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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

#121

Post by Test0129 »

And like all things, it flows from the intelligence agencies, to the military, to the police so that it can be used on citizens. This is about as close to minority report level precognition as we can attain in this century.

I can imagine a scenario: A dumb-box is put in a squad car that can run queries specific to a person. You get pulled over, give the cop some lip for harassing you over your license plate expiration (the new sticker is in the mail). The cop goes back and uses the dumb-box to pull up 10 mile areas around a major crime and you happened to be in one of them. Now you're in the back of the squad car to be "interviewed" (read: assaulted) over an alleged association with a crime. Doesn't matter if within that 10 miles is a grocery store and a bank.

It doesn't end with the police though. This is enabled because we willfully carry tracking devices everywhere we go. It's the greatest slight of hand ever pulled by the CIA and FBI. So great in fact I doubt the legend of corruption Hoover could imagine it. Some of us avoid the obvious traps like social media and some of us even have hardware switches on our phones. The vast, vast majority of Americans are beacons brighter than the sun with Tiktok (CCP intelligence app), Facebook (US intelligence app), etc.

Privacy advocates have been shouting from the rooftops for two decades now about the future of spying and we gave up privacy for convenience and even paid for it. In some sense, we deserve exactly what we paid for.

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

#122

Post by Test0129 »

upofadown wrote: post #39
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…

The root problem here is the commercial exploitation of personal data. How can you deny law enforcement access to data that is, for all practical purposes, available to anyone? The solution to this particular problem is political. The USA needs federal privacy laws.

I doubt the people who are literally responsible for deciding who to drone strike with meta data from things like this are going to suddenly turn around and decide "well, we definitely don't want that for our citizens".

This is all according to plan. The best part it's totally politically ambiguous. Republicans are war hawks and "the party of the people" (Democrats) have been responsible for thousands of extrajudicial killings overseas. Both major parties LOVE this idea. Who wouldn't want to be able to manufacture a crime against your alleged political adversaries?

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

#123

Post by [deleted] »

kristopolous wrote: post #113
curtainsforus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It's a cognitive trick used to assign a label. All you need is a frame of mind, a professed sincere belief and it's done. Most wars of aggression were sold as self defense. Jonathan Swift even poked fun of this in the 1700s. It's a really old trick. The problem is some people get extended the credulity of self defense and others aren't. Could I declare self defense against a police officer? Why not? Aren't they just…

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by hnbad »

lupire wrote: post #108
parineum wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That was my point. Roe didn't establish a right to privacy but it was justified with a right to privacy. Roe was overturned because the SCOTUS now argues that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy so Roe was invalid.

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

#125

Post by hnbad »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #85
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…

Stirner could defend literally any politics under his egoistic framework. There's a liberal reading of the unique and it's property buried under the "anarchism" he esposed that resulted from how shitty the 1840s German state was...

We don't talk about Stirner.

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

#126

Post by zzo38computer »

aaaaaasss wrote: post #58
hnburnsy wrote: post #53

Google and Apple need to fix this by not allowing apps to start up by themselves, by not letting them run in the background without permission, and giving user control for killing apps.

Even if they don't allow any apps to run, the cellphone company will know your general location... There is 2 OS on your phone/pocket computer.

Even so, being able to disable background processes still would be helpful, possibly to save power and/or RAM.

What else would be needed is possibility to provide fake data (for location, sensors, contacts, etc), including fake error codes (which is also possible to test program working in case of errors).

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

#127

Post by candiodari »

If this is based on "legal consent" by phone owners ... what's to prevent them from selling this same data, live, to jealous ex-boyfriends? Are we to suppose consent in that case to.

(and of course, some jealous ex-boyfriends work at the police office, so they already do a bit of that)

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

#128

Post by 93po »

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 always shop at Amazon after clicking their affiliate link. Not sure if this is bad form on HN to paste it directly but it's available on their website. You have to visit it before adding items to cart.

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

#129

Post by hnbad »

vlod wrote: post #119
shaftoe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for posting this, I was not aware how far they've strayed off civil liberties. Have not investigated this, but pg [0] seems to thumbs down ACLU and thumbs up FIRE: [0] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1533824076896260098

FIRE is primarily funded by conservative and libertarian foundations and pg (much like most VCs) is libertarian. I'm not saying this to dunk on them, but it's unsurprising that pg would tend towards FIRE over ACLU, which is funded by slightly more progressive libertarian foundations (unless you consider George Soros a leftist).

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

#130

Post by _V_ »

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.

I'd also donate if I could be sure that the money would go to the (online) privacy.

I honestly don't give a damn about abortions in the US and I don't care about any local policital movement, that is cool for the season.

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