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Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

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Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#152
post #129
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sure - that I’d believe. The royal family has historically been the prototype for “above the law.” But I meant I wasn’t aware of any cases in which (in our lifetimes or relatively recently) the royal family had put their thumb on the scale of a law and had it modified in a way that changed it for the general citizenry of the UK.

They've vetted over 1000 that may conflict with their interests. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...

You missed my point - on any of these 1000 or more, did they change anything or stop them? If not, then it’s largely just procedural, at least in effect.

That’s my point.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#153
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever seen representative anarchy? Please tell me where - I'll be there like a shot! "Representative anarchy" was my shorthand for the concept of "whoever can stand up with a megaphone and get the largest mob behind them wins." To do this, the person with the megaphone needs to understand what hot-button issues will make the mob follow them in their coup or secession attempt. In that sense of understanding…

I think we have had royalty and "democracy". I think you have been watching too many films. I don't think people act as a mob, overthrowing anyone. The governance structure doesn't really accept any real inputs from you and I. They are a bloodline. You get to vote in a 'representative democracy' where your vote every 5 years is aggregated with 100k+ of other to choose one of 2 candidates, who then purports to represe…

I get the sense that you just aren't familiar with any nations that actually have coups. Here, a list — it's very, very long, and most entries are from the last 50 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt...

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really quite surprising just how many American issues come down to this. Much of the identity-politics driven discussion of late can really just be boiled down to liberal vs conservative / right vs left.

I have noticed that people who are steadfast in positions and don't listen to reason and subscribe to 'identity' politics on both the left and right differ mainly in where they were raised and by who raised them. The Berkeley folk who mandate it illegal to burn wood in your own fireplace have more in common with people who think trans people should be forced to live as the gender defined at birth than they do with pe…

I'll start off by saying I don't have a solution.

But if I don't have any alternatives, I'd much rather have the "you can't burn wood in your fireplace" people in charge than the "force people to live as the gender assigned at birth" people.

One of those people is pushing policy that ultimately saves the human race from making the planet uninhabitable, while the other is imposing their small-minded religious worldview on people who have nothing to do with them.

And this is the thing that bothers me so much with the "both sides are just as bad" argument. Yes, agreed, they are, when it comes to listening to each other with empathy. I totally get that frustration, and I'm sick of the left/right culture war; both sides are to blame for perpetuating it.

Further, I think it's unfair to say that these two groups have more in common with each other than people who can listen with empathy; you're just comparing two unrelated axes of commonality.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#155
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a job all my life but with the proceeds from that job I've bought a house I rent to a local association, and I also have a retirement plan (as pretty much everyone else), so I'm a shareholder in almost all the biggest megacorps through the indexes my retirement account buys. So I'm both? Who do I fight for?

This is the problem with trying to fit a political doctrine written more than 100 years ago by an academic who spent most of his time in libraries into modern life. There is a reason 'it was a good idea so I wrote it all down, thought of everything, and then forced everyone to do it' has never worked.

You don't need to follow everything to a T to grasp the fact that 99.99% of us exist to feed the capitalists, the ruling class, to keep them satisfied.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious response is to own it and be an actual commie. Join a revolutionary party, organise in a trade union, set up mutual aid, learn self defence, etc.

I am all for this, the problem is that that behaviour on their end shuts down any discussion and mutual aid becomes harder.

You don’t have to lead with it necessarily. I don’t, but I don’t hide it either.

People pay attention to their material interests. In most cases, you can get through to working class people despite ideology. Can’t win everyone over either and that’s ok too.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#157
I've always wondered why politicians in America take similar stances (outside of a few like Rand Paul). Even a wild card like Trump should see how unpopular some of these policies are. Are the intelligence agencies really that influential?

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#158

It’s good that Whittaker is taking a stand, but it would be nice to not have to take her word for it. Reproducible builds would help, but I don’t think we have those on iOS yet?: https://community.signalusers.org/t/add-reproducible-builds-...

It is up to the Apple to decide to provide packages as unencrypted for everyone to access and verify. Once they do that, yes.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#159
I'm still banking on the hope that governments incompetence at dealing with other issues transfers to this one and delays it long enough for someone with some sense to come into office and rip it up. You'd hope that they'd at least try to deal with the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine first.

Then again, Labour and almost all the major opposition parties have been quiet on this, not really doing the job of opposition, so even with that delay I'm not sure how much will change.

Re: Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law

#160

This is the lasting legacy of Apple’s CSAM photo scanning debacle. Apple mainstreamed the concept, demoed the dystopian tool, and legitimized the discourse of this dystopian insanity. Apple executives should be ashamed of their direct role in this.

Nah, this has been coming (and inevitable really) since Snowden prompted the tech companies to introduce e2e messaging.

Note that similar laws are being proposed in the UK, EU Australia and Canada (not sure of the latter two tbh).

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