The majority of legislators and politicians in the US seem hell-bent on destroying everyone's privacy in the name of "national security". Now the Dems are experiencing the result of Russia's attempts to further its own national agenda by invading US politicians' privacy. There's at least a little poetic justice in that, methinks...
Does it send the phone's device ID? I didn't see it in the summary.
The article also doesn't even mention the topic of personally identifiable information. That fact alone speaks volumes about the question, given that TFA quotes a rather lengthy statement from the company president, who didn't once take the opportunity to say that the device doesn't collect personally identifiable data.
So I'm genuinely not seeing what's inherently wrong with wanting to understand how products are used and could improve, especially in the burgeoning sexual-health industry.
Please note that "wanting to understand how products are used and could improve" is neither the ethical nor the logical equivalent of collecting private, intimate, real-time data without anywhere informing the purchaser that this is happening. Also, even if the data collected isn't personally identifiable now, it could become so later, and there are plenty of precedents for this.
Another note: when the president of the company says "our policy does disclose that we may collect data", that refers to their website policy; it IS NOT disclosed when the app is downloaded, according to TFA.
Do you see now "what's inherently wrong" with this picture?
This is dangerous business. Google needs to get this JUST right, or it will be a ridiculously easy-to-exploit attack vector.
The problem is that "JUST right" is a state of limited duration. And all too often it's a VERY limited duration. As for Google getting it 'just right', even for 5 minutes - well, I suspect they really don't give a flying fuck, considering that they regard us all as mere experimental subjects anyway. We're all basically lab rats as far as Google is concerned.
Poor people don't have the slightest notion how to draft trade policies that won't ruin the economy, let alone how to tell credible science from media-fluff.
In some African countries, very poor villagers, when given micro-loans, establish businesses that lead to thriving micro-economies. And they do so with a lack of other resources and supports that might well leave you flat-ass broke and begging for handouts if you were in the same situation. Poor != stupid, lazy, ignorant, etc. As for 'credible science', many people the world over who live at the sharp end of existence have been blowing the trumpet of global warming for decades. It took organized science a while to catch up with them.
And their best attempts at administering justice would be indistinguishable from barbarism.
If you're going to put up a straw man, you should first acquire some straw.. Your 'argument' doesn't have even that, never mind the string to hold it together and give it shape.
Centralized government is corruption. The ONLY fix is to restrict centralized governance, and make it more local.
I've been thinking along similar lines a lot lately. The city-state is an attractive model of both governance and commerce. The problem I see is that complex systems, (whether socio-political, technological, or whatever), will always 'evolve' into centralized control models. Even the Internet is moving in that direction, despite its vast geographic spread. So "to restrict centralized governance" will require some quality, strategy, or force in the social realm that's equivalent to anti-gravity in the physical realm. It hasn't been seen yet, and there's no indication that it will exist in the near future.
It is more difficult to fund power if you have to curry favors over a broad group of people, rather than a few "Powerful elites" in a far away city.
There's nothing stopping those in one region who have or desire power, from meeting with like-minded individuals in other regions. That's the beginning of centralized governance and centralized power; it can start as easily as a lunch meeting, and the first steps may be as innocuous as pooling resources to achieve 'economies of scale'. Then you have secret meetings, trade agreements, etc, and the whole mess starts again. Big Government, big corporations, and other forms of centralized power are not the disease, they are a symptom. Every 'ism' invented so far, including Libertarianism, ignores this fact and aggressively tackles symptoms while ignoring the underlying pathology, which as far as I can tell is pretty much indistinguishable from a fundamental universal force; for all I know it may well be one.
This is one tenant of Libertarianism in a nutshell.
I think you meant to say 'tenet'; but speaking as a former Libertarian, I agree that many of them live in nutshells.;-)
we do not want to take the risk of supplying our extremely secure service to the wrong people... we have taken a strategic decision to only supply our platform and services to the enterprise segment
Because of course, and so obviously that no explanation is needed, "the enterprise segment" of the market couldn't possibly comprise "the wrong people", could it? Why, I bet there's not a single large criminal organization or shady financial corporation among GhostMail's enterprise clients!
FTS: "Those who may encounter compatibility issues because of drivers may get it slightly later through Windows Update"
Gee, Microshaft, it would have been nice if you had given a thought to drivers and "compatibility issues" back when you were ramming your unwanted "free" Windows 10 "upgrades" up people's asses and breaking their computers. Are you now turning into a 'kinder, gentler' bunch of megalomaniacal despots? Say it ain't so!
No, in fact, the only thing like that threatening my lifestyle is the ban on using HFCs in inhalers. Big Pharma assholes again.
Right on. I'd like to kick the ass of whatever genius thought it was a good idea for me to pump vapourized ethanol into my already inflamed bronchial passages. Fucktards. Fortunately, here in Canada I can still get inhalers with a sensible propellant - most of the time...
... If you had worked and trained your whole life for something that you probably only had one shot to accomplish, would you give that up easily? Something that for many of them can literally change their life and that of their family for the better?
Point taken. But really, in this regard how does competing at the Olympics differ from a stint on any of several reality TV shows? And arguably the TV shows might be safer.
I'm not saying this to be flippant, nor to minimize the dedication and hard work and sacrifices of athletes who compete at the highest levels. But seriously, when do we stop giving in to corporate greed and corruption? The IOC is organized thuggery, and there are uncomfortable parallels between the Olympic Games and the Hunger Games. Yes, it's an extreme comparison; but a little thought, especially in the context of your argument, makes it seem somewhat less extreme.
For some of these athletes they are literally competing for their future financial well being. Winning an Olympic medal in some places can be life changing. It can make some of them national hero's and set them and their family up for years to come.
I don't know about you, but to me that sounds even more like "Hunger Games".
Would you swim through a river of shit if it would drag your family out poverty?
If I was any kind of a swimmer, then yes, I probably would. The more important question is, "with all of humanity's productive power and technological advancements, why is it still necessary for anyone to swim through a river of shit in order drag their families out of poverty?" Never mind doing so for a chance at a 'job interview'.
Cameron believes that having first-run movies in the home will stop people heading off to the cinema, the place where advertisers make the cinema experieince more and more like the TV-in-your-livingroom experience. "The biggest impetus toward piracy is still the ongoing destruction of the sanctity of the viewing experience in a movie theater -- when it comes to advertisements," he says... Interestingly, Cameron also says that if piracy somehow became legal and download speeds were drastically improved, viewing content outside the theatrical setting would become preferable to the car-ad-laden, trivia-quiz-infested crapfest that is the modern cinema experience. "You may be watching [movies] on a small platform, but at least you have some measure of control over your environment," he explains.
It used to be that every once in a while the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken would get the better of me and I'd plunk down a few bucks; then the food tasted like shit, I had indigestion and buyer's remorse, and I'd swear off the stuff. Finally I learned my lesson, and I never eat KFC any more. For me, going to a cinema is increasingly like eating KFC.
I think modular addons for phones and tablets might be the next wave, simply because a phone without additional hardware bits, (such as a keyboard), is a shitty replacement for a desktop or laptop. So what I see happening is that phones will continue to manage locally-stored data and 'cloud' data, (basically all of a user's computer data), in a pocket-sized device. To do serious work, (requiring a keyboard, mouse, larger screen, longer battery life, a projector, bigger local storage, etc), you'll add the appropriate modules to the phone, and/or plug the phone into a docking station.
The way 'Lenovorola' has chosen to do this may not be what the market will eventually settle on; but given smartphones' ubiquity and portability, and the growing multitude of uses for them, I think some kind of hardware extension model will ultimately be necessary.
then the bastards must be kicking themselves in the ass. It hasn't taken them very long to come up with a fix; if they'd spent the time to do that back in the development cycle, they could have saved themselves a shitload of money - not to mention all the damage to their reputation since they got caught trying to pull a fast one.
As the old engineering saying goes, 'never time to do it right, but always time to do it over'.
Not only is religion a mental disorder, it has the dubious distinction of being a communicable mental illness, which is something very rare indeed.
I'm not sure that communicable mental illnesses are so rare. Belief in things like racial superiority and class superiority, along with the various forms of servitude or outright slavery they engender, are also communicable 'social diseases'. Then there are various irrational 'fad' beliefs, such as those of anti-vaxxers. Hell, advertising and marketing are the commercial versions of mental disease propagation. (It's interesting that 'propaganda' and 'propagate' share a common Latin root).
Because we humans can communicate with a great degree of specificity and detail, various forms of mental, emotional, and intellectual health deficits are communicable. Language is a mental disease vector.
and "serious crime" increasingly is equated with thoughtcrime. The definition of "legally" is fluid and arbitrary, and "safeguards" are totally unspecified and undefined; this renders both terms utterly meaningless in the context of TFA. "(L)aid down by proper legislative process" and "respect the essence of the right to respect for privacy and data protection" are weasel words and part of a snow job.
Undefined, non-specific buzz-words are the perennially favourite tools of despots and would-be dictators. Unfortunately, today they are also the lingua franca of both political and legal discourse; and a befuddled populace, (with the help of news media which are largely complicit in the scam), goes along with it all as though it means something other than their eventual enslavement.
My quick scan of the title of TFS had it as "Tor and Bitcoin Hinder Anti-Privacy Efforts". I guess my sub-conscious brain is smarter and/or more aware than the European Union Intellectual Property Office. Not that that's a very high bar to clear...
Oddly enough, although I'm leery of GMO foods, I'd be happy to eat lab-grown meat. I know that's totally self-contradictory, but such are the vagaries of human preferences. My feelings may stem in part from factory farming practices; they are horribly cruel and cause incalculable suffering. I'd like to enjoy my meat without the accompanying feelings of guilt, and lab-grown meat promises that.
but with verbiage like "many will find super useful" and "split the cost of an app or a music album with your friends", TFS reads like an advert.
Note to editors: I understand the need to generate revenue, but fer chrissake, when you've got something that can actually be written like a tech story, don't turn it into a fscking Slashvertisement!
A time honoured legal concept, (it's almost a century old now), that the judiciary should loudly, enthusiastically, and explicitly embrace again. It's been conspicuous mostly by its absence for far too long now, and it's good to see Judge Pauley doing his part to restore its currency.
if YouTube simply shut down for a week. Just one week. I rather suspect the drop in sales would have those music "industry" fuckers screaming like stuck pigs. Then maybe they'd just STFU about how YouTube is destroying their profitability. In a year or so they'd start bitching again. Lather, rinse, repeat. After a few wash cycles maybe they'd even catch on.
Anyone for whom this news is important, interesting, or titillating is probably in the loop already. Everyone else probably lost interest at "10%". I find it hard to believe this submission was modded up by enough Slashdot members to have made the cut, unless "slownewsday" now counts as an upvote instead of a downvote.
The bill's sponsor, Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-NC) described HR 5606 as an attempt "to stop the flow of illicit dollars to criminals and terror organizations."
The bill's sponsor, Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-NC) probably thinks of HR 5606 as a huge step forward "in improving the ease and profitability of asset forfeiture, expanding its scope to include even more innocent citizens."
We like to pretend that Mozilla was something more than it was, but the reality is this is what they've always been.
I remember when Mozilla actually took users' desires seriously and used their feedback to help shape the browser. And I remember when they were proud of Add-ons - now they seem to regard them as a millstone around their necks. So no, I don't agree that Mozilla has always been this way.
We'll pull out all the irrational arguments that they've changed, but that's really just a reflection of where we've gone, not where they've gone.
For me, it's probably a reflection of where I haven't gone - namely, to minimalist GUI fads that give me jack shit when it comes to configurability and customization, and to products that are not only aimed at the lowest common denominator, but are purposely designed so they can't be raised above that level.
If it wasn't for Pale Moon, I'd still need Mozilla. And really, I still do need them anyway, because Pale Moon relies on them as an upstream for security updates. For me, there is no substitute for FireFox or a derivative, because of its extensions - especially Tab Mix Plus. And also because of 'about:config' - I have quite a few customizations in there that no other browser developers would even think of making available. I've tried other browsers, and I last less than a day on them. I think that if Mozilla hadn't lost its direction and started jumping on every flavour-of-the-month bandwagon that rolls through town, they'd dominate the browser market now.
that politicians and lawmakers consider themselves beholden only to lobby groups and corporations:
"But, even though the vast majority of the responses urged the authorities not to up the prison term, lawmakers decided otherwise."
The electorate? Fuck'em. That's what governments say, and they're starting to say it more and more openly. Citizens around the world need leashes on their 'leaders' - and for at least the worst offenders, I'm NOT speaking figuratively.
Slashdot Mirror
The majority of legislators and politicians in the US seem hell-bent on destroying everyone's privacy in the name of "national security". Now the Dems are experiencing the result of Russia's attempts to further its own national agenda by invading US politicians' privacy. There's at least a little poetic justice in that, methinks...
I know that explanations have to be simplified for a non-tech audience. But radio waves "wobble"? Really?
Does it send the phone's device ID? I didn't see it in the summary.
The article also doesn't even mention the topic of personally identifiable information. That fact alone speaks volumes about the question, given that TFA quotes a rather lengthy statement from the company president, who didn't once take the opportunity to say that the device doesn't collect personally identifiable data.
So I'm genuinely not seeing what's inherently wrong with wanting to understand how products are used and could improve, especially in the burgeoning sexual-health industry.
Please note that "wanting to understand how products are used and could improve" is neither the ethical nor the logical equivalent of collecting private, intimate, real-time data without anywhere informing the purchaser that this is happening. Also, even if the data collected isn't personally identifiable now, it could become so later, and there are plenty of precedents for this.
Another note: when the president of the company says "our policy does disclose that we may collect data", that refers to their website policy; it IS NOT disclosed when the app is downloaded, according to TFA.
Do you see now "what's inherently wrong" with this picture?
This is dangerous business. Google needs to get this JUST right, or it will be a ridiculously easy-to-exploit attack vector.
The problem is that "JUST right" is a state of limited duration. And all too often it's a VERY limited duration. As for Google getting it 'just right', even for 5 minutes - well, I suspect they really don't give a flying fuck, considering that they regard us all as mere experimental subjects anyway. We're all basically lab rats as far as Google is concerned.
Poor people don't have the slightest notion how to draft trade policies that won't ruin the economy, let alone how to tell credible science from media-fluff.
In some African countries, very poor villagers, when given micro-loans, establish businesses that lead to thriving micro-economies. And they do so with a lack of other resources and supports that might well leave you flat-ass broke and begging for handouts if you were in the same situation. Poor != stupid, lazy, ignorant, etc. As for 'credible science', many people the world over who live at the sharp end of existence have been blowing the trumpet of global warming for decades. It took organized science a while to catch up with them.
And their best attempts at administering justice would be indistinguishable from barbarism.
If you're going to put up a straw man, you should first acquire some straw.. Your 'argument' doesn't have even that, never mind the string to hold it together and give it shape.
Centralized government is corruption. The ONLY fix is to restrict centralized governance, and make it more local.
I've been thinking along similar lines a lot lately. The city-state is an attractive model of both governance and commerce. The problem I see is that complex systems, (whether socio-political, technological, or whatever), will always 'evolve' into centralized control models. Even the Internet is moving in that direction, despite its vast geographic spread. So "to restrict centralized governance" will require some quality, strategy, or force in the social realm that's equivalent to anti-gravity in the physical realm. It hasn't been seen yet, and there's no indication that it will exist in the near future.
It is more difficult to fund power if you have to curry favors over a broad group of people, rather than a few "Powerful elites" in a far away city.
There's nothing stopping those in one region who have or desire power, from meeting with like-minded individuals in other regions. That's the beginning of centralized governance and centralized power; it can start as easily as a lunch meeting, and the first steps may be as innocuous as pooling resources to achieve 'economies of scale'. Then you have secret meetings, trade agreements, etc, and the whole mess starts again. Big Government, big corporations, and other forms of centralized power are not the disease, they are a symptom. Every 'ism' invented so far, including Libertarianism, ignores this fact and aggressively tackles symptoms while ignoring the underlying pathology, which as far as I can tell is pretty much indistinguishable from a fundamental universal force; for all I know it may well be one.
This is one tenant of Libertarianism in a nutshell.
I think you meant to say 'tenet'; but speaking as a former Libertarian, I agree that many of them live in nutshells. ;-)
we do not want to take the risk of supplying our extremely secure service to the wrong people... we have taken a strategic decision to only supply our platform and services to the enterprise segment
Because of course, and so obviously that no explanation is needed, "the enterprise segment" of the market couldn't possibly comprise "the wrong people", could it? Why, I bet there's not a single large criminal organization or shady financial corporation among GhostMail's enterprise clients!
FTS: "Those who may encounter compatibility issues because of drivers may get it slightly later through Windows Update"
Gee, Microshaft, it would have been nice if you had given a thought to drivers and "compatibility issues" back when you were ramming your unwanted "free" Windows 10 "upgrades" up people's asses and breaking their computers. Are you now turning into a 'kinder, gentler' bunch of megalomaniacal despots? Say it ain't so!
No, in fact, the only thing like that threatening my lifestyle is the ban on using HFCs in inhalers. Big Pharma assholes again.
Right on. I'd like to kick the ass of whatever genius thought it was a good idea for me to pump vapourized ethanol into my already inflamed bronchial passages. Fucktards. Fortunately, here in Canada I can still get inhalers with a sensible propellant - most of the time...
... If you had worked and trained your whole life for something that you probably only had one shot to accomplish, would you give that up easily? Something that for many of them can literally change their life and that of their family for the better?
Point taken. But really, in this regard how does competing at the Olympics differ from a stint on any of several reality TV shows? And arguably the TV shows might be safer.
I'm not saying this to be flippant, nor to minimize the dedication and hard work and sacrifices of athletes who compete at the highest levels. But seriously, when do we stop giving in to corporate greed and corruption? The IOC is organized thuggery, and there are uncomfortable parallels between the Olympic Games and the Hunger Games. Yes, it's an extreme comparison; but a little thought, especially in the context of your argument, makes it seem somewhat less extreme.
For some of these athletes they are literally competing for their future financial well being. Winning an Olympic medal in some places can be life changing. It can make some of them national hero's and set them and their family up for years to come.
I don't know about you, but to me that sounds even more like "Hunger Games".
Would you swim through a river of shit if it would drag your family out poverty?
If I was any kind of a swimmer, then yes, I probably would. The more important question is, "with all of humanity's productive power and technological advancements, why is it still necessary for anyone to swim through a river of shit in order drag their families out of poverty?" Never mind doing so for a chance at a 'job interview'.
What James Cameron should have said:
Cameron believes that having first-run movies in the home will stop people heading off to the cinema, the place where advertisers make the cinema experieince more and more like the TV-in-your-livingroom experience. "The biggest impetus toward piracy is still the ongoing destruction of the sanctity of the viewing experience in a movie theater -- when it comes to advertisements," he says... Interestingly, Cameron also says that if piracy somehow became legal and download speeds were drastically improved, viewing content outside the theatrical setting would become preferable to the car-ad-laden, trivia-quiz-infested crapfest that is the modern cinema experience. "You may be watching [movies] on a small platform, but at least you have some measure of control over your environment," he explains.
It used to be that every once in a while the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken would get the better of me and I'd plunk down a few bucks; then the food tasted like shit, I had indigestion and buyer's remorse, and I'd swear off the stuff. Finally I learned my lesson, and I never eat KFC any more. For me, going to a cinema is increasingly like eating KFC.
It was nice of them to supply some Bud Light during an emergency.
You're giving water a bad name by comparing it to Bud Light. That stuff ain't beer - it's what comes out of me AFTER I drink beer.
I think modular addons for phones and tablets might be the next wave, simply because a phone without additional hardware bits, (such as a keyboard), is a shitty replacement for a desktop or laptop. So what I see happening is that phones will continue to manage locally-stored data and 'cloud' data, (basically all of a user's computer data), in a pocket-sized device. To do serious work, (requiring a keyboard, mouse, larger screen, longer battery life, a projector, bigger local storage, etc), you'll add the appropriate modules to the phone, and/or plug the phone into a docking station.
The way 'Lenovorola' has chosen to do this may not be what the market will eventually settle on; but given smartphones' ubiquity and portability, and the growing multitude of uses for them, I think some kind of hardware extension model will ultimately be necessary.
then the bastards must be kicking themselves in the ass. It hasn't taken them very long to come up with a fix; if they'd spent the time to do that back in the development cycle, they could have saved themselves a shitload of money - not to mention all the damage to their reputation since they got caught trying to pull a fast one.
As the old engineering saying goes, 'never time to do it right, but always time to do it over'.
Not only is religion a mental disorder, it has the dubious distinction of being a communicable mental illness, which is something very rare indeed.
I'm not sure that communicable mental illnesses are so rare. Belief in things like racial superiority and class superiority, along with the various forms of servitude or outright slavery they engender, are also communicable 'social diseases'. Then there are various irrational 'fad' beliefs, such as those of anti-vaxxers. Hell, advertising and marketing are the commercial versions of mental disease propagation. (It's interesting that 'propaganda' and 'propagate' share a common Latin root).
Because we humans can communicate with a great degree of specificity and detail, various forms of mental, emotional, and intellectual health deficits are communicable. Language is a mental disease vector.
and "serious crime" increasingly is equated with thoughtcrime. The definition of "legally" is fluid and arbitrary, and "safeguards" are totally unspecified and undefined; this renders both terms utterly meaningless in the context of TFA. "(L)aid down by proper legislative process" and "respect the essence of the right to respect for privacy and data protection" are weasel words and part of a snow job.
Undefined, non-specific buzz-words are the perennially favourite tools of despots and would-be dictators. Unfortunately, today they are also the lingua franca of both political and legal discourse; and a befuddled populace, (with the help of news media which are largely complicit in the scam), goes along with it all as though it means something other than their eventual enslavement.
My quick scan of the title of TFS had it as "Tor and Bitcoin Hinder Anti-Privacy Efforts". I guess my sub-conscious brain is smarter and/or more aware than the European Union Intellectual Property Office. Not that that's a very high bar to clear...
Oddly enough, although I'm leery of GMO foods, I'd be happy to eat lab-grown meat. I know that's totally self-contradictory, but such are the vagaries of human preferences. My feelings may stem in part from factory farming practices; they are horribly cruel and cause incalculable suffering. I'd like to enjoy my meat without the accompanying feelings of guilt, and lab-grown meat promises that.
but with verbiage like "many will find super useful" and "split the cost of an app or a music album with your friends", TFS reads like an advert.
Note to editors: I understand the need to generate revenue, but fer chrissake, when you've got something that can actually be written like a tech story, don't turn it into a fscking Slashvertisement!
A time honoured legal concept, (it's almost a century old now), that the judiciary should loudly, enthusiastically, and explicitly embrace again. It's been conspicuous mostly by its absence for far too long now, and it's good to see Judge Pauley doing his part to restore its currency.
if YouTube simply shut down for a week. Just one week. I rather suspect the drop in sales would have those music "industry" fuckers screaming like stuck pigs. Then maybe they'd just STFU about how YouTube is destroying their profitability. In a year or so they'd start bitching again. Lather, rinse, repeat. After a few wash cycles maybe they'd even catch on.
Anyone for whom this news is important, interesting, or titillating is probably in the loop already. Everyone else probably lost interest at "10%". I find it hard to believe this submission was modded up by enough Slashdot members to have made the cut, unless "slownewsday" now counts as an upvote instead of a downvote.
The bill's sponsor, Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-NC) described HR 5606 as an attempt "to stop the flow of illicit dollars to criminals and terror organizations."
The bill's sponsor, Congressman Robert Pittenger (R-NC) probably thinks of HR 5606 as a huge step forward "in improving the ease and profitability of asset forfeiture, expanding its scope to include even more innocent citizens."
We like to pretend that Mozilla was something more than it was, but the reality is this is what they've always been.
I remember when Mozilla actually took users' desires seriously and used their feedback to help shape the browser. And I remember when they were proud of Add-ons - now they seem to regard them as a millstone around their necks. So no, I don't agree that Mozilla has always been this way.
We'll pull out all the irrational arguments that they've changed, but that's really just a reflection of where we've gone, not where they've gone.
For me, it's probably a reflection of where I haven't gone - namely, to minimalist GUI fads that give me jack shit when it comes to configurability and customization, and to products that are not only aimed at the lowest common denominator, but are purposely designed so they can't be raised above that level.
If it wasn't for Pale Moon, I'd still need Mozilla. And really, I still do need them anyway, because Pale Moon relies on them as an upstream for security updates. For me, there is no substitute for FireFox or a derivative, because of its extensions - especially Tab Mix Plus. And also because of 'about:config' - I have quite a few customizations in there that no other browser developers would even think of making available. I've tried other browsers, and I last less than a day on them. I think that if Mozilla hadn't lost its direction and started jumping on every flavour-of-the-month bandwagon that rolls through town, they'd dominate the browser market now.
that politicians and lawmakers consider themselves beholden only to lobby groups and corporations:
"But, even though the vast majority of the responses urged the authorities not to up the prison term, lawmakers decided otherwise."
The electorate? Fuck'em. That's what governments say, and they're starting to say it more and more openly. Citizens around the world need leashes on their 'leaders' - and for at least the worst offenders, I'm NOT speaking figuratively.