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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]

#141

Post by dgroshev »

big85 wrote: post #138
dgroshev wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's much worse than you suggest. Quoting the government: > The government therefore wants Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance. All smartphones and tablets will be required to detect and block adult content on the device. You can avoid it by showing photo ID, but it's bizarre that the default state should be to assume the user is n…

How is it worse than I suggested? There's no "surveillance", for all intents and purposes it's just a hole in functionality requiring age verification to be filled. Article 1 doesn't guarantee that as a kid I can use my possessions to acquire a bottle of vodka.

You don't need to show a government ID, I never did. Also, I trust Apple-mediated age verification with a single bit output to any vendor much more than a random B2B SaaS.

More generally, the backstop on abusing system is always political. It can't be just a passive immutable barrier with any variation seen as a slippery slope (see the US government just buying commercial intel on citizens). Our political system just saw two ~new national parties spring up in additional to already established three (plus national parties) and MPs revolting at a mild inconveniences to their constituents. We're alright.

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

#142

Post by cortesoft »

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…

I am guessing they thought "My kids are depending on me to pay our mortgage and buy food"

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

#143

Post by cucumber3732842 »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #100
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person doesn't think that far ahead. They just hear "a cause I like can be furthered by implementing 1984" and so they support it. Check out any comment section on transportation policy, environmental policy, professional licensing for trades other than software. Look at how HN, people who should know how this sausage is made, schemes about how policy and technology can be used by government to enforce it…

There is something to be said about true believers, who will go out of their way to not 'live and let live'. I remember getting extra antsy when one such individual was flying drones over private properties looking for signs for what they believe is an issue. Tech.. it truly is a tool and something of a true reveal of character. It immediately shows what you do with power.

I don't respect those people unless they're willing to suffer the same tactics used upon them to enforce other issues.

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

#144

Post by big85 »

dgroshev wrote: post #141
big85 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's much worse than you suggest. Quoting the government: > The government therefore wants Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance. All smartphones and tablets will be required to detect and block adult content on the device. You can avoid it by showing photo ID, but it's bizarre that the default state should be to assume the user is n…

How is it worse than I suggested? There's no "surveillance", for all intents and purposes it's just a hole in functionality requiring age verification to be filled. Article 1 doesn't guarantee that as a kid I can use my possessions to acquire a bottle of vodka. You don't need to show a government ID, I never did. Also, I trust Apple-mediated age verification with a single bit output to any vendor much more than a ran…

Parental Controls don't bother me. What bothers me is that they should be enabled on my own device against my wishes!

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

#145

Post by autoexec »

cortesoft wrote: post #142
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…

I am guessing they thought "My kids are depending on me to pay our mortgage and buy food"

Yet they stopped thinking as soon as their wallet got involved and never considered that their kids also need freedom and the ability to use technology that works for them and not against them. Selfishness and greed are the problem. The kids are just a convenient but shallow way to deflect from that.

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

#146

Post by cucumber3732842 »

yason wrote: post #38
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…

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…

>People who look at pedestrian traffic lights and cross when it's green vs. people who look at cars and cross when there are no cars coming. The first say you must follow traffic rules and the second kind say they wouldn't be alive if they looked at the green/red light of law instead of whether there are oncoming cars: a green doesn't mean it's safe to cross and a red doesn't mean you can't cross if only there are no cars.

Don't forget the selfish jerks who simply ask for whatever class of traffic that isn't them to be punitively regulated to their benefit.

(both literally and transferrable to other issues as a metaphor)

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

#147

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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…

> Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means...

Your argument is flawed here. The truth is that measures such as secure boot do have real security benefits. They can be misused, like any technology can be, but that is not an inherent feature of the tech, but rather how it is implemented. And as the developers of such measures are not a monolith, it is unfair to paint them as merely trying to exert control. I'm not going to argue that some involved parties were trying to exert control. But lots of others were trying to implement a genuine security benefit for the users, and they don't deserve to be reprimanded as if they were some kind of apologists for authoritarianism.

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

#148

Post by jamesu »

Havoc wrote: post #89

The UK gov is just getting worse and worse at law making

Its been getting pretty bad for a long while now. On the topic of UK privacy, there's an interesting requirement that if you are a "data controller" processing "personal" data for "non-exempt" purposes, you need to register with the ICO to go on the register. Even can apply to individuals.

Sounds great until you realize anyone that does that effectively gets their residential address publicly doxxed and archived by archive.org (unless they can use a separate company address or spend money on a po box). And to make it worse, unless you have an obvious named company it's basically useless for looking up data controllers.

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

#149

Post by autoexec »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #46
xeonmc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often also wonders if ideological zealots ever thinks of this passage while pushing their agenda for control: ...and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the…

Those who would think of such a passage (or any biblical passage) and those who push for a total-control agenda are disjoint sets. Communism and fascism were both fueled by atheism (either explicit or functional), not a Judeo-Christian worldview. "Ohne Gott und Sonnenschein bringen wir die Ernte ein." (Without God and without sun, we will get the harvest done.) - the slogan of East Germany in 1975 when people were hu…

Christian fascism exists. In the US it's how fascism came to the country. Christofascism doesn't seem to have any problem with the absence of atheism.

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

#150

Post by trumpdong »

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…

There's a selection effect. Some people thought these were bad and didn't implement them. Other people thought they weren't bad and implemented them. We use implementations from the latter group of people. Obviously.

Same thing is happening with age verification. We had the chance to just ask if the user is over 18 when setting the computer up, but we didn't do that so they're using a solution from a mass surveillance company instead.

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