Why does Signal has an organizational entity in the US? I thought they were Swiss or something.
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
521–530 of 618 posts
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#522Anybody concerned about these issues should consider donating to their favourite non profit that can have an impact that works in the area. Most HN users can afford $20/year pretty easily (others could afford $200/month and not even notice it) As they say, “Put your money where your mouth is.”
Would you name some please? Do you mean like ACLU (BCCLA in Canada)
https://NOYB.eu are doing great work.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#523It’s easy so say net win for society is privacy. But it’s important to also acknowledge it does come at a cost — there exists criminal behavior that most reasonable people would agree is bad and should be stopped that may reach a dead end with services like Signal. In formulating your statement that examining criminal behavior is a problem, you are suggesting there shouldn’t be ways to uncover crimes.
No one is suggesting it should be impossible to uncover crimes. But I’d say that we should work to make it impossible for mass surveillance to exist, full stop. Police should have to do real actual detective work to implicate people in a crime.
Why is obtaining phone records not "real actual detective work"?
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#524While I applaud Signal's response I expect this entire event (subpoena and response) will be provided as one of the exhibits to congress by the Department of Justice to justify their request that it be unlawful to provide such services. The DoJ will say, "See, here is this horrible crime we are investigating and because this company chose to make it impossible for law enforcement, with a warrant and a subpoena to get…
This is why there should not be a single entity that runs the network. Make it fully decentralized with economic incentives for node operators. some projects trying to do this now are Status, Session, Sylo
you purposely ignored the biggest name? or is matrix not as popular as I thought?
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what you are proposing is TOR but with a twist to charge connections?
Actually, what OP is proposing is federation, like e-Mail. Some people do pay for their e-Mail providers today...
Yes, that was the idea. Matrix does something like this for messaging.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except it really doesn’t. The United States has been a stable democracy with absolute freedom of speech for two and a half centuries. The same for Switzerland and the UK (British hate speech laws were only installed in the 1990s). In contrast the country where the Nazis actually came to power, Weimar Germany, had some of the most extensive hate speech codes of any Western nation in the 1920s.
>The United States has been a stable democracy with absolute freedom of speech for two and a half centuries. By freedom of speech you might consider that law enforcement does not take actions against someone speaking its own mind. But if companies and activist groups are retaliating against someone by denying employment, conducting business, acquiring goods, home rental, even instigating against that individual to th…
right. only the fringe who weren't employable to begin with will speak their minds. that's probably why lately some lunatic ideas seem very loud... and everyone else just keeps their heads down
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there are groupings of people by genetic markers which correlate to linguistic/cultural origin. These aren't "races" per se but they are a valid and interesting taxonomy of people. And unsurprisingly given they are determined by genetic distance, these groups tend to have a more homogenous physical appearance. When we're talking about IQ, asking "why is does it differ across identifiable groups of people?" seems…
> These aren't "races" per se but they are a valid and interesting taxonomy of people. The thing about groupings like this is that they only exist in the statistics. If you take two populations of otherwise identical people and then isolate them from each other, they'll diverge over time. Maybe the land is different, or the weather, and some genes are better adapted to one place or the other so they become more commo…
> The thing about groupings like this is that they only exist in the statistics.
You could say that about any grouping of people whatsoever.
> If you want to talk about something, talk about people who have the trait or don't, rather than where their ancestors lived.
But clearly where there ancestors lives is a major factor in identifying the likelihood that a person will have a particular trait. And all of this matters because people have gotten it into their heads that every cultural/ethnic group should be equally represented in every field. When you point out that, for the above reasons, this is just as absurd in executive leadership as it is in basketball, they call you a racist/Nazi.
The same objection is raised when people ask "Why are Ashkenazi Jews disproportionately rich/powerful/successful?" or "Why are African Americans disproportionately not?" and you point to the IQ data. In fact you're a racist for even thinking to study this in more detail. This is why I'll never trust anyone to decide what is and isn't an offensive thing to say.
> The salient point is that the Nazis are still wrong even if it is.
It depends on what you mean "wrong". They're clearly morally wrong for murdering and sterilizing millions of people. They're not however wrong that eugenics programs are just as effective in humans as any other animals. And there's more than one way to do eugenics. Why not, for instance, as a matter of public health, simply incentivize people with desirable traits to produce more offspring?
> It's legitimately hard to separate them out even when it's not as politically charged as this.
I agree. Like most things it seems to be genetic predisposition in combination with environmental factors.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stopped supporting the ACLU when they started doing this: Fighting against due process: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/see-you-court-aclu-sues... claiming there's no men: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1196877415810813955 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1199725066302308354 Telling families to discuss pronouns: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1250795126584217602 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/st…
In other words, you're transphobic and you think everyone else should go along with you. To put it rather mildly, that's not what ACLU is about and that's not even what they should be about. You don't get to decide what is "really" about freedom. You shouldn't try. Leave that to the people whose rights are being threatened in the specific case in question.
My name is gender-ambiguous but I am pretty strongly male-presenting in person. People I meet over email/text communication often misgender me. Before 2016, when I met those people in person, they would joke about it. Today, it terrifies them that I might tell someone or escalate it, and I have gotten profuse apologies related to the pronouns.
I don't like that this sort of thing terrifies people. It creates a real bias in people's minds against working with anyone whose gender they don't know. The ACLU used to agree with me.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would go further and ask for mandatory 24/7 surveillance of elected officials for transparency and to combat corruption every time they bring up this bullshit.
In the UK the government introduced a "record of everyone's internet history" law and then exempted themselves from it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13087339
They also conduct a LOT of government business over Whatsapp - and aren't keen about giving up the contents.
Re: Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stopped supporting the ACLU when they started doing this: Fighting against due process: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/see-you-court-aclu-sues... claiming there's no men: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1196877415810813955 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1199725066302308354 Telling families to discuss pronouns: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1250795126584217602 and this: https://twitter.com/ACLU/st…
From the descriptions you gave, I did not expect most of those links to end up being "The ACLU harmlessly addresses a trans issue in passing." I think there's an argument to be made for the ACLU becoming increasingly performative, with catchy Twitter slogans edging out the real work, but this isn't it.
There is no “harmlessly addressing” the trans issue.
People feeling uncomfortable with their bodies and performing mutilation is sad. Some people remove their feet as a kinda fetish. Trans people try to look like something else to make themselves feel normal (evidence is that’s not super effective, but that’s beside the point).
The main issue isn’t that. People can do what they want in my opinion. It’s the compelled speech that the ACLU is promoting. “You have to use someone’s pronouns” is the exact opposite of free speech. It’s about as authoritarian a position as you can take. Imo pronouns are even more insidious because (a) they can change by the day and (b) you rarely use someone’s pronouns with said person, so other people have to “enforce” the proper pronoun use.
No, civil liberties has nothing to do with people using someone’s pronouns. It has to do with the freedom to say what you want to say, not compel others. ACLU is now on the side of compelled speech.