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We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

federalregister.gov

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Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#291

Post by logicchains »

willmadden wrote: post #213
sschueller wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So national security trumps democracy and freedom? What do you have left to protect when you give it all up? Might as well just elect a king and be done with it.

There's an argument to be made that we would be far better off with a benevolent monarchy than whatever this is.

In a monarchy at least there's a chance of getting a good ruler by the genetic lottery. In a political system almost inevitably the people who get to the top are the best liars and manipulators, not good people.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#292

Post by joh6nn »

throwup238 wrote: post #28
CalRobert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the biggest argument in favour is that it would remove anonymity on the internet, at least from governments, and that could enable law enforcement to more easily find people committing real crimes. CSAM, scams, etc. I think the biggest argument against it is that this removes anonymity on the internet, at least from governments, and that would remove people's ability to freely voice their opinions withou…

> …directs the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) to propose regulations requiring U.S. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers of IaaS products to verify the identity of their foreign customers… (from TFA) This is about IaaS not “internet services”. It doesn’t remove anonymity from internet users, just foreign customers renting cloud servers and other infrastructure.

how will US customers prove that they're not foreign customers?

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#293

Post by Stagnant »

wkat4242 wrote: post #281
dsign wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS has my name and my credit card number. But they have never asked for a photocopy of my passport, my history of international travel, which nationalities I have and so on. Something tells me that for the goal of this law to be achieved, all those details would need to enter the database.

If you rent a VPS in supposedly privacy-conscious Germany they need photo id too :( Luckily there's other cheap options in Europe like in France.

I don't think that is a legal requirement in Germany. At least Hetzner lets you rent a German VPS or dedicated server without ID. Though Hetzner may require you to submit an ID if you are flagged by their automated systems upon registration.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#294

Post by AnthonyMouse »

krapp wrote: post #283
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do you explain these? https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/anony...

I see controversy and a lot of dissent among Justices, but no decisions that explicitly declare a Constitutional right to anonymity. And the modern Court explicitly declared that a Constitutional right to privacy does not exist, and one cannot have anonymity without privacy, so no.

> I see controversy and a lot of dissent among Justices,

Precedent is set by the majority, not the dissent.

> but no decisions that explicitly declare a Constitutional right to anonymity.

Weird then that there are several decisions striking down laws that violate the right to anonymous speech?

> And the modern Court explicitly declared that a Constitutional right to privacy does not exist, and one cannot have anonymity without privacy

One cannot refuse to turn over one's papers and effects in the absence of probable cause without privacy either.

Consider the possibility that there could be a right to anonymous speech without a right to anonymous practice of medicine. A universal right to privacy would require both. Just because it isn't both doesn't mean it's neither.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#296

Post by kube-system »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #288
kube-system wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next sentence is: > The consumer [...] has control over the operating systems, storage, and any deployed applications. That was just a snippet of the full definition here: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-01580/p-46

There are two possibilities here. First, the rule applies to WordPress and all that kind of thing, and then providers would have to KYC WordPress users. Which is a reason not to pass it. Second, the rule is completely pointless, because it doesn't, and then anyone could create an AI training WordPress plugin that uses whatever arbitrarily fast hardware the server has and thereby easily bypass the rule. Which is a rea…

That's silly, no Wordpress hosting has H100 GPUs hooked up to it.

If you skim the full context of this proposal and the topics it focuses on (dedicated servers, virtual servers, AI acceleration), and you've been paying attention to current geopolitics in these areas (top chips being sanctioned), it is completely obvious that goal here is to prevent things like evading sanctions by renting hardware instead of buying it.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#297

Post by unethical_ban »

rattlesnakedave wrote: post #287
unethical_ban wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: Vultr info is wrong. They don't have anonymous use anymore. Vultr, for example. There are high-quality IaaS providers that accept bitcoin for payment, allowing someone to host a server on their platform without revealing their identity.

Vultur requires a card linked for ID verification even if paying for BTC. Or at least they did in the past when I tried.

Interesting. I can't even create an account with a privacy address (passmail.net forwarding). Wankers.

You are correct. "Account must be funded by credit card or PayPal before making a Bitcoin deposit." No more anonymity on Vultr.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#298

Post by jofla_net »

kensey wrote: post #241
dsign wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS has my name and my credit card number. But they have never asked for a photocopy of my passport, my history of international travel, which nationalities I have and so on. Something tells me that for the goal of this law to be achieved, all those details would need to enter the database.

Not necessarily (although that doesn't necessarily mean I think this is OK). Payment-card-based verification is a longstanding method of doing prima-facie verification like this. When you give your credit card, you give your billing address and typically your phone number -- if the postal code is a US address and the phone number is a US area code and everything else is consistent with that, that might be all the KYC…

Thanks, this was useful clarification.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#299

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kube-system wrote: post #296
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two possibilities here. First, the rule applies to WordPress and all that kind of thing, and then providers would have to KYC WordPress users. Which is a reason not to pass it. Second, the rule is completely pointless, because it doesn't, and then anyone could create an AI training WordPress plugin that uses whatever arbitrarily fast hardware the server has and thereby easily bypass the rule. Which is a rea…

That's silly, no Wordpress hosting has H100 GPUs hooked up to it. If you skim the full context of this proposal and the topics it focuses on (dedicated servers, virtual servers, AI acceleration), and you've been paying attention to current geopolitics in these areas (top chips being sanctioned), it is completely obvious that goal here is to prevent things like evading sanctions by renting hardware instead of buying i…

What stops them? You could have a WordPress plugin that uses Stable Diffusion to generate images, or encodes uploaded video, or provides an AI chatbot, and needs fast GPUs because there are a lot of users. Providers will supply anything the customer is willing to pay for. The expected AI plugins would be doing inference rather than training, but the user could use the same hardware for plugins that do something else.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#300

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

krapp wrote: post #276
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is one supposed to exercise their right to anonymously express political opinions if anonymity is prohibited by law?

There is no right to anonymously express political opinions. There is a right to express political opinions, but anonymity is a privilege, not a right.

The converse would have to be true then, that the government has the legitimate power to intimidate people to not express their opinion. This does not seem like a legitimate power for government to have, but now I need to be careful whether I express it at all.
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