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Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

asia.nikkei.com

211–220 of 281 posts

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are joking, but it's illegal in Japan to carry a locked-blade knives or folding knives with blade longer than 5.5cm. You need a solid reason to carry those, like if you just buy it from the shop (in the original package), or if you are a chef, etc.

Is fishing legal anywhere in Japan? If so, then do people have to take the fish home before cleaning them or can they prepare and eat them while camping, etc?

Fishermen and scuba divers are, in practice, generally not going to be busted by police for having a normal-size knife in Japan. Of course, this is the problem with the legal strategy of “make it illegal but give enforcement discretion to the police” - it adds a lot of uncertainty to what you are actually allowed to do, it allows the government to convict many normal people of a crime if they want to, and it gives the police discretion to get people in trouble for arbitrary reasons.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s in an even worse position being self hosted by people/entities with no power or sway in the face of a state. Is there a technical provision that applies to people hosting mastodon instances that doesn’t apply to large social media cos and cannot be beaten with a $5 wrench?

Mastodon is federated, which means everyone can start a instance. There will always be instances not controlled by the government and you cannot chase everyone.

They can get a lot of them (but not all) through amazon and digital ocean etc.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#213
post #198
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of "smart home" devices automatically shovel all of their camera data to the manufacturer's servers, because most consumers don't want to deal with a NAS box and remote access. With this kind of architecture, law enforcement doesn't need 0-days, they only need a warrant/NSL, or to just ask the manufacturer nicely. Some manufacturers (e.g. Amazon/Ring) are a little too eager to essentially hand all o…

Apple devices don’t force updates. They’re very pushy, yes, and there are a couple of dark patterns in their update notification UI, but my devices aren’t running the latest iOS

Are you using your observations of Apple's user-facing iOS Update UI to conclude that they're not capable of pushing a silent update to an iOS device? You do realize that branded OS updates and even point releases are not the only units of software that receive updates from Apple, right?

Google also asks you if you'd like to update Android, and they currently let you turn off auto-updates in the Play store, but they push updates to their nebulous, infinitely privileged "Play Services" packages frequently and without asking or informing the user. Even if Apple doesn't currently do something similar, it would be foolish to believe that they're not capable of doing so, as an ace-up-their-sleeve in an emergency scenario.

Also baseband firmware is pushed by the carriers silently and is essentially unauthenticated.

You really, really, really should not trust your phone, like, at all.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#214
post #159
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of "smart home" devices automatically shovel all of their camera data to the manufacturer's servers, because most consumers don't want to deal with a NAS box and remote access. With this kind of architecture, law enforcement doesn't need 0-days, they only need a warrant/NSL, or to just ask the manufacturer nicely. Some manufacturers (e.g. Amazon/Ring) are a little too eager to essentially hand all o…

The vast majority of homes are not in any way smart.

The vast majority of people in the US have a smartphone in their pocket.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#215
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, why do you think they've been trying to progressively restrict guns for years?

Firearms make it easy/way easier to kill/seriously injure * a large number of people * from a distance * with basically no effort With knives on the other hand it's hard (especially for untrained attackers) killing/injuring * even a low number of people (IF even more than one) * from arm's reach * with large physical effort. Following that firearm restriction to those who may actually need them (law enforcement etc.)…

Fewer than 200 people die every year in the US (~1 in 1,500,000) from rifle homicides, fewer than the number of people who die from kicks and punches or blunt objects, and yet rifle platforms such as the AR-15 are one of the most popular targets of anti-gun lawmakers and are heavily regulated in many states.

Saving lives is not a rational explanation for the political strategy of anti-gun activists. If it were, I would be more willing to consider what they had to say. Based on what they do rather than what they say, I can only conclude that their motivations have nothing to do with rationally increasing safety, and are more related to mindless irrational fear, disarming people for political reasons, and simply pandering to people who have also done no real research.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#216
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KGB is the direct successor to MGB, which was spun off from punitive branch of NKVD, which itself was a reorganized CheKa. Huge swathes of KGB operatives worked through all of its organizational incarnations. They did (and Russian FSB still does) refer themselves as 'chekists' informally. Their professional holiday is the CheKa foundation day.

Huge swathes of post-war German police, judiciary, political personnel were Nazi Party members[0], but we don't attribute crimes carried out in the Third Reich to West (or East) Germany or its institutions. If you want to pretend the KGB, or the regime it operated under[1], was just the same as the NKVD under Stalin, then please provide examples of the same crimes (mass killings) occurring from 1954-1991. [0] https:/…

Do you really suggest that West German police was basically Gestapo that changed the name? Because that's what MGB to KGB transition was. The status was changed from Ministry to Committee, that's it.

The policy has been changed under Khrustchev, but thousands of the same butchers that committed massacres of 1930s were serving (often in the same offices) until late 1970s.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#217
post #187

> Security alliance worries encrypted messaging apps can be used by bad actors Same goes for kitchen knives. I don't hear them call for banning those, or have every sale of one tracked and monitored (which would only illustrate the lunacy of their "argument" even more).

Actually a lot of countries do ban knives. And guns. And anything else bad actors might abuse.

“Anything else bad across might abuse” includes things that people can’t possibly delude themselves into thinking it would be rational to outlaw, such as cars and caustic cleaning agents.

Of course, shockingly few of these ban-heavy countries, with the exception of the East Asian ones, have considered the much more effective strategy of adopting laws to reduce the number of bad actors. Switzerland is almost unique in only adopting laws to reduce the number of bad actors (very strict immigration system) but having fairly lax object laws (knives are mostly fine, guns are relatively loosely regulated) and it works well for them.

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#218
post #197

> Security alliance worries encrypted messaging apps can be used by bad actors Same goes for kitchen knives. I don't hear them call for banning those, or have every sale of one tracked and monitored (which would only illustrate the lunacy of their "argument" even more).

"Kitchen knives" went too far to be an example. How about door locks? I still don't get the idea that having a weakened security system could somehow benefit security. Based on many real-life hack stories I've heard, it's usually the "bad actors" who's taking advantage of unsecured apps to attack normal people, this is the very reason why developers are making apps more secure to begin with. Another point is, insecur…

> The point is, even if you've successfully banned encryption in big companies, users will then just add a layer of encryption of their own, and that layer can be very very secure.

That's what projects like Maskbook do[1]. The problem with those is that the use of such technology can be detected, and thus the small number of users singled out. You'd need steganography for this principle to work, and AFAIK that's already what paranoid criminals are doing. So in reality making E2E encryption inconvenient only penalizes regular honest people.

[1]: https://mask.io/

Re: Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime

#220

> Security alliance worries encrypted messaging apps can be used by bad actors Same goes for kitchen knives. I don't hear them call for banning those, or have every sale of one tracked and monitored (which would only illustrate the lunacy of their "argument" even more).

Actually here in the UK the government did briefly consider banning all knives with points. I know right? Welcome to the nanny state. (from 2005 but it was brought up again last year...) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm#:~:text=%22Off...

I love the logic (or lack) with things like that.

Are they also going to ban files and bar stock because give me those and you can make something utterly lethal.

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