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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

#201
post #75
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of countries ban voip in some way or another. Not allowed to connect to the PSTN. Disrupted by licensed ISPs based on traffic inspection. Large vendors yelled at. Etc.

isn't phone tech itself digital over the internet nowadays just like VOIP if it isn't using VOIP directly? on the other phone calls are getting replaced by video chat with the various messengers, making VOIP a dying technology, at least the part that end users access directly.

It's not the tech they care about, it's the network structure.

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

#202
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of countries ban voip in some way or another. Not allowed to connect to the PSTN. Disrupted by licensed ISPs based on traffic inspection. Large vendors yelled at. Etc.

voip is pretty effectively banned, or at least marginalized, in the USA. Can't use a Google Voice number for most payment services, for example.

Does jmp.chat work?

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

#203
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.

"Do you consider your position so weak that it cannot withstand debate?" -- Data, STNG They're afraid of people communicating. That's not a safety thing.

I'm not at all saying private messaging makes people unsafe. I was interested in what the OP thinks governments should be doing to keep people safe.

Clearly I have not worded my reply carefully enough, so for clarity: I am all for private messaging and against mass surveillance.

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

#204
post #103
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.

and in this argument we pre-suppose that loss of privacy equates to an increase in safety, right?

I've replied to other comments but to reiterate I am not saying that at all. I was simply trying to ask what the OP considers an appropriate form of safety a government might take.

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

#205
post #17

India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices. I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me,…

I disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-f…

Largely uncited and generalised exposition of Bangladeshi's misses other factors which could be involved in their decision towards distrust of India.

India's initial decisions need not be merely humanitarian but also political.

https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turni.... This article explains that it's due to an increasingly unequal interactions as sowing distrust.

Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.

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

#206
post #17

India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices. I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me,…

Japan has no trash cans. (reaction to the japanese subway attacks)

Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't know. Is it irrelevant?

Is it interesting that all these "democracies" around the world have persistent speech bans? When someone says something they don't like?

I seem to have a recollection of flipping through HN for a decade or so and people talking about all the meanie-pants who want people to be able to speak freely, even if it hurts people's feelings and might not be endorsed by the elected government.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you wanted the opportunity to beat that “healthy culture of resistance” drum. Every tweaker, every inbred, every starved person acting out of desperation is Rosa Parks now. You name things and decide that‘s “resistance”. People break the law because there’s no real consequence or because they just have nothing to lose. They’re not “resisting”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of pe…

>Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.

This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.

Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.

It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.

>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.

Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t thinking of totalitarianism but rather a country objecting to Starlink operating on its territory. This is why I brought up Berlin and fines, not the secret police breaking in your house at night. After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.

National firewalls and other such things are tools of totalitarianism. Except possibly in wartime, or if they are causing harmful interference, or if Starlink refuses to pay taxes, I don’t really see a good argument against things like Starlink.

Or if the country already operates another system on the same frequencies, or just hasn’t validated and authorized Starlink on their territory, something countries really like to do.

Not everything is about “fighting the power”, there are plenty of good reasons to want to validate and approve these systems.

Musk was as usual likes to talk big and brave but same as with his fight in Brazil over X, or the Tesla factory in Germany, if he wants to operate there he needs to follow the rules. And there’s no moral argument (saving freedom) he can pull out of his wig in most parts of the world that can make him money.

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

#210
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

care to clarify yourself then? It's hard to see what other conclusion I should arrive at, because it seems like you're implying that privacy interferes with safety.
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