[cynicalbastard]

freedom-loving internet users will soon know how gun owners feel. every single bogus argument for gun control or "assault weapons" bans can, and will be, used against internet speech freedom and information privacy, now that the western political establishment has taken it upon themselves to strip you of your free speech rights after seeing how trivial it was stripping you of your guns, and how much enthusiasm their populaces had for it. you can count on that. it was almost like a practice round for the real task of shutting everyone the hell up and monitoring what they say in "private".

i wouldn't be surprised if they start calling it assault encryption. the US government at one point had classified encryption as munitions, i suspect^W observe more governments will^W are, or start enforcing usage as such.

the thing you'll be most surprised at (or not) is at how self-defeating your fellow citizens will be, and how enthusiastic they will be about having their freedoms systematically dismantled by government. they will embrace it, nay, they will DEMAND it at any cost. indeed, many of them will only be upset if it DOESN'T happen.

perhaps this will be a wake-up call, but i doubt it, seeing the way things are going. i'm willing to bet most people will actually be pro-speech-control. once they have taken your ability to express and defend yourself securely, what exactly is left?

and just wait until you see the kinds of laws people with no fundamental understanding of the topic are capable of coming up with. it won't be pretty, but i assure you it will be infuriating and hilarious.

[andy_ppp]

This is a brilliant comment except for the fact these weapons you presumably own will never, ever be able to overthrow the US government; a few hackers employed by Russia already did that anyway.

Secondly, if what you say is true I assume, given the refusal to follow large parts of the rest of the constitution, you are planning to overthrow them as we speak?

Finally, I’m concerned that your dream of overthrowing a bad/illegal government, while utterly hopeless, is causing tens of thousands of deaths and about 100000 people being shot per yer. But hey, that imaginary overthrowing the government thing is worth it...

[cynicalbastard]

yeah, we're in agreement. there will be no overthrow, instead the government (and all governments) will simply take away more and more of your rights, until they're all gone. both the ones you like, and the ones you don't like. doesn't matter; they're all going out the window, slowly but surely.

next on the list: encryption and data privacy. and there are plenty of useful idiots out there who think encryption somehow harms children, they will come out of the woodwork at exactly the right time, and scream the loudest and make the least sense, you can be sure of that.

[drdaeman]

While the parent made a partially correct comparison, this whole thread is turning into a giant contest on highlighting where it doesn't work and then trying logic fallacies of all sorts. What's wrong with you, people?

Surely, not every argument. I don't think arguments like "legally owned guns are frequently stolen and used by criminals" works for strong cryptography. However, things like "more ____ control laws would reduce deaths", "high-____ should be banned because they too often ____", "____ are rarely used in self-defense" or "a majority of adults, including ____, support common sense ____ control" can be tried. I just took those from the first search result for "gun control", picking few that I was able to adapt without rephrasing too much.

Heck, I can see even how "more ____ control leads to fewer suicides" can be pulled. In glorious Russia we already have this train of thought running at full-speed, just with "Internet censorship" instead of "strong cryptography".

So while parent comment is obviously biased, it has some valid point. Not sure if its validity means anything useful, though.

____

Note, I explicitly don't evaluate any claims validity here, and must remind that even if "A does X" is true, and even though "A is similar to B in some respects", that doesn't mean that "B does X" is true.

Edit: ouch, can't flag myself. :(

[babyrainbow]

>, they will DEMAND it at any cost. indeed, many of them will only be upset if it DOESN'T happen...

You can see it already happening, almost everywhere with mandatory vaccinations...

[shermozle]

So if I go crazy armed with military grade encryption, how many school kids can I kill before the cops get me?

Sorry, your argument is bullshit.

[dang]

This violates the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please don't do that, regardless of how wrong someone else is. Besides frequently being uncivil, it leads to massively poorer comment threads, as demonstrated below.

[nine_k]

If you encrypt something, isn't it because you're trying to hide child molestation and sexual exploitation footage?

"Think of the children" is one of the most powerful cards there is, and it will be played in full force by governments, only less elegantly than you just did.

[bitJericho]

If you don't want guns, maybe you should repeal the second amendment instead of ignoring it. Same goes for the first.

[roughcoat]

Wait, you're calling his argument bullshit? You didn't even make an argument, you just said something completely nonsensical.

[cynicalbastard]

> So if I go crazy armed with military grade encryption, how many school kids can I kill before the cops get me?

don't worry, i suspect your government will be ramming this answer down your throat by year's end.

[partycoder]

The problem is the fallacy consisting in the idea that that owning a gun puts you in equal terms with the government. That used to be the case maybe circa 1776, but no longer the case in 2017, 241 years later.

The government operates a regular, professionally trained armed forces with modern, military grade equipment. Your weapons can barely counter law enforcement, let alone an army.

Good luck solving a dispute with the government by firing a semi-automatic gun at an Apache Helicopter firing you back with 6000 rounds per minute.

[bogomipz]

>"freedom-loving internet users will soon know how gun owners feel. every single bogus argument for gun control or "assault weapons" bans can, and will be, used against internet speech freedom and information privacy, now that the western political establishment has taken it upon themselves to strip you of your free speech rights after seeing how trivial it was stripping you of your guns, and how much enthusiasm their populaces had for it."

Wow what a total straw man. Firstly this is an article about Australia not the U.S. But I will get into why Australia is particularly relevant in your poor choice of straw man in a second.

Firstly, "Gun control" is not about wholesale elimination of gun ownerships but rather rather having some policy that permits its' ownership while still accounting for public safety. Your sentiment is typical FUD propaganda employed by lobbying groups like the NRA in the US - "they're coming to take your guns!" By the way the NRA is among the most powerful lobbying groups in the US[1], there is no such encryption/privacy lobby.

The central talking points in "Gun Control" are enforcing some common sense provisions like "back ground checks" to prevent mentally people unstable from owning guns. Or restricting civilian ownership of military-style assault rifles that don't have a compelling civilian use case in either hunting or self defense.

Australia has implemented both of these common sense provisions mentioned above - forbidding semi-automatic assault rifles and mandating back ground checks and waiting periods for gun purchases. And guess what? Australia doesn't the mass shootings that are so common they start to overlap each other's news cycles. There is no epidemic city like Chicago where 762 people in a single year were killed by guns[2] And plenty of Australians own guns. Australia implemented these after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996. And not only does Australia have no shortage of people that own guns but gun ownership is on the rise [3]. You know what isn't on the rise though? Mass shootings of innocent civilians these went from 11 per year to zero after changes in legislation proposed in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre[3].

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/inside-the-power-...

[2] http://time.com/4635049/chicago-murder-rate-homicides/

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/05/guns-...