I'm not a man, and I agree with scotty79. We are all different as individuals, and gender is pretty mush meaningless. Knowing that someone is a man, woman, non-binary, etc. might allow me to guess some things about them (if I also know their culture), but it doesn't determine anything and people are way more likely to make incorrect harmful assumptions than correct useful assumptions. It might be slightly more predictive than zodiac signs, but only slightly.
> The low median value of most forfeitures is in line with media reports about forfeiture activity. For example, from 2012 to 2017, Cook County, Illinois, law enforcement conducted over 23,000 seizures totaling $150 million. The median value of these seizures was just $1,049, and approximately three-quarters of the seizures were of cash (most of the rest were vehicles). Many of these seizures, including most cash seizures of less than $100, were clustered in the poorest parts of Chicago.
If that's rare, what is common? Do you think anyone else in Cook County, Illinois stole anywhere near as much or as many times as the government did during that period using civil forfeiture alone?
You're technically right that you're statistically unlikely to face civil forfeiture in your lifetime, but you're also statistically unlikely to face burglary, mugging, or any other form of non-state theft (except maybe pick-pocketing), but that doesn't mean those things are particularly rare or not something we should worry about.
12 or 13 employees in an organization being accused of terrorism or war crimes doesn't necessarily mean the organization is complicit in those acts, or could have foreseen the situation. This is especially the case in a region where such acts are common.
Did UNHCR operate in ISIS territory? I could be wrong, but I don't believe they ever did. The UN peacekeepers in Kosovo were not from the region, so that comparison doesn't make sense. Do you think it would be possible for UNRWA to recruit a sufficient number of people who do not already live in Gaza to move there and work for them, considering the rate at which UNRWA employees have been killed so far? You still have not said what UNRWA should have done differently.
My understanding is that the Israeli government never ended the occupation of Gaza in a way that could have allowed it to function as anything more than a ghetto or open-air prison. They forcefully removed their citizens from the territory, but did they ever end the blockade? Was there even a day when people in Gaza could import and export goods, generate electricity, or travel in and out of the territory without Israeli permission?
It makes no sense to solely blame the Palestinians for Hamas controlling Gaza when the Israeli government created the conditions that allowed them to seize power and the current prime minister of Israel has said: "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas [...] This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
The claim about 10% doesn't seem to say much. What does it mean exactly for someone to be a "Hamas/PIJ operative"? Has UNRWA been told who these people are and what they have done? I suspect we will eventually find out if there was any truth behind the allegations against the 12 (or 13) specific people accused of involvement in the attack, but I doubt we will ever learn anything about the 10%. The 50% is completely meaningless. People are responsible for their own individual actions, not those of their family members.
My question remains, are UNRWA employees more likely to have been involved in or associated with atrocities than the average person in the region? Involvement and association doesn't necessarily mean that they personally committed those atrocities. How does this compare with the average Palestinian or Israeli? Should I boycott an Israeli company if 0.1% of their employees were involved in the commission of war crimes or other atrocities in the IDF, even if they were fired/suspended when the accusation came to light, and no one seems to be able to suggest what they should have done differently to avoid hiring them?
Gaza is a ghetto controlled by a genocidal group at war with another genocidal group. It's an active war zone. It's not comparable to Silicon Valley. How does the 0.001% of employees being accused of involvement in the October 7 attack compare with the adult population of Gaza? How does it compare with the adult population of Israel and involvement in attacks on Gazan civilians?
I think you are holding UNRWA to an impossible standard, and I think it's up to those who think it should be able to meet that standard to propose an alternative before proposing its abolition.
> They're already starting to make it more difficult. Look at what's happening with DoH where it's harder and harder to choose how your DNS queries get done and you get steered to CloudFlare (who are pretty low on my list of entities I want to trust) instead. Now that browsers have mostly succeeded in forcing HTTPS everywhere, expect them to start turning the screws.
DoH doesn't interfere with your ability to choose your own DNS provider. It only means that your DNS queries are between you and your DNS provider, free from the interference of your ISP and other third parties. It provides greater user freedom because your ISP cannot as easily force you to use their DNS provider. Nothing stops ISPs from offering DoH and some (e.g. Comcast) do offer it. Users may however benefit from using a DNS that's not affiliated with their ISP because ISPs are more vulnerable to censorship demands from governments. Usually, when a government demands that an ISP censor a website, the ISP will simply block DNS queries regarding that domain, allowing users of other DNS providers to escape the censorship. This may of course not be a long-term solution, as governments may be more likely to demand different censorship methods if fewer use the IPS DNS.
As far as I'm aware, no one has suggested that DoH should be mandatory. It is a sensible default that improves the privacy and security of most users, but a user who decides that they do not want to use DoH can simply opt out in the settings. Likewise, HTTPS is not mandatory either, and browsers will not prevent users from accessing unsecure sites. They will however warn users to make sure they are aware of the risks. As far as I'm aware, browser vendors do not benefit from users using HTTPS everywhere. They encourage its use because it is generally beneficial to users.
> Really? Can I make a FoI request to find out why a CA refused to issue a certificate to a particular entity? Is there a right of appeal if they refuse to issue a certificate on discriminatory grounds?
A FoI request is just asking the government to give you information. They will never intentionally give you anything they do not want you to have. FoI laws tend to contain enough exceptions to cover any situation, but even if you should legally receive the information, there is nothing you can realistically do to make them provide it to you. Similarly, you can ask any organization for any information, and they can refuse. The same is true with appeals. You can ask an organization to reconsider its decision and for someone else in the organization to look at it, but the decision remains within the organization. The difference is what you can do once the decision has been finally made. Will the decision maker try to force me to adhere to their decision through violent means, or am I free to ignore them and try to convince others to do the same?
The main difference regarding transparency is that more information is made public by default in the current system (what good is the ability to request information if you don't even know that the thing you wanted to request information about happened?) and that decisions are made by several separate entities that need to justify their decisions to each other in order to maintain consensus.
I have no idea what you are talking about. There are literally infinite alternatives because you can freely modify any open-source alternative in infinite ways.
No one is going to kick down your door and shoot you if you try to make a new browser or OS from scratch, like they would if you tried to make a new government, but there is really no reason to make a browser from scratch.
Microsoft didn't need to trust Google to fork Chromium, they didn't give up any power to Google and have exactly the same ability to influence web standards as if they had reinvented the browser. If they disagree with a choice the Chromium developers made, they can change it and keep the rest. The same applies to anyone who wants to do the same.
When it comes to certificate authorities, you don't even need to modify the browser or OS because they already allow you to add and remove authorities. The main reason people don't tend to do that is because they have no reason to. If you tried to start a new one, the natural thing to ask would be why I should trust you over the established certificate authorities. If your answer is that I don't have a choice because you have the backing of an army and police force that you will use against me if I don't, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
The current certificate authorities don't need to threaten anyone with violence to secure their position, and they operate with significantly more transparency than any government I know of. Compared to governments, they are also much safer to trust because they rely on consent rather than force. A compromised or malicious certificate authority won't shoot you for trying to replace it, it has no enforcement mechanism beyond inertia.
That's frankly ridiculous. Moving countries is expensive, and there are a limited number of countries in the EU and the world. If you can't afford to move or don't trust any of them, you are out of luck.
Installing an open-source OS and browser is free and the options are practically unlimited as anyone is free to create a new alternative.
They can install an open-source OS/browser and ignore Microsoft, Google, and Apple. There is nothing they can realistically do when they don't trust a government.
Governments ultimately derive their power from their ability to impose their will by violence. That makes them inherently less accountable than organizations that you are free to ignore.
It's hard to say whether that would be allowed because the regulation is written in such a vague language. There is a risk that such a system would be considered to be a precautionary measure under Article 45a-1.
And those elected officials are beholden to the highest bidder. In the
current system, the people who make CA decisions acquired that power voluntarily and seem to have acted benevolently in the past, that's way more than you can say about government officials.
The current voluntary system is also very open, and anyone can get involved and participate to a much larger extent than people realistically can in an electoral democracy. To me, the voluntary system seems to be better and safer for everyone who doesn't have a very large amount of money to throw at elections.
EU governments will be even more subject to pressure from the US. I don't understand how anyone could doubt they will comply with every request from the US government.
The difference is that the current decision makers only have power because other people trust them voluntarily. That makes them accountable, and it means a whistleblower can do much more to limit the damage by leaking the fact they are giving after to US pressure.
A government can impose its will by force, so it is much less accountable and doesn't have to worry about the consequences of its decisions nearly as much. There is nothing I can realistically do if I object to a decision by a government unless I'm a large political donor because governments don't need my consent to operate.
It would be impossible for them to force me to blindly accept a government issued ID card as true, and it would be insane for me to comply with such a demand. The same is true here, I won't run a browser or OS that complies with these regulations and as far as I can tell, they can't realistically make me.
The problem is if companies like Apple and Microsoft that make proprietary operating systems are forced to comply by the threat of import bans, etc. That would make their less technologically sophisticated customers vulnerable to completely unnecessary risks. The EU might not think the risks are unnecessary because they gain "sovereignty", but that only helps the EU and their member states, not 99.999% of the people who live in their territory.
Ultimately, I don't think this will be implemented. They can scream "sovereignty" as much as they want, but everyone else has an incentive to resist, and it would be even more harmful to their perception of sovereignty if both Microsoft and Apple say no and the EU faces the choice of either banning 99% of computers on the consumer market (and still be unable to force the remaining open source alternatives to meaningfully comply) or backing down to foreign organizations after a public confrontation.