4 ms·

I don't think this difference is relevant here. We've seen many technological features that were supposed to be only used in a very narrow use-cases be abused

by hda2 5y ago

I don't think this difference is relevant here. We've seen many technological features that were supposed to be only used in a very narrow use-cases be abused by governments. Contact tracing technologies (for covid-19) being the most recent victim where they are now being used by governments to track political protesters, criminals, and seemingly anyone else that catches their fancy. I've seen this cycle play out enough time to know better. Governments never relinquish power. If client-side scanning that can report users to authorities ever becomes wide spread, governments _will_ abuse it. Democracies _will_ suffer and humanity _will_ be worse off for it.

gonehome 5y ago
Contact tracing is actually a perfect example. Early in the pandemic the tech companies came together to create a privacy preserving bluetooth exposure notification system that relied on phones and a clever design to prevent this kind of tracking panopticon you describe. See: https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ExposureNotification-BluetoothSpecificationv1.2.pdf https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/cu... The HN response was ignorant and loudly knee-jerk without understanding how any of this worked. It was stuff like this that caused this to fail to get adopted (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629304 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957763). This is partly why I ignore HN on topics like this. Instead, we ended up with governments just doing it via data brokers and other types of way more invasive tracking. Our response to encryption policy like Apple's that doesn't decrease privacy could lead to a similarly bad outcome.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >Instead, we ended up with governments just doing it via data brokers and other types of way more invasive tracking. It sounds like you are blaming people's concern for the first technology for the implementation of the second technology. I believe the implementation of the second technology is evidence that the first technology would have been abused eventually anyway. How about: government, stop tracking/spying on us without a warrant. Apple, don't use my equipment to spy on me without allowing me to turn it off, and the off switch actually works.

by hda2 5y ago

gonehome 5y ago

Contact tracing is actually a perfect example. Early in the pandemic the tech companies came together to create a privacy preserving bluetooth exposure notification system that relied on phones and a clever design to prevent this kind of tracking panopticon you describe. See: https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact-tracing/pdf/ExposureNotification-BluetoothSpecificationv1.2.pdf https://covid19-static.cdn-apple.com/applications/covid19/cu... The HN response was ignorant and loudly knee-jerk without understanding how any of this worked. It was stuff like this that caused this to fail to get adopted (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629304 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957763). This is partly why I ignore HN on topics like this. Instead, we ended up with governments just doing it via data brokers and other types of way more invasive tracking. Our response to encryption policy like Apple's that doesn't decrease privacy could lead to a similarly bad outcome.

Clubber 5y ago
>Instead, we ended up with governments just doing it via data brokers and other types of way more invasive tracking. It sounds like you are blaming people's concern for the first technology for the implementation of the second technology. I believe the implementation of the second technology is evidence that the first technology would have been abused eventually anyway. How about: government, stop tracking/spying on us without a warrant. Apple, don't use my equipment to spy on me without allowing me to turn it off, and the off switch actually works.