Have you been to a city council meeting lately ? Ever?
I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck.
Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly.
It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show.
So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all
Of course the system has a rather obvious remediation for that. You could also run for office or find a kindred spirit to support.
Trying to one to one with a representative or a council just sends them a signal to not care. You're one of n constituents. Showing up to the city council meeting without bringing an exponential curve of people with you over a short enough amount of time in support of your cause simply confirms to your representatives your cause is marginal.
If you are already cutting clips you might as well bite the bullet and run for office. Best of luck with your foray in democracy!
I'm part of org working with ACLU, EFF and actual more important and active orgs that would would not know about.
When I go to city council, its with 50 other peoples and 4 or 5 other speakers.
Its when we need to have our representative on the record.
Me and other folks in that loose network of org have forced our city to pass regulations, have our police force admit they use surveillance without oversifht, and expose their poor security practice overall.
Good luck in your comfort that your country is not broken
It's my hobby! some people like 3d printing or trolling on the internet.
I like to prevent my city council to implement more surveillance and expose how cosy they are with the companies selling said surveillance.
>So you accomplished all these things and yet the country is broken
Yes. Those things are meaningless in the face of 3 letter agency capability or broad stroke regulation like FISA (recent big win by the folks at RT4 there, normies have not heard of it but those people did a great job at influencing republican politician )
> Did you not get everything you wanted fast enough? How sad :(
I mostly want privacy, for myself and the people who seek it.
I don't find that too much to ask in a country that is fast to point the finger at China "dystopian level of surveillance"
10 years is a sizeable slice of life. Their was some progress and wins. And those days the zeitgeist is on our side.
If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Sadness is part of life. I actually respect the work you do, your own obvious condescension aside ("normies" and so forth). I guess we can allow it given this is probably a typical attitude of those who are deeply enmeshed in these issues while others just go on about their lives.
I simply ask you to consider the counterfactual to your original articulation in this thread.
If one or a handful of people showing up could simply change the law or the prevailing order by the force of their minority stamina alone that would not be a desirable society, now would it? As someone who has been to more than a few city council meetings you have surely encountered some of these people. In your case, I would too wish the path was easier. But if you could get everything you wanted right away then doing so would open the door to any crackpot. There is normative value in making change hard, even if in specific cases, this comes across as cruelty, corruption, and so forth. We could do a lot worse. Government in large part exists because people favor corruption over bloodshed. Are you any different? What is today your hobby was something some ancestor of yours doubtlessly lost their lives over. It is fine to be a little demoralized now and again, but let us not spread the gospel of the needlessly catastrophic. Such an outlook is highly disrespectful to the reality of our collective situation and our history.
If you have an alternative formulation to govern man, which is somehow neither resistant to your own ideas, nor any opposition of your neighbors, please describe it.
Until then:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...
Oh,there is a constitutional basis to what we're doing.
The 4th amendment regulate searches and seizure.
I would like the government bodies that have to follow the constitution to respect that.
When Flock track movement at scale, when skydio film with uncanny accuracy, when Leonardo build a unique id from your devices. This is infringement. ( See : kyllo vs USA )
I'm playing by the rules of democracy here. And yet you want to explain to me that democracy is hard and compromise frustrating.
Yes, I know! And I'm not asking for another system. I'm asking for accountably, transparency in decision, and actual representation of the voters.
--
I've talk a lot. Do you think there is a problem in 2026 with local laws enforcement buying military grade surveillance services from private company without oversight ?
Or is it normal ? Maybe I should just chill and pick another hobby. Who care after all? Our leaders know better, I should trust them, their will be no abuse! Not here.
The only thing I am pushing back against is your exhortations to fatalism. Let's be clear about how you started this thread. Walking your critique back to something more reasonable is appreciated.
Where do I exhort to fatalism?
That would mean : "there is nothing to be done, why bother"
Let's not turn the table here, I'm the one with a hobby of parsing system logs from surveillance system to prove that police forces are abusing it.
That's not exactly the definition of "letting fate decide". I'm taking action to support my beliefs . To both society and the legal system of our country.
What you might have confused with fatalism is my bleak view on our elected officials. I do have low esteem of them.
But I don't think that all elected official are bad. I think they mostly stay too long in power and end up clinging to it, and, yes, getting corrupted in the process.
That last part often bring gasp and shock. But we have to come to term with it: as you stated, no humans are angel, and our elected official have problems.
Nothing that could not be fixed with the right amount of accountability.
That is certainly not how you came across earlier.
To answer the question in your first sentence, allow me to quote you:
Have you been to a city council meeting lately ? Ever?
I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck. Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly. It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show
and later:
Good luck in your comfort that your country is not broken
I am glad to know after this back and forth that you have a more sensible position. Perhaps I misread you, perhaps you could have articulated your original points with more subtlety. Perhaps we both have something to learn here.
Anyway, one more quote of your's I wish to highlight:
My original quote use active verbs like "pushing", and is describing action I'm taking. That does not fit the definition of fatalism
And yeah, I found you cute in your naive view of how politics work."just get in there man"
But I take it back, you are mostly repeating thing back at me and not engaging in this conversation. Not cute, boring.
Conversation is about swapping ideas. And I've been waiting for those, I'm still unclear on where you stand. Beside sounding vaguely offended? Maybe ? Hard to tell via text.
Not every lawmaker is the same and there's more than one way to get a lawmaker's attention.
Get more people with you. Or convince a group that's previously established trust in your jurisdiction to join you in speaking out. Or find out what causes the policymakers do care about and think of a compelling way to frame arguments against age verification in those terms. Heck - if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.
There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
I should have clarify, I'm part of a local group, itself part of a network of groups.
We don't do politics, we do privacy and security advocacies. It means we work with DSA, MAGA, Libertarian.
Allies that normie would known: ACLU, EFF. I talk with those folks weekly. (they talk a lot, themselve )
>There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
I should have clarify that I despite those circus so much that its our last resort. Its when we need to get them on the recort saying something. 1on1 meeting are always more productive.
> if you can get a local government agency to officially back you up, all the better.
I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.
> I should have clarify, I'm part of a local group, itself part of a network of groups.
Which is great! Though my understanding is a big weakness of the ACLU/EFF/etc... crowd is that they typically pigeonhole themselves. The ACLU immolated its hard-earned partisan-but-principled reputation in the past decade and the EFF has a reputation of keeping non-lefty-libertarians at a very long arm's length away.
Beyond that - those groups tend to be sclerotic in their coalition membership. That inflexibility isn't always great!
Take the (largely) Progressive-funded Effective Altruist movement - in particular the Center for AI Safety. They are single-minded in their political goals, going so far as to enlist the help of Glenn Beck and Steve-Bannon-associate Joe Allen. They have spun off additional organizations to cater their pro-AI-regulation framing and messaging to different audiences: conservative and biblical messaging to evangelicals, fighting social media disinformation and fascism to progressives, and a hefty dose of civic grassroots rhetoric for their social media presence.
They have goals and are willing to make unsavory temporary alliances if it means enacting regulation.
I do not see such an appetite to influence politics from most of internet civil liberties organizations.
> I should have clarify sorry: I live in the US. That seems unlikely, to say the least.
And? Corporate lobbyists do this lobbying-by-proxy crap with decent regularity. Heck - Nintendo is known to have laundered some of its lobbying through NCMEC years back and credit card companies and banks have long laundered their wishlist through various LEAs. Turns out if you get a bureaucrat to convince FBI leadership of the importance of your pet cause and the nexus it has to their agency, legislative pushes in Congress tends to follow.
That all said - it works both ways and not necessarily with any negative connotations. The DoJ and FTC in administrations-past have had representatives come to hacker conventions to describe the collaborative efforts they've had with members of the community - to include lobbying congress for legislative change.
Getting government agencies on your side as a partner in affecting policy change is relevant only if the change is seen as relevant to a given agency's mission.
They'll just do that trick where they ignore you while the government starts investigating your tax history and some private contractor starts investigating and reframing your romantic history.
Despite this, and despite the fact that all of your communications are monitored, you manage to get a crowd of people to a meeting - where you are allowed to "comment" (i.e. speak, while nobody is obliged to listen to you or react), your crowd makes a lot of joyful noise which is never broadcast on television news, and is deleted within minutes from Tiktok, Facebook, and Youtube for vague policy violations (your third appeal on youtube is accepted, and the video returns to the web a month and a half after it was filmed.)
This protest really energizes you all until the vote, when the bill you were protesting passes unanimously. Afterwards, three out of the nine people on the committee lose their seats (the other six weren't up for election that year.) One of them gets a new appointment to a more-powerful higher-paying government job; the second joins a venerable contractor that immediately starts lobbying the state for the contract; and the third, a moron, didn't realize the others were being controlled and ends up assistant manager at a local car dealership. Everything is forgotten by the next election cycle, especially because all of the leaders who showed up at meetings and wrote their representatives were smeared in the media as bad parents with questionable tattoos, and eventually moved away due to loss of employment, housing, and shortly later banking and insurance coverage.
There's a real childishness in these 50s-propaganda style views of civics. The only way something gets accomplished like that is if there is no money against it, and your "activism" makes the politician thinks that there might ultimately be money (or money-equivalent) in taking your side.
But e.g. $10M is pocket lint to people and organizations pushing this stuff. They can go around like fairies changing everyone's lives who are willing to sell out, and politicians are already pre-configured for that. They've been dreaming all their lives of selling out. Your angry letters to the manager notwithstanding.
The reasons these are eventually getting passed have nothing to do with people not speaking up or not getting their lawmaker's attention. They have to do with power, who has it, and who doesn't. It's not about whose the most virtuous and persuasive. The case for age verification is not persuasive, to anyone, and barely makes an attempt to be - they just go immediately into calling people alt-left Chinese pedophile terrorists. It's not because they're dumb.
> There's more to politics than just going to town hall meetings or sending emails or making phone calls!
Going to town hall meetings, sending emails, and making phone calls is already an enormous amount of work. It is also simply advisory to lawmakers who are not obliged to listen to you or care; trying to get daddy to understand is a good tactic only because daddy loves you.
What real politics consists of is threats. You can't threaten somebody who has backing from somebody with a hundred million dollars and an opportunity for more if they get a few votes to go the right way. Even a well-framed argument is a tool to make people who ignore it feel threatened by people who are convinced by it. Where is the threat?
There's no political way to stop this. I absolutely believe that the only reason they move even this slowly is because powerful people feel like they could be in personal physical danger if they were near the center of particular decisions or particular acts based on those decisions. It's a waiting and boiling game, where the media and government messaging gradually change public perceptions and attitudes until doing things like age gating the entire internet seem safe to do.
This has always been true buddy. No line suddenly emerged in this respect in the 50s. Politics and power are practically synonymous. Sorry you have to try harder before getting to play out your personal physical danger fantasy.
Just remember the threat works the other way around. History is riddled with people like you, so ready to get the chance to flip the table over until they realize flying cutlery comes in both directions.
We also live in a time were increasingly what one might call the "prevailing order and norms" are being challenged successfully. As of yet this has not been the result of overt threats to the personal safety of those they displaced. The end of history is now satire, and so on. Candidates that would have been considered fringe are increasingly mainstream. Really if anyone is humorously out of date here, it's you.
Pessimizer would be more interesting if you weren't so transparently pessimistic. Nice schtick though.
By whom? This is veering dangerously close to a "democracy doesn't work" argument which makes me less sympathetic and likely to believe everything else you say.
> Also, what does "making encryption illegal" entail, exactly? Does that encompass HTTPS?
Something like "we have to be able to read one of the ends of the pipe". HTTPS satisfies that definition already.
> What does not scale exactly about using encryption at rest and point to point ?
The fact that everyone has to use it for it to work everywhere. If the government tells big businesses "You can't use it" most of their users are automatically left unprotected for most of their activity.
By the company selling the product our cities are buying. In 2026, skydio DFR drones are a common example of blurry boundaries. Flock is another. Elected official "retiring" in the private sectors is common.
I'm engaging in the Democratic process. Are you ? Beside voting once a year ?
> If the government tells big businesses "You can't use it" most of their users are automatically left unprotected for most of their activity.
Absolutely. That's our near future. What does not scale in concern citizens and encryption hobbyist still choosing to use encryption from end to end?
If the US government make THAT illegal and actually enforce it.( djb style, like in the 90s ) Then I hope that technical folks would recognized that the Rubicon has been crossed.
I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly.
Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck. Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly. It will be a minor inconveniences.
what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show.
So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all