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How is this supposed to work in reality? Do we really want to provide Meta, Apple and Google with a list of phone numbers of accounts of militarly and security
by WA 2y ago
How is this supposed to work in reality? Do we really want to provide Meta, Apple and Google with a list of phone numbers of accounts of militarly and security personell in order to have their feature-flags for sharing links/photos enabled?
- karma_pharmer 2y agoThe cellular carriers very obviously already have a system like this for location tracking. Their tower dumps contain enough metadata to determine all the people who spend most workdays at office buildings in McLean Virginia. And then, of course, where those people sleep (i.e. charge their phones) at night. It takes positive effort to erase that data, and believe me, it's being erased. The powerful people don't want it to exist. So yeah, there is already a system for doing this kind of thing. It will be extended. Plebs like you and me don't get to use it.
- WA 2y agoThe carrier, for example Vodafone Germany, might have that data. How does that help to enable a feature-flag in US-based Meta's WhatsApp?
- karma_pharmer 2y agofacepalm
- Hizonner 2y agoUnless you have positive evidence, I'm gonna guess that the "powerful people" aren't that organized or that on top of things. But, sure, they'd like to be.
- raxxorraxor 2y ago> The powerful people don't want it to exist. Good on those powerful people then, because this data should not exist.
- mikrotikker 2y agoThe problem is that these towers and metadata are hackable by China and Russia, and now you understand how dangerous it is to run Huawei and ZTE etc in your critical infra.
- setopt 2y agoApple and Google could provide devices or OS versions that disable these features, which could be issued as work phones to military and security personnel. Not saying it’s a perfect solution, but they might consider it a “95% good enough” solution.
- eru 2y agoBut it's the other way round: people in those industries (can) have those features enabled! Unless by 'feature' you mean the mandatory scanning?
- setopt 2y agoI mean “software feature” [1]. It is an “anti-feature” for sure, but I’d still call it a “feature” as well when someone has to write a new blob of code to perform a new task. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_feature https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_feature
- perihelions 2y agoThey already have those lists because those are US companies that famously assist US intelligence. Those flags will be used in multiple incompatible ways, depending on who's asking.
- viraptor 2y agoA company assisting the US intelligence will get assigned some contact. They will not get a list of the intelligence staff. That's not the way the information is expected to flow.
- rightbyte 2y agoDunno. The exception is a security breach in it-self.