291–300 of 357 posts
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> Surveillance is a tool. It's neither right nor wrong, good or evil. What is it a tool for, it is a tool for observing while no person is present therefore breaking privacy. Privacy, a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people. Any tool is (as long as it exists) always used for right or wrong, good or evil. However what might be good or evil is very subjective. Both in the moment and looking ba…
> What is it a tool for, A nuclear weapon is a tool. You can use it to blast a city-killing asteroid, one you just noticed, into pieces that'd burn in the atmosphere (and miss the city). You can also use it to mass murder an entire population. > it is a tool for observing while no person is present therefore breaking privacy. The capacity exists, but it's not necessarily used all the time. We should create the legal…
Then it hits reality and it takes about 5 minutes for governments to start abusing it and when caught will retroactively legalise their actions https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23769206
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The phrase 'banality of evil' comes to mind.
Does that really still apply when the people in question make six or seven figures for it? At some point we should expect some kind of individual responsibility.
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> Surveillance is a tool. It's neither right nor wrong, good or evil. What is it a tool for, it is a tool for observing while no person is present therefore breaking privacy. Privacy, a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people. Any tool is (as long as it exists) always used for right or wrong, good or evil. However what might be good or evil is very subjective. Both in the moment and looking ba…
> What is it a tool for, A nuclear weapon is a tool. You can use it to blast a city-killing asteroid, one you just noticed, into pieces that'd burn in the atmosphere (and miss the city). You can also use it to mass murder an entire population. > it is a tool for observing while no person is present therefore breaking privacy. The capacity exists, but it's not necessarily used all the time. We should create the legal…
By choosing not to engage with a tool you are deciding that the tool serves you and your goals (perception of good) best by not being used. You can make it illegal to use the tool but as long as the tool exists it does not mean it won't be used.
Think of the millions devices part of a botnet or web accessible camera's that are being used illegally by malicious actors.
Isn't it worth considering if we actually need and/or want this tool to be build in the first place?
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should"Earlier quoted context omitted.
That you could work someplace else doesn't mean someplace else is hiring someone with your skills, or that you could afford a pay cut if necessary.
This is true for fruit pickers or uber drivers or whatever but it is ridiculously out of place statement for software engineers.
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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…
> The first kind think "This is the law, we must follow it" and the other kind think "This law doesn't make sense, we must change it". Indeed. I can't understand the people who blindly believe any law is good just because. Stop, think. Is the law good? What's good about it? What's bad about it? Can it be abused? Then maybe it should be changed? I advocate that every law should have an annual review to catalog every c…
Personally I would put myself somewhere between your two "kinds of people". Many individual laws are bad and should be changed, but the rule of law itself is a good, stabilizing force that should generally be respected. If people only followed laws they 100% agree with then that would be chaos, therefore even bad laws deserve at least a modicum of respect.
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ZKP age verification doesn't verify because you can just copy someone else's token.
You can also... ask someone else to pass selfie-age-verification during an account registration, no?
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It's starting to feel like ethno-nationalism is the answer. See: the PRC. Support for surveillance is allegedly high. Anecdotally, talking to PRC citizens in circumstances where they don't need to worry about said surveillance (e.g., when they're vacationing in Japan and I want to pester someone and practice my mandarin), they generally like it. Makes them feel safe. The CPC has sold them on a vision of them as membe…
>Anecdotally, talking to PRC citizens in circumstances where they don't need to worry about said surveillance (e.g., when they're vacationing in Japan and I want to pester someone and practice my mandarin) I'm not sure you are aware that China has monitoring operations for its citizens outside China.
Sure, you and I know that, but most PRC people don't really believe in that or are aware. At least nobody I've met.
The ratchet ratcheting: client side scanning, then remote attestation to ensure client side scanning works, digital identity verification, etc etc.
Due to the fact that it can't easily be modified without the source, software is uniquely able to act against the interests of its owner in a way almost no other product can. Client side scanning wouldn't be viable if people could just install a mod that disables it, and remote attestation would be a much harder sell if the availability of such mods were expected.
Maybe software copyright should require releasing the source and build tools just like patents require releasing the design...