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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

#371
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are born into generational wealth, you are by construction a Prole. If you need to or had to work for a living until you could afford not to, then you are a Prole. Whether you choose to "betray" this class - and fight in support of the people who make the rules, the slave owners, those who play god without permission - is a different thing.

Only dummies think in classes. People are people.

Some people find this helpfully confusing: it allows them to remain in denial of the obviousness of how horrendous the ruling class is.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that most large left-wing movements tend to be about highly centralized socialism that is at best soft authoritarian (and in practice tends to quickly devolve into something much worse). I understand why - once you take away the cudgel from the people who currently have it, using it yourself to quickly solve problems is just too tempting. But it does mean that many (most?) of those parties are not a vi…

Class struggle doesn’t end in one stroke. When the working class wins state power over the capitalist class, the former doesn’t stop existing. The cudgel is to keep internal and external capitalists from counter revolution. Ultimately, results matter. My country started semi feudal and it was under socialism that it industrialised, electrified, developed universal health care, built homes for every working family, et…

Which country? 89 makes me think not Russia.. Romania?

It is worth pointing out your observation applies to lots of post-colonial societies, too. Socialism took Tanzania's literacy rate from about 10% at independence to 80%+ in a generation, and IIRC it also doubled its agricultural output in that time by organising farming along collective lines. Life expectancy rose substantially too, though I forget by how much.

(So much for empires being about spreading civilization, eh?)

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

#373
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class struggle doesn’t end in one stroke. When the working class wins state power over the capitalist class, the former doesn’t stop existing. The cudgel is to keep internal and external capitalists from counter revolution. Ultimately, results matter. My country started semi feudal and it was under socialism that it industrialised, electrified, developed universal health care, built homes for every working family, et…

Which country? 89 makes me think not Russia.. Romania? It is worth pointing out your observation applies to lots of post-colonial societies, too. Socialism took Tanzania's literacy rate from about 10% at independence to 80%+ in a generation, and IIRC it also doubled its agricultural output in that time by organising farming along collective lines. Life expectancy rose substantially too, though I forget by how much. (…

România indeed. Similar astonishing improvement in all socialist countries, for sure.

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The idea of pervasive spying has been around forever. The want, and why. Apple mainstreamed, normalized the discourse, and demoed the concept of pre-scanning in the face of E2E. Apple provided the answer for the how.

HN commenters leave so much context out of the discussion. Google is already scanning photos for CSAM. Meta is already scanning photos for CSAM. Dropbox, OneDrive... EVERY storage provider is scanning your photos for CSAM. And yet confusingly you only complain about Apple.

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

#375

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.

No, this has nothing to do with that.

Dropbox scans your images in the cloud for CSAM. Google scans your images in the cloud for CSAM. Meta scans your images in the cloud for CSAM. Microsoft scans your images in the cloud for CSAM. Apple did not (and still does not) scan your images in the cloud for CSAM.

Notice anything different here? The privacy company wanted to do what everyone else was already doing in a privacy-preserving way. They made a press release about it, and everyone got mad. But the same people are just fine using Google and MSFT which actively scans their data for the same images?

I seriously do not understand your logic behind this.

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

#376
post #42

Don't forget to https://signal.org/donate/

No. Signal is not the solution. The position that they are taking publicly in this dispute with the UK vassal state is correct on the face of it. But they now have some people on their board that raise red flags for anyone interested in privacy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346396

Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Unless you have a well-known, more powerful alternative organization that we can donate to, this is the solution for right now.

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

#377
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country? 89 makes me think not Russia.. Romania? It is worth pointing out your observation applies to lots of post-colonial societies, too. Socialism took Tanzania's literacy rate from about 10% at independence to 80%+ in a generation, and IIRC it also doubled its agricultural output in that time by organising farming along collective lines. Life expectancy rose substantially too, though I forget by how much. (…

România indeed. Similar astonishing improvement in all socialist countries, for sure.

How old were you in 1989?

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

#378
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have recognized that if you even think you need Tor and Signal to protect yourself from your own government, you need to organize politically to install representatives who ensure you don't think you need those things. We overlook that young people with tech jobs in the 90's humiliated a lot of their peers, ones who went on to pursue messy politcal careers instead of business ones. Those peers learned to ha…

I think that's an over analysis. Sweeping statements about how each generation thinks sound a bit daft. I don't think UK politicians have any shame or envy. This legislation comes from politicians believing that the general populace would vote for a government that places catching criminals over having e2e encryption. I doubt those legislating have a grand surveillance of the masses plan, or much in the way of philos…

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

#379
post #5

Related post from 10 days ago which goes into more depth on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36596610 TL;DR: UK government wants to degrade public's right to privacy / encryption under the guise of "but think of the children!"

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

#380
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If things go the way I think, I'd feel bad for Scotland. They'll have zero percent of the fault, and fully share in the consequences. Why feel bad for folks in Scotland in particular? Why not for the folks in London (a larger, more geographically concentrated group, which also voted to remain)? (Not being snarky - I'm genuinely curious.)

I don't like guilt-by-association, but here's a short list of things the folks in Scotland didn't do: - Genocide against the people who lived in America - Bring India to its knees, from one of the richest to one of the most impoverished nations in the world - Addict China to opium - Irish potato famine I'd talk about Africa, but that's a lot more diverse. A lot of England's current wealth came by theft, rape, and mur…

Here's a short list of things the current citizens of England didn't do:

- Genocide against the people who lived in America

- Bring India to its knees, from one of the richest to one of the most impoverished nations in the world

- Addict China to opium

- Irish potato famine

Furthermore, the narrative that Scotland is subservient to England, and not equally complicit in the historical crimes of the *union of England and Scotland* is misleading. The 1707 Acts of Union [1] were introduced by both nations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707

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