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The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

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Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, those are far more convincing arguments than "well let me see your phone then".

The two arguments aren't mutually exclusive. The shock value of 'let me see your phone then' can lead into the greater discussion that AnthonyMouse is presenting. The emotional hook can often be just as useful as the logical argument, especially when dealing with someone who didn't really reason themselves into a given position in the first place.

I like the way you think. I appreciate you!

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just how government works in general though. [0] "Why is someone privileged to arrest me but I can't keep them locked up in my house?" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Monopoly on violence is fine, but in return the government should be 100% transparent, in order not to abuse this monopoly.

In relinquishing our right to violence, we demand both influence over its use and transparent practices. Injustice arises when this exchange fails to be equitable, particularly when the government monopolizes violence without being held accountable to its citizens or offering anything of value in return.

Of course, numerous ethical concerns surround the monopolization of violence, but for I want to focus on on the negotiation of rights for societal benefits.

Similarly, we often surrender our privacy with the promise of protection from criminal threats. However, this bargain becomes unjust and imbalanced when we look at it critically. The map is not the territory as the saying goes, and what are sold as effective measures against crime (on "the map") don't seem like they would be in reality ("the territory"). We risk relinquishing our privacy for nothing of value in return.

This, at least, is my perspective on the matter.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#473
post #391
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They are "serving". Especially Cancun Cruz. Seriously, they are not serving anyone.

He's getting his base excited because he's such a reliable putz, seeing the extreme danger from the existence of trans people. Getting votes is how they claim to serve people. I was just referring to the fact that those kinds of people do get votes, they read the room.

I am not disagreeing. I am just saying their net contributions to society are negative.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#474
post #3

I'm so tired. I wish we didn't have to keep going through constant attacks on our privacy. I know they're hoping that people will give up after a point out of weariness, and I'm afraid when it comes to many people they're right.

As each generation is born not caring about privacy and posting everything for likes, I fear more are being coached to not have privacy as a priority.

my ideal is to bring my complete, unadulterated self everywhere i may go. pursue authenticity, lower the barrier between myself and others. if i hide my intimate thoughts behind a wall of privacy then i may never experience intimacy. i may never feel at home among my friends or neighbors.

i put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else, anyone who wants to look through my window in the morning can verify that for themselves. shame is defeated by coming out of your shell, not hiding inside it. i draw the shades and recede to my private world only when i want to remove stimuli for the sake of deep focus. or when i'm fearful of this abstract mass of power hanging always above me at every moment and threatening to destroy me if i'm honest about how i enjoy the "wrong" drugs, or about how i embrace a moral compass which guides me to not fund the machine that takes my brothers away from me and pits them in armed conflict against my sisters, come tax season.

!

as far as i can tell that's the only "good" reason to embrace privacy: that in this crazy contradiction it's impossible to be authentic if the wrong people know you as you are. i don't think it's good to use that as a basis on which to idealize privacy in the abstract. i think it's deeply disturbing and we should use it as a basis to fight all these real things which make one fear authenticity. privacy is a necessary stopgap: negating power imbalances is the most proximate thing to a solution.

kudos to the young and bold who seek to find themselves among others. praise to the old and scarred who fight to make that possible.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#475
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at human history. We absolutely ought to fear power and those who wield it.

As I mentioned in a recent comment: The balance between privacy and the authority is just that. We outsourced the rule of law to the state in order to have a fair and just society. Ipso facto the government should be fair and just to have the right to invade some amount of privacy in order to keep a society free, fair and just. That’s why the judicial branch exist: to see if what the government (or anyone) did was pl…

It's going to be awfully weird to see who the embodied AGI members of society vote for and what dynamics they inject into politics.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "why do you have the right to know?" is a decent answer. "What level of trust do you think you've earned?" "What do you want to do with all this information?" "How will this make things better?' "Don't you have more important things to spend time and money on?" "Is this really the best thing the government should be working on right now?" "How does this help any of society's ills?" "Will taxes need to be incr…

"IT PROTECTS THE CHILDREN!" they'll scream, while using it to take more power away from society and concentrate it into their own hands. Surveillance isn't some harmless thing, because you can tell a million lies with a drop of the truth in them for any reason you want. Imagine you get established in life and decide to run for local politics only to have the fact that you've gone to Vegas 4 times in your life somehow…

Can you please not fulminate like this on HN? It leads to more predictable, less interesting discussion.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#477
post #392
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't they usually store a hash of it? Any bank that restricts which characters one can include in a password probably doesn't store a hash of it.

This is completely false. You validate any password requirements before salting and hashing the password and then store the salt and hash. Even if you restrict usage of previous passwords, you are just comparing hashes.

If the bank is indeed salting and hashing the password, then what's the rationale of allowing certain special characters like '!', but not '+'? Hashing and salting should be character agnostic.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#478
post #477
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely false. You validate any password requirements before salting and hashing the password and then store the salt and hash. Even if you restrict usage of previous passwords, you are just comparing hashes.

If the bank is indeed salting and hashing the password, then what's the rationale of allowing certain special characters like '!', but not '+'? Hashing and salting should be character agnostic.

Some special characters are not processed as one might expect, particularly by implementations of languages such as COBOL, which is still used on the server side by many banks, insurance companies and government agencies where consistency is paramount.

"#" can mean phone number "+" or "&" can mean concatenate variables

It is vastly easier to screen out possible problems at the user/browser level than rewrite zillions of lines of legacy code.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are asking what a reasonable person of the public thinks about digital privacy, that ship has already sailed. We have people installing and handing out their data to third parties in the form of: * Cameras on their front doors (Ring doorbells, etc.) * Mics all around their house (Alexa's and other digital assistants) * 3D accurate maps out the entirety of your house's floor plan (Roomba's etc.) * Digital door…

These people think that their data are safe with those products and third parties. Those who are burnt by this trust, tend to change their mind quickly.

Right, but that apparently isn't happening to enough people, so these different means to erode our reasonable expectation of privacy will continue to grow. As they do governments can hold up Ring cameras for example and say, "look, everybody has one of these on their front porch and they're filming their neighbors. If you let a private company do that then there's nothing legally keeping us from doing the same."

It's pretty blatant in my neighborhood already. Whenever something criminal happens and cops come around one of the first things they ask is if I have a Ring doorbell they could take a peek at.

Re: The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos

#480
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even among the dinosaurs in the US Senate, Feinstein stands alone in her striking ability to be willfully ignorant about anything developed after the steam locomotive. The country would be an objectively better place if both the House and Senate had a mandatory retirement age.

In fairness, she’s announced that she won’t seek re-election in 2024.

Not sure how this is relevant to the point.
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