Comment by fweespeech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fweespeech | Hacker News Reader

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> It's where I want to go. Also you have YET to show ANY evidence that we are more safe or more free from terrorism by surrounding our rights to privacy.

If they could show that, credible evidence would have presented by now. ;)

But in all seriousness, the 1st & 4th amendment protections are the most vital freedoms we have and they should not be abridged outside of a direct link to harm. [e.g. Things like child porn, words designed to incite violent harm, violent prisoners shouldn't have privacy ]

So you have to be rational about it but yeah, mass surveillance and reducing self-defense tools to protect ourselves against criminals isn't "rational" behavior.

Criminals are going to do illegal things and we have the right to protect ourselves. If it inconvenience the government? So be it. I'm not going to bend over for any criminal who wants access to my financial data "because Terrorism".

Similarly, banning tools of self-defense [e.g. encryption for financial data, access keys] are simply guaranteeing the criminals will be the only ones to possess them.

I'm aware alot of people will be like "what about the 2nd"??

Yeah, that provides no protection against the government since they'll always have the ability to drop bombs on you. When you can afford a F-16 and the ability to pilot it for "self defense" purposes, let me know.

Self-defense is an interesting approach to privacy.

So far, we've been treating encryption as a matter of privacy (Fourth Amendment). But since the U.S. government has historically treated encryption as a weapon, perhaps we could also argue that encryption is a matter of the Second Amendment. It would be really interesting to get the NRA, Rand Paul, and Bernie Sanders to speak out in favor of encryption at the same time...

Of course, the flip side of this approach is that it's much easier to support restrictions on the possession, use, and export of weapons. "Export-grade" ciphers are still causing issues 20 years later.

And just for the hell of it, let's throw in the (nearly-never cited) 3rd Amendment.

It "places restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent". This explicitly was to prevent citizens from having to bear the capital costs associated with the government's own decisions, but it also appears to have been borne out of a fear of having a government agent be able to observe one's most private affairs.

For better or worse, the 3rd amendment doesn't come with the precedents of the 2nd or 4th. There is an argument to be made that by having a General of the US Military capable of monitoring me while sitting on my couch (in a realistic scenario via my cell phone or Xbone), that the military is overstepping its constitutional bounds with respect to my privacy. This would not apply so much to the FBI, but it might eventually were precedent to be pushed in the correct direction.

The part about "prevent[ing] citizens from having to bear the capital costs associated with the government's own decisions" is also interesting.

It could mean that if the Feds want to make their own jobs easier by trespassing on the private property (laptops, phones, etc.) of citizens, they'll have to get the owner's permission first.

Now that we've successfully reinterpreted the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Amendments to support privacy, why not the 1st Amendment? Would you like to join the Church of Privacy and accept Ed Snowden as your Lord and Savior? According to our Holy Book, in order to reach salvation, you must vigorously resist the Devil's attempts to spy on your life. Oh, and the 5th already gives you the right to refuse to divulge encryption keys, at least on some interpretations.

People who make that argument about the second amendment always seem to forget that the U.S. military has been getting its ass kicked for more than a decade now by people mostly armed with Toyota pickups, AK-47s and IEDs.

Oh that's cute. The U.S. has essentially upgraded its military forces and gets to beta test it in the deserts of the middle east. Did you think 'Winning the hearts and minds of the people' was an actual mission? And the U.S. pulling that off while only losing ~5K troops just furthers how laughable your statement was

Ya, but the war on drugs has been a resounding success...oh, wait....

> People who make that argument about the second amendment always seem to forget that the U.S. military has been getting its ass kicked for more than a decade now by people mostly armed with Toyota pickups, AK-47s and IEDs.

People who make that argument seem to forget that if you decide to rebel, the 2nd amendment doesn't matter because you are a criminal and can bring guns over the border through Mexico or via other channels. The same is true of IEDs.

The "people" with AK-47s aren't getting them legally as common citizens.

That doesn't change the fact the majority of the US isn't going to rebel and that such "rebellions" in the US tend to look like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

You cannot fight against an evil government with the 2nd amendment, but you can definitely resist it. An unarmed population is totally helpless, meanwhile.

What's the difference between fighting against an evil government and resisting it with arms?

Actually trying to take on the military, vs resistance (sabotage and only fighting if absolutely necessary). Guns are still helpful for the latter.

Wouldn't the first act of an evil government be to outlaw civilian armaments and confiscate these guns? At that point, you'd be forced to either go to war(which you agree you would lose), or lose your weaponry. Perhaps the proliferation of guns would help the now criminal resistance acquire an arsenal, but I'm skeptical. European history is rife with examples of armed resistance forming from an unarmed populace.

I wouldn't call my ancestors 'helpless' considering their multiple armed rebellions and constant resistance after being conquered, or examples I'm less acutely aware of like the French or Polish resistance during WW2. It's also worth noting that while this resistance was very much detrimental to the hostile government, it was never the primary factor of its downfall.

> "Wouldn't the first act of an evil government be to outlaw civilian armaments and confiscate these guns?"

And now you know why gun registry laws regularly get torpedoed.

Hard to round up all the guns if you don't actually know who has what.

> Wouldn't the first act of an evil government be to outlaw civilian armaments and confiscate these guns?

Historically this is exactly what happens.

Proponents of gun registries know this, want this. People who value their freedom have to fight a (so far, winning) battle to maintain their Constitutionally-protected rights.

If it comes to that, whether there's a legal right to have said guns is pretty much moot, because the people you're using those guns to resist aren't going to respect that right. If you're prepared to fight your government, you don't care whether it's allowing you to have the means to fight it.

Therefore the right to bear arms as a defense against tyranny is mostly empty words. The way to prevent tyranny is robust public institutions and a democratic culture. Weakly democratic states fall to autocrats all the time. There is no culture of democracy so the number of power holders a would-be autocrat has to cow is few. Democracy, real democracy, involves orders of magnitude more people, it's that much more difficult to overthrow.

Easier to already have a gun from when they were allowed, then to acquire a gun after they were banned.

Of course the later would never be hard in America, considering just how many guns there are that would not get swept up... But the first is still easier.

That's just wrong. Look at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebelli.... The unarmed revolutions (including some civil unrest but no large-scale deployment of firearms) are plenty and more successful than the alternative, which usually ends in a civil war.

And how many of those revolutions were against the homeland of a group that spends nearly $700 billion a year on defense? These are completely different circumstances.

Is it? Suppose the entire population refused to pay taxes.

> ability to drop bombs on you

People in mud huts in Afghanistan don't seem to be having trouble waging guerrilla warfare against the most powerful (and expensive) military on the planet.

F-16s don't occupy territory. F-16s don't police thoughts.

This "they have tanks, planes, and bombs, so your rights don't matter anyway- you don't need them" bullshit is a farce:

People police people. People occupy territory.

It would just so happen that people are exceptionally susceptible to small arms fire.

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