4 ms·

This is a temporary rollback while there’s a choice to speak against it. Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

by dgxyz 8mo ago

ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
I worked in large union data centers, decades ago. Cannot even imagine what is going on these days, inside & out.
- ohyoutravel 8mo ago
  Can you elaborate? This is interesting
  - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
    I worked across several facilities and obviously cannot talk specifics about those. It is public knowledge that one of them housed a large metro area's main ISP "meet-me room." During Snowden revelations I'd already been apprenticing for years; nothing Edward documented surprised me. I'd literally walk around our 500,000sqft elevated floors knodding my head [none of this exists, officially]. ---- Nothing is as it seems. ---- During DEF CON ~XX~ (approximately same timeframe as story above) it was publicly revealed that intelligence communities had redefined the word "intercept," to mean when a human operator catelogs a certain piece of data/traffic (i.e. not algorithms sorting). #1984 #newspeak #elevenyearsago ---- I no longer carry a cell phone. Don't use email. PO Box in profile
    - dgxyz 8mo ago
      Yeah well aware of that stuff here. Two companies I worked at had entirely airgapped infrastructure because they knew the adversarial situation wasn't winnable. Everything was checked for implants at goods in. It's shocking some of the shit that goes on. I run grey man where I can. Stuff that's private stays private. Paper and physical security is still good.
      - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
        >physical security is still good Possession is nine-tenths of the law (e.g. physical bullion; offline crypto keys; bullets; counter-bugging). >checked for implants ... shocking some of the shit that goes on I've seent some bullshit, myself — "shipping delays" — smelt their pure evil. Our facilities necessarily existed to be networked; but definitely had isolated departments.
    - King-Aaron 8mo ago
      > I no longer carry a cell phone. I'm not quite there yet, but after Netanyahu made that comment like "if you have a phone you're carrying a little piece of Israel with you" right after the pager attack stuff.. I keep the phone in the back of my backpack away from my meat bits.
      - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
        >no cell phone A one-way beeper allowed me to phase out mobile phone usage. Obviously presents inconveniences, but I'm semi-retired with no rush to be anywhere. Bonus health points: no locally-generated EMRadiation. [•] My provider (USA): <https://pagersdirect.net/ https://pagersdirect.net/> If you use numeric-only paging, bots haven't figured out how to SPAM, yet. Also available is alphanumeric email-to-page; two-way pagers also exist (but why?).
        DANmode 8mo ago
        Longer battery life than phone, no microphone to access via baseband.
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8mo ago
      > PO Box in profile Pretty sure government agencies will have no trouble finding you from that bit alone, and then tracking your movements is trivial. I mean, you have to show up and check the box periodically..
      - jkestner 8mo ago
        They implement a physical Tor each time their check their box - layers of Taskrabbits hiring Taskrabbits. One picks up the Mail and hands it off to the next. The owner is one of the Taskrabbits somewhere in the chain.
        ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
        Back in 2006, I became involved in a USPS investigation (witness/victim); barring specifics, the perpetrator's PO Box [0] was involved: the investigated would send minors in to retrieve packages, which is allowed ("possessor of key possesses mailbox privileges"). This made it extremely difficult to capture the actual perp. He eventually walked away with minimal consequence, for lack of evidence/possession. [0] established with false identification
      - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
        I am already found — not hiding — just have to follow their rules.
doctor_radium 8mo ago
Agreed, but this would then inconvenience millions of non-techies. Could a solution be forcing Amazon (and Google and Flock and...) to open their backend software either for self-hosting or for running on somebody else's "cloud"? So subscribing to such a device isn't that different from getting web hosting from Dreamhost or Hetzner? Maybe there's a host or IP field in the settings that users can easily change?
- dgxyz 8mo ago
  I know this is not constructive, but fuck 'em and their convenience!
- syntheticnature 8mo ago
  If there was an IP setting users could change, all the self-hosting etc. forums would be talking about how to change it instead of explaining other options. I'd expect not just fixed hosts and an ecosystem dependent on their proprietary protocols, but also pinned certificates and secure boot so you can't change any of it. N.B. Flock isn't really targeting the consumer market.
dylan604 8mo ago
> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempting to leverage their users and their data for any other form of income. Companies used to do it all of the time. It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude to not sell out their users.
- antonvs 8mo ago
  > It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude ... Just for context, could you provide some examples of such people?
  - macki0 8mo ago
    Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) come to mind, both founders could have made platfoms that would have been ad-ridden (and made a boat full of cash) but the founders chose not to
    - fakedang 8mo ago
      Uhh, Craigslist is literally an ad platform. They just didn't want anything to do with a middleman.
      - dylan604 8mo ago
        I think we can all agree the "ads" on CL are not even close to the same ballpark as the offerings of ad tech. Like to conflate the two as the same would be the most disingenuous bit of logic that I'd be embarrassed if I were the one to have made it.
- trinsic2 8mo ago
  The problem now is how can you trust any of these companies? The infrastructure is there to link this data if you have cameras that connect to the internet. How can you ever be sure this wont happen in secret? We have no guarantees that companies will follow the laws and laws are not even being enforced.

This is a temporary rollback while there’s a choice to speak against it. Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

by dgxyz 8mo ago

This is a temporary rollback while there’s a choice to speak against it. Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

ProllyInfamous 8mo ago

I worked in large union data centers, decades ago. Cannot even imagine what is going on these days, inside & out.

ohyoutravel 8mo ago
Can you elaborate? This is interesting
- ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
  I worked across several facilities and obviously cannot talk specifics about those. It is public knowledge that one of them housed a large metro area's main ISP "meet-me room." During Snowden revelations I'd already been apprenticing for years; nothing Edward documented surprised me. I'd literally walk around our 500,000sqft elevated floors knodding my head [none of this exists, officially]. ---- Nothing is as it seems. ---- During DEF CON ~XX~ (approximately same timeframe as story above) it was publicly revealed that intelligence communities had redefined the word "intercept," to mean when a human operator catelogs a certain piece of data/traffic (i.e. not algorithms sorting). #1984 #newspeak #elevenyearsago ---- I no longer carry a cell phone. Don't use email. PO Box in profile
  - dgxyz 8mo ago
    Yeah well aware of that stuff here. Two companies I worked at had entirely airgapped infrastructure because they knew the adversarial situation wasn't winnable. Everything was checked for implants at goods in. It's shocking some of the shit that goes on. I run grey man where I can. Stuff that's private stays private. Paper and physical security is still good.
    - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
      >physical security is still good Possession is nine-tenths of the law (e.g. physical bullion; offline crypto keys; bullets; counter-bugging). >checked for implants ... shocking some of the shit that goes on I've seent some bullshit, myself — "shipping delays" — smelt their pure evil. Our facilities necessarily existed to be networked; but definitely had isolated departments.
  - King-Aaron 8mo ago
    > I no longer carry a cell phone. I'm not quite there yet, but after Netanyahu made that comment like "if you have a phone you're carrying a little piece of Israel with you" right after the pager attack stuff.. I keep the phone in the back of my backpack away from my meat bits.
    - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
      >no cell phone A one-way beeper allowed me to phase out mobile phone usage. Obviously presents inconveniences, but I'm semi-retired with no rush to be anywhere. Bonus health points: no locally-generated EMRadiation. [•] My provider (USA): <https://pagersdirect.net/ https://pagersdirect.net/> If you use numeric-only paging, bots haven't figured out how to SPAM, yet. Also available is alphanumeric email-to-page; two-way pagers also exist (but why?).
      - DANmode 8mo ago
        Longer battery life than phone, no microphone to access via baseband.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8mo ago
    > PO Box in profile Pretty sure government agencies will have no trouble finding you from that bit alone, and then tracking your movements is trivial. I mean, you have to show up and check the box periodically..
    - jkestner 8mo ago
      They implement a physical Tor each time their check their box - layers of Taskrabbits hiring Taskrabbits. One picks up the Mail and hands it off to the next. The owner is one of the Taskrabbits somewhere in the chain.
      - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
        Back in 2006, I became involved in a USPS investigation (witness/victim); barring specifics, the perpetrator's PO Box [0] was involved: the investigated would send minors in to retrieve packages, which is allowed ("possessor of key possesses mailbox privileges"). This made it extremely difficult to capture the actual perp. He eventually walked away with minimal consequence, for lack of evidence/possession. [0] established with false identification
    - ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
      I am already found — not hiding — just have to follow their rules.

doctor_radium 8mo ago

Agreed, but this would then inconvenience millions of non-techies. Could a solution be forcing Amazon (and Google and Flock and...) to open their backend software either for self-hosting or for running on somebody else's "cloud"? So subscribing to such a device isn't that different from getting web hosting from Dreamhost or Hetzner? Maybe there's a host or IP field in the settings that users can easily change?

dgxyz 8mo ago
I know this is not constructive, but fuck 'em and their convenience!
syntheticnature 8mo ago
If there was an IP setting users could change, all the self-hosting etc. forums would be talking about how to change it instead of explaining other options. I'd expect not just fixed hosts and an ecosystem dependent on their proprietary protocols, but also pinned certificates and secure boot so you can't change any of it. N.B. Flock isn't really targeting the consumer market.

dylan604 8mo ago

> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempting to leverage their users and their data for any other form of income. Companies used to do it all of the time. It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude to not sell out their users.

antonvs 8mo ago
> It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude ... Just for context, could you provide some examples of such people?
- macki0 8mo ago
  Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) come to mind, both founders could have made platfoms that would have been ad-ridden (and made a boat full of cash) but the founders chose not to
  - fakedang 8mo ago
    Uhh, Craigslist is literally an ad platform. They just didn't want anything to do with a middleman.
    - dylan604 8mo ago
      I think we can all agree the "ads" on CL are not even close to the same ballpark as the offerings of ad tech. Like to conflate the two as the same would be the most disingenuous bit of logic that I'd be embarrassed if I were the one to have made it.
trinsic2 8mo ago
The problem now is how can you trust any of these companies? The infrastructure is there to link this data if you have cameras that connect to the internet. How can you ever be sure this wont happen in secret? We have no guarantees that companies will follow the laws and laws are not even being enforced.