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The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

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Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#231

Post by wbsss4412 »

dandanua wrote: post #127
tazjin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that this is the dominant view in the Western sphere and there's really no point arguing about it, our priors would be too different. Doesn't change anything about what I said about tech dependence though, especially between Europe/US (where Russia is not in the picture at all).

> and there's really no point arguing about it The truth is singular, we don't live in parallel universes. My prior is that 2+2=4. But, of course, this is not a place to fight about everything else. We have a free speech here, so that everyone can just stick to their own thoughts.

Even taking for granted that the truth is singular, that doesn’t mean it is well known/well understood.

Your priors are still heavily dictated by your experience living within certain cultures.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#232

Post by digisign »

growse wrote: post #223
digisign wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a looking-forward statement... projecting current trends 5-10 years in the future. More likely will be a de-facto requirement to participate in society rather than a law. As I mentioned in another comment, many private companies are already requiring it.

Another forward-looking statement might be that "governments will require constant 24-hour curfews 10 years from now". After all, that's just projecting and extrapolating from recent historical events (temporary movement restrictions, or lockdowns). Anyone can make "forward looking statements". If they're going to be useful and not dismissed as hysterical fear-mongering, then it helps if they're actually credible.

Choosing to ignore clear trends is a strategy as well. I put away the smartphone for several weeks this year, was surprised how many things it discouraged and a few times prevented.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#233

Post by hypertele-Xii »

toss1 wrote: post #207
oooooooooooow wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember Russia has been the undisputed world champion of dezinformatsiya for centuries My friend, you seem to have mispelled United States of America

Sure, correlates nicely (NOT) with the Russians having a word for it before it appeared in French or English [0] [0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/disinformation

So if you were the first to invent misinformation, you would immediately add it to your local language to make that fact public? Doesn't make sense. You'd rather make up some newspeak code name. It's more plausible that Russians made the word to describe what their worst enemy (USA) was doing, so they could be aware of it and counter.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#234

Post by throwawaygh »

distances wrote: post #227
throwawaygh wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My bank has made it (almost) impossible to make payments without a phone, btw My bank has several buildings full of people, all within driving distance of my house. Any of those people will happily accept a stack of paper bills. If you don't want to use digital forms of payment, why on earth are you using a bank that doesn't have physical branches located near your home?

Paying bills in a physical branch will get expensive fast, at least here every bank that even allows that will take 3-10€ per bill.

Interesting; I wasn't aware. In the US it's still very normal (and free) to deposit/withdraw cash at physical branches.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#235

Post by marcosdumay »

throwawaygh wrote: post #164

Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism. Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes. It's a special sort of odd neoliberal fantasy where capitalists or technologists can route around an authoritarian social movement that seizes the power of the state. Do you want to know what happens to people who think they can route around an authoritarian regime with cl…

To be fair, those primes are an exceptionally useful tool if you want to get serious about the work of political persuasion.

They are not what will change things, but they are a tool you can use to disperse ideas and make change happen.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#236

Post by matthewdgreen »

bentcorner wrote: post #189
throwawaygh wrote: post #164

Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism. Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes. It's a special sort of odd neoliberal fantasy where capitalists or technologists can route around an authoritarian social movement that seizes the power of the state. Do you want to know what happens to people who think they can route around an authoritarian regime with cl…

Technology people make this mistake a lot. They see a problem like "the government might track all of our payments in the future" and create bitcoin. Or "the government might rootkit our phones" and creates an open source hardware phone. Or "the government might want to see who you are communicating with" and create an E2E encrypted chat application. None of these solutions do anything to solve the original problem,…

I am the author of the original tweet, so allow me to push back on this point of view.

Technology people are not the solution to this problem, we are the problem. And we really need to stop being the problem. There have been authoritarian governments before, and still are all over the world: but they've never had access to technology anywhere near as powerful as what we have today, e.g., ubiquitous user location or unencrypted smartphone backup or vast unprotected email databases. These technologies themselves are brand new: smartphone cloud backup is only 10 years old, and ubiquitous GPS-enabled smartphones are younger than my middle-school aged child.

But thanks to aggressive deployment by Silicon Valley we went ahead and created a surveillance utopia on a timescale so short that most citizens don't even realize what we've done. Future governments now have capabilities we could never have imagined a decade ago: centralized data repositories and collection systems that would make the Stasi blush. These systems now exist because people like us built them and decided to leave the problem of securing those repositories to the future. But we're running out of future.

Is more privacy the solution? I don't know. It's possible that authoritarian regimes are very efficient and will somehow force companies to build insecure systems that can be abused, and force consumers to adopt them at Google scale. I suspect this could happen but would be slow and inefficient and full of friction. None of that has to happen now -- there is no friction -- because Silicon Valley has already done the architecture work and deployed the technology at scale. They did it recklessly and with no thought to how it might be abused, and now they're finding it difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. It will not get easier.

TL;DR: The data repositories already exist and all that's protecting them is a fig-leaf of legislation and honest government behavior that could disappear at any moment. Removing those repositories might not save us, but we need to try. We sure need to stop creating more of them.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#237

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

Tyr42 wrote: post #206
throwawaygh wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a11n I'm not sure what this means, assuming weird auto-correct from authoritarian? > An a11n regime needs the buy-in of private leadership because... Only if that leadership is necessary to seize or hold power. An authoritarian regime in the US would not need buy-in from major tech companies.

They don't want to type the letters in the middle, so they dropped them and put a count of how many letters were dropped. I'm mostly familiar with a11y meaning accessibility.

I believe this pattern was originally popularized by "i18n" for "internationalization", partly for convenience and partly to have an identifier that would fit in legacy systems.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#238

Post by wbsss4412 »

stickfigure wrote: post #117
Quigglez wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. When I hear people say "vaccine passport" I assume they mean "COVID-19 vaccination documentation". Is that a correct interpretation, or does a vaccine passport mean something more? If it is just "COVID-19 vaccination documentation", has there been a push to not allow the paper documentation? I've been primarily using my paper documentation without issue. As far…

I need to lead this with "I'm fully vaccinated and pro-vaccine" so nobody gets the wrong idea (I'm disappointed that this is the state of discourse) BUT... Anyone can print a piece of paper. If vaccination requirements are going to have any teeth whatsoever, they will need to be much more invasive. A central database is the minimum. You'll need holographic cards with your picture, like driver's licenses. Spot checks…

Anyone can print a piece of paper, but it’s also amazing how much a small obstacle can affect people’s behavior.

So yes, to get 100% compliance you would need the measures you outline, but who says that’s the goal?

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#239

Post by summm »

rvense wrote: post #212
toss1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look more closely. That's what I thought at first. Read what people who were actually in the intelligence agencies said.

Why in the world would I trust people who were in intelligence agencies?

Even worse: Why would I trust professional liars whose wrongdoings were uncovered by Snowden? "Do your own research". He cannot even name specific sources for his vague insinuations.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#240

Post by ByThyGrace »

throwawaygh wrote: post #177
zwkrt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When authoritarianism comes around, it wont just be surveiling. An a11n regime needs the buy-in of private leadership because the goal is to turn the state into an all-encompasing master of peoples lives, and work is a large part of peoples lives (especially in an a11n regime!) Whether or not the state can surveil is a moot point if the owners of the tech are in on the game.

> a11n I'm not sure what this means, assuming weird auto-correct from authoritarian? > An a11n regime needs the buy-in of private leadership because... Only if that leadership is necessary to seize or hold power. An authoritarian regime in the US would not need buy-in from major tech companies.

> a11n

Perhaps it's like i18n, except it's the will of the dictator that which gets translated for the masses.

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