alt Hacker NewsWhen are we going to see substantive legislation advancing digital rights instead of chipping away at them?
For the US, we need a new bill of rights, a bill of digital rights that constitutionally protects right of repair, right to root our own devices, right to be free from dragnet surveillance, right to general purpose computing, and the right to access speech without government-mandated age or identity checks.
With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen?
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The effort to erode privacy is so much greater than the effort to preserve it. Governments around the world are like a dog with a bone when it comes to increasing surveillance.
An apathetic and ill informed public doesn’t help matters.
The libertarian technologist space specifically prefers technological solutions because they don't depend upon fallible and corruptible humans implementing the laws. This is the ideological wing that gave us the PC, encryption, the Gnu project, free software, the Internet, P2P filesharing, Bittorrent, social media, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, Freenet, Mullvad and other VPNs, Monero, etc.
When it comes to laws, libertarianism faces an internal contradiction. A libertarian believes that they shouldn't be able to control other people; therefore, if a company wants to make an unrepairable unrootable surveillance device and the population consents to using it, the libertarian believes that it is not their right to interfere. The only thing they can do is create a better repairable rootable device, which is how we got GCC, Linux, Ubuntu, Firefox, Graphene, etc.
We don't need a "new" bill of rights. If they don't respect the first one why do you think they'll respect the next one?
There's a different remedy for the current situation.
As a Canadian user of HN it's really frustrating to see a rare post about a Canadian subject be immediately dominated by a thread about American politics.
Twenty words into your post and you've pivoted to the US.
What mechanism or discussion can we have to encourage the users to show some restraint on this?
> … why can't we make that happen?
Greed. More money to provide the tools of oppression via government contracts.
>With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen?
Maybe because they're full of shit? (Sorry to swear, but I'm struggling for a better way to phrase this.)
I ran into a lot of open source projects that needed donations that would be considered tiny in any other nonprofit space, but despite all their talk about cipherpunk stuff, they don't seem to put their money where their mouth is.
The "lolbertarians", as I like to call them, seem to want a world where the state has a monopoly on violence and a monopoly on data -- and if you get on their radar, they're just being neutral. (Forgive me if I roll my eyes so hard my retinas nearly detach.)
When people working for corporate interest will stop being voted in. Good luck
> With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley
As a libertarian myself - these people are fake libertarians, actually better described as crypto-authoritarians. So called "right" libertarianism is fertile ground for this, as it's based on an axiomatic/reductionist framing of rights wherein when someone violates a precondition, their rights then become irrelevant. The philosophy is supremely attractive to authoritarians who go down its rabbit hole - finding a whole bunch of reasons to reject appeals to other people's rights while convincing themselves they are advocating freedom.
Whereas in reality, the "freedom" they believe in is merely the freedom for themselves to oppress others - witness how these billionaires have chiefly made their money with centralized proprietary web apps/services based around removing choice away from users (at the edge) in favor of "take it or leave it" top-down monolithic offerings, slowly made worse over time (ie enshittification) to extract value after sticky network effects have been achieved.
There are of course exceptions - some use their wealth to attempt to pivot to making libre software. And I'm sure there are many more who become disillusioned with the "freedom" they thought they were making, and merely check out. But as the general rule this is why you don't see much actual support for freedom from the rich Surveillance Valley types.
> With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley
Those are pro-surveillance, pro-repair-prevention, pro-fascism.
Libertarianism is about your freedom to restrict others, if you are rich and powerful.
Because they're not libertarians. They're greedy narcissists who what to do whatever they want to anybody and just say that it's libertarian.
Thomas Massie introduced the best privacy bill I have seen. I know nothing about political strategy but i would think a democrat would have been a better cosponsor. Will it even get voted on if the house speaker doesn't want it?
https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com/
>Warrant required Government must go before a judge to access your metadata, location, or financial records — just like searching your home.
>No Data Shopping Agencies can no longer simply purchase data from brokers to bypass the warrant process.
>Face recognition banned Warrantless facial recognition and AI biometric surveillance in public spaces is prohibited.
>You Can Sue Private right of action means if the government violates your rights, you have legal recourse.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8470...