainland); North America; South America, almost all of the region; Europe; Australia, NZ, Indonesia, the Phillipines; South Asia (India, and I think they are enshrined if not enforced in Pakistan and some others).

What's mostly missing is the Middle East, Central Asia, parts of SE Asia, and large parts of Africa - though there are Benin, Botswana, Kenya, and many others iirc.

Yes, but: crucially, not in the USA. The EU human rights framework includes non-citizens, because they are still humans. The US constitutional rights framework does not include non-citizens, which is why ICE have free rein to abuse them.

So not just to the west?

No it's not. There are no human rights for the lowest castes in Hinduism, there are no human rights for polytheists in Islam, there were nothing like the modern idea of human rights in Japan or China before they westernized. That's why the west was able to leapfrog other nations economically (and hence militarily), because it was the first place where people had enough rights for something resembling a modern economy to develop.

And there were no human rights for the slaves of the Western nations.

As opposed to slaves in non-western nations? May I remind that slavery was not exclusively a western thing, and that there are more slaves today than there ever was, in absolute terms, almost none in western nations.

The parent comment was making it seem like the West is some kind of beacon of virtue.

> That's why the west was able to leapfrog other nations economically

I tend to agree, though it's of course hard to prove. However, I'm talking about the present, not the past.

> There are no human rights for the lowest castes in Hinduism

I said it is "very widespread", not everywhere. Perhaps the confusion is the word Universal: that doesn't mean everyone believes it (false for any belief), but that everyone has the rights, whether or not they know or can exercise them. It's the concept that starts the Declaration of Independence: All are created equal, and all have inalienable rights.

> there were nothing like the modern idea of human rights in Japan or China before they westernized

I am talking about the present, where it's adopted in East Asia (including in China - Taiwan, Hong Kong (though suppressed now), June 4 on the mainland), throughout Latin America, Europe of course, parts of Africa, the Anglo world, etc.

> there are no human rights for polytheists in Islam,

There is no country called 'Islam'; if we go by scripture, nobody has human rights. The idea that all practicioners of Islam have the same beliefs is as true as saying all practicioners of Christianity do - and look at HN.

In Indonesia, the largest majority Muslim country, there are human rights, also in India, with the largest Muslim population (but not the majority). I think Pakistan and some South Asian countries probably have them enshrined.

If you don't give someone a reason to live they ain't gonna slave away very hard for you

I mean, nobody knows why "the west" (whatever that is) leapfrogged anyone, and this is a fairly small period in terms of total human history.

The industrial revolution is quite well documented

Things people did, sure, but not why they did them here and not there is a bit trickier. There's a variety of theories, easy access to coal is my favorite, but some people like to blame the magna carta or something.

Jared diamonds an idiot and “guns germs and steel” is among the worst books written in human history - right up there with Republic and whatever the hell sam Harris is doing.

I hope I wasn't coming off as quoting/endorsing that book, but easy access to a major fuel source has got to be at least somewhat relevant

And any leapfrogging done there hardly has anything to do with human rights I guess, so I'd say the poster above has a really bold claim here

It's not an unusual claim: Freedom breeds innovation - people are not only free to think for themselves, to ignore the orthodoxy and established power, but they are raised and encouraged to do it and admired for it (to a degree).

I think it's accurate to say that all the wealthiest (per capita) economies in history - i.e., the wealthiest economies over the last ten years - are in free societies.

Your last point might be true, but it doesn't necessarily imply causality of freedom -> wealth.

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Unfortunately for us all, the assault on liberty even done of the “normies” have started noticing recent, is only the latter stages of this assault on on America that has been going on for arguably 180 years ago.

Many in American history have noted that America is a kind of natural fortress protected by ocean moats. What that assumption just did not take into account is how America’s enemies would take action against America with that assumption taken as granted. It has come in the form of endless amounts of infiltration, subversion, corruption, and pollution… as any half-witted strategist and saboteur would have done. America was simply not sophisticated enough to realize that massive threat, because the leaders relied on that assumption that the USA is an impenetrable fort; never considering what happens if your fort is infiltrated through the many different means you open yourself up to being infiltrated.

America, a genuine America or whatever one can scrape together to consider as such, not just one that emulates and imitates like some kind of container cult, is really not long for this world. Another 20 years and Americas simile stops existing in anything but name only, if that, since there’s not even any reason or incentive anymore to keep the name out the branding at that point.

What do we call this place post America? Maybe we just come right out and just call it Oceania.

The problem is there are two Americas, and always have been. At one point they were clearly separated and had a civil war, but really they exist in overlapping spaces all the time. One is the America of the Declaration of Independence and all the propaganda believed by flag-saluting schoolchildren - some of that is real some of the time. The other is the America that South America is more familiar with, the country responsible for banana republics and endless War on Drugs violence, the America of plantations and exploitation.

The problem America(complimentary) is currently facing is the rebound of America(derogatory). It has elected its own Peron, and is turning into a dysfunctional South American country, driven by exactly the same forces.

Sorry, name's taken.

I know you're making a point by linking it to 1984, but Oceania is a real name for a continent.

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

The most bootlicking anglos in the world are the Australians , despite the extreme competition that NZ and the UK give them. The Orwellian definition IS the real name.

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

Whatever. It’s still taken so you can’t use it for the Fascist States of America.

We have a branch of government called Congress, here are some things they used to do that made it a crime to read your mail or listen to your phone calls.

1. Postal Service Act of 1792

2. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986

Anyway, Facebook can read your DMs, Google can read your email, Ring can take photos from your camera.

We can very easily make those things a crime, but we don't seem to want to do it.

3. Video Rental Protection Act (1988)

>we don't seem to want to

Congress protects only itself and its actual constituents — wealthy corporate persons.

----

Citizens United (2012) and the surveillances themselves make this monitoring self-capturing: the only way to prevent it is to convince most people to not install, but most people want the installed benefits.

Even getting your neighbors to re-position their Ring cameras (which they have every right to install) can become very difficult.

After city councils individually ban Flock-like CCTV traffic monitoring within their jurisdictions, their police can (and often do) still access neighboring jurisdictions' to monitor border crossings. You can't escape This System, even without license plates nor cell phones.

----

Term Limits now? end Citizens United. release The Files!

The Video Rental Protection Act was passed when a video rental employee blackmailed a congressman and there was no law against it. So it's clear how to make congress write new privacy laws.

Psst anyone at Covenant Eyes[0] want to sign up for the obvious assignment here??

[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-joh...

That doesn't appear to be accurate, at least from the Wikipedia article.

Robert Bork (sorry to add my personal commentary but an absolute shit stain of a human being) was nominated for the Supreme Court (which, thankfully, he always not confirmed), and a reporter went to a video rental store and asked for his rental history, which there was no law against. The published article didn't include much, as Bork hadn't rented any particularly salacious material, but there was bipartisan outrage that this had occurred.

Just goes to show how far we've fallen when there was once bipartisan outrage over accessing your Blockbuster rental history, when tech giants now have 10 times as much surveillance on you - your 1 am "shower thoughts" in your search history, all the websites you've visited, all your social media posts, and even social media posts about/including you posted by someone else, everything you've ever commented on a blog forum, your location history, etc.

> Even getting your neighbors to re-position their Ring cameras (which they have every right to install) can become very difficult.

In Germany it's prohibited by law to point your private surveillance camera to public spaces like the boardwalk, no recording of these areas is allowed. I think thats the way it should be. Unfortunately in some areas (e.g. train stations) it is allowed.

You'd prefer train stations don't have CCTV? What about when an attack happens?

That’s what this ENTIRE conversation is about… the (ostensible) trade off between surveillance and security.

In the case of an attack, I’d wish for a gendarme not a recording that would let me relive the experience.

Right, and I was saying it's wrong not to want surveillance in a super public area like a train station.

A gendarme is worse in every way.

The gendarme might actually arrest the attacker. The security camera will do nothing (but record). And having the policeman standing there is about as much a deterrent as a "Smile--You're Being Recorded" sign.

> The gendarme might actually arrest the attacker.

So might the cops we already have in such places.

> The security camera will do nothing (but record).

Exactly as intended.

> And having the policeman standing there is about as much a deterrent as a "Smile--You're Being Recorded" sign.

This seems like a weird thing to say. Cops are more of a deterrent than a gendarme.

I'd argue they should be better positioned, to minimize off-railroad property intrusion.

They still need to capture incidents in the station itself.

This argument justifies CCTV surveillance of all public places.

Is that what you intend to be arguing for? In any case, there needs to be more nuance in the discussion than a one-liner.

I think the quantity of surveillance matters. When it’s just a few places, then it’s a minor intrusion on liberty. When it’s a lot of places, it’s a major intrusion that will facilitate the (further) rise of authoritarianism.

> This argument justifies CCTV surveillance of all public places.

Well, yeah, I think that was super obvious, no?

> In any case, there needs to be more nuance in the discussion than a one-liner.

Not really. Super public busy places like train stations ought to be surveilled. The benefits far outweigh any cons.

There is far more nuance than this.

What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic?

Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is? What if that authority wants to move the line to include everything? Or nothing? Do they even need to provide notice to the public of their actions?

Who should be able to access to all this footage? Public? Government investigative branches only? What about the system administrators?

Does this footage require attestation to prove it's legitimacy in a world where AI can generate footage?

How long should this footage exist for? Do I have to trust not just current admins and their superiors but all the people who may be in those roles in perpetuity? IE do I have to trust people who haven't even been born yet?

Is it allowed to be centralised, so people can easily be tracked from one site to another for every step outside their house? Or should each site have separate data housing with access terms to match so that tracking a person is a significant task?

.. ..

There are a lot of concerns. You may argue that there isn't a lot of nuances because you have a set idea of how it should all go. But others may differ.

> There is far more nuance than this.

There's just....not. It's a pretty well established concept by now. For almost 50 years or so.

> What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic?

Yes to all of these.

> Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is?

Not a person, but a sound methodology ideally. Kind of like what we've mostly been doing even if it isn't formalized.

> What if that authority wants to move the line to include everything?

Yes, the slippery slope is a problem, agreed. That's why we need to be vigilant in responding to government plans.

> Do they even need to provide notice to the public of their actions?

In a civilized democracy, they should.

> Government investigative branches only?

Yes, pretty much.

> What about the system administrators?

Not if it can be avoided.

> Does this footage require attestation to prove it's legitimacy in a world where AI can generate footage?

No.

> How long should this footage exist for?

3 - 6 months is typically standard.

> Do I have to trust not just current admins and their superiors but all the people who may be in those roles in perpetuity? IE do I have to trust people who haven't even been born yet?

You have to trust the system is accountable.

> Is it allowed to be centralised,

Ideally, no.

> Or should each site have separate data housing with access terms to match so that tracking a person is a significant task?

Bingo.

> There are a lot of concerns. You may argue that there isn't a lot of nuances because you have a set idea of how it should all go. But others may differ.

I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades.

> I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades.

The issue is that times are changing. "Worked fine for decades" doesn't apply to the Ring Doorbell or Flock. Or that authorities exactly want to have all footage in the one place, from train stations too.

Modern computers allow for scaling of capabilities that are only tolerable at all when limited in number.

IE the capability to track an individual's every movement is tolerable if it is limited in number, has oversight, and only used by appropriate authorities against bad people that everyone can agree are bad.

But being able to track minority groups en masse as modern systems are capable of is clearly an issue.

I see your parameters to the above questions as mostly reasonable although I'd rather not have the cameras everywhere in the first place. But do you think even your reasonable seeming desires are being adhered to?

I don't.

I'm not arguing for mass surveillance, I'm arguing for keeping surveillance in busy places which as you admit has worked well for decades. I'm against the Ring/Flock dystopian nightmare as well.

> But do you think your desires are being adhered to?

No, but I think an apathetic population are the problem, and I don't know how to solve it.

I think we are largely in agreeance here.

It was the thing about "nuances" that bugged me mostly. The nuances determine whether the benefits outweigh the cost.

Appropriately managed isolated systems are fine. Dystopian nightmare is not.

.. and the apathy might doom us all. Thank you for an interesting thread of conversation.

> and the apathy might doom us all.

That, and the eagerness for misinformation that fits with preconceptions.

> Thank you for an interesting thread of conversation.

Likewise!

If I had a choice, I think I’d prefer not to have my death recorded and viewed by many strangers.

Such footage generally isn't viewable by the public unless it serves the public good.

The CCTV won't do shit to stop me from being attacked, it's a camera, not a cop. It's only useful for figuring out who to blame after the fact.

But there are other ways that we could figure out who to blame after the fact that don't require everything you will ever do to be recorded, forever.

> But there are other ways that we could figure out who to blame after the fact that don't require everything you will ever do to be recorded, forever.

No one said anything about retaining footage forever.

What are your suggestions for help finding an attacker without CCTV footage?

> No one said anything about retaining footage forever.

It's inevitably what happens.

It doesn't have to be, but that brings us back to the problem being an apathetic or misinformed population.

How would term limits help? Without term limits, congressmen can be judged by their voting history. With them, we get always new batches of congressmen, while lobbyists stay the same and consolidate their power.

It's so easy to get rid of a congressman you don't like with term limits. But why do you think, on average, his replacement would be better? The replacement would only be more unknown.

I think long-term ("establishment") politicians are more-inclined to have been bought-out; new blood is more likely to make new alignments, churning up the dirty space that is politics.

Lesser of two evils sort of thought process...

One problem is that seniority confers power. Throwing out a long-serving incumbent substantially reduces your district’s effective representation.

That could be improved by getting rid of de jure preferential treatment for things like committee memberships. You’d still have informal power from seniority though.

Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one. In the early days they would spin it as a good thing: "that's why the spam filtering is great!"

Why is everyone suddenly outraged Ring has access to your footage? These cloud-connected cameras...hosted on someone else's servers. It's literally how they work. "But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to them!"

So instead, people are rage-returning Ring cameras and posting their receipts and exchanging them for...Chinese cameras. Which do the same thing, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.

It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

> So instead, people are rage-returning Ring cameras and posting their receipts and exchanging them for...Chinese cameras. Which do the same thing, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.

No, the right thing to do is to buy an IP camera (most of which are made in China), firewall it, and send the footage to a local NVR. At no point should the camera speak to the open Internet.

It's the same principle with any Internet-of-Shit device -- it's not allowed to communicate over the Internet, period. At that point, any built-in backdoor or anti-feature becomes irrelevant.

99% of the people returning Ring cameras are not going to do, or are even capable of, what you suggest.

> Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one.

These constructions feel too simplistic to capture anything useful.

My credit card company can see my transactions. My medical provider can read my medical records. People who hire house cleaners let people see inside their house.

It's commonly accepted that when you engage with a company for business purposes, they can see things involved in your business with them.

The problem with the Ring situation isn't that Ring can "see" your video cameras. It's that they were using the information for things outside of the scope of business that was implied when you bought the camera.

People don't care if a Google bot "reads" their e-mail for spam filtering. They don't care if a contractor sees the inside of their house during construction. What they do care about is if the other party tries to use that access for something outside of the scope that was agreed upon.

> It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy. It's unnecessarily condescending for what? To look down upon people or play "told you so" games? If privacy advocates want to get anywhere they need to distance themselves from people who run with this kind of attitude.

> > It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

> These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy.

In addition: it’s not just the Ring camera installer whose rights are being violated (to be optimistic), it’s everyone who walks past on the sidewalk.

Privacy is a public good.

And it’s so long gone nobody (in the US or UK at least) can see a way to get it back.

>People don't care if a Google bot "reads" their e-mail for spam filtering.

There was that google engineer who was reading kids emails to groom them.

If someone can abuse something, you should expect it will be abused and you might not expect the avenue of abuse.

I get what you are trying to say, that its outcomes that are important. But you cant just hand everything over and trust.

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> But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to them!

This is exactly the sort of thing there should be legislation for. To a somewhat weaker extent than I’d like this is what GDPR and friends covers, the law says that companies must state what data they’re gathering and what purposes they’re gathering it for. If they overreach then they can be fined into oblivion.

In practice this is not as strong as it should be, broadly companies can and do basically go “we’re collecting all your data for whatever purpose we like” and get away with it, but they do at least think carefully about doing so.

There’s no reason we can’t force providers of cloud backed devices to treat your data with respect, rather than thinking of it as residual income they’re leaving on the table if they don’t also sell it to third parties for data mining.

'then they can be fined into oblivion' with capital CAN. Give me an example where this actually happened. (not just a statement that it will be done, but an actual example of a company going under because of the fine)

>Chinese cameras. Which do the same thing, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.

Which Chinese cameras do this? I've only seen some dumb IP cams.

Yi has a whole range.

yitechnology.com

https://www.amazon.com/stores/YI/page/DA1FB96F-810D-4062-8CD...

We have known all of this for over a decade now, ever since the Snowden leaks revealed some very damning things. The public has unfortunately decided they do no care it seems...

Now it’s not just the government. The commercial data aggregation has also reached eyebrow-raising levels.

When private data sources are being used to drive government enforcement actions (ICE), I think the reality has gone beyond Snowden.

Yes, that is what many people thought because people assume that a state with a reasonable commitment to individual liberty would have safeguards in place to force merchants to not spy on them.

The fault is not with the idea of expecting that you own the data that you made and the equipment that you purchased. The fault here is the regulatory structure that makes you by default not the owner of your data or your things.

People are waking up too late, so don't support them, rather ridicule them and tell them their newfound awareness is futile?

>, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.

The Chinese or Russian or whatever government is not sending thugs with guns to my doorstep over petty matters and if they did I would likely, depending on the exact details be within my rights to resist them with violence.

You can't say that about the federal/state/local government.

> The Chinese or Russian or whatever government is not sending thugs with guns to my doorstep over petty matters

China set up secret police stations in the US. Which doesn't detract from your point, but just in case you didn't know.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c785n9pexjpo.amp

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Don't confuse the public's want with the current situation controlled by the power and money being used to prevent these things from being a crime

Get money out of politics (reverse citizens united) and enact term/age limits for all public offices.

These problems will be solved. Most Americans agree on most things. Don't let the politicians who benefit off of dividing us fool you. An agenda that focuses on reform outside of the usual finger pointing game of partisan politics and promises to enact these reforms without fear or favor will win.

Any such agenda must also be willing to purge itself of any old guard that stands in the way, and treat them as a virus attached to their political movement. There is no benefit from trying to say, make a wedge between a Clinton and a Trump. If you can't get over that you're part of the problem, and this cycle will just continue.

Stop defending an old guard halfway in the grave. Being right doesn't matter in electoral politics, winning does. It is likely the only way to achieve such a broad reform is to be willing to entertain as many incriminations as possible.

Given recent relevations re Epstein this is our best chance to reform corruption in generations. Let's not squander it by defending anyone simply because they fall on one side of a dubious partisan line, or seem "less bad" than another.

The broader the castigation, the more likely to achieve momentum that can actually enact said reforms, given the disadvantages of taking on these vast incumbent interests and a government that is easily susceptible to gridlock driven by a minority.

And we can get there with ranked-choice voting. We really need to press hard until we get it.

Approval, not ranked-choice.

Ranked-choice reduces transparency and understanding of the vote-counting process, disenfranchises an alarming percentage of lower-income voters, obstructs risk-limiting audits (which are essential for security), and is non-monotonic (increasing voter support for a candidate can make them lose). Further, ranked-choice doesn't actually fix the spoiler problem and won't eliminate two-party dominance.

Approval voting is cheap and easy to implement, dead simple to explain, count, and audit. Not only does it eliminate the spoiler problem, it is easy to see why it does so: your ability to vote for any candidate is independent of your ability to vote for any other.

I've heard the arguments for approval voting, and I'm sure it's all the things you mention and more, but people don't get it. I don't get it. I don't want to vote for both Hillary and Bernie. I want to vote for Bernie, and then only if Bernie can't win, would I let my vote go to Hillary. You can explain to me until you're blue in the face why approval is strictly better even in this situation, but I am emotionally attached to my vote counting for Bernie more than any other candidate, so reason isn't going to work on my lizard brain.

I know, it sucks. Politics is terrible. But we have some momentum behind RC/IRV so we should use it and stop the single-vote FPTP system that's plagued us for centuries. Anything is better than that. So let's join forces and get behind whatever has momentum even if it's not technically the best.

Approval voting seems to me to be worse on all counts that the previous commenter was levying against ranked-choice. To your point, the spoiler effect seems like it would be much worse with approval than with a ranked ballot, since highly partisan voters would have little reason to approve of any candidate other than the single candidate they want in office. Approving of anyone else lessens their candidate's chance of winning.

A ranked choice ballot at least requires you to assign a unique value to every candidate on the ballot: you can honestly rank your second choice without being concerned that doing so undermines your first.

>A ranked choice ballot at least requires you to assign a unique value to every candidate on the ballot: you can honestly rank your second choice without being concerned that doing so undermines your first.

That's highly implementation dependent. Where I live we have ranked-choice ballots for local primary elections, while the local general elections are FPTP. State and Federal elections are all FPTP for primary and general elections.

While I am free to rank up to five candidates when filling out my ballot, I am not required to use all five choices.

I can just ignore all that if I choose and just rank one candidate first and leave the rest of the ballot blank. Or I can rank multiple candidates, but I'm not required to "assign a unique value to every candidate on the ballot."

In fact, if there are more than five candidates for a particular office, I can only rank five of them.

All that said, I'm absolutely in favor of RCV and wish we had it for all elections, not just local primary elections.

It sounds like the local ranked-choice implementation is unnecessarily complex and constrained. A simple "rank all candidates from 1 (most preferred) to n (least preferred)" for n candidates seems like the better solution.

>It sounds like the local ranked-choice implementation is unnecessarily complex and constrained. A simple "rank all candidates from 1 (most preferred) to n (least preferred)" for n candidates seems like the better solution.

I'm sure you're right. Unfortunately, I'm not the person you'd need to convince.

Here's contact information[0] for the relevant folks, and thanks for taking an interest. I'm sure my fellow townspeople will be grateful for your guidance. You have my thanks for stepping up to help us improve our voting systems!

For your reference, here's some background on the how the process came to be[1][2][3][4]

[0] https://www.vote.nyc/page/contact-us

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_City_Ballot_Question_1,_Ele...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/nyc-ranked-choice-voting-explaine...

[3] https://rankthevotenyc.org/history-of-rcv-in-nyc/

[4] https://rankthevotenyc.org/what-we-learned-from-new-york-cit...

> Approval voting is cheap and easy to implement, dead simple to explain, count, and audit.

Not so dead simple to vote, though. If you're a sincere voter and you prefer Alice to Bob and Bob to Charlie, do you approve of Alice, or both Alice and Bob?

That choice has to be either strategic or very noisy.

There seems to be some unavoidable complexity to voting methods: letting the voter deal with the complexity leads to a method with a very simple algorithm but that's tricky to use. Letting the method itself deal with it leads to more complex algorithms, but makes it easier to vote.

That said, the alternative vote is a bad ranked voting method; with that I do agree. Just beware of the complexity hidden in the system, whether that's Approval or Ranked Pairs.

I agree with this. Ranked choice is easy to explain to a naive voter: everyone understands how a preference order works, and the result is "the candidate more people like the most". Counting the votes is (a bit) complicated, but I think the (minority of) people who get excited by implementation details out-smart themselves, by worrying that most people won't understand the details. Of course most people won't understand the details, because they don't care about the details. They don't know how votes are tallied now!

My position admittedly breaks down when people lie to low-information voters about the fairness of the process - but, in my defence, people will lie about any system that doesn't produce the results they want. I'd prefer they lodge their objections to a better system than first-past-the-post.

Yes. Without it, we'll keep getting dysfunctional ultra-partisan elected bodies.

When we get out of this hole, that will be the number 1 thing I dedicate my civic duties towards. It's the last true bipartisan gridlock and it of course works against the people.

Even by its nature, ranked choice means that radical ideas need to temper themselves or somehow be extremely popular. Trump never would have won in a ranked choice system.

> Get money out of politics

If you also mean make it so Congress doesn't have a $4T slush fund to buy favors and influence every year, then I'm on board. If you think reducing the paltry sums spent on campaign contributions is going to take the money out of politics, you're bad at math.

The best way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money. The government playing an outsized role in the economy is precisely what draws money into the political process in the first place.

This. If you're the trade group for a billion dollar industry you'd be not doing your job if you didn't buy both sides of the isle. With how powerful the government is you can't afford not to.

Weird way to agree with someone, end with an insult just because you're not sure whether or not you should take the least charitable interpretation. You would think the rest of my post would have been a clue.

Moving past that, yes we are in agreement. In fact you bring up an excellent point, which is that political parties themselves make corrupt use of campaign finance lawlessness to get in the way of their own voters and rig their own primary systems. None of these entities, whether the DNC or a right wing corporate interest group should be able to buy and sell American elections.

Individual campaign contributions are a non issue, also because regular people are capped at relatively low and long established FEC limits these various slush funds/pacs are designed to circumvent. As you said, the math is clear. I'm confident if this issue were ever put straightly to the American people, the result would be overwhelmingly in favor of campaign finance reform. The real issue isn't anyone's ability to do math, but what you hinted at earlier. The political parties themselves enjoy and benefit from this corruption. Therefore they are incentivized to ensure such a vote never takes place.

The current moment offers an opportunity to overpower such entrenched powers that be, if we can collectively move beyond partisan finger pointing that will only alienate those fellow Americans we need to agree with us to make such a broad based reform possible.

> Get money out of politics (reverse citizens united) and enact

Citizens United was a case about a federal agency attempting to suppress the publication of a movie due to breaching "electioneering communications" rules first introduced in 2002. Contrary to the common narrative, it was more a case of the government arguing "speech is money" as a pretext to use its authority to regulate certain expenditures of money in order to control what information could be released into the media ecosystem. The court struck this down under a correct application of consistent first amendment jurisprudence, ruling that speech is always protected by the constitution, and cannot be suppressed under the guise of regulating spending.

The case and the ruling had nothing to do with campaign donations or funding of candidates. Overturning the Citizens United ruling would create a situation in which agencies under the authority of incumbent politicians would be able to control and curate public political discourse in the lead-up to elections. This is likely the exact opposite of what you intend.

> term/age limits for all public offices.

Term limits would have the effect of creating large incentives for office holders to use the prerogatives of office to set themselves up for their future careers after their terms expire. Term-limited politicians would be even more motivated than those in the status quo to hand out favors to potential future employers and business partners.

On top of that, it would be much more difficult for for politicians to establish notoriety and carve out a base of direct public support by building reputation in office. Instead, a steady stream of relative unknowns would require support from sponsors and entrenched party organizations to win office, making back-room players much more powerful than in the status quo. This is, again, likely to result in the exact opposite of what you intend.

> Given recent relevations re Epstein this is our best chance to reform corruption in generations.

Agreed, but that will require voters to abandon their reflexive partisan positions and accept that the institutions themselves are dysfunctional, irrespective of which people happen to be administering it at any given time. In the current cultural climate, that seems unfortunately unlikely.

Does the next coalition have any money?

What point are you attempting to make? Or are you one of a minority of people that refuses to see the difference between (say among other things) the unrealized gains of someone like a Musk vs someone's working class parents saving up for retirement?

Citizens United litigated a very specific issue. It was only an issue because Congress had actually passed some meaningful campaign finance reform after many painful years (really decades) of effort. The court essentially kneecapped it overnight on a 5 to 4 basis. Get money out of politics commonly means get dark/pac/corporate money out of politics, not individual donors well within long established FEC limits that these pacs are designed to circumvent.

Again, billionaires live by different rules. This doesn't just apply to taxes, criminal justice, etc it applies to the foundation of our democracy - free and fair elections. What could be more in keeping with the best of American traditions than ensuring our elections are as egalitarian as possible?

Its a nice outrage wave, but I have very hard time believing this will be a major topic in 2 weeks. People simply don't give a fuck en masse.

Accept that many folks are built differently than you and me and stuff like actual freedom you may be willing to lay your life for may be meaningless fart for others, especially when its not hurting them now. For example US folks voted current admin willingly second time and even after a full year of daily FUBARs the support is still largely there. If even pedophilia won't move some 'patriots' then reading some communication doesn't even register as a topic.

Also, anybody actually concerned about even slightest privacy would never, ever buy such products, not now not a decade earlier. Ie for my family I don't even see any added value of such devices, just stupid fragile something I have no control over, but it sees everything. Why?

These comments appear everywhere, as if people never made changes. Look at the enormous changes prior generations have made. Look at the changes from the conservative/MAGA movement, #metoo, and the George Floyd protests. The claim doesn't stand up to any examination.

Comments like these are a distraction. All we need to do is get to work. If people took action every time they felt like posting these comments, we'd get a lot done.

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Well, except that you have debts like mortgages and car loans to pay off. And your kids need to participate in extra-curriculars so they can get into a good school, and those cost money. And theaters are out of fashion now, so you'll need to buy that 80" TV with the surround sound so you can have a theater at home. And your shows are now on 6 different streaming services so that'll cost a little extra each month. And life really is easier with AI, but they all have strengths and weaknesses so you'll probably want to pay for 2, if not 3 of them. And your fast fashion gets threadbare after 20 or 30 washes so you'll need to regularly order 3 or 4 replacement shirts so you can send back the 2 that don't fit quite right.

Anyways back to the gears and whee.... oh look a squirrel!

Get to work, ha. People are too fickle and their brains are too easily hacked with the latest craze to trust them to do the right thing, whatever that is in your opinion, especially en masse.

> Look at the changes from the conservative/MAGA movement, #metoo, and the George Floyd protests.

Which changes? metoo certainly didn't change much, the George Floyd protests also led to nothing, just look at how ICE has been executing US citizens in the last months. In 2025 alone, before Renee Good and Alex Pretti, ICE murdered 32 people with zero accountability [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/...

<< ICE has been executing US citizens

Shot. Killed. Executing is a ridiculously inaccurate framing bordering on rage baiting. And that is before we get to whether Pretti or Good were committing felonies, when they were willfully obstructing federal agents from doing the job they were assigned.

> when they were willfully obstructing federal agents from doing the job they were assigned.

Even if one assumes that to be true: there might have been a case for an arrest, but not for firing into a moving vehicle that is forbidden even under ICE guidelines, and certainly not for unloading a whole magazine worth of ammunition into an unarmed person.

I stand by my judgement: both cases were extrajudicial killings and clear enough in their intent to be called executions.

Good hit him with her car and he is law enforcement. She should have put her car in park and surrendered to the officers as they were instructing her to do. The agents and the Goods both didn't appear there in the street out of a vacuum, clearly she was there to obstruct. Seemed like Good was afraid and chose to flee consequences.

Pretti may have had an accidental discharge of his gun, which he took to a confrontation with law enforcement. Sad and foolish way to go out, seemed like a suicide by cop situation to me.

Everything I just wrote is opinion, just like everything you wrote. Who is right? Maybe neither of us, it's complicated/messy.

Considering only the timing of these events, I conclude this ice stuff is poorly concocted psyops meant to enrage people and distract from other news.

if government agents can kill people on their own authority, without following due process, when they aren't threatening the safety of anyone, without any investigation, then all the other freedoms you supposedly have are useless. I would hardly call that a distraction from real issues.

She hit him with her SUV. She acted first. He was the authority, not Good. On whose authority? 80% of the electorate, that's who.

Defund the police is a loser latest craze issue engineered by scoundrels, no matter how you package it.

Regarding conservatives/MAGA, if you're saying the US hasn't changed dramatically since 2016 then I don't know what to say to you.

And I think you're misremembering the world before #metoo and George Floyd. Regarding the latter, police used to widely behave like ICE; now it's anathema - at least in cities. None of them help ICE afaik.

The conservatives like to preach hopelessness to their enemies - for obvious reasons, an age-old tactic - saying things like protests accomplish nothing (obviously false), these movements did nothing. The wierd part is, their enemies have picked up that argument and make it themselves. They simply and bizarrely have disarmed themselves, but they had and have the power the entire time.

> Regarding conservatives/MAGA, if you're saying the US hasn't changed dramatically since 2016 then I don't know what to say to you.

That is precisely why I didn't mention these.

> Regarding the latter, police used to widely behave like ICE; now it's anathema - at least in cities. None of them help ICE afaik.

They still kill people en masse [1], still overwhelmingly non-White people, and the number only increased over the years. It's good that police and National Guards (at least in Minneapolis) are on the side of the people, but as a system, police in the US is still loving to kill people.

And the GOP had DC tear apart the last visual reminder, the Black Lives Matter road mural [2] under extortionist threats.

> The wierd part is, their enemies have picked up that argument and make it themselves. They simply and bizarrely have disarmed themselves, but they had and have the power the entire time.

Similar to the Epstein Files, what should have happened in response to metoo and George Floyd/BLM was action that went beyond symbolism. Actual prosecution and judgement of people found to be in violation of the law and making sure that the conditions leading to these events will not repeat. But that was not done - movie sets got intimacy coordinators, Washington DC the BLM mural... while Weinstein got at least one conviction overturned on technicialities and Chauvin got moved to a low security prison [3].

Of course particularly the young generations are angry. Absolutely vile and horrible things can happen without any impactful action afterwards. And that's before we even go into the mess that is the Epstein Files, with Maxwell hoping for a pardon of all things after being moved to a minimum security facility already [4]. She does not deserve even one single day in freedom in her life again. Or before we touch the mess that is Jan 6th 2021, with Trump handing out pardons like others hand out candy [5]. Attempt a fucking putsch and get off scot free? WTF is this shit? In many other countries, putschists get hanged in the streets, as a warning sign to others.

To sum it up: there have been no meaningful results and changes from either of these events. And that is why there are so many voices on the progressive left calling for the removal of, amongst others, Chuck Schumer and other high-ranking Democrats in favor of people like Mamdani on one side, and mob justice aka the plumber's brother on the other side. Some still have faith in democracy itself but just demand better representatives and leaders, but others deem executing people like insurance CEOs the only way forward. And personally? I don't condone acts of violence like this, but I understand where they are coming from - a completely shattered trust in the ability of the government to hold bad actors accountable and improve the lives of the wide masses.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/08/nx-s1-5321872/dc-black-lives-...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/g-s1-18339/ex-officer-convict...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd049y2qymo

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...

To say there are still problems doesn't mean there isn't significant progress. Otherwise, there is no significant progress anywhere in anything.

> what should have happened in response to metoo and George Floyd/BLM was action that went beyond symbolism.

There was and is:

Laws have been passed in many places protecting rights. Oppressive systems like bail have been reformed in many places. Progressive prosecutors were elected around the country - some still are in office. Even the other prosecutors have (often) stopped backing law enforcement corruption. In some places, police have been prosecuted and jailed for the first time.

I think people overlook it for a common reason: Many things that were disruptive change then became the norm, so people don't notice them. As they say about innovation: First they laugh at you (ridicule your idea), then they say it's not in the Bible (violates the established orthodoxy), then they say they knew it all along. :)

> And the GOP had DC tear apart the last visual reminder, the Black Lives Matter road mural [2] under extortionist threats.

Maybe the last reminder in DC, which I doubt. I see plenty of BLM signs (and LGTBQ+ pride flags) in cities.

> I think people overlook it for a common reason: Many things that were disruptive change then became the norm, so people don't notice them. As they say about innovation: First they laugh at you (ridicule your idea), then they say it's not in the Bible (violates the established orthodoxy), then they say they knew it all along. :)

You do have a point in there. The problem IMHO is communication: silent progress just isn't enough with such glaring abuses of power.

> Maybe the last reminder in DC, which I doubt. I see plenty of BLM signs (and LGTBQ+ pride flags) in cities.

That's private persons that float these. The DC mural was a public admission by a government entity that they don't stand for such behavior, and that is what made ripping it out so powerful symbolically. The teardown was a very public symbol of "we shit on anything DEI".

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The Epstein stuff is a distraction. The previous admin had 4 years to do literally anything about it and they did nothing.

A distraction from what?

If anyone with power picks and chooses who gets justice then there is no justice, those people are corrupt, and they need to be removed from power and charged.

Whatabout whatabout whatabout. Charge, try, and imprison the guilty regardless of how much money they have, which political party they are part of, or how they vote. Anything else is madness.

Madness is all that remains at this point.

We're talking about trump, try to stay on topic?

What should they have done?

They put Ghislaine Maxwell in jail then had to wait until her appeal about Epstein's immunity deal made it to the Supreme Court.

My personal take is that everything is a distraction, nothing is real ( except conspiracy theories -- naturally ). Also, please subscribe to my totally organic podcast.

I am almost sure that those two acts refer to human beings reading and listening, not to algorithms. Or at least a decent corporate lawyer will convincingly turn things that way.

> We have a branch of government called Congress

... that has been virtually useless as it has been rendered ineffective by Republican obstructionism and the unwillingness of the Democrats to counteract it, leading to the current state of Trump being able to do what he wants completely unchecked.

That's a flaw of the constitution and it's revisions.

You should always assume bad actors when designing a political system.

And that's why parliamentary republics where you elect parties that form coalitions that chooses a prime minister who still has to deal with opposition and its own party support, every day, are much more resilient to authoritarianisn.

In fact there hasn't been a single parliamentary republic to turn authoritarian since Sri Lanka 50 years ago. Presidential ones? As many as you wish.

It's very stupid to elect single individuals to executive power.

> In fact there hasn't been a single parliamentary republic to turn authoritarian since Sri Lanka 50 years ago.

I'd disagree on that. Austria had the FPÖ in government multiple times and each time they caused massive scandals. Some of the German states are on the brink of the AfD not even needing a coalition partner alone - should the elections this year turn out to be as bloody as the polls suggest, it may very well be the case that they go from opposition straight to sole government, with no one holding them back.

Fully agree on the rest though.

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better.

I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a clear, binding mission not to exploit the data, not to sell or be funded by investors who expect it to, etc. We have the power to build more than ever. We should use it.

>I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products.

I noticed your own app's website [0] hosts videos on YouTube [1] and uses Stripe as a payment processor [2], which is hosted on AWS. You also mentioned that your app is vibe coded [3]; the AI labs that facilitated your vibecoding likely built and run their models using Meta's PyTorch or Google's TensorFlow.

"Just stop using" makes for a catchy manifesto in HackerNews comments, but the reality is a lot more complicated than that.

[0] https://wordsunite.us/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbCM99cz9W8

[2] https://wordsunite.us/terms

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45644698

Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account.

Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment

I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware.

Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change the status quo within the country or overseas.

Even in the EU we can't use a lot of "society important" smartphone apps without Google Play or the Apple Store. I can get a physical key thing for my national digital ID, but I can't get anything for my bank, my healthcare (which is a public service in Denmark) or any of our national digital post services. You can apply to get exempt from the digital post services, and they do have a website sollution, but still.

Don't get me wrong. I appreachiate all the work being done to get Europe out of the claws of US tech companies, but I think having an official EU app store alternative would be a good start.

Why not just mandate that all such apps must also be available on some government-approved Linux distro, ideally one that could run on mobiles too?

> Even in the EU we can't use a lot of "society important" smartphone apps without Google Play or the Apple Store.

Install GrapheneOS on a Pixel. Most Android apps just work, and unlike the stock OS, it does not spy on you.

You still have to get Google Play to get the apps. It's better but it's not like it makes us less reliant on Google in the current way these apps are distributed.

This doesn't help. Your contact number is shared by 50 parents' phone..are you sure of their security measures.

Even if I keep everything safe many govts are using Microsoft cloudfor day2day operations. Recently my employer lost tons of data. Every CV you send to a company or recruitment is kept often unencrypted. Every other country is fingerprinting/face ID upon arrival. Are you sure about their security?

Things that I have dumped into my email are far less consequential compared to those.

The game is lost. Very few people can have privacy.

A Pixel is depending on Google.

Parent mentioned not using the Play Store or the Apple Store. The hardware Graphene runs on is kind of irrelevant for that. I don't see a problem with paying Google for hardware that I am free to use as I like; unlike other manufacturers the bootloader is unlockable, which means the stock OS can be replaced.

Requiring a device from the same manufacturer as the OS as the only way to be free: there is really nothing you see contradictive in that? I mean, power to you!

> [...] but I can't get anything for my bank,

You most likely can.[0] Of course, banks don't tend to advertise these kinds of authentication devices, probably because people tend to find apps easier, but you absolutely should be able to get one from your bank. It's very much not a Danske Bank specific technology, and it's explicitly there to allow for accessibility for those people without "suitable" phones, e.g. old people.

It's certainly not as convenient to use the online bank with a fob like this vis-à-vis a banking app, and we should absolutely push for banks to not be reliant on Google and Apple for their apps, but it is possible to use the services without being reliant on Google or Apple.

> my healthcare (which is a public service in Denmark) or any of our national digital post services. You can apply to get exempt from the digital post services, and they do have a website solution, but still.

Now admittedly I don't know how this stuff is over there in Denmark, but here in Finland we have access to the digital healthcare services via a website, both for the national patient database and the healthcare region access. Again, not as convenient as the respective apps -- although the app for the national patient database, OmaKanta, is very much in beta stages still, and it's way more convenient to use the website even on the phone -- but it's possible. I would be very surprised if that wasn't also possible over in Denmark.

And authentication can happen via couple means that aren't reliant on the smartphone duopoly, with authentication doable with online banking -- which as established, doesn't even need a phone -- and via a "phone authentication" which IIRC only needs support insofar as it's supported by the SIM card, and then of course authentication can be done with the national ID card and a smartcard reader.

And again, the point isn't that this kind of de-Googling or de-Appleing isn't difficult or inconvenient, or that we shouldn't improve the situation, but that it's absolutely possible to get away without using these vendors. And that we should make sure that these kinds of alternatives remain possible to use.

> Don't get me wrong. I appreachiate all the work being done to get Europe out of the claws of US tech companies, but I think having an official EU app store alternative would be a good start.

Absolutely.

[0]: <https://danskebank.dk/erhverv/find-hjaelp/netbank-erhverv-bu...>

In my opinion there is a too strong connection now between these private corporations and "politicians". Everyone can be bribed.

The only way I see a change possibility is for people to think about how to change this collectively. Pushing for open source everywhere would be one partial strategy that could work in certain areas.

How do we accomplish such abstract goals when 54% of U.S. adults aged 16–74 read below a sixth-grade level?

I have little hope, since the EU is lobbyist-infested like the US, but there is a chance the EU will fund FOSS platforms over centralized solutions. There are already several EU wide or national funds for that and it would help immensly when that money would go to burning out solo devs and maybe even to orgs like mozilla.

https://eu-stf.openforumeurope.org/

> it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws

Regulation and liberty mongering are very American. We do it constantly at multiple levels of government.

What kills privacy regulation is this weird strain of political nihilism that seems to strongly intersect with those who care about the issue. I've personally worked on a few bills in my time. The worst, by far, were anything to do with privacy. If you assume you're defeated by forces that be, you're never going to probe that hypothesis.

You are incorrect. There is another way to address this problem and I suspect it will come to this: average people will begin attempting to destroy data centers and their interconnection points.

Your trillion dollar investment to control the populace ain't worth shit when its on fire and the monkeys are hurling flaming shit at you.

What law would you propose, and have you thought through unintended consequences?

> make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware.

None of this is legally easy to implement or enforce, and any attempt of doing it is virtually guaranteed to create an unbelievable amount of unintended consequences as people figure out ways to game this new set of rules.

We need something similar to FIPS for interoperable software and standards. Organizations will fall in line when money is at stake.

Say for example your local/state/federal agency publishes (or accepts) documents exclusively in ods/odf instead of proprietary formats, that will automatically drive adoption of software and prevent lock-in.

Agressive interoperability at the protpcol and exchange format - its why email mostly works even forcing Google to back off when they tried to change email to be rendered by their cdn (i forget the name of the offering - but was similar to what news pages were being pushed for speedup). Bad actors will always abound - like Microsoft spiking the documnt standards by pushing through ooxml when odt/odf was gaining traction. Or basically just coercing the decision makers like in Berlin(?) where they moved their offices into hte city to get them to drop Linux/Openoffice.

Re: ooxml vs odt/odf

I've heard that both have parts of the spec that are hard to implement if you don't have the software to verify.

How is it a bad thing that both major office software are now documented?

As i rmeber it ooxml backers made it intentionally harder to parse the specs than was necessary ,if it was fully open i believe the open source implementation would have been on par. As it is its subtly broken in annoying ways , and with Word being the default - its version wins out and gets to be the only acceptable submission format. If you notice most doc submissions when its not a pdf being requested will specifify MS's version.And by sheer momentum the alts get less traction.

[flagged]

While that may be true, people need to start somewhere. Otherwise the future will just be even more sniffing done by private entities. Do we want a sneaky Skynet that looks more like 1984?

The guy who is obsessed with using Lord of the Rings to name his companies certainly does want that.

Everything counts, this attitude is very defeatist. Stop using it the easy ways at first, and then make conscious steps to get off these services going forward.

It's probably at the same scale as gas/oil companies and recycling at this point. I'd like to believe my individual efforts will make a dent in the surveillance state, but at this volume legislation is truly the only meaningful effort to defang these multi-billion dollar companies.

Yea I noticed many of these sevices won't allow an email address not hosted with a provider that wasn't Google,Microsoft, or apple where they can collect other details. I think i tried to sign up for VanceAI, it would only accept gmail or discord connected account as a sign in.

"... tried to sign up for VanceAI, it would only accept gmail or discord connected account as a sign in ..."

I don't know what "VanceAI" is but I am confused ... why would they not want corporate (as in, Fortune 500) users to sign up ?

> [...] and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account.

How so?

A lot of schools use apps like 'ParentSquare' to interact and manage the student/teacher/parent relationship, and do not offer the same level of communication through traditional channels anymore.

I wonder if there would be standing to sue, since public schools are an agent of the government and sending your kids to school is mandatory. Lawsuits are the usual way these types of shenanigans get sorted. Can the government really force you into contracts with private parties?

This is because social media has trained today's young parents to be completely entitled assholes and teachers can only take so much of their abuse. What teacher is going to want to sit down for a conference with a parent who whips out a phone to record the meeting and then posts selectively edited excerpts online in order to get a few upvotes on a social platform.

And these apps require a google account?

They require a phone that can log into an App store, so unless parents can work around that, then yes?

Nonsense. My kid just started kindergarten this past year - I've never been required to log into ParentSquare through a GMail address and I have only ever accessed it through a browser on a laptop.

(Damn, I failed at my attempt to stop posting.)

The web is no better than phone apps when it comes to data gathering. Maybe the data is a little fuzzier, but you can be assured it's being gathered all the same as it is in phone apps.

Yes it is.

It is not perfect but you have much more control on which domain you connect to and/or which js you execute.

In our part of the world that's Meta/WhatsApp.

All school and class related information is shared exclusively via WhatsApp communities.

He needed to verify his identity via an app at pick up time, and needed an gmail/apple account as part of the process. I don't remember which app.

bring my kids now or i will call the police and you will be charged with abduction.

You must have a complexion on the lighter side if you think calling the police is the best solution to something like this.

thats about as calm as it gets, if my kids were abducted because im not using an app.

and how are you going to prove your ID? you might as well be the one abducting them, and especially if you refuse to use an app to identify yourself... (playing devils advocate here)

How about...showing your actual ID?

I am a parent and the school employees in primary would ask the kid to point finger at their parents and would remember our faces after just a few weeks. If someone had to pick them up because we had an issue we would just call the school.

I however never understood why I couldn't sign a paper so my kids could walk home on their own, especially since they would walk to school on their own already.

most immediate, would be my children would identify me, next one is under the assumption this suddenly crops up as a policy change, such a policy from the start would be a non starter, however familiarity of face would overide the need for what would be plutobeaurocratic requirement.

the really tight one is how to proceed when there is a change of lawful custody or guardianship, because, unfortunately, divorce, and domestic violence happens, and the lag between court order and, notification of custodial reassignment should be close to zero.

Oh well, I guess there is nothing to be done. Pack it up everyone. It is over. You can't do anything. No one can learn anything. No. You heard the guy above. It is over. Go home. Do nothing.

I don't mean to say that nothing can be done, I was just agreeing that it's often more complicated than it looks.

it is not complicated at all if you have resolve and understand what the ramifications of not doing anything are. I quit all social media 6 years ago, thought it would be hard, took about a week total to not even think about it. had same “trouble” in school with whatsapp groups and whatnot, threatened to sue, everything got moved to the SMS within a week………

Apple isn't on the evil list, aside from the kowtowing every powerful leader must do not to have their business attacked.

> Apple isn't on the evil list

Yeah, Tim Apple handing over a 24-karat gold plaque to the sitting president is completely normal behavior for CEOs to engage in, and not at all about just making as much money as possible. He had to do that, otherwise Apple as a company would disappear tomorrow. They're just trying to survive.

Unless you're going to demonstrate that handing over a golden plaque implies handing over privacy data to government agencies, I'm going to prefer the former over the latter.

Apple has already been outed as one of the participating companies in PRISM. [1] So that privacy boat has long since sailed. The public legal wrangling is likely just a mutually beneficial facade. PRISM is almost certainly illegal, but nobody can legally challenge it because the data provided from it is never directly used. Law enforcement engage in parallel construction [2] where they obtain the same evidence in a different way. So nobody can prove they were harmed by PRISM, and thus all challenges against it get tossed for lack of standing. It's very dumb.

But in any case the legal battles work as nice PR for Apple (see how much we care about privacy) and also as a great scenario for the government because any battles they win are domains where they can now legally use information directly to the courts and sidestep the parallel construction. That also takes the burden off of Apple PR in giving that information up because it can be framed as the courts and government forcing them, rather than them collaborating in mass data collection.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

I don’t like that we’ve gotten to a place where presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist is the same thing as engaging in massive surveillance of the entire population.

If you or I had complete knowledge of all of apple's activities, this would be a more relevant point.

Instead we have to make judgements based on what limited information we possess and sucking up to trump is a real bad sign for things like caring about privacy/liberty/safety

> presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist

Unfortunately, I think reality is much worse than you seem to be under the impression of. Voter suppression and military violence against your own population isn't "narcissism", it's the introduction of authoritarianism. The flagrant narcissism is a symptom of that, not the actual issue.

Apple was a PRISM partner. They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

>They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

For something like icloud vs gmail/gdrive, they're approximately the same, but that doesn't mean "they share just as much [...] as Microsoft and Google. If they never collected data in the first place, they don't have to share with NSA. The most obvious would be for location data, which apple keeps on-device and google did not (although they did switch to on device a few years ago).

Remember when Apple PR spent a bunch of time putting Tim Cook alongside images of RFK? Civil rights hero! That campaign wouldn’t land these days.

Rfk the brainworms guy?

In this case, the same-named father of the brainworms guy

It doesn't have to be a binary choice between "don't use it ever" and "continue using it as much as you are now". If people stopped using these services 50% of the time, it would have a huge impact.

In concept what you say is correct but reality is complex. There are very few providers that implement friction free login/password and importantly security. A large number of email providers didn't implement 2FA until very recently. Even those that have terrible apps, ad infested, no app password or oAuth etc. so many governments use MS hosted services.

It is akin to Visa/MasterCard duopoly. It is hard to escape but even if one does it then it resulted only inconvenience. I still don't have my cards in phone - neither will google change path nor will govts force a change.

I don't see any contradiction here with what I said. If you feel that using Google for email is unavoidable, that can be the part that you keep using. You can still easily ditch a lot of other things. E.g. Pixel phone, Google Docs, Google Drive, AWS. Each of those has plenty of, arguably better, alternatives.

I've largely disconnected from big tech for years, perhaps 80%, and encouraged others to do likewise. When does the seismic shift happen?

I don't care for these 'bottom up' strategies because they don't have clearly defined success conditions and are more wishing than anything else. It also puts the responsibilities on consumers for 'not advocating (or voting) hard enough,' which imho is just another kind of diffusion of responsibility. Everyone ends up feeling bad for not doing enough to solve the problem when the reality is that coordinating social swarms or other sorts of collective action against tech giants with highly integrated command and lobbying structures is almost impossible.

> Each of those has plenty of, arguably better, alternatives.

That's the incorrect premise - for that 50% that you hope to ditch.

Pixel phone is not inherently bad. One can even buy them second hand.

The information lock in from US is impossible to escape for majority of connected world citizens.

I don't understand your point. We're talking about ways to reduce dependence on big corp products. Some people object on the basis that it's not always feasible. I've responded that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You've identified some products that you think you can't move away from. I've identified some that I think you probably can, and acknowledged that you might still by stuck with those others. I don't see how your latest comment fits in.

In the context of the present debate, Pixel phone is inherently bad because it's a Google product. You're putting money in Google's bank account when you buy one, and you're running your phone the way Google wants you to. The point of the debate is whether it's feasible to move away from such things. In the case of a Pixel phone, it is possible (to some extent, anyway).

But you can still reduce your exposure. Giving in to hopelessness seems suboptimal.

The comments are fair. My post was quick and lacked details as I was frustrated in the ever increasing enshitification of the web.

What I meant to convey, from my personal experience, is that it seemed hard to get off of platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Prime, Alexa, Ring, Google Photos, etc. but then I did it and didn’t miss them. These small moves by a lot of people, I believe, can still make a difference. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. Do I still use some services? Of course, I have Gmail and WhatsApp, and use a lot of Apple products. When I can, I choose intentionally what I use since there’s no perfect companies out there, but there are “better” ones (whatever that may be in one’s opinion). I chose cloudflare for hosting and Anthropic for vibe coding. Allowing people to use existing login info versus exposing them to more risk with self managed auth was a choice I made. There are tons of choices we make every day so trying to be more intentional is a good start.

Nobody is perfect, but we can try to improve each day in these choices we make.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

his app has also Google, Apple logins and for first time I have seen, login with meta button.

https://app.wordsunite.us/

I don't think using AWS has quite the same privacy implications to using Amazon's own SaaS services.

It’s hard that’s why he is still using it

Talking about anti-tech-monopolies and using Stripe-paypal is extra ironic.

I can understand aws, youtube, being on google index, and other things as they sometimes are the most cost efficient or vendors don't offer alternatives... but stripe-paypal is more expensive and worse than the less-bad alternatives. jeez.

> I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products

It's not just hard for some though, literally their livelihood depends on it. Want to run a restaurant today? You basically must have Facebook, Instagram and Google Maps entry for enough people to discover you, probably more than half of the people we got to our restaurant who we ask, cite Google Maps as the reason they found the place, and without half our income, the restaurant wouldn't have survived.

It really depends where the restaurant is located.

Name a place it isn’t true.

Any city with either an actual city center, an historic center or touristic area. Any restaurant that is in a major business area.

Any neighborhood were local zoning is not a thing and local restaurant can be open. We have a lot of tapas or marisquerías places in Spain that are almost only visited by people from the same neighborhood. I like fish and seafood but don't want the smell of it in my kitchen the next day, whenever I want to eat fish I go to some place selling that and I don't need google maps to find one in my neighborhood.

Also world of mouth is still a thing in many places in this world. Reading HN feels sometimes like a weird parallel universe were people would never open their front door nor meet and to people.

> We have a lot of tapas or marisquerías places in Spain that are almost only visited by people from the same neighborhood

Yes, this is exactly the thing. Our restaurant is in Spain, and what you're saying is very true, which is why Google Maps, Instagram and Facebook tends to be important, as again, half (~guess) the people who arrive found it via Google Maps or Instagram, the rest are people who live nearby.

I'm Italian, there's plenty of stellar places with no online presence and endless customers.

Perhaps DPRK.

I mean deGoogle/meta etc is almost impossible

Alaska

That is going to work as the same as telling people to stop buying gas from Standard Oil or stop using Bell Telephone. Without government intervention you cannot break up their control.

I agree that government restrictions usually help if they're implemented well, but part of the issue is the government is benefiting from this kind of thing.

Also, most people don't actually need something like Amazon. Not to minimize the level of investment in it, but I don't see Amazon or Google as being quite the same as Bell or Standard Oil. Maybe between Google and Apple there's some kind of duopoly like that?

My impression is people don't value — either because they don't understand or minimize — things that protect privacy and anonymity. This is a standard refrain on these kinds of forums and elsewhere — "your typical person doesn't know or care about [feature X that preserves privacy, choice, and autonomy], they just want something that works and is fun". It's been belittled as unfashionable or paranoid or performative or something, when it's really something that's had short term costs that pale in comparison to the long-term costs.

I'm not saying governments don't need to be on the "right side" but I think people need to see security as involving not just encryption and so forth, but also decentralization, anonymity, demonopolization, and censorship resistance. It needs to be seen as part of the product or service benefits.

A lot of this reminds me of stuff from the 90s, when network security was ignored for awhile for customer convenience's sake. It seems really similar now, only the thing that's been ignored is like user control and privacy or something like that.

I think the thing that's surprising to me, for example, is that it takes a Super Bowl ad for people to realize that maybe there are downsides to letting a monopoly have access to video throughout the neighborhood everywhere.

You can start by creating a email at tuta or proton. It does not have to be 100% overnight

but then you send a mail to $person, and this $person uses gmail, and now your mail is still indexed by google.

The only way to get around this is to use encryption. dont send plain text email.

And if the recipient uses a Chrome extension to handle the decryption... Google still has access to the cleartext. There's no winning.

Tuta is just horrible, often rejecting account creation altogether. AtomicMail.io is a nice free alternative to Proton.

Thanks for your perspective. I've been using tuta since a year now. Nothing to report

Tuta is pathetic because it asked for my real name, ID verification, and real phone number, altogether defeating the point of anonymity. When I refused to provide identification, it disabled and deleted the new registration. This makes it as bad as Discord.

Perhaps you have a grandfathered account, but times have changed for the worse with Tuta alone.

Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free".

Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't even register.

People need to start paying for things, because if you're not paying for it, you're not in control of it.

I see what you're saying but I don't think that's the answer for everything, because people also pay for conveniences, like a Ring subscription so that Amazon stores footage in their cloud for you.

The problem is centralization is more convenient for consumers. You can easily control your doorbell, your garage door, your security cameras with 1 app, and everything just works.

Open source and decentralized solutions need to be just as convenient and cheaper than centralized ones for consumers to choose them.

Alternatively, basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state. After all, the state provides a road network, which is similarly essential and rather more expensive.

> basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state

You're looking at America in 2026 and concluding we want to give the state more control over private lives?

Yes, you can give control to the House of Representatives. The House should have way more control over government agencies, it's the people's house. The people deserve to have control.

> control to the House of Representatives

There is an entire branch of government whose purpose is to execute the will of Congress.

Let me know if you find it because the Presidency is no different than a monarch. Might be more believable if the Presidency didn't have a pardon power and wasn't elected in an extremely undemocratic fashion.

> it's the people's house

You dropped an adjective: wealthy

No, the Senate, Presidency, and Legislative branches are for the wealthy. The constitution was literally written so a minority of rich people would have the most control over the government. Having state legislatures (who also happened to decide who can vote + how) choose senators, requiring the senate to pass bills written by the house, judges that are chosen by senators. House of reps only serve for 2 years compared to 6 or 4 or lifetime appointments.

The 17th amendment is a little over 100 years old.

People need to stop treating the US constitution as this "mythical" thing rather than the reality of it being a very undemocratic document that is highly resistant to change.

Luckily the house can be expanded with a simple majority IN the house, one way to truly combat this.

The more you ask around the more you will find the real divide in the US is the same as it always has been. There are those that believe a more powerful government will solve all the problems and those that just want the government to leave them alone to solve their own problems.

Thomas Sowell's Conflict of Visions describes the difference well.

You make a really good point I think, if the government just leaves us alone then we can solve all of our own problems with the friendly assistance of ma bell/standard oil/google/facebook.

E-mail used to be provided by your isp and there were enough different ISPs ( at least in my country ) to not have a duopoly.

Yes, but they didn't develop it. ISP email required you to configure IMAP or more likely POP in an email application and did nothing to combat spam. Google came along and offered gmail, easy sign up, no configuration, used your web browser so no other applications to install, spam largely filtered out, just worked.

The app to install wasn't really an issue given any OS with a default desktop came with an email app.

What brought the popularity of gmail was the huge space provided which at the time felt infinite. I still remember the counter that was showing the size increasing seemingly indefinitely.

Yes, that too. I think the initial sell was a 1GB mailbox. Which was an enormous limit at the time. And another thing the ISPs missed. Most had small limits, "mailbox full" was a common thing and you had to download/delete mail all the time which was annoying.

> used your web browser so no other applications to install

I see this as a downside. Native email clients are much faster and a far better UX than a Web inbox. It's also pretty much required if you juggle multiple accounts.

I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail

Searcv in Gnome evolution is super fast

The problem with ISP based email is once you're a customer with their email you can never switch.

Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...

The neat thing about the state is that it can act directly off the incentives of the people. The state can supply such service in a private manner, given enough support from the populace.

The “incentives of the people” are famously steadfast and resolute in favor of the rights of others.

Not only that, but were it State-implemented, it would be an AWFUL implementation all the way through.

This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite.

Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue.

Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government.

I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...

There seem to be many layoffs, and the hype say that AI has made coders redundant. Who knows? Perhaps you won’t have to depend on the many people who would happily take lower pay for the chance to contribute to their nation.

There’s more incentives than pure profit - Government seems capable enough to attract people when it comes to cyber weapons.

Governments aren’t currently making these tools, because until last year, private enterprise was good enough. It still is, minus the dependency on America and its political climate.

Personally - The issue isn’t engineer availability or salary, but committee based decision making.

People pay for things and are still spied on.

People wear seatbelts and still die too.

We need to move in the right direction, not get paralysis in the status quo because of high profile edge cases.

No matter what there will always be warrants and wire taps. The goal is to get away from the "free flow" of information.

The point is, paying for things isn’t a solution. Paying for things is a consequence of having fixed the problem. I pay for Kagi and buy groceries from a ma-and-pa grocery store where I’m still going to be tracked if I use a credit card, bring my phone (or go with someone else who brings their phone), drive certain cars…

In most cases there can’t be movement in this direction and to the degree there can be, it isn’t enough.

[dead]

It's easy to say we should all start paying for things.

Most people don't have much of a disposable income.

DuckDuckGo is free to use, and is proof that you can have privacy respecting search. They make their money like Google used to by selling rankings, not by having users log in so that they can be followed across all their devices.

>People need to start paying for things

...with money. They are already paying for things by violating their own privacy and those around them. The irony is that the amount of money required for the service is much less the expected value of the surveillance for the provider. Service payment is an insurance expense, protecting against individual and systematic violation of the 4th Amendment rights. It's insurance (and cheap insurance) because this usually doesn't matter in practice. But sometimes it does, and when it does it REALLY does matter.

<tinfoil_hat>It would be smart for surveillance capital to fund some of these privacy forward providers, steer them to both charge you for a service and violate your privacy, hope for a very public controversy, and eventually discredit the fundamental approach.</tinfoil_hat>

And the problem with that is, all the money has been siphoned off by the people at the top.

That's one of the big hidden factors driving the ad/surveillance economy: people's purchasing power just isn't what it used to be, while at the same time they're expected to be paying regularly for more things than ever before (home broadband, mobile phone plans, etc).

We could

- regulate the crap out of surveillance capitalism.

- enforce laws on the books

- Break up firms

Tech used to have a leg to stand on in the face of government over reach. Today, tech firms have largely adapted to the incentives that actually make themselves known every quarter.

Customer support, content moderation, compliance are avoided, and lobbying argues that if you dont let tech it easy, your economy wont innovate. Except enshittification is the term to describe how extractive mature tech markets become.

I am all for more subscription models, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of throwing our hands up and ignoring the many changes that can better align the current incentives.

I'm not sure its necessarily that simple. For example, because of the job market for software engineers I have moved to new cities multiple times during my adult life. As a result, my social network is highly fragmented and without Facebook it would be incredibly difficult for me to manage.

So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."

I don't say this to necessarily mean that you are completely wrong, just to point out that opting out of these companies can be more complicated than it may initially appear.

> So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."

You just aren't looking for obvious alternatives that would still allow you to do all that privately. Keep your family photos offline on your own hardware. Create a contacts list on your phone (ideally de-Appled and de-Googled) and text people on Signal and/or create group chats. Tell people you are leaving Facebook because it is an evil surveillance machine, and that you can be reached on Signal, email (self-hosted) or phone.

Where are you that Facebook (the network, not meta as a company) is still minimally relevant ? I haven’t logged in in about a decade.

Facebook (if you don't use newsfeed) is a very useful product.

Local events - check

Local groups - check

Small time music bands/artist/performances/etc - check

Buy nothing groups where I can get rid of something I don't use - check

Groups for mom with kids to get organized for some kids event - check

A library having a read together event for a kids book author - check

I'm happy I don't have to use FB, but my wife uses it all the time, she just avoids newsfeeds and all the click/rage bait parts.

Is that in the US?

I’m genuinely asking, it wasn’t rethorical - none of that exists in my corner of Europe anymore. Businesses, indie stuff and local stores use instagram, groups are WhatsApp, second hand stuff has its own app.. facebook seems to be just the >60 year old crowd.

Guess what, Instagram and Whatsapp belong to Facebook (Meta).

No shit. That’s why I literally made the distinction in the first post.

Meta as a company is obviously currently relevant, it’s Facebook as a social network still being used what’s surprising to me.

Here they’re almost in the same category as MySpace, something you mention in passing talking about the past.

I'm polish/Italian and Facebook is the major source of local events information in both countries.

People before Facebook found themselves in exactly the same situation as you and managed to survive.

People have become dependant on the convenience of these tools and become, for lack of a gentler word, lazy. Moreover we have this current sense of entitlement -- that all of these details of modern living should be done for us. Having our social circles organized and maintained for us, having infinite entertainment a button press away, food delivered to our door on a whim, cars to take us anywhere always minutes away.

People survived just fine before these conveniences, it just too a bit more effort. You could collect your friends contact information, keep an address book, call them up from time to time. It's not perfect, but it works and starts to break the silicon valley tech giant dependence.

Personally I find adding friction to these processes has actual value. When you slow down and have to put a bit more effort in, it helps you to evaluate what is important, and what truly matters. You prioritize, you make tradoffs. The process IS the richness in life. We all don't need to be jet setting globetrotters to whom paris might as well be New York or london or munich, while robots manage our social lives. There is no substitute for actively working to build a community where you are. You have to put the effort in, and in a single generation we have lost so much of it. But we can get back there again if we try.

Nonsense, those aren't real relationships if you don't have numbers to each other and the relationships die with you deleting an account.

I've deleted all of my socials but LinkedIn in 2019 and I haven't missed anything at all.

In the main example cited by the article: how? It involves the use of surveilance systems by other people,These people may be unaware, disinterested, or even enthusiastic participants in this data collection. The same goes with data being collected by Google when the customer did not have an active subscription.

At best, we can only control our own actions. Even then, it is only possible to minimize (rather than eliminate) the use of their products without putting up barriers between ourselves and society. Consider email: we can use an alternative provider, but chances are that we will be corresponding personally or professionally with people who use Gmail or Outlook. The same goes for phones, only the alternatives available are much more limited. Plus you have some degree of tracking by the telecom networks. (I don't consider Apple or Microsoft much better on these fronts. Ultimately they have their business interests in mind and, failing that, their existence is ultimately at the whim of the state.)

Meta is the easiest to cut of those. I don’t use anything from them as I don’t engage on social media, nor use their VR and AR stuff etc.

Google and Amazon are harder to complete cut imo. I have replaced Google apart from using YouTube, and I do rely on Amazon for delivery and running personal projects on AWS.

Agreed.

That said for some I can foresee Meta being hard or harder to disconnect from because of their percieved level of personal social needs.

I left facebook and many of my friendships faded away.

Awkward bumping into people conversations would happen such as: "We missed you at my birthday party!", "I didn't know about it, else I would have been there!" "We posted it to facebook..." "I deleted my facebook account 2 years ago."

My personal philosophy was maybe they were not real friends to begin with. After all in the now 5 years since deletion, not one has reached out to ask if I'm even still alive. I've reached out to a couple people, with little to no reply. None the less, it was a hard transition.

For others', that might be an impossible task.

I removed Facebook about 11 years ago now. I made new friends who know I’m not on social media so we organize through text or discord. And for my core friend group they also moved to discord servers, so that made the switch easier.

I guess it can be hard initially though. Also, my core group of friends is less than 10, but that’s enough for me. I don’t need to follow what 100 other people are doing in their day to day haha.

> stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products

That's the easy part. What do you do about stuff like face recognition and cameras everywhere? Should you hide your face every time you go out? Should you not speak because there might be a mic around picking up your voice?

This is only going to get worse. We can't trust companies or governments to respect our privacy. We can't trust each other to keep the data recorded by our devices private.

It seems like the fight for privacy is a lost cause. What do we do?

"trust"? Lot's of ambitious people are selling extra refined new additions to surveillance right now! "business is good" for example the 90s PDF architect Leonard Rosenthol recently put up ads promoting a brand of Ring cameras that have extra features. Of course he is making money on it. Someone on LinkedIn said "what is this?" and the reply was "adding ownership attributes to Ring camera footage is a step towards publication rights for the owner" .. almost too strange to believe but yes, this is the actual move.

None of that helps, that's the point. How can you stop a ring camera from recording you as you're just taking a walk outside? How can you stop people's phones from tracking other people's phones, APs and BT? How can you stop ISPs from selling your real time location info, including to the cops?

Using AI to do anything isn't going to liberate one. It's just going to shift the dependence from one company to another. Your new feudal lord will be the people running the Santa Claus machine you're running. Don't keep trying to tell people AI is the solution. The real solution is self-hosting. And that cannot be AI'd half as easily.

The suggestion is not to depend on AI for privacy, but to use it to build products like signal which guarantee privacy. Using AI to build a product doesn't mean sharing the data from that product. In addition, right now AI has little vendor lock in and there are multiple competitive alternatives, so becoming dependent on a single company is not so likely.

>The suggestion is not to depend on AI for privacy, but to use it to build products like signal which guarantee privacy.

Uh huh. No. You use their system to do it, they have your prompt, and the output on hand. Even more so, they have the capability to tamper with it. They are essentially in a position to own the entire instance of the work product. It doesn't matter if they don't yet. It matters that they can. Furthermore you lose out on the learning. You lose out on any innovation. You lose out in the eyes of the law on the privacy of the communique you use to drive the black box.

>In addition, right now AI has little vendor lock in and there are multiple competitive alternatives, so becoming dependent on a single company is not so likely.

Yup. Right. Like we don't know how that ends. <gestures to />50 years of market consolidation in the distance, letting the illusion of choice speak for itself>

You can self host AI but speed and quality aren’t going to be as good as what companies can offer.

And the upfront cost will be quite high.

Alone from that list, it means.

No Go, no Flutter, no Android, no GCP nor AWS or anyone that relies on them like Vercel and Netlify, no llama, no React or framework that builds on top of it.

Keeping the list small, there are other items that depend on those companies money and engineering teams.

It doesn’t just seem hard, it is hard. I’m working on it, but here’s a few examples:

- I want to delete my Amazon account because service has gotten worse and they mistreat their employees. I also want to be able to get groceries, but I don’t have a car and the walking distance grocery store just closed (due to mismanagement). Now I need to spend hours every weekend walking to the farmers market or to the Safeway a considerably distance away.

- I want my prescriptions, but the pharmacy I used to walk to is closing. Now I need to find a pharmacy delivery service that isn’t tied up with Amazon.

- I signed up for One Medical before it was Amazon and it was great. Now it sucks. There aren’t exactly a lot of great alternatives even if I wanted to pay a premium. Wtf do I do?

- I have a Microsoft account I want to delete. If I do that, I will lose access to my Xbox games, and I will lose access to download anything at all on my Xbox 360, which is loaded up with XBLA games I can only use because Microsoft has kept the download part of their store working.

- I’m not on Instagram, but businesses seem to think Instagram has completely replaced the World Wide Web - many restaurants don’t post their hours _anywhere_ but Instagram. I cannot access these details without logging in. A local “speakeasy” coffee shop has a password you have to get from the Instagram story. I just can’t go. Unfortunately the employees are not accommodating. I’ve left a nasty review but that can only go so far. Without a big tech account I can’t even do that.

Do you have any evidence that this actually works as a strategy?

As if these tech giants are an aberration? Any company filling their niche will be under the same pressures.

No no you see... when Google or Amazon or Meta et al are doing it it's a-okay. But let's ban Huawei or DJI on 'National Security' grounds because they MIGHT be doing this too!

Surveillance is not black or white. In this world you’d have to be a cave man to not get surveyed, you just have to pick your battles. Not using any other the big 5-10’s product or s like saying don’t buy from Walmart or something. It’s stupid

Other people are using them.

You are surrounded by people using them.

Therefore, you are subject to the mass surveillance they encode.

And by NOT using them, you mark yourself as dangerous.

Meta was easy - nothing of value is lost. Google and Amazon are a bit harder.

They are everywhere

> But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be

This is a calculated move to normalize such technology. Yes, it will cause controversy in the short term, and these companies knew this was a possibility—but as a result the image in people's minds won't be the gestapo rounding up grannies; it'll kids finding puppies. To call this "unwitting" is simply naive (not surprising for Greenwald).

That’s why I’m hoping the news picks this up more - especially about the intended integration with flock/ICE. That might be the issue that brings awareness mainstream beyond the tech-aware circles

No marketing team would willingly do this and it's insane to think otherwise.

Cambridge Analytica was an experiment run by a marketing team. I wouldn't say marketing will always side on ethics.

Propaganda is, and always has been, a subset of marketing aimed at shifting public perception. It would be wild to assume it never happens.

> Cambridge Analytica was an experiment run by a marketing team. I wouldn't say marketing will always side on ethics

The argument isn't against ethics. It's about self interest. Amazon bought the Super Bowl ad to sell Nest units.

"Unwitting" is correct. There are no lizard people coordinating our march towards dystopia. Just individual people who will–like me–read this article, think we should do more, and then probably do nothing.

(If you want a realistic conspiracy, Amazon may have greenlit the spot with an eye towards an audience of one or two in D.C.)

I do not see the difference, between influencing policy by targetting "one or two", or a greater mass of people.

Both serve the same goals, in a different manner. Both require the same choices by marketing - active and with conscience aforethought.

    There are no lizard people coordinating our march towards dystopia. Just individual people who will–like me–read this article, think we should do more, and then probably do nothing.

It's very much possible for people to brand the surveillance state as cute; and for consent for a surveillance state to spontaneously emerge / be generated from the attempts of marketers trying to make the Ring dystopia cute.

Insane is a bit hyperbolic. The history of marketing is full of grand mistakes that seem absurd in hindsight.

OP was suggesting this wasn't a mistake. They are suggesting it's a win for Amazon, even with the backlash, because it frames the technology the way they want to.

Of course, they would. If the administration asked Bezos, and he gets a benefit out of it. He will task his marketing team to come up with something which tries to frame it in a positive light. Knowing that even if a few people make a stink this will blow over eventually and when it rolls out, he can always say it is just about puppies and neighborhood security. Nobody cares.

> If the administration asked Bezos, and he gets a benefit out of it. He will task his marketing team

On what planet would the ask be marketing copy versus straight access?

I meant that the admin would ask Bezoz for the surveillance, and he would tell his marketing team to find a frame which makes the surveillance look good.

> he would tell his marketing team to find a frame which makes the surveillance look good

In a Super Bowl spot? Why? Nobody was taking out Super Bowl spots for their PRISM participation.

And yet this went up. I understand it’s easy to just say “marketing teams don’t understand anything,“ but I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. They get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this incredibly intentionally.

>they tend to air on the side of caution

Completely off topic, and for future reference, it's "err" not "air".

Completely fine mistake, stupid homophones and all. Just thought you'd like to know.

Also, these things happen to me all the time if I use voice dictation. I don't trust it because of edge cases like this.

Voice to text, should’ve proofread better

Probably, but I didn't dictate that comment.

No I meant on my end, sorry wasn’t trying to be rude to you. “I used voice to text and I should I’ve proofread it better” is what I was saying.

> they get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution

Then this guy [1] walks into the room and says no, be bold, who could possibly object to my life's work, and he gets his way because he's signing the cheque.

[1] https://x.com/pavandavuluri/status/1987942909635854336

Marketing teams are constantly out of touch with the message they want to convey vs the message that gets conveyed. The creative team is usually not even talking to the other teams that would drive decisions like this - they almost exclusively are an isolated team (purposefully, like how engineers are often isolated from customers) that talks to a separate marketing team that then manages things like legal/compliance, which then bubbles up to other orgs etc.

The people creating ads are just organizationally isolated in most cases.

I worked in that world for a solid decade as a “creative” (video production) and when it comes to the big dogs, that is absolutely not true. They are incredibly top down and have to review everything. We have to pitch our ideas even when we’re in the door. They have strict brand bibles we have to adhere to. Ones that gave us free rein were the exception, not the rule.

Sometimes it was for no other reason than a bunch of people in house felt they needed to justify their existence, but regardless that’s how it was 90% of the time.

I feel like what you're saying is compatible. I'm not suggesting that things aren't top down or that you wouldn't have brand guidelines, that's actually exactly what I'm suggesting. I just mean that there is organizational isolation between creative teams and other teams, just as there is organizational isolation between engineering and other teams.

So it is unsurprising to me that a creative team might have been given brand guidelines and a goal, like "hey we want to sell this, we want people happy with this" (much more concretely, obviously) and that could lead to this sort of ad, and I think that's probably more plausible than the team going "we're going to psyop everyone into surveillance statehood".

Are any of these brand bibles public?

If you ever do creative work for a company they usually hand you brand guidelines in some form or fashion. Colors, fonts, how to display their name, what you can/can’t do with their logo, etc. it’s boring.

Some companies put up “press kits” on their site for public use but it’s usually logos and just basic info/stats .

> on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this

They'll avoid negative perception because this is their job, the message is still arbitrary.

> I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions.

And yet there are countless examples that show the exact opposite.

This made it through one of the largest marketing budgets in the world…

https://youtu.be/uwvAgDCOdU4

All of y'all keep saying variations of this yet the whole point is it’s the exception to the rule. The vast majority of ads aren’t controversial. That’s why it’s such a big deal when one is. It’s newsworthy and everyone has an opinion on that one ad.

The claim wasn’t ads not being controversial… the claim was that the marketers intentionally made an ad that would outrage consumers and incite them to not only not buy the product, but actively abandon already purchased product.

The justification was marketers at large corporations don’t mess up and that’s both ridiculous and provably false.

I don't think people grasp the gravity of the situation.

I see everyone talking about how to stop using products. I even thought about legislation that could help. But that's just it, none of that is possible. You can't even employ a "torches and pitchforks" approach. For any of this to be possible, people would have to coordinate. The means by which people communicate and coordinate are under the influence and control of the very entities that the people are trying to bring under control.

The only way to win this war is by means of economic warfare. And I don't mean "vote with your wallet". If I could spell out what I mean here, then the previous paragraph would have been invalid.

No, the only way to win this war is to reform your system of governance, decentralisation and democratisation. Power to the people.

The people are part of the problem. They're largely fine with all this.

That could be said prior to all revolutions.

The people are brainwashed by corporate controlled media. In a functioning democracy, there is counter balance against the oligarchs.

Democracy has no built in controls to stop oligarchs becoming a thing, and the people were a problem in the first place as they voted against measures that would prevent them. See all the people voting for Reagan, for example.

The US is only nominally democratic

How can you do that if you can't coordinate and communicate with others to that end?

Once upon a time, a bunch of people in Boston threw the East India Company's tea into the ocean. We might try something like that again.

> The only way to win this war is by means of economic warfare.

We are only in this situation because the economic war was lost. You want the world to fight Amazon and Google while they're in the middle of counting their spoils?

That's not what I meant.

It is not yet illegal or dangerous to call for a general strike. Only by shutting down the ports, the rail, the trucks and the delivery services will people create enough economic disruption that the billionaires will call their political toadies to heel and get them to start fixing this shit.

We still have the power to panic the billionaires, and they have the power to get what they want. If what they want is temporarily in sync with what society needs, then so much the better.

Luigi Mangione really put a scare in the billionaires for a moment at least.

This occurred sometime after his actions(CEO giving a talk and was interrupted by a protester): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SK-5AALSBFA

There were rumors that the reason Elon was bringing his child around every single moment he was in public was because of speculation that the child could assist in being cover for him(again thats speculation though people did get a laugh out of it). It started around the Luigi murder.

How do you convince people to participate in a general strike when the tiktok, facebook (and as a result threads, instagram), and twitter are controlled by the whitehouse and are actively taking down such posts?

Even if you want to inform people the old fashioned way, or organize in person, a few might, but you need majority of voters, how can you reach them when they only want to be reached by mediums controlled by the white house?

> We still have the power to panic the billionaires

Yeah, and making them lose a few billions of dollars isn't it. Even criminal punishment is useless, they'll get pardons, and if not they can just flee to any country that would protect them for their money. there are ways to make them scared for real though.

> Only by shutting down the ports, the rail, the trucks and the delivery services

This is the right track for sure, but the problem is scale, you need coordination to do that. But more than that, you need lots of people agreeing to do without nice things like a good and stable economy, mass layoffs, and dire consequences that aren't worth mentioning here. Matter of fact, the one group of people in the world that could have the most impact are all gathered here on HN :)

For the extreme measures that need to be taken by the people to actually be taken, the people need to understand that those measures are neccesary, and actually be informed of the strategies behind those measures and have some awareness of some of the tactics available to implement those strategies.

The problem is, there is no one even considering any unconventional means. Anyone with power to act is waiting for elections and campaigns. Why can't people just read history and learn from it? Why do we need tragedies to keep teaching us the same lessons again and again. The people in charge are not idiots. they also know elections are ahead. They're actively ignoring courts and making clear and public threats of subverting elections. Why do people have to wait until that actually happens to plan ahead of time?

Americans are still in a catatonic state of "that could never happen here where I live", despite things that could never happen in America continuing to happen every day. The answer is the same as my original post: communications and media are controlled where they matter now.

What would be asked for, exactly?

Ha! The "general strike".

The general strike is a sad, obvious myth solely to delude us tax-cattle that we will have power, one day, for a day. Something something workers something bosses something something struggle. Bullshit for peasant workers.

"general strike" needs to be thrown in the same box as "communism" and "democracy" and "representation".

Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.

Laura Poitras' documentary Citizenfour is an excellent introduction to the amazing work that Glenn does and has done, and how he's been personally targeted - although I don't recall whether the doc includes Glenn's partner being harassed by US authorities.

He's great for privacy, surveillance and a centrist liberal critique of both parties, but his obsession with Israel is annoying and distracting from the other non- partisan contrarian attitude that I like him for.

Heh, “obsession”, as if Israel has been doing absolutely nothing of interest for the past two years. Not to mention its blatant involvement in the domestic US political scene via AIPAC and friends.

He became well known for exposing surveillance but that instinct to portray himself as exposing government hypocrisy lead him to parrot Russian intelligence/Trump campaign attacks on Clinton and Biden long after he should have realized that the right posed a much greater threat to civil liberties and were feeding him information in service of their own campaigns, not transparency. It’s really undercut his earlier work.

Examining Glenn's work through an ideological lens leads to this kind of rhetoric. It's why he's so good at what he does. He's crossed ideological boundaries constantly in pursuit of the truth of a matter, and in defense of the public.

"pursuit of the truth" is an ideology. What are you trying to say here?

Glenn is, essentially, hypocritcal because he ignores things that go against his predetermined narrative.

Does he post true things sometimes? Sure, but is it really worth filtering through the rest?

I think what they are saying is a common sentiment among people who don't belong in any of the major political camps. It's a common experience to take heat from all sides because, surprisingly, neither "side" in politics is perfect nor particularly virtuous.

But we're not criticizng him for not registering for the democratic national convention or the republican one or whatever you think "belonging to a political camp" even means (what does it mean, exactly?)

He's being crticized for repeating lies and refusing to post truths.

His ideology is “America bad”, which leads to some alignment with foreign influence and arguably leads to him spreading propaganda

If only his ideology was "Republican America bad, Democrat America good", then he would not be aligned with foreign influence and wouldn't be spreading propaganda.

^ This ... and note, it is sarcasm.

Uh, that’s how he likes to style himself but that’s more of an ideological stance than you’re complaining about. A true focus on truth and defense of the public would have included questions like “are the Russians totally unbiased in feeding me this information?” or “am I serving the public by refusing to admit I made a mistake and repeated untrue claims which were highly beneficial to the political party who amplified my claims?”

To anyone on Twitter in like 2016-2019, this is a rather funny sentiment to have about him. I can remember my respect for him dissolve day by day. I didn't even remember until now if he was pro- or anti- Trump, probably neither still. But I simply remember that he slowly turned into the worst caricature of a smug Twitter media guy. Just turned into "hot take" haver and seemed to lose his own plot.

If you know you know I guess, but even then, broken clocks and all that. There was a point where he was such a cool guy to me, and I grew up a little in a good way seeing him turn into whatever he did.

It may just be Twitter's fault at the end of the day too!

It's probably Twitter. There are people I know IRL who are completely different on that platform, it's unbelievably toxic.

That’s my impression, too. Not hardcore MAGA so much as falling into the addiction of thinking he was smarter than “the establishment” about everything and taking contrarian stances to show they couldn’t boss him around. Twitter’s algorithm was like a drug for those guys because they’d give a radioactive hot take and get a bazillion notification pings.

This was my experience too. So many 'voices' just turned into grifters and self promoters. Garland, Mensch, etc.

[dead]

This is the same "useful idiot" trap that Julian Assange fell into. It's a challenge to incorporate the lessons of people like these without falling into the opposite trap, that of cynical apathy.

Is he taking a break from being a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda?

Can you make an example?

He has frequently laundered the notion that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the West's fault for expanding NATO. He also told Tucker Carlson he believed the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hosted American bioweapons labs. He has spent his entire career being a grandstanding contrarian who is occasionally correct.

Those guys find it useful when there's some kind of legitimate gripe to use. He needn't take a break, it's very much Western companies doing this. He doesn't even need to put in an ad for whatever doubtless sanctioned Russian services would like to replace these Western tech giants.

Sometimes actual problems can be readily exploited for sinister purposes. Doesn't mean the original problems aren't also sinister, just be damn careful where you intend to flee to :)

Right if you’re not a mouthpiece for the US State Depts horrific foreign policy you’re a Russian propagandist. My family fought in every war going back to the Revolution and I think our policy on Russia is complete shit. AFAIC we started the whole conflict.

> AFAIC we started the whole conflict.

Is this talking point still being paid for? I haven't seen it in a while, but I guess I don't keep track that closely.

What are the other russian provided talking points these days?

I would direct you to George Kennan[1] and his 1997 NYT article where he said, among other things:

"... expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking ..."

Is it your position that he was paid for, or in some way disingenuously held, this view ?

I don't have strong opinions on this topic but I note with interest that there seem to be contrary viewpoints that aren't not puppets/trolls.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

Kennan was arguing a Russian position, which makes sense given his long focus on Russia, and time there. What he wrote doesn’t actually support the idea that the West “started” anything.

Strengthening a defensive alliance is not “starting” something, that’s just the usual narcissistic gaslighting used by people with nefarious intent.

It doesn't matter if he was paid and I have no indication Greenwald ever was either. Only that this line of thinking aligns with Russian propaganda and is also complete nonsense.

Saying we should constrain the sovereignty of Eastern European nations to not hurt the feelings of their most dangerous rival is just bullshit. Russia's goals are simply neoimperialist and they obviously had no intention of waiting for Ukraine to join NATO or the EU before invading. They certainly had no similar provocation to snatch territory from Moldova and Georgia.

I am not saying these things. I have no strong opinion on this topic.

I am simply pushing back on the notion that anyone who disagrees with my parent was paid to do so.

I don't believe that Kennans position (in 1997) was disingenuous or dishonest.

Did I miss the news of ukraine joining nato or something?

More to the point, this is some hardcore "she was asking for it" victim blaming.

You know who started the war? THE COUNTRY THAT LAUNCHED THE INVASION.

You missed the news where our own state dept officials are on leaked calls hand selecting the anti Russian government of Ukraine weeks before their coup or the news where Merkel admitted we negotiated treaties with Russia over Ukraine in bad faith.

The war started with our expansion of NATO, followed by couping Ukraines govt, multiple fake peace treaties, and finally Ukraine murdering thousands of culturally Russian civilians in Eastern Ukraine. I count a war as started when someone starts murdering people w the military not when someone walks over a border. Although your narrative doesn’t work then right?

Ah yes, the "culturally russian civilians" that... were mostly part of the ukraine army or the russian sponsored rebellion. Boy. How awful.

> I count a war as started when someone starts murdering people w the military

So saddam hussein started the second iraq-america war?

Don't answer that.

Also tell me more about your evidence of united states soldiers landing in ukraine and killing/capturing the existing government to replace it, that sounds like a really big scandal we should be talking about!

(Also, gee, I wonder why a government would be "anti-russian" during the past 50 years. Hmmm, nope, nothing comes to mind. Must be racism or something)

He literally reposts russian lies.

His focus has also involved generous amounts of simping for Russian fascists, excusing their colonialist wars, etc. Not an anti-imperialist, just anti-US.

link?

https://voxukraine.org/en/messing-with-the-truth-disinformat...

Both the quotes of this, otherwise empty, article are reasonable and do not make him a Kremlin mouthpiece.

Stating that the west, and the US, has actively used Ukraine as a puppet in the geopolitical game is a fact.

It's also a fact that US troops and NATO forces have increasingly surrounded Russia since the 90s.

Mind you, I think that the NATO argument is bogus.

What happened in Ukraine was not a matter of Russian security, but Putin's own ambitions and paranoia against democratic waves in Belarus and Kazakhstan.

"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...

Rumble is indeed a free for all, with lots of angry kooks. But it’s also a place where reasonable dissenting voices have found a way to get their ideas heard. It’s a mixed bag.

As it should be. If it's not a mixed bag, you're in an echo-chamber. That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person.

HN is one massive echo chamber. Sorry to be the one to point it out to you. Why do you think HN has such a bad reputation for being smug corporate bootlickers?

The elitism and groupthink here is fucking wild.

Every places have echos of echo-chambers, but some are worse than others. At least on HN you can choose to see stuff heavily downvoted, in many other places moderators just remove posts as they see fit. You'll get more different point of views here than on many other places, but I'd be happy to hear what places you consider less of an echo-chamber than HN.

Wait a second, I instantly recognized your post as self-deprecating humor and not glazing and had a light chuckle. You mean that:

>That's why I hang out here on HN with my fellow crazies who can separate ideas, thoughts and knowledge from the person.

Is unironically what you think and posted in earnest? Thats WILD.

> Is unironically what you think and posted in earnest? Thats WILD.

That's exactly the point! We're both thinking very different, yet neither of us have explicitly (only implicitly) tried to insult each other. What place on the internet does that better than HN?

Purely in terms of "more different point of views"? Pretty much anywhere. Facebook, Steam forums, Nextdoor, twitter, even Reddit if you delve into various subreddits.

Well… let’s be fair… outside of tech specific posts, this place is Reddit/r/poltics maybe the lite version. This is an echo chamber on at least a dozen major topics.

> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?

It's always fun reminding people that the internet was invented by the US military

So was the programming compiler, not sure what that's supposed to tell us. Programming languages are violent?

And Tor was a US Navy project. What’s your point?

[flagged]

Yes.

Suffering from success.

They couldn't possibly make all that money from just Nazis: I'm given to understand they're doing really well these days. I had the impression that Substack became heavily co-opted by anti-Nazis and have done nothing to defend the feelings of the Nazis they're also happy to host. Not sure what the balance is currently, but again: they couldn't possibly be making all that money from just Nazis, and I think that's instructive.

You mean Snowden had to force his material on him, he reluctantly published it, got hooked on the fame and promptly jumped the shark

I personally miss Snowden's revelations so much. Such a brave soul! He should keep doing what he does best and never stop. It's sad that we have not heard any new revelations from him for a long time, though. Any ideas why he stopped?

I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or something, but Snowden essentially lives in exile from his home as the US government would like to punish him for exposing the secrets of the US government spying on everyone. Not sure what new revelations could come from him.

[flagged]

Snowden is currently more or less trapped in Russia, and therefore unable to expose overreach of authoritarian governments without immediately fearing for his life.

The US has lots of issues but at least it doesn't toss you out a window when you cross Fearless Leader. Maybe you get ICE'd, but Russia's kill rate of people Putin doesn't like is 1000x Trump.

> at least [the US] doesn't toss you out a window when you cross Fearless Leader.

Well, not yet anyway:

> Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

So, what's currently going on to fight back against all this? Here's what I found. Does signing a petition actually doing something? It's hard to tell but if you are inclined, at least take a look at some current efforts.

-Active Petitions and Campaigns to Limit Surveillance: End the Surveillance State (Action Network): Petitions call on Congress to permanently end the PATRIOT Act, stop warrantless surveillance, and oppose the expansion of surveillance technology.

-Ban Facial Recognition (Amnesty International & ACLU): Amnesty International is running the "Ban the Scan" campaign, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) targets the use of face surveillance, arguing it poses risks to civil liberties and disproportionately impacts marginalized communities.

-Stop Surveillance Data Brokers (Mozilla): Mozilla Foundation is targeting major websites to stop sharing data with surveillance technology firms that track user movement and interactions.

-Protect User Data from Subpoenas (EFF): The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pressuring tech companies to resist lawless DHS subpoenas for user data.

-Oppose Localized Surveillance (ACLU/Action Network): Local petitions aim to limit technologies like Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that create massive databases of personal movement.

-Federal Legislative Reform: Advocates are pushing for the "The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act," which aims to restrict intelligence agencies from purchasing data from brokers without a warrant.

It's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in 1850, operated largely outside the constraints of the Fourth Amendment for much of the 19th century because they were private agents, not government actors. Congress passed the Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893, which prohibited the federal government from hiring Pinkerton employees or similar organizations.

As an attorney I’d like to understand why you think there is a “clear” Constitutional violation going on here. What activity, specifically, are you referring to, and what precedent supports your claim?

You're an attorney and you're asking me why the government spying on everyone is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment?

Yes. You’re the one making the assertion (not just that there is a violation but also that the activity is that “the government spying on everyone”); the burden of proof is thus on you.

Attorneys challenge each other as a matter of course in every case before a court. This is how the adversarial system works.

Perhaps what you meant to say is that “I don’t like the activity that is happening here,” or “I think some of this might be unconstitutional.” When someone makes a naked blanket assertion about the law, it’s usually a sign that that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

> When someone makes a naked blanket assertion about the law, it’s usually a sign that that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

You seem to be playing dumb here. You realize us "normal people" believe the Bill of Rights is to protect us from the government, and the 4th means the government doesn't get to spy on everybody indiscriminately?

And yes, they are spying on everybody. They have access to things like cellphone metadata, which to a normal human being is a very clear violation of privacy.

It's also my firm belief that our legal system has been undermining these basic concepts for decades now. It benefits the federal government to make this all very vague, as if modern technology suddenly means you have no expectation of privacy anymore. They've also mixed in some of that wonderfully authoritarian "for purposes of national security".

There's actual lawyers saying these same things, if you'd like someone to properly debate with.

I'm not going to argue over principles, as that's not law, and I largely agree with them.

However:

> They have access to things like cellphone metadata, which to a normal human being is a very clear violation of privacy.

In the U.S., when you study 4th Amendment law in Criminal Procedure, you learn there is a "third party doctrine" that says that if you voluntarily provide a third party with information--even information you consider private-it's the third party's property and you can no longer object to it being sought by the Government. There's a good overview of this on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

The Supreme Court declined to extend the third-party doctrine to tracking one's location via cell-phone metadata in Carpenter v. U.S., 585 U.S. 296 (2018), so it's not absolute.

> I'm not going to argue over principles, as that's not law,

> The Supreme Court declined to extend the third-party doctrine to tracking one's location via cell-phone metadata in Carpenter v. U.S., 585 U.S. 296 (2018), so it's not absolute.

In other words, principles are law -- in the US, whatever the principles of 9 judges at a given time, because they are the final arbiter of what anything written down by Congress means. "Third-party doctrine" is not law as written by Congress, it is something the Supreme Court made up out of thin air according to their principles. And these principles are not binding; a later panel of judges is free to throw out the rulings of older judges if they decide their principles differ, as famously happened to Roe v. Wade among other cases.

Yep, that's the exact "loophole" I mentioned in my original comment!

The government can now partner with private businesses to effectively bypass the Fourth Amendment.

Yes, that is true. But that is not a violation, which was in the first clause of your original claim. It's an end-run.

If it were a violation, Courts could enjoin it. But since it's not a violation, there's nothing to enjoin.

You had me up until now. Turns out your whole point is arguing semantics? You're arguing just to argue and not providing anything of substance on this point. As another person said, this isn't a court.

If X is against law Y the recourse is to seek judgment from courts. If it’s not against the law the recourse is to seek new law from Congress.

The difference is significant for that reason alone. The other reason is that if you’re looking to recruit supporters you will get more of them if you get your ducks in a row. Disorganized ducks impair credibility and create friction.

Not making the distinction between the two is only helpful for the purpose of blowing off steam and the only outcome is outrage fatigue.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47026226

Unfortunately, all lawyers and courts do is argue semantics.

Which is why it's a misnomer to call the legal system a justice system in criminal cases. Lol.

If it's not clear already, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not using strict legal definitions.

Congratulations. By needling and carving at semantics, you win the argument! Two more Internet points for you!

It's almost like HN isn't a court and the OP was expressing their opinion that this should be illegal. . . Not relying on specific semantics for the current state of affairs?

it is times like these i am reminded of https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

That was actually my first thought. The focus on this part of the thread has left the actual meat of the article entirely and is focused instead on a post trying to weedle meaning where there is none.

You caught me, boys! I’d better go tell my boss I failed because these kids are too smart to be fooled.

To say that something is a belief or should be and to say that something is a fact are two different things. When you say the latter, you are putting yourself at a significantly greater risk of being incorrect. You don’t have to be a lawyer to know this. And I’d expect someone with your background to know this better than most!

HN is a forum of written communications. Clarity and accuracy are essential skills for participating effectively in such places, and are the responsibility of the author.

This is an internet forum, not a court of law.

And therefore what, exactly? When you distill the two down to their essence, they’re similar in that they’re groups of people making written arguments against each other. (And, frequently, complaining about mistreatment.)

Are you trying to argue that people shouldn’t be taken at their word? Or that we shouldn’t challenge people who make unqualified legal assertions? I’m not sure what your point is.

People here are making arguments about what should be. Either as interpretations or created laws.

We all know that the actual interpretation is up to 5 republicans on the supreme court and whatever they feel on a given day will increase their side's power/ideology.

No one is going to be making arguments about that because there's no point, you can't logic someone out of a position that they didn't use logic to get to in the first place.

So again, when someone on a forum says "this is wrong and something should be done about it" replying that it might technically be legal at this moment in time is incredibly useless. It's completely missing the point.

> when someone on a forum says "this is wrong and something should be done about it"

If that had been what was said, we wouldn’t even be here.

Perhaps we can work on what is called "media literacy" where we understand text based on its context and authorship and other such clues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025768

You have the roles and responsibilities exactly backwards.

Well, my comments got more upvotes than yours did, and this is a democracy, so I guess I win?

You can't see others' upvotes (at least, for net positive scores), so there's no way to know.

> It's also my firm belief that our legal system has been undermining these basic concepts for decades now. It benefits the federal government to make this all very vague, as if modern technology suddenly means you have no expectation of privacy anymore. They've also mixed in some of that wonderfully authoritarian "for purposes of national security".

Very well said. While the legal system's details are important for a few avenues of effecting change, they're often used to bog down conversions into "what is" territory rather than staying focused on "what ought". And "what ought", based on the ideals laid out in our country's founding documents, is very different from "what is" in the modern day.

I'll bite. We live in a society where the 2nd amendment is a rorschach test for interpreting century old English. Yet, because of how people feel, particularly a couple of activist judges, it has been given the strongest possible interpretation to impart the strongest possible freedoms to the citizenry.

Why have the other amendments not enjoyed this same individual freedom absolutism? Why are we cherry picking which amendments get expanded modern powers "in the spirit of the text"? It's because of how the judges feel.

So before you dismiss someone's opinion because how it might be, let's all be honest with ourselves and realize constitutional law of this nature does not depend on precedent and is largely do to the whims of the supreme court.

I'm not dismissing the opinion; I'm asking for it to be supported by law and facts. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47024599

I also disagree with your characterization of 2nd Amendment jurisprudence, but I'm not going into that rathole!

Not overtly but the subtext is there, but you also miss my point: there is no argument to give. There is no good faith argument with this supreme court. Unless you're the kind of person who is going to defend overturning the precedent of Roe v Wade.

This sort of nihilist/defeatist attitude serves no one.

People have good-faith disputes over whether their activities should be permitted or forbidden, and--like it or not--it's up to our judicial system to interpret the law, especially when it's unclear (which is rather often). The judges hear the arguments and, having heard both sides out fully, has to decide who has the strongest case. It's not an easy job, but in a vague, messy, and imperfect world, someone has to do it.

There are ways to reduce ambiguity, like passing new laws, clarifying existing ones, and even amending the Constitution. That requires we vote and press our representatives to do these things. This has the benefit of making it clear what we want, as opposed to leaving it to the unelected judiciary to try to figure it out and anger half the country who thought they decided wrong.

And the entire organizational structure we base ourselves around also collapses routinely throughout history. The supreme court has demonstrated that they are corrupt, the only solutions at this point are radical.

As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government:

1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.

https://archive.ph/b9ON8

2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants

A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”

3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents

Egregious, yes. Concerning, yes. Illegal, I’m not so sure. As a fellow attorney, why do you think they are illegal?[1] Maybe they should be, but our jurisprudence since the 1960s (the “put down the dirty hippies” age) seems to treat the the 4th Amendment not as an expansive right to be left alone but as a narrow one that treats only one’s home as a privacy zone.

I found crim pro to be a very distressing and depressing course.

Also, that last link to The NY Times article is broken.

[1] To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity. They know; and they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible when motivated by their bosses.

Just off the top of my head all three examples I provided violate the First Amendment. It is Constitutionally prohibited for the government to track and gather information on citizens because they exercised their First Amendment rights.

Wait, we just jumped from the Fourth to the First Amendment. Not only did we change subjects, but it's difficult for me to understand how your examples implicate the First Amendment.

My post neither stated or implied the constitutional provisions. The easiest and clearest provision that has been violated is the Government gathering direct data to classify citizens based upon their expression of their First Amendment rights. That is very apparent in every single example in my post.

I'm not going to engaged with someone on HN debating legal principles regarding something so straight forward. And, as I said, this is off the top of my head. It's basic constitutional law which I haven't found necessary to research. After that sentence I googled McCarthyism and found that SCOTUS ruled in multiple cases that Senator McCarthy and his supporters violated the First Amendment rights of the citizens they accused of communism. I haven't read the opinions, but I am confident they ( and many others ) support the very basic principles I speak of.

Respectfully, this is all making me very strongly doubt your bona fides. There are many clues in the above comment that suggest you aren't who you claim to be.

Nice.

The government cannot collect and put the names of peaceful anti-government protestors into a government database; or show up at their homes when they violated no law; or the government issuing a subpoena to google for personal data about a man who wrote a one sentence letter to a DOJ prosecutor asking for leniency for the defendant in a case he read about.

These are all actions taken by the government in response to citizens expressing viewpoints the government did not like. You will never find more classic First Amendment fact patterns.

Then you haven't really studied 1A law in a long time, if you ever did. These fact patterns have not been well tested in court. They look similar to some cases, but are quite distinguishable, too. They might be 1A violations because of the chilling effect they could have on speech, but I'm not going out on a limb to say with certainty that they are; and I don't know any competent attorney who would.

> The government cannot ... show up at [people's] homes when they violated no law

This happens all the time. It depends on the purpose. Is it purely to harass someone, or is it to perform an investigation or for some other legitimate purpose? It's not prima facie unlawful.

You might find this poster to be instructive. It is very difficult under current law to prevail in a harassment case. https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Infographic_First-...

>>To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity.

I neither make nor imply any such suggestion.

>>they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible

This administration has already overtly failed to comply with valid Federal Court Orders.

My fault: the link I posted was cut off... full link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents...

Seems to me like someone's security camera footage, even if held by a 3rd party, would pretty clearly fall under "papers and effects" same as my crap sitting in a rented storage unit does.

It's only because we've had a century of legal contrivance that it doesn't IMO.

If corporations and government are acting together, this is fascism (according to Mussolini). It seems that is already the case. It's just we call it 'democracy'. Perhaps 'crypto-fascism' is the right term.

"Inverted totalitarianism" is the term you're looking for, although with Trumpism we're flipping to just straightforward totalitarianism. "Crypto-fascism" is applicable to Surveillance Valley's fake strain of "libertarianism", which is more accurately described as corporate authoritarianism.

[dead]

It’s pretty amazing when you get the worst of both worlds—total surveillance, yet still rampant crime.

That's the only way it can be in a system with thousands of crimes on the books.

People commit minor offenses, and often felonies without knowing it, on a regular basis. If surveillance was consistently used to actually enforce the laws, people would a) notice the surveillance[0] and then actually object to it and b) start objecting to all the ridiculous and poorly drafted laws they didn't even know existed.

But they don't want the majority of people objecting to things. They want a system that provides a thousand pretexts to punish anyone who does something they don't like, even something they're supposed to have a right to do, by charging them with any of the laws that everybody violates all the time and having the surveillance apparatus in place so they can do it to anyone as long as it's not done to everyone. That doesn't work if the laws are enforced consistently and the majority thereby starts insisting that they be reasonable.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1zhe85spsw

I wonder if this is a technique used by certain leaders of authoritarian regimes to take out people in power they they deem threats. Everyone in the party routinely breaks laws, knowingly or otherwise. The person in charge can decide they don't like someone and start an investigation, knowing they'll eventually find something illegal. Then they can delegitimize and remove them under the guise of "corruption".

Absolutely. It's often more calculated than that though. The only way (by design) to succeed in the regime is through corruption - you're giving the leader the rope to hang you with if you ever fall out of favor.

Very much so: “everyone does it” means that the leader can destroy anyone who doesn’t toe the line while seeming to be following a reasonable law.

And only a few steps further and the leader rarely needs to employ the service of obedient judges, but opponents "just" fall out of windows.

Exactly. See also underposted speed limits, for example. It's not about being able to stop everybody, it's about being able to stop anybody.

On the other hand, those thousands of crimes on the books exist because American society operates under a norm of "if its not explicitly illegal then its fine for people to do it". See for example, the rhetoric around maximizing shareholder value.

If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.

IMHO, that's one of the core failures of modern Libertarian/Objectivist influenced thought.

> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.

Except that that isn't the only way to protect yourself from selfish people and the assumption that it is is the source of a significant proportion of the dumb laws.

There is a narrow class of things that have to be prohibited by law because there is otherwise no way to prevent selfish people from doing them, like dumping industrial waste into the rivers. What these look like is causing harm to someone you're not otherwise transacting with so that they can't prevent the harm by refusing to do business with you. And then you need functional antitrust laws to ensure competitive markets.

The majority of dumb laws are laws trying to work around the fact that we don't have functional antitrust laws, or indeed have the opposite and have laws propping up incumbents and limiting competition, and therefore have many concentrated markets where companies can screw customers and workers because they have inadequate alternatives. Trying to patch that with prohibitions never works because in a concentrated market there are an unlimited number of ways the incumbents can screw you and you can't explicitly prohibit every one of them; the only thing that works is to reintroduce real competition.

Oh sure, if we can somehow get functional anti-trust, campaign finance reform, labor protections, and progressive taxation, then we probably wouldn't need nearly as many of these protective laws.

However, I don't see that happening anytime soon so the numerous laws are the best option we have.

I will add this: the number of ways in which humans can harm one another is immeasurable, and every law comes with an associated cost. At the bare minimum the cost is enforcement plus the harm imposed by occasional false accusations and convictions. But bad laws can also dampen legitimate economic activity, making social problems worse.

As a society plunges into dysfunction due to economic stress, the number of people harming one another increases. If the society responds using more laws, and fails to correct the source of the dysfunction, it will eventually collapse under the weight of those laws as enforcement becomes uneven and politically driven. (This is the failure mode of legalist and bureaucratic states.) Alternatively, if the society responds with a more arbitrary case-by-case system of punishment, it will collapse into mob rule or dictatorship, so lack of structured law isn’t a solution either.

The only real solution is to fix the root problems facing the society. Antitrust helps with this because it can “unstick” parasitic incumbents who are preventing the market from dynamically responding to real economic conditions.

> At the bare minimum the cost is enforcement plus the harm imposed by occasional false accusations and convictions.

Don't forget compliance costs. Those are some of the largest costs and they're largely hidden because they don't go into the government budget. You pass a law to prevent a million dollars in total harm and then a hundred thousand companies each spend $100 to comply with it, what did you get and what did you pay?

Compliance costs also have a specific type of cost because of their asymmetry. It's like adding a fixed amount of weight to a boat. If you add 1000 pounds of regulatory costs to a 200,000 ton container ship, it doesn't even notice. If you add the same amount of weight to a kayak, it sinks. But if you keep adding costs until you sink all the small boats, and then sink all the medium boats, you're not just failing to solve all the problems caused by market consolidation, you're actively making them worse.

> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal

It's not. You're asking for contract law.

How do you forsee contract law helping? I can't very well sign a contract with every person that I meet. That's to say nothing of situations where they simply refuse to agree to reasonable terms.

And the people in power not facing the consequences of their crimes even if they come to broad light. In fact the people in charge of the surveillance is the same that hide those crimes, or convince population that there is nothing to see there.

The rampant crime is largely made up.

Compared to other major western countries, the US has a serious problem with violent crime in particular.

If you remove like 250sq mi of land from that stat you can cut the violent crime stat by 90%.

There are some neighborhoods with more murders in a month than some whole states see in a couple years.

Can't you do that for any epsilon? (i.e. for every e > 0 there exists a area of the United States such that 90% of the crime is in an area < e)

You can make it zero too if going by this argument. Count up the individual points at which crimes were committed. The area adds up to zero since the number of crimes is finite.

Not popular.

We know exactly where the majority of crime is in the US, you are correct, down to the neighborhood.

Now… let’s say you were to call the national guard in to safeguard those areas, how do you think that would go over by those cities governors and reaction media? I guess the answer depends on the year.

This comment really confirms the "everyone is twelve years old now" theory.

"If there's crime, let's send in the army!" Of course you'd suggest that, you're twelve.

I don’t remember suggesting that. But, go on with your strawman, you are doing great.

"Now… let’s say you were to call the national guard in to safeguard those areas"

Ah yes. Good point.

Someone uses a scenario as reductio ad absurdum, you can yell “THEYRE ONLY 12” and claim it was an endorsed suggestion.

I mean it, you’re doing great. Keep digging.

Tim Walz and Jacob Frey are both on record saying they'd love to have federal help with reducing violent crime.

That is not Donald Trump's / Stephen Miller's objective in Minnesota, nor is it the outcome.

And science already told you the best improvement ever, in the world history with regards to violent crime, came from unleaded gasoline.

So, are you using your brain and demanding other systemic changes like free mental-health care and housing? or are you just being a tool and wanting more police violence?

And quality of life crimes. In my country, I can get a package left on my property and it is not stolen.

What are you basing this claim on?

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-06-1...

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/11/19/gallup-crime-p...

There's always the question of where exactly you're referring to and what kind of crime you're referring to. But I assumed that's what the parent post was referring to.

Really? Rampant white collar crime is made up?

Who’s making up the homicide and other violent crime statistics and for what purpose?

Which statistics are you looking at? Crime has been dropping since the 90s, with the exception of short term regressions.

https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-is-likely-down-an-enormo...

You do realize these are still crap compared to other countries right?

Small rich counties with vast majority homogeneous populations?

Agreed, the world overall is pretty safe these days.

If you’re being sarcastic, well, congratulate yourself for being better than shitholes I guess.

If you’re not, yes it is, unfortunately same can’t be said about the U.S., where my not very large social circle have experienced robbery at gun point at a gas station, street mugging, home break-in with everything stolen, smashed car window, all within the past decade. I was more fortunate but still got my bike stolen.

What statistics? These?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...

https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/year-to-year-comparison/crimeType

You should look at a comparison of American violent crime to other major western nations.

I think I would say the same, that you should actually look at that.

For example, Wikipedia has a page of studies and conclusions about violent crime rates in countries around the world, and the United States isn’t looking so good on that list, which compiles many studies and statistics. It’s far behind both Canada and Europe on violent crime.

How do the stats look compared to 5, 10, 20, 40 years ago?

The surveillance protects the regime, which mostly involves the US Federal government. Street crime, unless it’s organized by Cartels, is not a political threat.

You can see the counter example during the 40s-70s when the FBI targeted the mafia and local political corruption to take out the remaining organized crime strongholds .

Today organized crime doesn’t have much political influence. A sort of truce. So there’s no longer incentive for the feds to pursue street crime. Street crime yields no longer funnel into influence.

In fact, most political corruption today is coming from entitlements , which further bolsters political control.

...because the point of surveillance was never to solve crime.

Ring camera spyware, Amazons....excuse me Department of Defence/War..whatever the name, they have contracts with Amazon, which had the Super Bowl ad reveiling a new feature called "search party"...which it uses AI face/pattern recognition under the guise "search for missing dogs" to scan all its cameras videos for the "missing dog"... .Now this scans all Ring cameras, inside houses, outside houses, wherever theres a Ring camera....but its really to find people, dissenters, "criminals" in the eyes of the satanic surveillance system. The minds involved always play on the emotions of people to bring this about, such as a child who lost their dog or an "illegal" immigrant who commited a crime...they spread the propaganda, stir up emotions, then get the results...more gullible Americans accepting more surveillance and spying on their neighbors like the psychos did with fake "covid" hysteria. Part of their propaganda the so called missing lady Nancy Guthrie...how convenient, right around the time of Amazons search party, Google Nest has the psyop. With a sherrif saying the videos were not saved, she didnt have a Google Nest subscription..lol, see where thats going?

Related: Apparently even non-subscribing Nest cameras send video to Google, where it’s stored for an undetermined length of time.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/guthrie-doorbell-video-delayed...

This type of centralization breeds authoritarianism. See also the Iran protests. There’s too many single points of failure in technology. These systems become sources of oppression inevitably.

How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?

> How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?

by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens.

It has to start at the top - gov't has to mandate it.

Anything that relies on gov't can be undone by gov't. Or weaponized by gov't.

We need resilience that's hard to regulate or undo.

You already had resilience that was very hard to undo: three independent branches of government, indirect elections via the electoral college, separation of church and state, strong protections for freedom of speech, independent journalism. Yet you still managed to have it undone.

What does a non-government solution look like to you that can't be undone by the People?

The real problem isn't that it was undone by "the People", but rather that the surveillance industry effectively formed a fourth branch of government that grew and grew, then finally had enough sway over the People to convince them to undo it. To head off what we're currently staring down, we needed a US equivalent of the GDPR and enforcement against anti-competitive bundling 15+ years ago.

You (and the rest of the world) are not really swimming in a sea og alternatives.

If government regulation is the tool which can bring the amount of torque needed to loosen the screws on competition, then government is the tool you have to use.

Regulation is also being developed around the world to figure out how to address the challenges being thrown up. The DSA and GDPR are being studied and better policy will result.

Government has connotations in America, that end up derailing any conversation about it.

Usually at some point, it gets pointed out that Tech is booming in America, while it’s moribund in Europe, and do you really want to be Europe? This shifts the conversation to what kind of money you want to make.

> by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens

Compatibility isn't the problem. CCTV is pretty much an open standard. Folks are choosing Ring and Nest over open systems.

CCTV is a different market that requires a bunch of setup rather than merely being plug and play consumer electronics. The compatibility there is good for that market. The compatibility there in the context of Ring/Nest is irrelevant.

Compatibility in terms of the Ring/Nest ecosystem would be the separation out as separate product categories, and prohibition against anti-competitive bundling of these four aspects: hardware device, backend storage service, client app (mobile/weapp) that interacts with both, and any background "application"" functionality (image recognition, sharing with neighbors/police, etc).

If Google or Amazon released a product in each of these categories that's probably fine, as long as each were only built with documentation publicly available to every other developer. The point is if Amazon storage + Amazon social features were still wildly popular-by-default leading to this type of commercial, people could easily switch to alternatives that respected privacy.

Functioning antitrust is really all it takes. The last significant US antitrust action was on AT&T in 1982.

It's simple - if a camera sends pictures and images to a cloud (other prople's computers) you must expect that thay process and store the data (and it's often in their ToC anyway). It's sad that many non-technical people don't realize that.

> This language moves beyond platform-level age gates and toward infrastructure embedded directly into hardware or operating systems.

This is lurching toward what the US military calls the Common Access Card. This is a security token carried by most US military. It's used for everything from logins to building access to meals.[1]

Merely having a Common Access Card doesn't allow access to anything. The system reading it has to recognize the identity. So there are lots of databases of who's allowed to do what.

Is that where we're going?

[1] https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/

For anyone who doesn't know yet, there are a wide variety of ONVIF supporting cameras that you can setup with a local NVR running Frigate. You can block internet access to the cameras, so they can't create outbound connections, and only inbound connections to the video streams are allowed.

Tailscale has a free tier that's a good option to remotely access your network and cameras.

https://archive.ph/20260214004458/https://greenwald.substack...

It looks like an endless captcha.

Browser / DNS issue. Wireless fine here on WiFi and mobile.

> Flock Safety, a police surveillance tech company Interesting - few months ago this was private, illegally tracking people and cars company. I’m amazed how well US progresses!

There’s more posts that get to the front page complaining about Apple’s frosted glass than the surveillance state being built by every other tech company

Other? No other company makes you register with the company before you can install apps on your own phone. No other company makes you send your location to it if you want to access GPS on your own phone.

> while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm

Not the same, but ring is a common target for police warrants already

> "All of this is particularly remarkable, and particularly disconcerting, since we are barely more than a decade removed from the disclosures about mass domestic surveillance enabled by the courageous whistleblower Edward Snowden..."

With respect to Greenwald, I don't think it's remarkable at all.

I have learned, through experience, that sometimes when people want to do things they should not, or against which there is opposition, there is enormous power in simply doing it. If you ignore people enough, you can do anything.

Preventing this requires systems with accountability.

And as HN commenters frequently note, accountability for government, tech, or corporate leaders in general seems culturally missing in the US.

Despite Snowden, nothing here is remarkable. This has grown because it _can_ grow.

USA society has devolved into a game. The only object is to win. Nothing else matters.

I don't understand the issue with the nest cam video.

The data is only accessible to us for 3 hours but why would we expect them to shred the drives at the 3 hour mark so it's not accessible to them?

It is remarkable that it took an ad from the same company that makes the product to make (some) people come to the realization of the surveillance they are subjected to and uninstall their cameras. The public is truly clueless despite all the messaging from the EFF and other organizations.

It is also interesting that US seems to be getting the surveillance state without any of the benefits such as low crime rate. In my view it is a valid choice for the country of having more crime Vs more surveillance, but in the US such a choice is not offered.

It’s baffling and makes you wonder about the strategic mission of the surveillance state. Surely they must be achieving some objectives – since they are heavily resourced, and capable. If not crime prevention, it must be political influence.

There’s a ton of evidence of foreign state intervention since WW2. And there are hints at domestic intervention since the 1960s . The likely focus is domestic political intervention, since it takes time for whistleblowers and stories to see the light of day.

It's always been curious to me how Americans have pointed at places like China, mocking their government surveillance state, while also just allowing U.S. (and foreign) corporations to surveil everything under the sun, including our schools. Those corporations then sell or give information to both other corporations and the government.

These corporations have nothing in mind but profits and would sell your sould if it meant a tick up in their bottom line.

Great writeup. Glenn mentions that he stopped using Gemini. While I still use Gemini for technical research and occasional coding/design work via Antigravity, for all day to day queries and prompts I have switched to using Proton's Lumo that is really quite good: use of a strong Mistral model and web search is 100% private, and while chat history is preserved for a while it is stored and processed like Proton Mail.

More good reading that I found helpful are the books: Privacy is Power and Surveillance Capitalism.

I wasn’t aware of the 100% private web search, I’ll have to look. How well does this work?

Try it for free. I pay $10 a month for unlimited use.

[dead]

Big Brother… It's a cliché, but I think it's a fitting expression. Is it true that individuals themselves are the only means of self-defense?

They must love dogs really deeply to go to such length to rediscover them.

if you really want users to see an outward sign of your respect for privacy, start building cameras with lens covers, and microphones with mute switches, and a "flag" of some sort that clearly demonstrates the position of the privacy hardware.

As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government:

1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.

https://archive.ph/b9ON8

2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants

A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”

3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents

As a side and probably fully off topic note (although...), I asked ChatGPT an innocent code question while not giving my code. It basically answered with the variable name I had written in my own code (da.ma.st) (a variable inside an object inside an object : data.main.stance). I still have to understand how and why it happened (I am not using anything else than ChatGPT in my browser and I absolutely never provided this chunk of code to the AI).

I further noticed that while I had a chatgpt window open, my dev site window was becoming laggy after many refreshes as if something was deliberately trying to scan it every time it got refreshed. I suspect the AI to scan other open tabs and simply reading through everything it can encounter. It is actually the only explanation up to date (but I unfortunately don't have much time to try to validate this speculative opinion: I will surely give other shots in order to narrow my suspicions).

I tend to think that this kind of data extraction frenziness may be a big problem in the future. Read it as : "let's collect everything, just tell everyone we are not collecting it, and then we'll see what we can get from it." Imagine such data being used in the future versions of governments if things get wild.

These comments: Citations needed

Much ado about nothing, this link has been going around the Fediverse: https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/

it took a while, but Bentham finally got his Panopticon.

I don't want to say I give up, but after seeing how powerful modern facial recognition softwares are, mostly by Israelis, and what I mean is: if you're walking randomly in an Uzbekistan's mall with a moustache and sunglasses this information is instantly known by lots of actors with 99.9%+ accuracy, I kinda give up.

1984 is here and we are allowing it bit by bit by normalizing at every small step stuff that would've been madness ten years before.

I mean, this does not come as a surprise. If you look at the US corporations, not just Amazon or Google but Facebook, or more recently Discord - and our all-time favourite chummer, Microsoft - this all screams of strategic mass sniffing and snooping after people. There is 0% chance that this is done solely on a per-corporate level. This is systematic sniffing.

I think the long term solution will have to be to become as independent as possible on these sniffer-corporations and to get real people into office rather than those lobbyists who work for those corporations. This will require a complete re-design of the whole system though. I am not sure we'll see that in our lifetime.

This probably even has ramifications beyond US residents.

I'm confident Google etc will be compelled (if they haven't already been) to share their dossiers with the US and allies so that there is a file on each individual's psychology, weaknesses, and a how-to manual for gaslighting that person with the goal to silence them or coerce them into acting a certain way.

And by then, the Stasi would look like cute amateurs in comparison.

Those raising these concerns have been dismissed as paranoid for decades, even post-Snowden. And yet, surprising no-one, here we are.

I've noticed a big split in viewpoint between people who don't live in the US.

Its like those who live in the states have a incentive to act like everything going on is ok, while those outside are increasingly having statements like yours. "How do you not see this power 13 years past Snowden"

I've not given up trying to point out how dangerous the US govs powers are in the hands of an ever less capable and more fascist government, ie posting here on HN, but the odds to convince people are low.

I spend significant time in the US, Canada, and Europe, and nobody I talk to seems to think that what's going on is OK.

Both Canada and Europe are undertaking major projects to reduce their interdependence with America, and public sentiment on America has changed rapidly since the current administration assumed power. Europeans have always distrusted American tech, and Canadians have started trying to break away as well.

The Americans I spend time with are also unhappy with the direction things are going, but most of them still use Google Chrome and buy everything on Amazon. They seem to be less willing to accept a little bit of inconvience to take a moral stand.

Opinion poll Dec 2025 Canada-wide: "How do you think the Canadian government should approach the following countries?"

https://thehub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/c9Enf-how-do-yo...

Some is just shock and overreaction I think. But it is an enormous shift.

I almost forgot that Canada and India are on such poor terms. I wonder what the numbers would be if India hadn't assassinated Nijjar on Canadian soil in 2023.

Regular where I live:

I don't use google maps, I use Waze I don't use messenger, I use whatsapp I don't upload my pictures, contacts (sync is enabled by default)

Anyways. What are the options? It will be another free cloud hosted service.

Isn't Waze owned, operated and share infrastructure with Google Maps?

It has hard sarcasm my part: Waze is google, whatsapp is meta, and phones are uploading all your data by default

Just give them fake information when signing up. They want your money more than accurate information.

you think they can't de-anonymize you extremely easily from all the other data they have?

I know they can. They can also breach all that under a false identity so I have nothing to worry about.

Anyone have an archive link?

why do you need it? The article is available in full via the link.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023400>

https://web.archive.org/web/20260215130824/https://greenwald...

Maybe if congress gave a rats ass about consumer protections and privacy we wouldn't be in this spot. But money talks and shit walks.

Land of the free.

Home of the Brave.

Dropped Alexa years ago. They sure can do the same thing, and listen into every house "to find a missing child". Or some other BS. Or let all Alexas say "This is a national emergency. Do not leave the house. This is ..."

East Germany spent millions to spy on people.

Now people spend millions so the state can spy on them.

Madness.

It's pretty disappointing that there are engineers enabling all of this.

Agreed. "Be the change you want to see". In this case, both as a user and a professional.

The backlash against the use of Ring cameras began with their tone-deaf superbowl ad. Amazon assumed that customers would buy their surveillance technology. The whole thing reminds me that we have returned to the Gilded Age, when the rich people who run the world strutted about arrogantly, without fear of shame or public disapproval. It’s as if Bezos is telling us “you have no choice. You will buy our product whether you like it or not.”

Will another Progressive Era bring about more equality, or are the billionaires too entrenched?

The bigger problem is that our digital gilded age is founded in an entrenched culture organizing and framing support for it. It’s one that has been carefully created with several tracks of effort going back decades (some even a century).

Counterculture is disorganized and shallow, and funding is not as abundant where understanding of this problem exists.

Greenwald demonstrating his technological illiteracy once again. This time, he doesn't say that PRISM is mass surveillance, though he writes about it right next to where he talks about mass surveillance and has never admitted his mistake.

Now he's complaining that Nest had video footage without a subscription as if the user wouldn't know this. Nest still processes video for motion detection alerts for people without a subscription. It just deletes the video after processing unless you have a subscription to pay for the storage. Even though I am not a user myself, I'd be surprised if this isn't clear to the people who use the product. I am not at all surprised that Greenwald doesn't understand it though.

"...While the “discovery” of footage from this home camera by Google engineers is obviously of great value to the Guthrie family and law enforcement agents searching for Guthrie, it raises obvious yet serious questions about why Google, contrary to common understanding, was storing the video footage of unsubscribed users. A former NSA data researcher and CEO of a cybersecurity firm, Patrick Johnson, told CBS: “There's kind of this old saying that data is never deleted, it's just renamed.”..."

Its another copy of their MAC data storage scenario due to a "rogue engineer"

I don't respect Glenn Greenwald after he decided to become a Kremlin spokesperson.

I can say from direct experience Apple is not any better and at times much worse as they actively lie about their security measures by obscuring loopholes left open for direct government access as well as they cooperate with little to no push back.

Do you have any details about those loopholes? It seems like a potentially big story.

iCloud loophole, push notification loophole, RCS loophole, business messaging loophole. These are just the semi public ones.

No one cares.

Those aren’t loopholes and are widely known? I mean, they have an entire E2EE iCloud feature giving customers a choice between security and convenience:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108756

RCS has never offered that security guarantee at the protocol level. Google has deployed a proprietary encryption layer on top but refuses to allow other clients access. This was rather famously part of the blue/green message divide which was in the news for years.

Similarly push notifications have had privacy recommendations for ages - that’s why apps like Signal give users the option to choose their level of risk exposure.

Im referring to the legal and cooperation loopholes Apple has put behind those.

Each one allows for access, at times warrant less, at any moment.

It’s bizarre that you think this is “Ok”. Insane you are defending it. Combined it makes a hard hard take that they are security oriented.

Beyond that Apple has cooperated with data turnover at the personal request of President Trump multiple times. So pull your head out of the sand.

Okay, can you express the “legal and cooperation loopholes Apple has put behind those” clearly enough for me to understand what you mean? Are you alleging that iCloud E2EE is compromised? Are you saying that Apple promised RCS would do something more than the carriers designed it to do? It’s hard to assess vague, unsourced claims.

There obviously will be no sources. I’m telling you as someone who worked directly On iMessage and Google messages.

Apple not only gives keys they often provide access with no legal requirement at all. They also DO NOT e2ee all sources they claim to depending on what regions the messages pass through to devices they end up at. There are also massive cooperation and caching going on of messaging and push notifications which access is provided to several governments. Aka as the Wyden leaks

The surveillance industry has gotten out of hand. It is also true that there is ample reason to ignore and avoid anything coming out of the OA's author, who has a strong history of Russian-aligned propaganda efforts. Please don't cite him or amplify him further. Propaganda and disinfo ops worldwide are just as big of a problem as accelerating, unchecked, abused surveillance.

Reminder: Glen Greenwald doesn’t think Jan 6 was an insurrection and now aligns with people like Tim Pool and Alex Jones.

Is he pro Jan 6 because he's anti-establishment or he's pro Trump? Seems like he's the former and doesn't know when to stop being anti-establishment and that puts him weird places.

Do people still believe Jan 6 was an insurrection? Didn't the police invite protesters in?

> Didn't the police invite protesters in?

They did not.

Jan 6 wasn't an insurrection. Nobody was armed except one guy with a pistol and the dude with a spear. It was a bunch of obese methbillies trashing the place.

Insurrections do not look like that.

- Jan 6, the day the votes are certified by Congress.

- The goal was interrupting the peaceful transfer of presidential power, a foundational element of U.S. constitutional governance.

- Force was used to disrupt lawful governmental authority.

- Part of a larger conspiracy to use alternate slates of electors to dispute the election and send it back to state legistatures (see Eastman memo and resulting lawsuits).

All these things are true except

- Force was used to disrupt lawful governmental authority.

In the end, it wasn't anything history books will recognize as an insurrection. Because it wasn't an insurrection. That word means something, and this wasn't it. Was it bad? A bad thing? Yes, it was a bad thing I'd say. Not an insurrection though. Whatever those people did, it wasn't going to change anything. The powers that be could have had every last one of them killed with a snap of their fingers. They didn't because that would have been an overreaction to a bunch of methbillies trashing the place.

At this point, it's fair to assume that if the US government wanted to surveil you to a nefarious end, they absolutely could, easily, using things you bought to make your life more convenient.

The keys then become:

1) Implementing policies discouraging them from doing so at the societal level

and

2) Implementing force behind those policies at the personal and societal level

DHS isn't getting paid right now because Kristi "Dog Shooter" Noem managed to screw up so badly that even Congressional Republicans under Trump don't want to own her agency's behavior and carved DHS out of the normal funding bill. There's still a chance for #1 to be achieved. #2 remains to be seen at the societal level, but you can start working on that yourself for the personal level.

Sadly ICE and CBP is still getting paid because it was already funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. [1]

So while some parts of DHS aren't funded, and it does give Democrats bargaining power, it could still end up in a situation like the October 2025 shutdown where they don't get meaningful change.

TSA employees won't get paid which could impact air travel. Probably not as bad as when FAA employees weren't getting paid but if it's bad enough the pressure for Democrats to cave again will be high.

[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/one-big-beautiful-bill-made-ice-sh...

I laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!

Same, exactly the same here.

But the other holes in the bucket doesn't mean you have to help. From a real opsec point of view a single tiny hole is the same as no wall at all. But from a day to day view less is less. It does at least reduce the spam.

And there is also, say you plug hole A and you can't do anything about hole B.

Some day something may develop that changes hole B (maybe a new law, maybe it's a service that you can stop using, maybe one org stops cooperating with another, whatever).

If hole A has already been wide open for years then closing hole B may not change much. But if hole A has been closed for years when the opportunity to close hole B comes along, then maybe closing hole B actually does something.

I choose to see it as something is better than nothing and it's worth it to apply pressure and be sand in the gears.

It's got to be better for everyone that there is at least some sand in the gears than if there were no sand in the gears.

I always pay in cash. I go out of my way to get cash and travel to more distant stores to spend it.

How are those two things the same?!

They're both a single long-lived identifier that identifies a single person and their habits?

Once again we see tech companies capitulating to the US government who is actually doing the things we accuse China is theoretically doing in the future.

I don't own a smart speaker. It's actually annoying because there are so few options for a music system now. I've previously owned a Sonos but honestly it's just not a polished product. Anyway, my issue with smart speakers is I don't want a cloud-connected always-on microphones in my house. Sorry but no. You simply never know when law enforcement will use such a thing via a warrant nobody can tell you about (ie FISA). It could be targeted to you, individually but there are far worse alternatives.

It could be a blanket warrant against, say, people posting negatively against ICE online. Or microphones couldd be used to identify such people based on what it hears. You just have no control.

And once again, Google handed over PII voluntarily to the government recently [1]. Companies don't need to comply with administrative subpoenas. It takes a court order signed by a judge to enforce.

All of this is just another reason why China was correct to keep US tech companies out, basically. But here's where it's going to get much worse for the US and those same companies: when the EU decides enough is enough and creates their own versins that are subject to EU jurisdiction.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/google-sent-personal-and-f...

I bought some tower speakers made in the early 2000s and they sound awesome. Huge heavy things, but it's not like I've ever had to move them since I bought them. I power them with an inexpensive NAD amplifier that supports streaming and bluetooth sources.

He’s not wrong but screw Glenn Greenwald. I assume his solution will be to back the current or next strongman, because strongman rule will save us?

It’s like the “don’t tread on me” militia crowd voting by like a 90% margin for a regime that is now enacting every single one of the things they’ve been afraid of for 50 years: masked cops, opaque detention centers, assaulting (and murdering) people for legally exercising second amendment rights, mass surveillance, social credit systems, and so on.

Or, I guess, like Lenin creating a totalitarian state to enslave the workers to liberate the workers? Or the French Revolution replacing the monarchy with the terror? Many examples in history I suppose.

I don’t see where you’re coming from. Greenwald is constantly pointing out abuses of power and hypocrisy in government. Have you actually read what he writes? He is in no way a fan of totalitarian strongmen.

Greenwald defends totalitarian strongmen abroad by his reflexive and universal opposition to American power. His stance on Ukraine, for example, is as extremely pro-Putin as any writing can get without saying "I love Vlad and I will kiss him".

What evidence do you have the Glenn Greenwald wants a strongman?

If anything, he has been attacked by numerous 'strong men' (in various governments!) over several years.

Greenwald is a vocal and consistent anti-institutionalist, and this creates the conditions for strongmen to take over. Whether he is aware of having this effect is not relevant.

He criticizes the military-industrial complex. Don’t you think that’s an institution worth dismantling?

Greenwald has criticized every institution that exists, so there's not a signal there.

What’s been dismantled? The major impact of his recent work was helping elect Trump twice and get tech companies to drop anti-disinformation campaigns. The military-industrial complex not only isn’t dismantled, it’s growing!

he not only not criticizes but is the most war-loving president we’ve had in a long time. at least he did right but making DoD what is actually is. america knows nothing but military and he’ll grow it to even more epic proportions once we invade iran and 10 or so other countries as we approach november

Greenwald supports both Putin and Trump, for starters.

He's either insanely clueless, a propagandist who is being dishonest about his goals, or an accelerationist who thinks making things worse will make them better after (magic happens here).

The magic never happens. Any political program that boils down to (1) break everything, (2) magic, (3) things are better, really goes (1) break everything, (2) either things stay broken and you end up a failed state or someone worse takes over.

Who would have thought that after changing no laws to ban the behavior, firing nobody, and re-upping the post-9/11 laws consistently, that the process would continue? I, for one, am shocked... that anyone might be shocked about this.

Don't worry, I'm sure that trusting these systems to a group of ghouls from the Epstein files won't have any negative consequences.

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It would be foolish to believe this isn’t happening basically everywhere. The reason this is news right now is because Amazon got cocky enough to buy an ad spot on the most watched TV event in the US showing the extent of their surveillance network.

here in my town in Spain I still see no cams, just phones and you cannot publish without consent when filmed in a public venue.

1. Because it is referring to the Super Bowl which was last week

2. Because everyone knows China is a surveillance state. It’s also entirely done by the state.

3. As above, the US’ surveillance is masked under private companies. This is far different from everywhere else.

4. Whataboutism (although I generally hate this newspeak term).

I know Ring is getting a bad rap for enabling state level surveillance, but the Ring app offers an option to enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone.

The stored video is encrypted with key generated on your phone. You have to be physically close to the camera in order to share the key and complete the set-up. Once encrypted, the video can't be analyzed by AI or used in a broad surveillance effort.

It's entirely possible that the encryption keys have a backdoor, but I doubt it. Although there is no way to verify.

End-to-end encryption only means something if you trust the endpoints.

They often also tend to call HTTPS end-to-end encryption

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/securing-your-origin-for-...

even Amazon Web Services:

    Benefits of using HTTPS connections:
    HTTPS provides end-to-end encryption

I wonder if that's why it's called Transport Layer Security.