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Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#51

Post by Nextgrid »

sylware wrote: post #35

Something I don't really understand. In my country, it is not even legal to sell/provide a piece of equipement/a service which enable people to communicate ... which cannot be spied on. As far as I know, it is the law.

These spying capabilities generally only require to work once a valid warrant has been provided. The US has those as well, but what's being discussed is warrantless mass-surveillance to anyone who's happy to pay for it.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#52

Post by bmismyname »

The cops have way too much money, too much power, and are basically immune from responsibility. Plus there is a ton of evidence to show police don't reduce crime. You reduce crime by improving quality of life, which seems like the antithesis for capitalists these days. The people in charge only want to "help" the poor insofar as it helps move the money into their own pockets.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#54

Post by seanw444 »

kristopolous wrote: post #44
Barrin92 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that are unrelated to their main goal given that we're commenting on a thread about invasive police surveillance it's pretty funny to think there's no very obvious correlation to immigration. Which groups do you think are among the most targeted by law enforcement surveillance tech? People who get hung up on this, what's the underlying mindset? "I love privacy for white dudes, but god forbid they accidentally help a…

An ingroup that is protected by the law but not bound by it. An outgroup that is bound by the law but not protected by it. So maximum liberty for me and law and order for thee. Another example: Best defense against a "bad guy with a gun" (outgroup) is a "good guy with a gun" (ingroup). See also Rhodesia, Jim Crow South, apartheid South Africa, and Western Expansion under the Homesteading acts. This is how some people…

I don't see how the gun example fits here at all.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#55

Post by kurupt213 »

The opportunity for abuse is huge. This gives law enforcement the ability to select a person and go search for a crime in their history. That isn’t how the criminal Justice system is supposed to work. They are supposed to look for perpetrators of established crimes.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#56

Post by sashahrzg »

maxehmookau wrote: post #20
robk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

To say that agendas around "gender and immigration" are unrelated to the EFF's goals is missing the point. You can guarantee that if society moves towards criminializing trans people, or further demonising immigrants, or tracking women's fertility for the purposes of further restricting access to abortion; surveillance technology will be at the forefront of that effort and the EFF's goals of technological privacy and…

People don't realize that once they're done coming after "them" they're coming after you. I think the EFFs efforts to support adjacent groups is awesome and completely inline with their goals. Thanks for pointing this out.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#57

Post by throwaway0a5e »

dane-pgp wrote: post #23
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why "defund the police" became a slogan: operational control against abuse just doesn't work, so the blunt instrument of reducing the amount of money for toys is the only one left.

But it's exactly the same mistake as the supposed "starve the beast" policy. If someone really doesn't trust the government to spend money on the right programs, then they shouldn't expect that reducing tax revenue will make the government prioritize the same things they would. Besides, governments can produce very bad outcomes with almost no budget at all, since some of the worst things in life are free. If cops lik…

I live in a city that's been defunded by economic circumstance. There are simply not enough blue bodies to harass people over the petty stuff. The cops focus on violent crime and drug trafficking because staffing levels are low enough that there is a sufficient amount of "resume enhancing" crime like that to satisfy the needs of the department. Playing with MRAPs, harassing the citizenry on a hunch and perving through people's location data for no good reason is what departments that are well staffed enough to have idle hours do. Make no mistake, this is not a great environment to be a cop. You look at the department demographics and it's basically the young guys who will be up and out and being managed by a few old guys who are fresh out of fucks to give. I'm sure for people wrongly targeted by them there is little recourse but it doesn't seem like they spend a lot of time going off on people who've done little wrong.

The caveat is that you are on your own for securing your property and the department basically laughs at the "standards of polite behavior and endangering the public" crimes that the HN crowd tend to take very seriously.

Overall I'd give it a 9/10. I'm very happy with my department's performance so far as I can see it.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#58

Post by aaaaaasss »

hnburnsy wrote: post #53

Google and Apple need to fix this by not allowing apps to start up by themselves, by not letting them run in the background without permission, and giving user control for killing apps.

Even if they don't allow any apps to run, the cellphone company will know your general location... There is 2 OS on your phone/pocket computer.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#59

Post by quantum_solanum »

shaftoe wrote: post #48
hnbad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes "charitable causes" can be apolitical. I guess the ACLU might be closer to what you want then? They have a recent history of criticism for defending the far-right in the name of free speech while generally being thought of as "liberal". The problem you're facing is that "fighting against power structures" is a political gradient starting short of authoritarianism and ending at anarchism (unless you're St…

The ACLU has increasingly become exactly what he seeks to avoid. https://reason.com/2022/08/31/the-student-loan-debate-shows-... I would support a truly civil-liberties-only ACLU, but not what they currently are.

[flagged]

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#60

Post by banannaise »

dane-pgp wrote: post #23
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why "defund the police" became a slogan: operational control against abuse just doesn't work, so the blunt instrument of reducing the amount of money for toys is the only one left.

But it's exactly the same mistake as the supposed "starve the beast" policy. If someone really doesn't trust the government to spend money on the right programs, then they shouldn't expect that reducing tax revenue will make the government prioritize the same things they would. Besides, governments can produce very bad outcomes with almost no budget at all, since some of the worst things in life are free. If cops lik…

It may not be a particularly good lever, but it's the one we have. Police departments will ignore all oversight, but they still can't spend money that doesn't exist. They will absolutely spend their crumbs on the most aggressive and vengeful policing strategies and tech they can find, and that will be an improvement over where we are today, where they spend a vast majority of their budget on that anyway.
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