Agree to disagree, because my liberty is useless without my life.

Balance can be found. And increasingly, it looks like in the modern era, the balance is found in a situation where the PATRIOT act exists and we find a new normal around its existence.

Which government of more than a few million people do you assume doesn't have a line into monitoring intra- and interstate digital communications in this era?

I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying.

I regret that - assuming my own ongoing case of COVID-19 resolves without fatal complication - I'm quite likely, I think, to have that curiosity satisfied. I regret it because this isn't a cause for change of perspective which I would wish on anyone. But everything I'm seeing suggests it's a cause for change of perspective that many millions of people are going to have.

My hope is that people don't lose sight of the long term in spite of the short term suffering we may experience. You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever. How many movements would have been impossible if a local government could spy on everyone to break it up before it even begins? I'm thankful we didn't have the same technology we have now during the civil rights movement, for example.

I sincerely hope for your swift recovery.

> You can only surrender your rights once, the effects of losing those rights will last forever

With an app like tracetogether, you can just uninstall it after the pandemic, right? No need to surrender your rights forever.

Until the government decides that it's in the public's best interest that such an application be installed on every phone, and non-removable.

We already have NSA / Tech company "collaboration" so this is hardly a huge step in terms of tech or privacy invasion. It would just be the next step.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? You can only get sick and die once, but that lasts forever too.

Put another way, would you want your children to live in a world where their government abused and spied on them? Borrowing from the future seems free at the time, but the true cost can be enormous. Everyone has to make their own value judgment, but I fall on the side of protecting the freedoms of people now and in the future. If people in the future choose differently for themselves, that will be their choice when their time comes.

Of course, 'you can only surrender your rights once' and 'you can only die once' aren't equivalent either. Once a nation of people surrenders their rights, nobody ever has those rights again (even if the loss of those rights costs lives). A person, or a group of people, becoming ill or passing away doesn't take away the lives of the next generation.

If you think back on the experiences of the last century, how much harm would be done if we couldn't freely assemble because a government decided to intervene? We'd have stayed in Vietnam longer, black folks may not have ever won their civil rights, and its possible women would be unable to vote.

For the record, I don't downplay the suffering of illness. I've lost a parent to cancer, as well as many other family members. Everyone else alive is in the same boat. We're all mortal.

It's not really about what I want or don't want; for one thing, I don't have children and never will.

If I did, though, I suspect I would want them to live.

I honestly wonder if more people have been killed by dictators and authoritarian regimes or the black plague. I suspect it's relatively comparable. As technology has progressed, I believe it's become more reasonable to fear man more than nature.

Cancer isn't like a pandemic. Cancer multiply within a body; pathogens multiply within societies.

I disagree with "you can only surrender your rights once"; unlike life, rights can be won back. There's plenty of places on the planet in which you couldn't freely speak or assemble just a couple decades ago, but now you can. Things aren't going monotonically from bad to worse (though I admit, there's a strong directional pressure here; maintaining rights feels like fighting entropy).

I am a parent, I want my child to live in a world where the government doesn't abuse and spy on them, but where that government is also capable of containing an infectious pathogen (whether natural or purpose-made) pretty much as soon as it registers. There is a practical balance to be found there.

(And if we're trading imaginary worlds: I want my child to live in a world where private entities don't spy on them and sell private information, a world where adtech doesn't exist.)

I want both freedom and a competent government. However, there's no need to spy on people to properly prepare for a pandemic. That said, given that governments have proven to be both incompetent and evil, why should I want to give them more power?

My comment regarding illness is only to reinforce the point that everyone is mortal, and the vast majority of us have empathy for others and value the lives of at least one other person.

> unlike life, rights can be won back

This costs lives. How many wars have been fought to overthrow evil regimes? How many journalists or 'other' people are killed or enslaved in the world today by evil regimes?

This is like saying “There are no atheists in foxholes.” People who say it might believe it, but it is demonstrably false.

I'm sure there are a few!

>I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying.

Already had the virus, it was a bad cold.

Liberty or death.

> I'm curious how many people who now say "give me privacy or give me death!" will change their tune in a hurry once they are themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, in real danger of dying.

The weak ones we shouldn't be prioritizing over the strong. Harboring weakness is just asking to be taken advantage of. It may seem empathetic at first, but all you end up doing is undermining the individuals growth and selling out the security of future generations. If you're an adult, you need to come to terms with death, and recognize that extending your life isn't worth stealing from future generations. They deserve more freedom than we've had. Not less.

It's a mercy you won't be held to this when you get sick, and find it's somewhat easier to talk in the abstract about coming to terms with death than to face the imminent possibility.

edit: Well, you won't be held to it assuming we haven't reached a need for sufficiently severe triage, I suppose. Otherwise, you might get a chance to quite literally put your life on the line for the principle you've just espoused! I wish you joy of it.

Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar. We ban accounts that keep doing that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

All the soldiers, firefighters, and doctors/nurses/EMTs (and many more) are putting their lives on the line for what they believe in. Some of them believe in the constitution and some of them simply desire to help their fellow man. Not everyone is so weak that they sell out others for their own benefit, and assuming the worst of others only serves to expose your values, or lack thereof.

> I wish you joy of it.

That was straight-up evil. Whatever empathy and respect you may have had just went out the window. I'm almost in disbelief that you would edit your post just to literally wish someone the "joy" of having a chance to die.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. You've done it repeatedly in this thread. That's not ok, regardless of how wrong or bad another comment is, or you feel it is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"The weak should be winnowed from the strong, that the strong may prosper without being held back" is an idea that attracts your sympathy, though?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You seem to love misrepresenting people's views, or perhaps you just really don't comprehend them.

No, I don't think the unfortunate should be harmed or taken advantage of. I also don't think anyone should be forced to surrender their rights to governments, period. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to prosper in this world. That is impossible so long as there's some 'higher power' manipulating the system to the advantage of one group or another.

I hate war. I hate when the police enforce evil policies and eviscerate the lives of innocent people. I hate when governments play god and overthrow other governments for the financial gain of a select few.

You know what else I hate? When governments cover up the truth and cause massive pain and suffering. The Chinese government spies on their people, they used that system to silence the story about this virus which is now infecting people around the globe.

Giving up your right to privacy, speech, and defense is [1]literally exactly how this happened in the first place.

If the truth had gotten out sooner, it could have been contained. Instead, the world economy is grinding to a halt and people are dying. All thanks to a government spying on its people's cell phone

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/whistleblower-...

Meanwhile, contact tracing, in places like South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, appears to have made a major difference in the rate of transmission. In those countries, people have to some greater or lesser extent traded privacy for security, and - so far, at least - it appears to be working.

Is that a choice they all individually made? Of course not. There are penalties for noncompliance, same as for laws here in the US, whether you agree with them or not. Did that also, though, save a lot of lives? Ask again in a year, I suppose; it's too soon to tell.

But by the same token, it's too soon to call that a failure, at least if lives saved is a figure of merit.

I think it should be. I'm not averse in concept to the sacrifice of life in defense of principle, but I am very much averse to the sacrifice of some life in defense of others' principle.

You spoke earlier of the horrors of dictatorship, of totalitarianism, and the like? As far as I'm concerned, every one of them starts right here. If you want to die on behalf of whatever principles you hold dear, you're welcome. That's your life to spend. It is the only life that's yours to spend.

Yet you're advocating to arrange things for everyone according to your principles which can also, demonstrably, cost lives. I'm advocating that individuals make choices for themselves about when to work together to solve a crisis, or when to avoid one another, or when to collaborate with their government, or when to oppose it.

Totalitarian regimes start with the people being stripped of their freedoms. In every case throughout history, they have stripped people of their rights to speech and defense.

> I am very much averse to the sacrifice of some life in defense of others' principle.

Then advocate for a better healthcare system and government accountability. They don't need to have the system to track people in order to provide healthcare, restrict foreign travel, or issue public guidance on how to handle the situation.

Besides, most people would happily volunteer the information, assuming it was on their terms and reasonably secure. But it never is.

> lives saved figure of merit

I agree, it should be. But you're not counting the lives lost or destroyed by the choice you favor. The "compromise" isn't to give up rights, it's to improve healthcare and preparation for situations like this.

Evil regimes killed 100+ Million people in around a 100 year period. Not allowing governments the power to do that level of evil saves more lives than the coronavirus could ever take.

> Then advocate for a better healthcare system and government accountability

Yes. But failing that, I'll take contact tracing and risking fines for breaking quarantine - which I would now be liable for, assuming I had also even been able to be tested in order to become a confirmed case, which is apparently too much to ask at the moment - over the combination of adtech surveillance for no greater point than to make money, and incompetent government response that seems all but guaranteed to end five or six figures' worth of lives minimum, that we have now.

>It's a mercy you won't be held to this when you get sick, and find it's somewhat easier to talk in the abstract about coming to terms with death than to face the imminent possibility.

It's unfortunate that you're a coward.

Death is not something to fear, and with a stock of strong pain killers neither is dying.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. No more of this please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments here generally. You've done it repeatedly, and we've already asked you not to.

Sure, assuming you have the good fortune to choose your manner of dying. I wouldn't feel very comfortable making that kind of assumption. But I concede it's easier to sling accusations of cowardice than to think seriously about drowning slowly and helplessly in the fluids of your own destroyed lungs.

Congratulations on having gotten over this pandemic virus. Good luck with the next one!

In any sane world euthanasia would be legal and everyone could chose a painless death.

But of course we can't have that freedom.

Reflecting on how my relationship with death has varied with my life experiences, I don't think you know enough about his particular experience to call him a coward.