Edward Snowden Says Assange 'Could Be Next' After John McAfee Suicide

[David Barrett]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 4:47 PM Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok that's encouraging, I agree we shouldn't give up on what we've got!
>>
>> What I'm not quite following, however, is that you seem to be agreeing
>> that the court system is *so broken* that the rest of the world should stop
>> extraditions to us -- even though the courts are apparently interpreting a
>> complex law that has significant (and slightly majority) support amongst the
>>
>
> The problem is that people are spending often their lives in prison
> associated with politics rather than crime, and many of these people are
> killing themselves in prison; it's not exactly a therapeutic environment.
>

No doubt prison sounds awful, and it's unacceptable for anyone to serve
extended period behind bars without a trial and conviction -- and I agree,
it happens all too often.  But so often to *stop all extraditions*?

That said, I do like the idea of foreign nations pressuring the US to
improve the efficiency of its justice system by basically "setting
conditions" on extradition -- or even enabling the US justice system to
proceed while the suspect is held in foreign custody.  This way if the US
system isn't moving fast enough, they can just release them.


population:
>> https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/poll-most-want-edward-snowden-charged-092930
>>
>
> Eventually the advertisements win.  They have more air time.  I'm noting
> this is a minority of poll results: the article states it is one single
> poll.
>

Can you share any other data suggesting the opposite?  Is it possible that
people genuinely feel that leaking national secrets should be a crime, and
think it not because "the advertisements win", but because they actually
think for themselves as much as you do, but came to a different conclusion
than you?


It's still our duty to defend whistleblowing and fight surveillance, or we
> will trend to becoming a legalised empire where the same dictator is always
> voted in.  Computers can already predict individual people's votes with
> strong confidence.  We aren't in a democracy until protecting voters in
> such an environment is resolved.
>

I 100% agree with the importance of defending democracy.  But can you help
me understand how you feel surveillance undermines democracy?

At best I think you might be suggesting that with data we can predict
voting patterns, and then feed that into hypertargeted gerrymandering
algorithms to create districts that protect incumbents.  And I absolutely
agree that needs to stop.  But I think the algorithms are already pretty
accurate with the data they've got -- more surveillance doesn't really
change anything, gerrymandering is already a potent threat.

So I would 100% agree with you that we need to stop gerrymandering.  But
the growth of surveillance (which is it's own serious problem) feels like a
largely sidenote to that conversation.  I would love to talk more about how
we stop gerrymandering, expand access to voting, and especially enact
the National
Popular Vote <https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/>.



> I totally understand disagreeing with that law, or disagreeing with the
>> majority -- and our government is built to manage that difficult push and
>> pull between varied interests.  But it feels premature to throw out our
>> entire justice system over something that most people agree with.
>>
>
> I'm of the camp that punishment-oriented justice increases crime until you
> have a possibly-violent rebellion to change whatever is stuck with the
> enforcement of the laws.  In a community with honest dialogue crime reduces
> due to people learning and addressing its relevant reasons.
>

I think that's a great vision. But if you agree with democracy (which it
sounds like you do), then I hope you agree that's not necessarily the
system we have right now -- and the way to fix it is gradually, slowly
through voting, while defending the system we have *even though it's not
ideally what we'd want*.

In this community, the people have a more heightened awareness of how
> political targets are targeted, manipulated, tortured, and destroyed by the
> powers they threaten.  We need the information Snowden leaked to protect
> ourselves from real violent criminals.  It's that the system is corrupt
> more than that it is inherently unjust.
>

Can you elaborate on how anything Snowden leaked actually protects you or I
from "real violent criminals"?  My understanding is the only real world
effect was to cause a spread of zero-day attacks, and reduce the visibility
of our CIA/NSA into adversary thinking.  But I'll admit I haven't followed
it very closely.


>
> This is why I asked if you agreed with the entire concept of democratic
>> rule, as if the majority agrees with something, write a law for that thing,
>> and has an executive branch and court system that enforces that law -- on
>> what basis can you claim justice isn't being served?
>>
>
> I'm personally for consensus rather than majority, far safer, notably in
> situations like this.
>

Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?  Are you saying the government
should only do what has unanimous consent from 300MM+ voters?  You
genuinely think that's a good method, and aren't just stating it for
dramatic flair?


I'll pick the courts here for what's unjust.  Cases like this usually use
> secret evidence, which is not democratic.
>

It's not *transparent*.  But if that's what voters decided, how can you
claim it's not democratic?  Also, are you *genuinely* in support of total
transparency of evidence logged into the public record for all to see
forever -- including, say, child pornography?  Here's the kinds of evidence
that is typically kept secret.  Which of these do you feel should be shown
publicly, and why?
https://www.wicourts.gov/services/attorney/docs/conf_flyer.pdf

I suspect what you are *actually* trying to say is that "yes, I agree that
not *everything* should be public.  But I would like more to be public."
Which is a reasonable position to take.  Is that what you are actually
trying to say?

-david
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 9320 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20210627/26c362bf/attachment.txt>