Well, governments also used to kill people in large numbers, people used to slaughter each other, and all sorts of other horrible things used to happen. Hopefully, we can fix government by democratic and peaceful means this time around, just like we have learned to do a lot of other things better over the last few centuries.
Unfortunately, Schneier doesn't go far enough. The problem isn't specifically that the US government has betrayed the Internet, the problem is that governments in general have acquired too much power over our lives. In the US, between Obamacare, e-Verify, gun registration, income tax, banking regulation (and the associated data disclosures), TSA, DHS, and other laws, the federal government would get detailed and personal information over every aspect of our lives even if there were no Internet at all.
We need a fundamental shift of government power back from the federal government to state and local governments, and we need to limit government power in general. But that requires sacrifices. Unfortunately, many of the same people who complain about the NSA are unwilling to actually make the necessary sacrifices; they erroneously think that there is some magic solution that keeps the government out of people's hair while still delivering a social welfare state.
(1) We need to adopt technologies that are secure no matter what the government wants.
(2) We need to reduce and devolve the power of government in general in all areas: defense, federal police, welfare, health care, monetary policy, economic policy, etc. And that needs to happen in both the US and Europe.
but the US has proved to be an unethical steward of the internet. The UK is no better
Any nation would prove to be an unethical steward of the Internet: power tempts and corrupts, whether it's the power to control the Internet, the power to wage war and kill people, the power to mess with the economy, or the power to hand out "benefits" to people.
The only solution to any of these problems is to rely on decentralized mechanisms that can't be controlled and corrupted by central authorities, and to limit the power of governments as much as possible and to the absolute minimum.
There were many attempts to index the web and create search engines around that time. I find it a stretch to call JumpStation "the first practical" search engine.
In any case, the article is right that trying to get a high-tech company off the ground in Europe is an exercise in frustration. The UK is probably still better than the rest of Europe.
Everyone deserves a fair trial. The plea bargaining system, "Parallel construction", and use of confidential informants / jail house snitches in the USA greatly undermines the credibility of anyone that claims the right to a fair trial exists in the United States.
I see nothing unfair about plea bargaining. Informants are widely used everywhere. And "parallel construction" is illegal.
Somewhere along the way the United States Department of Justice lost its respect for the rule of law. When you have access to extraordinary investigative tools, the constitutional protections(which were intended to accompany the 4th amendment) begin to look antiquated. But that was exactly the purpose of the 4th amendment. Without protections against wholesale fishing expeditions, there is nothing that will stop confirmation bias and political considerations from eroding away any remaining protections for the people who have fallen victim to prejudice based on secret & circumstantial evidence taken out of context.
That's a very nice speech and I hope Obama takes it to heart. But few other justice systems are any better.
Because in order to subject someone to extradition, they ought to be able present some pretty convincing evidence, much more than for a simple domestic case. So, once they extradite someone, the probability that that person gets convicted should be a lot higher.
You really want those who are doing the prosecuting prosecuting to have the means to bias an independent judiciary and randomly-selected jury of their peers?
their entire society has been destroyed and will never recover.
As I was saying, I prefer the US to be much more isolationist. But most of the places the US intervened in were disaster areas long before the US ever did anything, including Central America.
In most civilized nations, they have to provide a fair (and open) trial, observe due process, and basically respect basic human rights, even if you're a threat to national security. There are international treaties on this. It is not exceptional.
They have to in the US; that's the Constitution and the law. Unfortunately, power-mad politicians like Bush and Obama are ignoring the law, and Congress is too timid to challenge them.
Other nations don't end up with camps full of prisoners of war not because they are "more civilized", but because they are never even faced with the choice; it's easy to whine and complain if you live in Hong Kong, New Zealand, or Iceland: you can leave all the dirty work to others.
Well, I agree that this is not good for the US but the main issue I see is with the nation's global reputation. This doesn't seem important to you, so why do you think it's bad?
The US has never had a good global reputation among Europeans, and we will never get one no matter what we do.
The reason we should stop bombing other countries is because (1) it's expensive, (2) because it leads to blowback from terrorism, and (3) because it gets the people responsible for those messes off the hook.
Almost every single quagmire the US has been involved in (Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Russia, etc.) was started by European colonialism and/or policies, and usually the US has acted on request by Europeans. It's time the people who are actually responsible to pay the financial, political, and human price for their deeds.
In that case US officials should shut up about human rights abuses in these countries.
That makes no sense. Besides, there are a lot of things I'd like our politicians to shut up about, but I guarantee you, complaining about human rights abuses elsewhere is near the bottom of that list.
Not really. $48 billion in trade is no trivial amount even if trade with Europe is larger.
And if the $48b in trade were stopped, nothing would change anyway but both Americans and ordinary Saudis would be worse off. Just because you think that trade embargoes are the right way to deal with every human rights issue doesn't mean it's true.
Sure. And they're guilty of the same thing, and lose moral authority in the same way. The same areguments apply to these as to the US.
You say that as if I anybody should give a damn about who you believe has "moral authority". I really don't care what Obama tells you. Frankly, all I care about is that he stop bombing other countries because it's not good for the US when he does.
Its countries like Russia and China. Places where we'd like to see better due process and better human rights because this is beneficial to everyone.
It's not America's job (nor within America's abilities) to fix Russia or China by exerting pressure.
The fact that the "being treated more nicely" invloves the US turning a blind eye to considerably worse harm being done to the majority of the citizens of Saudi Arabia than those allged terorists are ever likely to do.
Here, too, you overestimate the abilities of the US. The fact that, for example, Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian state that commits human rights abuses against its citizens is a given. No amount of US pressure is going to change that, if not for any other reason than that the major trading partners for Saudi Arabia are in Asia and Europe. In particular, Europe exports four times as many arms to Saudi Arabia (in dollars) than the US does. Germany does huge deals with Russia and China.
I'm not talking about Europe. They're enlightened enough not to use the US as a model.
You're right there: instead of standing by its actions, Europe just quietly deals with all these totalitarian regimes with few restrictions and then blames the US. That is much more enlightened, because it obviously bamboozles people like you.
The fact that Obama does this doesn't mean other countries don't use rights abuses by the US to justify their own
Other countries use US policies to justify their rights abuses no matter what. Even Hitler did so, and the policies he justified were nothing like what existed in the US. The point is, the US could be a model democracy and European leaders would still use it to justify their own rotten policies.
American pressure to reduce human rights abuses in other countries tends to be weakened if a country reserves the right to hold, interrogate and search people, and sieze their property, without allowing them any legal representation.
Yes, the US is nicer to dictatorships that cooperate with its law enforcement and spy agencies than to dictatorships that harbor terrorists and engage in drug smuggling. If Saudi Arabia delivers Al Quaeda terrorists into the hands of US authorities without due process, it is being treated more nicely than when the Taliban doesn't. Your problem with that is... what?
Forgot GITMO and the number of people detained there without ever having seen a judge, or a lawyer?
That's little different from the imprisonment refugees suffer in places like Germany and Australia. Australia has even set up extraterritorial detention camps in places like Nauru.
A country where you can be taken off the street without any cause, just by labeling you a 'terrorist' sounds just like the Soviet Union, North Korea and Nazi Germany..
If you are considered a threat to national security, you can be taken off the street in pretty much any nation. The only thing that's unusual about the US is that this didn't use to happen here. And the sooner we return that exceptional status among nations, the better.
Is the US doing things it shouldn't be (Spying on its citizens, TSA, etc.), sure. But that is far from Soviet Union, North Korea, Nazi Germany. You know, actual Totalitarian Police States.
And it is, in fact, not very different from what many other nations are already doing. Modern Germany, France, the UK, and lots of other nations have been spying on their citizens for decades and are still much more intrusive into their citizens' personal lives than even the US under Obama.
Throughout its history, the US has more or less never had any interest in the well-being of other nations they enter relations with.
No, it hasn't. I'm not sure whatever gave you the idea that it did, or that it should have. America has only ever acted in its own self-interest, and done so unapologetically.
then the best thing for the world is for them to have less of an influence in strong-arming other nations into agreeing with them.
I doubt that that's the "best thing". America's economic self-interest is still a lot more benign than Germany's, France's, the UK's, Russia's, or China's have ever been. And those nations don't have any interest in your well-being, wherever you may be, either.
This influence historically has come largely from dominating economic pressure, but we'll see if it lasts - hopefully it doesn't. The last thing the world needs is to become more like the US.
Yeah, because Europe, Russia, and Asia were doing so well when they ran things according to their ideologies, right?
The discussion is not about how much hassle it is to get into a country, but whether you can be "detained, searched, and interrogated" pretty much arbitrarily. And that is happening everywhere: they can do that to you anywhere in Europe and anywhere else in the world.
In addition, people are so closely tracked and monitored inside Europe that they need less border control. Once you're in the US, you can still pretty much disappear and live as an illegal alien.
That may be true, however I fail to see how conservatives would like strong government involvement in the economy. If they do, they aren't real conservatives.
You don't get to define what "real conservatives" are; conservatives are what conservatives do, and in practice, they interfere in the economy for their own purposes as much as liberals/progressives.
1) America has a significant tradition and history of immigration and open borders. The country was founded on the basis of immigration.
It also has a long history of opposition to immigration, from the right because of cultural issues, and from the left because of erroneous economic beliefs. Furthermore, liberal immigration policies don't mean liberal border crossing policies.
2) It's wildly hypocritical to have an administration (not just the current one, but in general) that espouses freedom all over the world, and make claims to freedom inside its borders, but then turns around and effectively strips all your freedoms the moment you set foot into an airport.
What happens to you when you travel internationally has nothing to do with my freedom.
And our politicians aren't "espousing freedom" in some kind of mission (although they may sound that way), what they want is purely utilitarian: they want good trading partners and peaceful neighbors for the US, and democracies of some form are better for that than colonial empires (which is what Europe tried).
When someone travels to the USA, they expect a certain amount of welcome and freedom because that's been the refrain for so many years.
"The refrain" applies to US citizens, not people who come in for a week-long tour of Disneyland. As a practical matter, we'll try to make your trip easy because we want your money, but other than that, we don't really care. Furthermore, the more freedoms we enjoy internally, the more important it becomes to weed out the riff-raff at the border.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, governments also used to kill people in large numbers, people used to slaughter each other, and all sorts of other horrible things used to happen. Hopefully, we can fix government by democratic and peaceful means this time around, just like we have learned to do a lot of other things better over the last few centuries.
Unfortunately, Schneier doesn't go far enough. The problem isn't specifically that the US government has betrayed the Internet, the problem is that governments in general have acquired too much power over our lives. In the US, between Obamacare, e-Verify, gun registration, income tax, banking regulation (and the associated data disclosures), TSA, DHS, and other laws, the federal government would get detailed and personal information over every aspect of our lives even if there were no Internet at all.
We need a fundamental shift of government power back from the federal government to state and local governments, and we need to limit government power in general. But that requires sacrifices. Unfortunately, many of the same people who complain about the NSA are unwilling to actually make the necessary sacrifices; they erroneously think that there is some magic solution that keeps the government out of people's hair while still delivering a social welfare state.
(1) We need to adopt technologies that are secure no matter what the government wants.
(2) We need to reduce and devolve the power of government in general in all areas: defense, federal police, welfare, health care, monetary policy, economic policy, etc. And that needs to happen in both the US and Europe.
Any nation would prove to be an unethical steward of the Internet: power tempts and corrupts, whether it's the power to control the Internet, the power to wage war and kill people, the power to mess with the economy, or the power to hand out "benefits" to people.
The only solution to any of these problems is to rely on decentralized mechanisms that can't be controlled and corrupted by central authorities, and to limit the power of governments as much as possible and to the absolute minimum.
There were many attempts to index the web and create search engines around that time. I find it a stretch to call JumpStation "the first practical" search engine.
In any case, the article is right that trying to get a high-tech company off the ground in Europe is an exercise in frustration. The UK is probably still better than the rest of Europe.
Apparently, they know almost nothing on me: I exist, I'm male, and I have made one purchase.
(Sorry I couldn't warn you in time; network delays, you know.)
Perhaps we didn't want a Japan or Germany at all; they could both easily have been split up and made part of neighboring nations.
I see nothing unfair about plea bargaining. Informants are widely used everywhere. And "parallel construction" is illegal.
That's a very nice speech and I hope Obama takes it to heart. But few other justice systems are any better.
Because in order to subject someone to extradition, they ought to be able present some pretty convincing evidence, much more than for a simple domestic case. So, once they extradite someone, the probability that that person gets convicted should be a lot higher.
That has nothing to do with extradition requests.
As I was saying, I prefer the US to be much more isolationist. But most of the places the US intervened in were disaster areas long before the US ever did anything, including Central America.
They have to in the US; that's the Constitution and the law. Unfortunately, power-mad politicians like Bush and Obama are ignoring the law, and Congress is too timid to challenge them.
Other nations don't end up with camps full of prisoners of war not because they are "more civilized", but because they are never even faced with the choice; it's easy to whine and complain if you live in Hong Kong, New Zealand, or Iceland: you can leave all the dirty work to others.
The US has never had a good global reputation among Europeans, and we will never get one no matter what we do.
The reason we should stop bombing other countries is because (1) it's expensive, (2) because it leads to blowback from terrorism, and (3) because it gets the people responsible for those messes off the hook.
Almost every single quagmire the US has been involved in (Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Russia, etc.) was started by European colonialism and/or policies, and usually the US has acted on request by Europeans. It's time the people who are actually responsible to pay the financial, political, and human price for their deeds.
That makes no sense. Besides, there are a lot of things I'd like our politicians to shut up about, but I guarantee you, complaining about human rights abuses elsewhere is near the bottom of that list.
And if the $48b in trade were stopped, nothing would change anyway but both Americans and ordinary Saudis would be worse off. Just because you think that trade embargoes are the right way to deal with every human rights issue doesn't mean it's true.
You say that as if I anybody should give a damn about who you believe has "moral authority". I really don't care what Obama tells you. Frankly, all I care about is that he stop bombing other countries because it's not good for the US when he does.
It's not America's job (nor within America's abilities) to fix Russia or China by exerting pressure.
Here, too, you overestimate the abilities of the US. The fact that, for example, Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian state that commits human rights abuses against its citizens is a given. No amount of US pressure is going to change that, if not for any other reason than that the major trading partners for Saudi Arabia are in Asia and Europe. In particular, Europe exports four times as many arms to Saudi Arabia (in dollars) than the US does. Germany does huge deals with Russia and China.
You're right there: instead of standing by its actions, Europe just quietly deals with all these totalitarian regimes with few restrictions and then blames the US. That is much more enlightened, because it obviously bamboozles people like you.
Other countries use US policies to justify their rights abuses no matter what. Even Hitler did so, and the policies he justified were nothing like what existed in the US. The point is, the US could be a model democracy and European leaders would still use it to justify their own rotten policies.
Yes, the US is nicer to dictatorships that cooperate with its law enforcement and spy agencies than to dictatorships that harbor terrorists and engage in drug smuggling. If Saudi Arabia delivers Al Quaeda terrorists into the hands of US authorities without due process, it is being treated more nicely than when the Taliban doesn't. Your problem with that is... what?
Compared to what?
That's little different from the imprisonment refugees suffer in places like Germany and Australia. Australia has even set up extraterritorial detention camps in places like Nauru.
If you are considered a threat to national security, you can be taken off the street in pretty much any nation. The only thing that's unusual about the US is that this didn't use to happen here. And the sooner we return that exceptional status among nations, the better.
And it is, in fact, not very different from what many other nations are already doing. Modern Germany, France, the UK, and lots of other nations have been spying on their citizens for decades and are still much more intrusive into their citizens' personal lives than even the US under Obama.
No, it hasn't. I'm not sure whatever gave you the idea that it did, or that it should have. America has only ever acted in its own self-interest, and done so unapologetically.
I doubt that that's the "best thing". America's economic self-interest is still a lot more benign than Germany's, France's, the UK's, Russia's, or China's have ever been. And those nations don't have any interest in your well-being, wherever you may be, either.
Yeah, because Europe, Russia, and Asia were doing so well when they ran things according to their ideologies, right?
I sure hope that if the US goes through the trouble of extraditing someone, its case is "biased towards conviction".
The discussion is not about how much hassle it is to get into a country, but whether you can be "detained, searched, and interrogated" pretty much arbitrarily. And that is happening everywhere: they can do that to you anywhere in Europe and anywhere else in the world.
In addition, people are so closely tracked and monitored inside Europe that they need less border control. Once you're in the US, you can still pretty much disappear and live as an illegal alien.
You don't get to define what "real conservatives" are; conservatives are what conservatives do, and in practice, they interfere in the economy for their own purposes as much as liberals/progressives.
Yes it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation
It also has a long history of opposition to immigration, from the right because of cultural issues, and from the left because of erroneous economic beliefs. Furthermore, liberal immigration policies don't mean liberal border crossing policies.
What happens to you when you travel internationally has nothing to do with my freedom.
And our politicians aren't "espousing freedom" in some kind of mission (although they may sound that way), what they want is purely utilitarian: they want good trading partners and peaceful neighbors for the US, and democracies of some form are better for that than colonial empires (which is what Europe tried).
"The refrain" applies to US citizens, not people who come in for a week-long tour of Disneyland. As a practical matter, we'll try to make your trip easy because we want your money, but other than that, we don't really care. Furthermore, the more freedoms we enjoy internally, the more important it becomes to weed out the riff-raff at the border.