FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-encryption laws

Re:FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-e... by CamperBob2 on Sunday February 24, 2019 @11:38PM (#19242976)

In any protracted discussion of US politics, it's pretty common for someone to raise the point that other countries have better voting systems than the one we use, where a winner-take-all paradigm inevitably devolves to a contest between only two dominant parties, and where there is little incentive for the victorious party to form a working coalition with the other. Australia's use of ranked-choice voting is frequently cited as one area where our first-past-the-post system is behind the curve, and in fact we're starting to consider adopting ranked choice voting in some limited areas [1].

We also hear frequent arguments in favor of Australia's compulsory voting law as a way to combat the sort of voter apathy that led to the... unexpected outcome in our last Presidential contest.

Stories like this serve as good counterpoints for Americans to raise in those debates, I think. Yes, Australia has implemented a number of progressive electoral reforms... but those progressive electoral policies are obviously not getting them better leadership or better laws. So why should we, in the US, follow their example?

[1]: https://bangordailynews.com/2018/08/28/opinion/contributors/...

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Re:FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-e... by Jaepa on Monday February 25, 2019 @12:08AM (#19243145)

That's an interesting notion. Not to follow this tangent to far, but I think that most likely it is a more representative democracy. If you were to ask the people in the US if they want a bill that would allow law enforcement to "read the private messages of terrorist", I'd guess that most people would say yes, not knowing or understanding the ramifications of what the law would mean, or what a clear definition of what terrorist are.

But to the point, I do agree that mandatory voting may be actively harmful as it values all degree of civic engagement the same. That being said here in the states we have actively installed barriers to make voting more difficult. We aren't really getting better leadership or better laws from it.

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Re:FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-e... by rickycook on Monday February 25, 2019 @12:01AM (#19243104)

well, australian voting systems aren’t exactly progressive (it’s just a few steps above the worst case), and neither is the voting populace

id say our government matches closer to our electorate than what the US government does, but we still have only 2 major parties which severely limits choice. there are ways to combat this (NZ, Germany for example)

this example is also a fairly poor one, because it’s possible this law came as a “test the waters” as part of 5 eyes, so it could be followed in other counties. where spying and secrets are concerned, we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions because we don’t know all the facts

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Re:FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-e... by A2017U1 on Monday February 25, 2019 @02:36AM (#19243780)

It doesn't necessarily have to be enacted in other 5 eyes countries. The specific wording of the law said they can enlist citizens to put in backdoors at the request of other Governments.

Even more absurd is that it also mentions this regarding economic espionage purposes. They legally could ask a developer to commit large scale theft of industrial secrets from say Germany for the benefit of Canadian enterprises. Anyone refusing faces penalties in secret court rooms.

The open ended nature of the wording is staggering.

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Re:FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-e... by getmoheb on Monday February 25, 2019 @01:09AM (#19243415)

Actually the political logic on national security legislation here is a little more complicated and not really related to the electoral system or compulsory voting.

National security policy has been used as a wedge issue here in the last 20 years, like in lots of other places. So the raft of security legislation that's been passed since the conservatives took office in 2013 has actually been as a result of both major parties voting together. If the Labor Party (centre-left) opposes security legislation, they're painted as soft on terror, weak on border security, etc.

Security agencies have given a shopping list to the Liberal (i.e. conservative) government - data retention, citizenship, and encryption amongst others. The Libs have put bill after bill forward in an attempt to generate opposition from Labor and thereby get an effective national-security wedge. Some of them have been 'genuine' reforms but some have been less so. Labor knows this of course. But it's ahead in the polls and wants to be a small target come the election, so it has refused to bite. The result has been a bunch of shitty new security laws.

It can be wonderfully disheartening to watch, especially given that lots of people on both sides of politics know perfectly well that they're bad laws but can't say it out loud due to the the politics of it. They're not all idiots who don't understand tech.

So while the electoral system here has delivered slim majorities for successive governments (or indeed minorities at times), it's not really relevant here. When the major parties vote together the laws are going to pass.

Sorry if that's off topic but I find it very interesting, albeit depressing sometimes.

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