13 ms·

Stop Scanning Me

505 points by favourable 4y ago

lookagain 4y ago
- favourable 4y ago
  I didn't make it. It's by EDRi[0], as per the Twitter URL in the footer[1] [0] https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/ [1] https://twitter.com/edri https://twitter.com/edri
raspyberr 4y ago
Would be nice to be able to use my RSS reeder for this instead of giving an email address.
sneak 4y ago
Apple intends to roll this feature out for iOS devices; they announced that they would do so, and they did not subsequently announce that they would not. I get the impression they are being compelled.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
LAC-Tech 4y ago
In 2022, European lawmakers proposed new rules with the noble intent to protect children. How can a grown adult be this naive?
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Exactly. But that won't change the 'respectable' cover story.
- derefr 4y ago
  They know exactly what they're writing. They're not saying it because it's true; they're saying it because saying anything else would leave them open to certain rhetorical attacks from the people willing to manipulate their audience to get these bills passed. Remember: the goal of political speech isn't to convince reasonable people of anything; reasonable people don't need convincing, they just need facts. The goal of political speech is to (somehow) convince unreasonable people of things. Which requires, for a start, showing deference to what they already believe.
  - cr4nberry 4y ago
    > Remember: the goal of political speech isn't to convince reasonable people of anything; reasonable people don't need convincing, they just need facts. The goal of political speech is to (somehow) convince unreasonable people of things. Which requires, for a start, showing deference to what they already believe. I think this says less about political speech and more about the time we're living in
    - derefr 4y ago
      ...no? "Political speech" is a jargon term; it doesn't just mean "anything said by a politician." Political speech is speech intended to influence people's political beliefs. And political beliefs, in turn, are beliefs rooted in people's subjective preferences, which cannot be swayed merely with facts-about-the-world, but where you must instead convince people of deficiencies in the logic they use to evaluate various world-states as satisfying, or not satisfying, their preferences. A politically-conservative person can not be made politically-liberal, or vice-versa — even temporarily, on just one issue — by presenting facts-about-the-world alone. Such a change can only be effected by shifting how the person thinks — what mental tools they will reach for to evaluate information. If only temporarily. And that's what political speech does: attempts to shift or reprioritize the mental toolkit people are using, at the same time as giving them information to apply this (temporarily) reorganized mental toolkit against. Usually, this process of temporarily rearranging someone's mental toolkit using speech is referred to as "rhetoric." (Which is really annoying to me personally, because that's also what you call things that don't do that, but rather just attempt to confuse people by activating the bad, naturally weak or biased tools in the human mental toolkit, using e.g. ad-hominem attacks, equivocations, etc.) Thankfully, "political speech" (at least when used as a jargon term) can capture the nuances of "rearranging someone's mental toolkit" without the default implication that the speaker is committing professional malfeasance as a communicator. Also, in case you were presuming that I was attempting to insult "unreasonable" people: actually, "unreasonable" people are the vast majority of people, and always have been; and that's not really a bad thing, per se. "Reasonable people" are extreme outliers — they're people who will take raw facts, explore their implications, and then use those implications to argue themselves into having different political beliefs, grinding the facts against their mental toolkit until the mental toolkit is what gets broken and reshaped. They're people who are willing to accept and internalize "repugnant conclusions" if they're inescapable due to the facts at hand; without first requiring a lens through which the conclusion can be made non-repugnant to them. Even people who can sometimes think this way, usually don't. Anyone who can manage to think this way most of the time, could get a job as a professional philosopher. (And sometimes, the goal of political speech is to activate the dormant "reasonable" mental tools in these sometimes-reasonable people — a.k.a. to "get people to see reason!" Usually not, though; due to quirks of personality, "reasonable" people are rarely also thought-leaders in such a way that swaying them becomes key to swaying others; so they're rarely the targets of political speech.)
- chabad360 4y ago
  I don't think they believe that. But the only way you get anywhere is by not making ad hominem attacks.
- Fogest 4y ago
  Governments in Canada have tried to pass similar laws and have literally made statements saying 'Stand with us or with the child pornographers' [1]. It's quite obvious they use these tactics to make people have a hard time arguing against the laws and it's honestly a disgusting tactic I wish people could recognize. [1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-on-e-snooping-stand-with-us-or-with-the-child-pornographers/article545799/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-on-e-sn...
- jbirer 4y ago
  This is actually a smart move by the author, as this type of debate will usually lead to someone try to call him a pedophile in an attempt to shut down conversation.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  It is an effective steelman (opposite of strawman). I thought it was clever. Also any counter solution has to address this to survive scrutiny.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  It's literally the same as the HN guideline of responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says; it enables the debate to proceed on a substantive basis, rather than becoming a pointless back-and-forth of unfalsifiable allegations about motives. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It seems at least equally naive to me to ignore the strategic value of choosing the ground on which to make your rhetorical stand instead of charging forward blindly.
  - signed_up_agree 4y ago
MichaelZuo 4y ago
Notably, the UN report linked is a report TO the Human Rights Council f a subordinate office, and not the official recommendation of the council itself, or any equivalent or superior UN organ. The actual recommendations of the OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right), who wrote the report, are as follows: " 56. With this in mind, OHCHR recommends that States: (a) Ensure that any interference with the right to privacy, including hacking, restrictions to access and use of encryption technology and surveillance of the public, complies with international human rights law, including the principles of legality, legitimate aim, necessity and proportionality and non-discrimination, and does not impair the essence of that right; (b) Conduct human rights due diligence systematically, including regular comprehensive human rights impact assessments, when designing, developing, purchasing, deploying and operating surveillance systems; (c) Take into account, when conducting human rights due diligence and assessing the necessity and proportionality of new surveillance systems and powers, the entire legal and technological environment in which those systems or powers are or would be embedded; States should also consider risks of abuse, function creep and repurposing, including risks as a result of future political changes; (d) Adopt and effectively enforce, through independent, impartial and well- resourced authorities, data privacy legislation for the public and private sectors that complies with international human rights law, including safeguards, oversight and remedies to effectively protect the right to privacy; (e) Take immediate measures to effectively increase the transparency of the use of surveillance technologies, including by appropriately informing the public and affected individuals and communities and regularly providing data relevant for the public to assess their efficacy and impact on human rights; (f) Promote public debate of the use of surveillance technologies and ensure meaningful participation of all stakeholders in decisions on the acquisition, transfer, sale, development, deployment and use of surveillance technologies, including the elaboration of public policies and their implementation; (g) Implement moratoriums on the domestic and transnational sale and use of surveillance systems, such as hacking tools and biometric systems that can be used for the identification or classification of individuals in public places, until adequate safeguards to protect human rights are in place; such safeguards should include domestic and export control measures, in line with the recommendations made herein and in previous reports to the Human Rights Council (h) Ensure that victims of human rights violations and abuses linked to the use of surveillance systems have access to effective remedies. 57. In relation to the specific issues raised in the present report, OHCHR recommends that States: Hacking (a) Ensure that the hacking of personal devices is employed by authorities only as a last resort, used only to prevent or investigate a specific act amounting to a serious threat to national security or a specific serious crime, and narrowly targeted at the person suspected of committing those acts; such measures should be subject to strict independent oversight and should require prior approval by a judicial body; Encryption (b) Promote and protect strong encryption and avoid all direct, or indirect, general and indiscriminate restrictions on the use of encryption, such as prohibitions, criminalization, the imposition of weak encryption standards or requirements for mandatory general client-side scanning; interference with the encryption of private communications of individuals should only be carried out when authorized by an independent judiciary body and on a case-by-case basis, targeting individuals if strictly necessary for the investigation of serious crimes or the prevention of serious crimes or serious threats to public safety or national security; Surveillance of public spaces and export control of surveillance technology (c) Adopt adequate legal frameworks to govern the collection, analysis and sharing of social media intelligence that clearly define permissible grounds, prerequisites, authorization procedures and adequate oversight mechanisms; (d) Avoid general privacy-intrusive monitoring of public spaces and ensure that all public surveillance measures are strictly necessary and proportionate for achieving important legitimate objectives, including by strictly limiting their location and time, as well as the duration of data storage, the purpose of data use and access to data; biometric recognition systems should only be used in public spaces to prevent or investigate serious crimes or serious public safety threats and if all requirements under international human rights law are implemented with regard to public spaces; (e) Establish robust well-tailored export control regimes applicable to surveillance technologies, the use of which carries high risks for the enjoyment of human rights; States should require transparent human rights impact assessments that take into account the capacities of the technologies at issue as well as the situation in the recipient State, including compliance with human rights, adherence to the rule of law, the existence and effective enforcement of applicable laws regulating surveillance activities and the existence of independent oversight mechanisms; (f) Ensure that, in the provision and use of surveillance technologies, public- private partnerships uphold and expressly incorporate human rights standards and do not result in an abdication of governmental accountability for human rights." However, many of the recommendations only make sense for countries that recognize the supremacy of international law over domestic law.
BoGoToTo 4y ago
Honest question. Are these laws being put forward by groups who only want a plausible excuse to violate people's privacy, or is it misguided people who genuinely care about stoping child exploitation and don't care about the profound effects of privacy? I'm guessing the answer is 'both' but I was hoping someone might have insight if it leans one way or the other.
- civilized 4y ago
  We live in a society where people can get entered into an immutable Child Abuse Registry and blacklisted from society if they're "caught" leaving their own kid alone in a cool car for a few minutes while they use the nearby ATM. If that's unbelievable to you, look up what happened to Kim Brooks, then read what she wrote about it and the other cases of alleged "child neglect" she and Lenore Skenazy (of Free Range Kids fame) found people getting persecuted for. The exact details vary, but the scenario above is quite plausible if you consider the things that have actually happened. There are definitely people who will stop at nothing to do what they view as protecting children. What their motivations, whether they get some kind of sick sadistic pleasure out of their "virtuous" actions, I'm not sure. But they're out there.
  - boosteri 4y ago
    For those of us not in the know, what happened to Kim Brooks? My search throws up nothing and I'm questioning the wiki page being about the same person you are talking about ...
    - civilized 4y ago
      Here is the Kim Brooks story, as well as some other stories that substantiate the picture I gave above: https://www.salon.com/2018/08/21/kim-brooks-left-her-son-in-the-car-and-the-cops-came-for-her-this-is-parenting-in-the-age-of-fear/ https://www.salon.com/2018/08/21/kim-brooks-left-her-son-in-... https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/05/16/skenazy-careful-child-abuse/27386999/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/05/16/skenazy... https://reason.com/2020/10/14/colorado-couple-adoption-plans-wrecked-by-child-abuse-charges-for-briefly-letting-a-kid-wait-in-the-car/ https://reason.com/2020/10/14/colorado-couple-adoption-plans... https://reason.com/2022/06/02/child-abuse-and-neglect-registry-parents-kids/?itm_source=parsely-api https://reason.com/2022/06/02/child-abuse-and-neglect-regist... https://reason.com/2022/08/17/arizona-central-registry-park-kids-banned-due-process/?itm_source=parsely-api https://reason.com/2022/08/17/arizona-central-registry-park-... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scottpham/child-abuse-and-neglect-registries-punish-parents-of-color https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scottpham/child-abuse-a...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thewanderer1983 4y ago
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- bombolo 4y ago
  I wouldn't say good intentions are involved here. I think the idea here is just to cast the net and collect data about everyone, to then be able to actually use the data against your opponents.
pfoof 4y ago
Imagine: they succeed in implelenting this and suddenly some black hat collects all the data on the actual lawmakers. That would be a plot twist.
- landemva 4y ago
  I heard the FBI does this to control politicians and what bills are introduced. Like this guy https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dennis-hastert-sentencing-filing-met-0410-20160408-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dennis-haste...
  - account42 4y ago
    Not at all a new concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
- glandium 4y ago
  John Oliver did something like that. https://youtu.be/wqn3gR1WTcA https://youtu.be/wqn3gR1WTcA (from about 21 minutes in)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jacooper 4y ago
Chat control absolutely flies against everything the EU has done to improve digital privacy, even its own (big) members are against it. It feels its not the normal people who made the GDPR and DMA are the ones writing this, rather Secret agencies pushing for more surveillance.
- djbebs 4y ago
  It doesn't though, it's perfectly in line with their past behavior
- glogla 4y ago
  Because they are not the same people. The good stuff usually comes from EU parliament while the messed up stuff usually comes from EU commission. EU parliament is staffed by elected officials from all over Europe, while EU commission is staffed by ministers from governments of member countries. It is pretty obvious that the latter will be pretty corrupt.
chmod775 4y ago
Every year like clockwork they try this shit. I worry that at some point people will grow too weary to nip it in the bud.
- Test0129 4y ago
  That assumes that democracy even continues to work after the Nth time. Eventually, like all tinpot dictatorships, they'll just force the issue and you'll get it anyway. IMO, there is only a faint shadow of democracy left in the world. Your vote really doesn't matter. In this case, enough people made noise the demons will go back into their lair for another year or more before fielding it again. All it will take is one of those guys to realize they don't really have to listen to anyone to get what they want. This is the genesis of the 5 eyes, and it will be the genesis of modern AI-driven surveillance like OP's link.
  - danuker 4y ago
    They made noise about the copyright directive and online platforms, yet nothing changed. https://danuker.go.ro/eu-copyright-directive.html https://danuker.go.ro/eu-copyright-directive.html
    - est31 4y ago
      The copyright directive could have been way way worse. A lot has changed due to public push back. Not enough, but there has definitely been an impact.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    The actual solution is to use devices obeying the user and not corporations. My GNU/Linux phone doesn't collect any data on me and nobody can force anyone to get it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yrgulation 4y ago
The STASI, Securitate and KGB are all looking down upon us and smiling. We truly have reached a level where everyone is monitored minute by minute day by day. Corporations do it and now governments too. All you need is the wrong captain at helm and the right mix of storms and all this can turn very bad very fast. In theory this sound good, but without careful oversight it can be abused.
- godelski 4y ago
  > All you need is the wrong captain at helm Even if you don't buy the argument of turnkey tyranny (the above concept), it is also important to remember that nothing is unhackable. So if you're the "well I trust X" or "what is X going to do with it, sell me ads?" type, you should also question "What ,,could'' my enemies do with this data?" (Foreign or domestic. State sponsored or run of the mill hacker) While governments can be the most egregious abusers of this data, they aren't the only ones that can abuse the data. We have hundreds of reports about cops stalking their (current and former) partners, hackers blackmailing high profile people (including politicians), and plenty of reports about how nation states use this data to influence your countrymen. You may be immune (you aren't) but is everyone else? I think pigeon holing this conversation to governments is wrong. There's a whole laundry list of potential problems with data collection like this and checking off any item on the list is generally enough to be against this type of policy. For example, I don't think anyone wants a national repository of children's IP addresses. That's not only valuable to nation state actors (who want to influence the next generation), but also pedophiles. With intentions to protect children you end up actually putting them in more danger. We should HIDE children's personal data rather than gather it. But the only way to do that is to hide everyone's data. Edit: I do believe in turnkey tyranny. I'm just saying that the argument isn't effective to everyone (as time has shown). I'm saying that when you run into these people don't keep talking about turnkey tyranny, shift your argument to one of the other many issues to choose from. One of them will (likely) be something they care about and use that as the baseline for your argument. If you keep arguing something that someone doesn't care about then I'm not sure how you all expect to convince anyone. Our exclusively turnkey arguments have been ineffective, let's adopt a better strategy.
  - 4y ago
trcflow 4y ago
The European Commission and von der Leyen are at it again. I presume that her conversations with Katrin Suder and Mc Kinsey have not been scanned. Unlike the plebs, perhaps they have their own mail servers like Hilary Clinton: https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-minister-over-spending-scandal/a-46704514 https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-min... "The investigative committee will examine irregularities in a contract awarded to McKinsey and a €390 million ($442 million) IT contract given to another company that failed to pass through the company's supervisory board as required. It will also investigate whether von der Leyen committed nepotism by hiring Katrin Suder, a former McKinsey consultant, as her deputy to oversee the ministry's arms procurement section." I think the presentation in stopscanningme.eu is too kind. We should not have to beg for our constitutional rights.
- rnk 4y ago
  What's with all these aspersions about European politicians? What do they have to do with the topic at hand?
  - novok 4y ago
    Where do you think the proposed laws are coming from? It's extra bad when they act hypocritical too.
  - qhAGS 4y ago
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    - girvo 4y ago
      It’s remarkably widespread, too, though I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising. The sadder part is when it gets repeated enough by these brand new accounts, it seems to permeate enough that actual people begin repeating it.
    - 4y ago
stall84 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Gustomaximus 4y ago
As a side point I feel this is a good exame of where the EU is going wrong and will cause more exits. And generally shows how government via its leaders always wants more power. In my mind EU focus should be on trade efficiency internaly and globally. The more the reach into people's daily lives the more people will look for a door.
- thefz 4y ago
  There will always be some inept politician pushing for stuff like this. I am glad for measures like the GDPR and I think the EU is doing more good than harm to its state members.
  - Ylpertnodi 4y ago
    GDPR is a fantastic piece of legislation, and I agree the EU is doing more good than harm - start with just on a financial level: The old joke was, that if you set off from the UK with £200 and visited every European country, by the time you got to Istanbul you would have £0, only by exchanging your remaining currency at each border. Ahhhh, good times doing expenses in those days :-)
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Or, it's a misstep that can and probably will be corrected. there's a lot of things the EU gets right in the privacy domain. I don't really think this is likely to cause more exits; look what a complete shitshow the UK is at present, and reflect on the fact that their freshly 'liberated' government has been in a rush to introduce or increase all sorts of draconian laws now that it's no longer constrained by the EU's human rights framework.
  - Gustomaximus 4y ago
    To be clear I dont think this will cause exits. More this adds one more to a death of one thousand cuts type situation. Followed by a tipping point moment who knows when. And absolutly it can be corrected. I also find it incredible a rule like this got so far. It means there is a significant amount of people in powerful positions supporting it. That makes it hardee to correct and generally shows the people in power seem out of alignment to my views towards citizens privacy anyway. Even if not passed its amazing it got so far, at least to me.
anigbrowl 4y ago
This is a masterpiece of effective advocacy, both graphically and textually. Very impressed.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
A kinda off-topic question about the website itself: why does it render slightly wider than the screen, causes an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar? I see this quite a lot lately.
- dmak 4y ago
  cmd+0
  - thrdbndndn 4y ago
    No, I didn't change the zoom level, it's 100%. I don't use HiDPI screen or change system UI scaling setting either. I tested on two browsers (Firefox, Chrome), same issue. It only happens when I full-screen the browser. I use Windows if it matters.
- defanor 4y ago
  Apparently it's because of the messed up "responsiveness" with media queries: @media (min-width:1920px) { .responsive-width { width: 1920px; } } Those are defined for multiple common screen widths, without taking the scroll width into account, so at those points the horizontal scrollbar appears.
powera 4y ago
cr4nberry 4y ago
This wouldn't be a problem if people stopped going to the same platforms for literally everything and stopped using a bugged phone OS Not only this, but closed source software in general, since the black box makes it harder to disable anti features Once they put this infrastructure in place, it's just a matter of time before some "crisis" occurs and it gets used inappropriately
betwixthewires 4y ago
The EU, home of laws like this and the reason for the cookies popup, where the citizens talk about how they have better privacy than the united states.
- nirimda 4y ago
  The cookies popups are not the fault of the EU. It's the fault of private companies who want to collect more information than they're allowed to without installing cookie popups. All necessary cookies are allowed without a popup, so there's literally no reason for any website to ask you if you want cookies - unless they intend to do something which gratuitously risks your privacy.
  - betwixthewires 4y ago
    The response to incentives created by EU legislation were predictable. Are governments not responsible for the outcomes of incentives they create?
    - nirimda 4y ago
      The EU legislation didn't create the incentives to collect the data. The EU legislation did inform companies of community expectations, which the companies proceeded to ignore. It is the companies - and their defenders - who need to stop acting like children and take some responsibility for their choices and actions.
klabb3 4y ago
Always the same story. To me, it reads something like this: > Child sexual abuse often happens in bathrooms. Therefore, all bathrooms should have cameras. The video feeds should be stored and analyzed for illegal behavior, and law enforcement should have access, ideally in real time and without a court order. The risk of leaks, hacking, or abuse by law enforcement or system administrators is negligible, so citizens need not worry. Historically, law enforcement has been chronically understaffed and generally ineffective enforcing these heinous crimes. Even credible and actionable reports that could lead to arrests often end up on a pile. When this system is deployed, the amount of flagged behavior will be 100x more than the reports of today, most of which will be false positives. This is ultimately what makes it obvious that these are bad faith arguments, and that the ulterior motive is good old mass surveillance.
- _nalply 4y ago
  Let me paraphrase more generally. Crimes, like sexual abuse, do happen in private spaces like bedrooms. Some people propose or request that all private spaces have surveillance, for example with cameras. Data should be stored, analyzed and made accessible by law enforcement in real time and without legal process like court orders. However law enforcement is understaffed and won't be able to act in timely matter on flagged behavior, which will be hundreds times more than before. Citizen are told that risks like leaks or abuse are negligible or manageable. However people are bad at security and mistakes are unavoidable. Proponents don't understand this outcome or are in bad faith with hidden agendas like mass surveillance.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    Yep! I think the main issue is that digital surveillance is new and abstract, and somehow the kind of privacy issues we have intuitions about – such as cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms – don't map naturally to the digital space, at least not intuitively, so people underestimate the level of detail it means. And then there are som novel nuances in the digital world, like metadata collection and automated analysis, that are essentially infeasible irl because not even stasi had the workforce to process that amount of data.
- deleted 4y ago
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Funny how during the cold war everyone was criticical of russia for spying on all citizens. This was a symbol of how little freedom they had, that it was a proof that communism was leading to terrible dictatorships. But our politicians seem to think that if we do it, it's to help people. Unlike the ussr politicians of course, because they were evil.
DeathArrow 4y ago
Before it was about protecting children it was about fighting terrorism. Before that it was about fighting drug lords.
- Ptchd 4y ago
- fsflover 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
hit8run 4y ago
The situation in Europe is very bad. We have a conglomerate of corrupt people in power positions that are waiving anything their lobbies want them to. Living in Germany is the worst with the new government. They manage to destroy every form of wealth the citizens had. Decisions are made based on stubborn ideology and not on what’s best for the country. If you’re living in the US and ever thought your politicians are bad I invite you to have a look at Germany. Very weird country.
cebert 4y ago
The Internet is a global system but jurisdictions keep attempting to define how they want it to work within their borders. The Internet doesn’t work that way. Unless we stop trying to regulate the Internet or have one global government, we risk fragmenting the Internet and introducing so many different regional regulations it will too be expensive for all but the biggest players to build applications. Only Meta and Google scale companies can survive.
ai_ja_nai 4y ago
I see a lot of grudge in the community about surveillance of posting surfaces for unlawful content, like if the authorities put in charge of fighting crime are some kind of extenal tyrannical force imposed onto poor people, and not the direct actions of a democratically elected government. While I fully support lobbying efforts like stopscanningme, because they rise awareness in people that ultimately vote governments so that they might do more informed voting choices, I just don't condone all of this whining about mass surveillance on privately operated companies: remember that gmail, facebook, whatsapp, etc.. are for profit, privately held companies that are held accountable for the content that circulates on their platforms. Companies, like any other citizen, must abide the law and not become a free field for Child Exploitation or Adult Exploitation Imagery. You want total privacy, which in your mind is the word for "unaccountability"? Use different services or setup your own. The topic is very vast, but it can't really handled by just saying "bad government, want to wiretap!"
- pfortuny 4y ago
  You mention gmail which is a "mail" service, and whatsapp, which is a "messaging" service. In all of (Western) history, those services have been considered one of the most private, like it or not. So changing that status (in the West) should require very public and very clear discussion, not just hand-waving about "child molesters". Facebook: that is something totally different. The fact that mail is handled by a private entity does not make it less mail than the official post. At all, and this has been understood (in the West) since, probably, the Roman times.
  - varnaud 4y ago
    Snail mail is still scanned for illicit content. Also many times in western history letters were read and then possibly censored at processing facilities. Back in those days, it was a human opening letter/package and inspecting the content. They had rules to respect the privacy of the sender/addressee, like not sharing the content with anyone else if the content is OK. I'm not sure who considered these services to be one of the most private. Also in those days, one could make use of a secure private mail service, bypassing the normal processing facilities and have grantee that the letter remained sealer the whole journey. To be even more secure, basic encryption could be used, or even invisible ink. Today, things just got more sophisticated.
garfieldnate 4y ago
A couple days ago I watched this video where Smash Bros. community members discuss their thoughts and emotions around discovering a lot of sexual predatory behavior in their community [1]. Pretty fascinating and worth a watch. But what really struck me is how little most people (including) know about predatorial behavior or victimization and what the warning signs are; the description of what grooming actually is I found particularly enlightening. I think we would gain far greater benefit from simply improving our understanding of our own psychology and sociology and from their trying to prevent humans from becoming predators in the first place. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSR3P9jayPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSR3P9jayPo
bacan 4y ago
The age verification maybe a good idea if it is used to create a segregated place for kids. But instead of having filters & being able to scan messages, I think it'd be better to not have private messaging on those platforms. This will allow other users to report suspicious behavior.
EricE 4y ago
"think of the children" People uttering that should be immediately shot.

Stop Scanning Me

505 points by favourable 4y ago

lookagain 4y ago

favourable 4y ago
I didn't make it. It's by EDRi[0], as per the Twitter URL in the footer[1] [0] https://edri.org/ https://edri.org/ [1] https://twitter.com/edri https://twitter.com/edri

raspyberr 4y ago

Would be nice to be able to use my RSS reeder for this instead of giving an email address.

sneak 4y ago

Apple intends to roll this feature out for iOS devices; they announced that they would do so, and they did not subsequently announce that they would not. I get the impression they are being compelled.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

LAC-Tech 4y ago

In 2022, European lawmakers proposed new rules with the noble intent to protect children. How can a grown adult be this naive?

hilbert42 4y ago
Exactly. But that won't change the 'respectable' cover story.
derefr 4y ago
They know exactly what they're writing. They're not saying it because it's true; they're saying it because saying anything else would leave them open to certain rhetorical attacks from the people willing to manipulate their audience to get these bills passed. Remember: the goal of political speech isn't to convince reasonable people of anything; reasonable people don't need convincing, they just need facts. The goal of political speech is to (somehow) convince unreasonable people of things. Which requires, for a start, showing deference to what they already believe.
- cr4nberry 4y ago
  > Remember: the goal of political speech isn't to convince reasonable people of anything; reasonable people don't need convincing, they just need facts. The goal of political speech is to (somehow) convince unreasonable people of things. Which requires, for a start, showing deference to what they already believe. I think this says less about political speech and more about the time we're living in
  - derefr 4y ago
    ...no? "Political speech" is a jargon term; it doesn't just mean "anything said by a politician." Political speech is speech intended to influence people's political beliefs. And political beliefs, in turn, are beliefs rooted in people's subjective preferences, which cannot be swayed merely with facts-about-the-world, but where you must instead convince people of deficiencies in the logic they use to evaluate various world-states as satisfying, or not satisfying, their preferences. A politically-conservative person can not be made politically-liberal, or vice-versa — even temporarily, on just one issue — by presenting facts-about-the-world alone. Such a change can only be effected by shifting how the person thinks — what mental tools they will reach for to evaluate information. If only temporarily. And that's what political speech does: attempts to shift or reprioritize the mental toolkit people are using, at the same time as giving them information to apply this (temporarily) reorganized mental toolkit against. Usually, this process of temporarily rearranging someone's mental toolkit using speech is referred to as "rhetoric." (Which is really annoying to me personally, because that's also what you call things that don't do that, but rather just attempt to confuse people by activating the bad, naturally weak or biased tools in the human mental toolkit, using e.g. ad-hominem attacks, equivocations, etc.) Thankfully, "political speech" (at least when used as a jargon term) can capture the nuances of "rearranging someone's mental toolkit" without the default implication that the speaker is committing professional malfeasance as a communicator. Also, in case you were presuming that I was attempting to insult "unreasonable" people: actually, "unreasonable" people are the vast majority of people, and always have been; and that's not really a bad thing, per se. "Reasonable people" are extreme outliers — they're people who will take raw facts, explore their implications, and then use those implications to argue themselves into having different political beliefs, grinding the facts against their mental toolkit until the mental toolkit is what gets broken and reshaped. They're people who are willing to accept and internalize "repugnant conclusions" if they're inescapable due to the facts at hand; without first requiring a lens through which the conclusion can be made non-repugnant to them. Even people who can sometimes think this way, usually don't. Anyone who can manage to think this way most of the time, could get a job as a professional philosopher. (And sometimes, the goal of political speech is to activate the dormant "reasonable" mental tools in these sometimes-reasonable people — a.k.a. to "get people to see reason!" Usually not, though; due to quirks of personality, "reasonable" people are rarely also thought-leaders in such a way that swaying them becomes key to swaying others; so they're rarely the targets of political speech.)
chabad360 4y ago
I don't think they believe that. But the only way you get anywhere is by not making ad hominem attacks.
Fogest 4y ago
Governments in Canada have tried to pass similar laws and have literally made statements saying 'Stand with us or with the child pornographers' [1]. It's quite obvious they use these tactics to make people have a hard time arguing against the laws and it's honestly a disgusting tactic I wish people could recognize. [1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-on-e-snooping-stand-with-us-or-with-the-child-pornographers/article545799/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-on-e-sn...
jbirer 4y ago
This is actually a smart move by the author, as this type of debate will usually lead to someone try to call him a pedophile in an attempt to shut down conversation.
quickthrower2 4y ago
It is an effective steelman (opposite of strawman). I thought it was clever. Also any counter solution has to address this to survive scrutiny.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 4y ago
It's literally the same as the HN guideline of responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says; it enables the debate to proceed on a substantive basis, rather than becoming a pointless back-and-forth of unfalsifiable allegations about motives. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It seems at least equally naive to me to ignore the strategic value of choosing the ground on which to make your rhetorical stand instead of charging forward blindly.
- signed_up_agree 4y ago

MichaelZuo 4y ago

Notably, the UN report linked is a report TO the Human Rights Council f a subordinate office, and not the official recommendation of the council itself, or any equivalent or superior UN organ. The actual recommendations of the OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right), who wrote the report, are as follows: " 56. With this in mind, OHCHR recommends that States: (a) Ensure that any interference with the right to privacy, including hacking, restrictions to access and use of encryption technology and surveillance of the public, complies with international human rights law, including the principles of legality, legitimate aim, necessity and proportionality and non-discrimination, and does not impair the essence of that right; (b) Conduct human rights due diligence systematically, including regular comprehensive human rights impact assessments, when designing, developing, purchasing, deploying and operating surveillance systems; (c) Take into account, when conducting human rights due diligence and assessing the necessity and proportionality of new surveillance systems and powers, the entire legal and technological environment in which those systems or powers are or would be embedded; States should also consider risks of abuse, function creep and repurposing, including risks as a result of future political changes; (d) Adopt and effectively enforce, through independent, impartial and well- resourced authorities, data privacy legislation for the public and private sectors that complies with international human rights law, including safeguards, oversight and remedies to effectively protect the right to privacy; (e) Take immediate measures to effectively increase the transparency of the use of surveillance technologies, including by appropriately informing the public and affected individuals and communities and regularly providing data relevant for the public to assess their efficacy and impact on human rights; (f) Promote public debate of the use of surveillance technologies and ensure meaningful participation of all stakeholders in decisions on the acquisition, transfer, sale, development, deployment and use of surveillance technologies, including the elaboration of public policies and their implementation; (g) Implement moratoriums on the domestic and transnational sale and use of surveillance systems, such as hacking tools and biometric systems that can be used for the identification or classification of individuals in public places, until adequate safeguards to protect human rights are in place; such safeguards should include domestic and export control measures, in line with the recommendations made herein and in previous reports to the Human Rights Council (h) Ensure that victims of human rights violations and abuses linked to the use of surveillance systems have access to effective remedies. 57. In relation to the specific issues raised in the present report, OHCHR recommends that States: Hacking (a) Ensure that the hacking of personal devices is employed by authorities only as a last resort, used only to prevent or investigate a specific act amounting to a serious threat to national security or a specific serious crime, and narrowly targeted at the person suspected of committing those acts; such measures should be subject to strict independent oversight and should require prior approval by a judicial body; Encryption (b) Promote and protect strong encryption and avoid all direct, or indirect, general and indiscriminate restrictions on the use of encryption, such as prohibitions, criminalization, the imposition of weak encryption standards or requirements for mandatory general client-side scanning; interference with the encryption of private communications of individuals should only be carried out when authorized by an independent judiciary body and on a case-by-case basis, targeting individuals if strictly necessary for the investigation of serious crimes or the prevention of serious crimes or serious threats to public safety or national security; Surveillance of public spaces and export control of surveillance technology (c) Adopt adequate legal frameworks to govern the collection, analysis and sharing of social media intelligence that clearly define permissible grounds, prerequisites, authorization procedures and adequate oversight mechanisms; (d) Avoid general privacy-intrusive monitoring of public spaces and ensure that all public surveillance measures are strictly necessary and proportionate for achieving important legitimate objectives, including by strictly limiting their location and time, as well as the duration of data storage, the purpose of data use and access to data; biometric recognition systems should only be used in public spaces to prevent or investigate serious crimes or serious public safety threats and if all requirements under international human rights law are implemented with regard to public spaces; (e) Establish robust well-tailored export control regimes applicable to surveillance technologies, the use of which carries high risks for the enjoyment of human rights; States should require transparent human rights impact assessments that take into account the capacities of the technologies at issue as well as the situation in the recipient State, including compliance with human rights, adherence to the rule of law, the existence and effective enforcement of applicable laws regulating surveillance activities and the existence of independent oversight mechanisms; (f) Ensure that, in the provision and use of surveillance technologies, public- private partnerships uphold and expressly incorporate human rights standards and do not result in an abdication of governmental accountability for human rights." However, many of the recommendations only make sense for countries that recognize the supremacy of international law over domestic law.

BoGoToTo 4y ago

Honest question. Are these laws being put forward by groups who only want a plausible excuse to violate people's privacy, or is it misguided people who genuinely care about stoping child exploitation and don't care about the profound effects of privacy? I'm guessing the answer is 'both' but I was hoping someone might have insight if it leans one way or the other.

civilized 4y ago
We live in a society where people can get entered into an immutable Child Abuse Registry and blacklisted from society if they're "caught" leaving their own kid alone in a cool car for a few minutes while they use the nearby ATM. If that's unbelievable to you, look up what happened to Kim Brooks, then read what she wrote about it and the other cases of alleged "child neglect" she and Lenore Skenazy (of Free Range Kids fame) found people getting persecuted for. The exact details vary, but the scenario above is quite plausible if you consider the things that have actually happened. There are definitely people who will stop at nothing to do what they view as protecting children. What their motivations, whether they get some kind of sick sadistic pleasure out of their "virtuous" actions, I'm not sure. But they're out there.
- boosteri 4y ago
  For those of us not in the know, what happened to Kim Brooks? My search throws up nothing and I'm questioning the wiki page being about the same person you are talking about ...
  - civilized 4y ago
    Here is the Kim Brooks story, as well as some other stories that substantiate the picture I gave above: https://www.salon.com/2018/08/21/kim-brooks-left-her-son-in-the-car-and-the-cops-came-for-her-this-is-parenting-in-the-age-of-fear/ https://www.salon.com/2018/08/21/kim-brooks-left-her-son-in-... https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/05/16/skenazy-careful-child-abuse/27386999/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/05/16/skenazy... https://reason.com/2020/10/14/colorado-couple-adoption-plans-wrecked-by-child-abuse-charges-for-briefly-letting-a-kid-wait-in-the-car/ https://reason.com/2020/10/14/colorado-couple-adoption-plans... https://reason.com/2022/06/02/child-abuse-and-neglect-registry-parents-kids/?itm_source=parsely-api https://reason.com/2022/06/02/child-abuse-and-neglect-regist... https://reason.com/2022/08/17/arizona-central-registry-park-kids-banned-due-process/?itm_source=parsely-api https://reason.com/2022/08/17/arizona-central-registry-park-... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scottpham/child-abuse-and-neglect-registries-punish-parents-of-color https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scottpham/child-abuse-a...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thewanderer1983 4y ago

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

bombolo 4y ago
I wouldn't say good intentions are involved here. I think the idea here is just to cast the net and collect data about everyone, to then be able to actually use the data against your opponents.

pfoof 4y ago

Imagine: they succeed in implelenting this and suddenly some black hat collects all the data on the actual lawmakers. That would be a plot twist.

landemva 4y ago
I heard the FBI does this to control politicians and what bills are introduced. Like this guy https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dennis-hastert-sentencing-filing-met-0410-20160408-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-dennis-haste...
- account42 4y ago
  Not at all a new concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
glandium 4y ago
John Oliver did something like that. https://youtu.be/wqn3gR1WTcA https://youtu.be/wqn3gR1WTcA (from about 21 minutes in)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jacooper 4y ago

Chat control absolutely flies against everything the EU has done to improve digital privacy, even its own (big) members are against it. It feels its not the normal people who made the GDPR and DMA are the ones writing this, rather Secret agencies pushing for more surveillance.

djbebs 4y ago
It doesn't though, it's perfectly in line with their past behavior
glogla 4y ago
Because they are not the same people. The good stuff usually comes from EU parliament while the messed up stuff usually comes from EU commission. EU parliament is staffed by elected officials from all over Europe, while EU commission is staffed by ministers from governments of member countries. It is pretty obvious that the latter will be pretty corrupt.

chmod775 4y ago

Every year like clockwork they try this shit. I worry that at some point people will grow too weary to nip it in the bud.

Test0129 4y ago
That assumes that democracy even continues to work after the Nth time. Eventually, like all tinpot dictatorships, they'll just force the issue and you'll get it anyway. IMO, there is only a faint shadow of democracy left in the world. Your vote really doesn't matter. In this case, enough people made noise the demons will go back into their lair for another year or more before fielding it again. All it will take is one of those guys to realize they don't really have to listen to anyone to get what they want. This is the genesis of the 5 eyes, and it will be the genesis of modern AI-driven surveillance like OP's link.
- danuker 4y ago
  They made noise about the copyright directive and online platforms, yet nothing changed. https://danuker.go.ro/eu-copyright-directive.html https://danuker.go.ro/eu-copyright-directive.html
  - est31 4y ago
    The copyright directive could have been way way worse. A lot has changed due to public push back. Not enough, but there has definitely been an impact.
- fsflover 4y ago
  The actual solution is to use devices obeying the user and not corporations. My GNU/Linux phone doesn't collect any data on me and nobody can force anyone to get it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yrgulation 4y ago

The STASI, Securitate and KGB are all looking down upon us and smiling. We truly have reached a level where everyone is monitored minute by minute day by day. Corporations do it and now governments too. All you need is the wrong captain at helm and the right mix of storms and all this can turn very bad very fast. In theory this sound good, but without careful oversight it can be abused.

godelski 4y ago
> All you need is the wrong captain at helm Even if you don't buy the argument of turnkey tyranny (the above concept), it is also important to remember that nothing is unhackable. So if you're the "well I trust X" or "what is X going to do with it, sell me ads?" type, you should also question "What ,,could'' my enemies do with this data?" (Foreign or domestic. State sponsored or run of the mill hacker) While governments can be the most egregious abusers of this data, they aren't the only ones that can abuse the data. We have hundreds of reports about cops stalking their (current and former) partners, hackers blackmailing high profile people (including politicians), and plenty of reports about how nation states use this data to influence your countrymen. You may be immune (you aren't) but is everyone else? I think pigeon holing this conversation to governments is wrong. There's a whole laundry list of potential problems with data collection like this and checking off any item on the list is generally enough to be against this type of policy. For example, I don't think anyone wants a national repository of children's IP addresses. That's not only valuable to nation state actors (who want to influence the next generation), but also pedophiles. With intentions to protect children you end up actually putting them in more danger. We should HIDE children's personal data rather than gather it. But the only way to do that is to hide everyone's data. Edit: I do believe in turnkey tyranny. I'm just saying that the argument isn't effective to everyone (as time has shown). I'm saying that when you run into these people don't keep talking about turnkey tyranny, shift your argument to one of the other many issues to choose from. One of them will (likely) be something they care about and use that as the baseline for your argument. If you keep arguing something that someone doesn't care about then I'm not sure how you all expect to convince anyone. Our exclusively turnkey arguments have been ineffective, let's adopt a better strategy.
- 4y ago

trcflow 4y ago

The European Commission and von der Leyen are at it again. I presume that her conversations with Katrin Suder and Mc Kinsey have not been scanned. Unlike the plebs, perhaps they have their own mail servers like Hilary Clinton: https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-minister-over-spending-scandal/a-46704514 https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-min... "The investigative committee will examine irregularities in a contract awarded to McKinsey and a €390 million ($442 million) IT contract given to another company that failed to pass through the company's supervisory board as required. It will also investigate whether von der Leyen committed nepotism by hiring Katrin Suder, a former McKinsey consultant, as her deputy to oversee the ministry's arms procurement section." I think the presentation in stopscanningme.eu is too kind. We should not have to beg for our constitutional rights.

rnk 4y ago
What's with all these aspersions about European politicians? What do they have to do with the topic at hand?
- novok 4y ago
  Where do you think the proposed laws are coming from? It's extra bad when they act hypocritical too.
- qhAGS 4y ago
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  - girvo 4y ago
    It’s remarkably widespread, too, though I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising. The sadder part is when it gets repeated enough by these brand new accounts, it seems to permeate enough that actual people begin repeating it.
  - 4y ago

stall84 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Gustomaximus 4y ago

As a side point I feel this is a good exame of where the EU is going wrong and will cause more exits. And generally shows how government via its leaders always wants more power. In my mind EU focus should be on trade efficiency internaly and globally. The more the reach into people's daily lives the more people will look for a door.

thefz 4y ago
There will always be some inept politician pushing for stuff like this. I am glad for measures like the GDPR and I think the EU is doing more good than harm to its state members.
- Ylpertnodi 4y ago
  GDPR is a fantastic piece of legislation, and I agree the EU is doing more good than harm - start with just on a financial level: The old joke was, that if you set off from the UK with £200 and visited every European country, by the time you got to Istanbul you would have £0, only by exchanging your remaining currency at each border. Ahhhh, good times doing expenses in those days :-)
anigbrowl 4y ago
Or, it's a misstep that can and probably will be corrected. there's a lot of things the EU gets right in the privacy domain. I don't really think this is likely to cause more exits; look what a complete shitshow the UK is at present, and reflect on the fact that their freshly 'liberated' government has been in a rush to introduce or increase all sorts of draconian laws now that it's no longer constrained by the EU's human rights framework.
- Gustomaximus 4y ago
  To be clear I dont think this will cause exits. More this adds one more to a death of one thousand cuts type situation. Followed by a tipping point moment who knows when. And absolutly it can be corrected. I also find it incredible a rule like this got so far. It means there is a significant amount of people in powerful positions supporting it. That makes it hardee to correct and generally shows the people in power seem out of alignment to my views towards citizens privacy anyway. Even if not passed its amazing it got so far, at least to me.

anigbrowl 4y ago

This is a masterpiece of effective advocacy, both graphically and textually. Very impressed.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

A kinda off-topic question about the website itself: why does it render slightly wider than the screen, causes an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar? I see this quite a lot lately.

dmak 4y ago
cmd+0
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  No, I didn't change the zoom level, it's 100%. I don't use HiDPI screen or change system UI scaling setting either. I tested on two browsers (Firefox, Chrome), same issue. It only happens when I full-screen the browser. I use Windows if it matters.
defanor 4y ago
Apparently it's because of the messed up "responsiveness" with media queries: @media (min-width:1920px) { .responsive-width { width: 1920px; } } Those are defined for multiple common screen widths, without taking the scroll width into account, so at those points the horizontal scrollbar appears.

powera 4y ago

cr4nberry 4y ago

This wouldn't be a problem if people stopped going to the same platforms for literally everything and stopped using a bugged phone OS Not only this, but closed source software in general, since the black box makes it harder to disable anti features Once they put this infrastructure in place, it's just a matter of time before some "crisis" occurs and it gets used inappropriately

betwixthewires 4y ago

The EU, home of laws like this and the reason for the cookies popup, where the citizens talk about how they have better privacy than the united states.

nirimda 4y ago
The cookies popups are not the fault of the EU. It's the fault of private companies who want to collect more information than they're allowed to without installing cookie popups. All necessary cookies are allowed without a popup, so there's literally no reason for any website to ask you if you want cookies - unless they intend to do something which gratuitously risks your privacy.
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  The response to incentives created by EU legislation were predictable. Are governments not responsible for the outcomes of incentives they create?
  - nirimda 4y ago
    The EU legislation didn't create the incentives to collect the data. The EU legislation did inform companies of community expectations, which the companies proceeded to ignore. It is the companies - and their defenders - who need to stop acting like children and take some responsibility for their choices and actions.

klabb3 4y ago

Always the same story. To me, it reads something like this: > Child sexual abuse often happens in bathrooms. Therefore, all bathrooms should have cameras. The video feeds should be stored and analyzed for illegal behavior, and law enforcement should have access, ideally in real time and without a court order. The risk of leaks, hacking, or abuse by law enforcement or system administrators is negligible, so citizens need not worry. Historically, law enforcement has been chronically understaffed and generally ineffective enforcing these heinous crimes. Even credible and actionable reports that could lead to arrests often end up on a pile. When this system is deployed, the amount of flagged behavior will be 100x more than the reports of today, most of which will be false positives. This is ultimately what makes it obvious that these are bad faith arguments, and that the ulterior motive is good old mass surveillance.

_nalply 4y ago
Let me paraphrase more generally. Crimes, like sexual abuse, do happen in private spaces like bedrooms. Some people propose or request that all private spaces have surveillance, for example with cameras. Data should be stored, analyzed and made accessible by law enforcement in real time and without legal process like court orders. However law enforcement is understaffed and won't be able to act in timely matter on flagged behavior, which will be hundreds times more than before. Citizen are told that risks like leaks or abuse are negligible or manageable. However people are bad at security and mistakes are unavoidable. Proponents don't understand this outcome or are in bad faith with hidden agendas like mass surveillance.
- klabb3 4y ago
  Yep! I think the main issue is that digital surveillance is new and abstract, and somehow the kind of privacy issues we have intuitions about – such as cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms – don't map naturally to the digital space, at least not intuitively, so people underestimate the level of detail it means. And then there are som novel nuances in the digital world, like metadata collection and automated analysis, that are essentially infeasible irl because not even stasi had the workforce to process that amount of data.
deleted 4y ago

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

Funny how during the cold war everyone was criticical of russia for spying on all citizens. This was a symbol of how little freedom they had, that it was a proof that communism was leading to terrible dictatorships. But our politicians seem to think that if we do it, it's to help people. Unlike the ussr politicians of course, because they were evil.

DeathArrow 4y ago

Before it was about protecting children it was about fighting terrorism. Before that it was about fighting drug lords.

Ptchd 4y ago
fsflover 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

hit8run 4y ago

The situation in Europe is very bad. We have a conglomerate of corrupt people in power positions that are waiving anything their lobbies want them to. Living in Germany is the worst with the new government. They manage to destroy every form of wealth the citizens had. Decisions are made based on stubborn ideology and not on what’s best for the country. If you’re living in the US and ever thought your politicians are bad I invite you to have a look at Germany. Very weird country.

cebert 4y ago

The Internet is a global system but jurisdictions keep attempting to define how they want it to work within their borders. The Internet doesn’t work that way. Unless we stop trying to regulate the Internet or have one global government, we risk fragmenting the Internet and introducing so many different regional regulations it will too be expensive for all but the biggest players to build applications. Only Meta and Google scale companies can survive.

ai_ja_nai 4y ago

I see a lot of grudge in the community about surveillance of posting surfaces for unlawful content, like if the authorities put in charge of fighting crime are some kind of extenal tyrannical force imposed onto poor people, and not the direct actions of a democratically elected government. While I fully support lobbying efforts like stopscanningme, because they rise awareness in people that ultimately vote governments so that they might do more informed voting choices, I just don't condone all of this whining about mass surveillance on privately operated companies: remember that gmail, facebook, whatsapp, etc.. are for profit, privately held companies that are held accountable for the content that circulates on their platforms. Companies, like any other citizen, must abide the law and not become a free field for Child Exploitation or Adult Exploitation Imagery. You want total privacy, which in your mind is the word for "unaccountability"? Use different services or setup your own. The topic is very vast, but it can't really handled by just saying "bad government, want to wiretap!"

pfortuny 4y ago
You mention gmail which is a "mail" service, and whatsapp, which is a "messaging" service. In all of (Western) history, those services have been considered one of the most private, like it or not. So changing that status (in the West) should require very public and very clear discussion, not just hand-waving about "child molesters". Facebook: that is something totally different. The fact that mail is handled by a private entity does not make it less mail than the official post. At all, and this has been understood (in the West) since, probably, the Roman times.
- varnaud 4y ago
  Snail mail is still scanned for illicit content. Also many times in western history letters were read and then possibly censored at processing facilities. Back in those days, it was a human opening letter/package and inspecting the content. They had rules to respect the privacy of the sender/addressee, like not sharing the content with anyone else if the content is OK. I'm not sure who considered these services to be one of the most private. Also in those days, one could make use of a secure private mail service, bypassing the normal processing facilities and have grantee that the letter remained sealer the whole journey. To be even more secure, basic encryption could be used, or even invisible ink. Today, things just got more sophisticated.

garfieldnate 4y ago

A couple days ago I watched this video where Smash Bros. community members discuss their thoughts and emotions around discovering a lot of sexual predatory behavior in their community [1]. Pretty fascinating and worth a watch. But what really struck me is how little most people (including) know about predatorial behavior or victimization and what the warning signs are; the description of what grooming actually is I found particularly enlightening. I think we would gain far greater benefit from simply improving our understanding of our own psychology and sociology and from their trying to prevent humans from becoming predators in the first place. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSR3P9jayPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSR3P9jayPo

bacan 4y ago

The age verification maybe a good idea if it is used to create a segregated place for kids. But instead of having filters & being able to scan messages, I think it'd be better to not have private messaging on those platforms. This will allow other users to report suspicious behavior.

EricE 4y ago

"think of the children" People uttering that should be immediately shot.