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Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

signal.org

41–50 of 357 posts

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#41
post #24

So, in this order: 1. You need a camera on your computer to allow a third party to verify your age before viewing adult content 2. It applies to social media too 3. It applies to your operating system too 4. Unless you age verify, the law demands your computer must be powerful enough to run an AI, or be internet-equipped and send your private photos to a third party, to detect and prohibit nudity. It must be capable…

>Next step, certainly to outlaw most operating systems and older devices.

They won't have to.

Instead, they'll just make some new essentially mandatory tech which older devices cannot run – update or stop existing, societally.

----

Phones and email already seem this way (i.e. "required") – from my perspective as an internet user whom doesn't use phone/email, personally. Nobody believes me when answering "no phone, no email" – free-est man alive - their loss is disbelief.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#42

Signal should come out swinging. Here's a pitch. The Government is going to put a snitch on every phone, tape every bedroom, and listen in every evening on every home. Every doctor's visit. Every therapy session. Every pub. Every street. Every store. When the snitches phone home, what you type to your lover may get the cops sent to your home. Artificial stasi in every desktop, laptop, tablet, camera, and phone. Aroun…

AKA The Witness in Nick Harkaway's novel Gnomon.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#43
post #8

> Surveillance Is Not Safety Maybe not, but as long as the average person thinks it is, it may as well be.

Does the average person think this? Perception of what other people think doesn't always line up with what they actually think.

The average person doesn't think that far ahead. They just hear "a cause I like can be furthered by implementing 1984" and so they support it.

Check out any comment section on transportation policy, environmental policy, professional licensing for trades other than software. Look at how HN, people who should know how this sausage is made, schemes about how policy and technology can be used by government to enforce it's will and preferences upon other people in ways they cannot avoid or resist. It's not a case of divide and conquer, it's a case of completely lacking principals. Nobody believes in privacy, civil rights or that the application of government (violence) should be expensive and difficult and politically fraught when it's an application that they like. Nobody is thinking far enough ahead to wonder how those systems will be used when the whims and dispositions of government and society shift.

Just this morning I was reading a comment where some jerk was scheming about how the government should (the implication being that now that AI makes it easy to automate) scrape property listings and fine people for not pulling permits when there's a diff from the prior listings and that the whole thing can be automated and anyone innocent can just have the government tour their home to prove it.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#44
post #8

> Surveillance Is Not Safety Maybe not, but as long as the average person thinks it is, it may as well be.

Does the average person think this? Perception of what other people think doesn't always line up with what they actually think.

>Does the average person think this?

The average person hold all kinds of conflicting views.

The average middle class parent will surveil the shit out of their children, for example.

Hence the title of the article is not completely correct. The outcome of surveillance is the intent of the entity surveilling. In the case of the parent, this is likely the safety of their offspring. In the case of a state entity, it's likely the safety of the people in power of the state. This second type of safety is very dangerous and does not include your safety.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#45

Signal is on the right side here. I think it's time for us techies to fight back by developing the future. I'm trying to do my part - https://mediaden.ca Also looking to get involved with the meshtastic project.

Looks proprietary. Need fully open source to guarantee that right long term.

I used to agree with this, but now I don't actually think I do. Apple's app privacy report can be used to guarantee network access for any iOS app - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102188

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#46
post #36

I sometimes wonder whether the people in the tech industry who worked on things like secure boot, attestation, and DRM saw this as the inevitability open source advocates always saw it as. Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means, that politicians couldn't transfer that control to themselves by political means? Did they think they could lock things down to ex…

I often also wonders if ideological zealots ever thinks of this passage while pushing their agenda for control: ...and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the…

Those who would think of such a passage (or any biblical passage) and those who push for a total-control agenda are disjoint sets.

Communism and fascism were both fueled by atheism (either explicit or functional), not a Judeo-Christian worldview.

"Ohne Gott und Sonnenschein bringen wir die Ernte ein." (Without God and without sun, we will get the harvest done.) - the slogan of East Germany in 1975 when people were hungry and it kept raining during harvest.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#47
post #24

So, in this order: 1. You need a camera on your computer to allow a third party to verify your age before viewing adult content 2. It applies to social media too 3. It applies to your operating system too 4. Unless you age verify, the law demands your computer must be powerful enough to run an AI, or be internet-equipped and send your private photos to a third party, to detect and prohibit nudity. It must be capable…

>Next step, certainly to outlaw most operating systems and older devices. They won't have to. Instead, they'll just make some new essentially mandatory tech which older devices cannot run – update or stop existing, societally. ---- Phones and email already seem this way (i.e. "required") – from my perspective as an internet user whom doesn't use phone/email, personally. Nobody believes me when answering "no phone, no…

I am very curious how you make it in current society without a phone or email. It does sound incredibly freeing, but I'm definitely having trouble comprehending how it works.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#48

I sometimes wonder whether the people in the tech industry who worked on things like secure boot, attestation, and DRM saw this as the inevitability open source advocates always saw it as. Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means, that politicians couldn't transfer that control to themselves by political means? Did they think they could lock things down to ex…

Oh, the people who work on secure boot, attestation, DRM, and other such features know very well, but don't care. This is because the claimed benefits for them, such as less hackers, less malware, less bot traffic, outweigh any possible downsides for the society.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#49
post #36

I sometimes wonder whether the people in the tech industry who worked on things like secure boot, attestation, and DRM saw this as the inevitability open source advocates always saw it as. Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means, that politicians couldn't transfer that control to themselves by political means? Did they think they could lock things down to ex…

I often also wonders if ideological zealots ever thinks of this passage while pushing their agenda for control: ...and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the…

I don’t think 1st century Rome had much in the way of digital surveillance.

Or even surveillance, for that matter.

Plenty of hubris, mind.

Re: Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]

#50

I sometimes wonder whether the people in the tech industry who worked on things like secure boot, attestation, and DRM saw this as the inevitability open source advocates always saw it as. Did they think, as they worked to transfer final say from users to corporations, by technical means, that politicians couldn't transfer that control to themselves by political means? Did they think they could lock things down to ex…

Did they think that the trillion-dollar companies would become some sort of Che Guevara style insurgents...

Arguably this plan is mostly working for Apple.

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