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I have no intention of trusting our civil institutions with access to my private data. In fact, as a citizen of the United States I would like to see the Fourt

I have no intention of trusting our civil institutions with access to my private data. In fact, as a citizen of the United States I would like to see the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution more widely held to prohibit our civil institutions from having access to my private data. I do not believe that I am secure in my papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures if our civil institutions have the power to lock or unlock my devices and accounts.

acdha 4y ago
That’s not what’s being proposed at all: Apple clearing the activation lock doesn’t give you the previous owner’s encryption key. It does let you wipe it and generate your own key.
- Telemakhos 4y ago
  The GP also specifically proposes some institution which can grant you access to your Google account if you are locked out "unfairly." Besides the weasel word "unfairly," that means the government gets to determine who can access your Google account. Adding in "unfairly" implies that your access to digital accounts depends on a politician's notion of what it means to "fairly" lock you out of an account, and I guarantee you that, in the fullness of time, that will come to include political dissidence.
  - acdha 4y ago
    > that means the government gets to determine who can access your Google account This is already the case legally: if you lose a court case, Google will follow a legal order to turn something over to the winner. If you're suspected of some kind of crime, Google will follow a legal order granting the relevant authorities access to something like your Gmail messages. It's also important to remember that this is a real problem affecting a lot of people: ask anyone who deals with the larger public and you'll hear that it's not uncommon for people to change email addresses after getting locked out of their old one, and that problem disproportionately affects certain groups of people (e.g. the elderly). What would make sense in this regard is something similar to what Apple does where you can optionally set up a legacy contact who is allowed to initiate a password reset, presumably with time delays and notifications (“your password will be reset in 3 days unless you deny this request”). Imagine an option where you could do something like go to the local public library, DMV, police station, notary, etc. and they could basically login to a special Google form to attest that they did a full photo ID validation to confirm that your ID matched the ID registered to an account. That would be useful for thousands of people and if you made it optional, people who are especially worried about their government could choose not to enable it.
LocalH 4y ago
If you support either popular option for political parties in the United States, you're already trusting them with access to various parts of your private data. That is simply unavoidable in the modern world, unless you never use anything but cash, never connect to the internet other than through Tails on a burner PC, and never make use of any government services whatsoever. Paying taxes? They've got your info. Got a drivers license? They've got your info. If you don't think both the Democrats and Republicans would love nothing more than a few easily-squeezable companies being the clearinghouse for everyone's data, then you're exhibiting some quite hard cognitive dissonance. There are already companies in existence with the sole focus being to funnel your data to anyone who asks, including the government.

acdha 4y ago

That’s not what’s being proposed at all: Apple clearing the activation lock doesn’t give you the previous owner’s encryption key. It does let you wipe it and generate your own key.

Telemakhos 4y ago
The GP also specifically proposes some institution which can grant you access to your Google account if you are locked out "unfairly." Besides the weasel word "unfairly," that means the government gets to determine who can access your Google account. Adding in "unfairly" implies that your access to digital accounts depends on a politician's notion of what it means to "fairly" lock you out of an account, and I guarantee you that, in the fullness of time, that will come to include political dissidence.
- acdha 4y ago
  > that means the government gets to determine who can access your Google account This is already the case legally: if you lose a court case, Google will follow a legal order to turn something over to the winner. If you're suspected of some kind of crime, Google will follow a legal order granting the relevant authorities access to something like your Gmail messages. It's also important to remember that this is a real problem affecting a lot of people: ask anyone who deals with the larger public and you'll hear that it's not uncommon for people to change email addresses after getting locked out of their old one, and that problem disproportionately affects certain groups of people (e.g. the elderly). What would make sense in this regard is something similar to what Apple does where you can optionally set up a legacy contact who is allowed to initiate a password reset, presumably with time delays and notifications (“your password will be reset in 3 days unless you deny this request”). Imagine an option where you could do something like go to the local public library, DMV, police station, notary, etc. and they could basically login to a special Google form to attest that they did a full photo ID validation to confirm that your ID matched the ID registered to an account. That would be useful for thousands of people and if you made it optional, people who are especially worried about their government could choose not to enable it.

LocalH 4y ago

If you support either popular option for political parties in the United States, you're already trusting them with access to various parts of your private data. That is simply unavoidable in the modern world, unless you never use anything but cash, never connect to the internet other than through Tails on a burner PC, and never make use of any government services whatsoever. Paying taxes? They've got your info. Got a drivers license? They've got your info. If you don't think both the Democrats and Republicans would love nothing more than a few easily-squeezable companies being the clearinghouse for everyone's data, then you're exhibiting some quite hard cognitive dissonance. There are already companies in existence with the sole focus being to funnel your data to anyone who asks, including the government.