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The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

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Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#281

I appreciate the wealth of technical solutions that don't violate privacy, but isn't this overlooking an important point: that children don't need to be connected to the Internet at all times from such an early age? Many internet and cell phone providers seem to take it for granted that children must be online, which is already a net loss for their privacy as they mature.

That's their parents' decision to make, not yours.

What is "parents' decision" is up to debate. This is how the society always worked.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure I didn't provide an address or an id when I got my library card.

In the US? I think you most likely need to provide proof of an address

I think some will just limit the books you can take out at a time if you don't have proof.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two strong incentives - deanonymization for law enforcement is pretty useful so that's one. You want to make it easier to subpoena information about posters for various reasons, access to stores on different dates etc. Lots of reasons for that. And you want to satisfy voters who are worried about children online or have heard scary things about anonymous criminals. You want to be seen to do something about th…

>There's two strong incentives - deanonymization for law enforcement is pretty useful so that's one. When you say it like that it sounds less scary than "deanoymization so the government can track down people saying things it doesn't like." Let's not forget the UK has more people in jail for things they said on the internet than Russia and China put together.

God, that sentence didn’t pass the sniff test, so I checked:

https://pa.media/blogs/fact-check/fact-check-international-d...

Don’t think that the claim stands up to scrutiny, since its comparing unlike things.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#284
post #257

> you’re criticizing a powerful politician, or talking about your experiences with abuse or addiction, or discussing embarrassing medical issues you’re facing This is not the problem. Even if, like millions, you are not talking about these things online, these systems still place you in danger. Even if you are a perfect, clean, compliant citizen these privacy-destroying systems place you in danger. Fundamentally thes…

> these systems expose you to coercion, extortion, blackmail, ID theft, etc. by criminals and immoral people

I'd prefer to have safety from that regardless of privacy.

I think privacy is a stopgap semi-solution to those problems that might lessen the pressure to actually solve them in a reasonable manner.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#285
post #20

I’m glad this is finally becoming the cause célèbre du jour. This feels like THE FIGHT or at least one of the TOP 3 THE FIGHTS and it hasn’t had even a fraction of the public’s attention until now.

>I’m glad this is finally becoming the cause célèbre du jour. It really isn't, though. Don't mistake the internet for reality. The majority of people in the US and Europe support laws like these, and most of the rest don't care. Even on Hacker News the consensus is mostly in favor of anything from age restriction to making all social media illegal.

Don't mistake cynicism for knowledge.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked in the industry, so just adding some extra info, as I agree with you that the ticket system is not really less tracked than other systems, just differently tracked: Lottery tickets don’t “fall off of trucks” or get “lost in the mail” because they aren’t valid for redemption until they’re activated at the POS terminal of a licensed store, and the lottery company knows which store receives each ticket roll,…

> Lottery tickets don’t “fall off of trucks” or get “lost in the mail” because... Oh yeah, true. A few minutes after I posted the comment, it occurred to me that lotto tickets always get scanned at the register, which is the obvious way to track their distribution and make it annoying to use a whole bunch of winning ones that fell off of a truck. Thanks for the first-hand industry info. If it's effective, all that tr…

The scan at the time of purchase is just for tracking what the store owes to the state for the lottery system. The last ticket in each roll of tickets is scanned by the dedicated lottery terminal prior to being placed for sale in an admin mode activation function. The terminals themselves I am familiar with are Linux-based and seem to be thin clients which do everything remotely in real-time, because nothing works if the terminal is offline, from activation to redemption of tickets to win/loss checking. The terminal has its own dedicated wired Ethernet connection to a stand-alone Cradlepoint or other competitor brand cellular modem/router, which along with the terminal is all outsourced to a third party management company. (SGI is the only one I’m familiar with; there are likely others.) All of this is public info which could be gleaned from observing the terminals and their installation/operation, but I probably can’t say much more about them, but they are pretty neat and seem to work fairly reliably.

Now that you mention the auditing etc, a lottery system would probably be an easy way to get people to literally buy into an online ID scheme, not because it would necessarily be privacy-preserving, which would depend on implementation details, but because a not insignificant number of folks seem to like the chance to win money. Considering many states already have lottery systems, the ID code tickets could probably be provided alongside lottery tickets for free or nearly free, and employees already have the training to check/scan IDs. If there was an incentive such as the possibility to get discounts, win prizes, or tie-in purchases of some kind, I think it could work.

Many stores that sell lottery tickets also sell gift cards, so that technology could also be used instead or in addition to ID tokens at the point of sale. There are a lot of sponsorship opportunities available for cross-promotion.

“Please drink a verification can” was probably more prescient than was at first apparent. Mike Judge saw this whole thing coming from a mile away.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#287
post #257

> you’re criticizing a powerful politician, or talking about your experiences with abuse or addiction, or discussing embarrassing medical issues you’re facing This is not the problem. Even if, like millions, you are not talking about these things online, these systems still place you in danger. Even if you are a perfect, clean, compliant citizen these privacy-destroying systems place you in danger. Fundamentally thes…

Sadly your take doesn’t matter since the other voting bloc is parents and people concerned about their kids.

I wish this resulted in techies spending more time to look at the substance of the harms playing out, however I see denial of the situation altogether more than anything else.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#288
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this is necessary. First, the only devices that actually need to be gated are cell phones. The user agent should simply send the user’s age of the parental lock is set up and the websites required to respect this. Parental controls and the OS should be robust enough to not let kids bypass it (e.g.: by installing a browser that skips the header, or blocking proxy websites) Done. Cellphones only because those a…

Never underestimate the resolve of a teenager who is being kept from something they want. And once they solve it, they will spread the word for clout.

The system doesn't need to be impenetrable. There might even be legitimate reasons for kids to circumvent it.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#289
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t stop the scheme the parent proposes, where adults install some proxy on their device and challenges are responded to on the parent device. Then the private key never leaves the parent device and all the child device has is the proxy software, which could be set up to not log any identifier of the key that it used

[flagged]

Trusted computing is the biggest threat to privacy and liberty of them all!
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