Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksymph | Hacker News Reader

This argument consistently comes up in techie circles when it comes to regulating or outlawing, well, just about anything, and it really gets my goat.

Making something illegal is the prerequisite to enforcement. These are separate parts of the government. You can't build enforcement infrastructure around something that isn't yet illegal! You don't even know what that would look like until you know what the laws you're enforcing are. Enforcement is the goal of these processes, the laws are the foundation from which enforcement stems.

It is true that simply putting a law down doesn't mean the problem is solved. But solving these problems doesn't happen all at once, so there's no reason to criticize the first step for not being a leap to the finish line.

View on HN

It's the same critiques that come up with taxing the rich. "Oh people will just evade it". Cool then nail them then. Or if they all want to move to tiny tax shelters then tax them when they move their money there.

They want you to believe it's not possible to restrict them so that you don't try.

Good comparison! The best part is that it's not even true! Tax evasion is far from common, as no one wants to go to jail. It's tax… optimization? that's the problem.

In other words, the rich don't generally break the law to avoid paying taxes. Rather, they find _legal_ loopholes that work for them, and even create them through lobbying.

Which suggests that legal measures _would_ be likely to work!

To the common man, there is no real difference between tax evasion and tax "optimization". Especially since the people who most use those "optimizations" often have excessive impact on the writing of the tax code in the first place!

Well sure, making things illegal is better than letting things be illegal, but the current government gets away with a lot of illegal shit so the skepticism is warranted.

I think what people want is just tearing all of the cameras down. Law enforcement had their chance to prove flock cameras were good. They proved to be poor stewards for the technology. Now get them the fuck off our streets.

Third party audits should be part of the enforcement. And even then, those third parties should be vetted and have full daylight as to ownership, conflicts of interest, etc.

Or it's just a flood of comments trying to take the moral high ground without actually helping in any way the cause. I'll call it pure aura farming or something, because I totally fail to see how constant bickering about any fixes is actually doing any fixing. Yes, I'm irritated.

In this case what you've proposed is the exact same setup FISA, and other "national security" collection works under. Does this system work? who knows the people policing themselves won't say

Even if it's enforced, you're one terrorist attack or child kidnapping case + PR campaign away from it being changed.

So in the second push add a periodic audit requirement. In the third push mandate unmodifiable firmware and certain physical anti-tamper features. At some point circumventing the law using the existing infrastructure becomes similarly difficult to installing all new infrastructure.

The problem is, these "consecutive pushes" for reform rarely happen in practice and get silently shelved. That's how it went in Germany with a lot of things, anywhere from the Hartz IV reforms two decades ago all the way through the half-finished cannabis legalisation - and we have four years of legislative periods, while the US House is reelected every two years which leaves just one year (if not less) of productive work time.

System that requires police to police itself does not work.

Selective enforcement is worse than no law at all.

The first step would be not to set up a surveillance system.

> You can't build enforcement infrastructure around something that isn't yet illegal!

Yes. Yet merely making something illegal must not be an excuse to set up something that is sooo easy to breach.

In other words, stealing being illegal does not make it a good idea to recklessly leave stacked banknotes unattended on my lawn.

Yeah? Laws are how we encode society’s preference that we not do something.

Laws encode the preferences of a subset of society.

Some laws don't reflect what broader society thinks at all.

Having laws is generally a good thing when they are enforced. A law that is not enforced, selectively enforced or not enforceable is actually worse than no law since it gives power and agency to the enforcer without providing much to the people.

Edit: this being said, the New Hampshire laws above seem to be mandating that the data is deleted. Not that it is not accessed. It seems like pretty good start.

But there also could be a law stating "do not set up mass surveillance camera network in public areas".

Quis custodiet ipso custodes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com