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

Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

foxbusiness.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 645 posts

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#211

Post by fivestones »

sandworm101 wrote: post #39
sidewndr46 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOJ would just have the website host, the ISP, or the domain registrar revoke and terminate everything

Ya, the pirate bay is still online, so too innumerable similar sites once targeted by various agencies. A smallish map running on a RP plugged into tor would be very resiliant. But there is a bittorent protocol that allows for rolling updates to a torrent. That would be the best way to distribute kml files imho.

What’s this updatable BitTorrent protocol? I wished for something like this years ago as an auto-updating torrent for downloading Wikipedia with live (or daily or whatever) changes.

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#213

Post by heavyset_go »

andsoitis wrote: post #63
saurik wrote: post #8

FWIW, everyone who claims that Apple fundamentally needs the centralized ability to control apps on their platforms "for everyone's safety" -- despite how that obviously and repeatedly makes them become patsies for governments all over the world to enforce their censorship regimes -- are complicit in this stuff (in addition, of course, to the people who build it at Apple...).

> are complicit in this stuff I don’t know that that is fair. This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather than their actions. Being complicit means to be knowingly involved in or facilitating an illegal or wrongdoing act. In my books, it requires a level of participation that I don’t think your characterization meets.

There's a difference between having a view and spreading apologia for public consumption.

For example, surely anti-abolitionists' apologia made them more complicit in the continued institution of slavery than those who chose not to make excuses for it did, even if they themselves did not own or facilitate the sale of people.

We don't seem to have a problem with assigning some responsibility for abolition with abolitionists' own apologia, some of it still read in schools today.

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#214

Post by mac-attack »

toukale wrote: post #111

Why are we asking for profits companies to fight our fights? I am reading lots of comments from keyboard warriors. For profits companies are not there to fight citizens fights. You don't want this kind of stuff to happen, then people need to fight their governments and demand better and stop relying on for profits entities to do so.

For-Profit companies have an outsized impact on our day-to-day and have the ear of the current administration. Citizens United allows their voice to be heard politically (where they again have an outsized impact). I'm curious why they can lobby to impact the lives we live and our access to information, and their CEO can donate a million to the inauguration but suddenly they deserve the right to fade into the background and stay out of it all?

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#215

Post by goku12 »

imoverclocked wrote: post #154
jjav wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that Apple is a company that has to obey the rule of law. Right, so the fundamental problem is having a device where the software that runs on it is controlled by a single company. It creates the attractive nuisance of being able to choke off anything the government doesn't like because, as you said, that single point of contact can't avoid obeying the government. Computing needs to be open and controlled o…

That’s your belief and there is a platform that allows just that. The fundamental problem here is not specific to Apple; It’s specific to a regime that is overstepping its bounds daily.

> That’s your belief and there is a platform that allows just that.

A platform that's just about to take it away with user registrations. And that isn't just a 'belief' - that's what a lot of people do with their phones.

But the problem here isn't about an alternative. Apple platform is popular enough to make it a juicy target for tyrannical regimes. And when that happens, millions of people find their devices useless or outright hostile towards them, due to lack of user-controlled escape hatches.

> The fundamental problem here is not specific to Apple; It’s specific to a regime that is overstepping its bounds daily.

Would you have predicted the current situation two years ago? Regimes go rogue unpredictably all the time. That's why people argue against this sort of device lock down all the time! It's meaningless to shift the entire blame on to the regime after Apple failed to take precautions in the face these warnings.

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#217

Post by [deleted] »

beeflet wrote: post #197
andsoitis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re still not shaming me.

If you buy apple products, work for the company or own its stock then you are financially facilitating this. I don't know who you are and I don't care, I am just saying this is the basic cause and effect. Things cannot improve unless stakeholders use their levers to change or abandon the company.

[deleted]

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#218

Post by heavyset_go »

goku12 wrote: post #203
sandworm101 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the people on this planet have never touched an iphone. Android dominates basically everywhere outside north america and, interestingly, the DPRK.

Google does the same with the rest of the population, don't they? The methods are different, but the results are the same.

They make some policies, restrictions and changes to their revenue confiscation schemes in lockstep with Apple, or they lag behind them by some years.

But yes, eventually the results are the same: the frog gets boiled.

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#219

Post by what »

beeflet wrote: post #197
andsoitis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re still not shaming me.

If you buy apple products, work for the company or own its stock then you are financially facilitating this. I don't know who you are and I don't care, I am just saying this is the basic cause and effect. Things cannot improve unless stakeholders use their levers to change or abandon the company.

Do you have a 401k that somehow doesn’t hold Apple stock? Or are you complicit too?

Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

#220

Post by mindslight »

gottorf wrote: post #137
1659447091 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if subjectively cherry picking. VPN apps "help circumvent the law", I wouldn't call them a bad thing

VPNs can serve a legitimate purpose, like shielding your traffic while using a public network. Seems to me the better technology analogue to ICEBlock is The Pirate Bay; maybe there's some flimsy pretext of it being used for a legitimate purpose, and maybe it's not outright illegal, but everyone knows that it's almost always used for an illegal purpose.

ICE is abducting citizens and generally stirring up chaos to make pretexts for escalating federal occupations. Anyone would be an utter fool to voluntarily put themselves in the presence of the new "American" Gestapo. And since the number of citizens is much larger than the number of iLlEgAlS (regardless of what the fearmongering on boomers' TVs would have you believe), an app to help avoid the lawless thugs is in the same exact category as a VPN.
Post reply on HN