131–140 of 384 posts
I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain. Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon.…
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It could e.g. be "anti-democratic" by a universal definition of democracy and civil liberties which no single country then gets to fork and redefine...
Let's suppose you had your way and the cultural concept of America as a set of ideas and values related to democracy was erased. Would the universal non-national concepts of democracy and civil liberties have been able to inspire Mike Pence to stand up to Donald Trump on January 6th?
When the term "anti-American" is used, it is a placeholder for "against my values". Noone is ever anti-American himself, it is only a label applied upon others.
That's why IMO it should be rejected when used by people in a public role, see original comment.
You are free to think otherwise, which I may then label as "anti-American" in passing, while quickly moving on to you mentioning Mike Pence and some random conspiracy I have /s
Again, /s/s/s/s
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relevant username lol. I tend to agree though...establishment democrats are a major problem for americans who want to be free of the problems that trump brought to us. Their only complaint about him seems to be that he's on the wrong team and has poor decorum. That's why so much emphasis has been placed on electing non-establishment democrats this time around. But the establishment is pro-corporate and pro-israel and…
> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like the…
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Then I realize I'm probably better off not.
At this stage I'd settle for echelon era surveillance and consider it a win... Ad tech/tiktok has proven its possible to deduce what people are think at scale from subtle signals, now sifting info at scale is possible thanks to LLMs and a large portion of everyone's online history is likely to become vulnerable to store now decrypt later attacks. Get rid of cash, force identity verification for every online service,…
On a more positive note, the fact that this doesn't happen indicates things aren't that bad right now. No amount of KYC or age verification can stop large amounts of angry people who want one thing.
People sometimes bring up China - which isn't relevant because people still remember being extremely poor, thus being grateful to the Party - or one of those dictatorships as counterexamples for this, but see the Arab Spring (food got more expensive -> revolutions), Nepal recently... etc.
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It's not while, it's because. They have to create a "threat" that's of the same "magnitude" as their actual crimes, vectoring out from the subjective origin of "traditional" man/woman identity and relations. They do that by casting transgenderism not as the benign and modest personal identity that it is, but as the same kind of sexually aggressive comportment as their own; something that you do or perform willfully i…
Taking hormones activates the genes responsible for making someone biologically a woman. That's kinda the point of taking them.
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I don’t have a strong view, but I don’t think that should baffle you, you think the reaction comes from nothing at all? One side is pushing to “wedge” (sort of) into a very low level space so that it cements itself at a foundational level and there’s no repeal or return from it - all or nothing view. The other side picks up on that and doesn’t want to let big changes go unchallenged. It’s a pretty understandable proc…
> HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing. Because in this case, we're talking about maybe a few dozen (if that) relevant cases in trans youth [1]. With police/secret services abusing surveillance... it's huge enough that LOVEINT [2] is a term, and at least 50 cases were serious enough to be brought under official investigation [3]. [1] https:…
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relevant username lol. I tend to agree though...establishment democrats are a major problem for americans who want to be free of the problems that trump brought to us. Their only complaint about him seems to be that he's on the wrong team and has poor decorum. That's why so much emphasis has been placed on electing non-establishment democrats this time around. But the establishment is pro-corporate and pro-israel and…
Totally agree. Establishment Democrats are against these expansion of powers, but then when they have the opportunity to roll them back, they treat them like they got free stuff instead of inheriting toxic waste.
I find it ironic that in the US, there's this social movement against Flock cameras - which have shown real results in tracking down criminals - while everyone walks around all the time with a personal tracking device in the form of a smart phone. That's wayyyy more invasive than cameras along roads.
In any case this article is about the whole spectrum of mass surveillance, not one specific company.