Live data from Hacker News

The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

twitter.com

291–300 of 330 posts

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In times of frustration with the modern Internet, I've often sympathized with the Amish. For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now." When frustra…

I submit that the Amish have been successful in their efforts because they have a unifying transcendent value system that gives their group cohesion and purpose. Secular efforts will quickly dissolve into warring sub-tribes.

Thanks for response.

I agree, their religion probably does a lot to hold the Amish society together. It sets out a common set of rules that everyone plays by. There is also the strict punishment of social shunning for not following the rules. I wonder how fa

I disagree that a societal value system _must_ be religiously-transcendent to be effective. I can't name any such system that has had 100% success, but I reject the notion that it's impossible for a a functioning secular society to work.

To be sure, my idea of a new-Amish whose only rule is minimal Internet usage, would not work as a tight-knit community. There would have to be a bigger connection than a common disdain for the Internet.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#292
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm about as technical as it is possible to get. I fucking hate technology these days. It all sucks, it tries to insert itself between everything human and sane, and extract value for its masters. People are serfs in closed silos. They own nothing, just like the serfs of old: not their farmlands or cattle (laptops, phones and data), nor their homes (accounts in the 'cloud' subject to AI shutdown without human recours…

> It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. We'll see about that, I guess. Revolutions in the past were successful because you couldn't control people so strongly and you needed the to work to be able to tax them. With our new surveillance tech and automation I am afraid this has change…

I think it will be better for four reasons:

1) Initially, when a new technology is discovered and leads to a paradigm shift, commercial/capitalist ventures are most efficient at digging down and innovating quickest. A depth first search if you will: relentlessly driving down costs, improving the technology and consuming or destroying the competition. Then, once the time is right, the exploitation begins. No longer are the newest models of $TECHNOLOGY strictly better than their predecessors, any progress is incremental and genuine innovation is partially co-opted by marketing.

When this happens the screws start getting tightened. Companies used to rapid growth due to merit try to maintain growth velocity by cutting cost, exploiting regulatory loopholes yet to catch up with the paradigm shift, and any other things not directly related to their new niche that the risk/reward calculators deem worth it (breaking laws, anti-patterns, etc.).

The reaction to this is two fold: 1a) governments want to stick their hand in the newly-added piece of the pie, 1b) people don't like being more and more exploited.

2) People understand when they're being screwed. Our sense of 'justness' is about as evolved as can get, people might not always be able to pinpoint what is screwing them over, but the anger still builds. I believe (really can't justify any of the things I'm claiming here as truth, it's just my opinions) that trust takes longer to build than to destroy. I loved google for 2 years, I've hated them for much longer. I feel intuitively that I'm being exploited when forced to help their machine learning algorithm detect traffic signs that only a few people will profit off. I feel like I've never entered into a fair contract where I'm obtaining search results in exchange for some of my attention; I'm just forced to fill these things out every once in a while to access a site unrelated to google. Can you believe my GP's site has a google captcha page on the contact form? Where I enter medical data? I _HATE_ that.

3) People like me (and you?) spread the word. After the initial rush described in point 1. other ways of working gain speed. Technology, organization, open source, education, they all make it easier and easier to replicate what was an enterprise deployment a decade ago as a small group, or even individual, today. One day a matrix bridge will allow me to message all my friends from a single, polished place, with good UX. One day later a friend will see me using it, and the word will spread.

The inherent nature of information favors the communicators, integrator and middle men. It's impossible for a silo to detect with certainty that you are not actually using a third party app, like a matrix bridge, to talk to your friends. A false positive will lead to more feelings as shown in point 2, a false negative is the natural result of progress in point 3.

4) Governments cannot afford a completely tech illiterate population. Security and military forces around the world have recognized for years already that information technology is another avenue to achieve their goals. Knowledge of the possibilities of information technology is a natural (but certainly not perfect) antidote to some of the ways an opponent might exploit your population. Organizations (in a liberal country) in this sphere will focus on education, partially to increase their own resilience against attack, and create a fertile recruiting ground for new recruits.

We gotta hold on till we get there.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a relevant XKCD So... what? Don't try? Don't bother? That's like saying don't bother cooking your food because even cooked food can get you sick some of the time. Or do you believe that a hypothetical future authoritarian government can hire an army of thugs to kneecap everybody who they believe shared an anti-regime meme? Censorship-resistant tools are being used by dissidents today to organize against rep…

> Censorship-resistant tools are being used by dissidents today to organize against repressive regimes such as in Hong Kong. Right, so my whole point here is... ...and how's that going?

Better than if they had nothing.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TV show Upload [1] has a group of people dubbed the "Ludds" (i.e. Luddites) that refuse to be party to the turn that the technological revolution has taken and stick to traditional ways of doing things. I strongly believe if that were to happen in our world today, much of Silicon Valley would be "Ludds", while a mass of non-tech people would happily welcome our new technological overlords. [1]: https://www.imdb.c…

In times of frustration with the modern Internet, I've often sympathized with the Amish. For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now." When frustra…

Interestingly, they also give their young a chance to leave temporarily, known as the Rumspringa, and then decide whether they'd like to return and live as Amish or stay in modern society (with the ability to still visit if they'd like). A few decades ago they retained 75% of their children. Now it's closer to 90% which probably tells you something.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#295

Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism. Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes. It's a special sort of odd neoliberal fantasy where capitalists or technologists can route around an authoritarian social movement that seizes the power of the state. Do you want to know what happens to people who think they can route around an authoritarian regime with cl…

> Surveillance-resistant systems are not an answer to authoritarianism.

> Private companies do not have freedom of operation in authoritarian regimes.

That seems to me like false dilemma of ideal freedom vs authoritarian regimes. Full-scale authoritarian regimes are scary but unlikely risk for western democracies. The real risk is small-scale creeping authoritarian policies accepted democratically with popular support.

We have to consider that liberty is not without real trade-offs between it and other values. It is fantasy to offer political persuasion as a solution. Different people have different preferences for political values and if there is a policy that is unacceptable for liberty-loving minority but satisfies preferences of majority by offering better support for other values, then it is unlikely than just political work can stop it (that would mean to convince others to accept a position detrimental to their own values). And there is enough people who in good faith would like to repress terrorist, CSAM, corruption, tax evasion, public health risks for a 'small' liberty restriction.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#296
post #175

Snowden is twitting from Moscow. Russians in a similar position have been formally labeled "foreign agents", imprisoned, or worse. I'm wondering how Snowden managed to avoid a similar fate.

Because he is their agent. Remember Russia has been the undisputed world champion of dezinformatsiya for centuries - they did a good job of making him appear as the "disgruntled principled whistleblower" they wanted. But most of the stuff he stole had little to do with the NSA activities they publicized, and much to do with key intelligence damage to the USA, including likely loss of lives. That's not protest, it's t…

I came to the same conclusion. At my job I learned that one of the important disclosures in his leaked documents wasn't true, it simply did not exist and there was no possible way for it to exist, pretty conclusively*. While this doesn't prove he was a foreign agent, it is certainly very suspicious.

I'm not willing to say more, and I don't expect my comment will convince anyone here. But I assume there are a fair number of other HN readers working at big tech in positions where they can look into some of the claims in the leaked docs themselves, and draw their own conclusions.

* well, assuming no functioning government quantum computers a decade ago, and assuming P != NP.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#297
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't require you buy the device - they merely require apps that run on the device to do certain necessary things, such as drive a motor vehicle, enter certain buildings, use public transportation, etc. The migration to "Oh we now have mobile enabled -- X" is already happening, with "X" being boarding pass, driver's license, building pass, payment method, etc. First, it's a convenience, then it becomes a require…

> they Who does any of the things you listed? AFAIK we're actually in exactly the opposite situation. I can be imprisoned for not having a physical copy of my driver's license while operating my vehicle! > First, it's a convenience, then it becomes a requirement. What requires a smartphone app? > At that point, we'll need two devices. So, just to be clear, you're going to carry two smartphones. One that has a PNG of…

>>Who does any of the things you listed? 1) Any of the states/countries who uses vaccine passports. 2) Any employer using smartphone badges [0]

>>why? What's the "win" here? The win would be that the one carrying all your 'required' stuff is not the same one as the one you use for telecommunications & other work. Separation. The one with all your licenses, accounts, etc. has ONLY that stuff.

And sure, if you want to carry only one with the minimal stuff, go for it.

>>If by "wealthy enough" you mean "has 40 bucks..." Yes, I'd make the license/pass/etc phone a cheap one, but it still might require a separate plan, which is monthly maintenance, etc...

>>I'm genuinely bewildered about your threat model.

I'd say the main post described it rather well.

Just the combination of nice-to-have options becoming mandatory/primary, the underlying device thus also becoming mandatory, and the device explicitly working against our interest.

While 'I've got nothing to hide', I still don't like my devices gathering data on me that isn't also useful to me.

E.g., right now, it's pretty optional to be tracked - just leave the smartphone behind, bring cash and your license/badge/whatever. We can't do that when all those passes are on the same device, along with our communications history and more...

[0] https://blog.dormakaba.com/this-is-why-smartphones-will-repl...

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either support the inevitable neo-Luddite revolution (probably will happen in next 10 years), or move out of the reach of the technological system. Both options will be very difficult.

>inevitable neo-Luddite revolution Butlerian Jihad represent! Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

There may have been an UFAI (UnFriendly AI) involved in the timeline there.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submit that the Amish have been successful in their efforts because they have a unifying transcendent value system that gives their group cohesion and purpose. Secular efforts will quickly dissolve into warring sub-tribes.

Thanks for response. I agree, their religion probably does a lot to hold the Amish society together. It sets out a common set of rules that everyone plays by. There is also the strict punishment of social shunning for not following the rules. I wonder how fa I disagree that a societal value system _must_ be religiously-transcendent to be effective. I can't name any such system that has had 100% success, but I reject…

Religion is the only reason and purpose which motivate their minimal use of technology. There are many different sorts of Amish, each with different rules (in the tradition of protestant sects which split on a regular basis), depending on which amount and type of technology they believe would interfere with their devotion. It is not some sort of hippy community which rejects the excess of modern technology and wraps some spirituality around it. It is the other way round.

Re: The window to deploy surveillance-resistant systems is running out

#300
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the “anxieties and neuroses of society” are the only reason we're still forced to wear cloth masks in certain places, so...

God, all these ellipsis and references to vague fears is tiring. The pandemic didn’t turn out to be a bogeyman that had no impact. Oh shucks—just a common cold after. But I guess that’s too “blue pill” of me to say.

However much of a bogeyman the pandemic turned out to be, the concern is that the state, proverbially, doesn't let a good crisis go to waste. Such was the case after 9/11; and there are signs that such is also the case now.
Post reply on HN