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Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#21

Post by fsflover »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #12
robk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

Seems like the obvious answer is no. But if can see that they are doing important stuff, and you're letting your hangups over unrelated political issues keep you from donating to their awesome work, I'd say that's a mistake. They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator for spending their money effectively.

> They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator

You probably mean 4/4: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/043091431.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#22

Post by yieldcrv »

robk wrote: post #10
charles_kaw wrote: post #7

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

You can always designate the purposes of donations. Maybe not through their donation portal but the regulations allow for it.

Many non profits reject those kind of donations though. But money talks.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#23

Post by dane-pgp »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
sysadm1n wrote: post #13

> "Local law enforcement is at the front lines of trafficking and missing persons cases, yet these departments are often behind in technology adoption," Broderick told AP. "We fill a gap for underfunded and understaffed departments." So if they had a near-unlimited budget, they would have even scarier tools. Obviously law enforcement isn't the NSA, but that part made me think. Just how far does LE want to go with tec…

This is why "defund the police" became a slogan: operational control against abuse just doesn't work, so the blunt instrument of reducing the amount of money for toys is the only one left.

But it's exactly the same mistake as the supposed "starve the beast" policy.

If someone really doesn't trust the government to spend money on the right programs, then they shouldn't expect that reducing tax revenue will make the government prioritize the same things they would. Besides, governments can produce very bad outcomes with almost no budget at all, since some of the worst things in life are free.

If cops like spending money on toys rather than doing the hard work of solving or preventing crimes, then giving them less money won't suddenly make them stop brutalizing vulnerable people (and potentially might make them more likely to do so, out of boredom or revenge).

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#25

Post by rendall »

Their "OneTrust" popup does not allow opt-out from "Match and combine offline data sources" nor "Link different devices" among other trackers.

I wonder if we will ever see an article from ArsTechnica about corporate surveillance? Indeed, their focus seems to be on state surveillance, only: https://arstechnica.com/search/?ie=UTF-8&q=surveillance

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#26

Post by Karellen »

Barrin92 wrote: post #18
robk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

>that are unrelated to their main goal given that we're commenting on a thread about invasive police surveillance it's pretty funny to think there's no very obvious correlation to immigration. Which groups do you think are among the most targeted by law enforcement surveillance tech? People who get hung up on this, what's the underlying mindset? "I love privacy for white dudes, but god forbid they accidentally help a…

Cory Doctorow's "shitty technology adoption curve" hypothesis covers this quite well. He's written about it a bunch of times, but an example with a really good summary is at https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/18/always-get-their-rational...

> The "shitty technology adoption curve" describes the arc of oppressive technology: when you have a manifestly terrible idea, you can't ram it down the throats of rich, powerful people who get to say no. You have to find people whose complaints no one will listen to.

>

> So our worst tech ideas start out with prisoners, asylum seekers and mental patients, spread to children and blue collar workers, and ascend the privilege gradient to the wealthy and powerful as they are normalized and have their roughest corners sanded down.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#27

Post by polygamous_bat »

I believe I am not the only one here whose blood boils at such a news story. Thank you EFF for investigating this.

My question is, what can we do to fight such oppressive surveillance mechanisms as individuals? Beyond the standard donation to EFF and such. In my rage I want to see the Fog Data Science people prosecuted and the police depts which unquestioningly used their product stripped of their post, but what power do we have as a collection of individuals to work against these nefarious machinations?

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#28

Post by keyme »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #27

I believe I am not the only one here whose blood boils at such a news story. Thank you EFF for investigating this. My question is, what can we do to fight such oppressive surveillance mechanisms as individuals? Beyond the standard donation to EFF and such. In my rage I want to see the Fog Data Science people prosecuted and the police depts which unquestioningly used their product stripped of their post, but what powe…

You have no power. The moment you'll come close to regainig it in any way, it'll be called an "insurrection" and you'll be neutralized and disgraced.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#29

Post by swader999 »

keyme wrote: post #28
polygamous_bat wrote: post #27

I believe I am not the only one here whose blood boils at such a news story. Thank you EFF for investigating this. My question is, what can we do to fight such oppressive surveillance mechanisms as individuals? Beyond the standard donation to EFF and such. In my rage I want to see the Fog Data Science people prosecuted and the police depts which unquestioningly used their product stripped of their post, but what powe…

You have no power. The moment you'll come close to regainig it in any way, it'll be called an "insurrection" and you'll be neutralized and disgraced.

Doesn't take an army to invent alternatives to our always on, always pinging smart phones. At some point someone will.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#30

Post by javajosh »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #27

I believe I am not the only one here whose blood boils at such a news story. Thank you EFF for investigating this. My question is, what can we do to fight such oppressive surveillance mechanisms as individuals? Beyond the standard donation to EFF and such. In my rage I want to see the Fog Data Science people prosecuted and the police depts which unquestioningly used their product stripped of their post, but what powe…

Save your blood and accept the simple fact that "the police" are a actually a set of more-or-less independent small government departments who get to beat people up and get away with it. And then arrest the beaten up person putting them in jail indefinitely before trial, and creating an immediate huge financial and social burden on that person. Mostly the public is unaware of this because the frog has boiled in fits and starts, the last big temp increases happened because of 9/11 under Bush and Obama and the distro of military gear to PDs. Tell me: what about this situation implies "self-restraint" is a key virtue of PDs?

I'll tell you what the problem is. It's the justice system itself. It's extremely slow and expensive. Defense lawyers have perverse incentives -- delays make money. Prosecution have perverse incentives -- they just want easy wins. The courts have perverse incentives -- they don't want to decide cases. So you get a system rooted in all-powerful patrolmen who effectively serve as judge, jury and executioner, with the rest of it serving as a willing, very highly paid window dressing. So why would a PD ever say no to getting any legal advantage?

The solution must be to rethink justice from top to bottom, such that excesses like this are punished meaningfully. I'm uncharacteristically optimistic about the possibility, mainly because of computers and the internet. Justice is about making sound decisions informed by reality after applying agreed upon rules (laws), and it requires a judge/jury. Computers can help with each of these elements in ways barely explored by modern-day courts. They can help with information gathering and jury selection/operation. If we wanted, we could have same day trials of higher quality than the months or years long things we have today.

For people aware of these problems, the only solutions they hear involve fixing the justice with new legislation or by electing the right sheriff, mayor, police chief, or if a higher level of government steps in (like the FBI or federal courts). Or even worse that odious pablum "just vote" - if you've been served shit for dinner it won't taste better if you push it 'round your plate.

(If someone with infinite money (and with open-minded connections with judges in various courts, and supportive politicians) wants to fund a serious effort in this area, please reach out to me, because this need is critical.)

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