291–300 of 361 posts
What i don't get, yes you can force Facebook to implement Backdoors, but how would you do that with a opensource project like Matrix or even the full opensource Android?
The most interesting and important parts of the smartphone stack are closed source. The parts that control doing calls, connecting to cells, etc. They are called "Radio" firmware.
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Money laundering is just math too.
Yeah, so? Most acts of "money laundering" consist of nothing more or less than the basic principles of privacy applied to financial transactions. The fact that the government has somehow managed to normalize intrusive mass surveillance in the domain of finances does not justify extending the surveillance to other areas.
Is false.
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Unless receiving/storing unexplainable random bytes becomes illegal (like "forgetting" your password).
Right that's why you send random bytes to other people. You're forcing everyone else to receive or store random bytes. Thus rendering any actual enforcement of a law forbidding possession of encrypted data (or random bytes) nigh-impossible. If someone gets charged for possession of random bytes, send the prosecutor and judge a bunch of random bytes and see if they're still intent on moving forward with charges.
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Why not work on said technology? It can even end up being very lucrative to take up the cause. Do you forget that prior to the 90s (and also during part of the 90s) much of the lead-in to the completely common, widely commercially and privately used digital encryption we have today was completely discouraged or even made illegal by governments except for their own use. It was a generation of pioneers who weren't quit…
I agree vehemently with your call to go work on this stuff. What I don’t understand is why you seem to be suggesting that as an alternative to opposing legislation which would prohibit such work.
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I agree vehemently with your call to go work on this stuff. What I don’t understand is why you seem to be suggesting that as an alternative to opposing legislation which would prohibit such work.
Both can be done, activist opposition, and a practical move to build the tools that make circumventing such privacy-hating regulatory nonsense all the more easy to pull off. More simply put: while active public opposition to bad laws is good, few things nullify bad laws better than a fait accompli that's out of the bag.
However, the second part (about the fait accompli) is a very important point.
You’d have to achieve widespread usage among the general population for this to be effective to be effective.
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Yeah, so? Most acts of "money laundering" consist of nothing more or less than the basic principles of privacy applied to financial transactions. The fact that the government has somehow managed to normalize intrusive mass surveillance in the domain of finances does not justify extending the surveillance to other areas.
So this statement: “See encryption is just math, and you can't really outlaw or limit how math is used.” Is false.
Back in late medieval europa most postal services had a back room, called cabinet noir where letters where carefully opened, read and resealed to check them for signs of treason against the crown or cross. These were often abused for what we today would call economic espionage. For these reasons many rich people employed private couriers who traveled to their business partners in person to hand over messages. Those w…
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If you never move on to constructive action, that's a problem, for sure. However, telling a sad or difficult truth and stopping there is still a big improvement on pretending there was no issue in the first place.
You have presented a false choice. Saying negative things is just negative, full stop, as already stated. You can make this positive by suggesting a solution or asking someone qualified to suggest one and then helping them achieve it.
I dunno, I'm not sure that's always an absolute. Example: your boss says the budget has been slashed and the department head will be downsizing the whole department by 50% in the coming months. This is very obviously a negative thing, but is your boss doing you a disservice by giving you a heads up? "Oh but he should give me guidance that I should work diligently but also prepare resumes and look into other options." Of course they should and it would be really nice if they also could find out for sure if your head is on the chopping block- but let me ask you this: even if your boss doesn't offer this very obvious advice or have any insight into the department head's persona non grata list, is knowing about this negative truth a net-negative for any employee this concerns? Of course not.
Or even more relevant to HN: a very outgoing individual who loves the face-to-face environment of the office has just been told that the CEO has decided everyone will be 100% remote starting next week until 2022. Is being told this negative truth a net-negative for the social butterfly employee who now at least has a brief chance to wrap their head around the idea and mentally prepare for the change instead of being blindsided?
Sometimes simply raising awareness that a negative thing is happening isn't a bad thing.