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Hmm. I wonder how the protesters know who to trust in their Telegram groups and on LIHKG. There has to be a core of organizers, however anonymous they may app

by ETHisso2017 7y ago

Hmm. I wonder how the protesters know who to trust in their Telegram groups and on LIHKG. There has to be a core of organizers, however anonymous they may appear to be. Is there a way to track metadata exhaust from telegram for building a social graph or xss lihkg? Could be a way to ID them.

_petronius 7y ago
This is some serious “too interested in seeing if you could, and not stopping to wonder if you should” content. What possible positives are there in exploring how to de-anonymize people whose life and freedom requires anonymity, and who are fighting the good fight?
- mskvsk 7y ago
  Telling those people how to improve their privacy before Beijing did this.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    Slightly tangential since you're specifically discussing communication but I've noticed that the term "privacy" is often getting incorrectly used when discussing surveillance tech (e.g. face recognition). There is no expectation of privacy in a public place. But an important right in a free society is the right to anonymity. A street is not a private place and, as said, there is no expectation of privacy there: Anyone and everyone can see you and what you are doing. But you should have the right to remain anonymous as long as you do not breach the law. That's what called into question these days with e.g. automatic facial recognition.
    - germanier 7y ago
      > A street is not a private place and, as said, there is no expectation of privacy there: Anyone and everyone can see you and what you are doing. Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place. "Expectation of privacy" and that you can't have it in a public street is a US-centric concept. Other societies draw the line differently.
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere. Privacy and public space are simply contradicting terms.
        CogitoCogito 7y ago
        You're referencing old ideas of public and private life that made sense at a time. Those ideas did not form in a time with ubiquitous surveillance. The ideas may have made sense before in their historical context, but that doesn't mean they make sense today. How about instead you ask yourself why those ideas grew out of that older historical context and whether the same reasoning would apply today? Why not re-read this and think about what germanier means: > Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place. [ Quote from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713153 ]
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        This is not an old idea. This is common sense: how can you expect privacy in a public place? Taking pictures of someone specifically may be different because that may be harassment. But in general ending up in pictures and films of others because you were in a public space fits in the standard concept of what a public space is.
        ptx 7y ago
        Imagine you are taking a walk in the forest. The forest is a public place (where I live anyway!) – anyone can walk anywhere they want. Eventually, later in the day, you might need to take a leak, so you do what everyone normally does – go behind a tree. Do you in this situation expect to be photographed and have high-resolution pictures of your genitals posted to Instagram? Don't you think this, if it were a regular occurrence, would interfere with people's age-old custom of enjoying a quiet walk in the public forest?
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      > A street is not a private place There are still degrees of this across the world. In certain places, wearing face covering is banned. In others its literally forced on 50% of the population to obscure their head and/or face. Some places don't care at all. Same goes for tinted glass on vehicles. Not saying any of these position is ethical or not.
  - _petronius 7y ago
    That's a boneheaded excuse: if the comment was about improving privacy it would be highlighting mitigation strategies, not focussing on exploiting potential vulnerabilities.
- roenxi 7y ago
  The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. They've already thought of it, never you worry. The really interesting question for me is, when they inevitably succeed, how much damage they will do to themselves. Reform for the better is basically indistinguishable from chaos and collapse to the regime in power.
  - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
    > The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. Yet they couldn’t control a band of wandering, illiterate horsemen. The human spirit can never be controlled.
    - steve19 7y ago
      Except they did. The horsemen got fat on Chinese food and used to Chinese comforts and culture. They stopped riding and became Chinese (just not Han Chinese). China today claims the whole of Mongolia as theirs.
      - ptx 7y ago
        They don't claim the territory of Outer Mongolia, do they? Only Inner Mongolia is part of China, as far as I know.
        FooBarWidget 7y ago
        They don't claim it because they seceded it to Russia in order to keep peace with Russia: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-China-re-take-Tibet-but-not-Mongolia/answer/Yu-Hsing-Chen-1 https://www.quora.com/Why-did-China-re-take-Tibet-but-not-Mo...
  - _petronius 7y ago
    > The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. This at least a complete misunderstanding of the history of the Catholic church, which is both terrible at "preaching" and has never given it prime importance either theologically or practically, but also of Chinese civilizational history. Confucianism, the dominant philosophical and religious theory behind the organization of a huge period of the ancient Chinese state, recognized the right to revolution! It also seems irrelevant to the discussion about why it's wrong to leap straight into iterating potential ways to deanonymize protesters instead of suggesting mitigation strategies.
- kzzzznot 7y ago
  But this is the point of security research, to find vulnerabilities so they can be fixed.
  - roca 7y ago
    In practice the point of most security research is: get the paper published and give the talk, or sell the zero-days, or use them yourself, and then move on to the next thing. The actual non-sexy defensive work of cleaning up bugs and implementing countermeasures, i.e. the real work on improving security instead of making it worse, is mostly done by rank-and-file software and hardware developers whose names are never known.
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      > the real work on improving security ... is mostly done by ... developers whose names are never known And it's a very thankless job.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- idlewords 7y ago
  Seriously, for real. Thank you for making this point.
PikachuEXE 7y ago
Judge by speech AND actions Also keep a clear mine and use independent thinking Put faith in actions not a person/group
kerng 7y ago
When nearly half the population participates, I dont think you need much ID'ing.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  There's over 7 million people in HK, at the largest protest, they estimated around 2 million took part, so not even half. During most protests, that number is significantly lower.
  - throwaway1997 7y ago
    2 million turned up. Now how many support the protests and were unable to/didn't want to turn up to protests? Many people are very old, work on Sundays, wouldn't be allowed by their parents (people typically live with their parents into their thirties here). You can probably double that figure.
    - loyukfai 7y ago
      One also needs to consider that the HK people are traditionally apolitical. So the 2m figure really sent a huge shockwave across the board. And only then, the government started to realise that they have screwed up badly.
  - idlewords 7y ago
    Two million out of seven is nearly half. You have to account for the kids, sick, infirm, etc. It's a mind-boggling proportion of the population to have in a single march.
    - woutr_be 7y ago
      Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely massive. But 28% isn't half, or even nearly half the population. of course a lot of people didn't go out, but still supported the protestors.
WilTimSon 7y ago
I can't find the proper link right now but there was a case of a "journalist" with no press pass going around the HK airport when it was occupied by the protesters. He took people's photos without permission, tried to quickly get info out of others, etc. It's referenced in passing here, it seems: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/hong-kong-flights-resume-at-airport-after-clashes-between-protesters-and-police https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/hong-kong-flig... I'd wager it's the same in their group chats. Someone's talking too much and seems too eager to find out details or incite violence? That's very suspicious. I don't think the mainland forces are trained for infiltration of this kind so they're messing up a fair bit.
loyukfai 7y ago
LIHKG's resilience in the current crisis is truly remarkable. That being said, it's not politically-oriented at all beforehand... it's something like the Reddit or 4chan of HK whereas most people just "shit-post" most of the time.

_petronius 7y ago

This is some serious “too interested in seeing if you could, and not stopping to wonder if you should” content. What possible positives are there in exploring how to de-anonymize people whose life and freedom requires anonymity, and who are fighting the good fight?

mskvsk 7y ago
Telling those people how to improve their privacy before Beijing did this.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  Slightly tangential since you're specifically discussing communication but I've noticed that the term "privacy" is often getting incorrectly used when discussing surveillance tech (e.g. face recognition). There is no expectation of privacy in a public place. But an important right in a free society is the right to anonymity. A street is not a private place and, as said, there is no expectation of privacy there: Anyone and everyone can see you and what you are doing. But you should have the right to remain anonymous as long as you do not breach the law. That's what called into question these days with e.g. automatic facial recognition.
  - germanier 7y ago
    > A street is not a private place and, as said, there is no expectation of privacy there: Anyone and everyone can see you and what you are doing. Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place. "Expectation of privacy" and that you can't have it in a public street is a US-centric concept. Other societies draw the line differently.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere. Privacy and public space are simply contradicting terms.
      - CogitoCogito 7y ago
        You're referencing old ideas of public and private life that made sense at a time. Those ideas did not form in a time with ubiquitous surveillance. The ideas may have made sense before in their historical context, but that doesn't mean they make sense today. How about instead you ask yourself why those ideas grew out of that older historical context and whether the same reasoning would apply today? Why not re-read this and think about what germanier means: > Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place. [ Quote from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713153 ]
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        This is not an old idea. This is common sense: how can you expect privacy in a public place? Taking pictures of someone specifically may be different because that may be harassment. But in general ending up in pictures and films of others because you were in a public space fits in the standard concept of what a public space is.
        ptx 7y ago
        Imagine you are taking a walk in the forest. The forest is a public place (where I live anyway!) – anyone can walk anywhere they want. Eventually, later in the day, you might need to take a leak, so you do what everyone normally does – go behind a tree. Do you in this situation expect to be photographed and have high-resolution pictures of your genitals posted to Instagram? Don't you think this, if it were a regular occurrence, would interfere with people's age-old custom of enjoying a quiet walk in the public forest?
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    > A street is not a private place There are still degrees of this across the world. In certain places, wearing face covering is banned. In others its literally forced on 50% of the population to obscure their head and/or face. Some places don't care at all. Same goes for tinted glass on vehicles. Not saying any of these position is ethical or not.
- _petronius 7y ago
  That's a boneheaded excuse: if the comment was about improving privacy it would be highlighting mitigation strategies, not focussing on exploiting potential vulnerabilities.
roenxi 7y ago
The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. They've already thought of it, never you worry. The really interesting question for me is, when they inevitably succeed, how much damage they will do to themselves. Reform for the better is basically indistinguishable from chaos and collapse to the regime in power.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  > The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. Yet they couldn’t control a band of wandering, illiterate horsemen. The human spirit can never be controlled.
  - steve19 7y ago
    Except they did. The horsemen got fat on Chinese food and used to Chinese comforts and culture. They stopped riding and became Chinese (just not Han Chinese). China today claims the whole of Mongolia as theirs.
    - ptx 7y ago
      They don't claim the territory of Outer Mongolia, do they? Only Inner Mongolia is part of China, as far as I know.
      - FooBarWidget 7y ago
        They don't claim it because they seceded it to Russia in order to keep peace with Russia: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-China-re-take-Tibet-but-not-Mongolia/answer/Yu-Hsing-Chen-1 https://www.quora.com/Why-did-China-re-take-Tibet-but-not-Mo...
- _petronius 7y ago
  > The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. This at least a complete misunderstanding of the history of the Catholic church, which is both terrible at "preaching" and has never given it prime importance either theologically or practically, but also of Chinese civilizational history. Confucianism, the dominant philosophical and religious theory behind the organization of a huge period of the ancient Chinese state, recognized the right to revolution! It also seems irrelevant to the discussion about why it's wrong to leap straight into iterating potential ways to deanonymize protesters instead of suggesting mitigation strategies.
kzzzznot 7y ago
But this is the point of security research, to find vulnerabilities so they can be fixed.
- roca 7y ago
  In practice the point of most security research is: get the paper published and give the talk, or sell the zero-days, or use them yourself, and then move on to the next thing. The actual non-sexy defensive work of cleaning up bugs and implementing countermeasures, i.e. the real work on improving security instead of making it worse, is mostly done by rank-and-file software and hardware developers whose names are never known.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    > the real work on improving security ... is mostly done by ... developers whose names are never known And it's a very thankless job.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
idlewords 7y ago
Seriously, for real. Thank you for making this point.

PikachuEXE 7y ago

Judge by speech AND actions Also keep a clear mine and use independent thinking Put faith in actions not a person/group

kerng 7y ago

When nearly half the population participates, I dont think you need much ID'ing.

woutr_be 7y ago
There's over 7 million people in HK, at the largest protest, they estimated around 2 million took part, so not even half. During most protests, that number is significantly lower.
- throwaway1997 7y ago
  2 million turned up. Now how many support the protests and were unable to/didn't want to turn up to protests? Many people are very old, work on Sundays, wouldn't be allowed by their parents (people typically live with their parents into their thirties here). You can probably double that figure.
  - loyukfai 7y ago
    One also needs to consider that the HK people are traditionally apolitical. So the 2m figure really sent a huge shockwave across the board. And only then, the government started to realise that they have screwed up badly.
- idlewords 7y ago
  Two million out of seven is nearly half. You have to account for the kids, sick, infirm, etc. It's a mind-boggling proportion of the population to have in a single march.
  - woutr_be 7y ago
    Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely massive. But 28% isn't half, or even nearly half the population. of course a lot of people didn't go out, but still supported the protestors.

WilTimSon 7y ago

I can't find the proper link right now but there was a case of a "journalist" with no press pass going around the HK airport when it was occupied by the protesters. He took people's photos without permission, tried to quickly get info out of others, etc. It's referenced in passing here, it seems: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/hong-kong-flights-resume-at-airport-after-clashes-between-protesters-and-police https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/hong-kong-flig... I'd wager it's the same in their group chats. Someone's talking too much and seems too eager to find out details or incite violence? That's very suspicious. I don't think the mainland forces are trained for infiltration of this kind so they're messing up a fair bit.

loyukfai 7y ago

LIHKG's resilience in the current crisis is truly remarkable. That being said, it's not politically-oriented at all beforehand... it's something like the Reddit or 4chan of HK whereas most people just "shit-post" most of the time.