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Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

decentralize.today

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Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#31

Post by kuschku »

jnbiche wrote: post #26
rmc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember: if you're a non-US citizen outside the US, then the US Constitution protection against search (4th Amendment) doesn't apply to you! We have no 4th Amendment protections!

I'm as opposed to mass surveillance as anyone on HN, but I've been surprised by this kind of reaction. Why are non-citizens surprised at this lack of constitutional protection? Are there actually any countries whose constitutional protections apply to non-citizens and/or non-residents? I think that would be pretty cool and progressive if it were the case, but I'm not aware of any.

> Are there actually any countries whose constitutional protections apply to non-citizens and/or non-residents? I think that would be pretty cool and progressive if it were the case, but I'm not aware of any.

Yes, Germany.

Almost all of German constitution applies to any "Person", not even just any human.

And the government has the constitutional requirement to help ensure those rights are granted to people globally.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#32

Post by Hondor »

pjc50 wrote: post #18
iamdave wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think their point was to make precise and completely congruent analogues of these three topics.

It's more that I don't want sensible concerns about privacy in online services diluted by monetary theory that's at best "fringe".

The article identifies the risk that printed money will disappear, replaced with a few large credit card companies and banks so the government can monitor everyone's use of money. Since we're clearly already heading in that direction bit by bit, I wouldn't call it a fringe theory.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#33

Post by rini17 »

microtonal wrote: post #22
rini17 wrote: post #16

Has anyone of these activists ever considered the appalling inability of average person to manage private keys properly? Whether it is Bitcoin, pgp, whatever else, using private keys on own hardware where noone else has access to is absolute prerequisite of successful decentralized crypto. Yet the privkeys keep getting leaked,stolen,lost(including Zimmermann's pgp key),cracked(due to generation by buggy software) wit…

You will have a hard time stealing a private key remotely from a good hardware token. (Of course a compromised machine can be used to sign using a hardware token, but that's a different level of compromise than getting the private key.)

Obviously the token can be stolen,too. Also,people all the time voluntarily allow others to use their tokens if convenience demands it.

Your comment is also a good example of how the concern 'people can't manage privkeys well' keeps getting handwaved away, with sad results.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#34

Post by bogomipz »

pjmlp wrote: post #3
unicornporn wrote: post #2

Domain: decentralize.today. Published on: Medium. Seriously, it isn't THAT hard to at least host your blog outside the centralized disservices. You could argue that reach is negatively affected. It probably is. But if everybody (and that includes the outlets promoting decentralization) just swallows the bait, how can things ever change? (Wo)man up!

Having been raised in a country enjoying the first winds of freedom after a dictatorship of 44 years, I wonder how serious this kind of blog posts are. Sometimes they look just doing activism from the couch.

What do you not find serious about it?. The author is sighting actual examples of behavior that they find concerning. Do you doubt the veracity of these examples? Also Why does it matter where activism is conducted from?

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#35

Post by jnbiche »

kuschku wrote: post #31
jnbiche wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as opposed to mass surveillance as anyone on HN, but I've been surprised by this kind of reaction. Why are non-citizens surprised at this lack of constitutional protection? Are there actually any countries whose constitutional protections apply to non-citizens and/or non-residents? I think that would be pretty cool and progressive if it were the case, but I'm not aware of any.

> Are there actually any countries whose constitutional protections apply to non-citizens and/or non-residents? I think that would be pretty cool and progressive if it were the case, but I'm not aware of any. Yes, Germany. Almost all of German constitution applies to any "Person", not even just any human. And the government has the constitutional requirement to help ensure those rights are granted to people globally.

That's impressive. I guess that's the difference between a modern, progressive constitution written over 2 centuries ago versus one written 50 years ago.

Semantic point, do you differentiate between a "human" and "person"? This may be a translation issue, but to me there's no practical difference between the two.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#36

Post by seren »

jnbiche wrote: post #35
kuschku wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there actually any countries whose constitutional protections apply to non-citizens and/or non-residents? I think that would be pretty cool and progressive if it were the case, but I'm not aware of any. Yes, Germany. Almost all of German constitution applies to any "Person", not even just any human. And the government has the constitutional requirement to help ensure those rights are granted to people globally.

That's impressive. I guess that's the difference between a modern, progressive constitution written over 2 centuries ago versus one written 50 years ago. Semantic point, do you differentiate between a "human" and "person"? This may be a translation issue, but to me there's no practical difference between the two.

I am ignorant of the German constitution, but legally there are more "persons" than humans.

The most famous example is the concept of corporate personhood.

See also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#37

Post by jnbiche »

seren wrote: post #36
jnbiche wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's impressive. I guess that's the difference between a modern, progressive constitution written over 2 centuries ago versus one written 50 years ago. Semantic point, do you differentiate between a "human" and "person"? This may be a translation issue, but to me there's no practical difference between the two.

I am ignorant of the German constitution, but legally there are more "persons" than humans. The most famous example is the concept of corporate personhood. See also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood

You're absolutely correct. I was thinking of what is called natural personhood. But I'm curious specifically how the German constitution differentiates the two.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#38

Post by martinko »

kbart wrote: post #17
martinko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me, was that before or after they enabled end-to-end encryption?

Since WhatsApp is virtually a blackbox, their word for end-to-end encryption means nothing. Few 'bugs' in implementation and you have a nice backdoor.

True, but it would at least give them plausible deniability that they couldn't hand over plaintext messages, even if they wanted to.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#39

Post by kuschku »

jnbiche wrote: post #35
kuschku wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there actually any countries whose constitutional protections apply to non-citizens and/or non-residents? I think that would be pretty cool and progressive if it were the case, but I'm not aware of any. Yes, Germany. Almost all of German constitution applies to any "Person", not even just any human. And the government has the constitutional requirement to help ensure those rights are granted to people globally.

That's impressive. I guess that's the difference between a modern, progressive constitution written over 2 centuries ago versus one written 50 years ago. Semantic point, do you differentiate between a "human" and "person"? This may be a translation issue, but to me there's no practical difference between the two.

> but to me there's no practical difference between the two.

Well, just in case Lt.Cmdr. Data ever comes to Germany ;)

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#40

Post by david-given »

rini17 wrote: post #33
microtonal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will have a hard time stealing a private key remotely from a good hardware token. (Of course a compromised machine can be used to sign using a hardware token, but that's a different level of compromise than getting the private key.)

Obviously the token can be stolen,too. Also,people all the time voluntarily allow others to use their tokens if convenience demands it. Your comment is also a good example of how the concern 'people can't manage privkeys well' keeps getting handwaved away, with sad results.

Sounds like the obvious solution here is to provide a blessed and convenient way for one person to allow another to use their tokens in a limited fashion.

What's the actual use case here? What are people wanting to do when they do this?

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