Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

25 years of mass surveillance is enough

schneier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 384 posts

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#221

Post by hax0ron3 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #21
asaddhamani wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a trans woman, enough is enough! I’m tired of us being made into the scapegoat while literal pedophiles and sexual criminals not only walk free but gain ever greater power and idiots keep blaming us for their problems as they close their ears and stomp their feet’s on the ground

but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.

One of the trans acceptance movement's main problems comes, as is often the case in politics, from some of its most militant and passionate activists. To put it simply, those extreme activists overreached and annoyed people. That's not the fault of trans people in general, but it explains some of the backlash and the focus on niche cases.

Basically, the activists I'm talking about overreached by:

- Pushing for speech control around preferred pronouns

- Being overrepresented among Reddit mods, thus becoming to some extent the "face of censorship" for many highly online people

- Equating the mere act of disbelieving trans people's chosen gender identities with out-and-out bigotry of the KKK kind

- Talking about a mythical "trans genocide" and getting angry when people questioned its existence

- Pushing for equal bathroom access long before the American public had actually been made ready for something like that

Etc.

So what we have now in the highly online discourse is essentially a battle between niche militant trans activists who seem to illogically believe that they are on the brink of being put into extermination camps, on the one hand, and niche militant anti-trans fanatics who exaggerate the relatively rare cases of trans people doing bad things for the sake of pushing an overall anti-left agenda.

The militant trans activists I speak of seemingly just can't stop themselves from continuously providing people who actually hate trans people and people who just hate the left with more and more ammunition by having a prominent online presence while saying a mix of untrue and highly questionable things.

Before anyone jumps in with an angry reaction... yes, if it's not already clear from what I wrote, I also think that the right has a problem with insane deluded militant people.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#222

Post by godelski »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #207
Varelion wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any adult who has been paying attention has no doubt that enough of the elite do collude to call the duck a duck.

In the real world it's hard enough to get 5 people on the same page about anything. The idea that dozens/hundreds of people with billions of dollars who are in business against each other in many cases are secretly colluding with any effectiveness is a joke. If they were, zuckerberg, larry and sergey would have been squashed in the 90's/00's by the elite of the time. Sam Altman would have been crushed years ago. Obam…

This seems to contradict itself. You first claim that there's no organization but then you claim billionaires have no power because of the more powerful above them. Hierarchy is organization, so which is it

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#223

Post by graemep »

kodoman wrote: post #203
andrewla wrote: post #67

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.…

I am from the UK and we are quite far down the surveillance and control mentality (Flock actually seems a greater system of surveillance then what we have here but if such a system was created, the push back would be less). But a lot of people here are slowly beginning to see the benefits in self defense and gun laws that mean you are not dependent on the police, this kind of logic where people have want autonomy and…

I do not know a single person in the UK who wants US style gun laws.

There is significant pushback against surveillance.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#224

Post by Havoc »

Pannoniae wrote: post #135
Havoc wrote: post #23

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,…

how not? All of this is "soft" control, if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided "this can't keep on going on", all relevant public buildings would be occupied everywhere and the relevant government imprisoned promptly. 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…

>if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided

No kings protests was a very respectable effort....peaked at 2.3%.

Even the current administration inept as it is is basically home free on this one. Senate neutered, Courts sidelined, Treasury subjugated, loyalist in charge of military, JAG core silenced, secondary personal goons squad established and lavishly funded, Social media captured, Stats department dismantled, Cult of personality created, common enemy created (immigrants), distractions for the masses arranged (culture wars, UFC on whitehouse lawn), truth undermined (prez spouting nonstop lies & AI), oligarch class established, surveillance normalized, norm of kiss the ring & pay tribute established.

Dunno about you but to me that looks like US democracy is so cooked the kitchen smoke alarm has gone off & everyone was too busy doomscrolling to notice.

Hope I'm wrong but that list looks pretty fuckin comprehensive to me. Hell they even somehow managed to throw in a roman salute...

>On a more positive note

Yeah sorry...above isn't exactly that

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2026_No_Kings_protests#T...

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#225

Post by user3939382 »

asaddhamani wrote: post #16
RajT88 wrote: post #13

> 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…

As a trans woman, enough is enough! I’m tired of us being made into the scapegoat while literal pedophiles and sexual criminals not only walk free but gain ever greater power and idiots keep blaming us for their problems as they close their ears and stomp their feet’s on the ground

You're not a scapegoat you're fodder for a social warfare diversion to enable the treasury to be looted by both parties while the economy collapses. DC's puppeteers don't give a shit about anything unless it starts with $

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#226

Post by hackable_sand »

cik wrote: post #24
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow trans woman, we've been the scapegoat for reactionaries, at least documented, since the rise of the Third Reich. And if we're honest, probably before that. Fixing society-scale problems is really hard. Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside is easy. People reliably choose easy.

I'm not going to pretend to understand your stuggle, but I will echo it through my lens. I am not trying to hijack your point, inasmuch support it with my view. I uses to think that it was about fear of the unknown, or as you've said "Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside". I now firmly believe that it's a modern form of tribalism. Having an "other", whether as a scapegoat, a fear inducing device…

"tribalism" is a dog whistle

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#227

Post by ux266478 »

godelski wrote: post #206
ux266478 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we live in different worlds? I can't think of a single meaningful way my comfort has increased in the past 25 years. In fact, with the rise of the homeless and mental health crises, the encroachment of more and more people who have no business touching computers into cyberspace, the increased relevance of flash mob power on the internet, I would say my comfort has been actively degraded on a fundamental and signif…

I believe the parent is implying that we sit uncomfortably at home, silently, rather than uncomfortably marching through the streets, demanding. Yet, I say that while uncomfortably sitting in my home, typing on a screen

Mass demonstrations are common and frequent, more than ever. The thing is that these are mild pressures at best. What came from Occupy Wallstreet? The George Floyd protests? The No Kings marches? Anti-ICE demonstrations? They're not nothing and we should continue to have them and participate in them, but we have to recognize them as what they are: background radiation. On their own, they don't affect change or bring about course correction. We clearly need something more, people inside of these institutions, sharks who are going to fight and win against the entrenched powers on their home turf. There's a very limited pool of people who are capable of doing that.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#228

Post by asaddhamani »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #221
mschuster91 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.

One of the trans acceptance movement's main problems comes, as is often the case in politics, from some of its most militant and passionate activists. To put it simply, those extreme activists overreached and annoyed people. That's not the fault of trans people in general, but it explains some of the backlash and the focus on niche cases. Basically, the activists I'm talking about overreached by: - Pushing for speech…

“Militant” trans activists? How is just using someone’s pronouns “speech control”? It’s no different than using a name. If trans people tell you who they are, just believe them, it’s not that hard. There’s nothing mythical about the ongoing trans genocide. Genocides don’t just happen in gas chambers.

https://translegislation.com/

I am not going to say much more here because I’m fairly certain none of this will get through to you given the tone of your comment. Trans people are far more likely to be victims in washrooms than to be perpetrators.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#229

Post by Rover222 »

iamnothere wrote: post #166
Rover222 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Way to hand wave away all the negative effects of mass surveillance. Car theft is bad, but sleepwalking into dictatorship is worse. There’s also plenty of options for solving car theft that aren’t dystopian.

Your phone in your pocket is a much more powerful surveillance device. That's my point, it's just pure hivemind to freak out about traffic cameras.

I find it pretty dystopian that CVS has to lock up cheap products because society has failed to punish criminals.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#230

Post by godelski »

stephbook wrote: post #205

I think the problem is twofold: One, the move to digital lives made digital surveillance necessary. It wasn't enough to check attendance at the local mosque/far right rally. Then, the counter-move to encrypted communication meant law enforcement now had to rely on metadata. Second: A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care. LG is snooping on you? I bet they won't see…

  > A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care.
I think the problem is a bit more subtle. People do seem to care but feel powerless. In addition to that, complexity is high. When you tell people what is possible with massive data they label you as a conspiracy theorist because it's much easier to believe that Facebook is listening to you with a microphone than piecing that information together through thousands if individual pieces of data (especially when you're more likely to notice the hits rather than the misses). So now when they do record everything you say it feels like nothing changed.

It's exhaustion, it's impotence, it's desolate. But that's different than apathy. People care, they are just overwhelmed

Post reply on HN