I need to apologies to conspiracy theorists.
Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
91–100 of 162 posts
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#92"Few pause to think that their phones can be transformed into surveillance devices, with someone thousands of miles away silently extracting their messages, photos and location, activating their microphone to record them in real time." They were designed to be surveillance devices! Remember when you could replace your phone battery? They corrected that 'design flaw'. Smart phones, smart meters, smart cities, 5g... th…
This seems a bit over the top to me. I don't think I agree with your overall sentiment, even though I share some of the fear. Our phones were certainly not designed to be surveillance devices, that's just a side effect of having one central device that includes pretty much all of your life's data. As convenient as it is to have everything that matters to you on one device, it simply makes spying that much easier. I'm…
The idea of journalism is good in principle, but it rarely works in our modern highly centralised and easily controlled society.
Journalists are not independent enough to create a market of actors with different ideas and point of views. If they are, they're probably internet blogs or youtubers and are labeled conspiracy theorists by mainstream journalists.
In the mainstream media you have a few narratives (typically one per party but there may be variations) who are sponsored by either the government or massive businesses.
There are certainly noteworthy exceptions (think about Greenwald - Snowden) but those are few and far.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#93I don't think the problem is with the "lie" that the innocent need not fear surveillance. Most people will agree that mass-surveillance will negatively affect some people that are indispensable to healthily functioning liberal society: journalists, activists, academics, public figures... The problem is that even if most people don't subscribe to the "nothing to hide" argument in general, they do not care about themse…
yes, exactly. My mum, sister, brother and sister-in-law were all listed on the latest facebook leak (with ~500mil others). Yet none of them could be bothered to switch their phone number or get off facebook or whatsapp (even though they got signal and communicate with me on it once I moved away from whatsapp)… I feel pretty helpless to help them understand the risks. Or they just don’t calculate the risk vs hussle th…
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Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Venice wasn't a democracy in any meaningful way, either in the style of Greek democracy that preceded it or western liberal democracies that succeeded them. It was an oligarchy with limited democratic elements.
It's worth noting that the popular conception of "Greek democracy" tends to ignore the massive caste of slaves that Greek city states had.
Tell me again how this applies to user privacy concerns?
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of these are anonymous platforms where people are unafraid to speak their mind due to that anonymity. Also the existence of loud people on these platforms isn't evidence that the number of people self-censoring hasn't increased. A small, loud group of people is enough to create the effect that you see. Polling suggests that the number of people self-censoring has increased. It's especially common among college e…
It is circumstantial evidence, but I wouldn't expect an increase in radical activity on social media to occur in a society in which most people are afraid to express their views due to fear of omnipresent surveillance. Some people are self-suppressing, a lot of people aren't. And what is it that people are afraid to say? That they only believe in two genders, or innate gender roles? That the US should return to the g…
> It is circumstantial evidence, but I wouldn't expect an increase in radical activity on social media to occur in a society in which most people are afraid to express their views due to fear of omnipresent surveillance.
The consistent "haha only serious" taunt I hear on the left is directed towards "Twitter activists" – leftists whose only contribution is to tweet, and who aren't politically active outside of their social media bubble.
I'd almost wonder if taking a hands-off approach to social media benefits the surveillance state: undirected radical energy flows into social media and away from organizations that could try to focus it towards change. Those organizations remain small, which means the people who are actually likely to radicalize are easier to watch. Social media as a "pressure relief valve", I guess.
Someone may point out that sometimes that pressure relief valve gets stuck and we experience stochastic terrorism, which is very true. But I contend that benefits the state as well.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are saying it as if "in bands of no more than 300 people" there was no hierarchy. It starts appearing at few dozens, let alone few hundreds. Proof of it being biological? Look at other primates. They form groups of way less than few hundreds and still maintain (strict) hierarchy.
It's nowhere as clear-cut as you try to portray it. First of all, there are differences among primates, how are these hierarchies structured and some of it is also, surprisingly, cultural. (Look for example at work of Robert Sapolsky.) I for example believe that hierarchies are a cultural artifact of civilization, not a biologically inherent human value. The inherent human value is deference to authority, which is us…
Following this claim, a society does not need social order to fulfill the need to defer, it is just more comfortable.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess identity theft is the most likely risk? but who knows? and humans are pretty bad at calculating such risks. Changing your phone number is a pretty concrete hassle though, and I guess none of them estimated it worth the hassle… It’s just some anecdata to support the parent’s point.
If your threat model is mostly about identity theft, then switching your phone number and going off whatsapp won't help at all; going off facebook might limit it a bit but not really, as data in FB leaks isn't that relevant to identity theft, that's usually done based on leaks of your data from e.g. Experian which you can't prevent. There are a bunch of somewhat reasonable precautions against identity theft (credit f…
> It's just some anecdata to support the parents point.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#98So few phones have hardware switches.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#99I don't think the problem is with the "lie" that the innocent need not fear surveillance. Most people will agree that mass-surveillance will negatively affect some people that are indispensable to healthily functioning liberal society: journalists, activists, academics, public figures... The problem is that even if most people don't subscribe to the "nothing to hide" argument in general, they do not care about themse…
> The problem is that even if most people don't subscribe to the "nothing to hide" argument in general, they do not care about themselves being the target of surveillance.
They do care, but they don't have a choice. Investing the time and effort it takes to avoid constant surveillance is far more costly than being under constant surveillance.
If asked, they would all prefer a functional government, rather than the ones we have now that not only refuse to regulate, but take advantage of lax laws for private date collection to get around slightly tighter laws for government data collection.
Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
#100My next phone is going to be a Linux phone, and this is partly why. Individuals need to be the ones in control of the software and hardware that they use, not the other way around.
Hope it’s not manufactured in China.