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Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

Government debanked the lockdown protestors in Canada. Freezing their bank accounts. So people started giving them cash so they have something for food. But imagine if you couldn't buy bread because government decided you shouldn't oppose their lockdown policy. Without cash, you are a slave to the state, and can't have food unless they say you can.

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This, and I cannot agree enough. Generally speaking, governments don't always have your best interests in mind.

> Generally speaking, governments don't always have your best interests in mind

Generally speaking, this a massive stretch for a democratic country such as Switzerland. What is the government there but a representation of it's citizens?

> What is the government ...

Extreme naivety or trolling?

A government's highest priority is keeping itself in power at all cost.

> What is the government there but a representation of it's citizens?

Situations sometimes come up that the people don’t exactly get a chance to vote on. For instance, no one in the US in 2018 ran on a “if there’s a dangerous respiratory virus circulating in the future I vow to lock the country down to the best of my ability and mandate vaccines that have been fast-tracked” platform, and such a candidate likely wouldn’t win. But here we are.

That's a rather poor example. Nobody campaigns on "If an earthquake/hurricane strikes, I vow to respect and implement the advice of the relevant agencies whose entire job is it to deal with this kind of stuff", because it's kind of a given.

Not only a slave to the state, but a slave to private companies. Most electronic payments, including cards and apps are via companies (as opposed to govt). Who wants companies to have more control over their life?

most people who have never experienced real hunger do not understand this

Don't get me wrong, but the government asked the fringers to leave nicely, then demanded they leave... other than amassing an army and arresting them all, I don't see what else they could have done to make them listen.

> amassing an army and arresting them all

This is acceptable. Everyone should have an inalienable right to proof of identity and access to an electronic funds account, regardless of their crimes. If the government wants to seize funds, they can go to court and prove the crime.

If I'm not mistaken, freezing their bank accounts did need some sort of court approval... You can't just walk into a bank and say "Hi, I want you to make sure this list of people can't continue business as usual".

Edit: I don't think an army would have been the best solution either... Since the protest, many of those same people are now part of the defund police protests. Imagine the mess that would have happened if the police had showed up in military gear and arrested thousands of people...

Freezing bank accounts is not acceptable, since that is currently the mechanism for electronic money transfer. It is like taking away someone’s right to own or use cash.

If a crime has been committed, and there is a fine with the crime, and there is a conviction of the crime, then the government taking money from the electronic account as payment for the fine is OK.

But the right to engage in transactions should never be able to be taken away.

Tell that to the government then, it's not like they held a referendum to ask us what our opinion was. I'm just saying this method was less violent than the alternative.

That was the point the government was making. They had so much power, they do not even need to be violent, they could strip their livelihood with a few clerical actions. Which means due process and all that is just a formality, that can apparently be ignored when politically convenient.

I'm not sure if you are aware. But the government resorted to the "alternative" violence to end the protest anyway. There's videos on youtube of the mass arrests (crackdown) if you're curious. A grandma gets trampled by a police horse, and some arrested are battered with batons in Ottawa.

In Windsor they used tow trucks from Michigan to clear out the protestors trucks. Which if you think about it, Canada government used foreign aid to end a protest against itself.

You are mistaken. Since Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act he didn’t need a court order to freeze bank accounts. The feds literally went on record stating that freezing bank accounts was used as a deterrent from people protesting. There was no judicial or legislative process involved in unilaterally cutting off people from all of their funds.

Sounds like the banks asked the court anyways. https://globalnews.ca/news/8615490/td-bank-freezes-accounts-...

And there was a review after the fact if the emergency powers were used appropriately, and that review just finished and said that yes, Trudeau was in his right and didn't abuse the emergency powers.

A review which found that Trudeau was justified does not change anything I said. I personally haven’t read the entire report so I wont comment on whether or not I believe the actions were justified.

The reality is that it is legal for the Canadian state to extrajudicially suppress protests, hence why it is important to have cash around because of these laws.

Also what if the use of the Emergency Act is found to NOT be justified in a report a year later? How are you going to make those who had their bank accounts frozen whole again? A report in one years time in the future is not going to help you buy food or pay for shelter today.

At least if you capture someone you have to feed them. But if you freeze their money? That's hell

Right to assembly and protest are inalienable rights. Do you feel the same way towards the chinese being harsh with hong kong protestors? or should they simply go home when asked?

Doesn't really seem like due process.

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