Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it • Hacker News Board

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#141

Post by madaxe_again » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #137

madaxe_again wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that makes my head hurt is that some of the people described in the article as having been swept up in this dragnet are still authoritarian nationalists . How having an experience such as this can’t shake your belief that the state is infallible I really can’t comprehend. It’s almost like Stockholm syndrome.

What do you expect these people to tell a newspaper when asked about what they “did?” Of course they’re going to declare their enduring love and support for their wonderful leader. Saying anything else would result in a prison sentence.

It doesn’t change that they’re still authoritarian nationalists. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, publicly supports the big duck that likes hurting other ducks rather than simply keeping its beak shut...

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#142

Post by rublev » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

t-away9912 wrote: post #43

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm. And you believe those on top will allow this to happen? You're raw material to them. Something they can consume. You're a chess piece. One reason I conceal my identity is because my father has some very strange political beliefs, and I'd be embarrassed to be associated with his writings. But as time wears on, the belief that war is the inevitable outcome keeps pressing at me, gnawing at me, like a scratch on the…

caution against only blaming "those on top". Unfortunately, many of these policies are supported by the masses which is a lot more disheartening to me.

Can't blame the masses. I feel no contempt for propagaters, only catalysts.

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#143

Post by ythn » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

thrillgore wrote: post #102

ythn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Guns don't kill people, people do" "Code doesn't cause people to be arrested, people do" True in both cases, but also true in both cases that guns/code are used as enablers of the evil deeds.

Firearms are designed to kill or disable another party. Software has no use case besides what a developer gives it. That's a pretty significant difference in design!

You could think of a gun as just a malicious piece of mechanical engineering. You could think of the software in the article as a malicious piece of software engineering.

My point still stands.

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#144

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #135

thrillgore wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firearms are designed to kill or disable another party. Software has no use case besides what a developer gives it. That's a pretty significant difference in design!

OMG I can't believe you're downvoted for saying that, more than the person you were responding to! Americans you are nuts. Last political-related comment I ever make on here, if I can help it. Sick of seeing and getting downvotes for stating the bleeding obvious.

You can generalize from firearms and target shooting up to something that applies to software and surveillance dragnets. Sure, you might just want to target your ads more accurately but the same software can be turned right around and (ab)used as a surveillance dragnet.

Selling better ads and tracking consumers is just target shooting with some abstraction. You can still ruin lives with the technology if it's used irresponsibly. Any similarity or comparison with the firearms industry is not popular in the software industry for reasons having to do with the beliefs most people in the software industry subscribe to.

The parent comment was denying that software can be used for nefarious purposes because software only does what the developer builds it to do. That is probably why he was down-voted.

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#145

Post by mamon » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

gazorpazorpaway wrote: post #105

gazorpazorpaway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Turkey as in many other countries it's a case of a person takes control over the country through populistic propaganda, then censor all news. The only news available is the government approved news about how great the great leader is. The population doesn't speak English so even if they could get a hold of uncensored news from the outside, they couldn't read it. Absolutely everything that has to do with trying to…

This is what excites me about the future. As technology develops it will hopefully be harder to control information in a whole country. Imagine if it was impossible for any government to block or censor anything.

No, exactly the opposite. Technology, especially Big Data and Machine Learning enable more strict information censorship by government. Take Facebook ML algorithms blocking accounts for "hate speech" as an example and extrapolate.

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#146

Post by pavel_lishin » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #133

>nearly 150,000 Turks detained >An estimated 30,000 are believed to be among the innocent swept up in this particular campaign I'd say an estimated 150,000 or so are innocent of anything that would be a crime in any normal country. I note Turkey is not getting anywhere with getting Gullen himself extradited because it would require showing evidence to a US court that he'd done something beyond being a political oppon…

Yeah, I found that to be a weird phrasing on the article's part. I guess what they mean is that 120,000 were actually charged with a crime, due to an action they committed (whether those outside of Turkey would believe that action to be inherently criminal or not).

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#147

Post by thriftwy » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #114

thriftwy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vein they could just be jailing actual (or hypothetical) Bylock users' friends and friends of friends (and relatives and relatives of relatives). This is both similarly idiotic, doesn't depends on technology at all and have been done through history.

Sure -- and in fact, that's what the government appeared to successfully do in 2015-16, initially [0]. The OP's revelation is that at some point, the government's dragnet became ridiculously loose. So whether you believe the government is justified in cracking down on the purported treasonous group, it appears they've become so overzealous and incompetent that they (the gov't) have been easily tricked by their target…

> But other people -- including some gov't supporters quoted in the article -- may realize that this is a symptom of a government that has gone too far.

On the fifth day of imprisonment, our native companion, Eagle Sharp-Eyed, noticed that our jail lacks fourth wall.

I mean, searching the country for (a hundred thousand) "gulenists" suggests not only going too far, but actual schizophrenia. Going so far that you end up returning from the opposite side.

Who didn't get the memo at this point?

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#148

Post by LeifCarrotson » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

hi41 wrote: post #112

>Beşikçi said it was due to a single line of code, which created a window "one pixel high, one pixel wide" — essentially invisible to the human eye — to Bylock.net. Kindly, could someone please explain what kind of hacking attack this is and how it works? Did this window create a browser cookie for Bylock?

It's not a "hacking attack", it's an element on a website:

or

This code, if it was a part of a page you browse, would cause your browser to load the linked site, almost exactly like clicking on this link: http://bylock.net. This iframe was present in various websites and apps.

The nefarious component of the attack is that the Turkish government surveils all Internet traffic within its borders and thought that the website may have helped some of its opponents commit what it believes to be treason. Its surveillance data tells it all the sites your phone looks up, and it accused people whose phones looked up that domain as being guilty of treason.

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#149

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #113

thrillgore wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firearms are designed to kill or disable another party. Software has no use case besides what a developer gives it. That's a pretty significant difference in design!

There are plenty of firearms whose only purpose is to put tiny holes in paper at varying distances.

Do you mean non-gunpowder based "firearms"? My understanding was something even as small as a .22 is significantly deadly

Re: Thousands of Turks accused of using Bylock app despite never having used it

#150

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #129

reallymental wrote: post #4

Everybody hears the echos of this behavior throughout history. I wonder if Erdogan thinks he'll be the one who escapes the universal fate of tyrants. As Turkey becomes increasingly alienated from the EU, Putin looks to gain another monster.

I'm not sure what the universal fate of tyrants is supposed to be. A lot of them seem to hang in there fairly comfortably till they die of old age.

Minus a couple of outliers, I think history has taught us that the fate of tyrants and oppressors is a long, healthy, and comfortable life of luxury and immense wealth. As a bonus, that fate often includes admiration and support from at least 50.1% of the oppressed population.