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

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

#101

Post by more_corn »

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.

EFF is dedicated to online privacy and preventing government and law enforcement overreach with technology. That’s basically all they do.

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

#102

Post by krapp »

dane-pgp wrote: post #23
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lik…

What people often forget about "defund the police" is where it came from, or in what context it was originally framed. It didn't mean simply paying the police less, or reprioritizing funding away from guns and violence, it meant defunding and dismantling the justice system entirely, and then rebuilding it around explicitly antiracist principles, if at all.

Read the list of demands from the Seattle protestors who created CHAZ[0] in the midst of the BLM riots. Their very first point was not to "starve the beast" in small government terms, but abolition of the police in its entirety. That's what "defund the police" is supposed to be. Not a reasonable compromise but a revolutionary ideal. Obviously what defund became after white liberals appropriated it, watered it down and used it for clout wouldn't work because the teeth were taken out of the concept so that it couldn't actually pose a threat to the status quo.

[0]https://medium.com/@seattleblmanon3/the-demands-of-the-colle...

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

#103

Post by kornhole »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #91
kornhole wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great Chinese firewall is far more effective than the GDPR. They outright ban US corporations such as Google or Facebook from operating in their country or retain control over the data and networks of companies such as Apple.

By all means, let's laud the Chinese firewall with its twin guiding principles of authoritarian censorship and IP theft.

I am not sure how IP theft has any relevance to how they setup their networks. Yes in the western media we hear much about the censorship and surveillance in China. We do not hear as much about their need for data sovereignty and defense against US controlled networks which I think is their higher motivation.

In the autocratic state, you do what you are told. In the free west we do what we want, but coincidentally what we want aligns with what the powerful want us to do. We may have more options to opt out in the west once we learn how we have been tricked into things.

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

#104

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jononomo wrote: post #90
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? For fifty dollars, no. If you’re giving more substantially, of course.

money is fungible

> money is fungible

To an extent, depending on the fraction of the budget you're contributing.

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

#105

Post by bogomipz »

kornhole wrote: post #77
superkuh wrote: post #70

There is a simple way to avoid this. You do not have to carry a cell phone/tracker at all times. Stop taking your tracker transmitter with you everywhere. Or simply turn it off/remove the battery. I know a lot of people will say that cell phones are too useful to turn them off. And that's fine and reasonable. Just be aware they literally are tracking devices and it is your choice. There will be no legislative solutio…

Most phones do not actually turn off. You need to put them in a faraday sleeve. The other options more difficult for many is to use phones with alternative OS such as Graphene, Calyx, Lineage, Linux.. with only safe FOSS apps installed. SIM card mitigations are to switch number to VOIP and only occasionally use burner SIM's or https://invisv.com/pgpp/ .

>"Most phones do not actually turn off."

Can you elaborate? It is possible to power cycle a phone which implies that it's capable of powering off. Are you saying a powered-off phone still communicates with the network?

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

#106

Post by curtainsforus »

kristopolous wrote: post #62
seanw444 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the gun example fits here at all.

You have two people: one has the right to take others lives and the other doesn't have even the right to their own life. How can that system be justified? Label one "good guy" and the other "bad guy". It's one of the most pure forms of the ideology I've seen. You have people like George Zimmerman doing pro-gun confederate flag artwork, the connection is rugged and robust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Confedera…

>How can that system be justified?

The 'bad guy' is whoever is the aggressor. Everyone has a right to life; if someone starts shooting at you, or swinging a bat at you, you have the right to defend yourself, and if you kill the aggressor in self-defence, so be it.

I've heard from an internet lawyer that it's possible in principle for two people attacking each other to both have grounds for self-defence, too, if both were in reasonable fear for their lives. Whether A kills B, or B kills A, either may be able to argue self-defence given the right (wrong) circumstances. But that's just some internet theorycrafting I heard.

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

#107

Post by lupire »

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.

Charity Navigator does not try to measure effectivess. They measure overhead and transparency.

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

#108

Post by lupire »

parineum wrote: post #88
CWuestefeld wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recent US Supreme Court rulings have shown the implications of that as e.g. Roe v Wade and other decisions that used to cement various civil justice issues ranging from interracial marriage and the abolishment of anti-sodomy laws to legalizing abortion were apparently literally based on the "right to privacy", which the Supreme Court ruled doesn't exist. The SCOTUS decision in Loving (the anti-miscegenation laws, i.e…

Also Roe's reversal found that privacy implied in the 14th amendment doesn't imply a 3 trimester schedule of first, abortions legal, second states choice and third, illegal. That's it. The right to privacy wasn't established by Roe so overturning Roe doesn't have any effect on it.

There is no "the right to privacy". "Privacy" I'm various particular aappears areas appears in various court rulings, taken as implied via "penumbra."

https://www.justia.com/constitutional-law/docs/privacy-right...

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

#109

Post by rufus_foreman »

shaftoe wrote: post #48
hnbad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes "charitable causes" can be apolitical. I guess the ACLU might be closer to what you want then? They have a recent history of criticism for defending the far-right in the name of free speech while generally being thought of as "liberal". The problem you're facing is that "fighting against power structures" is a political gradient starting short of authoritarianism and ending at anarchism (unless you're St…

The ACLU has increasingly become exactly what he seeks to avoid. https://reason.com/2022/08/31/the-student-loan-debate-shows-... I would support a truly civil-liberties-only ACLU, but not what they currently are.

>> a truly civil-liberties-only ACLU

Take a look at FIRE, https://www.thefire.org.

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

#110

Post by sylware »

advisedwang wrote: post #96
sylware wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what I don't understand is why ppl here who are "fighting for privacy" are not explicit/loud about this law.

Because they are afraid?

Afraid to say out loud there is such a law???
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