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How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

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Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#111

Post by null0pointer »

t-writescode wrote: post #11
viktorcode wrote: post #5

Sad to see UK becoming one of the apologists of internet censorship, closing the gap to the levels of authoritarian countries. Once you have censorship facility in place, the area of its application will only grow. The term "illegal information" is also widely used in Russia for the same purpose.

The cameras tracking everything everywhere in UK would say that it's long been an authoritarian country. Authoritarianism is a sliding scale. From what I can gather, lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian (against the kinds of people they don't like, of course).

> lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian

I think it's probably more like a survivorship bias than an innate quality. The only people who are capable of surviving in politics long enough to the point where they have any meaningful influence are the ones who know how to use the systems under their control to protect themselves while tearing down their opponents. Usually this means attempting to consolidate power in themselves, ie. authoritarianism.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#112

Post by t-writescode »

null0pointer wrote: post #111
t-writescode wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cameras tracking everything everywhere in UK would say that it's long been an authoritarian country. Authoritarianism is a sliding scale. From what I can gather, lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian (against the kinds of people they don't like, of course).

> lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian I think it's probably more like a survivorship bias than an innate quality. The only people who are capable of surviving in politics long enough to the point where they have any meaningful influence are the ones who know how to use the systems under their control to protect themselves while tearing down their opponents. Usually this means a…

Oh, I also mean regular people. The loudest voice sing songs and get articles written ... about new laws we need to add (when the old laws already cover the illegal misdeeds) to stop a new threat from coming upon us, perceived or otherwise.

edit: or making laws that are more about making it illegal to do something some people find icky or culturally unusual.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#113

Post by d110af5ccf »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #88
gambiting wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we can be doing this back and forth for a while, but again, to quote from the article: "Judge Christopher Parker did not accept Nicholson's "wholly inadequate" excuse that providing his password would expose information relating to cannabis." So basically he said "I know the password, but I'm not going to tell you". That's obstructing justice. My point is if you say you don't remember and maintain saying you…

This is the reason America's 5th amendment exists, people have the ability to not self-incriminate because it gives way for a different form of obstruction of justice, compelling people to speak under duress mainly. I've long wished most of the American constitution made it's way over to Britain. We've had many of the freedoms enshrined in it for centuries but a few, particularly the principle of freedom of speech, h…

While the fifth amendment in the US is certainly a good principle, even it doesn't (currently) appear to provide a blanket protection against providing your passwords. My (likely incomplete) understanding of the current situation is that things are still ambiguous with many nuances not yet having been settled by the courts.

On the one hand, there is federal precedent (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/17...) that the government must be able to demonstrate both that the defendant knows the password and that criminal evidence is known to exist on the device. The bar for both of these things appears to be fairly high.

On the other hand, there is precedent at the state level in Pennsylvania (https://law.justia.com/cases/pennsylvania/supreme-court/2019...) that disclosure of passwords is testimonial in nature and therefore always (I think?) protected, even if you admit both to knowing the password and to the existence of criminal evidence.

Note the different jurisdictions for the precedents here. In federal courts that fall under the third circuit (which includes Pennsylvania), the first one applies. In state courts within Pennsylvania, the second one applies. This oddity won't change until and unless the US Supreme Court chooses to hear a relevant case. So in Pennsylvania, the law is currently different depending on if the FBI or the local police is the one prosecuting you.

Also note that from the first case, failure to provide the password is a form of civil contempt and therefore confinement is limited to 18 months at most.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#114

Post by d110af5ccf »

908B64B197 wrote: post #92
buro9 wrote: post #74

This appears to be the thing that will finally take my sites offline. I'm an individual who runs 300 forums. I do this because I believe that forums organised around an interest bring people together and help address loneliness. Further I believe that if you do that, you also help minimise the impact of depression and things like the suicide rate for middle aged men. The forums are things like this: https://www.lfgss…

Transfer them to the United States and simply ban European members?

If it really came to this, transfer ownership wholesale to someone who resides outside of both the UK and the EU and who isn't worried about risking UK legal ire. That way none of the current members need to be banned. (I hear Seychelles is a good jurisdiction for such things.)

Of course, the UK government might attempt to filter the website. But if SciHub is anything to go by then that might not be very effective.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#115

Post by bosswipe »

bosswipe wrote: post #57
jancsika wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish there was some sort of island or safe haven country setup by cryptographers so they could safely work on crypto without legal issues or crypto being seen as a munition and a threat to government. I wish there was some sort of island of safe haven country setup by compiler developers where C didn't have problems with memory safety. Why is politics the only domain where HN'ers think they can make the domain's…

You're HN'er yourself.

To the downvoters let me explain what I meant. jancsika is an HN'er as we all are. But jancsika is on here trying to say the community as a whole is a bunch of arrogant idiots. This annoying type of comment where you make yourself seem smart by putting down the entire community has become common in this community. I see it more and more often on here.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#116

Post by Veedrac »

I realize this is about the least popular opinion you can express on HN, but I really strongly dislike the lack of engagement with the issue here.

Online abuse, of all varieties, including sexual abuse, including of children, is not a boogieman. It is not marginal. It is not so rare as to be a rounding error. It is not enough for you, personally, to not want to partake in it. A person is not bad, or evil, or morally compromised, for recognizing or wanting to mitigate this problem.

Semi-centralized control over data is not the end of the world. Most people are rightly fine with companies storing their data. The ability to enforce laws in publically shared online spaces is not an unthinkable compromise. Not all data needs to be end-to-end encrypted and immune to outside influence. Defaults matter. Purely offline methods of intervention and investigation are difficult to apply.

I understand there are significant difficulties here. I moved to DuckDuckGo for my default search engine as a response to the mess Google made wrt. COVID. I am extremely worried about how disinformation countermeasures have and will continue to be misapplied. I realize that governments are not generally trustworthy. I agree that overregulation is extremely harmful.

I just wish people would take both sides of the issue equally seriously.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#117

Post by brokenmachine »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #103
viccuad wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or better, transfer them to Europe and simply ban UK.

There is a good chance a significant portion of those forums have UK members. You can't just hollow out a community like that and expect it to survive.

A tickbox asking, "If you are in the UK you cannot access this site, are you in the UK?"

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#119

Post by young_unixer »

lostlogin wrote: post #44
young_unixer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Liberland, an attempt at a libertarian country, but it's still far from being an actual country.

That sounds a lot like a place for liberals rather than libertarians. It’s very interesting to read about, thanks. https://liberland.org/en/about

Liberal as in "classic liberal"

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#120

Post by KingOfCoders »

duiker101 wrote: post #56
KingOfCoders wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is only tractable because 90% of companies don't implement it. In Germany thousands of companies illegally use Mailchimp for example.

What makes Mailchimp illegal? From what I can see they seem GDPR compliant

They can't be GDPR compliant if they can't prevent US three letter agencies from accessing their data - or more to the point, EU citizien need to be able to get to court with US three letter agencies to administer their rights, which they can't for various reasons, one of them that they don't know because the US has secret courts.
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