3 ms·

I probably don't fully understand the background of this, but who is this noise generator protecting and from what?

ale42 4y ago
I guess this is related to the recent decision of the US supreme court, basically cancelling the previously federally guaranteed right to abortion, making it illegal in potentially almost half of the states.
- Proven 4y ago
dredmorbius 4y ago
This is a response to last week's Dobbs v. Jackson case which overturned the 50-year-old precendent of Roe v. Wade guaranteeing access to abortion in all US states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson An immediate concern amongst digital rights organisations has been potential risk that might be created through records created from Web, email, travel / location, phone, and other digital tools. The EFF has issued a specific caution on this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-statement-dobbs-abortion-ruling https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-statement-dobbs-a... The ASNG is a tool intended to make such searches more difficult by adding many instances of searches from people who are not, or at least may not, be presently seeking abortion or other reproductive health services. It's in the spirit of several earlier such tools. I've concerns over how effective the tool might be. Though I applaud the general principle. Unfortunately, faked vs. legitimate signals tend to have other reasonably readily-detected patterns, and "fuzzing attacks" to obfuscate activity are on their own probably not enough. This is why strong personal privacy rights are so critically important, and technical countermeasures can only get one so far. Unfortunately what's being seen is a profound reduction in such privacy rights. The surveillance capitalism infrastructure is very much to blame here. Some of us have been making that point for a while: https://web.archive.org/web/20170604101018/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/foKDxbyhYUF https://web.archive.org/web/20170604101018/https://plus.goog...

I guess this is related to the recent decision of the US supreme court, basically cancelling the previously federally guaranteed right to abortion, making it illegal in potentially almost half of the states.

Proven 4y ago

dredmorbius 4y ago

This is a response to last week's Dobbs v. Jackson case which overturned the 50-year-old precendent of Roe v. Wade guaranteeing access to abortion in all US states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson An immediate concern amongst digital rights organisations has been potential risk that might be created through records created from Web, email, travel / location, phone, and other digital tools. The EFF has issued a specific caution on this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-statement-dobbs-abortion-ruling https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-statement-dobbs-a... The ASNG is a tool intended to make such searches more difficult by adding many instances of searches from people who are not, or at least may not, be presently seeking abortion or other reproductive health services. It's in the spirit of several earlier such tools. I've concerns over how effective the tool might be. Though I applaud the general principle. Unfortunately, faked vs. legitimate signals tend to have other reasonably readily-detected patterns, and "fuzzing attacks" to obfuscate activity are on their own probably not enough. This is why strong personal privacy rights are so critically important, and technical countermeasures can only get one so far. Unfortunately what's being seen is a profound reduction in such privacy rights. The surveillance capitalism infrastructure is very much to blame here. Some of us have been making that point for a while: https://web.archive.org/web/20170604101018/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/foKDxbyhYUF https://web.archive.org/web/20170604101018/https://plus.goog...