Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

blog.tripu.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 240 posts

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#81

Post by throwaway98797 »

willhackett wrote: post #17

Legislation in favour of the consumer is almost starting to seem detrimental to the startup founder. The number of barriers, prerequisites, requirements, etc that a founder needs to consider pre-launch is bordering on insurmountable. This might just be me feeling like this, but even considering geo-residency in some of my early prototype designs feels very odd. I was optimistically hoping PaaS providers would catch u…

maybe that’s why successful start ups disregard laws

sometimes they get big enough comply or change laws later

remember there’s always later

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#82

Post by mbork_pl »

tripu wrote: post #31
Radim wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with these gems in the text: > (Norway) the most robust democracy in the world (which also happens to be a EU member state) Norway is not in the EU. > Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression (“flawed democracies”) Coming from a Spaniard? Go fuck yourself. Like tripu , I am strongly and vocally in favour of privacy and individual agency. B…

> Norway is not in the EU. You are right, thank you! I just fixed that. > Coming from a Spaniard? Go fuck yourself. I was already fixing the error, and writing in my head the kind answer above. I hadn't seen this nasty comment. Why the ad hominem? I'm ranking governments — not individuals — according to international reports I've seen. Those classifications are debatable, of course. There might be bias, or nuances I'…

> How on Earth is it relevant that I'm a Spaniard?

He probably can't trust you because _he's known too many Spaniards_. (Sorry for being off-topic, but I really could resist making that reference to the greatest movie of all time;-).)

More on topic:

> Hungary and Poland, are still immature barely-liberal regimes with more than a whiff of political repression

I don't know what reports you've read, but I don't think we have any "political repression" here in Poland. Mind you, we had a huge demonstration opposing the ruling party 2 weeks ago (and many more in earlier months/years), and I haven't heard about any nasty consequences for people taking part in them. Though there is a lot of propaganda, both in the country and abroad, painting the government (which, by the way, was more or less voted out two days in an election) as some kind of evil empire, but that is just that - propaganda.

That said, I understand that (almost) nobody has time to study politics of 50+ (or more) countries just to write a blog post or something, so it's not like I blame you.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#84

Post by madmads »

anonym29 wrote: post #72
globular-toast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unrealistic about it? I've been doing it for more then a decade.

You have an extremely generous and optimistic view of the cognitive capital of the average person.

That's probably the most self-aggrandizing interpretation. Could it be that other people have other priorities or interests rather than spending their time figuring out how to obtain digital privacy without compromising in the areas they care about? No surely it's their low "cognitive capital" /s

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#85

Post by psychoslave »

globular-toast wrote: post #48
crazygringo wrote: post #27

I can sympathize with the general notion that more encryption is better, even if I wouldn't go to the extreme of declaring it a duty . But the author just completely lost me at: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros... Those tools and techniques should ceas…

What's unrealistic about it? I've been doing it for more then a decade.

And do you think all of your non-tech-savvy relative would go for it?

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#86

Post by judge2020 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #51
crazygringo wrote: post #27

I can sympathize with the general notion that more encryption is better, even if I wouldn't go to the extreme of declaring it a duty . But the author just completely lost me at: > We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros... Those tools and techniques should ceas…

> it undercuts my ability to take the rest of the piece seriously at all. This lack of ability to be able to control your emotions undercuts my ability to take the rest of the comment seriously at all. It's not any kind of seriously considered rational comment, weighing the pros and cons of the thoughts presented -- it's bad commentary.

Living in a pipe dream where you think people want to be educated about maximizing their freedom, at the expense of their time or convenience, is delusional. That's why the rest of the piece is basically irrelevant, if it only works when everyone or the majority follow through with this plan.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#87

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #30

I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime where all our conversations/messages/photos need to be dissected, catalogued and approved by un-elected bureaucrats. I mean you can literally go to eastern Europe to see the vestiges of the Stasi where they used to listen to the conversations of their citizens while trying to find dissidents among them. This isn't some ki…

> Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus?

The very microsecond that some tragedy befalls the populace, the very first thing people start screaming about is how pathetic the government is for not knowing about the tragedy in advance and preventing it.

We don't live in 1923. We live in 2023. You can't put a secret agent in a room with a bunch of nefarious terrorists anymore, because those terrorists don't sit in a room with each other. They talk on Telegram. We, the tech nerds and libertarians obsessed with privacy and the freedom to do whatever we want, have been fermenting a technological arms race for decades. The more bullet-proof encryption we create, the more the government has to encroach on our privacy to do the thing we require them to do: keep us safe from the real threats that do actually exist in the world, and hide among us.

If you want more privacy, paradoxically, the best thing would be to actually give up some privacy. Telephones and letter mail have been automatically scanned for like 50 years, and this doesn't seem to concern us, and was good enough for intelligence services that they didn't need to collect anything more. So we could stop sending all our communications with bulletproof encryption. We could give the federal government a bypass. Allow the security services to peek under the covers. If we give them some leeway, they won't feel the need to compromise all privacy and security. But if you give them nothing, they literally have no other recourse but to compromise everything, because they don't know where to look and they have no leads.

Nobody wants the government snooping on them. But if you really can't handle any level of surveillance at all, tell your elected officials you no longer want any federal or state intelligence services, and deal with the consequences. When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it. You simply can not have your cake and eat it too.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#88

Post by danbruc »

lazide wrote: post #60
pmarreck wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Law of Power (basically, "might makes right") will run circles around any other "law" concept. Whether even this conforms to some "natural law" underneath, is secondary IMHO.

Yup. And underlying ‘might makes right’ is another even more basic one, ‘they who survive and reproduce wins’. Everything else gets layered on top, with more and more sophistication. Ethics and morals are attempts to encode various ideas of long term successful strategies for that longer term goal, to help counteract many of the shorter term incentives. But, like most ‘shoulds’, they are often just wishes by those di…

The most basic law is the only law that can not be broken, the laws of physics. That is what might makes right is backed by, surviving and reproducing is what you get as the result of being able to inflict more violence on the other side than they can on you.

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#89

Post by rdm_blackhole »

lazide wrote: post #67
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #30

I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime where all our conversations/messages/photos need to be dissected, catalogued and approved by un-elected bureaucrats. I mean you can literally go to eastern Europe to see the vestiges of the Stasi where they used to listen to the conversations of their citizens while trying to find dissidents among them. This isn't some ki…

Many people look at things like the Stasi and think - the problem with it was who was in charge, not that it existed. We’re the good guys so it would be a good thing. Not a bad thing. The problem is, they’re almost always the absolute worst to deal with, as almost any evil is excusable when done ‘for the right reasons’ or when ‘we’re the good guys’, where selfish evil at least sometimes takes a break or feels bad. An…

> Many people look at things like the Stasi and think - the problem with it was who was in charge, not that it existed.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

It seems to me that most of the Eastern European states would be against this law but as it stands, they most certainly welcome it.

> How a group does is more about what it does with it, and how it directs it/reins it in (and acknowledges it), rather than its lack of existence

I am not sure I understand what you mean

Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty

#90

Post by _Algernon_ »

Chabsff wrote: post #80
globular-toast wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think because keyboards on Android etc. suggest an emoji by default based on the last word, and people seem to think it "softens" a sentence, especially when mentioning something embarrassing, like sex.

> The EU Data Protection Board, the European Parliament’s Research Service and the EU Council’s Legal Service say they are warning of chat controls. Ursula von der Leyen is not interested in these opinions This is straight up crass and off-putting. These shitposting emojis do not belong in a serious pitch.

Yes, that particular example was especially off-putting.
Post reply on HN