We're trying to form a voting bloc in my community to turn the local government upside down. If similar movements happened in other communities around the U.S. the legislature would be very different.
At the same time I try to convince people outside of that country of what should be their political number 1 priority (in my humble opinion); political decisions through popular vote.
In general, there is plenty of hard proof that public advocacy works in the U.S. See the entire environmental and union movements, for example.
Feigning helplessness in the face of corruption is not as insightful or clever as you think, and contrary to what you might think, works to suppress citizen engagement rather than spur it. "You have no power" is what your opponents want you to think. What are you helping them convince people it's true?
The reality is that citizens absolutely have the ability to affect their governments, and should make it clear that mandating encryption backdoors is not acceptable policy.
I always thought the NSA gave up on its Clipper Chip initiative not because people complained, but rather because of a handful of people with the right skills or the right kind of influence engaged in civil disobedience.
Specifically, Phil Zimmermann wrote PGP and published its source code (under no-commercial-use terms, which at that time were not frowned upon as strongly as they are these days) and enough people demonstrated a resolve to keep the source code on the internet -- by continuing to host it even after being threatened by the US government -- to convince the NSA that it would never persuade enough manufacturers to adopt the Clipper Chip.
Netscape's decision to design and implement SSL and include it in the most popular browser of the day probably had a lot to do with it, too.
You are contradicting yourself. Effectively you're saying unless a majority of people agree with you then it is non-democratic. As parent poster said we have the responsibility: it is to communicate this argument to people and also to be part of our own government.
No, I'm not. My point is that we (citizens) are not in charge of government. It's misleading to claim that we are.
It doesn't matter whether "the people" are for or against encryption. It's irrelevant for political decision making (unless popular opinion on encryption threatens to influence elections, which right now it doesn't and probably won't ever).
> it is to communicate this argument to people and also to be part of our own government.
"We" (as in the majority of citizens) can't be part of our government. "We" can't even significantly influence government at all other than through elections. Popular political influence through elections only works for very limited very broad subjects that happen to be in fashion by the time an election takes place. Subjects unlike relatively specific things such as encryption.
> we have the responsibility
With the above in mind I don't agree. At all. You could try to explain the point of the parent poster to 1000's of people and convince them to agree. This would be a tremendous task and would politically change: nothing. At all.
You could also try to convince them of the opposite. And this would also have 0 political effect.
Even if everybody on HN did it. Even if everyone on here had the exact same opinion, arguments and same amazing sales skills.
Personally at present I think representative democracy is working, but that people are very dishonest about what they really want.
This seems to me like an uncharitable interpretation of what he said. If one part of it "works", then saying it doesn't work at all is a false statement. The correct question is, to what degree does democracy "work", in 2019 - I believe the year is an important component of the question, because most people's conception of democracy is abstract theory, and disregards the increasing complexity of the world.
> In which case what is there to talk about here?
The degree to which democracy "works".
What do you mean by "works"? A violent dictatorship with a genocide here and there works perfectly fine, depending on your definition of "works".
> In which case what is there to talk about here?
Priorities. Should the priority be to discuss the importance of encryption. Or should the priority be to discuss the importance of means to influence decisions about encryption?
> You should be out attending to the business of revolution, not yakking on forums about incremental change right?
You mean literally losing a hand or an eye as a yellow vest? Or something like that? Nah. Meh, thanks. Not the best option I would say.
> Personally at present I think representative democracy is working,
Yeah. Again. I agree that it's "working". But without a definition of "working" or a benchmark that's an information-less statement.
> but that people are very dishonest about what they really want.
And you have hope that this will change?
People can't know what they want, if they aren't honestly informed about what's going on around them.
Tell that to the Hong Kong protesters.
We're talking people losing their hand(s), eye(s) or dying here.
Same for the Barcelona protests (non yellow vests).
You'll have to search quite a bit to find articles on those if you live in "the West", but yeah they do happen.
On topic: if only Macron and Winnie the Pooh could somehow circumvent the encryption of those pesky protesters...
Individual rights were never won or kept by lying down.
I'm more afraid of direct democracy than anything. I basically think I'll be dead within a few months of that emerging. Authoritarianism is my next greatest fear.
Any substantiation? My fear is the exact opposite (anything decided by "not us" is "not for us").
Wait, what? We have a saying in the actions and decisions of our governments (context: EU and US)?
No we don't. We don't live in direct democracies. If Interpol or any police force wants to ban encryption and if that benefits who ever is in government, then that ban will come. Thus: that ban will come. (Western) governments have been eyeing bans and bypasses of encryption for decades. This is nothing new. What we as citizens think of that is completely irrelevant. Unless the majority of the population would really care about encryption and it would influence the 4-yearly vote-thing (elections). Which is not the case.
Every Western country has had headlines in their news papers in the past months about their politicians -all of a sudden and all at the same time- wanting to pass laws to allow them to bypass encryption (pressured by the US?). Just in case it would influence the 4-yearly voting thing. The synchronized timing of the publications to me is shocking but not really surprising anymore. Manufacturing consent.
the online kiddy porn and terrorism is really getting out of hand like right about now. Never been worse. Let's all ban encryption quickly and save the world from all child abuse