The literal point of civil disobedience is accepting that you may end up in jail:
"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."
That's not the point of civil disobedience, it's an unfortunate side effect. You praise a martyr for their sacrifice, you deplore that the sacrifice was necessary.
It's not that the point of breaking a law is that you go to jail, it's that breaking the law without any intention of going to jail isn't a sacrifice. 'Martyrs' who don't give anything up, who act without punishment aren't celebrated, they're just right.
It makes it a problem that's inherently present for any act of civil disobedience, unless you truly believe that you can hide from the US government. I'm pretty sure that all of the technical workarounds in the world, all of the tradecraft, won't save you from the weakest link in your social network.
That's life, if you can't take that heat stay out of the kitchen. It's also why elections are a much safer and more reliable way to enact change in your country than "direct action" is except under the most dire of circumstances.
This works when protesting an unjust law with known penalties. King knew he would be arrested and had an approximate idea on the range of time he could be incarcerated for. I don't know if it's the same bargain when you are subjecting yourself to an actor that does not believe it is bound by the law.
What? No, he didn't. The police went after peaceful civil rights protesters with clubs and dogs. They knew they could be badly hurt or killed and did it anyway.
Oh, apologies, I'm not saying that King didn't risk considerable injury or death. I'm saying that I don't think he is talking about that in this particular passage. The passage gp quoted is about how accepting lawful penalties from an unjust law venerates and respects the rule of law.
I think it's different with illegal "penalties" like being mauled by a dog or an extrajudicial killing. While those leaders of the civil rights movement faced those risks, I don't think King is asking people to martyr themselves in that passage, but to respect the law.
In contrast to accepting punishments from unjust laws, I think there is no lawless unjust punishment you should accept.
If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
Accepting jail over 1A protected protests only proves you're weak (not in the morally deficient way, just from a physical possibilities way) enough to be taken. No one thinks more highly of you or your 'respect for the law' for being caught and imprisoned in such case, though we might not think lesser of you, since we all understand it is often a suicide mission to resist it.
>If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
My point is about civil disobedience, not disobedience generally. The point of civil disobedience is to bring attention to unjust laws by forcing people to deal with the fact they they are imprisoning people for doing something that doesn't actually deserve prison.
Expecting to not end up in prison for engaging in civil disobedience misses the point. It's like when people go on a "hunger strike" by not eating solid foods. The point is self-sacrifice to build something better for others.
If that's not what you're into -- and it's not something I'm into -- then I would suggest other forms of disobedience. Freedoms are rarely granted by asking for them.
If your point is to ignore the history and political philosophy of civil disobedience because "times are different now," then just grab your gun and start your civil war already... because that's where you've concluded we're at.
I'm not even really sure why I'm getting so much pushback here. I've thought this administration should have been impeached and removed within a week of the inauguration in 2017. I just am not sure where all this "why won't you admit that things are so bad, and shouldn't be this way" is helpful, when Trump was democratically elected. When you have a tyranny from a majority, the parallels to MLK are very clear, and you can't expect that change with come without sacrifice.
Civil disobedience is only nice and easy when you're sect is already in power, which -- when we're talking about people who generally support liberal democracy -- it has been since probably the McCarthy Era.
Materially impeding law enforcement operations, interfering with arrests, harassing or assault officers, and so forth is not 1A protected and is illegal. There’s lots of this going on and some of it is orchestrated in these chats. They may nevertheless be civil disobedience, maybe even for a just cause, but I have no problem with people still being arrested for this. You obviously cannot have a civil society where that is legally tolerated.
It isn’t just people walking around holding signs or filming ICE. Can we please distinguish these cases?
Importantly this definition references an individual’s conscience. Seditious conspiracy is another matter. Here is the statute:
> If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
A group chat coordinating use of force may be tough.
> protestors behaving legally or practicing civil disobedience can still have their lives ruined by people in power.
They surely can. But the point was more than the people in power don't really need Signal metadata to do that. On the lists of security concerns modern protestors need to be worrying about, Signal really just isn't very high.
This is the price we pay to defend our rights. I would also expect any reasonable grand jury to reject such charges given how flagrantly the government has attempted to bias the public against protesters.
Also, anecdotally false. The highest performers were often late 30s-55 yo at both startups I've worked (acquired and 'unicorn'). The young had tons of energy, but their output didn't meet any engineering rigor for working in a hardware startup. Maybe the mobile/web guys have a different story. But here in hardware, firmware, electrical engineering "The Best" had families, children, dogs, homes, heli-ski'd, bicycled from Mill Valley to SF, and were absolutely surgical with their work.
These people were exceptional and I would easily call them The Best any day.
the author almost realizes that hiring cheap talent is like looking for a stock to invest in ... the trick is to identify undervaluation. then he shortstops and overvalues the usual metrics like low age just as everybody else. some people miss the forest for the trees.
More charitably, someone who is older and exceptional has probably had a chance to find equilibrium with the market, i.e. they know exactly how much they are worth and as a little startup you're less likely to end up landing them.
> But what's the point of bringing a phone at this point?
I don't have much experience with protests, but I'd think people still need to commute to them. Either by their own car, public transport, or uber.
It would be nice to have your real phone for the commute to/from the protest, or in case of emergency, or if you leave the protest for some food or coffee.
A lot of cameras have built in wifi now, so when you leave the protest you could upload your camera's photos through your phone.
There's still a lot of utility of having a phone and selectively being able to prevent signals emanating from it.
It's kinda shocking to me how people are so willing to give tools to government agencies to track, spy, find, dox, and identify fellow citizens.
I guess I grew up drinking the 'American culture is one of mistrust of government' cool-aide, rather than 'American government has deep pockets' fruit punch.
I'm not sure if it's just an evolution of the times, or an actual erosion of principals (since when? 9/11?)
Started much earlier than 9/11. Probably the drug “war” that had things going towards the police state thing. Police departments buying military grade weapons and equipment to arm their swat teams. Then compounded by the fact US citizens are extremely armed themselves and use automatic rifles in their crime. So the police were outgunned. I think the North Hollywood shootout was pivotal in that regard, in the mid-late 90s.
You are not crazy, you make a valid point. But the truth is - the author (me) - was just lazy to upload it to something else and just wanted it published. I promise you I'm not trying to hack you :)
I ask ChatGPT all kinds of questions that could be considered potentially problematic. For example, I frequently ask about my dog’s medications. When my dog had a reaction to one of them, I asked ChatGPT about the symptoms, which ultimately prompted me to take her to the emergency vet.
A couple of weeks ago, I also asked about the symptoms of sodium overdose. I had eaten ramen and then pho within about twelve hours and developed a headache. After answering my question, ChatGPT cleared the screen and displayed a popup urging me to seek help if I was considering harming myself.
What has been genuinely transformative for me is getting actual answers—not just boilerplate responses like “consult your vet” or “consider talking to a medical professional.”
This case is different, though. ChatGPT reinforced someone’s delusions. My concern is that OpenAI may overreact by broadly restricting the model’s ability to give its best, most informative responses.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-supreme-court-s...
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