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I wouldn’t trust a week-old vibe coded project to protect my identity against state actors.
DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
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Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#82[flagged]
I wouldn’t trust a week-old vibe coded project to protect my identity against state actors.
Especially when it's GP's own project lol
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330876
> On the other hand, I'm working on a prototype to completely throw away conventional email. Creating a system where you can simply spin your own physical mail box and node, and reach others at their unique address.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#83> In several cases, the DHS has withdrawn a 1509 summons after it was challenged in court and before a judge could rule on its legality. That may be a deliberate strategy to avoid having a judge rule on the legality of the summons. They have a toy, they’re increasingly abusing it, then trying to dodge from it being taken away. The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it.…
> The thing is nobody has to comply with 1509 summons, DHS has to go to court to enforce it. You're not wrong, but companies such as Google make business decisions, not moral decisions. It's far easier and cheaper for them to comply, while there is basically no incentive for them to fight the summons. Especially given the current administration's proven record of taking retaliation against anyone who stands in their…
You could say that the difference between "don't be evil" and having no backbone at all is quite a strong incentive (and strongly influences your brand valuation), but once your reputation is in the gutter, maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#84Welcome to the dictatorship. One has to wonder whether all Trump voters wanted this. I don't think so.
As long as it hurts the right people, yes they voted for it completely.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't the affected individual be able to sue the provider at least in some cases? From what I understand e.g. Stored Communications Act might allow suing T-Mobile in this case, at least if the individual isn't covered by binding arbitration. And possibly even government under 18 U.S.C. §2712. Of course then it's up to judge to determine if the request was valid or not.
> Wouldn't the affected individual be able to sue the provider at least in some cases? And lose time and money, which they also likely don't have?
If you go by this logic, you can forget the entire legal system. You might as well immediately close all lawsuits and declare the party the winner that has more capital.
It doesn't (yet) work that way.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn’t trust a week-old vibe coded project to protect my identity against state actors.
Especially when it's GP's own project lol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330876 > On the other hand, I'm working on a prototype to completely throw away conventional email. Creating a system where you can simply spin your own physical mail box and node, and reach others at their unique address.
I gave it a deeper look and it bundles 500+ kB minified OpenPGP library in JavaScript, presumably to do all the encryption and key management logic.
Not saying it's necessarily malicious, but if I wanted to do malice this is exactly how I'd do it.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The system in which those companies exist is explicitly designed though to strip away any humanity or moral qualms as much as possible. Dividing it on the shoulders of many people, making nobody in particular feel responsible for the damages themselves. Gaslighting employees into thinking they are doing the "lesser evil" or something. Just following commans of their boss.
> The system in which those companies exist is explicitly designed though to strip away any humanity or moral qualms as much as possible. Citation needed.
If this area of research interests you, look into Thompsons "Designing Responsibility: The Problem of Many Hands in Complex Organizations" from 2017 or Bovens ur-werk "The Quest for Responsibility" from 1998.
Diffusion of moral responsibility in complex organizations is not a new observation.
The Wikipedia article leans a bit too much on the psychology and not on the organizational design / decision architecture, but is still a good entry point:
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially when it's GP's own project lol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330876 > On the other hand, I'm working on a prototype to completely throw away conventional email. Creating a system where you can simply spin your own physical mail box and node, and reach others at their unique address.
I gave it a deeper look and it bundles 500+ kB minified OpenPGP library in JavaScript, presumably to do all the encryption and key management logic. Not saying it's necessarily malicious, but if I wanted to do malice this is exactly how I'd do it.
I thought the exact same thing and that's what I would do too(I didn't). This is from the official openpgp repository and you end up asking your self these things.
PGP is set up in a way where this wouldn't be that hard either. You could easily encrypt every message with a master key so that every PGP message sent would be decryptable. That's how group messaging works, everyone encrypts the same message with everyone's key. Otherwise you would not be able to read your own outbound main for instance.
The hardest thing you would have to do is hide the fact that your key exists inside the source code, as well as the instruction set to encrypt it with this key.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#89Most countries are on the path to curtail privacy in the name of security and profit. The US, however, is really good at being at the forefront of the movement while pretending to be otherwise. It’s extremely obvious to outsiders how blissfully ignorant the average american is.
Re: DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I gave it a deeper look and it bundles 500+ kB minified OpenPGP library in JavaScript, presumably to do all the encryption and key management logic. Not saying it's necessarily malicious, but if I wanted to do malice this is exactly how I'd do it.
I thought the exact same thing and that's what I would do too(I didn't). This is from the official openpgp repository and you end up asking your self these things. PGP is set up in a way where this wouldn't be that hard either. You could easily encrypt every message with a master key so that every PGP message sent would be decryptable. That's how group messaging works, everyone encrypts the same message with everyone…
If you want to do encryption the proper way on modern browser, look into https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_...