alt Hacker News> We, collectively, only have ourselves to blame, and now it's too late.
Why would we have to be blamed for a law written by some lobbyists? That makes no sense at all. There are of course some folks that are in favour of this because "of the children" but their rationale does not apply to me nor to many other people. Why should they be able to force people to surrender their data, with the operating system becoming a sniffer giving out private data to everyone else? That makes no sense.
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Because the government has a monopoly on violence and enforcement of the law. That’s why they can force you. If you don’t like it, move somewhere else.
Also, the uproar here is hilarious, because many people here literally get paid to work on privacy-destruction-machines. But now that the government is the one doing it, it’s suddenly bad. Give me a break.
And yes, I can say that my conscience is clear. I may not be rich, I may have had to quit two jobs and spend two years homeless because I did not want to implement immoral or unethical code. But my conscience is clear.
The invocation of "lobbyists" in this context is meaningless. People lobby for all kinds of things. Doesn't really matter once it becomes a law anyway.
If people could just say I don't agree with this law, it "makes no sense" and it's written by "lobbyists" and the government should not "be able to force" me to comply then we don't have a society anymore.
You had better come up with some better arguments otherwise it just seems like the typical sad case of the losing side suddenly griping about the referee's monopoly of force when it's no longer going their way...
The comment you replied to rightly pointed out one way of getting ahead of said monopoly of force is addressing problems with the status quo before the state takes an interest. It didn't happen, and now you will probably get some heavy handed intervention. But ignoring this basic point to ask why oh why suggests an ignorance of the very nature of the society that is and has been constantly regulating you.
If you only happened to notice now you should consider yourself a rather lucky specimen in the long line of human history, full of those remarking "this makes no sense" as they are nonetheless compelled to comply.