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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

"Mullvad's vision is to make censorship and mass surveillance impractical."

I'm pretty convinced that the only way to do this is through enforceable legal restrictions, not through technology. This is because those with deep pockets (nation-states and multinational corporations) will always have the technological edge over any average user.

In addition, any operating business has to operate under the laws of the host country, see what happened with Lavabits and its refusal to hand over email encryption keys in 2013:

"The court ordered Levison to be fined $5,000 a day beginning 6 August until he handed over electronic copies of the keys. Two days later Levison handed over the keys hours after he shuttered Lavabit."

The only way to stop nation-states and multinationals from spying on everyone and everything is to make it illegal for them to do so, and to enforce those laws with meaningful punishments.

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This sounds naive.

Part of a problem is that people with legislation-changing privileges are on the other side of the conflict.

If privacy-seeking people don't have a practical leverage for a negotiation, they can't sustain the legislation and enforcement tilted in their favour.

For example, the USSR was meant to be a very liberal and democratic state. At the very beginning, soldiers elected their officers! How long ago have you voted for your favorite manager to manage you at work? But given the "network effects" of the armed and aggressive party organization, the power was quickly centralized and pretty soon lowly individuals' needs and lives were worth nothing.

Well, there was no Bill of Rights in the Soviet Union... or China... or Saudi Arabia. And that Bill of Rights provides a legal basis for opposition to an American government that clearly envies Chinese and Saudi state control systems.

Now my point is simply that technology has not allowed repressed people in Saudi Arabia or China to defeat or evade state surveillance technology, has it? Now, I have no doubt the US government would love to have that kind of power - and the only thing stopping it from reaching out and taking that power is the legal system.

Of course, blatant violation of the legal system by the state is possible. So is violent armed resistance and civil war. But, I think a government that tried to toss the Bill of Rights would be a government with no legitimacy. See Declaration of Independence.

Many countries around the world have functioning liberal democracies; it's arguably the most overwhelming political success in history - when has a form of government swept the world with such success?

Many countries protect privacy; the EU is off to a good start on that. Yours can too if you make it happen.

The USSR was never meant to be a very liberal and democratic state.

For one example, Soviets forcibly disbanded the (democratically elected) Constituent Assembly after 13 hours of operation, because they didn't get the majority in it, and couldn't influence its decision - and this happened several years before the USSR was even formed.

For another example, the very first Soviet constitution (of 1918; again, before USSR was even a thing!) allocated voting power as follows:

"The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of representatives of urban soviets (one delegate for 25,000 voters), and of representatives of the provincial (gubernia) congresses of soviets (one delegate for 125,000 inhabitants)."

That is, one urban vote counted for 5 rural votes. Most rural votes (and thus votes in general, back then) were those of peasants, who tended to vote for parties such as SR. Urban votes, on the other hand, were mostly factory workers, who tended to support Bolsheviks.

Furthermore, the same constitution outright banned several groups of people from voting:

"(a) Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain form it an increase in profits; (b) Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.; (c) Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers; (d) Monks and clergy of all denominations;"

As for liberal, one of the first Bolshevik decrees was the "decree on the press", which specifically stated that "bourgeois press" is not subject to freedom of speech. Or we could talk about how the Constitutional Democrat party was banned outright a few weeks later, and its members subject to arrest.

The way to stop nation-state-level spying is, if I understand correctly, to make it illegal? I'm not sure I follow.

Well, prior to the legal system, the only way to resolve conflicts between humans was, well, violence. So, if the legal system loses legitimacy, we are back to violence as a dispute resolution system. Probably not a good idea, unless there's an authoritarian imperial Nazi setup that need to be sent down to Hell.

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