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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#181

Post by intrasight »

judge2020 wrote: post #123
drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

> By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. There is a really good way to do this that solves most concerns: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu... The only real downside to this is that a 0kp cannot be reliably tied to an identity of the person using the device and thus tickets could be proxied/shared around w…

Those in tech who study this already understand the need to hardware attestation. Everyone else will understand soon enough.

Old hardware will have to be grandfathered. Old cars don't track us and that has created a market for old cars.

Hardware age attestation will be a long timeframe project. The current work should be towards standards that can get us there.

Finally, anonymity didn't exist for my grandparents. It won't exist for my grandchildren.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#182

Post by ColdStream »

6r17 wrote: post #164
cuoder wrote: post #156

UK government (and the rest of Europe) has had a very easy time implementing strict administrative regulations due to public acceptance. And the children argument is like the easiest angle to attack, you can use it for almost any cause and win.

[flagged]

My issue with the whole move out of country X is that, where would you move to? It seems like everyone is moving in lock-step globally.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#183

Post by onetimeusename »

6r17 wrote: post #164
cuoder wrote: post #156

UK government (and the rest of Europe) has had a very easy time implementing strict administrative regulations due to public acceptance. And the children argument is like the easiest angle to attack, you can use it for almost any cause and win.

[flagged]

Some state-resistant technology (idk if this term is in general use) like Signal planned for a lot of contingencies that could happen caused by governments. Tor is kind of like that too. So I have more optimism for building tech that is state-resistant than I do for any kind of constitution, or movement, or law. That's not to say give up but I think it's hard to argue against a state.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#184

Post by dmitrygr »

dionidium wrote: post #111
matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously. Of course. Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.

> Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. This makes very little sense. People sometimes appeal to the safety of children cynically, but it's very often sincere, since parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids . You can tell people to ignore these appeals, but it won't work, and you'll be leaving better arguments on the table.

  > parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids
As they should. Perhaps they can put their efforts into parenting and not into limiting our freedoms?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#185

Post by paulryanrogers »

spawarotti wrote: post #170
switchbak wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the issue I have with most of my well meaning but somewhat politically uninformed friends. The idea of “wouldn’t it be good if …” (idealized scenario), is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). Yes it might actually work out ok if a mythical benevolent dictator could manage things with infinite precision and unlimited compassion. I would imagine that has n…

> is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?

> OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all?

Conservatives seem to be fine with mafia rule, so long as the don has the correct party affiliation.

> When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?

Mob rule doesn't with very well as a defacto government, or oligarchy. Nor food and drug safety or national defense. Some things just have to be tackled by society as a larger group. Ideally as locally as possible, but not so locally that minorities are crushed or rule becomes petty and micromanaged.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#186

Post by ColdStream »

areoform wrote: post #88

For the first time in human history, the cost of surveillance has dropped below the cost of privacy. It is more expensive today to maintain your privacy and anonymity than it is to surveil you. The collective surveillance grid makes it possible to track people's movements, whereabouts, their predilections, political views, personal images and more for a few cents every day. It's a bargain. And in this new world, the…

It is a great example of how difficult it is to anticipate the N-th order effects of things. 79 years ago the transistor was invented, in less than a century it ended up being the back back of a global surveillance system. Not many people could have foreseen this.

Cheaper computer technology has been great for the average persons uses but it cuts both ways. It also means much cheaper surveillance. I suspect that governmental/corporate surveillance now costs less than 1% of their spending, something that simple couldn't have been done even a few decades back.

I do wonder what the world would have been like is say computer technology peaked at 486 level performance/memory. Much of what we have today simply could not have happened in terms of surveillance and social media damages. Alas, this is the world we didn't get.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#187

Post by fedpost »

jaimex2 wrote: post #167

What can the average person do to try and dismantle these NGOs?

Delay the legislation whenever possible, call your Congress critter and make their lives a tiny bit worse. Deny them at every level of government including local and state assemblies where you have a bigger voice. Defend your communities by actually showing up to city council meetings. That kinda stuff...

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/prot...

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#189

Post by autoexec »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #112
autoexec wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly the incentive already exists because parents want their children saved from the harms of facebook and social media. The story is that parents are clamoring for the government to do something about it. I don't think parents really are, or where they are the expectation is that the social media companies will be forced to change their behavior, not that parents will be forced to start parenting their childre…

The incentive for parents to stop giving their children smartphones does not exist. If it did exist, it would incite parents to perform the action: ie not give their children smartphones. Incentives incite action. No action. No incentive.

That's not true. Incentives aren't the whole cause of behavior and they aren't the solution to changing it either. That's the same simplistic and flawed mentality that pushes for harsher punishments to deter crime when the evidence shows that doesn't work and that not even death penalty is an effective deterrent. People have several incentives to lose weight, but increasingly they still overeat.

Incentives play a role, you don't want to encourage wrong behaviors certainly, but they're just one factor in determining what people do or don't do. At best, they nudge. Those nudges aren't likely to overcome stronger forces, or even several weaker ones.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#190

Post by ColdStream »

Buttons840 wrote: post #129

It seems to me the intrusiveness of age verification will continue to grow. They want the OS to report the user's age. People will use this to claim whatever age they want. For instance, if companies cannot advertise to children, they might find that almost every computer is reporting that the user is a child--turns out adults want the protections kids receive as well--sometimes. Eventually they will have to enforce…

I will go back to DOS before I hand over this information. I already have my setup for it when this comes down the line.

Can also just lie about your age, "I am as old as the fjords, as young as a newborn lamb" - Thor - GTA Vice City radio ;)

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