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akerstenyesterday at 11:40 PM1 replyview on HN

This frames the issue in a fundamentally incorrect way.

Since the dawn of pseudoanonymous communication, politicians have been trying to get their nasty little claws into it. See Clipper Chip in the 90's. They've tried many avenues to deanonymize and centralize. Going after the parents is just their latest - they've discovered they could use convincing language like this to trick a bunch of people who previously had no reason to care about The Internet to now suddenly "realize" oh gosh it's scary out there, what can we do to help.

Unfortunately their latest tactic is working. They figured out how to recruit a (possibly) well-intentioned bloc into supporting efforts that undermine privacy in an irreversible way.

> Because of our industry’s refusal to take those concerns seriously, we lost our voice,

Fighting against demands to censor, unmask, and neuter the closest thing we've got to a global platform of freedom is a valiant effort. Not entertaining these bureaucrats isn't some moral failing of our industry, in the same sense that ignoring a persistent busker on the street entitles him to your money after some uninvolved observer has arbitrarily decided he's made the same demand enough that somehow it's starting to make sense because the victim hasn't yelled at him with a good enough argument against it.

In other words: yep, still the parents' job, yep, internet was still there when I grew up, yep, I turned out fine, yep, politicians have been trying to take away our privacy for 30 years (and unfortunately, they're finding more creative and convincing ways to disguise it). Hint: it's never about the kids


Replies

Nevermarktoday at 3:44 AM

> Hint: it's never about the kids

Well yes it is. It is about both the cover problem (child safety), and the ulterior motive (surveillance, control).

And not taking the reasonably concerning cover problem seriously, by finding sensible solutions, both leaves it festering unsolved in its own right, and growing in usefulness as a cover problem.