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Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

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Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#191

Post by inigyou »

lebuffon wrote: post #21

India is kind of cute. In the late 90s I attended a Telephone industry conference while working for a telephony test equipment company. A rep. from the Indian government gave a talk on their telephone system regulations. During the question period I got up and asked how India was dealing with voice over internet protocol (VOIP). With a straight face the speaker replied "We will not allow it". :-)

That is still the case. I looked up this law. It is strictly forbidden to ever connect the POTS network to an IP network. End of story.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#192

Post by inigyou »

SoftTalker wrote: post #137
gruez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc. I don't think there's any country that can keep a lid on the internet. The best they can do are leaky blocks (china's gf…

As I understand it, China's GFW is intentionally leaky, balancing as much control as they can get away with but not enough to forment open revolt. As with a lot of things, the best control is not total control.

Also not revealing their capabilities. During normal times, some VPNs work. Whenever there is a protest in Beijing, suddenly, none of them work any more.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#193

Post by inigyou »

infinite_spin wrote: post #180
SoftTalker wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, China's GFW is intentionally leaky, balancing as much control as they can get away with but not enough to forment open revolt. As with a lot of things, the best control is not total control.

except this implies total control, and a willingness to use that control to gaslight your citizens into believing they have some control

Neither of those is a problem for any government on the planet, I promise.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#194

Post by mindslight »

realo wrote: post #181
philipallstar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think so. There's a set of people who consume media that deliberately and consistently conflates "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant", and they just can't disambiguate what happens to one from what happens to the other.

But what to do with an "illegal immigrant" who has been living in the country for 30 years (and PAID TAXES!) , had 4 kids and a perfectly normal , productive life? Do you separate them from their kids, and send the bunch to a prison? That is insane. Because from what we hear about ICE, that is exactly what is happening... when they don't just kill them outright.

It might be enlightening for some to look at what happens to someone who builds a house on land they don't own, and then lives there for 30 years. It's a pretty well established body of law.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#195

Post by andrewla »

tavavex wrote: post #162
abernard1 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Adams wrote that as a reason why the United States is not a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. It's a consistent theme throughout the Federalist Papers. Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not. The United States of America is the second iteration of American government, after the one that failed in 1787. The arguments leading up to the 1…

> It's a Constitutional Republic. Which is a kind of democracy. Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people. This is a weird framing that I see brought up by Americans only, and I don't understand it, because direct democracies (what these Americans are actually referring to when they say 'democracy') are basically extinct in the modern world. They keep trying to…

But Adams was specifically arguing not against democracy in the broad term, but specifically, unconstrained direct democracy, so this is not relevant to this discussion.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#196

Post by inigyou »

iamnothere wrote: post #67
kube-system wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc. This stuff happens in many places, including in India.

They could even just shoot people for using the internet! It’s hopeless. Anyone who wants freedom should probably just give up now before it’s too late.

Reminds me of FSF versus some Uyghur. Summary:

FSF: if you use PGP your communications will be unreadable by outsiders.

Some Uyghur: bruh, the government assigned a Han Chinese person to live in my house and watch me whenever I use technology.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#197

Post by abernard1 »

tavavex wrote: post #162
abernard1 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Adams wrote that as a reason why the United States is not a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. It's a consistent theme throughout the Federalist Papers. Individual States and localities have elements of democracy, but the US—built upon knowledge of Rome—is not. The United States of America is the second iteration of American government, after the one that failed in 1787. The arguments leading up to the 1…

> It's a Constitutional Republic. Which is a kind of democracy. Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people. This is a weird framing that I see brought up by Americans only, and I don't understand it, because direct democracies (what these Americans are actually referring to when they say 'democracy') are basically extinct in the modern world. They keep trying to…

> Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people

No. It's not. I encourage you to read the quite enlightening treatment of democracies in the Federalist Papers. And Greece's government was nothing like Rome. If there is a conflation there, it is one largely created by America.

Which in its own right is interesting. What is interesting about the longest-running continuous constitutional government in history (America)?

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#198

Post by tavavex »

transcriptase wrote: post #175
tavavex wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long it's going to take until we have universal communication monitoring, including in real life. It's not an impossible technical challenge, it's just a question of time. Every spoken word recorded forever and scrutinized. After all forms of distant private communication fall, the spoken word will be the last one remaining. And all these arguments they're making apply to it, too.

That went live about a decade ago. Heck, a lot of the people who built it and maintain it are here on HN, each getting paid so well and contributing only so little that if they can even admit it to themselves, they would never do it publicly.

What went live a decade ago? I feel like the monitoring technology we have now (let alone what we had in 2016) is still just scratching the surface, it can (will) get so much worse.

My post was talking about things like discreet microphones in public spaces that can automatically separate and recognize multiple voices, smartphones recording and sending every word (or, even better - 24/7 camera footage) to the relevant authorities. But it's not just recording - we still lack the deep level of organization to automatically and fully correlate and organize ALL these types of data from countless sources for everyone. All of these are things that we already have to limited extents, but they're still not taking full advantage of, yet.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#199

Post by ifh-hn »

infinite_spin wrote: post #176
ifh-hn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not condoning this but what would you suggest they should be doing to keep people safe? I'm fairly sure whatever they do you'd likely be complaining about it. Glad to be wrong though.

How is private messaging causing people to become unsafe? If you're saying privacy = unsafe environment, then your right to privacy is meaningless.

That's not what I'm saying at all. If you've taken that from my comment you've misread it.

Re: Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey

#200

Post by inigyou »

mothballed wrote: post #88
close04 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or fly a plane or drone overhead and see [0] where the terminals are. After a few fines most people would decide it’s not worth the risk. I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber deci…

I can see how that worked in Berlin. In USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance that would fail laughably. Americans will drive with no license, registration, in cars they've stolen back from the repo man because they refuse to pay anything to anyone. When my car was totalled by an illegal alien, the police didn't even show up, wisely because they were surely driving without license, identity document…

Let American police crush any car violating traffic rules into a cube, and then see how quickly people obey traffic laws.
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