We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services • Hacker News Board

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#221

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #48

oshout wrote: post #21

Skimming through the article, it seems like the extent of this is to require IAAS (Infrastructure) providers to verify the identity of those who are using their services to train AI. It's an attempt to stymie sanctioned or malicious actors, from training AI and especially from hopping between services or using aliases to continue training on their model. It seems a bit benign and I don't understand the parallels othe…

From the executive order (Executive Order 14110) it seems to affect only massive compute infrastructure: > (i) any model that was trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 10^26 integer or floating-point operations, or using primarily biological sequence data and using a quantity of computing power greater than 10^23 integer or floating-point operations; and > (ii) any computing cluster that has a set…

> Keep in mind that most consumer graphics cards are in the _teraflops_ range, which is 10^12.

Something like 40 of them, or 100-300 if you're looking at FP16. So well over 2^14.

And that's per second, give it your idle cycles for four months and that's 10^7 seconds.

It gets pretty close to 10^23.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#222

Post by rtkwe » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

greyface- wrote: post #50

perihelions wrote: post #40

- "To Address the National Emergency" A fast-moving emergency that can't be fixed by normal constitutional lawmaking processes, and must resort, exceptionally, to executive-branch emergency decrees—for expedience. Nevermind the executive order it's drawing authority from was written three years ago. It was a fast-moving emergency then, too, I suppose. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/25/2021-01... (…

Fun fact: we've got active national emergencies dating back to 1979! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...

They're mostly sanctions regimes though it looks like which the Executive can largely implement on it's own (under current constitutional interpretations). It probably included other things that have since been ended and the sanctions are the only thing really left.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#223

Post by krapp » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

willmadden wrote: post #213

sschueller wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So national security trumps democracy and freedom? What do you have left to protect when you give it all up? Might as well just elect a king and be done with it.

There's an argument to be made that we would be far better off with a benevolent monarchy than whatever this is.

There is no such thing as a benevolent monarchy, if that monarchy exists as anything more than a figurehead. No position of absolute and uncheckable power, least of all derived from a claim of divine right or racial purity, can be considered benevolent.

Yes, an argument can be made. And such an argument can and should be quickly discarded with a glance at the last thousand years or so of human history. We tried it. Rolling the dice that the next king or tsar or emperor to own the people will at least treat them kindly. And we decided that being owned by a government in which we have no franchise is a bad idea. A very bad idea.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#224

Post by kube-system » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:40 PM UTC

monksy wrote: post #180

kube-system wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is all defined in TFA: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/01/29/2024-01... The TL;DR is that it can be whatever the provider wants, as long as it: * includes name, address, email, phone number, IP address, and payment information, * is written down, * gives them a "reasonable belief that it knows the true identity of each customer" * and "a sound basis to verify the true identity of their customer and…

> * gives them a "reasonable belief that it knows the true identity of each customer" > * and "a sound basis to verify the true identity of their customer and beneficial owners and reflect reasonable due diligence efforts". I'm reading in to that in a conservative manner where it's "internally justified" that going the full privacy abusive route is justified. "Reasonable due diligence" is respective to the organizati…

If the business is not a "trustable entity", then why are you using them for hosting?

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#225

Post by mikegreenberg » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #163

mikegreenberg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the definition of IaaS Products could very well extend to ISPs: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-01580/p-46 > This proposed definition adopts the E.O. 13984 definition for “Infrastructure as a Service product”, which is any product or service offered to a consumer, including complimentary or “trial” offerings, that provides processing, storage, networks , or other fundamental computing resources, and w…

I can't see how an ISP (or VPN for that matter) would qualify for the second half " and with which the consumer is able to deploy and run software that is not predefined, including operating systems and applications." This would apply to all hosting providers, which is bad enough.

Some counterexamples:

- TCP is a spec delivered by a software implementation program. Maybe you disagree that TCP is being "deployed" as opposed to "used"?

- What about peer-to-peer hosted webpages? Certainly this is deployed software served over the internet connection?

The devil is in the details... details which are not specified in the order. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a lawyer arguing the finer details of "deployed" and "software" and falling on a definition which results in a less "open" Internet.

Also, I think of the meaning of "that is not predefined" is not at all clear. Predefined at what point in time?

IANAL.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#226

Post by robocat » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:44 PM UTC

greenavocado wrote: post #195

robocat wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systems run the show, not people. "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?": I believe that nobody is running the show. The systems we have created are more complex than we understand. I think a few people individually understand a few aspects of the different systems (we are not at the complete mercy to these systems). I also believe that we have a psycological need to know our social heirachies t…

Banking is the foundation of all so-called systems. Take away the financing and nothing gets done.

People's desires are the foundation of all so-called systems. Take away the people and nothing gets done.

Or were atoms the foundation? Or thinking? Or maths? Or law? Or take away black holes and nothing gets done?

Ranking interdependent systems is nonsense. Reductionism and false arguments don't help much either.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#227

Post by _tk_ » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

chlodwig wrote: post #203

_tk_ wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to assume, that one can engage in a business relationship with these services outside the US? I'm not sure I see the effect that you are implying. AWS, GCP, Azure don't accept crypto. Mullvad is as you point out not an IaaS provider.

Namecheap, Vultr, BuyVm all operate in the U.S. and at times in the past (I don't know if they still do) have either accepted crypto or anonymous charge cards (available for cash at a convenience store), thus making it possible to get a dedicated server or VM totally anonymously. This new regulation would seem to prevent this.

Interesting, I did not know this. The actual anonymity of crypto currencies aside, it's good to see these kind of businesses do still exist.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#228

Post by tadfisher » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

greenavocado wrote: post #189

sschueller wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So national security trumps democracy and freedom? What do you have left to protect when you give it all up? Might as well just elect a king and be done with it.

Freedom has been on a steady decline since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 when established banking dynasties seized control over the currency of the country. The symbolic destruction of the constitution occurred on 9/11/2001 when the modern police state went into full force.

We established the Fed (and later, the FDIC) because people were sick and tired of bankers controlling monetary policy and wiping out their life savings. How the Fed turned into the ancap Boogeyman is the real destructive force in our society.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#229

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:47 PM UTC

mysteria wrote: post #168

kube-system wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wordpress clearly does not meet the definition of IaaS in the document. > provides processing, storage, networks, or other fundamental computing resources, and with which the consumer is able to deploy and run software that is not predefined, including operating systems and applications

Services like Github Actions, Google Collab, and web-based IDEs likely meet this definition though as it lets users execute their own custom code on their cloud. So basically all developer stuff may require an ID check.

Does Scratch count?

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#230

Post by logifail » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 5:47 PM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #161

logifail wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With that said, I also don't understand the issues people are having with this. The regulation "requir[es] U.S. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers of IaaS products to verify the identity of their foreign customers" Q: How would one propose to determine if a customer is foreign or not? A checkbox, perhaps? No bad actor would possibly pretend to be a domestic customer, of course...

That's a strawman. It won't be a checkbox, of course...

> That's a strawman [..]

OK, I'll bite. How exactly are [US] domestic users of services supposed to prove they don't need to prove their identity?

EDIT: it reminds me of the Common Travel Area (between Ireland and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), which has some glorious inconsistencies. For instance that nationals of Ireland and the UK travelling between those two countries do not need a passport, except when you take an international flight and rock up at IE/UK border control it's fairly hard to prove you are a national who doesn't need to provide a passport without having ... a passport (or equivalent ID).