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US authorities can see more than ever, with Big Tech as their eyes
- billy99k 2y ago[flagged]
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoNot quite, I still cared and I’ve personally written to congress about it. Surprisingly, I got a response. Unsurprisingly, the response I got was basically a diplomatic “We know better than you do, we don’t care what you think, we’re going to do it anyway”
- anonym29 2y agoMany (but not all, it's worth noting) people who work for the government live in an apartheid society inside their own heads, where they and everyone else who works for government is the superior tier of their imaginary hierarchy, and everyone else is thought of as "lesser than", with fewer rights, a different (more strict) set of rules, on the inferior tier of their imaginary hierarchy. Next time you're observing this, try to imagine the outrage if the government official were a white South African government official talking to a black South African citizen. There's the same level of condescending animosity and supremacist ideology at play, just along a completely different axis - employer rather than skin color.
- gamgam69 2y agoI'm pretty sure this is just inside YOUR own head.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoYeah I do imagine that on a regular basis yet, something about my comment appears to be unpopular since I’m being downvoted. I usually don’t mind but this one bothers me a little bit since writing to congress is just about the only thing an average American can do to influence the legislation. Actively participating in democracy is not cool these days.
- gamgam69 2y ago[flagged]
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoI didn’t want to believe that at first but that became crystal clear after the responses I got.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoI do care about privacy but only one party wants me dead for being transgender
- anonym29 2y ago[flagged]
- seveneves7s 2y ago[flagged]
- Jensson 2y agoDid the government kill those?
- int_19h 2y agoNah, I'm pretty sure that Musk in particular genuinely hates trans folk at this point, and he's certainly a major part of "THEY" with actual power.
- panny 2y agoScott Pressler, a gay man, was almost single handedly responsible for swinging Pennsylvania, and therefore the 2024 election. He motivated 200,000 Amish to get out and vote after the FDA overeach tried to shut them down. MAGA loves their LGBT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Presler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Presler
- harimau777 2y ago[flagged]
- milesrout 2y ago[flagged]
- ttyprintk 2y agoWe have to agree that Elon Musk is the ideological leader of the party now. He has arranged explanations for his own extreme and unambiguous statements. It’s noble to hold strangers on the Internet to a higher bar. But no idea in the party isn’t touched by Elon Musk. So when he says “dead — killed by the woke mind virus” he might be trying to garner figurative sympathy as if he lost a child. It certainly coincides with a call to criminalize any facet of trans health care for trans youth. And when he says “America will go bankrupt” without him, he might be issuing a threat or maybe just a warning. Donald Trump is no stranger to bankruptcy and certainly must see that politicians only mention debt rhetorically. His administration added more than $8T, or $5900 per capita per year. So if we must accept only extreme solutions to things that were never problems, maybe their intention really was those urges?
- nullstyle 2y ago4.5 has our back: The hypocrisy in the comment lies in the author’s claim that others are acting in “bad faith,” while simultaneously misrepresenting the opposing argument. Specifically, the commenter criticizes the original poster for allegedly exaggerating (“malicious lie,” “breathless idiot”) when interpreting certain conservative actions as denying the existence of trans people. Yet, in doing so, the commenter engages in their own distortion—downplaying the genuine impact of policies that functionally erase or severely limit the recognition and legitimacy of transgender identities. Moreover, the commenter clearly distinguishes between literal existence and societal allowance for billionaires, yet refuses to apply the same nuance to the original comment regarding transgender identities. This selective application of interpretative generosity constitutes the core hypocrisy.
- 2y ago
- bilbo0s 2y agoThe government colluded with Facebook and Twitter during the Biden administration There's people that think this only happened during the Biden Administration? Not Obama? Not Trump? Not Bush? Just Biden? The gullibility of Americans in aggregate is stunning at times. If you're one of those still out preaching the quasi-religions of "left" or "right", you're honestly a large part of the problem at this point. And you're probably too submerged in the holy waters of your quasi-religion's divine scriptures to even begin to understand why.
- anonym29 2y agoI'd hazard a guess that the person you're responding to is not so naïve that they believe this was unique to the Biden administration, but rather, is frustrated at what they feel is this kind of government tyranny often only being discussed through a partisan, one-sided lens that they might characterize as emphasizing this kind of stuff when conservative administrations do it but downplaying when progressive administrations do it. I'm not necessarily supporting or defending that position, but we should at least strive to argue against the steelman version of our opponent's position, rather than the strawman position, no?
- bilbo0s 2y agoSteelman is "they meant what they said." ie - no reinterpretation at all. But even taking your reinterpretation at face value, it still couches the issue in terms of the "left" and "right" quasi-religions, no?
- anonym29 2y agoWe must have different definitions of steelman. I have always understood steelman to be the opposite of strawman. To argue with the strawman of their argument is arguing a weaker version of the argument than the one they're really making - i.e. "I assume because they didn't mention any other administrations, they must be some dumb idiot who only thinks this happened during the last administration", while arguing the steelman is arguing against the strongest version of the argument they're trying to make - i.e. "sure, that poster didn't mention other administrations, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt - if we asked them whether they'd support similar surveillance done by the Obama admin or Bush admin, I'd be willing to guess they'd say no, I bet they're just expressing frustration about the left's unwillingness to acknowledge the Biden admin's big tech collusion, even if their real qualm is with the surveillance itself, not the partisan coverage of it". I personally detest covert surveillance and social influence operations being waged by taxpayer-funded organizations (regardless of whether public or private in nature) against their own citizenry, and I oppose this across the political aisle. I think it reeks of institutions that distrust and fear us more than they represent our collective interests, and that's an ugly mindset unbecoming of a government or enterprise that publicly paints itself as a champion of free and open democracy on the world stage, regardless of whether it's an intelligence agency or an international social media platform. But I also recognize that it's bipartisan, and that most people seem to care more about deploying force against the other side than they do about reducing the amount of force that is deployed against all of us. Where does your definition of steelman come from?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- majormajor 2y agoHN has been full of privacy and critical-of-government-surveillance articles regardless of the presidency for over a decade. Most obviously, who was President when Snowden leaked things? Methinks you are overly sensitive on behalf of your chosen boss. OR you are trying to deflect from the surveillance by making it a partisan thing.
- seveneves7s 2y ago[flagged]
- notber293 2y agoTwitter published a big of gov interference. I distinctly remember most reactions were just nothing-burger. Just partisan politics.
- surfpel 2y ago[flagged]
- leptons 2y ago"Both sides are the same" has no relevance anymore. Every day since Jan 20th 2025 one side has been proving they will do anything and everything they can to destroy democracy and America. The other side doesn't have any power to stop them, mainly because people didn't show up to vote.
- error_logic 2y agoVoting within the plurality system gave voters access only to the inputs of the Nash Equilibrium decision matrix, not the outputs. All it took was everyone being focused on winning by making the other side lose, and suddenly "we" all lose. If instead we voted with permutations of {+1, +0.5, -0.5} assigned to a single combination of up to 3 candidates without duplication of score or candidate, we would be voting for the outcome of the decision matrix and avoiding the tragedy of the commons. But we didn't, and won't, so we brave the new world of tragically aligned AGI known as government. If the pattern isn't recognized, real AGI (rather than the metaphor of government) would definitely learn from it and wipe out humanity at this rate.
- leptons 2y ago>If instead we voted with permutations of {+1, +0.5, -0.5} assigned to a single combination of up to 3 candidates without duplication of score or candidate, we would be voting for the outcome of the decision matrix and avoiding the tragedy of the commons. And if there were pies in the sky, nobody would go hungry. Sorry, but you have to work with the system you have, not the system you want. If more people showed up to vote, Republicans would have no power. The only good path forward is to elect Democrats and then push them further left. Anything else is fantasy.
- xyzal 2y agoWhere was that nightmare GDPR letter template again?
- TriangleEdge 2y agoWait until that author learns about Edward Snowden or advertisement agencies. I used to play with Twitters firehose back in the day and there's quite a lot of personal data you derive from private accounts. We could tell the city someone likely lived if they followed a certain amount of people from a specific city, etc. Could also guess their gender with 95% accuracy with just using n-grams from their tweets. We'd test our algorithms with public accounts. I think there's too much power and money in personal information for it to stop.
- Y-bar 2y agoHe wrote about Snowden as late as last year: https://proton.me/blog/us-warrantless-surveillance https://proton.me/blog/us-warrantless-surveillance and corporate role in surveillance state before that https://proton.me/blog/privacy-user-data-requests https://proton.me/blog/privacy-user-data-requests
- Syonyk 2y agoThe book from a year or two ago, "Means of Control," by Tau, goes into some pretty good detail on the data collection and sales from just the adtech firms - where the entire ecosystem seems to be, "You can't use our data for anything but advertising... wink wink", and everyone knows exactly who is bidding on ads, and never winning any, just to slurp up location data and sell it. Or the "companies that don't sell the government." Also, they don't vet any clients beyond "The credit card is good." > And because giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible, there’s little they can do to protect your privacy. I quite disagree with the "must" there. They choose to collect as much data as possible, because that's their business model. And the good news is, it's fairly easy to opt out of quite a lot of that. Turn location services off, turn your phone off when moving about, and pay cash without "personal tracking cards" associated with you. Just about everywhere has [local area code] 867-5309 registered, if you care.
- zeta0134 2y agoFor a couple of years now I've been using [my area code] - 555 - [a unique 4-digit pin] for dealing with otherwise "walk-in" business that look at you like you have three heads if you decline to say a phone number out loud. In the US at least, the 555 block is defacto "fictional" and typically isn't assigned out, so it lets me create a valid looking number that won't accidentally ring some random real person if they try to call it.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoMinor quibble, 555 isn't fictional, it's typically reserved for teleco internal use, or at least that was the case 25 years ago, who knows what the deal is now. Used to be you could wardial 555-xxxx and end up with all kinds of weird AT&T field installations, back office numbers, switch remote command and control modem numbers, etc.
- function_seven 2y agoThe fictional block exists, but it's not the entire 555 prefix. It's 555-01xx. It was the entire "Klondike-5" block, but got narrowed.
- tptacek 2y agoWhat these analyses always miss is that providers on foreign soil have even less protection against the US IC: breaking into foreign providers is literally NSA's chartered mission. That's not to say you should deliberately use US providers! Unless, that is, abuse of legal process in the US motivates your decisionmaking, in which case: an abused legal process beats no process requirements at all.
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoIt's the NSA's job to do that domestically, it's just supposed to be firewalled by some hidden kangaroo court that absolutely doesn't do its job: FBI agents have been busted stalking women/exs several times. Has been since 9/11. Remember, there's the omnipresent neverending war on terror.
- tptacek 2y agoI mean, sure, stipulate that. But there isn't even a kangaroo court for a service hosted in Europe.
- idrathernot 2y agoEurope has plenty of “Kangaroo courts” of their own and partnerships like five eyes encourages authorities to share information. The UK’s NSA equivalent doesn’t need to worry about infringing on an American’s 4th amendment right and technically (if you don’t think about it) the NSA has plausible deniability if the UK shares this information. And vise versa with UK citizens or any western government.
- jonathanstrange 2y agoI think OP meant the EU. The UK is known to be a totalitarian surveillance state and has been less free than the US in that respect for a long time.
- foldr 2y ago
- panny 2y ago>giants like Meta, Google, and Apple must collect as much of your personal data as possible Stopped reading there. If someone tries to sell a lie like that in their first five sentences, I can't trust anything they say.
- kome 2y agobut it's the truth. where is the lie?
- bamboozled 2y agoIs it a lie?
- haswell 2y agoMeta and Google must collect your data. Apple does collect some of your data, but their business doesn't depend on it, and I have some degree of control over how much I participate. I think it's a category error to include all three in the same sentence, but I don't think the author is lying. I do agree somewhat with the sentiment that such a lack of distinction calls the content into question, or at least the author's framing of it.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoDisagree. All three companies exist in the set of massively international megacorps who as a matter of routine daily business collect and distribute personal information of the individuals who use their service. Being precious about what percentage of their yearly revenue is generated by this activity seems weird.
- fhchl 2y agoHave been using proto mail for a few years now and highly recommend it. You will ever have a cute @pm.me address!
- th0ma5 2y agoMany people I know are switching away from them because of their alleged support of fascism.
- Gys 2y agoI think they are mixing up who is supporting fascism…
- th0ma5 2y agoYeah fascists love to say everyone else is fascist so
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pcthrowaway 2y agoCan you provide any additional context for this? I haven't heard it, and a cursory search doesn't turn up anything obvious regarding their ties to fascism.
- cinema0747 2y agoTheir CEO made some comments in support of Trump. https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/ https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru...
- milesrout 2y agoAh yes. Everything I don't like is fascism. Ironically, we told you all for years that if you abused terms like fascist, Nazi, racist, etc then they would lose their power and their impact and people would ignore them in future. You were warned what would happen if you cried wolf.
- robertlagrant 2y agoI would love a privacy-friendly (e.g. Proton or similar-supplied) log in option on lots of websites. Log in with Google is what keeps me using Gmail.
- j-bos 2y agoProton has Proton Pass, even supports passkeys if you're into that.
- robertlagrant 2y agoYeah, that looks quite good! Not quite a log in with Google, but an interesting alternative.
- lazyeye 2y agoSelling peoples personal data has been around for longer than people realise The Hank Show https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250209277/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250209277/
- sub7 2y agoBuT ChiNa Is TeH SuRvEiLlaNcE sTaTe