Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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. I agree with you that is true but is there any proof that even if all telecommunications were open completely to the governments, it would be possible to stop every incoming attacks/tragedies? Because that is…
Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
161–170 of 240 posts
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Stylistic) point taken. I stand by what I wrote, although it could be argued in less stringent terms.
Persuasive writing is a skill. You lost my attention and I turned against your argument because of your "stylistic point". If it'd been written differently, I would have definitely agreed and supported the points I did read.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#163A bit of a tangent, but I followed the link at the bottom to https://stopchatcontrol.eu/ and while I want to take the site seriously and agree with the message, I can't with that silly usage of emojis (scroll down). Seems more like a joke website than a serious piece of advocacy it purports to be. The original blog post is good though.
Wow yeah, that's bad. I don't get the "end every sentence/paragraph with a relevant emoji" thing.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The only reason we currently have any message encryption is because a few tech companies have made the decision to protect as many as possible by releasing products which enable it (iOS, Whatsapp, and now texts via Google Messages)." Completely false. Phil Zimmerman gave us PGP for free in 1991, and numerous open encryption standards now belong to the general public. Giving credit to Apple, Meta, and Google for this…
PGP et al is basically irrelevant given how few people use PGP compared to the >2.5 billion users that use Whatsapp and >1B using iMessage. My wording wasn't exact; other encryption programs have enabled secure messaging, but without big players it would've been outlawed by now because it would've been easier to say "only criminals" use encrypted communication. As for the "numerous open encryption standards", these a…
didn't help as much as they hoped, as there are no trustworthy platforms to run any of it.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#165Lots of comments here mention that the vast majority of people won't use PGP, Linux and other things to protect their privacy, because they don't care/are dumb/have more important things to do/whatever. The bottom line though is that people that are more tech savvy and more knowledgeable will always have better privacy no matter what, unless you literally enforce Linux and all that on everyone, which is just not gonn…
It is actually a tragedy that privacy is so inconvenient and complicated
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#166I 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…
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#167I 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…
I believe it never went away and technology simply kept making it more pervasive, more efficient. It didn't suddenly happen in the last ten years or so, it was a continuous progression over decades.
Hopefully technology can also help us defeat it.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#168I 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…
The assumption surveillance stopped after stasi is astonishing. I believe it never went away and technology simply kept making it more pervasive, more efficient. It didn't suddenly happen in the last ten years or so, it was a continuous progression over decades. Hopefully technology can also help us defeat it.
It's little bit what we have now with respect to nuclear weapons, where we have used them twice and decided to not do it again (so far).
I just cannot fathom that someone is genuinely ok with having their worst secrets and their deepest fear out there in the open being sorted and analyzed by some black box algorithm who may or may not start an investigation against them because they said the wrong thing or shared the wrong image.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#169>If you don't have something to hide someone else might have something to hide I don't find it ethical to fight for the privacy just to protect criminals.
Re: Encrypting private data and private communications is now an ethical duty
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The assumption surveillance stopped after stasi is astonishing. I believe it never went away and technology simply kept making it more pervasive, more efficient. It didn't suddenly happen in the last ten years or so, it was a continuous progression over decades. Hopefully technology can also help us defeat it.
I don't mean to say that surveillance stopped necessarily but I thought that the thought of having a police state such as it was in East Germany or in other Eastern European countries would have vaccinated the world against those tyrannical tendencies. It's little bit what we have now with respect to nuclear weapons, where we have used them twice and decided to not do it again (so far). I just cannot fathom that some…
etc. etc.