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The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

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Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#451
post #8

I'm tired of these cutesy backronyms that they try to come up with to influence the public's perception of a law. "EARN IT"? What the fuck? It should be outright illegal to pass laws whose acronyms spell words. But, of course, that'll never happen, because who would willingly give up such a juicy tool for gaming the system?

Naming things is incredibly powerful aspect of human behavior. It can be used for good and evil and I don’t see a point in banning them. Media and politicians can still give unofficial names to bills when talking about them so such a ban would do nothing.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#452

4th amendment text: > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Let’s name names, the senators who introduced this are Mr. GRAHAM…

> FEINSTEIN Many years ago, I remember she supported a similar bill around limiting encryption. Around six months later, it was reported some government agency was spying on senators' emails, and she wasn't happy. I don't think she made the connection between the two, or that she supports widespread data collection when it's not her data.

> Around six months later, it was reported some government agency was spying on senators' emails, and she wasn't happy.

Good. I hope they start spying on her just for kicks. People who would deny us our privacy should be leading by example.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#453
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely false. You validate any password requirements before salting and hashing the password and then store the salt and hash. Even if you restrict usage of previous passwords, you are just comparing hashes.

Except you are giving them the password and trusting them to discard it after validating it. If it's purely client side, then the bank is trusting you to follow the password requirements which is also out of the question.

Whether hashing is happening client side does tell you a little, though in most cases most users are still trusting the client side software to not exfiltrate the password before hashing it.

Even with Client side hashing, the software can still validate password requirements on the client side, you may be able to bypass those requirements by modifying the client side software.

So still no, having password requirements tells you nothing about whether the password is being stored in the clear or not. The statement that I disagreed with is still completely false.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#454
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 1984. I think it was 1986, as in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. [1] > That way build sympathy for the law-breakers, then legitimize them via immigration reforms that only benefit the illegals it was noted "The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open soci…

I don't really care if somebody entered the country legally or not. Eventually, everybody assimilates. However, I am not ok extending benefits paid for by taxes to non-citizens. As long as there are politicians trying to give tax paid benefits to "illegal" immigrants I will be against illegal immigration.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many seem to not realize that privacy is not about having something to hide (I guess that would be secrecy), but about the right to keep things to yourself. Those are two different concepts.

Exactly! The best way someone put it - right to choose what to share and who to share it with.

I like this. I added my own parts to clarify and solidify my stance. "Unless I have created a harm, I have a right to choose what to share and who to share it with. I have no interest in the "suspected guilty until proven innocent" mantra.""

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#456
post #7

A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power: Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers are abused [1]: "NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog... [2]: https://reason.com/2022/07/26/police-can-access-your-ring-ca... [3]: https://reason.com/2021/04/26/warrantless-border-s…

Personally I favor a confrontational retort: "No, you never get to decide that. The inquisitor does." Revolutions are a messy example which demonstrate what happens when the mandatory becomes forbidden without ex-post-facto restrictions. There is a reason many people get the hell out of dodge even after the fighting stops.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#457
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are implied. What I posted was bog-standard HN moderation. You could replace the name Feinstein with any other, or her party or politics with any other, and I'd have posted the same moderation response. I'm not sure what you're finding hard to understand about HN having a guideline that asks people not to call names or do flamewar.

I don't have any complications with HN guidelines, but I do with the way they are enforced. I see plenty of posts that call people, both ordinary and public figures, "names" that go unflagged and unmoderated. I see plenty of meme posts that don't get flagged and moderated. I see political threads and subthreads all the time despite politics strictly being off-limits per guidelines. In fairness to you, you've never cl…

You're drawing conclusions based on what you've happened to notice. That's a skewed sample because people notice the cases that they dislike [1]. Users with opposite politics to yours draw opposite conclusions. If you don't believe me, see the examples at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. Here are a few more recent tidbits (links available upon request!):

"an extremely conservative place", "dang, who always hands out the bans to one side", "HackerNews Right-wing mods", "HN is surprisingly conservative", "dang, enabler of alt-right QAnon horseshit", "most of people on HN are ancap or fascists", "hacker news only cares about free speech when it can be used to dunk on the left", "zero left wing chatter. instant ban by this fash site", "I feel pretty confident about the right/libertarian bias to HN", "This place is a toilet of reactionary racists", "a white supremacist community", "generally nazi-sympathetic sociopaths", "fine with racist posts, right-wing, bigoted", "libertarian echo chamber", "a community full of some pretty extreme opinions, generally right-wing and regressive", "always been very right wing ... always filled with racist, sexist, right wing political abuse", "all of the libertarian BS here on HN", "many comments on HN of late have tilted radical right-wing", "filled with self obsessed tech bros who pretend they are libertarian but are actually just racists", "hn leans extremely conservative", "intolerable shithole full of pretend libertarians (e.g. racist white power sorts)", "it's capital that aligns to fascism", "pretty heavily Libertarian", "HN has always been a libertarian hell site", "pure, unadulterated, proto-fascist garbage for narcissistic jerks", "overwhelmingly hardcore libertarian forum", "right wing talking points", "gathering ground for aggrieved conservatives in tech", "HN is a weird place. Feels like the loudest political voices are alt-right-adjacent", "I knew HN was right wing but seriously guys?", "Yes, this website full of brain dead right wingers.", "A lot of fascists in this thread, to no one's surprise.", "a forum skewed libertarian techbros", "Literally anything left-of-right-of-centre immediately gets flagged (if not outright banned by the mods)", "moderation choices by dang (e.g. his pernicious need to pander to the anti-science, far-right crowd)"

(Before anyone goes "oho! that's because you are rightwing fascist enablers" - I've pasted these examples because the current complaint is that we're secret Feinsteinians. If the claim were the other way around I'd paste an opposite list. There's an endless supply, from all angles.)

Yes, there are plenty of cases where commenters break the rules and we don't do anything—but you're wrong to conclude that that's because we secretly agree with them. It's simply because there's far too much content for us to read it all. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [2]. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just how government works in general though. [0] "Why is someone privileged to arrest me but I can't keep them locked up in my house?" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Monopoly on violence is fine, but in return the government should be 100% transparent, in order not to abuse this monopoly.

_should_ is the main problem I have with this argument. A Monopoly on violence is _never_ fine because there is never a time where we can trust a person or an organization to be completely transparent.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#459
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho, sponsors of this bill want to collect dossiers and use them to blackmail opponents in the future. For example, you want to do something unpopular and a noisy council member opposes your plan. You reach to the "official and confidential" box, find there a personal file on that politician, conveniently created by the AI-scanner, share your discoveries with him and suddenly he changes his mind.

> Imho, sponsors of this bill want to collect dossiers and use them to blackmail opponents in the future. I wonder how it is that the NSA hasn't already enabled that. One of my early concerns with government spying is that we'd up with some kind of NeoMcCarthyism on crack where someone in power would be able to discredit any inconvenient person or even identify and eliminate the career of a potential opponent before…

I think this is already happening, we just don't hear about it in this context from the mainstream media.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#460
post #7

A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power: Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers are abused [1]: "NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog... [2]: https://reason.com/2022/07/26/police-can-access-your-ring-ca... [3]: https://reason.com/2021/04/26/warrantless-border-s…

Completely agree. Also a reminder that there are things to be scared of, today. People getting abortions in states where it's illegal need their communications to be safe and secure. The current forced medical detransition of adults in Montana means people are going to need to rely on underground distribution networks for their medication, starting in a few weeks. Their communications need to be secure from governmen…

I think all of these injustices are be created to further gaps between classes of people to lay the groundwork for a future paradigm shift towards totalitarianism. Is the same thing we do in other countries to spread the so called democracy under the guise of a dictatorship.
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