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> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) conside

> Imagine, Facebook asking you to upload your passport before you do a live stream. It wouldn't surprise me if a Western government (probably the UK's) considers introducing legislation to require exactly this in the not-too-distant future, most likely under the guise of preventing the spread of extremist propaganda. If they do, companies like Facebook and YouTube will face a choice between acceding to the new regulation or incurring punitive fines. Guess which option most of them will choose? The only way we can prevent George Orwell's vision from becoming a reality is if we build a more decentralised web. However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams.

bitL 9y ago
If it comes to having the same legislation in the UK, it'd likely ban decentralized web as well, perhaps requiring submitting your ID upon connecting to Internet every single time.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  I think in the far future, cloud computing and the web will morph into a single entity where you will login to your cloud. This idea of identifying yourself prior to accessing your resources and having your resources connect to others doesn't seem far fetched anymore. Especially with the way we are moving. Most people today are happy to use sso with services like facebook or google. Most people also have their real identify tied to their core profile they use to sign on to other services. The abstraction between the internet and the cloud is becoming more blurry to a internetizen that is technologically ignorant.
- abpavel 9y ago
  you do have to provide your ID to connect to the Internet, except for the prepaid anonymous sim cards paid for in cash.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    Which are unavailable in many EU countries already. Practically the only way of connecting anonymously to the Internet is the old-fashioned wardriving, or getting lucky and finding a "free wifi" which is not limited to the Web only.
lotsofpulp 9y ago
Also under the guise of child porn. Terrorism and "won't anybody think of the children" are a winning combo for people looking to restrict liberties.
- SCHiM 9y ago
  It's been known for ages of course, there's always been a bogeyman, I like how there's some older articles out there that have predicted which bogeyman it was going to be today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... Wikipedia cites this term being coined in 1988 ;).
- Banthum 9y ago
  If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.
  - darpa_escapee 9y ago
    I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
    - wyager 9y ago
      Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
achamayou 9y ago
I would be pretty surprised. Not everyone in the UK has ID, and since the NIC scheme failure, it's less likely than ever to happen. ID isn't even required to vote at the moment...
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  That is a minor oversight that will probably be rectified at some point — other countries are doing it, it is already required in Northern Ireland, and in 2018 a pilot will be held introducing the requirement in a number of districts¹. People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this requirement, it passed. So to vote now you need to bring a valid ID. If the British government wants to do this with a minimum of fuss, they'll do what our government did and make the driver's licence a valid identity card. That way the majority of adults will already have their ID on them as a matter of habit (and won't complain). Of course mentioning that it is needed to prevent Muslim voters from committing voting fraud (see¹…) will help push the bill trough. 1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-show-passports-combat-voter-fraud-vulnerable/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-...
  - jawbone3 9y ago
    What is the objection to keeping track of who voted?
    - PoachedSausage 9y ago
      Its supposed to be a secret ballot. Of course, most people tell their friends which way they voted, but that's their choice.
      - jawbone3 9y ago
        You mean you count not showing up to vote as an active vote choice that should be protected by secrecy? Because the secrecy of the physical votes is produced by the mixing of large numbers of indistinguishable containers prior to reading, not by the votes being handed in by strangers.
andai 9y ago
> However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams. However? Don't you mean, "as an added benefit"?
avaer 9y ago
You can't fix this with tech. No amount of decentralized web will help if ID is legally required to post things. Torrenting, encryption, and similar will simply be made illegal, since that's required for enforcement. Many of the established lobbies would support that, for the usual justifications. You can only fix this by not letting the law start on this crazy slippery slope.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  While I agree that it's critically important to not get on the slippery slope of laws that restrict internet freedom, I think a decentralized internet infrastructure would make censorship significantly more difficult for governments to impose. Without centralised gatekeepers, the only viable way to censor the internet is to enforce laws on end-users, which is a daunting task for any government. And technologically, at least two of the necessary elements for a global meshnet are here: protocols for decentralized addressing and routing, like cjdns >1, and protocols for peer-to-peer electronic value transfer between nodes, like Raiden >2. The only major missing piece of the technological puzzle, AFAICS, is a technology for cheaply deploying telecommunication backbone links. >1 https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepape... >2 https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.... DISCLAIMER: I am by no means a bonafide cryptopunk. I have contributed very little code and other meaningful technical work to privacy tech projects.
Zak 9y ago
Germany has recently started requiring identity verification of this sort to obtain prepaid phone service. I was shocked to learn that, and find it frighteningly close to what China is doing.
- pas 9y ago
  The perps in the Paris attacks used Hungarian prepaid SIM cards. Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. So making phones more traceable doesn't really work against terrorists, when there are so many incompetent people watching us :(
  - grzm 9y ago
    > Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. Would you elaborate more on the background of this? Were the SIM cards sold and registered with a private company? I would suspect it is (or they were, if more than one). Which national defense agencies are you referring to? Did the national defense agencies search these records? Do you assume the agencies have access to this information by default? If it's through a private company, should the agencies have access by default? Do you think the private companies should have contacted the agencies if they didn't have access? There are answers to these questions, some of them factual, some of them ethical or legal, and up for debate. In only a few situations I think it would be fair to call the agencies "so dumb". What leads you to use those words?
    - zzzcpan 9y ago
      They are not dumb, they just don't work for the people and terrorism is not even a threat they care about. On the contrary, they consider the people a threat and consider terrorism a form of propaganda, that is useful to trick people into accepting all kinds of crap.
      - throwaway575457 9y ago
walterbell 9y ago
NSTIC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_Identities_in_Cyberspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_...

bitL 9y ago

If it comes to having the same legislation in the UK, it'd likely ban decentralized web as well, perhaps requiring submitting your ID upon connecting to Internet every single time.

notyourwork 9y ago
I think in the far future, cloud computing and the web will morph into a single entity where you will login to your cloud. This idea of identifying yourself prior to accessing your resources and having your resources connect to others doesn't seem far fetched anymore. Especially with the way we are moving. Most people today are happy to use sso with services like facebook or google. Most people also have their real identify tied to their core profile they use to sign on to other services. The abstraction between the internet and the cloud is becoming more blurry to a internetizen that is technologically ignorant.
abpavel 9y ago
you do have to provide your ID to connect to the Internet, except for the prepaid anonymous sim cards paid for in cash.
- klibertp 9y ago
  Which are unavailable in many EU countries already. Practically the only way of connecting anonymously to the Internet is the old-fashioned wardriving, or getting lucky and finding a "free wifi" which is not limited to the Web only.

lotsofpulp 9y ago

Also under the guise of child porn. Terrorism and "won't anybody think of the children" are a winning combo for people looking to restrict liberties.

SCHiM 9y ago
It's been known for ages of course, there's always been a bogeyman, I like how there's some older articles out there that have predicted which bogeyman it was going to be today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... Wikipedia cites this term being coined in 1988 ;).
Banthum 9y ago
If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
  - wyager 9y ago
    Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.

achamayou 9y ago

I would be pretty surprised. Not everyone in the UK has ID, and since the NIC scheme failure, it's less likely than ever to happen. ID isn't even required to vote at the moment...

Freak_NL 9y ago
That is a minor oversight that will probably be rectified at some point — other countries are doing it, it is already required in Northern Ireland, and in 2018 a pilot will be held introducing the requirement in a number of districts¹. People likely won't resist it too much. We've had this identification requirement imposed upon us in the Netherlands a few years ago, and while there is valid criticism on this requirement, it passed. So to vote now you need to bring a valid ID. If the British government wants to do this with a minimum of fuss, they'll do what our government did and make the driver's licence a valid identity card. That way the majority of adults will already have their ID on them as a matter of habit (and won't complain). Of course mentioning that it is needed to prevent Muslim voters from committing voting fraud (see¹…) will help push the bill trough. 1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-show-passports-combat-voter-fraud-vulnerable/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/voters-will-have-...
- jawbone3 9y ago
  What is the objection to keeping track of who voted?
  - PoachedSausage 9y ago
    Its supposed to be a secret ballot. Of course, most people tell their friends which way they voted, but that's their choice.
    - jawbone3 9y ago
      You mean you count not showing up to vote as an active vote choice that should be protected by secrecy? Because the secrecy of the physical votes is produced by the mixing of large numbers of indistinguishable containers prior to reading, not by the votes being handed in by strangers.

andai 9y ago

> However, that also threatens the walled gardens' revenue streams. However? Don't you mean, "as an added benefit"?

avaer 9y ago

You can't fix this with tech. No amount of decentralized web will help if ID is legally required to post things. Torrenting, encryption, and similar will simply be made illegal, since that's required for enforcement. Many of the established lobbies would support that, for the usual justifications. You can only fix this by not letting the law start on this crazy slippery slope.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
While I agree that it's critically important to not get on the slippery slope of laws that restrict internet freedom, I think a decentralized internet infrastructure would make censorship significantly more difficult for governments to impose. Without centralised gatekeepers, the only viable way to censor the internet is to enforce laws on end-users, which is a daunting task for any government. And technologically, at least two of the necessary elements for a global meshnet are here: protocols for decentralized addressing and routing, like cjdns >1, and protocols for peer-to-peer electronic value transfer between nodes, like Raiden >2. The only major missing piece of the technological puzzle, AFAICS, is a technology for cheaply deploying telecommunication backbone links. >1 https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepape... >2 https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/README.... DISCLAIMER: I am by no means a bonafide cryptopunk. I have contributed very little code and other meaningful technical work to privacy tech projects.

Zak 9y ago

Germany has recently started requiring identity verification of this sort to obtain prepaid phone service. I was shocked to learn that, and find it frighteningly close to what China is doing.

pas 9y ago
The perps in the Paris attacks used Hungarian prepaid SIM cards. Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. So making phones more traceable doesn't really work against terrorists, when there are so many incompetent people watching us :(
- grzm 9y ago
  > Of course the national defense agencies were so dumb they haven't noticed that a few guys registered hudreds of thoudands of accounts. Would you elaborate more on the background of this? Were the SIM cards sold and registered with a private company? I would suspect it is (or they were, if more than one). Which national defense agencies are you referring to? Did the national defense agencies search these records? Do you assume the agencies have access to this information by default? If it's through a private company, should the agencies have access by default? Do you think the private companies should have contacted the agencies if they didn't have access? There are answers to these questions, some of them factual, some of them ethical or legal, and up for debate. In only a few situations I think it would be fair to call the agencies "so dumb". What leads you to use those words?
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    They are not dumb, they just don't work for the people and terrorism is not even a threat they care about. On the contrary, they consider the people a threat and consider terrorism a form of propaganda, that is useful to trick people into accepting all kinds of crap.
    - throwaway575457 9y ago

walterbell 9y ago

NSTIC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_Identities_in_Cyberspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Strategy_for_Trusted_...