There were more people willing to stand up for privacy after 9/11 during the “with us or against us” GWOT, which really says something.

This went too far with the whole woke thing, and resulted in 2 non-consecutive terms of trump, handing the right a litany of power they had no idea how to wield, and they hit every stupid branch falling down the failure tree.

Education isn’t the answer, dictating “I know what’s best” isn’t the answer, doge wasn’t the answer, starting random wars isn’t the answer.

Maybe by process of elimination we can find the answers. I am Hopeful that if the left gets a foothold again in the coming midterms they do not repeat their past mistakes.

Hopeful != optimistic. Lot of angry people out for blood.

Okay, but what's so bad about getting something positive done? It doesn't have to be comprehensive to apply to data brokers to be an improvement. That would bring in the data broker lobby and big tech. This bill would cement protections for Americans from their government.

>It's also going to piss off almost all of society if their data cannot be monetized, because pretty much all notable services will go from free to paid overnight.

Does it ban data brokers and selling data? From the website it seems to be focused on government privacy invasions. Its not a GDPR although we need that too (hopefully a better version).

recommend reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book) there's a netflicks documentary by the same name that is NOT a substitute for the book.

An explanation as to why the NDP fail to gain any substantial power could fill an entire book but imho the overarching reason comes down to the demographic distribution of Canada and dominance of the Bloq Quebecois has over Quebec preventing the establishment of any lasting NDP influence in such a densely populated part of the country.

As for the subject at hand, I wish it would be so easy as to just call an elected official, but as I said above, with the Liberal control of parliament for the remainder of their term and their high support in the polls there’s nothing that will Make them backtrack.

And this speaks to what Waterluvian mentioned in another thread. Too often with these kinds of surveillance laws the drive for them doesn’t seem to be originating by from the electorate, and it feels like this kind of stuff has an exogenous source and is meant for a whole different audience or player in the game.

Multiparty yes, but also first-past-the-post, which favours 2 dominant parties.

Absolutely. Bread and circuses isn't a new idea.

>The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.

Points for the doing good in the end. But it's a rule in hell/serve in heaven issue, if you first need to create hell with your quest for power you have failed the objective of doing good in the end.

The most confident I ever was that I was "obviously correct" was when I was 20.

> For example, continuing to accept anything that remotely passes as protect-the-children politics without understanding that the consequences are worse than the benefits, even for the children themselves.

Passing a censorship/surveillance bill using the pretext of protecting children is the opposite of WYSIWYG. The true motive is building an apparatus to use to enforce other authoritarian policies and protecting children is the Trojan horse.

If people were better informed about second order effects then that wouldn't work because they would see through the consequences when a pretext is being presented for a bad idea, and then the politicians who attempt it would be more often punished than rewarded. The tactic of lying to people would happen less often because it would be selected against when the number of people who see through you is enough to boot you out of office.

Well, because the issue with vaccine doubt, is misinformation. It's disinformation, spread for either profit (followers on youtube), or foreign actors working to reduce the cohesion of the West's societies.

Russia? China? Iran? None of these countries, even together, stand a chance militarily against the West. But if you cannot beat them militarily, you must weaken them from within. So confusion. Distrust. Pour fuel on the fire of any differences between sectors of a society. If you can weaken your political enemy, they it ceases to become a threat. Even better if you can trick your enemy into fighting itself!

It's no secret that a lot of countries are engaged in disinformation campaigns against the West. If you can cause your competitor to have plagues, when they were preventable? Well, that ties up resources, reduces productivity, and so forth.

I honestly believe that much of ID verification on the Internet is about this. A healthy society can handle outliers, handle internally created disinformation. Not so, if 1 guy in a foreign country seems like 1000 youtube channels. And you can see this everywhere. A video with a TTS voice, which is now progressing to entirely crafted video from scratch. Now anyone from China can look like a US citizen, going on about the woes of vaccination.

But if you can identify every person, and they can be sued for slander, libel, or criminal acts? Then you're back to normal, internal, citizen protest. EG, your normal crazies. And it can't be stated enough, there are a lot of marginals. Those "on the fence". If they hear enough nutty stuff, they move into almond territory too.

In the end, China, Russia, Iran won't be truthful or play ball, or will undermine attempts with fake IDs willfully issued, so they'll just get cut of entirely. The West will likely sign treaties.

So. Identity verification, is actually an answer to the vaccine issue. After all, we didn't have this level of issue until crazy Internet posters caused it. Although, to be fair, Elvis Presley is who helped convince youth to get the original polio vaccinations.

One way to look at it, is like driver's licenses. Before them, there was no way to stop a person from legally driving on the road. Take it away, and now they could be fined, jailed, etc for driving "without a license". A few bad actors were just unrepentant, and suddenly everyone could be carded, ID required, just to get around. This is like that. A bad result, eg ID on the net, but the attempt is likely to solve 100 internet pains.

I think if we have any sense, we'll come up with a best-privacy-laden method to allow this to happen. Because I cannot see how it will go away. If we can steer it, make it palatable. make sure it cannot be used by industry to track us, etc., it would be at least a partial win.