Privacy Tech vs Laws

I'm not so sure about that, you don't seem to be aware of the fact that there is an incredibly long list of examples demonstrating that governments and corporations will regularly violate the law if they have the technical means to do so. The only way to prevent abuse from these bad actors is to make such abuse either technically impossible, or immediately detrimental to their own interests (keep in mind that these are amoral actors that are historically never held to account). So what

The solution won't be technological, it will be in realm of laws and regulations. We are weak peasants and don't have any power over big tech, but we can change legal environment for them.IANAL but we (via our elected representatives) can push a law that prohibit restrictions on execution of users' code on their own devices. Or we can split app stores from vendors and obligate them to provide access to third-party stores, like we do with IE and windows.Also, it's comple

No tech can fix the lack of laws regarding rights and privacy of citizens. At best, it just slows down the encroaching.It's always laws.

To the author of the article I say, "can't we have better legislation /and/ tech hacks?"I don't think anyone would disagree with the idea that we can't solve the surveillance problems just through technology alone (apart from maybe some of the more naive HN members). But since we are partly in this mess because of technology, I don't think it's too radical to suggest that we can in part help get ourselves out of it using technology as well. To sugg

The author offers a solution that doesn't involve Google, but honestly, the solution is far more fundamental. Technology cannot protect you when your government is trying to push intrusive and oppressive laws.So -- do follow the author's recommendations, but also vote out those politicians and parties who are trying to push these laws at the local, state, and national level. That should be a coda to every one of these articles.

You can make it technologically impossible, but they can also come and arrest you just for using such technology. So its not really a technical problem, its a social/political one.

The correct way to solve this problem is through raising awareness of privacy issues and supporting efforts to create competitive and attractive open source communication protocols, not legislation enforced by a prison/military industrial complex. What you're suggesting is to hand the State further control over our choice in communications platforms and trust them to never abuse it.

This isn't really something that can be legislated. The cat is out of the bag, it's not being put back in. And closing the systems that are massive and popular will simply encourage replacements that have less restrictions. We can't even manage to legislate away the demon everyone agrees is a demon (child exploitation).Further, we are not talking about an easy to identify item like child pornography, we are talking about systems that are mostly invisible, even to professionals.

Surely it's inevitable that everything will be surveiled. The quicker we realise this and "encrypt all the things" the better.What's the point in fighting legislation when you can solve the problem with technology? If the technology doesn't exist now then this stupid legislation should spur it on.

We should push for laws and resist new acts that curtail our rights of privacy and free expression, but that is not a solution. We are generally on our own in making our choices of technology to use. If you go on using proprietary services and networks hoping that someday laws will suddenly fix all the problems, you are seriously deluded or naïve.