[HN Gopher] "You Have Zero Privacy" Says Internal Royal Canadian...
___________________________________________________________________
"You Have Zero Privacy" Says Internal Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Presentation
Author : emptybits
Score : 368 points
Date : 2020-11-17 08:10 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thetyee.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thetyee.ca)
| tareqak wrote:
| Someone needs to always immediately follow up with questions
| asking people who want others to give up their privacy to give
| theirs up first in turn.
|
| "Could I please get all of your phone records, browsing history,
| Internet account credentials, details of your friends and family,
| and anything else that you wouldn't want me to have but legal for
| me to have so long as you provide it to me willingly? If the
| answer is no, then why ask me to give up my privacy when you
| refuse to give up yours?"
| lwkl wrote:
| Quote of my coworker about why he doesn't want to vote yes on a
| referendum to overturn a law that expands our intelligence
| agencies rights for surveillance with oversight from a single
| judge and no transparency and accountability: ,,As long as they
| catch at least one of these assholes, I don't care about me
| being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a
| father."
|
| This opened my eyes most people have an irrational fear and
| think that these capabilities won't be abused. At the same time
| our state abused their surveillance capabilities during the
| cold war and gathered data on almost a million people. But
| people seem to have forgotten already.
|
| I'm talking about Switzerland if you are wondering what which
| of authoritarian regime I'm talking about.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| > "As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I
| don't care about me being surveilled. You will understand
| this when you become a father"
|
| I would probably make enemies very quickly as I would be
| sorely tempted to respond "So you want your children to live
| in a police state? God you are a terrible father."
| scotty79 wrote:
| You can get them thinking by making them realize that more
| than one of the assholes they are afraid of will be hired
| there and will have access to their and their kids most
| private data.
| sneak wrote:
| It's astounding how many ordinary regular humans want a
| father or a big brother to take the responsibility of looking
| after them and keeping them safe.
|
| The world is a scary place. The problem is that it doesn't
| become less so by giving up your privacy, it becomes more so.
|
| The world bought the idea that privacy and security are at
| odds, and that by giving up one, you gain the other. It's the
| biggest lie of our generation.
|
| I hope I don't live to see the chickens coming home to roost.
| It's happening in China and Russia, and what happened to
| Assange is a preview of what will eventually happen in the
| USA.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| > The world is a scary place.
|
| I can't agree with this. Life is hard but isn't scary. I'm
| far more concerned about losing my home to a natural
| disaster than terrorism. Fear is the media's new currency.
|
| There's nothing to be scared of, except maybe a dystopian
| future where you can be jailed or killed for your beliefs.
| sneak wrote:
| The world doesn't scare me, but it scares enough people
| (into doing stupid things in reaction to it) that it is
| accurately described as a scary place.
|
| I just don't scare easily. Many do.
| sdoering wrote:
| Eventually? You mean already is happening. It has started.
| But that only as a side note.
|
| The "problem" is, that there is not one universal
| "freedom". Freedom is many concepts packaged into one
| single word.
|
| Coming from Germany, I still remember the division by the
| Iron Curtain. Having lived on the western side few miles
| from the border and having talked to a lot of former GDR
| people (my father fled with his parents before the wall was
| build when he was still a little kid) during the years I
| came to understand two totally different forms of "freedom"
| at play in the different regimes:
|
| A lot of people in the east got away with critizizing their
| bosses and sometimes even becoming physical. Up to a
| certain point they even got away with being somewhat
| critical to the system and the problems within the system.
|
| In the west people got away with critizising the state
| quite well, while it became problematic to critique your
| bosses at your workplace. I know a lot of people in my
| father's generation who got fired for pointing out flaws in
| their workplace.
|
| We were able to travel to a lot of places (once we were
| well off enough to afford it). While my parents still
| struggled to pay for me being able to attend sport clubs.
|
| My while my SO's parents (she was born few years before the
| wall fell in the eastern part of Germany) were only ever
| able to travel to the east German coast, other eastern
| countries like Slowakia or what is now the Czech Republik,
| Romania or Bulgaria, Russia or Cuba (and they were by far
| less well off than my western German parents).
|
| I don't imply one system was better, one was worse. Well
| yes I do - the GDR was worse. But what I wanted to show is,
| that there are different kind of "freedoms" and that is
| just one example. Every form of freddom comes with inherent
| trade-offs.
|
| Because of preferences, personal values and said trade-offs
| other people tend to prefere different kinds of freedoms
| (while maybe not grasping that their choices impact others
| - like a tragedy of the commons thing). They seem to have a
| different hierarchy of what is important to them - and
| decide based on that. Be it in Germany, the US or as OP
| pointed out in Switzerland.
| mattm wrote:
| This is such a good comment.
|
| I was in China for a friend's wedding and his fiance's
| family was adding another floor to their house. I asked
| what kind of permission they needed. They said they
| didn't need anything. They just went ahead and did it.
|
| Contrast that to the US and, depending on the place, you
| could spend months arranging to get the proper paperwork
| and inspections to be able to do something like that.
|
| So while the Chinese person may not have the freedom to
| strongly criticize their government, in this case they
| did have more freedom to make an individual improvement
| to the quality of their immediate life.
|
| I think it's a huge issue when someone brings up
| "freedom". What does that even mean? In a society you're
| never truly free. There's always some form of constraint.
| You could go live as a hermit and be free but then you're
| constrained by the physical limitations of the
| environment.
|
| While walking to work (pre-covid) I'd see homeless people
| and wonder "Are they freer than me?" They can wake up and
| do whatever they want for the day. I'm the one that has
| to stick to a fairly regular schedule.
| Lio wrote:
| > I think it's a huge issue when someone brings up
| "freedom". What does that even mean?
|
| Someone smarter than me once wrote "Freedom is the
| freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
| granted, all else follows."
|
| If you can point out that someone in authority is wrong,
| without fear of death or persecution, then you have
| freedom and from that germ everything else can be
| reformed eventually.
|
| Dictators know this and it's why they don't let people
| laugh at them even when they clearly look stupid.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >I'm talking about Switzerland if you are wondering what
| which of authoritarian regime I'm talking about
|
| That's part of the the problem. Hundreds of years of
| (relative to everyone else) peace and stable not too abusive
| government makes people complacent.
|
| You won't hear many people from places that had repressive
| governments within their or their parents' lifetimes saying
| "but if it catches one terrorist."
| monkeynotes wrote:
| > You will understand this when you become a father
|
| Such a BS attitude. For one, it's self serving and selfish.
| It serves only to comfort the parent and has no consideration
| for the life their child will be handed when they become
| adults. Heck, even children and teenagers will suffer from
| freedom sapped by people who offload their agency to the
| government time and time again in exchange for an insulated
| "life". How can you make mistakes and learn if everything is
| under the eyeball of an authority who has the freedom to do
| as they please as long as it's in the name of public safety.
|
| Life entirely without risk and danger, at all costs, is not a
| life at all, and that's what you want to hand your daughters
| and sons?
|
| When you blindly let this legislation through because the
| first page of the draft reassures you it will get "assholes"
| off the streets you also tend to become entirely passive
| about the rest of the legislation. All sorts of side effects
| and detriments to society can be ushered in if you don't
| question big changes like this.
|
| People with the mentality of "at all costs we must be safe"
| are doing damage that is irreparable. We must accept that
| life is implicitly hazardous at times.
|
| I recognize my objection is futile, it's impossible to argue
| any case in the face of "think of the children". Genes want
| to survive and project themselves into the future, it's hard
| wired into us. The more technology and organization we have
| the more we are going to use it to abstract ourselves the
| human monument rather than mere organisms. We really can't
| help ourselves.
|
| This is possibly one of the most defining and interesting
| times to be alive. We get to witness the beginning of a
| madness, what happens when life is able to achieve its goal
| only to find out it's a meaningless dead end.
|
| Wow, that got dark quickly.
| kweks wrote:
| There is a nice counter-balance to the "I've got nothing to
| hide" idiom, which is "I've got nothing to hide, but I've got
| nothing to share".
|
| Changing the focus from "hiding", which insinuates
| underhandedness or immorality, to "sharing" - often allows
| the conversation to extend to "What would you be comfortable
| sharing with (the government | the police | your neighbors)
| etc.
|
| In my experience, this angle helps people grasp more quickly
| that they'd be uncomfortable sharing many things with most
| people.
| fsflover wrote:
| > ,,As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I
| don't care about me being surveilled. You will understand
| this when you become a father."
|
| _PRISM - NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single
| terrorist attack (tutanota.com)_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777115
|
| Fighting "assholes" is not even the goal of the surveillance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _I don't care about me being surveilled. You will understand
| this when you become a father_
|
| He's OK with random strangers surveilling his children then?
| Because no child molesters have ever been employed by the
| public sector, of course. And no government has ever leaked
| data onto the dark web. Honestly, there should be a parenting
| license people need to pass with exams.
| gspr wrote:
| Or, if they're of the type that are actually ok with that, then
| "please install this webcam next to your toilet" usually works.
| Followed by "what do you have to hide? Surely you're not
| committing CRIMES in there, are you??"
| muzani wrote:
| My standard response to telemarketers is, "I'm at work now.
| Could you give me your phone number and I'll call you back
| tonight?"
|
| They always get offended at the idea of me calling them at
| their personal number.
| Simon_says wrote:
| Isn't that an old Seinfeld bit?
| uCantCauseUCant wrote:
| I would- the reason being, that technical progress can not
| continue before a panopticon is instated.
|
| 9/11 proofed that humanity can not be entrusted with a flying
| car.
|
| Problem is, humanity and/or a state can not be entrusted to act
| reasonable with that data. I have no solution to that dilemma.
| Lio wrote:
| What people often forget is that often it's not Big Brother you
| need to be wary of but Little Brother.
|
| That is, low level bureaucrats that work for you local council,
| your local police force or at your local hospital or telecoms
| company. People who might actually know you or that you might
| meet socially. A friend of a friend maybe.
|
| These are the people being given access to all your private
| secrets...
| Folcon wrote:
| I'm not sure that's always a good start to a line of
| questioning? Don't get me wrong, I like the reasoning, but
| perhaps, "what expectations of privacy do you have for yourself
| or your family?".
|
| Their answer to that might be a better starting point?
|
| If they don't have any, then at least they would be consistent
| =)... You can also then discuss what kind of a society comes
| from that position and whether that's a good one to live in?
|
| Alternatively another question is, "do you and your colleagues
| want to be stewards of this data you collect?"
|
| What's an appropriate / reasonable punishment for failing to be
| good stewards? Jail time? Fines? Personal or organisational?
| Paying money into charities designed to act as public
| oversight?
|
| Starting off combative feels nice, but just gets people's
| hackles up in my experience =)...
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| They're probably not the best people to be asking that
| question anyway. Police, politicians, and especially anybody
| who works in a national security role, are all people who
| have already accepted living with seriously diminished
| privacy in order to do their jobs. It's also not terribly
| surprising the journalists are mostly rather delinquent when
| it comes to privacy controversies, as privacy gets in the way
| of a journalist doing their job as often as it does a police
| officer.
| Folcon wrote:
| This is a really good point and I'm not sure how to really
| tackle it other than ask if they're also comfortable with
| the same being true for their families as well as
| themselves?
|
| There were cases where lack of privacy for public figures
| family members have caused issues[0][1]. I don't want to
| focus on that specific story, it's just an example.
|
| This might be a case where people are happy about that
| information being public? Or maybe they have a more nuanced
| take? For example, report that it happened, but don't print
| their name / picture? (for example both articles below did
| name, but only nytimes seems to have also done picture)
|
| Where you draw the lines on this stuff can be really
| important.
|
| - [0]:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
| politic...
|
| - [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/nyregion/chiara-
| de-blasio...
| feanaro wrote:
| > Don't get me wrong, I like the reasoning, but perhaps,
| "what expectations of privacy do you have for yourself or
| your family?".
|
| I feel like some people flippantly respond "none" to this,
| which they can afford because they are not expecting to
| _really_ be compelled to give away their personal information
| on the spot. The response suggested by the OP would give them
| an opportunity to prove their position immediately.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| My answer, since I love to play devil's advocate, would be,
| "No, _you_ can 't have any of that information, because I
| only trust governments and corporations with it!" Then
| watch them twitch a little.
| Folcon wrote:
| That's true, but starting the question on that basis and
| also framing the question around it is important.
|
| The public / audience of the debate need to be constantly
| reminded that these rules apply to them as well and they
| need to ask themselves, what am I comfortable with living
| under? Do I trust this administration? The current law
| enforcement? Forever? What could they do to me or my family
| if we suddenly become persona non grata?
|
| To be honest even under this system people can reason that
| this is just giving the police etc powers, so even then
| their "privacy" isn't really at risk.
|
| They aren't necessarily thinking that:
|
| - data can be leaked
|
| - data could be sold
|
| - you can get malicious officers
|
| - the data can be used for other purposes
|
| - etc
|
| These are the other parts of the conversation that need to
| also be thought about because otherwise this is just
| another security blanket.
| tareqak wrote:
| Your phrasing is definitely a better initial starting point.
| I do think that my phrasing has its place if a non-answer is
| given after the second or third time.
|
| Your follow-up questions are great too.
|
| This sort of dialog / FAQ for "what do you have to hide"
| needs to be available somewhere online with a catchy URI e.g.
| https://privacymatters.org (I don't know if this is real just
| an example).
| Folcon wrote:
| Definitely agree that your stronger take is needed if
| people say none.
|
| But that's why in my opinion, a question about what society
| people are looking to live in is important. We can start to
| draw out what people are and aren't comfortable with.
|
| Personally I think that in addition to websites, more media
| needs to be available for the public to discuss this topic
| more and get a feel for it.
|
| EG: Mr Robot raised some questions about whether the
| hacking and casual discovery of personal information they
| were showing was realistic.
|
| Perhaps "Man in the High Castle", I've not seen it, so not
| sure if it covers the notion of the nation state turning
| hostile and then leveraging collected information to attack
| specific citizens, but something along those lines.
|
| Also things like the munk debates to foster discussion.
|
| In my experience media does a much better job of getting
| people to empathise with different circumstances which
| would get them really thinking what these things might mean
| for them.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| There is power imbalance there. Even if they agree with it,
| what you can do with their private data is not the same as what
| they can do with yours.
| youShould9 wrote:
| You should volunteer yourself to be the change you want to see
| in the world rather than sit on your hands for Superman to do
| it.
|
| You are a part of the system that does this. This is
| irresponsible deflecting.
|
| This community champions & builds these systems and puts it on
| others to challenge their use in society that you also belong
| to?
|
| That's incredibly frustrating and disheartening.
|
| I know literally you're one person. But this a broadly shared
| ignorance.
|
| Your lack of character to have these simple conversations where
| they need to happen, scaled across the population is why
| society is where it is.
|
| Why should anyone else come to your rescue?
| salawat wrote:
| The issue is there is a non-trivial portion of even industry
| insiders who buy into the "nothing to hide" rhetoric. I can't
| count the number of team outings I've had these conversations
| and get stonewalled on "Well, just be a Luddite then." I
| figured it's some sort of Upton Sinclairism, but most of them
| weren't even relying on it for a paycheck, and saw someone
| complaining about (for example) someone being nervous about
| the use of voice assistants like Google Home, Siri, Cortana,
| or Alexa around them, and wishing to have those devices
| turned off burdensome, or unreasonable even if broached
| politely.
|
| Do not seem to have that issue with people historically
| targeted by governments though.
| optimuspaul wrote:
| "give up their privacy" that's a funny phrase because it
| assumes that privacy was a thing they had in the first place.
|
| I am in favor of privacy but I'm not under the delusion that it
| is something I have ever really had.
| api wrote:
| They usually respond by just whipping out a thought stopper
| like "pedophiles."
| dmurray wrote:
| You don't have a symmetrical relationship with the government.
| Do you ask the IRS every year "can you please send me 25% of
| all the money you collected this year? If not, why ask me to
| give up mine?"
|
| I'm in favour of strong privacy protections, but this argument
| isn't one I find convincing.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Why can I not be pissed off at my government abusing my data?
| We should also be pissed off at the insanely wasteful
| spending that the federal government does as well.
| dmurray wrote:
| You can resent paying tax, and argue that you should pay
| less tax or that your tax money should be spent more
| effectively. But arguing that the government has no right
| to extract taxation is...fringe, let's say.
|
| In the same way, arguing that the government has absolutely
| no right to information you would prefer to keep private is
| not compelling. Better to demand limitations on what data
| can collect and what it can do with that data.
| Renaud wrote:
| The trick is maybe not to expect it from the government but
| from those who work in it.
|
| Everyone has something that can be used against them. If not
| legally, at least as leverage, blackmail or just to
| impersonate or humiliate.
|
| Enough to destroy someone's reputation, livelihood, family,
| life.
| [deleted]
| gambiting wrote:
| Well I have done this in the past to people I know who say they
| have "nothing to hide" and the answer they give is super simple
| - "I'm happy to provide all of the above and more to law
| enforcement agencies at any point. I don't have any problem
| with authority and I don't understand why you do.".
|
| You can then explain that the data does get misused, but they
| always just say that it won't happen to them or if they do get
| in a hairy situation they will always explain themselves since
| after all they have nothing to hide.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The best retort is "You don't get to decide that - your
| persecutor does and you have no way of knowing what their
| twisted ideology will find 'wrong' with your past actions."
| gambiting wrote:
| To which again, the answer is "I trust the authority and I
| trust the system". I've heard this too many times,
| ultimately the conversation ends with "but I trust the
| police and I trust the courts, so I _really_ don 't care"
| garbagetime wrote:
| The (unlikely) fact the person has done nothing wrong seems
| to be an irrelevancy: an immoral government will target per
| anyway.
|
| See model-citizen Uyghurs becoming targeted by the Chinese
| government just for being Uyghurs.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well the example I like to give is that pre WW2 many
| countries gathered completely normal census data, but of
| course during WW2 Nazis used it to find out exactly where
| Jews lived. So the data was collected with perfectly good
| intentions and it was then used to kill people.
|
| To which of course all I hear is
|
| "Well yes, but that's not going to happen to the UK, so I
| don't think it's important"
| garbagetime wrote:
| On the one hand antisemitism is definitely a massive,
| deep issue in the Labour party. On the other hand there's
| no way Jews could be systematically targeted in the
| future.
| codazoda wrote:
| I'm starting to create a list of abuses that have happened to
| people who have "nothing to hide". Are there any examples
| from the community here?
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _if they do get in a hairy situation they will always explain
| themselves since after all they have nothing to hide_
|
| Every middle class person thinks that but what they don't
| understand is that cops spend their entire lives being lied
| to, every day, nearly everyone they speak to who isn't a
| fellow cop is lying to them. So that you are lying is their
| default position. They're going to go with whatever it says
| on their screen or whatever another cop told them, 100% of
| the time.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Ask them if they'd also be fine with hackers potentially
| leaking all their account data to the public.
|
| There are enough real-life examples, like the Equifax debacle
| or that "dating" site where multiple people committed suicide
| when their online identities got leaked.
|
| The only way to guarantee personal data cannot be abused by
| anyone, authority or not, is when those data don't exist at
| all. We _know_ that governments are too incompetent to follow
| best practices in security, we _know_ that this kind of power
| gets abused with barely any limits because there 's no
| accountability(e.g. when a prominent German singer did a
| concert police officers made 83 lookups of her data in the
| police database just in that single night. Nothing ever came
| out of it even though the police had to admit those numbers
| aren't possible without abuse).
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I suspect that to a great degree, people who say they have
| nothing to hid _do_ have something to hide, but are trying
| to bluster their way out of closer scrutiny. The Ashley
| Madison thing is an excellent example, if anyone would
| commit suicide over having details of that nature leaked
| they certainly wouldn 't admit to having anything of the
| sort on their conscience when discussing the matter with
| friends or family.
|
| It's a bit of a tricky situation because as has been noted
| upthread, the best practical way to maintain privacy is to
| simulate the ambient data noise. So in a sense, loudly
| proclaiming one has nothing to hide is the best strategy
| for keeping one's own privacy secure, but at the expense of
| everyone else's.
|
| I don't get into these conversations much, but if I do
| perhaps I should try out the response: "I don't have
| anything to hide either, but I know a lot of my fellow
| citizens value their privacy. So I'm willing to advocate
| for it even though I know it will lead to more scrutiny on
| myself. Anyone who's afraid of that extra scrutiny is
| suspect! What are you really hiding!?"
| livueta wrote:
| This reminds me of an old /g/ post:
|
| ---
|
| The thing people don't realize about the 'nothing to hide'
| mantra is that it only makes sense if someone looks at your
| whole life. If you really did have someone examining
| everything you ever did, watching a playback of your entire
| life, through your eyes - and this was the only form that
| anyone would get your data in, by watching everything - then
| yeah, you probably wouldn't need to hide anything. That
| person would see everything you do, and understand you pretty
| well by the end of it. All the things you did, even the
| seemingly weird things, would make sense in context. They'd
| sympathize with you.
|
| But that isn't what happens. What does happen is huge amounts
| of data are recorded, but only little pieces are looked at at
| a time. And suddenly you do have something to hide, because
| the people looking at the data on you won't have the full
| story, and will therefore jump to conclusions based on what
| they have - and because you won't know when and where this is
| happening, and what specifically they're looking at, you
| won't be able to set them straight. Suddenly your every
| action has to look innocent on its own, you can't do anything
| that is justifiable given prior events or knowledge. Your
| wife has been treating you like shit for months, and finally
| you snap and yell at her? If they only see the end of it then
| you look like the bad guy. You're researching bombs because
| you're interested in the historical development of
| technology, including explosive technology? Tough shit, you
| don't get to explain that, to them it will just look like
| you're a big bad terrorist wanting to blow up the government.
|
| You might say that they will have all your information so
| they can fact-check. This is wrong, they have neither the
| incentive or the time to trawl through your whole life
| working out your motivations for everything. It's easiest to
| just jump to conclusions. And employers will look at this and
| make judgments on you - without you having any idea what
| they're seeing and what they're concluding from it.
|
| In public, people carefully monitor their behavior so they
| appear normal to anyone who only sees them for a second.
| They're only willing to show their weirder sides to people
| who know them, who won't make big judgments on them based on
| minor quirks. With total surveillance, everyone will be in
| public, all the time.
|
| ---
|
| I wonder how much a version of the fundamental attribution
| error is responsible for "nothing to hide" kind of thinking.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The problem is that too many people have a world view wherein
| government can do no wrong or never does enough wrong to
| matter. That world view (or massive amounts of cognitive
| dissonance) is a necessary prerequisite for being willing to
| tolerate this kind of government invasion or privacy.
|
| Making these people uncomfortable with giving the government
| all that info will just move them from the naive camp to the
| cognitive dissonance camp. Other than actually experiencing
| significant government abuse I don't think anything will change
| these people's minds. Political ideology is like a religion
| these days.
| mabbo wrote:
| Feels like laws are needed around this. Explicit, unambiguous
| laws. If you go above and beyond the law in terms of invasion of
| privacy, while acting as a law enforcement officer or on their
| behalf, you serve time in prison.
|
| Provide a handbook to all law enforcement members explaining
| these rules. Give them access to whistleblower hotlines. Make an
| agency whose job it is to look into such complaints and file
| charges. The problems would vanish in a very short time.
|
| But naturally, such a change would have to come from the top- and
| the government does not want to give up this power it has over
| its citizens.
| fistfucker3000 wrote:
| Maybe we can have this for cops murdering people too
| solinent wrote:
| The RCMP is a complete joke.
| kleiba wrote:
| https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/
| surajs wrote:
| I've given up all privacy and never felt more liberated.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I've stopped paying my credit card bills and never felt more
| liberated.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of
| servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home
| from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down
| and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly
| upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
| d33lio wrote:
| Yet another reason why I do not want to live in the great white
| north.
|
| Although, in time depending on how politics slants in the US
| there actually may be positive tax advantages for upper middle
| class earners ($150k-290k).
| johlindenbaum wrote:
| $150k+ household income is not considered middle class in
| Canada.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-votes-2019-middle-cl...
| novok wrote:
| People think of the kinds of income that makes the same money
| as doctors, lawyers, etc as upper middle, and the kind of
| people who can afford 10k sqft mansions, private jets and
| lambos as upper class, even if the numbers shake out to
| something else.
| ska wrote:
| Not really in the US either, e.g. Pew research cutoff is 145k
| for family of 3.
|
| You can handwave around the 150k end, but he 300k end is
| laughable.
| fudged71 wrote:
| As a Canadian I find this article pretty funny since there's no
| news in it whatsoever. It's not a particularly reputable news
| source up here.
|
| "There's little privacy anymore" is a reality not a joke.
| Citizens chose to engage in social media and to buy technologies
| which expose their private lives.
|
| The RCMP bought some script kiddie toys to explore Facebook and
| the dark web... because they have things like child exploitation
| units meant to look in places like that. Not news.
|
| I feel no threat to my privacy based on what's written here... at
| all.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| tell me something I don't know... I know you know what I know.
| arpa wrote:
| And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all. I am
| actually over preaching the need for privacy, I just try to
| practice opsec daily and identify my failures and weak spots.
|
| I tried to be a privacy purist: a smartphone without internet on
| a prepaid card running opensource software (likely with a
| backdoored baseband chip, but). Internet through rotating VPNs
| only on incognito browsers with anti-fingerprinting plugins, no
| sms'es, personal email on a self-hosted server with at-rest
| encryption...
|
| All while gaining absolutely nothing out of it, but
| inconveniences like filling out captchas and needing to go extra
| steps to open up wikipedia. That behaviour itself was a failure
| in opsec - I am sure that it put me on a watchlist somewhere.
|
| I'm a "normie" now, trying to emulate the "noise" that is around
| me. I believe that's much more a viable approach than being a
| hardcore privacy-ist(?)
| some_random wrote:
| The majority of people do not care because the police can
| legally blow your door of its hinges, kick the shit out of you,
| drag you into a van, and stuff you in a cell all before you get
| to the due process part of the justice system. They have
| accepted that this is fine. Telling them that they can be spied
| on by the government and that the only way to stay safe is to
| accept a quality of life drop and also learn up on half a dozen
| relatively complicated technological concepts is not going to
| work.
| treeman79 wrote:
| If your on a government officials bad list, then all you said
| applies. Deserved or otherwise.
|
| Being placed on list is still a fight.
|
| Give politicians free reign to everyone's browser
| history/social media account, well Suddenly a lot of people
| are on a bad list.
| cheschire wrote:
| Well, not everyone. The politicians themselves will have
| everything encrypted because they'll call it CUI.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Unclassified_Infor
| m...
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Where I work "CUI" is just the header we slap on all of
| our PowerPoints on NIPR[1], and basically means "don't
| email this to your civilian email account, or otherwise
| share it with people outside of work"...but it's still
| feasible, from a technical standpoint. It's just wrong
| from an administrative policy perspective. CUI doesn't
| automatically entail/require encryption. Most people
| don't even bother to encrypt their emails in Outlook even
| when chock-full of CUI documents, or worse, high-impact
| PII/PHI.
|
| If politicians want encrypted comms they'll probably have
| a //SECRET Blackberry or iPhone.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIPRNet
| inetsee wrote:
| Years ago I worked on a Special Access project.
| Everything that got thrown away went into the burn
| barrels, whether it had a classified label or not. Of
| course, when California took away our license to burn
| stuff, we acquired a grinder type shredder.
| novok wrote:
| That is just an easy general policy to adopt, secret
| project or not. At this point I would call it as basic as
| using HTTPS, just a general good practice.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Shredder on Grinder?
|
| I'm going to burn for that one :)
| davidwitt415 wrote:
| I'm in favor of the Black Mirror approach for politicians;
| Give the people full transparency into politicians'
| activities. This shouldn't be so controversial, given that
| they work for us, but of course, that is when you would see
| some _real_ concern for privacy!
| dddbbb wrote:
| > This shouldn't be so controversial, given that they
| work for us,
|
| Pretty suspect line of reasoning when you apply it to
| literally any other scenario.
| freshhawk wrote:
| Sure, if you compare it to scenarios that aren't remotely
| the same. I think we were supposed to take it as an
| obvious given that this applies to scenarios where the
| side giving away the power is watching the side that was
| given the power.
| dejavuagain wrote:
| A. They think you work for them.
|
| B. They write the laws. For example is illegal for USA
| politicians to do business with the children of foreign
| leaders, but it's not illegal for children of USA
| politicians to do business with foreign leaders.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > Give politicians free reign to everyone's browser
| history/social media account
|
| I'd argue that this is the core issue: _everyone is on a
| list now_. Where did the presumption of innocence go?
| xd wrote:
| _The majority of people do not care because the police can
| legally blow your door of its hinges, kick the shit out of
| you, drag you into a van, and stuff you in a cell all before
| you get to the due process part of the justice system._
|
| No, the police can not legally "kick the shit out of you",
| they can use reasonable force if you decide to ignore or
| refuse instructions when they have a warrant which has been
| obtained via the courts. The warrant will only be granted
| after presenting substantive evidence that the person they
| are wishing to arrest has committed serious crime i.e.
| possession / distribution of indecent images of children,
| drugs, money laundering etc which required rapid entry to
| secure evidence. They don't get to enter your property for
| minor offences or on a whim.
| bdamm wrote:
| US Marshals straight up executed an American citizen in
| Portland on order of the President. Trump himself all but
| admitted it, in classic Trump style. I'd say that ranks as
| "kick the shit out of you" and, since there was no
| consequence for the police or the one who ordered the hit,
| it sure appears to be "legal".
| gknoy wrote:
| the police can not legally "kick the shit out of you"
|
| I realize that we don't feel such behavior is legal, but
| recent history has shown that when police misbehave at this
| level (cf. Breonna Taylor), there are no meaningful
| consequences.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > Breonna Taylor
|
| Given the discussion topic, maybe you should cite an
| incident that the RCMP was involved in, or at least one
| that occurred in Canada?
|
| I could cite police violence in Hong Kong, but I think
| that would be off-topic too.
| freshhawk wrote:
| So many engineers live and breathe P.O.S.I.W.I.D.
| (purpose of a system is what it does) in all technical
| areas and then are violently opposed to that kind of
| thinking when it comes to politics or sociology.
|
| I'm honestly baffled by it. I get that people can be
| ignorant of how police act in the real world because they
| have no experience with it and watch cop shows on TV, but
| once you learn what the actual behaviour is ...
| salawat wrote:
| My God, I'd not heard that one before. Like I'm fully
| aware of the philosophy, but not of the acronym as a name
| for it. Thank you. Filing that for later use.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > they can use reasonable force
|
| "Reasonable force" for values of "reasonable" that are
| defined by a group of people that doesn't include me, no
| thanks.
| xd wrote:
| "[a] person is privileged to use such force as reasonably
| appears necessary to defend him or herself against an
| apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from
| another."[1]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
| defense_(United_States)
|
| In England it's got what I think is clearer definition:
|
| "Force is reasonable if a reasonable person would think
| it necessary to use force and would have used the same
| level of force as the defendant."
|
| As far as I'm aware these definitions apply to police
| officers.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| For police officers its defined by the policy of their
| department because they have training, less-lethal
| weapons, and are obligated to initiate force on subjects.
| The reasonable person in this case is a law enforcement
| officer who has the requisite training and experience.
| isochronous wrote:
| Not in the USA, they don't. Not as long as the cops in
| question don't know for a FACT that their behavior
| violates established law - even if it DOES violate
| established law, they aren't held accountable unless a
| previous court case established precedent under almost
| the EXACT SAME CIRCUMSTANCES. As you might expect,
| finding a previous case in which the exact same
| circumstances applied is not an easy thing to do. Read up
| on qualified immunity: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-
| qualified-immunity-and-what...
| yeahnotreally wrote:
| > No, the police can not legally "kick the shit out of
| you", they can use reasonable force if you decide to ignore
| or refuse instructions when they have a warrant which has
| been obtained via the courts.
|
| Ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kelly-Thomas-Police-
| Beati...
| xd wrote:
| Yeap, there are bad actors in the police just like in all
| other walks of life. Do we demonise doctors because of
| the likes of Harold Shipman?
| klyrs wrote:
| No, we require extensive training, and re-training, of
| doctors. On top of that, they need malpractice insurance,
| which balloons for the individual if they're royal
| fuckups. They aren't demonized, they're _held
| accountable_.
|
| Demonization is a consequence of bad behavior combined
| with radical unaccountability.
| yeahnotreally wrote:
| >Yeap, there are bad actors in the police just like in
| all other walks of life.
|
| Irrelevant. It's evidence that refutes your earlier claim
| that police can not legally "kick the shit out of you".
| They can. Dismissing them as "bad actors" doesn't change
| that fact.
| [deleted]
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I'd take it a step further after having read the article
| associated with that horrifying picture. Two of the
| officers were found not guilty. The third had charges
| dropped. This isn't just "bad actors", this is bad actors
| with the backing of the court system.
| hluska wrote:
| Sadly, while this answer is theoretically correct (and
| should be correct), reality is a lot muddier.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" The majority of people do not care because the police can
| legally blow your door of its hinges, kick the shit out of
| you, drag you into a van, and stuff you in a cell all before
| you get to the due process part of the justice system. They
| have accepted that this is fine."_
|
| No. The majority don't care because it hasn't happened to
| them or someone they love.
|
| Once it does you can believe they'll start caring pretty
| quick.
| int_19h wrote:
| Case in point. Maryland SWAT did that to the mayor of
| Berwyn Heights, shooting his dogs in the process:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayo
| r...
|
| So he spearheaded an accountability bill that mandated the
| state police to publish a yearly report on how often SWAT
| is deployed, for what reasons, how often lethal force ends
| up being used etc (it should be noted that police unions
| fought this tooth and nail, even though it didn't actually
| hold them accountable for any of it - only exposed how SWAT
| is _actually_ used most of the time).
|
| http://goccp.maryland.gov/reports-publications/law-
| enforceme...
|
| But there's a catch. You might notice from the link above
| that the reports end in 2014. That's because the law had a
| 5-year sunset clause, and nobody bothered to renew it.
|
| So, even when a fairly influential politician from a
| privileged background gets involved for personal reasons,
| that's not still enough long-term.
| salawat wrote:
| Funny on how sunset dates are the exceptions rather than
| the norm they should be.
| suifbwish wrote:
| You will see that even if it happens to 250k people, no one
| will believe it's happening just like covid
| n0nc3 wrote:
| Typically, when something like that happens to an
| "educated" person they are discredited in some way first.
| Surveillance makes that process a whole lot easier.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Or someone in their social class even.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| I feel like LEO's going out and saying this over and over is
| just them trying to move the window, with a little help from
| Silicon Valley executives[0]. The more they say, it the more
| the Jedi mind trick will work.
|
| [0]
| https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/home/blog/13018078/privacy...
| xoa wrote:
| > _And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all._
|
| I really, really dislike this meme. Try to put yourself into
| the shoes of a non-tech person, remembering that "non-tech" is
| in no way a synonym for "stupid" or "lazy". They may be a
| doctor, lawyer or professor, a construction worker, service
| industry person or driver. Maybe they make a reasonable amount
| of money, or maybe they're on minimum wage working multiple
| jobs to make ends meet.
|
| Now please _QUANTIFY_ what "care" means. I'll give it a shot:
| 1 hour a week. I think that a non-tech person is going to need
| to average putting in at least that much time, consistently
| over a year or two, to make major advances on defending their
| privacy in a Digital Wild West environment. We on HN tend to
| have not merely significant digital system knowledge, but also
| significant _meta_ knowledge. We don 't just know answers, we
| know questions and where to look for answers and how to try to
| find them, the kinds of keywords to use, the kinds of other
| people to ask and where to find them. This is of course true in
| any area, but it's easy to take for granted how much of a
| difference that makes. Someone starting from scratch is going
| to spend a lot of time even learning that things like firewalls
| or personal VPNs or the like exist at all, let alone what ones
| to use and how. They probably won't already have their own
| technical infrastructure either, like owning a a personal
| domain with email, and understand the various factors involved
| with that. Which in turn makes it harder to use unique
| addresses per site (hence services like Apple Sign In stepping
| in, which itself has concerns). It's deep, deep waters.
|
| But at $15/hr, even just an hour a week is $780 a year. That's
| real money. Maybe they'd be better off just spending more of
| that directly. But on what? I think the answer for some is
| "Apple devices" which they've heard are somewhat more updated
| and private, which could be some fraction of the premium for
| those that care. Or maybe it'd be better to put some into
| political donations and activism. But how exactly to do that
| effectively is itself an area of expertise that will take time.
| Etc etc.
|
| A sense of helplessness in the face of seemingly overwhelming
| force isn't the same as "not caring at all", nor ignorance that
| improvement is even possible. Contrary to your assertion, we've
| repeatedly seen the public being quite uncomfortable with mass
| surveillance. Large percentages polled don't like the idea of
| personalized advertising. Laws trying to enhance it have passed
| repeatedly, despite overwhelming concentrated interest
| opposition. The laws sometimes get watered down or are
| misaimed, but that's not surprising for technical things pushed
| by the public. But the _desire_ is certainly there for a
| majority, even if many have given up, or are merely quietly
| getting more angry about it.
|
| So please be careful about blithely ascribing motivations to
| swaths of hundreds of millions to billions of people from our
| perch of expertise. Life is more complicated than that, and
| furthermore it's self-defeating. We, people who care a lot
| about this _and_ have some idea of what to do about it, need
| large numbers of regular people who care but _don 't_ know what
| to do. Writing them off instead is stupid. Of course, that
| means we also need to care about satisfying their needs on the
| reverse too.
| _jal wrote:
| > I really, really dislike this meme.
|
| So, try: The majority of people do not
| rationally save for emergencies, let alone retirement.
|
| It is roughly equally true. I have no idea how to compare the
| relative impacts on social stability; keeping a sizable
| percentage of the population in economically precarious
| positions is likely more destabilizing, but spying and
| blackmail can have massive effects, too.
|
| > A sense of helplessness in the face of seemingly
| overwhelming force isn't the same as "not caring at all"
|
| I look at this as:
|
| (1) Roughly the same proportion of people at any given time
| will be [failing to save, feeding the surveillance beast].
|
| (2) Change the environment, and you change their behavior on
| the margin. (Opt-out 401K increases overall savings rates;
| safe defaults frequently don't get changed.)
|
| (3) Change the incentives, and you change behavior
| permanently. (Ownership stakes encourage savings; close
| channels that leak personal information.)
| jmnicolas wrote:
| No really most people don't care. Out of a group of 4 tech
| people that I spoke about privacy, one is concerned but won't
| go further than having an iPhone (even if he knows privacy is
| just marketing from Apple) and the others though they have
| the technical knowledge to make some changes really don't
| care.
|
| One even told me that he wished Google knew him better so
| some functionalities worked better for him.
|
| The non tech people don't even let me talk to them about
| privacy. I lost half my Whatsapp contacts that didn't want to
| install Signal.
|
| > But at $15/hr, even just an hour a week is $780 a year.
| That's real money.
|
| Please stop with this meme that every second of one's life is
| equal to some amount of money.
|
| For example I'm learning Flutter on my spare time right now.
| It doesn't cost me a dime because otherwise I would watch
| YouTube videos or some other unproductive activities.
|
| If you push it too far soon you're going to calculate how
| much sleep "costs" you!
| [deleted]
| mistermann wrote:
| >> And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all.
|
| > I really, really dislike this meme.
|
| I dislike it too, but for a different reason.
|
| This story is a conspiracy theory. _Literally_.
|
| At least one difference I notice in this case is that neither
| the article itself, nor the comments in this thread (at the
| time of writing this) contain either of the terms "conspiracy
| theory" or "QAnon" - but attach either of those, and you'll
| find all sorts of people who will suddenly develop a very
| passionate sense of caring/interest of a different kind: _in
| discrediting, downvoting, and silencing_ anyone who in any
| way supports or perpetuates _this type of_ a story.
|
| Conspiracy theories: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&pa
| ge=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| QAnon: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=fa
| lse&qu...
|
| In this case, I suspect the main difference is that the
| "public relations" departments of the Canadian Government and
| CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) are bush league
| compared to that of the US. In the US, this story would
| probably have been preemptively "taken care of" in the media
| before it even broke, or in 24 hours via a full court press
| if it did happen to accidentally fall through the cracks, and
| people would fall in line as they always do.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_behaviour#Biological_swa.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_behaviour#People
|
| Let's wait and see how the Canucks respond, assuming this
| gets any traction in mainstream newspapers (I'm guessing it
| does not).
| verall wrote:
| How is this story related to QAnon or a conspiracy theory?
| I feel like this is a true example of "begging the
| question", you just sort of assumed that part was true.
|
| Who in the US is "taking care of" stories? If you're going
| to make bold claims like this, include some details.
| mistermann wrote:
| It _isn 't_ related (more precisely: a relation _has not
| been established_ ) - that was my point.
|
| I was describing how _these types of stories_ can be
| discredited, by simply attaching a label to them...and
| how this can act upon people 's interest levels and
| thinking styles.
|
| > I feel like this is a true example of "begging the
| question", you just sort of assumed that part was true.
|
| I feel like this sort of rhetoric is a fine example of
| the very phenomenon that I described ("...but attach
| either of those, and you'll find...).
|
| > Who in the US is "taking care of" stories?
|
| Not sure _who_ it is exactly. And unless they for some
| reason decide to voluntarily confess, I suspect we will
| never know _for sure_.
|
| Are you under the impression that the United States
| government never uses propaganda? Maybe you guys have the
| state on a much shorter leash than the Canadians.
|
| > If you're going to make bold claims like this, include
| some details.
|
| I wonder: does your mind desire evidence when it
| encounters the inverse of my ideas?
|
| Regardless, to answer your question, here is an example:
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/q-fades-qanon-s-
| domin...
|
| This article implicitly(!) asserts that the Dominion
| story is an invention of QAnon. How it works (from a
| neuroscientific, "belief formation" perspective) is,
| these stories are printed in the news, and then people
| who read them believe what is in the story.
|
| Whether it is actually true or not has very little
| bearing. Not only do most people (who voice an opinion)
| not care what is actually true, they will go to great
| lengths to discredit anyone _who mentions the very notion
| of 'What is Actually True'_. This is not just an opinion
| - the phenomenon can be observed.
|
| To me, this behavior is absolutely fascinating. Why most
| people have such a strong aversion to the topic is also
| interesting.
|
| Back to the article...
|
| > "While the theory has already been debunked --
| including by Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity
| and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is tasked with
| national security related to the internet and
| technology..."
|
| Notice the language used in such articles, words like
| _debunked_.
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/debun
| k - _to show that something is less important, less good,
| or less true than it has been made to appear_
|
| If you have an eye for detail, you may notice that this
| is a very popular word with journalists these days. You
| may also notice that "debunk" has a fair amount of
| uncertainty and wiggle room _in its explicit definition_
| (if not so much in how it is interpreted by people who
| read it). This sort of wiggle room can come in handy if
| one is ever called to testify in court.
|
| I won't bother doing a full analysis of the article, I
| have not once encountered a single non-conspiracy-
| theorist who is able to discuss this topic with the same
| attention to accuracy as they would if we were discussing
| a technical topic like programming - I am merely drawing
| people's attention to the phenomenon. I have no illusions
| whatsoever that I am going to change a single person's
| mind (and believe me, I've tried), in the slightest.
|
| You are free to believe whatever you would like, as is
| everyone else. And Mother Nature will reward us
| accordingly, in the long run.
|
| But I will say this:
|
| _What gets us into trouble is not what we don 't know.
| It's what we know for sure that just ain't so._
|
| - Mark Twain
| verall wrote:
| > I feel like this sort of rhetoric is a fine example of
| the very phenomenon that I described
|
| I see your point, that by attaching certain labels (like
| a logical fallacy), many people write off information
| without independently judging its veracity (whether the
| fallacy actually occured)
|
| Yet in your case, you still fail to support your key
| claim:
|
| > I was describing how these types of stories can be
| discredited, by simply attaching a label to them...
|
| Obviously some people will never read past the label,
| whether it is "Qanon" or "socialism", but plenty of
| people do read past the label, and independently try to
| discover what is true.
|
| I don't think Dominion conspiracy is false because some
| low quality nbcnews article said it started on qanon -
| where it "started" does not really matter to me. I think
| it's false because it's obviously politically motivated
| and doesn't make any fucking sense. There would be
| noticable statistical differences between the results of
| Dominion and other voting machines.
|
| I reject the premise you seem to be trying to push, that
| only conspiracy theorists care about truth. I care about
| truth and am not a conspiracy theorist. Some conspiracy
| theories turning out to be broadly true (e.g. nsa
| metadata surveillance and mkultra) has no bearing on the
| truth of other conspiracy theories.
|
| Conspiracy theorists are a result of modern magic like
| airplanes and fiat currency being poorly explained in
| school and bad critical thinking skills. Most conspiracy
| theorists believe in multiple directly conflicting
| theories because it maximizes the chance of being correct
| at some point.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Yet in your case, you still fail to support your key
| claim:
|
| >> I was describing how these types of stories can be
| discredited, by simply attaching a label to them...
|
| > Obviously some people will never read past the label,
| whether it is "Qanon" or "socialism", but plenty of
| people do read past the label, and independently try to
| discover what is true.
|
| You seem to be framing the conversation as if I have made
| the assertion that 100% of people fall for these
| techniques. I made no such claim.
|
| > I don't think Dominion conspiracy is false because some
| low quality nbcnews article said it started on qanon -
| where it "started" does not really matter to me.
|
| Now you are addressing the example I provided, rather
| than the general phenomenon I am describing.
|
| > I think it's false because it's obviously politically
| motivated and doesn't make any fucking sense.
|
| There is some Truth to the story, or there is No Truth to
| the story. Our respective personal opinions or
| understandings have no bearing on the _actual_ state of
| reality.
|
| > There would be noticable statistical differences
| between the results of Dominion and other voting
| machines.
|
| Perhaps there would, perhaps there would not.
|
| Perhaps this would be noticed, perhaps this would be not.
| Can you point me to anything that demonstrates that an
| extremely thorough statistical analysis has been
| performed?
|
| > I reject the premise you seem to be trying to push,
| that only conspiracy theorists care about truth.
|
| I am not pushing the premise that "only conspiracy
| theorists care about truth". You are _framing and
| characterizing_ my comments _as if_ I am stating that.
|
| > I care about truth and am not a conspiracy theorist.
|
| How much any one person _perceives_ themself to "care"
| (a slippery concept) about something does not always
| match "the actuality" of the situation. This is _kind of_
| what sayings like "Watch What People Do, Not What They
| Say" are getting at. To make it even more complicated,
| the level of caring can often vary significantly with the
| smallest of modifications to certain variables in the
| model.
|
| To be clear, I do not mean to accuse you specifically of
| any particular imperfection - if I have done so, then
| that was done in error. I have no way of knowing your
| true beliefs or intentions. I am speaking of a general
| phenomenon _that can be observed_ - and furthermore, I am
| in no way asserting that it applies universally in all
| situations.
|
| > Some conspiracy theories turning out to be broadly true
| (e.g. nsa metadata surveillance and mkultra) has no
| bearing on the truth of other conspiracy theories.
|
| This is absolutely correct, and I have said nothing to
| indicate otherwise.
|
| > Conspiracy theorists are a result of modern magic like
| airplanes and fiat currency being poorly explained in
| school and bad critical thinking skills.
|
| This is an estimation. It is not possible to know with
| any kind of precision what the complex chain of causation
| is behind any individual conspiracy theorist, or
| conspiracy theorists in general.
|
| > Most conspiracy theorists believe in multiple directly
| conflicting theories because it maximizes the chance of
| being correct at some point.
|
| This is also an estimation. You do not have any way of
| knowing the actual, comprehensive beliefs of even one
| individual conspiracy theorist, let alone what "most" of
| them believe. Ironically, this neurological phenomenon
| (the mistaking of heuristic predictions _about reality_ ,
| for reality itself) is to a large degree the type of
| thinking that many conspiracy theory beliefs are based
| upon.
|
| I happen to believe that both sides are very wrong on
| this general topic, and most other popular "culture-war"
| category disputes. I would like for the counter-
| productive and harmful "he said, she said" meme wars (of
| which this topic is but one) that are going on in the
| world between the various tribes to stop. I would like us
| to move more towards a public discourse based on calm,
| measured, _truly_ evidence-based reasoning, and trinary
| logic (True /False/Unknown), rather than our current
| binary (True/False) approach (which _forces_ people to
| guess).
| SahAssar wrote:
| > > If you're going to make bold claims like this,
| include some details.
|
| > I wonder: does your mind desire evidence when it
| encounters the inverse of my ideas?
|
| Isn't this a Russell's teapot sort of situation?
| mistermann wrote:
| To some degree I think, but I think burden of proof is
| kind of shared int his situation.
|
| The general topic of the thread is ~government agencies
| "being bad", with several people complaining that
| ~"people don't care" about privacy.
|
| I submitted for consideration the notion that governments
| engage in "conspiracy theories", and covering them up.
| Evidence can be provided for this - there is plenty on
| record.
|
| A point of contention then arose:
|
| >> How is this story related to QAnon or a conspiracy
| theory? I feel like this is a true example of "begging
| the question", you just sort of assumed that part was
| true.
|
| >> Who in the US is "taking care of" stories? If you're
| going to make bold claims like this, include some
| details.
|
| And then:
|
| > I wonder: does your mind desire evidence when it
| encounters the inverse of my ideas?
|
| So what would be an inverse of my idea. By my reckoning,
| a valid example would be where someone asserts that a
| story should be ignored _because it is attributed to
| QAnon_ , or even better, when someone disputes that
| claim, and then the channel goes silent.
|
| I don't mind "losing an argument" on a technicality, the
| elephants in the room being discussed (or, explicit
| mentions of them "not being seen") is more than enough
| for me. To me, this is kind of the logical equivalent of
| asking conspiracy theorists where the evidence is that
| substantiates their characterization of the state of
| reality. One would think, at some point at least one
| person might realize and acknowledge that indeed, there
| are some things that occur (or do not occur) in reality
| that we do not know all the details of...that some
| portions of reality _are unknown_. One would think.
| arpa wrote:
| I am only speaking from experience. In my social bubble
| convenience is king. Privacy is not something desirable,
| because people "have nothing to hide". It's something they
| don't consider at all. They are not stupid or uneducated,
| they know stories about stasi. They don't care. And they care
| even less if privacy brings inconvenience. And this is where
| we, techies, should step in: provide privacy-friendly
| platforms which have the same level of convenience. Is that
| going to happen, tho? No. The problem is too hard, the status
| quo too deeply entrenched, no better (!) money is to be made
| here.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I've noticed that some people seem to have an intrinsic
| desire for privacy. Desire is possibly even to weak of a
| word, but I can't come up with a better one. I have it, one
| of my daughters has it. My wife does not.
|
| I would say that I do not feel like _me_ if I don 't have
| time that is unobserved by others (and I'm not using this
| as a euphemism for masturbation). Even though the things I
| do then are typically inane. My browser history is fairly
| inane, and yet I would not publish it.
|
| I had kind of noticed this before, but didn't really have
| to put it into words until trying to explain my daughter's
| need for privacy to my wife. She is a _very_ empathetic
| person, but it took several conversations for her to start
| to get the idea that "I want to do something without
| someone looking over my shoulder" is different from "I want
| to hide what I'm doing from someone" (though absolutely the
| latter can be used as a smokescreen for the former,
| particularly by teenagers).
| clarkevans wrote:
| Our business/regulatory environment reflects the values we
| wish to have, they are not a given and require work. We
| need concrete use cases to convince the public that privacy
| matters and to make it clear that technology can deliver
| it.
|
| For example, in our local swim team, I pushed back on using
| Facebook live-stream for broadcasting a time trial (parent
| audience was not permitted due to COVID) and instead we
| distributed heat videos with a password protected server.
| It seems other teams went with the convenient approach, and
| now they are banned from recording (since a few parents,
| correctly, complained). Since then we have gotten
| permission to continue what we were doing, because we put
| privacy first. But even so, this begs the deeper
| question... why is privacy not the default? It's about
| monetization (cost) and convenience.
| xoa wrote:
| > _I am only speaking from experience. In my social bubble_
|
| If all you're speaking from is personal anecdote from a
| tiny biased subsample of people, then _don 't_ speak about
| "the majority of the people". Because objectively, millions
| care given the chance. Measures like the GDPR were popular.
| Or in the US the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act),
| which in fact just this past election got an attempted[1]
| enhancing provision passed by popular referendum (2020
| Proposition 24) with 56% of the vote, or about ~9.1 million
| people.
|
| Of course people care about convenience and security as
| well. So again it's very important to make it clear that
| those don't have to be zero-sum games with privacy, and for
| technical people to not merely blindly oppose flawed
| efforts to improve that but put up better solutions. I
| think we've repeatedly made big mistakes there over the
| past 20 years, failing to get out in front of efforts like
| Apple's iOS and then ending up with no way to create
| standards with the good but not the bad. But that doesn't
| mean, all else being equal, that people don't care, or in
| major cases won't make some sacrifices for it. One of the
| real nasty strategies of anti-privacy forces in fact has
| been trying to twist it into zero-sum, claiming that
| privacy can't be convenient or secure.
|
| ----
|
| 1: Proposition 24 is itself also illustrative of how
| popular support doesn't always translate into perfectly
| written legislation, I know the EFF had reservations about
| it saying it was a mix of steps forward and backward. But
| again, the _desire_ is clearly there.
| [deleted]
| hluska wrote:
| This is a really excellent answer - I especially appreciate
| that you quantified the cost. I don't think I'll ever be able
| to say 'people just don't care' again without at least second
| guessing myself...thanks for that shot of perspective!!!
| bjarneh wrote:
| Sadly I think you are right; but it's scary that we've come to
| the point where seeking privacy in itself is suspicious
| behavior.
| _red wrote:
| Being a zebra in the middle of the pack is probably the most
| practical solution. However as things move forward with the
| great reset its going to become increasingly more difficult for
| that to maintain its effectiveness.
|
| Its obvious now that "vaccine passports" and "contact tracing"
| are going to become defacto required. Therefore, the level of
| data they will be collecting will be so granular that 'blending
| in' won't really matter. A simple SQL query 5 years in the
| future will establish your every movement and health history
| for any given point.
|
| >50% of average people are going to go along with this (or
| outright support it) and anyone who speaks against it will be
| called "anti-science" and selfish.
|
| It's literally mind-boggling we are at this stage, but we must
| open our eyes and accept it.
| mjparrott wrote:
| One of us will wake up in a gooey casket attached to some
| sort of harvesting machine in the future. We will have to
| fight an army of men in black suits as we try to save the
| human race from the robots.
| andai wrote:
| As far as I can tell, China's just ahead of the curve with
| this stuff, because rather than serving as a warning, they're
| being emulated.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| I think for the most part, China is just openly speaking
| about what everybody else is doing too.
| novok wrote:
| There is also the other side, most people do not realize what
| is happening, and full out consequences of various things.
|
| Once you actually tell them the reality of things, they really
| don't like it. Like why can the FBI force my therapist to give
| them their notes under the Patriot act? Most don't know it,
| most will not like it either.
|
| Another part of this is the power is unexercised and/or covert.
| Because if it was overt, it would create huge public backlash.
| They know this and it's why they use things like parallel
| construction.
| p410n3 wrote:
| For a while now I was struggling to put into words why my l
| changed from being a "privacy activist" to being a "normie".
| But you just hit the nail on the head. Security, both technical
| and operational are still very much important to me.
|
| But before recently, I would've preferred Firefox over Chrome
| for example, since it's more private.
|
| These days it's the other way around.
| [deleted]
| friendlybus wrote:
| So goddamn creepy.
|
| Why can't an innocent individual have private communications with
| other innocent individuals if so desired?
|
| Most private stuff is banal and not worth a government budget to
| look at.
|
| The level of assumed self-sacrifice for the collective is getting
| high enough to breed rebellion.
| freshhawk wrote:
| "for the collective" ... what collective? This is textbook top-
| down control, a small elite group spying on the masses. And
| when the masses find out it is considered a scandal.
| 1_player wrote:
| What rebellion? Anybody I've talked to about privacy has told
| me "so what, I don't have anything to hide."
| not_really wrote:
| So I take it you would be fine with sharing all of your
| credit card and location history for the past 10 years with
| at least 5000 people you've never met?
| p410n3 wrote:
| This is comparing apples with oranges.
|
| When I do give out my CC data I do this voluntarily and
| make an active decision each time to do so. I'm NOT giving
| it out to random people, some of which might be fraudsters
| redsparrow wrote:
| It seems common for people to assume that privacy is about
| hiding something. Most people close the door when they're
| using a toilet in a public place. Is it because they have
| something to hide? Or is it that they want some privacy?
|
| Privacy can be about hiding things, but it's also about space
| and boundaries. I want to have some control over who gets to
| know me, and how intimately.
| chokeartist wrote:
| Exactly right.
|
| So much of the "I have nothing to hide" retort misses the
| fact that it isn't about big secrets, but rather a
| collection of little secrets (if you want to call them that
| - they are just facts that are sensitive).
|
| Less about are you planning to violently overthrow the
| United States Government. More about what genre of porn do
| you like to entertain yourself with.
|
| These little things can be used against you. We all have
| them.
| friendlybus wrote:
| Why would anyone disagree with you publicly?
|
| Everyone I know who hates this stuff says so on the edge of
| normal conversations, couched in a wait-and-see vibe. Google
| Home gifts go unopened and tech devices are excluded from
| certain areas.
|
| The dialogue has become a scary game.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| This is exactly what happened. Five years ago, I got sick
| of being called a conspiracy theorist, shut my mouth, and
| focused on my own privacy.
|
| Now the public generally seems to have a sense of what's
| happened to privacy, but has given up do to the upkeep
| required to avoid our ubiquitous surveillance machine.
|
| The people in my circle who still think there's hope won't
| buy smart devices, but won't go further, because to do so
| would lock them out of large chunks of modern society, or
| require them to maintain a level of technical skill and
| perform certain kinds of upkeep which would disadvantage
| them in the long run.
|
| The world's complex, many of us are living at the margins
| of insolvency. The bandwidth required to fight the
| panopticon is too damn high, and unless done very well,
| only produces a moral victory ('I'm fighting the system as
| best I can').
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Why can't an innocent individual have private communications
| with other innocent individuals if so desired?
|
| >Most private stuff is banal and not worth a government budget
| to look at.
|
| Private conversations are potentially a threat to government as
| an organization. People might convince one another to vote for
| less taxes and more accountability <clutches pearls>.
|
| As the cost of keeping tabs on this kind of stuff gets lower
| the government does it more. It's no different than BigCos
| tracking your mouse on their eCommerse site "because its,
| cheap, we can and it might be useful".
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| >Private conversations are potentially a threat to government
| as an organization.
|
| That argument could be made about damn near anything & used
| to justify banning near anything.
|
| At some point common sense needs to prevail
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| Not to mention that there are lots of things we should have
| precisely because they are a threat to the state:
| encryption that the government cannot break, automatic
| weapons, individual autonomy, etc. These things all can be
| abused by "the bad guys", and will be, but we accept those
| risks because they are inherent to being free.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I don't disagree but clearly common sense is clearly not
| prevailing in the bureaucracies that cook up this shit.
|
| I think this is a fundamental problem with how we've
| structured modern organizations in a way that removes all
| personal accountability and responsibility. Everyone is
| accountable to the organization. Nobody has "be reasonable"
| as part of their job duties or performance evaluation. It's
| not wholly their fault but I blame the MBA-ization of
| everything for a lot of this.
| mjparrott wrote:
| Relative to MDs and JDs, is there a credible and in-use
| ethical creed for MBAs? MDs and JDs have some figment of
| doing no harm to try to help people. MBAs do anything
| legal to make a buck?
| ExcavateGrandMa wrote:
| Canadian mounted trojan horse :D
| nielsbot wrote:
| So why was the presentation secret?
| ficklepickle wrote:
| The RCMP needs to die in a fire. The only silver lining is that
| they are so fucking inept that they won't actually accomplish
| anything.
|
| Surrey, BC, kicked out the RCMP. Hopefully the rest of Canada
| will follow suit.
|
| If you pseudo-spooks are reading this, you are cordially invited
| to lick the muscle that cuts my shit.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| The thing that always got me about the RCMP is how board their
| role is. Depending on where you are in the country, they're the
| local police, the equivalent to state troopers, the FBI, are
| the prime minister's security, and more. It's ridiculous!
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that
| being one organisation; the UK is pretty similar:
|
| - local police forces (backed by national groups for serious
| organised crime, terror, financial, etc.);
|
| - that have within them CID (Criminal Investigation
| Department, plain-clothes detectives) [0] with a shared (as
| in uniform and non-uniform branches from a common point,
| AIUI) org chart, which is about the closest we have to the
| FBI in the US;
|
| - and the PM's visible security comes from the 'Protection
| Command' (also royals, diplomats, other ministers) [1] which
| is just a part of the Met, London's 'local police force'.
|
| I don't think that means there's some automatic abuse of
| power, or whatever it is (?) that you're concerned about,
| just from it all being 'the police'.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_De
| partm...
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_Command
| vkou wrote:
| It's not that ridicilous. Canada has no county-level
| organizations, and for various reasons, the provinces are not
| in the business of policing.
|
| So, cities either need to run their own police forces, or
| contract out to the RCMP.
| galacticaactual wrote:
| So much for dang's "trying for something different" here at HN.
| zingplex wrote:
| Whilst I find Dang's goals admirable, this isn't a discussion
| in the abstract about surveillance technology but instead a
| discussion about the misuse of said technology by an
| institution has historically committed genocide and continues
| to serve a similar role today. It can be quite difficult to
| not introduce emotion into such discussions.
|
| I don't think you can have a meaningful conversation about
| the RCMP without heightened emotions.
| Kuraj wrote:
| Thinking back on one of my own comments here a couple of
| days ago, I suppose the same thing could be said about
| Donald Trump.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The government of Surrey, BC and its self-aggrandizing mayor
| should by no means be an example of good governance. This is a
| case of a broken clock being right twice a day.
| justsid wrote:
| Given the amount of gang violence and killings going on
| there, I really don't think Surrey is the great example to
| pull out against the RCMP.
| core-questions wrote:
| > Surrey, BC
|
| Wow, what a beautiful and safe city you chose as an example.
| Not.
| ruined wrote:
| They are really good at cracking down violently on indigenous
| resistance to land appropriation and resource extraction, so
| they are performing their function, and these spying powers
| serve that function well.
| adventured wrote:
| No doubt. The same incompetence line (they're incompetent, so
| don't worry) has been used against numerous large agencies in
| the US, including the CIA. The CIA has been endlessly mocked,
| in every manner possible, across every possible medium
| (movies to books), for being incompetent. Does anyone
| question the CIA's ability to fuck shit up (coup city doesn't
| have to be a pleasant place to live)? To cause nightmare
| outcomes around the world? To get the US into wars based on
| fake intel?
|
| I equate that thinking as identical to "I have nothing to
| hide, so I'm not worried." It's one part evasion, deflection
| out of fear (head burying); and it's one part failure to
| understand how those agencies - systems - really work, and
| why they exist at all. Not only does the occasional (or
| frequent) incompetence not matter when you're untouchable
| like such agencies usually are, it can be super useful ('the
| CIA could have never been responsible for causing that,
| they're far too incompetent').
| axguscbklp wrote:
| >Took the names for Project Wide Awake and other internet
| surveillance programs from the X-Men comic book series, in which
| illegal government programs hunt human "mutants."
|
| This sort of "geeky but psychopathic" type of humor seems to be
| not uncommon in surveillance agencies. I suppose it makes sense
| that amoral intelligent people would be drawn towards
| intelligence agencies, as I suppose sadists were probably drawn
| towards organizations like the Gestapo, KGB, and Stasi. There's
| something I find galling about it - not only is one's privacy
| violated, but what's more is that the violators go about their
| business with corporate bureaucratic banality and "joking around
| the office" sort of humor.
| cutitout wrote:
| > It doesn't matter whether you hate the spies and believe they
| are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble
| guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that
| the secret agents know more than we do.
|
| > But the strange fact is that often when you look into the
| history of spies what you discover is something very different.
|
| > It is not the story of men and women who have a better and
| deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many
| cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely
| mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of
| us.
|
| -- Adam Curtis
| d3nj4l wrote:
| > This sort of "geeky but psychopathic" type of humor seems to
| be not uncommon in surveillance agencies.
|
| Relevant article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/the-
| fake-nerd-boys-of...
| nix23 wrote:
| Stingray's mounted on horses...i love that picture ;)
| bawolff wrote:
| Well stingrays (or similar devices) weren't mentioned in the
| article, and mounties don't ride horses anymore.
| antonyh wrote:
| Surprising that they don't - the London Met still use mounted
| officers.
| bawolff wrote:
| Keep in mind the RCMP is not responsible for policing major
| cities. They are mostly the canadian equivalent of the FBI
| and also are the provincial police in some (not all)
| provinces. They also are the local police in small towns.
|
| I've seen mounted policemen in canada, but never a mounted
| mountie (outside of ceremonial things)
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Canada is very big and most RCMP will work along trans-
| canadian highways. This makes horses unsuited for the job.
|
| AFAIK, they use Dodge Charger Enforcers.
|
| They do have mounted units and RCMP horse carrier trailers.
| nix23 wrote:
| >and mounties don't ride horses anymore.
|
| What are they mounting then?
| tempodox wrote:
| Vehicles. Motorized transport is still called a "ride".
| bawolff wrote:
| Nothing, its slang that dates back to long ago.
| nix23 wrote:
| Too bad it's not a Stingray on a Horse ;)
| bregma wrote:
| _Most_ mounties don 't ride horses. Some do as part of their
| job. There's only so many places a patrol car can drive or a
| desk jockey can ride.
| ThePreacherMan wrote:
| Defund, defund, defund.
|
| The police shouldn't be more that nights watchmen, neighborhood
| patrols and detectives to investigate big crimes.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I actually came here specifically to comment that based on my
| personal experiences with the RCMP, their ineptitude and moribund
| bureaucratic nature makes me surprised they're able to _actually
| do anything useful_ with the tools alleged in this report. And
| then I saw that a number of other people have already commented
| essentially the same thing.
| bawolff wrote:
| This article has a lot of words without saying very much.
|
| The tl;dr:
|
| Mounties purchased some sort of intelligence gathering software,
| and kept it secret for "national security" (i thought that was
| CSE or CSIS's job?)
|
| Mounties have some sort of darknet search engine. Article implies
| the term "darknet" is being used liberally, possibly to include
| spying on protestors, but is very unclear on the details.
|
| Mounties have some sort of vuln in facebook that allows them to
| see your fb friends even if set to private (this is probably the
| most significant revelation in the article imo)
|
| Mounties use proxy software when working undercover (no kidding,
| never would have guessed that one)
|
| Mounties have software to do sentiment analysis on intercepted or
| publicly available messages
|
| It is implied that the mounties have a caviler attitude towards
| privacy violations.
|
| --------
|
| The article is a little light on details and high on unstated
| implications. I'm not exactly happy about all this but this is
| hardly a bombshell of privacy violation. Maybe there is bad
| things there, but the article just doesn't have the technical
| detail to judge.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Theres important things missing from this summary - such as
| hiding that they have these capabilities, lying about parts of
| it, going against privacy expectations set by other parts of
| their government.
|
| That's a very blatant double standard - privacy for them, but
| not for us.
|
| Their culture as indicated by their actions (plus wording in
| training materials) is that they don't care about the rights of
| the people which the people believe they have, and are willing
| to lie to abuse the public's privacy.
|
| Its familiar, maybe from the plot of a bad action movie where
| the spy agency has gone rogue?
| bawolff wrote:
| > That's a very blatant double standard - privacy for them,
| but not for us.
|
| Other than the fb hack, these all seem to be consumer
| available technologies (albeit probably better versions).
| I've used proxies before. I've used search engines before.
|
| Hardly the most rouge thing the rcmp has ever done.
| zrth wrote:
| Thank you for taking the time to write the tl;dr!
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A few weeks back, an HN reader asked "Can you name some of the
| authors who were publishing panopticon concerns [in the 1980s or
| earlier], or the media they were publishing in?"
|
| As there didn't seem to be a useful compilation, I created one.
| This seems useful in answering persistent questions, tropes, and
| dismissals concerning privacy and surveillance.
|
| A formatted version lives at:
| https://joindiaspora.com/posts/bf4f5f10f6120138799c002590d8e...
|
| (Additions welcomed.)
|
| On authors who were publishing information technology panopticon
| concerns in the 1980s, or earlier
|
| Paul Baran / RAND
|
| - "On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy"
|
| - "On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American
| Character and the Role of the Engineer, or, A Little Caution in
| the Haste to Number"
|
| - "The Coming Computer Utility - Laissez-Faire, Licensing, or
| Regulation?"
|
| - "Remarks on the Question of Privacy Raised by the Automation of
| Mental Health Records"
|
| - "Some Caveats on the Contribution of Technology to Law
| Enforcement"
|
| Largely written/published 1967-1969.
|
| https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html
|
| Willis Ware / RAND
|
| Too numerous to list fully, 1960s --1990s. Highlights:
|
| - "Security and Privacy in Computer Systems" (1967)
|
| - "Computers in Society's Future" (1971)
|
| - "Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens" (1973
|
| - "Privacy and Security Issues in Information Systems" (1976)
|
| - "Information Systems, Security, and Privacy" (1983)
|
| - "The new faces of privacy" (1993)
|
| https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/w/ware_willis_h.html
|
| Misc
|
| - Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of
| Work and Power (1988) Notably reviewed in the Whole Earth
| Catalog's Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age
| (1988).
|
| https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-age-of-the-smart-machi...
| https://archive.org/details/inageofsmartmach00zubo/page/n7/m...
|
| - "Danger to Civil Rights?", 80 Microcomputing (1982)
|
| https://archive.org/stream/80_Microcomputing_Issue_26_1982-0...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877)
|
| - "Computer-Based National Information Systems: Technology and
| Public Policy", NTIS (September 1981)
|
| http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_5/DATA/1981/8109.PDF
|
| - "23 to Study Computer 'Threat'" (1970)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/12/archives/23-to-study-comp...
|
| The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
|
| "Privacy and Information Technology" bibliography is largely
| 1990-present, but contains some earlier references.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/it-privacy/#Bib
|
| Similarly "Privacy"
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/privacy/
|
| Credit Reporting / Legislation
|
| US Privacy Act of 1974
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opcl/privacy-act-1974
|
| Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 - Queensland Government, Australia
|
| https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/inforce/current/...
|
| Arthur R. Miller, The assault on privacy: computers, data banks,
| and dossiers
|
| https://archive.org/details/assaultonprivacy00mill/page/n7/m...
|
| "The Computer, the Consumer and Privacy" (1984)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/04/weekinreview/the-computer...
|
| Richard Boeth / Newsweek
|
| The specific item I'd had in mind:
|
| Richard Boeth, "Is Privacy Dead", Newsweek, July 27, 1970
|
| http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/11/is-privacy-...
|
| Direct PDF:
| https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/712228/1970-newsw...
|
| Based on an HN comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851736
| paulus_magnus2 wrote:
| Liberal democracy is incompatible with a police state but it will
| get worse before it gets better.
|
| There needs to be a digital version of "privilege against self-
| incrimination" [1] [2] but it seams like the governments won't
| legislate this without a push from the public.
|
| The laws of our society are so complex that at each moment we are
| breaking at least a few. This also means we could be arrested at
| any point, by a corrupt official trying to earn extra money for
| letting us go.
|
| Imagine living your whole life under the regime of airport border
| control section where anything you say / do can be misinterpreted
| by a border guard who had a bad day and needs to arrest someone.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| If the question was: give up your privacy to help stop covid
| killing people, it would be more accepted on Hacker News.
|
| I'm half surprised that our governments have not pulled this
| trick and half relieved that the world isn't going down the
| toilet as much as others would like to tell us it is!
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That bluff was already long called with the phone contact
| tracing protocols specifically designed to get privacy. They
| gave it a cold shoulder and attempted to roll their own slowly
| and terribly until it was far too late which should tell us
| everything about their concern for our lives and overall
| trustworthiness with data. That their response was to start
| railing on "Big Tech" as the well of all sorrows and
| responsible for kidnapping the Lindenburg Baby tells us that
| not only are they not trustworthy but we shouldn't even piss on
| them if they were on fire.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Agreed. It's a testament that the big tech cos have some
| interest in privacy and also that what some call The Big
| State is actually very horribly inefficient and
| disfunctional.
|
| Hence the relief; the dysfunction of these govts is a guard
| against dystopia!
| _trampeltier wrote:
| A bit off topic, but recently, when I downloaded software under
| export restriction from Siemens (for industry automation) I saw
| in the license text, it is not just allowed for military
| applications but also not allowed to use it for police
| applications. I think more and more companys think they just
| don't want to be involved in bad press, because not all, but a
| lot of police things have a such bad image now.
| [deleted]
| 692389400111 wrote:
| What I really don't like about these kinds of tools is that they
| are generally pretty bad at intercepting new threats, but are
| really, really good at pursuing known actors, like journalists,
| activists or political rivals.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The purpose of a system is what it does.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Not really any new information. This came out during the New
| Zealand shootings where the RCMP were showing up at Canadian's
| houses talking to them about 'supporting trump' or 'having viewed
| the shooting video'. Admittedly our police were less problematic
| compared to the police in the NZ.
|
| The more interesting thing if you google 'Brenda Lucki' in the
| news. TONS of groups are calling for her dismissal. They call her
| racist, but don't worry our blackface prime minister supports
| her.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Just say the magic word and all those pesky civil rights
| disappear.
|
| 'Corona'
| moonbug wrote:
| horses are terrible snitches
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