Ho Lee Fuk
The peak of Sarcasm.
I think this applies no matter where one lives: Europe, North America, South America, Asia or Africa. We have all found ourselves in a pretty much dystopian shithole.
There is a long discussion, including about technical and privacy aspects, over on the Fedora Discourse. It is rather less kneejerk than I’ve seen elsewhere.
The horse is out of the barn. Brazil already has a similar law that takes effect in two weeks, and there is word of it coming at the U.S. Federal level too. Court injunctions will follow, but don’t count on that for permanent relief. Much as we may hate the whole idea, we will have to either withdraw to a cave, or find ways to live with it. And as I pointed out over yonder, it is better to set the standard than to have the standard forced upon you. Would you rather the standard was determined by what linux does, or what Microsoft does?? (Microsoft will see “Great opportunity to truly enforce that Microsoft login!”)
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court already found that California can pass nutty laws if they like, but such laws cannot be used against other states, and cannot prohibit movement of noncompliant goods from other states.
To everyone:
I came to this thread to gain a preliminary background understanding of potential implications of the current California (at present) adaptation of gradually imposing totalitarian control tactics via software-based commandeering legal maneuvering, and once again, I found more valuable relevant information than I was expecting. This team crew is outstanding, and I am confident that we will find the appropriate measures to assess and effectively deal with such issues. Thank you all for your continuing efforts… the work that you and the rest of the admins and community in general do to make OM in my opinion the best Linux distro available. I wholeheartedly recommend OM to any and all at every available opportunity. Please keep up the great work….
You are appreciated.
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I understand the sentiment - but we’re here because our Parents didn’t stand up to the encroachment of tyranny in our past. If we don’t stand up, our children will be in permanent digital tyranny, 15 minute cities, biometric digital ID, CBDC and social credit scores to access and use anything.
This is they real reason for the global push of ID verification.
We either stand here, or we become permanent slaves to this global governance coming.
Also don’t think it’s going to stop here “for the children” (as I’m pointing out above) these tyrants are under the delusion that what they are doing is for our own good.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
Unlike most of the people bloviating about “muh freedoms” I have actual experience in a freedom being legislated away “for the good of those who cannot protect themselves”.
My formerly-honorable profession was regulated out of existence, and made actively illegal with penalties of huge fines and confiscations, in most of California. (It almost happened at the state level too, but it was happening so fast by way of county regulation that state law ceased to be a concern for those pushing it.)
In affected counties, people in my profession suddenly had no 4th Amendment rights.
And no amount of peaceful resistance made one whit of difference. Resisting meant the county showed up and took your property and you went to jail.
In my county, I was one of the last holdouts. But eventually the county showed up, and there being no recourse (other than giving up a business I’d built across several decades), I left California. I’ve worked out that in total this cost me $280,000. (This was about the same time as the county confiscated all the private wells, making desert property unsalable, and I had to walk away from a property I’d been paying on for 11 years.)
I know of exactly ONE case where someone was able to fight back in court, and by then his business had already been destroyed.
This same regulation-to-death of my formerly-honorable profession happened to varying degrees at the state level all across America (and had long since happened in Australia and most of Europe, but so long ago that no one remembers any different). The only state that successfully fought back was Missouri, and only because there was an established professional guild with the collective means to do so. And even there, it was play ball, or die. The established guild managed to pass preemptive legislation to protect our profession. This created more regulation than most would like, but there was no better alternative. Otherwise, they’d be gone too.
So unlike most people here, I have direct, painful, expensive experience in a freedom being legislated out of existence. And I can tell you from that experience that when laws and regulations come for you, resistance is futile, and even counterproductive (as you will become a very loud example, however much photo manipulation and lying that requires, with intent to shock the public into action against you, and then the real crackdown begins. And yes, that broadly happened in my profession.)
The only thing that works, at any level, is the preemptive strike. To craft the laws and regulations in your favor, so it looks like you are “properly regulated” but at least some of your freedoms are preserved.
With software, that means reading the tea leaves of public sentiment, and however much we may disagree with the principle, becoming the preemptive strike.
We have already lost the chance for that preemptive strike in California, Colorado, and Brazil.
All that would have been required is to make the parental option a low-level function, so it can’t be trivially avoided. Then WE could be the ones saying See? WE are protecting the children, no state-level intervention is needed. And then craft laws to back that up, and get them passed.
But instead there will be much resistance, and the laws will be crafted by hostile forces, and more freedoms will be lost than if we’d done that preemptive strike.
Eventually, you run out of caves you can retreat to.
I don’t disagree, and I’m not saying to run and hide but to stand up and say no more.
And that achieves what? Where will you find enough force to make “No more” the law of the land?
In America, we’ve been saying “No more!” since 1776. Let’s talk about another freedom: the right to bear arms. In most states, that’s been legislated to where some sort of carry permit is required, and in some locales an ownership permit.
Do you know what a permit (or license) IS?
It is temporary permission to do or own something that is otherwise illegal.
In other words, despite much resistance, some of it quite loud and organized, that freedom has been at least partially lost.
Where has that not happened? In the states that preemptively passed “Constitutional carry” legislation.
That’s a great example.
What if our Grandparents during the power grab under the prohibition when they created the ATF stood up and said no more?
They absolutely should have, by the constitution should the ATF exist?
At the time, standing up against it might have been practical. The government was still relatively small and powerless compared to today. Legislation to preemptively prohibit future power grabs (like the ATF) would still have been needed, because these things don’t just go away.
Now? See also “Waco”.
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Precisely along with Ruby Ridge, and recently Bryan Malinkowski.
Will more laws help us get out of this situation? I’m not so certain, but I know where things are headed and it ain’t good.
Shaking our fists at the government sure ain’t working. And if we don’t control the relevant legislation, someone else will.
I agree we need about 99% less government, but that’s not where we’re at.
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IMO, you guys should just do nothing and ban CA or whatever you have to do.
California’s nonsense has always hurt the rest of the US when entities comply because it’s such a highly populated state. However the other approach is those who abandon CA’s rules will likely win out in the free states and make a bit of that up. If the people who live in CA start missing out on a lot of stuff other’s have, someone will have to reverse course.
People in California have been doing exactly that for over 50 years. This is the reason why California is the way it is. A train wreck that makes San Bernardino look like a cub scout bonfire. There was a time when California had common sense. Ronald Reagan was elected governor and had zero issues with taking down the socialist communists in the universities, where the mental illnesses brought about by Saul Alinsky, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, and Karl Marx were trying to hide while expanding their influence.
California passed it. Now let California try to enforce it. If you need a reference, just look at Prohibition. Those pushing Prohibition were never able to enforce their failed law, not for lack of trying. One of California’s biggest problems is the state has no authority outside of California. Same applies to Colorado. Another problem for California is enforcement. To enforce such law, California would have to spy on every person in the state. California is already broke and failing. Businesses are leaving. U-Haul is paying hot shot truckers to haul their equipment to California so more people can leave.
/sarcasm
But I am quite certain President Trump will just give California the money to enable enforcement and stop the exodus.
sarcasm/
To me, this sounds more like California making another desperate move to try to remain relevant. Its EPA mandates are unenforcable in other states. Manufacturers no longer need bother with trying to comply with the state’s EV law.
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Thanks for your outlook.
I have faith and confidence in the ingenious ability of creative and imaginative individuals who will collaboratively find acceptable solutions.
“It ain’t over till the fat lady codes.”
Mentioned that above - you can expect more restrictions as they try to enforce this law - and remember, it’s not just California, there is a global effort to control free speech through the children going on right now.
Many states are already also simultaneously attacking VPN services, making it illegal to use a VPN.
Which is why there must be a pushback by everyone. Just as my grandparents’ generation did during Prohibition. Instantly, everyone became suspected of being a criminal simply because they had the potential to manufacture alcohol.
How are states going to enforce VPN services? Many of those services are based in other countries. Good luck with enforcement. Especially if users already have a VPN service set up. Here is what will happen. Those with a VPN service established will download the software for their friends, copy it to a flash drive, and sneaker-net it to the next computer. Or Bluetooth it when two phones come within range. Another way is a cloud service that supports sharing files, which is pretty much all of them. It will be the same as 25+ years ago when all those file sharing services started up and people quickly figured out they can use those services to pirate .mp3 files. VPN service providers will quickly figure out that they can make more money if they offer a VPN that connects to a state that lacks such a law and refuses to enforce the California law.
As for other countries, that is their own problem. Their laws don’t apply in the states, just as one state’s laws don’t apply in the other various states or other countries.
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Love this, and this is the sort of thing I was talking about in this thread. Peaceful protests that give a middle finger to the authoritarian state.
Actually we stopped saying “No more” in 1776 and not since 1776 have we actually meant it.
And that is the problem. We dont actually mean those words because we have had very easy lives. If we still meant those words as they were spoken back then politicians would fear the citizens, every aspect of a “public servents” life would be public knowledge and the private citizens would in fact still be private. But instead the politicians lives are more private than Joe Smith, whose last 5 address’s, SS, DOB, mother’s maiden name, pets, extended family, friends, work contacts, what ad’s he clicks on, where his mouse goes on the screen, what he shops for, his driving history, favorite contacts, his kids contacts, etc is all public knowledge.
Things are now currently 180 degrees out of phase of how the founders intended the country to be. Getting it to swing back around another 180 degrees to complete the circle will be just as hard as it was to set up the entire system from the start. It was very easy for us to let it slip into what we currently have.
I wonder if Franklin knew how true his words were when he said “We have a Representative Republic, if we can keep it.” Because we havent had the Republic for a very long time. They kept us fat and happy with the circus. We havent meant those words
I just hope enough average people have had enough to make them want to stand for themselves. Because those are the ones that will be needing to make the sacrifices to set things right.
But the problem is still, life in the USA is not hard and people talk a good talk but when it comes to needing to make the effort, they cant walk the walk.
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I’m an outsider. As you probably knew, I’m not from the USA. I applaud everything @UnkleBonehead said.
Let me add my two cents to this. I’m aware that some of you would like to beat me to death with keyboards after reading this. But I’m writing this with no bad intentions.
Society is decaying globally. Take Poland, France, Germany or whatever European nation you like.
We were somewhat homogenous and had a long common history. We were born into our respecive places of origin. We can refer to a common consciousness dating back 1000 years.
Yet we are horribly divided within our own nations. Countries fall apart and decay because of this.
Now let’s take a look at the United States of America.
It is a country of European settlers from all over Europe and all walks of life, searching for a new start. They were searching for better, more free living conditions. There was no common ground, no common history and no collective consciousness. There’s nothing that glues you together on a basic, primal level. There is tremendous work to be done to create a nation from such a random collection of people. The things that glue you together and make you a seed a rudiment of nation Is long fucking gone. One nation under Good is just an emty echo by now.
If you are unable to stand up and say no, then you are done! No matter what your favourite political party is, what your views are or what colour your skin is, you are done!
If you don’t reinvent what it means to be American, you’re fucked. Like it or not, you are a really young country compared to any given European country, and we are fucking dying. We are no longer Polish, French, German, English or Italian. We are fucking Europeans! What the hell does that even mean? Europe is dying. If you don’t find yourselves again quickly, you’ll follow us sooner than you think.
California is merely a symptom. Cure the disease. If you can. Which you probably can’t. But if you manage it, the symptoms will disappear.
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Who is this “everyone” of whom thou speaks? Once Microsoft and Apple comply, and they will, it’s game-over. That is 95% of user desktops and about half of the mobile-device market. Google is the other half of the mobile-device market, and do you really see them resisting yet another opportunity to scarf up your data?
Even if ALL the linux distros ignore this, they are too far from “everyone” to have any influence – unless they get there first and establish the standard (with proper privacy preservation).
This is not at ALL like Prohibition’s repeal, where a majority of the public had decided, somewhat after the fact, that alcohol was their personal right (remember, that same public had voted to pass Prohibition, it didn’t spring fullblown from the brow of Zeus). There was no corporate gorilla to go “Sure, we like Prohibition” and the majority of citizens understood the issue and already had strong opinions about it. Did you know there are still “dry” counties? Timelapse map here. Even before Prohibition, “dry” had long been more the rule than not, making it an even less-apt comparison. (And it might not have been repealed had not the influential booze-runners, notably the Kennedy clan, wanted a larger market.)
Reality: We can either influence how this is implemented, or we can be run off to the caves in the hills. Being the shining resistance on the hill may be the ideal, but in this case it’s just going to be a self-illuminating target.
As someone put it, “Safety is a tyrant’s tool; no one can oppose safety.”
Now, if you really want to go the repeal-Prohibition route, that means first it happens, then it proves unworkable (it’ll be a mess even best-case) and eventually goes away, to result in greater freedom than before. But by the nature of the software market and that it’s tilting hard into the subscription model, which needs age/identity verification for that monthly credit card charge, I think “repeal” is unlikely.
[Tho I don’t think this is being pushed for the public’s “safety”. I think it’s being pushed by the questionable markets like pot and bitcoin and porn, so they have plausible deniability in court, which explains why the leading indicators are Blue states. “Not our fault your kid did $_forbiddenthing and had $_badconsequences.”]