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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

The government doesn’t “enforce rights”. They take rights away from people. Laws by definition limit what you can do.

A company can only “violate my rights” if I choose to use those services. It’s much easier not to for instance use a phone with an operating system controlled by an adTech company than it is to not have to deal with a government.

Do you really think a government that always pushes the limit on being a surveillance state cares about your “privacy”?

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That’s a very interesting example you choose. I wonder if you’d have a choice of mobile phones today had the US government not exercised its anti-monopoly authority with the Kingsbury Commitment and later the break-up of the Bell System.

Prior to 1983, nearly everyone in the US and Canada had to lease their physical telephones (wired and wireless) from Ma Bell, and if you didn’t like the phone Ma Bell gave you, tough luck. Your other choice was to simply not have access to the PSTN.

The government granted AT&T its monopoly before taking it away.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/finance/encyclopedias-almanacs-...

The US government accepted AT&T’s natural monopoly of telephone communications (this is the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913 mentioned in the link you provide) in exchange for their divestment of their control of other forms of telecommunication—namely telegraph communications via their controlling interest in Western Union—which was the other major important telecommunication technology at the time in the early 20th century. I can only imagine what things might be like if AT&T was allowed to keep an unchallenged natural monopoly over all forms of telecommunication and further allowed to hold that monopoly to the present day.

We already know what would happen, landlines would still become irrelevant as cellular took over. There are and were still local “natural monopolies” with phone services.

>The government doesn’t “enforce rights”. They take rights away from people. Laws by definition limit what you can do.

If you want to have rights in any meaningful sense, people's actions must be limited such that they don't violate them overmuch.

>A company can only “violate my rights” if I choose to use those services.

That's complete nonsense. But even if it were true, how do you suppose that would help you if you don't have a handy oracle that provides you perfect information about every company's actions past, present, and future? It's not as if a company is likely to advertise practices they don't want you to know about. And there's nothing (aside from the government) preventing them from deciding the day after you purchase goods from them that, for example, they're not going to honor warranties anymore. And, of course, you don't have to buy from a company for them dump industrial waste on your property.

>It’s much easier not to for instance use a phone with an operating system controlled by an adTech company than it is to not have to deal with a government.

Is it easier to purchase all your goods and services from companies that have no objectionable practices? You probably don't have many choices of ISP and it's increasingly difficult to find a TV without some manner of integrated as tech.

>Do you really think a government that always pushes the limit on being a surveillance state cares about your “privacy”?

"The government" is not a single entity with only a single goal. Do I think that well-written legislation aimed at protecting privacy would, in effect, tend to protect privacy? Of course. Do I think that would stop the NSA from violating citizens' right to privacy? Of course not.

This gets back to the 11 chapter 99 chapter GDPR that all it gave us was shitty cookie banners. Do you think US state governments would do any better?

The last law related to tech that I can think of that was user friendly was phone number portability.

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