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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

#521
post #21

There are at least some technological solutions here, such as anonymous credentials. [1] Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users. Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol a…

I've noticed that tech people will respond to an encroachment on civil rights with a technological alternative. I think this is a mistake, because the excuse is presented in bad faith, and to present an alternative is to accept their framing. The correct response is something to the effect of "I know what you're trying to do, fuck off."

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

#522

Soon you'll need a passport to read a Wikipedia article

> Soon you'll need a passport to read a Wikipedia article

Hopefully you'll need a passport to edit a Wikipedia article, since they can't be bothered doing anything about all the neckbeards writing them.

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

#523
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple approaches. One, which the Europeans use, hardware-locks the token. Each age attestation is unlinkable, but the cryptographic credentials you need to make the attestation aren't portable. Of course, this model requires a big statist apparatus that does implementation certification, but it does achieve the narrow goal of unlinkable, privacy-preserving age attestation that doesn't instantly decay to…

> as anonymous digital currency and use cryptographic penalties like slashing Or make it so that tokens cannot be tested except by spending/burning them, which would significantly reduce (but not eliminate) a black market because it would be hard for any buyers to trust any sellers. The best outcome here is going to rest on getting people to agree that "good enough" is the best outcome. We want a system that gets the…

Yes "good enough" is right. At least until the issue become important enough to seek a full proof method.

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

#524

What scary me a lot, is the amount of people here or in real life that are not concerned about that, and that are like "it is to protect the children, so whatever it is, it worth it. And what else we can do?". And often it goes on with things like "anyway, social media are bad, they ruin people even adult, so good thing". Literally they all look like repeating a carefully crafted propaganda without that much more dee…

Mate, you have to revise your stance on Russia, more people are imprisoned annually in the UK for speaking than people in Russia in a decade. The UK banned RT while you can access any western propaganda outpost from within Russia. You’re on Hacker News, this website is known for attracting open minded free thinkers that do not fall under the influence of government financed propaganda. Learn and reassess your thought…

For the prison it might be true because opponents in Russia are already dead... Like Navalny and the mission in his underwear.

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

#525
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

No, you can reliably attest public source builds of critical software for the ultimate in transparency. That even includes models running on GPUs. Combine that with blind tokens and you get trusted, anonymous identity verification.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you conveniently forgot to mention is this means the death of open general purpose computing. No more rooted devices, no more self built PCs. You go buy a government approved device and run the government approved OS preinstalled and the moment you deviate from the government approved happy path you are booted off the internet.

I'm a fan of separating the trusted compute levels for commercial and non-commercial uses/sides of the internet. I think we have to move in this direction. As it stands today, doing business on ebay/craigslist/etc isn't that much different than doing it in a back alley in the bad part of town. Generally a bad idea but YMMV if you keep your wits about you. Of course it's your right to do business that way, but no one…

> I do think a Reddit with identity would be a much less toxic place.

Do you remember the days of "Real name" requirements on YouTube and "Google+"? The experiment was tried, it didn't change things. (Also, see Facebook for an ongoing version of the same experiment).

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

#528
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, you can reliably attest public source builds of critical software for the ultimate in transparency. That even includes models running on GPUs. Combine that with blind tokens and you get trusted, anonymous identity verification.

What you also get is mobile devices that can't run unblessed code, make it impossible to remove legally-mandated spyware or backdoors, as well as websites that you can't use anonymously, even when you have very valid reasons to do so.

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

#530
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a great idea, but I think we should also try to solve human trafficking online.

Creating a surveillance state isn't going to solve human trafficing.

Allowing the relevant authorities to control, shut down and arrest serious crimes doesn't turn a country into a surveillance state.

Poor surveillance controls do though - let's perhaps fix those instead of allowing garbage like Flock to spread and then hand wring? EU started with GDPR, let's see others follow and build on it?

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