[flagged]
It's not about children. It's about re-introducing Stasi.
Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
101–110 of 386 posts
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#102[flagged]
This is the way! It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone, in return for not having to care about their offspring and the illusion of 100% safety. I think the authoritarian trend accelerated during corona. Our western political nobility got a real taste for power, and they have not been able to free themselves from that afrodisiac ever since. Therefore chat control, 1, 2, 3, and when…
> how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone
...is there evidence that it's parents who are the constituency you describe?
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#103[flagged]
How about this: nobody shall be unsafe online or offline, and the state shall guarantee it. That's a foundation you can build law on, instead of hoping every child got lucky with their parents.
I think North Korea is attempting to do this, for example by punishing not only the criminal but also their immediate family to a life-sentence in working camps, if the person commits severe enough crime.
I don't think it's as successful as it sounds on paper, from the comfort of our western society homes.
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#104[flagged]
I'm against any kind of age verification legislation, but this is a really bad argument. It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly." In theory, one could implement age verification by negligent parent imprisonment, in practice, I don't think that would work, and definitely not in all cases. If we accept the premise that children having unfettered access to the int…
These systems won’t work any better than identification requirements for alcohol and tobacco or anything else. Maybe you didn’t know anyone who drank or smoked when you were a teenager but they are pretty widespread even when parents aren’t negligent. Systems like the proposed ones will be even easier for kids to find a way around.
I’m somewhat in favour of these foolish attempts at control because they always drive innovation in technology to circumvent them and adoption of that technology creating a thriving underground scene. Content piracy and alternative platforms could use a resurgence and this is just the thing to get it jumpstarted.
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#105While their arguments are sound, Perhaps Mozilla should disclose in this document that they are also a VPN reseller.
They also advocate for if not enforce HTTPS. Would this be bad if they were also a trusted CA selling signed TLS certs to companies?
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would sound like an advertisement though, so in some way it’s better they don’t mention it
It’s better to hide conflicts of interest? (Edit: I don’t disagree with Mozilla’s position, but failure to declare an obvious conflict of interest undermines their credibility.)
By your logic it's also better if Ray-Ban and Oakley don't publicly state that UV light is dangerous and that people should use sunglasses if outside.
That sounds silly.
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#107[flagged]
I'm against any kind of age verification legislation, but this is a really bad argument. It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly." In theory, one could implement age verification by negligent parent imprisonment, in practice, I don't think that would work, and definitely not in all cases. If we accept the premise that children having unfettered access to the int…
We don't hold parents responsible for most neglect. Why is this special?
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#108[flagged]
This is the way! It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone, in return for not having to care about their offspring and the illusion of 100% safety. I think the authoritarian trend accelerated during corona. Our western political nobility got a real taste for power, and they have not been able to free themselves from that afrodisiac ever since. Therefore chat control, 1, 2, 3, and when…
> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone,
It's not like parents have much of a choice. When you gotta work 2 jobs to barely make rent and groceries, you need some sort of "safe space" to pawn your children off to.
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The technology bit doesn't really matter though. The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them. The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.
The power to prosecute and the actual ability to prosecute are two different things. They currently can't prosecute CSAM offences nor piracy due to capacity. It won't happen.
The problem is not with the state actually prosrcuting all, or even many vpn "offences". The problem is that the legislation gives states another powerful tool to prosecute people they find annoying but cannot easily punish for clearly breaking other laws.
Re: Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
#1101984 was meant to be a warning, not the UK’s digital infrastructure roadmap
1984 is extremely naive. It assumes that people will fight for their freedom and insane measures will be needed to keep them in check. So foolishly optimistic… people can’t wait to give freedom away if only they get a stable job and housing in exchange. Or if it hits these other guys they don’t like at the moment. It’s all much, much less dramatic than Orwell. It is an ordinary, everyday erosion of your rights until…
Which is why I like "Brave new World" a lot more.
It actually asks hard questions and explores the tradeoff of an "utopian dystopia." In contrast to the society Orwell describes, where the government is cartoonishly evil, the one of "Brave New World" genuinely cares for the happiness of its subjects, and most of its subjects are genuinely happy, even if we disagree with the methods that it uses. This is by design; I read somewhere that Orwell wanted to position 1984 in explicit contract to Huxley, killing any debate on whether his described society was better or worse than the one the book was written in.
I think he heavily underestimated the human ability to ferret out the truth when the only thing the state gives them is lies. Even without access to reliable news sources, most people will at least realize that the news is lying to them. Even if they don't know what the truth is, they'll know that it's not what they're told it is.
I think the key to a working dystopia is to genuinely make people's lives pleasant. We care about the economics a lot more than we care about the politics. If you're a free democratic socialist republic and decrease people's monthly meat rations, citizens will riot and demand true democracy. If you are a democracy and the price of meat goes up due to the bird flu epidemic, people will riot and demand communism and wealth redistribution.