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Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

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Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#121

Post by Nevermark »

Surveillance replaces ostensible individual fringe threats with a clear dangerous pervasive and (for practical purposes) irreversible threat that monotonically aggregates increasing centralized leverage over every aspect our lives, direct and indirect.

Knowledge is power. Forced revelation of our inner lives puts each of us in a position of vulnerability.

Even when "not abused", the very real latent threat actively takes away freedoms of thought and action.

It is extreme abuse.

It undermines any sense that the state works for the people, when it operationally embodies a maximalized one-way threat over all citizens.

AI collation exponentially compounds the threat, the passive and active damage.

One of the wisest ethical/safety concepts ever: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

Democracy that sets up the levers of total autocracy is the greatest possible perversion and threat to democracy. Democracy only works as long as it recognizes government is the greatest threat to freedom. And that strict limitations on its power over citizens is the only defense.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#122

Post by dgroshev »

HiPhish wrote: post #64
yason wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that people who can work on stuff like that are the kind who just take the stuff in the world for granted. "This is how the world is, we need digital restrictions so now we need to implement them." "I don't have a say about whether DRM or remote attestation is standard business practice or not, it is just how it is." This is akin to how two kinds of people respond to law. The first kind think "This i…

> My impression is that people who can work on stuff like that are the kind who just take the stuff in the world for granted. "This is how the world is, we need digital restrictions so now we need to implement them." "I don't have a say about whether DRM or remote attestation is standard business practice or not, it is just how it is." I like to call those people "ventablackpilled". Being blackpilled is all about glo…

Ironically, the very OP statement is exactly that: trying to make the world a worse place because they believe that that is how the world works.

The solution to avoiding dictatorship is engaging in politics and preventing dictatorship directly through that. Trying to retreat into the (perceived) wilderness and build barriers to dictatorship doesn't really work. But since people drafting that statement don't believe that politics work and it is, in fact, possible to both have a vibrant political scene (we have what, five viable political parties vs the American two?) and not let kids send nudes, they try to drag everyone into the same mind frame.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#123

Post by Levitz »

komali2 wrote: post #117
briandear wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people vote for large, strong governments that are able to take the power you suggest Tech is enabling them to take?

It's starting to feel like ethno-nationalism is the answer. See: the PRC. Support for surveillance is allegedly high. Anecdotally, talking to PRC citizens in circumstances where they don't need to worry about said surveillance (e.g., when they're vacationing in Japan and I want to pester someone and practice my mandarin), they generally like it. Makes them feel safe. The CPC has sold them on a vision of them as membe…

>Anecdotally, talking to PRC citizens in circumstances where they don't need to worry about said surveillance (e.g., when they're vacationing in Japan and I want to pester someone and practice my mandarin)

I'm not sure you are aware that China has monitoring operations for its citizens outside China.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#124

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #108
alkonaut wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the law really require third party? Because having on-device functions configurable by parents doesn’t seem terrible at all.

That's not what the UK is demanding. They want client side scanning malware that breaks DRM, circumvents encryption and VPNs, and bypasses other security features in order to scan everything visible on your screen.

Given the PM's association with a certain good friend of Epstein's, it's hard not to wonder if child protection is really the point.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#125

Post by dgroshev »

alkonaut wrote: post #81
big85 wrote: post #24

So, in this order: 1. You need a camera on your computer to allow a third party to verify your age before viewing adult content 2. It applies to social media too 3. It applies to your operating system too 4. Unless you age verify, the law demands your computer must be powerful enough to run an AI, or be internet-equipped and send your private photos to a third party, to detect and prohibit nudity. It must be capable…

Does the law really require third party? Because having on-device functions configurable by parents doesn’t seem terrible at all.

It absolutely doesn't. However, the argument doesn't work when it's about connecting the "is the user a kid" bit to the existing and constantly running object recognition (phone cameras already run skin detection all the time to set white balance), so people invent "third parties" and "report people to authorities".

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#127

Post by dgroshev »

big85 wrote: post #99
skynotblue wrote: post #25

[flagged]

Surveillance which violates the privacy or other rights of lawful citizens is worse than crime, I argue. The criminal fears the police, but the government obeys nobody. Security cameras in public areas, I don't have a problem. Government mandated scanning software running on my PC, yeah, I have a problem. It amounts to a warrantless search.

It's no more "warrantless search" than object recognition in your photo app. Signal deliberately misrepresents the policy, which is about connecting (already existing, local) object recognition to (already existing, local) established adulthood of the user.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#128

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Governments have been pushing surveillance since the earliest days of the consumer Internet.

The earliest example I can remember is the Clipper Chip. That was dead three years after it was proposed.

This current idiocy - proposed by a PM who promoted a very good friend of the most notorious paedophile in recent history to ambassador, against the recommendations of the civil service - is similarly doomed. Three months to implement huge changes to every OS on the planet? Like that's even remotely likely.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#129

Post by jmyeet »

michaelt wrote: post #18

I sometimes wonder whether the people in the tech industry who worked on things like secure boot, attestation, and DRM saw this as the inevitability open source advocates always saw it as. Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means, that politicians couldn't transfer that control to themselves by political means? Did they think they could lock things down to ex…

People forget how we got here. Whatever your philosophical stance, history has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that giving most people complete control over their device has been an unmitigiated disaster.

Scams, stealing credentials, stealing money, botnets, viruses, losses of data, ransomware, etc etc etc.

What is better for most people is a locked down device like an iPad where each app has to be approved and they're incredibly sandboxed. 20 years ago we had people installing malware because a strange email promised them smiley face emojis.

When we transitioned from the single-user ODS-based Windows model (ie Win98/SE were the last of that line) to a multi-user restricted privilege model based on NT 3.0/3.5/4.0 (first as WinXP) it was meant to be better but privilege escalation was still too easy because of what users had become accustomed to doing and of what was needed to install software you downloaded.

Things like an App Store (on Mac and eventually on Windows) are actually a good thing. Signed apps are a good thing. Having to go out of your way to install unsigned apps is a good thing.

I really abhor "technical libertarians" because they never address these issues. It's all principle-based while ignoring reality, human nature and whether or not unfettered access gives users something they even need.

Also, other people pay the price. Where do you think these DDoS attacks come from? Compromised Windows PCs (primarily).

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#130

Post by arthurcolle »

HiPhish wrote: post #64
yason wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that people who can work on stuff like that are the kind who just take the stuff in the world for granted. "This is how the world is, we need digital restrictions so now we need to implement them." "I don't have a say about whether DRM or remote attestation is standard business practice or not, it is just how it is." This is akin to how two kinds of people respond to law. The first kind think "This i…

> My impression is that people who can work on stuff like that are the kind who just take the stuff in the world for granted. "This is how the world is, we need digital restrictions so now we need to implement them." "I don't have a say about whether DRM or remote attestation is standard business practice or not, it is just how it is." I like to call those people "ventablackpilled". Being blackpilled is all about glo…

I think it's vantablack unless you mean like a Starbucks Venti cup of black
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