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HN is pretty out of touch I think. When I talk to non HN crowd. * Apple's efforts around blocking CASM are applauded * Folks are GLAD that cops are using tec

HN is pretty out of touch I think. When I talk to non HN crowd. * Apple's efforts around blocking CASM are applauded * Folks are GLAD that cops are using tech to catch criminals * Folks don't have a ton of trust that the regulations will help their lives, or block govt from doing things, but do imagine they will be annoying (more permission banners / cookies popups etc). It would be interesting to look at other countries where the govt has gotten more hands on with regulations in this area (data retention etc). I know in some spaces I've seen the regulations actually end up REQUIRING retention of records, or the liability risks require retention of video for a long time (ie, railroads have REALLY dialed up use of video given the claims they were facing in terms of running into people - once they started tracking a retaining a lot more - claims went way down - not saying folks were lying before but they are going to push back on getting rid of their data collection at this point unless laws change).

sjwalter 5y ago
I dunno, I mostly agree with you, but I think lately, at least with my family and friends, the coronavirus political response has made many more people much more skeptical about centralized authority figures. The narrative that is commonly recounted is that it's obvious that the people in authority are either incredibly incompetent or crazily power-hungry, and both are leading many of my family and friends to question everything. I mean total normies who are otherwise just typical taxpayers. It's funny in a Kafka kinda way to witness the slow erosion of trust in institutions. Don't get me wrong, I love institutions. Just seems to me and basically everyone I know that the people who should know the most about how trust is built, do everything possible to kill off that trust.
- lavabiopsy 5y ago
  I'm just curious: What exactly is seen as being new or remarkable about the failure of some leaders during this pandemic? I share the frustration about these failures, but are your friends/family too young to know about other spectacular failures like Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or the Iraq War, etc? (I could go on) Edit: I just realized my second question is somewhat US-centric so if you aren't from the US then I apologize, please disregard that comment.
  - mwint 5y ago
    In my circles, this is often the first time legislation (often not even that - often executive action, sometimes by unelected folks!) has had such an immediate, clear impact on people’s lives. Many of my friends and family have had their closest interaction with the government be taxes & vehicle registration at the DMV - inconveniences, but not much more. What you list are indeed spectacular failures, but they happened “over there” or “to other people”. Suddenly, the government is telling _them_ they can’t buy something, they they have to wear a mask, they have to inject something in their body, they can’t go to a concert. Many in my circle have never felt the hand of government so directly. That’s what’s new and remarkable for a lot of people.
    - lavabiopsy 5y ago
      That's really interesting, I feel like I've experienced the opposite, most people I know have had some kind of interaction with the "hand of government" in some way, if not themselves then second hand. At least in the US with our incarceration rates, statistically it's still more likely that any given person knows someone who is in prison than knowing someone who has died from COVID-19. And COVID-19 has killed a lot of people. Also maybe you might want to help by explaining to them: it's not the government that was doing those things, it's the virus that was making it so they can’t buy something, they they have to wear a mask, they have to inject something in their body, they can’t go to a concert, etc. The government can only enforce the will of the people, which in this case happens to be fear of an unprecedented attack by a deadly virus. It's totally understandable that this type of global pandemic would be new and remarkable for a lot of people.
      - xfhgjxcfgh 5y ago
        >it's not the government that was doing those things, it's the virus that was making it so they can’t buy something, they they have to wear a mask, they have to inject something in their body, they can’t go to a concert, etc. The difference between my government's response to the virus and the Swedish government's response was not determined by covid's preferences. Humans made these policies. >The government can only enforce the will of the people... The government is enforcing the will of the medical establishment. We didn't get polled on "6' vs 8' social distancing" or "should cloth masks be required or is a bandana acceptable?".
- slownews45 5y ago
  Right - but how does this generate support for more GOVT regulation ie, Trump and Biden appointees running things vs confidence in companies (like Apple). My concern, the HN crowd is yelling for more govt regulation, but the average person actually thinks Apple, not the govt, makes reasonable tradeoffs (security, privacy, CASM etc) and might actually trust folks like apple or google MORE than if for example the govt set up an email service.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    There's a huge difference between government regulation of email services and a government email service. I doubt many people calling for the former would use the later.
- Lamad123 5y ago
  Kafka's hallucinations make a lot of sense in today's world!!
- jackstraw14 5y ago
  I think post-Trump it's tougher for anyone in the US to believe totally in the institutions that got us here, despite the different reasons on each side of the aisle.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  It's interesting how the pandemic has changed people's political views in various directions. Personally I've become more anti-authoritarian, on the political compass I've moved a few points further down and slightly to the left (based on the UK Overton window) while also adopting stronger views on constitutionalism and the seperation of powers. I've also become a lot more pessimistic about the power of institutions to act for the common good rather than for the benefit of the socio-economic elite. I'm very much now "I'm more than happy to pay taxes for better social services, but please keep the clumsy, oafish hands of the state out of my personal life before it does any more damage". I've heard of people going in completely the opposite direction, taking on overtly authoritarian and "might-makes-right" kind of views too. I think the pandemic really gave the moral authoritarians and curtain-twitchers of this world a great big stick to hit everyone else with, which to be honest scares me more than the pandemic itself did.
  - tbihl 5y ago
    >I'm very much now "I'm more than happy to pay taxes for better social services, but please keep the clumsy, oafish hands of the state out of my personal life before it does any more damage". This is very much a stance of "oafish hands for thee, but none for me." The same institutional mass of "oafish hands" that interferes in your personal life does the same to everyone engaging with social services. And while , in many cases, you can opt out of those social services at some expense to yourself, the market equivalents/alternatives will, over time, be weakened or killed the same way as you would see with any other deep-pocketed firm selling a product for below-market prices, at a loss, to smoke out smaller competitors. I can't speak for the UK, but in the US this has brought us such dire consequences as bulldozing of poor neighborhoods for de-humanizing, car-dependent housing projects; the near-dissolution of the institution of marriage for lower classes; and a healthcare system where buyer and seller have become so thoroughly de-coupled as to disarm the pricing mechanism completely and make it impossible to pay real prices for services outside of collective bargaining arrangements.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
lr4444lr 5y ago
What fundamental problem do you have with cops using tech to catch criminals? Not talking about the abuse of innocents here, or warrantless intrusions into your data, just the core of what you're saying.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  I'll bite. The problem is asymmetry of information, and that the protections haven't advanced alongside the ease of collecting information. For example, imaging you have a suspect and want to trail them. The courts have established that you have no expectation of privacy when in a public area, so an officer can trail your car and watch where you go. You only have so many officers, and so there are implicit limits on how many people you can trail in person. But if instead of sending an officer to trail a suspect, you attach a GPS tracker to the suspect's car, suddenly that restriction is removed. Instead of spending weeks trailing a single suspect, you could attach dozens of trackers to dozens of cars, or you could request location data from a third party. The lower cost of breaking somebody's privacy allows it to be done more frequently, even if the explicit legal protections haven't changed. The problem isn't the technology itself, but that protections of privacy and protections against unreasonable searches haven't advanced alongside the technology.
  - lavabiopsy 5y ago
    How is there asymmetry of information? AFAIK there have been just as many tech advances in police accountability as well, such as the prevalence of body cams, or the ability to see these warrants as they are issued in real time on a police web site, etc. Of course there are other issues at play but I think you may have missed some things that are on the other side, it's very feasible for one person to track many police officers much in the same way that you describe. What would be questionable is if the police were trying to stop the public from doing so.
  - lr4444lr 5y ago
    I am pretty sure thr police cannot put a GPS tracker on your car without a warrant.
midnightGhost 5y ago
I agree. You're not wrong. Us niche groups care, see how the tech works or learn how it works, see what happens with our data and see the possible use cases with some of these systems. That's why I think the whole data collection and privacy war is already over. Until the common user gets affected personally they think data collection is good, have nothing to hide and like it's being used to catch criminals.
ev1 5y ago
> * Folks don't have a ton of trust that the regulations will help their lives, or block govt from doing things, but do imagine they will be annoying (more permission banners / cookies popups etc). This is because those laws rarely have teeth at all. I don't want "ACCEPT BUTTON FOR MARKETING PERMISSION", I want all remarketing and persistent cross site tracking to be illegal. Period.
- dcow 5y ago
  Cookie banners are an indication that the EU botched part of GDPR. We really just need an outright ban on tracking cookies, agreed. That’s the type of legislation people are suggesting.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    They are working on a fix at least.
- slownews45 5y ago
  The problem is plenty of people don't care and click accept all and are tired of folks like you who make every site put a big pop-up in their face.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Highly depends on your environment actually. Most people care about privacy a lot and don't want 24h surveillance for their safety. They have no idea about CSAM of course. Furthermore many are indeed critical of big tech and how they censor and modify information for political convenience. They are also aware about oversharing on social media.

sjwalter 5y ago

I dunno, I mostly agree with you, but I think lately, at least with my family and friends, the coronavirus political response has made many more people much more skeptical about centralized authority figures. The narrative that is commonly recounted is that it's obvious that the people in authority are either incredibly incompetent or crazily power-hungry, and both are leading many of my family and friends to question everything. I mean total normies who are otherwise just typical taxpayers. It's funny in a Kafka kinda way to witness the slow erosion of trust in institutions. Don't get me wrong, I love institutions. Just seems to me and basically everyone I know that the people who should know the most about how trust is built, do everything possible to kill off that trust.

lavabiopsy 5y ago
I'm just curious: What exactly is seen as being new or remarkable about the failure of some leaders during this pandemic? I share the frustration about these failures, but are your friends/family too young to know about other spectacular failures like Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or the Iraq War, etc? (I could go on) Edit: I just realized my second question is somewhat US-centric so if you aren't from the US then I apologize, please disregard that comment.
- mwint 5y ago
  In my circles, this is often the first time legislation (often not even that - often executive action, sometimes by unelected folks!) has had such an immediate, clear impact on people’s lives. Many of my friends and family have had their closest interaction with the government be taxes & vehicle registration at the DMV - inconveniences, but not much more. What you list are indeed spectacular failures, but they happened “over there” or “to other people”. Suddenly, the government is telling _them_ they can’t buy something, they they have to wear a mask, they have to inject something in their body, they can’t go to a concert. Many in my circle have never felt the hand of government so directly. That’s what’s new and remarkable for a lot of people.
  - lavabiopsy 5y ago
    That's really interesting, I feel like I've experienced the opposite, most people I know have had some kind of interaction with the "hand of government" in some way, if not themselves then second hand. At least in the US with our incarceration rates, statistically it's still more likely that any given person knows someone who is in prison than knowing someone who has died from COVID-19. And COVID-19 has killed a lot of people. Also maybe you might want to help by explaining to them: it's not the government that was doing those things, it's the virus that was making it so they can’t buy something, they they have to wear a mask, they have to inject something in their body, they can’t go to a concert, etc. The government can only enforce the will of the people, which in this case happens to be fear of an unprecedented attack by a deadly virus. It's totally understandable that this type of global pandemic would be new and remarkable for a lot of people.
    - xfhgjxcfgh 5y ago
      >it's not the government that was doing those things, it's the virus that was making it so they can’t buy something, they they have to wear a mask, they have to inject something in their body, they can’t go to a concert, etc. The difference between my government's response to the virus and the Swedish government's response was not determined by covid's preferences. Humans made these policies. >The government can only enforce the will of the people... The government is enforcing the will of the medical establishment. We didn't get polled on "6' vs 8' social distancing" or "should cloth masks be required or is a bandana acceptable?".
slownews45 5y ago
Right - but how does this generate support for more GOVT regulation ie, Trump and Biden appointees running things vs confidence in companies (like Apple). My concern, the HN crowd is yelling for more govt regulation, but the average person actually thinks Apple, not the govt, makes reasonable tradeoffs (security, privacy, CASM etc) and might actually trust folks like apple or google MORE than if for example the govt set up an email service.
- foerbert 5y ago
  There's a huge difference between government regulation of email services and a government email service. I doubt many people calling for the former would use the later.
Lamad123 5y ago
Kafka's hallucinations make a lot of sense in today's world!!
jackstraw14 5y ago
I think post-Trump it's tougher for anyone in the US to believe totally in the institutions that got us here, despite the different reasons on each side of the aisle.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
It's interesting how the pandemic has changed people's political views in various directions. Personally I've become more anti-authoritarian, on the political compass I've moved a few points further down and slightly to the left (based on the UK Overton window) while also adopting stronger views on constitutionalism and the seperation of powers. I've also become a lot more pessimistic about the power of institutions to act for the common good rather than for the benefit of the socio-economic elite. I'm very much now "I'm more than happy to pay taxes for better social services, but please keep the clumsy, oafish hands of the state out of my personal life before it does any more damage". I've heard of people going in completely the opposite direction, taking on overtly authoritarian and "might-makes-right" kind of views too. I think the pandemic really gave the moral authoritarians and curtain-twitchers of this world a great big stick to hit everyone else with, which to be honest scares me more than the pandemic itself did.
- tbihl 5y ago
  >I'm very much now "I'm more than happy to pay taxes for better social services, but please keep the clumsy, oafish hands of the state out of my personal life before it does any more damage". This is very much a stance of "oafish hands for thee, but none for me." The same institutional mass of "oafish hands" that interferes in your personal life does the same to everyone engaging with social services. And while , in many cases, you can opt out of those social services at some expense to yourself, the market equivalents/alternatives will, over time, be weakened or killed the same way as you would see with any other deep-pocketed firm selling a product for below-market prices, at a loss, to smoke out smaller competitors. I can't speak for the UK, but in the US this has brought us such dire consequences as bulldozing of poor neighborhoods for de-humanizing, car-dependent housing projects; the near-dissolution of the institution of marriage for lower classes; and a healthcare system where buyer and seller have become so thoroughly de-coupled as to disarm the pricing mechanism completely and make it impossible to pay real prices for services outside of collective bargaining arrangements.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago

lr4444lr 5y ago

What fundamental problem do you have with cops using tech to catch criminals? Not talking about the abuse of innocents here, or warrantless intrusions into your data, just the core of what you're saying.

MereInterest 5y ago
I'll bite. The problem is asymmetry of information, and that the protections haven't advanced alongside the ease of collecting information. For example, imaging you have a suspect and want to trail them. The courts have established that you have no expectation of privacy when in a public area, so an officer can trail your car and watch where you go. You only have so many officers, and so there are implicit limits on how many people you can trail in person. But if instead of sending an officer to trail a suspect, you attach a GPS tracker to the suspect's car, suddenly that restriction is removed. Instead of spending weeks trailing a single suspect, you could attach dozens of trackers to dozens of cars, or you could request location data from a third party. The lower cost of breaking somebody's privacy allows it to be done more frequently, even if the explicit legal protections haven't changed. The problem isn't the technology itself, but that protections of privacy and protections against unreasonable searches haven't advanced alongside the technology.
- lavabiopsy 5y ago
  How is there asymmetry of information? AFAIK there have been just as many tech advances in police accountability as well, such as the prevalence of body cams, or the ability to see these warrants as they are issued in real time on a police web site, etc. Of course there are other issues at play but I think you may have missed some things that are on the other side, it's very feasible for one person to track many police officers much in the same way that you describe. What would be questionable is if the police were trying to stop the public from doing so.
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  I am pretty sure thr police cannot put a GPS tracker on your car without a warrant.

midnightGhost 5y ago

I agree. You're not wrong. Us niche groups care, see how the tech works or learn how it works, see what happens with our data and see the possible use cases with some of these systems. That's why I think the whole data collection and privacy war is already over. Until the common user gets affected personally they think data collection is good, have nothing to hide and like it's being used to catch criminals.

ev1 5y ago

> * Folks don't have a ton of trust that the regulations will help their lives, or block govt from doing things, but do imagine they will be annoying (more permission banners / cookies popups etc). This is because those laws rarely have teeth at all. I don't want "ACCEPT BUTTON FOR MARKETING PERMISSION", I want all remarketing and persistent cross site tracking to be illegal. Period.

dcow 5y ago
Cookie banners are an indication that the EU botched part of GDPR. We really just need an outright ban on tracking cookies, agreed. That’s the type of legislation people are suggesting.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  They are working on a fix at least.
slownews45 5y ago
The problem is plenty of people don't care and click accept all and are tired of folks like you who make every site put a big pop-up in their face.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Highly depends on your environment actually. Most people care about privacy a lot and don't want 24h surveillance for their safety. They have no idea about CSAM of course. Furthermore many are indeed critical of big tech and how they censor and modify information for political convenience. They are also aware about oversharing on social media.