And it is always under the guise of anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism or whatever other reason they can find to excuse their inexcusable actions. Take mass government surveillance for example.
So we're all suppose to become techno-anarchists? HN has a great balance of both, it's just mostly the crypto-obsessed that decry government encroachment because they're still struggling to find a useful purpose for the technology before they get regulated.
It's one thing to be a techno-anarchist and it's another thing to be reasonably skeptical about government and what it considers "justice" and the ramifications of that "justice".
The way the government has been approaching cryptography and privacy in general is very much "throw the baby out with the bath water, we don't need it". What is happening in the financial privacy space (i.e. developments in crypto) should be alarming to anyone who believes in democracy, in my opinion.
Financial privacy has little to do with democracy and at the extreme would be its antithesis. Absolute financial privacy would mean that moneyed interests could quietly buy any legislation they want and the public would be none the wiser because the funding/bribe would be untraceable and unknowable. See Citizens United[1] for an example of how extending human rights to money has negative consequences for democratic society.
Edit: I don't get why financial privacy is consistenly presented as a win for the "little guy" against "the man". The "little guy" spends most of his money on necessities and pays moderate to low taxes relative to other parts of society. The parties standing to win the most in a world where any transactions can easily be kept private are those that wield a lot of money, a lot of power, or both. Consider Nancy Pelosi's insider trading and how hard it would be to discover/prove if those transactions could be kept private.
Escaping government encroachment is literally the purpose of the technology. It needs no other purpose.
The thing is, most people here don’t think that escaping government encroachment is a worthwhile endeavor. Which is pretty much the antithesis of the word “hacker”
> Escaping government encroachment is literally the purpose of the technology.
You are assuming that the government is tech-illiterate/tech avoidant. As it stands, several US government agencies are way ahead of civilians on tech, and not for the purposes of escaping the government. Technology is just a tool, it can be used to further any end the wielder chooses
Yeah when I first discovered this site in like 2017, it seemed to be a place of tech-literate counter-culture folks. Now the counter-culture seems to be non-existent, and actually looked down on.
At this point, the majority of the comments I read sound like a CNN anchor script. Ha, maybe it's their web developers.
The greater the threat which a community represents to the vested control hierarchy, the more intensely it becomes infiltrated and coopted. This is an Iron Law.
One thing to recognize is that HN has had an influx of new users that are pretty right wing, at times using veiled far right speech. Years ago, it was filled with people who had stock very left wing (at times ridiculous) views that I wouldn't call "counter-culture" either. I only know this because I've had to report many of them.
My hypothesis is that each of these groups come here after being kicked out or pushed out of wherever they usually hang out. The ones that remain on HN after a period of time are the ones that dang doesn't wear out via moderation or haven't been outright banned. They eventually learn to be good HN members and then stay.
> HN in its current avatar would probably cheer on if the Patriot Act was enacted today.
No.
> Been on this site for a decade. Never seen it this filled with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.
Probably because you disagree with tech/gov right now. It's really a case of "the leopard ate my face." HN has a long history of supporting "Big Tech." The issue is, you don't like how big tech is using it's power now, but were fine with it using that power years ago.
> Never seen it this filled with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.
It's always been that way. You just refused to see it because it aligned with your views.
