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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

#301

Post by acdha »

jjav wrote: post #260
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…

> Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism. > > Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes. Companies can never be surveillance resistant, they'll get court orders and follow them. The only surveillance resistant (not surveillance-proof obviously) technologies are distributed, decentralized ones implemented in open source. You're right that political activi…

> Companies can never be surveillance resistant, they'll get court orders and follow them.

There’s a range on this - ask Apple about the FBI – and there are still several levels of usefulness: designing systems which don’t store data unnecessarily, forcing things to follow the legal process rather than quietly turning data over, and notifying the user when this happens. Obviously not all of this is possible to varying degrees but not all authoritarian states are the same, either.

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

#302

Post by paulcole »

core-utility wrote: post #60
paulcole wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds" Bullshit. Much of Silicon Valley likes to think they would be Ludds but they do so while hailing an Uber from their iPhone and hoping that their DoorDash is devlivered on time so they can eat while they watch a HBO Max show and they hope that nobody stole their Amazon Prime package.

I think it applies more along the lines of "free" products where "you are the product" comes into play. It may entirely be biased based on who I know, but I know more tech people who refuse to have a Facebook because of tracking than I do non-tech people.

No post body was provided.

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

#303

Post by PeterisP »

growse wrote: post #225
the-dude wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this work for a 'permit to enter' which is only valid 24hrs?

Only a CoronaCeck test result certificate is valid for 24 hours. Certificates of vaccination and recovery are valid for much longer ( https://coronacheck.nl/en/faq/1-4-hoe-lang-is-mijn-coronabew... ). Are there places which are legally required to only accept test result certificates?

For me, elective medical procedures and air travel required a recent (<24h) test result, vaccination was not sufficient.

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

#304

Post by ativzzz »

viktorcode wrote: post #36
brightstep wrote: post #11

Tech companies only stand to gain from partnering with an invasive government. The idea that they'd side with us over the state that regulates them and provides a market to seek profit is a fantasy

Until their clients learn about it. And then they stand to lose.

Tech companies' clients are advertisers and businesses, whose interests align with those of the tech companies. We get the end product for free, and we are not the clients.

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

#305

Post by greenyoda »

throwawaygh wrote: post #284
matthewdgreen wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also a bit presumptuous to assume that a future authoritarian regime wouldn't have expert technologists at their disposal... I think your thinking here is too binary. Clearly there exist possible futures where authoritarian governments are hyper-efficient and have brilliant technologists advising them. In those futures we're clearly doomed and thus we might as well give up now. The thing is, those futures are…

I think you massively under-estimate the banality of authoritarianism. If an authoritarian movement takes over the US government, at least a majority of the Johns Hopkins CS faculty will continue taking grants from the NSF/DoD. Many of those grants will be more-or-less aligned with the objectives of that authoritarian movement. Non-authoritarian students will grind away on those projects. Something similar would happ…

> Something similar would happen at FAANGM. ... lean on those companies to collect whatever data the state wants.

Well, that has already happened. The NSA went to Google and other companies and asked them to implement PRISM, and they did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

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

#306

Post by voakbasda »

greenyoda wrote: post #305
throwawaygh wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you massively under-estimate the banality of authoritarianism. If an authoritarian movement takes over the US government, at least a majority of the Johns Hopkins CS faculty will continue taking grants from the NSF/DoD. Many of those grants will be more-or-less aligned with the objectives of that authoritarian movement. Non-authoritarian students will grind away on those projects. Something similar would happ…

> Something similar would happen at FAANGM. ... lean on those companies to collect whatever data the state wants. Well, that has already happened. The NSA went to Google and other companies and asked them to implement PRISM, and they did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

Right? This comment thread reads like this sort of thing hasn’t already happened here. But it has. The US may not be the most authoritarian regime, but I think that its recent actions scream authoritarianism louder than any words claiming that it’s not.

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

#307

Post by stickfigure »

jsnell wrote: post #241
stickfigure wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The vaccination certificate in the EU has a QR code that can be cryptographically verified to have been issued by a legit authority, tells why the certificate has been issued (e.g. vaccination, negative test, etc), and embeds the name of the person such that their identity can be cross-checked against some form of official ID. So there's no need for anything more complex than a piece of paper you can download + print…

You still need the enforcement regime. Restaurants/bars/etc must have someone at the door scanning everyone's QR code (and cross checking it against a photo ID). Law enforcement must run stings against restaurants to ensure they're checking properly.

It's gross.

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

#308

Post by Goety »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #236
bentcorner wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

>Is more privacy the solution?

It is the only solution to prevent massive widespread reduction of freedom.

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

#309

Post by anotherhtw »

foxfluff wrote: post #161
coliveira wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said also works if you exchange America and Russia.

Do Canadians and Mexicans feel like the US is terrorizing them?

No, but many people in the middle east do. So I suppose you could say that, yes, the US technically does not terrorize their neighbors. They just go to the next neighborhood.

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

#310

Post by SamPatt »

DarylZero wrote: post #148
martythemaniak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the reason you see this increasing control is because people dont' want to give a small minority the ability to fuck up the rest of society. There is nowhere go to on Earth, because the entire world is spoken for. Hence why people will settle space. It's treated as a pie in the sky joke today, but once it's "affordable" (ie, 250K per ticket) many people will go. Long term, it'll be an essential pressure release v…

It's not just per person ticket cost, you need to put a whole space station up there. For the kind of money it would cost it would be affordable to buy whatever freedoms you want right here on Earth. There's already a movement to live at sea, in international waters, which makes a hell of a lot more sense -- but that movement has insufficient traction with the rich to fund itself. Living in space in the future will a…

This is why the Bitcoin bubble is interesting. Large wealth transfer to non-conformists. I've seen them fund some pretty cool stuff, garbage NFTs aside.
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