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Remember when people used to say, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” on the topic of whether there should be backdoors for law enfo
by raldi 4y ago
Remember when people used to say, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” on the topic of whether there should be backdoors for law enforcement?
- maerF0x0 4y agoThey never remember events like these, because it doesn't serve their purposes or narrative
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shadowgovt 4y agoOh, don't worry. People still say that. (Mostly because this sort of story is quite rare. It should happen zero times, but plenty of people are very happy with the status-quo tradeoff. I mean, we're talking about folks that the public trusts to carry lethal weapons openly, in spite of the damage they do with them; access to espionage tools are way down the security-and-safety-concern ladder from the Glock Gen 5s on the officers' hips).
- superkuh 4y agoA slight clarification: It's rare that it is caught and prosecuted. It's common enough within authority spies and enforcers that they have a word for it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT
- r00fus 4y agoGrotesquely orwellian.
- shadowgovt 4y agoThat still makes it rare, since the vast, vast bulk of the citizenry isn't married to / dating spies and enforcers. I'm not implying this should just be a "cost of doing business," but I am implying that most of the citizenry has implicitly accepted it as such, so we can't expect democracy to fix this issue.
- superkuh 4y agoCommon enough in groups of people regularly exposed to (unreliable but scary) polygraph tests and consequences for their actions. In local and state police who don't face oversight or consequences it is way, way, more common.
- shadowgovt 4y agoWhat I mean is even if each of the US's 600,000 domestic law enforcement and law-enforcement-adjacent officers were grossly violating the privileges of their authority to surveil their spouses and SOs in a way that grossly violates their fifth amendment rights... That's a problem directly impacting 0.2% of the population. It's real, real hard to get the polity at the national level to care about a 0.2%-of-the-population issue. I don't think we can expect a democratic solution to this issue.
- superkuh 4y agoThis article we're talking about isn't even about spouses/SOs. It's about dozens of random people the cop attacked.
- maerF0x0 4y agoThe unfortunate thing about backdoors is its hard to really know how many times it happened. Kind of like the unreported crime thing, but far more believable that a good portion is never detected, particularly for read-only access. I kinda doubt this guy would have got caught if he wasn't blackmailing the women.
- nsxwolf 4y agoBut, like, if we weren't such a puritanical society that stigmatized sex, we wouldn't have to care about our naked photos being leaked.
- d3nj4l 4y agoHow does that matter? It's not whether someone get stigmatized or not, it's whether they want to share explicit pictures or not. Even in a world without stigma, people could reasonably want pictures of them to stay private, and the choice should be theirs.
- Chernobog 4y agoI interpreted the post you replied to be directed towards the part about extortion, and not contrary to what you are writing. I agree with both.
- socialismisok 4y agoWe should always have the ability to consent to naked photos of ourselves being available. I'm about as sex positive as it gets - it's not about puritanism, it's about consent.
- raldi 4y agoThe nudity is the least-relevant part of the story. The target could’ve been the victims’ private love letters or recordings of singing practice and the violation would’ve been the same.
- brettermeier 4y agoDude, did you really say that? Where's the border?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aliqot 4y ago
- wslh 4y agoAlso: once your data leaves your own custody assume it is public.
- revolutukr 4y agoThe most famous person to say this was a billionaire who made his wealth selling peoples' personal data.[1] He's famous for having given a $90m golden parachute to a person as his punishment for accusations of sexually harassing Google employees.[2] 1. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468308/google-ceo--if-you-want-privacy--do-you-have-something-to-hide-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468308/google-ceo--if... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin#Sexual_harassment_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin#Sexual_harassment_a...
- mc32 4y agoAlso Eric the Schmidt had some "interesting" thoughts around privacy: https://www.pcworld.com/article/515472/googles_schmidt_roasted_for_privacy_comments.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/515472/googles_schmidt_roast...
- game_the0ry 4y agoWhen I would get that response, I would ask for the person's unlocked phone, and said that I would be going through the browsing history, photos, and text messages on their phone. Some people get it after that. Otherwise, I would see them makes some entertaining mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they still did not see the problem with electronic surveillance.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoThis doesn't work with a lot of people. Namely, it doesn't work with someone who has never been part of an outgroup and lives a completely harmless, mainstream life - or feels they do. They truly don't feel like they have anything to hide. They may recognize that someone who is, say, into kink or LGBTQ might be more hesitant to do so, but they haven't lived it. There are probably millions of Americans who would, without hesitation, hand their unlocked phone to their pastor or a police officer. Your "hand me your unlocked phone" exercise won't really work.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scarecrowbob 4y agoThis matches my experience. For a uniquely interesting spin on this, you might look at the case of Doug Jensen. After participating in the January 6th events, he willingly went for an interview with the FBI and then gave them his phone and his passwords so they could look. To me, that seems emblematic of a person who has never in their life been in a outgroup. The lack of awareness it would take to do that is astounding, but worth paying attention to; there are plenty of folks in the US who have never actually been on the receiving end of state power. As such they have no way of discerning what that power looks like, much less an appreciation for the real effects of it's use on themselves.
- mwint 4y agoFor myself, I’d never been on the receiving end of state power until Covid. It does, without a doubt, change how you think about politics, government, etc.
- aliqot 4y agoMedia and the orgs perpetuating this nonsense say this. Same as 'quiet quitting' and 'return to work'. Just wishful navel gazing on a slow news day.
- biftek 4y agoMaybe no-one you know, I had multiple people tell me versions of this to my face when the Snowden stuff came out
- marcosdumay 4y agoYet, the US government surely cared quite a lot about Snowden publishing the things they were hiding...
- raldi 4y agoI’ve heard this, both paraphrased and word-for-word, many times.
- UberFly 4y agoWhat? Many people have that attitude, or are at least completely apathetic regarding the concept of their own privacy.
- ubermonkey 4y agoNo one capable of critical thinking ever said this. No one who studied history ever said this.
- thewebcount 4y agoI think Eric Schmidt is capable of critical thinking[0]. He’s also, apparently, a jerk. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...
- scottyah 4y agoI mean, it’s a valid point and also Warren Buffet’s model for ethics. The overall answer to “is google a trusted friend” was no, and advice to be cautious. The article didn’t contain much context so I assume it’s clickbaity hit piece.
- thewebcount 4y ago> I mean, it’s a valid point and also Warren Buffet’s model for ethics. It's not a valid point and has nothing to do with ethics. If you're a gay person, there's nothing unethical about that. But if you happen to live in the Middle East, there's a good chance that your government wants to murder you because of that. Keeping it private is not unethical and doesn't point to you doing anything bad. And it's now impossible to live most of your life without some of it leaking out onto the web, even if you aren't the one actively putting it there yourself. Companies collecting data, people posting stuff about you, etc. If you live any part of your life, it's likely it will end up on the internet without you doing anything.
- woodruffw 4y agoI'm sure there are people who say this, but there seem to be infinitely many more people who will smugly repeat this quote instead. It's getting a little tired and, in the context of HN, is definitely preaching to the choir. We're almost all on the same page about the importance of privacy.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoYou're going to keep hearing it as long as those back doors exist. You know what I'm a little tired of? Politicians using the same old "won't someone think of the children!" arguments every time they erode our privacy even further.
- djbusby 4y agoEnsuring privacy IS THINKING OF THE CHILDREN
- candiodari 4y agoWell no. You need to THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Take the case of primary school teacher Gladys. She beats children when she's drunk to much at school. If a kid makes trouble on the playground sometimes she even kicks them until they stop asking for her attention. She doesn't have any children of her own and you can actually see her skin crawl when yet another parent makes the suggestion she might want one. What a headache. Well, the headache might be yesterday's booze, but you get the point. You see, every year there's one or two toddlers in her class that realize that either they can hit back, or take revenge by stealing those plastic cards in her purse she finds so important. And the other gets the idea they might get some support from their parents if they steal her emergency Jack Daniels bottle and take it to their parents. With privacy HOW WILL THE POLICE FIND REASONS TO THROW THOSE CHILDREN INTO RE-EDUCATION CENTERS? Without constant surveillance of yet more aspects of those children's lives (OUTSIDE of school or anything perfect, I mean government related, of course). I mean unless every hairdresser tells Youth Services that these are bad parents. With privacy how will youth services find reasons to throw children of parents who've committed heinous crimes into youth services? Heinous crimes such as abortions or same sex marriages or even ... gone to a protest for those unmentionable rights, or legalizing Satan-juice and Belzebub-smoke? Those parents could even be Jesus-killers, sorry, Jews is the PC term isn't it? Or terro...Muslims. We can't use that as a reason, but obviously children can't be trusted to those parents, so we'll trust them to youth services, you know, where half the girls grow up to be prostitutes, and most boys have more drugrunning arrests than points on their final exams. I mean the ones that actually do their final exams at all. Ahhhhh ... God bless good old American government style child upbringing! Think of the children! Think of Gladys! Think of the heinous crimes some children might be confronted with! DO YOU WANT BABY JESUS TO DIE? In other words privacy is bad if and only if the government is near-perfect. If the government is no better (and in fact significantly worse) than the society it serves ... then privacy protects you.
- breadchris 4y agoi came to this thread to see if someone commented this. when the apple fbi whole thing was in the news, it was interesting hearing normal people saying that phrase. As someone in security, I knew that “backdooring” encryption was effectively giving everyone in the world a chance to read your message. Abuse of power can’t be kept in check without cryptographically sound encryption, authorization controls protecting your data is meaningless if it’s data you really care about.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoMy strawman is that the backdoor is added by one or more engineers, and stored somewhere that is accessible by one or more DBAs, transmitted to the cops via infrastructure administered by one or more BOFHs, and maintained on the law enforcement end, by one or more personnel. One day, one of these people suddenly quits, moves to Dubai, and buys a Bugatti. The backdoor is now a front door.
- onemoresoop 4y agoThough I've heard people say this exactly I want to extend this to the wider pool of users of FAANG services as well which implies exactly this sentiment.
- randomdata 4y agoI suppose it still holds true. Explicit photos are only something to keep hidden because there is a perception that they are wrong. If the photos were of a pet dog playing the park instead, nobody would be concerned except maybe around realizing that the tech could also be used to expose wrongful material in the same way.
- ch4s3 4y ago> I suppose it still holds true. Explicit photos are only something to keep hidden because there is a perception that they are wrong. Is that why? We all shower and change clothes on a regular basis(I assume), there's nothing wrong with it. Yet, I'm sure most of us do that in private perhaps only in front of a romantic partner. Something doesn't have to be taboo to be personal or private.
- randomdata 4y ago> We all shower and change clothes on a regular basis(I assume), there's nothing wrong with it. Au contraire. Step outside to let the world see you doing those things and see how well you fare. You are going to realize quickly just how wrong those things are. Humans aren't rational. Just because we all do it doesn't mean it isn't deemed wrong. Of course, as with any wrongful act, you can get away with it as long as you aren't caught.
- ch4s3 4y agoWalking outside changes the context and the act.
- randomdata 4y agoYes, the change in context is that you are greatly increasing your chances of getting caught. If you want to flip things around, there is absolutely nothing that you can do that is wrong if nobody else not party to the act knows about it. Fundamentally, wrongness can only be judged when third parties are aware of an act. The acts of which we speak are wrong, but you can get away with it so long as you aren't caught.
- charcircuit 4y agoThat doesn't apply here because they did do something wrong. Taking explicit photos of themselves. That's something they want to hide. If you doesn't want to hide them who cares.
- feet 4y agoIs that actually "wrong"?
- TedKroft 4y agoThe police officer who did this probably justified it to himself as that.
- charcircuit 4y agoIf it was right why would they care about the images being sent to their family?
- feet 4y agoBecause people can care about privacy. Do you wear clothes around your family?
- yardstick 4y agoIMO there’s two solutions, both can be done at the same time: - Technological solution. Implement end to end encryption, and encrypt data at rest. Use techniques to prevent third parties from gaining access to decryption keys. - Human solution. Strengthen, and critically, enforce laws that protect the privacy of individuals. Severely punish and hold to account misuse of data & PII. It’s not dumb luck that the first and second amendments of the US constitution both provide protections against an unjust government. I’m not a gun fan by any means, I just see the similarity between the soft and hard approaches to addressing an issue.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 4y agoClearly, the framers of the constitution could not have imagined the smart devices of today, but based on how they wrote the constitution on what they could imagine, I believe that data/privacy protection would have been it's own amendment. We try to lump everything into the 4th amendment, but their biggest concerns were invasion of one's domicile. We should come together as a group to write a new amendment that protects one's digital life to propose to congress via a lobby group.
- breakpointalpha 4y agoThe US definitely needs iron clad data privacy laws. The authors of the Constitution absolutely understood how critical privacy was with respect to personal information. "Papers" is the keyword here, the OG Americans were 100% harassed by the British Gov. 4th Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
- kukx 4y agoIn reply I would ask them "so you think hiding passwords is wrong?" And also "so no one should share secrets with you because you cannot keep them?"
- nobleach 4y agoWho among us has never complained about a manager or some company C-suite. While there's NOTHING wrong with that, could you imagine those comments being shown to them? Could you imagine what might happen after that? Just because I'm not building a bomb in my basement doesn't mean I want all my dirty laundry trotted out in front of the world.
- mrgalaxy 4y agoMy mother is an employment attorney. When a company gets sued over an employee matter those kinds of messages are surfaced in pretty much every case because people tend to send those kind of things over company owned tools. Kind of hilarious the things people say thinking their boss will never see it.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoSome time ago someone commented here on HN about monitoring systems for employee communications that would scan all messages and notify the bosses whenever messages containing certain keywords were sent. Words like "champagne" or "congratulations" were immediately brought to their attention. This was coupled with company policy that attempting to evade this total surveillance system was grounds for being fired.
- joshspankit 4y agoOff-topic, but that paints a sad picture where the boss thinks that any reason to celebrate is a threat to be squashed.
- Fatnino 4y agoThe boss just doesn't want to miss out on any parties.
- SN76477 4y agoMy personal favorite is "if you do not know what you are looking for why are you looking." If they know what they are looking for, have a warrant. It is that simple to me.
- dylan604 4y agoeye roll...of course they "know" what they are looking for. they just can't tell you until they find it. /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- roenxi 4y agoI'll take any wins, but the stakes here are so high that it is a little depressing if things like this change people's minds. Speaking English doesn't confer magic powers. The same people who made up the the communist/nazi secret police are in every government, the only question is if they are in the ascendant. The stakes are very high, and we've seen in the 20th century that the situation can turn sharply and without warning that most people will accept to the point where some violent idiot is running the show. In some senses, a constant string of leaked nudes out of police departments is the best case. At least that will keep people asking how to preserve privacy. I'd rather have this Wilson bloke looking at people rather than the return of Lavrentiy Beria. Mr. Wilson is on the heroic end of the spectrum compared to what will happen with these spy networks, which are most effective when wielded politically.
- devmop 4y agoIf you've got nothing to hide then you should just let law enforcement install CCTV in your bathrooms and bedrooms.
- 8note 4y agoThose ideas come with having explicit pictures as under "doing something wrong"