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Comment by exe34 | Hacker News Reader

Only until the next Reichstag fire, I suspect, because by then there won't be any more democracy.

Can you phrase your thought as a causal chain so that I don’t have to guess what you mean?

In the 1930s, the Dutch government conducted a census that included religion. The Netherlands, after all, had a comprehensive population registry system (Bevolkingsregister) established in the 19th century. This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.

After the German occupation in 1940, the Nazis accessed and exploited the Dutch population registry, including religious affiliation.

About 75–80% of the ~140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were killed.

This is the highest percentage in Western Europe.

Compare that to France, which had a more fragmented administrative system, and less complete central records and 25% of Jews in France were deported and killed — a much lower percentage than the Netherlands.

As usual, when reaching the Godwin point, the idea is not for you to take it at face value, but to extrapolate to your situation.

The concentration of power and centralized people tracking are eventually always abused, and once your system becomes less free (which has historically eventually happened on a long enough timescale), you will pay the price for it.

In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.

The more you concentrate power and feed data about people, the greater the potential damage.

And of course, it doesn't need to be a full-on dictatorship to get problems with those.

It's a spectrum of increasing problems you will get, the more you lean into it.

>This registry was centralized, continuously updated, and included religion, addresses, family connections, and occupations.

Sorry, but why would the Dutch government need to know all those details in the first place? Did Dutch citizens never ask that question back then? Nazis or no Nazis, that was an issue waiting to happen. I guess it wouldn't have mattered if they did, since the Netherlands was a kingdom and people didn't have much say into how the monarchy ran things.

Do Americans or Europeans ask any questions with regarding to why the Government wants to pass these anti-privacy laws, or how is it even supposed to reduce "child grooming", etc.?

Maybe the Dutch citizens did ask these questions you think they did not ask, but the Government won.

To do governing properly you want to understand the impact your policies are having, and I general that means more data can give you better answers. In a world where the invasion had not happened yet it was not unreasonable to collect as much as we could and store it in threefold. Things are different now, once bitten twice shy.

Your post highlights how shocked people who don't live in a database state can be when they encounter one. In the UK you can expect to be asked your ethnicity, sexuality, sex, gender, religion and a few other things every time you apply for a job or interact with the state.

Simply not true.

I was asked all of the above the last time I applied for a job, and the last time I was admitted to hospital.

That's the whole idea about this thread: you don't want the power that be to know more than it should.

And the current legal setup mean you would have to own a google account, a terrible private life setup.

In those days education and healthcare were provided by the church and the government gave each denomination money for it.

So that is why the government needed to know how many Catholics or Jews there were.

> In our case, having a full history of all opinions, interactions, locations, and behavior linked to full identity of people is what we are ultimately talking about here. It's already well on its way, but it will make it worse.

Well, not really. Age verification doesn't have to, and IMO should not, lead to a linked identity. Just a blind check "are you a real human older than X years old? Yes! OK". That way you get the benefits of age restrictions and real human validation, without any of the potential privacy ramifications.

But to be clear, most real people's online presence is under their own names (or linked trivially to their own names, like a cutesy turn on their name for an instagram handle that is linked to their Facebook account which has their full name). It's already possible, and done, to track your public social media presence and interactions. Places like HN and even Reddit are much more niche than that.

That's the whole point of this thread, the current setup makes a google account mandatory, with all the terrible consequences on private life that it has.

It should not.

This implies you can control your name being linked to your social media profile based on whether or not you type it in?

That's not required though. Your friends have already given your name to them by allowing the app access to their contacts.

This registry was centralized

Not to detract from the rest of your message, but it wasn't centralized; the data was collected and stored in each municipality separately. The only part that is centralized is the historical archive: after death, each person's info card is moved to the National Archives.

This system has never been centralized, even after digitization: birth records are still kept only in the town of birth, and when moving house your active records must be officially requested and the transfer manually authorized between municipal systems.

Thanks for this correction.

We're already there if you live in places like Germany or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate". I think France, Italy are also following the same path. You know you don't have free speech anymore, when saying facts gets you in trouble.

And this is only the beginning. It will be more and more difficult to speak against the actions of your government the more unpopular the politicians become and the more people hate the results of their policies. And instead of changing course and following the wishes of the voters, politicians instead will clamp down on free speech.

You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing? Somehow the whole rightwing discourse looks to me based on scare tactics: it will be so bad, it's not yet bad but just wait and it will be! All fortune tellers in that wing indeed.

>You mean France and Italy where the parties which blame open border policies are governing?

Is Le Pen governing in France and I'm not aware of? Because I've never seen Macron do that.

And people are the ones blaming open borders, then some parties choose to capitalize on that (even if they ultimately do nothing), while some other parties choose to suppress that viewpoint as being right wing propaganda and that in reality there are no issue with open borders, that all the crime is imaginary, which is why they push for online censorship and anti-encryption laws, to make sure only their viewpoint becomes the only legally allowed one.

Nobody is suppressing the view that outsider migrants are the root of most evil in the west, just as nobody suppressed view that the outsider Jews are the root of most evil in the west in the 1930s. It's been a mainstream view in multiple mainstream media outlets for years.

> while some other parties choose to suppress that viewpoint as being right wing propaganda and that in reality there are no issue with open borders

To start with, there is no such thing as open borders (unless you mean Schengen?).

Second, saying someone is spouting nonsense isn't "suppression". Especially when the "suppressed" viewpoint is being proudly repeated almost daily on TV, radio and online on media sponsored by billionaires investing heavily into passing this message (like Bolloré).

Third, Le Pen isn't governing in France, but her party (reminder, she was banned from standing for office for corruption and stealing public money to enrich herself and her family, so it's no longer her), which has around 1/3 of the votes is crucial in maintaining the current ruling government. Without their support, the government has ~1/3 and fails a vote of no confidence immediately (the other 1/3 hates them both and would happily bring it all down in the hopes of new elections). So they are de facto exercising a lot of control.

Let me underline again that with the "fortune teller". I don't take the absolute view on the internet freedom of speech, that hate speech should be allowed. As hate speech is not allowed on the playground (you get your parents called in) and not allowed on the street (you get slapped) it's not acceptable on the internet either. We can talk details, that the current implementation is faulty, and please come up with proposal how to make it better without running into the full censorship which nobody wants, but also not allowing campaigns based on straight out lying - campaigns all too pervasive nowadays (and yes in real life lying is penalized as well, so there). Or ok if you think lying and aggression on the internet should be permitted because dunno internet, at least be sincere with that and don't beat around the bush showing an imaginary boogieman.

>that hate speech should be allowed

You're moving the goalposts to hate speech. When saying uncomfortable negative facts about government's actions are considered "hate speech" then you're no longer living in a free country. You must realize that.

The whole hate speech can of worms is such a dangerous slippery slope since the government can just sweep all criticism of itself and its actions as "hate speech" whenever it feels like it, and just ban it, problem solved, no more criticism, all citizens are happy, just like in USSR.

"Hate speech" is too broad of an umbrella to ensure it will never be used in bad faith because it 100% will be and it is. Whichever political party will come to power next will 100% gonna weaponize the existing speech censorship rules implemented by previous regimes, in its own favor to further entrench their own power. History proves this yet people are oblivious an think the solution is even more speech censorship.

Like you correctly underlined, we are talking here about a slippery slope. Because all what you present is imaginary implications - in the realm of possibility, I agree, just still imaginary in this moment. Now, what could be done to avoid the slippery slope? Is the law really saying "hate speech" without any qualifications?

Nothing I said is imaginary. That's like saying Hitler's rise to power was imaginary or that the Holocaust was imaginary. If it were imaginary they won't be spending so much effort on censorship.

It's the classic subversion and propaganda stages of denial, the deeper you dive:

  Stage 1: It's not happening, you're just imagining it

  Stage 2: OK, it's happening but only a little bit no need to exaggerate

  Stage 3: OK it's happening a lot but here's why it's a good thing that it's happening

The National Rally is not governing in France neither is Reconquest. You might want to check your facts.

>Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there, and there's a high chance police will knock on your door for "being a right supremacist" and for committing the "speech of hate".

In the UK that happened when a woman phrased her criticism of open border policies as a call for migrant hotels to be burned down.

This was controversial as many who wanted closed border policies (like Nigel Farage and supporters) thought that rallying crys to re-enact some kind of version of kristallnacht should count as protected political speech.

I was talking about something else: Nick Griffin and Mark Collett (2004–2006) and Ann Cryer (2003) who got dragged through the courts for "race hate" for speaking up against the Muslim grooming gangs, which the political establishment brushed off as racism and hate speech, until they couldn't cover it up anymore.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/6135060....

Now it would be naive to assume the political establishment only stopped at one cover up and there's not more under the rug that haven't been yet uncovered.

Just like with the post office workers scandal, you realize the political establishment doesn't exist to protect you the taxpayer, it only exists to protect itself from the accountability of its citizens and will go to great length in censorship, suppression and legal battles to defend itself, since there's nothing for them to loose if they loose, as none of them are ever going to jail for their mistakes, but if they win, then their image stays clean and can stay in power for longer.

> Mr Griffin had described Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith"

I see, he was really helping his case here, sounds like a cultured and educated gentleman.

Ah yes, that totally nullifies my clients' rape charges your honor. Sure there's whiteness and DNA evidence, but he insulted their religion and since nobody ever gets away with insulting Christianity in this country, they get a free pass from the rapes as compensation for their trauma.

There’s nothing in your article about the rape so I’d have to trust you on that, but I can’t given how liberally you mix your own beliefs with sourced information.

You do you mate, I'm not here to convince you of anything, believe whatever you want, I don't care, since I'll keep doing what is best for me.

> or the UK. Go on social media and criticize some politicians in the UK/DE about their open borders policies being directly responsible for some of the terror attacks there,

Could you give any examples of this happening? I assume you aren't referring to the one who called for migrant hotels to be burned down with brown people inside in the middle of race riots?

This is an article that I came across a while ago that speaks to a number of instances in Germany and the UK of people arrested for speech that would be considered acceptable in the states.

Things like calling politicians idiots, giving the middle finger to someone, and insinuating government policy is ineffective.

https://thedispatch.com/article/europe-germany-britain-free-...

Yeah, none of that is criticism of policies themselves, it’s all attacks on people or individuals.

"Attacks" with a middle finger?

Show me the story, and it it’s as portrayed (someone went to jail for flipping a politician off), I’ll change my mind.

Until then, it’s made up.

Not to mention that it’s irrelevant to the the original point about hate speech and migration but whatever, you managed to change the goalposts now defend the new ones :)

The OP referred to Germany. Never mind politicians, a quick search brought up a couple of cases where people faced serious penalties including driving bans for flipping off an unmanned speed camera. [1,2] Failure to pay the resulting four-figure fines would certainly have resulted in jail sentences.

I can't find any backing for their assertion that people have gone to jail for obscene gestures toward government entities in either Germany or the UK, but obviously we have already slipped a long way down that particular slope. Apathy doesn't seem like the smart option. It's hard to put it any better than you did yourself: "Here the wolf is clearly visible."

1: https://driving.ca/auto-news/entertainment/middle-finger-to-...

2: https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/germany-news/driver-gives...

It seems like you’re desperately reaching.

Yes but not the politicians but the police. Yes but not hate speech but criticism of policy. Yes but not criticism of policy but the middle finger. Yes but not to jail but a fine. Yes but…

Meanwhile in the US flipping the man off costs 175000 dollars: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna159185

It’s hilarious.

I was able to open that link through archive.org, and searched for "finger", but it wasn't found. I assume you made it all up?

Please link to sources where this has happend in Germany.

https://archive.is/I53tT

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros...

https://extremism.gwu.edu/fighting-hate-speech-germany

https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/06/german-fined-e6000-for-vio...

https://www.dw.com/en/german-man-receives-fine-after-insulti...

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/german-woman-fined-faceboo...

Yeah, none of these are actually about criticizing policies.

All of these are cases of targeting groups of people or individuals.

I guess some people just can’t grasp that distinction?

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