[HN Gopher] Privacy is ok
___________________________________________________________________
Privacy is ok
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 155 points
Date : 2022-12-29 21:07 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tbray.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tbray.org)
| grammers wrote:
| Totally agree with this. Yes, with privacy it's hard to
| 'eavesdrop' on the bad guys, but isn't it allowed to whisper? Why
| should having privacy be ok in real life, but not when you
| communicate digitally? So far no one has offered an honest
| explanation why we must monitor everything online, usually it's
| about protecting kids or defending against terrorists, but is
| this really it? It doesn't convince me. I'm happy using apps like
| Signal and Tutanota, and I believe everyone should do the same.
| clucas wrote:
| I'm totally against mandated backdoors, and I am pro-privacy.
| But we should acknowledge that the communication environment we
| live in now is materially different than it has been in the
| past. The past ~15 years is the first time in human history
| it's been possible for humans to communicate (1) instantly, (2)
| across any distance, (3) with no possibility of eavesdropping
| (given the right software), and (4) via devices that are cheap
| and _ordinary_ (i.e. expected to be owned and carried by just
| about anyone).
|
| Again, I think the harm of mandating backdoors far outweighs
| the benefit, but imagine your job is to make sure people aren't
| organizing mass terror attacks. I think you can take a look at
| the above environment and get a little worried, in a way you
| wouldn't be about people just whispering to each other in-
| person. When we say "no backdoors," we are truly making a
| tradeoff.
| [deleted]
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > Blackman says "The company's proposition that if anyone has
| access to data, then many unauthorized people probably will have
| access to that data is false." What on earth makes him think
| that?!
|
| This is exactly the answer I want, too.
| bdominy wrote:
| Most people are just learning that their online conversations are
| not as private as they believed, but the real-life consequences
| for that lapse is almost zero which is why there is not more
| demand for secure solutions. What does affect you, however, is
| the harvesting of your contact info as spam, robocalls, identity
| theft, and a multitude of scams all begin with the gathering of
| those details. E2EE is gaining ground with the public and my hope
| is for all channels between individuals online to eventually be
| protected.
| nix23 wrote:
| And also:
|
| https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/03/30/Maoris
|
| Beautiful art...but i had a 5 minutes giggle about the comment at
| the end of the page...gosh sometimes i still love the
| internet's....backflash to the 2000's.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| History has shown us time and time again that when privacy is
| given away because "bad people can use it", without fail turns
| out to be detrimental to the law abiding citizens, with little to
| no impact to criminals. In many cases it further pushed the
| government into a dictatorial, even totalitarian regimes.
|
| This has happened with speech, journalism, gatherings,
| associating with people, religion, self defense, and many more.
|
| The very definition of a criminal is someone who ignores some
| laws, performs illegal (not legal) acts, including the laws that
| supposed to correct them.
|
| People need to stop voting on _purely_ emotion, and vote _more_
| with logic and ethics.
|
| edit: add qualifier of "purely" & "more", as to acknowledge the
| responses and the nuanced problem around the overall topic.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > History has shown us time and time again that when privacy is
| given away because "bad people can use it", without fail turns
| out to be detrimental to the law abiding citizens, with little
| to no impact to criminals. In many cases it further pushed the
| government into a dictatorial, even totalitarian regimes.
|
| I agree with the conclusion, but I wonder about the claims and
| reasoning.
|
| Can you give us examples? I don't recall that many 'bad people
| can use it' arguments that led to what is described. I doubt
| it's led a liberal democracy to become authoritarian, and under
| existing authoritarian regimes, there is little or no privacy
| to give away.
|
| Finally, the biggest privacy threat in free countries now isn't
| government but corporations.
| datagram wrote:
| As far as privacy goes, the USA Patriot Act is probably one
| of the better examples of "we have to erode privacy to catch
| criminals": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invoc
| ations_of_t...
|
| As for general "bad people can use it" scenarios, US airport
| security would be my go-to example. Everyone has to take
| their shoes off at airport security, even though the
| Deparment of Homeland Security's own tests have shown that
| that terrorists could still still easily sneak weapons and
| explosives through security:
| https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-tsa-
| screeners...
| whakim wrote:
| I don't think blanket statements like this are true, and I
| don't think they're a healthy way to frame the debate. To take
| a non-trivial example, requiring cars to bear license plates -
| something almost everyone accepts, at least in the United
| States - has a lot of upsides like enforcement of traffic laws.
| Sure, perhaps traffic cameras aid totalitarian states in
| tracking the movements of citizens, but I think most people
| agree that license plates are a good societal tradeoff in terms
| of privacy.
|
| This is a long way of saying that, even as a strong privacy
| advocate, it's worth noting that the tradeoff _is real_ and the
| terms of debate ought to be over whether the tradeoff is a good
| one or not. In the case of encryption, this is a difficult
| question for us to answer because we 're essentially asking how
| many crimes _might have been prevented_ or _might have gone
| unpunished_ had the perpetrators used encrypted communications.
| That being said, I think the security state would be hitting us
| over the head with these statistics if they could actually make
| a coherent case - the fact that Reid Blackman is instead making
| a fallacious comparison between encryption and the nuclear
| launch codes suggests that the figures don 't add up.
| FigmentEngine wrote:
| false and dangerous analogy. knowing your number plate is
| comparable to knowing your phone number, rather than the real
| analogy of bugging your converation in the car. the number
| plate yields metadata about journeys, not the actual
| conversation.
|
| "i mean people who argue for privacy would never have a
| problem with barcodes on milk"
| w0m wrote:
| > "i mean people who argue for privacy would never have a
| problem with barcodes on milk"
|
| I mean; unless you pay cash for ~everything your spending
| habits have generally been wide open since the 50s in the
| name of convenience.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I think most people agree that license plates are a good
| societal tradeoff in terms of privacy._
|
| I think most people have never even considered the matter in
| those terms; they just accept that license plates are how we
| do things and don't bother asking why.
|
| When you actually ask why, your claimed upsides don't, IMO,
| actually amount to much. Enforcement of traffic laws? Most of
| those are revenue sources for local jurisdictions, not
| improvements in safety. If someone does no harm when
| violating a traffic law, there's nothing actually worth
| enforcing from a safety perspective; and if someone _does_ do
| harm, how much help is a license plate in tracking them down?
| What fraction of people who are in traffic accidents leave
| the scene in their vehicle before the police get there, but
| get found later because their license plates were known? A
| large enough fraction that license plates for everyone are
| justified taking into account the privacy downsides?
|
| This, btw, is the same logic you apply yourself in the latter
| part of your post. And your conclusion?
|
| _> I think the security state would be hitting us over the
| head with these statistics if they could actually make a
| coherent case_
|
| Which means that, since they're not, there actually _isn 't_
| a case. And I agree with that--both for license plates _and_
| for encryption backdoors. And for other claims that we need
| to give up our privacy for some other supposed benefit.
| nl wrote:
| > What fraction of people who are in traffic accidents
| leave the scene in their vehicle before the police get
| there, but get found later because their license plates
| were known?
|
| As a cyclist who continually sees stories of aggressive car
| behaviors being reported and acted on because the cyclist
| had cam footage of the license plate I'd say the fraction
| is close to 100%.
|
| So yes, it is a trade-off and in this case I agree with the
| OP that is is worth it.
| ghaff wrote:
| If hit and runs were known to be virtually untrackable, I'd
| guess you'd have a lot more hit and runs.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah I don't find your argument here compelling at all.
|
| You're right that I hadn't thought about license plates in
| these terms before, but now that I have, I'm convinced that
| they are a very good trade-off. So no, I don't think people
| only accept this because they haven't thought about it. I
| think enough people thought about it and accepted it long
| enough ago that we simply don't really need to think about
| it anymore. It was something that was invented, worked
| well, and thus faded into the unquestioned background. And
| that's good!
| whakim wrote:
| License plates are the primary _enforcement mechanism_ for
| traffic laws. Traffic laws (red lights, speed limits, etc.)
| provably save lives, and surveys have shown that people 's
| likelihood of obeying such laws correlates with their
| perceived likelihood of being caught.
|
| I think your argument about tracking down people who didn't
| _actually_ do any harm misses the point - you might not
| _intend_ to cause harm but the behavior you exhibit may
| simply lead to more harm if everyone did it. Should
| drinking and driving be legal as long as you don 't hurt
| anyone?
|
| I have made the same point with regard to a tradeoff
| betweening traffic laws and encryption (intentionally,
| since that's the point of my post - everything is a
| tradeoff). But I think license plates enable a system
| beyond "man in police car" which provably saves many lives.
| Even if you disagree (and I think you'd almost certainly be
| in the minority if you conducted a poll), the fact that
| we're even discussing it proves the GGP wrong - privacy
| tradeoffs aren't necessarily harmful ipso facto.
| int_19h wrote:
| And yet people don't like red light cameras. Case in
| point: many municipalities in US ban them outright, in
| most cases due to popular demand from their constituents.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > People need to stop voting on emotion, and vote with logic
| and ethics.
|
| There is no purely logical reason to vote at all that isn't
| fundamentally rooted in emotion. This is typically a desire for
| something to change in one way, a fear that it will change in
| another, or anger or indignation that it has already changed in
| some detrimental way.
|
| Indeed, your own argument is based on the fear of dictators,
| the looming threat freedom being taken away.
|
| Ethics too is rooted in emotion. When we look at something we
| consider unethical, something unjust perhaps, we feel anger and
| indignation. If we perceive such an event is about to happen,
| we feel fear. If we perceive it has been averted, we feel
| happiness.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Who's logic and ethics? I think that is the heart of the issue.
|
| Hard for all of us to stand together apart.
| schappim wrote:
| I generally agree with you; governments have chipped away taken
| a sledge hammer to privacy with The Patriot Act, NSA's mass
| surveillance program, PRISM, and the UK's Investigatory Powers
| Act etc. It is hard to quantify the chilling effects of losing
| privacy, similar to being impossible to prove a negative as
| there is no conclusive way to prove that something does not
| exist or did not happen.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| History has also shown us time and time again that absolutism
| isn't orthogonal with reality. Absolute privacy still results
| in tyranny, you just won't see it coming until it's far too
| late.
| FigmentEngine wrote:
| > Absolute privacy still results in tyranny,
|
| what are the examples of this, can't think of any?
| from wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you other than the fact that
| "lawful intercept" only became lawful in the 1970s and that
| the laws/modern law enforcement techniques you think are
| saving us from anarchy are relatively new. In the UK wiretap
| evidence isn't even admissible.
| clnq wrote:
| The argument that privacy is also terrible because it can
| facilitate crime neglects to consider that many other ways
| exist to encourage and obstruct crime and that nearly
| everything facilitates crime to a degree. For example, car
| ownership enables hit-and-runs, you can't have burglaries
| without homes, and gun ownership... is a topic for another
| thread, but you get the point.
| spritefs wrote:
| Whether or not privacy is "OK" according to some random closet
| authoritarian NYT columnist is completely irrelevant
|
| If X columnist thinks encryption is a problem, they should be
| willing to live with the consequence that the Texas govt would be
| able to see the communications of women seeking out of state
| abortions
|
| There is no way to eliminate privacy for "bad" actors only but
| preserve it for "good" actors
| zirgs wrote:
| And there's no way to ensure that only "good" actors will be
| able to use the backdoor. If there's a backdoor then "bad"
| actors will find a way to exploit it.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| > There is no way to eliminate privacy for "bad" actors only
| but preserve it for "good" actors
|
| Exactly columnist's point.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| "...dangerous because bad people could use it to plan nefarious
| activities..."
|
| My interpretation of the spirit of legislation like the U.S.
| First Amendment is that "bad people" is impossible to objectively
| define, so the price for freedom of speech is that sometimes
| there are "bad people," and you just have to live with it.
|
| I'm not sure I've really come to understand what is going through
| the minds of those who do want to police speech (and
| communications and association). Are they fools who cannot see
| where this leads? Do they believe that it will favour their
| interests? Are they just so easily frightened that they aren't
| sold on liberty anymore?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| He absolutely hits the nail on the head, wrt the reasons we can't
| have any type of backdoor - _ever_.
|
| Hate to be the one to tell the global law enforcement community
| this, but, apparently, they seem to be entirely ignorant of it.
| People have been having untapped correspondence between each
| other since the dawn of language. That's THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Long
| before Signal.
|
| All they do, is meet, or drop communications, in any of ten
| thousand different ways, to each other.
|
| It could be a thumb drive, or it could be two people, idly
| scratching the dirt (one of the stories behind the Christian
| "fish").
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| Guthur wrote:
| We have far more to fear from those that peddle fear than from
| those we are told to be fearful of.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| If a technology enables criminals to coordinate without any
| hope of detection that seems worthy of some fear to me.
| zirgs wrote:
| That's the price you have to pay if you want to live in a
| free country.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| The point of the original article is that it's not black
| and white. There is no, and never can be any, entirely free
| country. I want to be free enough to have good privacy, but
| not so free as to allow a crime ring to take over my town.
| philippejara wrote:
| if you are in a position a crime ring can take over your
| town, no amount of surveillance will help, it will most
| likely make the crime ring stronger by giving them access
| to it, there's a joke here about the government being
| already the crime ring I guess.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Some people say that already has happened, and the crime
| ring is called "the government".
| p0pcult wrote:
| >Some people
|
| Other people think those first people are complete
| nutjobs.
| sabellito wrote:
| Anyone can host an e2e chat solution, trying to take Signal
| down doesn't change anything for serious organised crime.
| tmpburning wrote:
| you are eating the pudding....
| tensor wrote:
| This has always been true. The old fashion way of doing it
| was called "getting together in person someplace private."
| Yes Signal makes it a bit easier, but also general technology
| makes it harder too.
| [deleted]
| weakfortress wrote:
| And to think, two years ago the people who say this also
| willfully handed over their privacy of their own bodies, their
| own medical records, and their own movement in order to protect
| themselves from a virus. We'll happily defend Signal, Bitcoin,
| whatever else. But the second someone starts asking for your
| (vaccine) papers suddenly destruction of privacy is okay for
| the "common good". All it takes is one very well constructed
| appeal to authority to destroy 100 years of work. No matter the
| alleged "good" intentions.
|
| I bring this up because all privacy falters in exactly the same
| way. Everyone is for it so long as <bad person> is not doing
| something they don't like. To me, it's a binary choice. You are
| either for privacy or you are not. There is not
| "well...sorta...except". Tyranny comes in many forms. One of
| those is waffling on such issues. As a demonstration, I'm sure
| I'll immediately catch flak for this post and possibly even be
| accused of being an "anti-vaxxer". These people are the same
| people who will sell you and your privacy out the second it
| becomes inconvenient to them. Worse, these people can vote.
|
| The average person will sell you and your privacy out the
| second they think you're up to no good. Privacy is no good if
| you know what people are up to. The dunning-kruger effect
| especially among allegedly intelligent people in regard to this
| subject has left a lasting impression on me. It's a paradox of
| the pseudo-intellectual.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > To me, it's a binary choice. You are either for privacy or
| you are not.
|
| This is called black and white thinking and it's generally a
| intellectual dead end. Applying wanton black and white
| thinking is a sign of a mind incapable of nuance, and rich,
| deep thought.
| timbray wrote:
| You're not allowed to drive at twice the speed limit, nor to
| smoke in enclosed public spaces, and, in certain pandemic
| situations, you shouldn't be allowed to breathe
| unobstructedly on strangers. Where's the privacy dimension?!
| base698 wrote:
| What level of risk do you believe allows massive
| corporations to loot the government?
|
| 1 in 100,000? 1 in 10,000?
| ls15 wrote:
| I am glad to see, that in 2022 finally some widespread common
| sense with regards to privacy seems to kick in. In my opinion,
| most people who argue against privacy fall into one or both of
| these two groups: 1) Idiots 2)
| Assholes
|
| It is totally fine if people want to voluntarily give up their
| own privacy, but as soon as they want to interfere with other
| people's privacy they are essentially proposing to invade other
| people's personal spaces against their will. At the very least,
| they should have an extremely good reason for that, but they
| typically are just fallaciously appealing to fear (think of the
| children, the terrorists, ...) or employ other fallacies (nothing
| to hide, you're on facebook anyway, you're not that interesting,
| ...) in order to strengthen their case.
|
| I associate politicians who advocate privacy invasion with
| corruption. Just like Eva Kaili, the EU Commision VP who was
| caught having bags of cash from Qatar at home and who is one of
| the main proponents of chat control.
|
| https://digitalcourage.de/blog/2022/kaili-chatcontrol-invest...
| waboremo wrote:
| I suppose the following group counts as idiots, but a lot of
| them are naive rather than actively malicious. You'll see
| people argue of things like oh who cares about privacy, I post
| online all the time and nothing happens. Completely oblivious
| to cases such as people using airtags to stalk people. Or
| people using location data from dating apps to assault their
| targets. Or widespread cases of people fearing their medical
| data could easily be accessed by law enforcement in a post
| Dobbs vs Jackson United States.
|
| This group is probably the most difficult to reason with
| because they refuse to empathize with others in these cases. To
| them, the idea of being targeted is something that happens to
| other people, and even if they were targeted nothing would
| happen besides maybe a nude leaking or whatever they consider
| "sensitive but worthless". It's this combination of lack of
| empathy mixed with a particular kind of data, not tech,
| illiteracy.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I didn't like the original post that much but I tink this one is
| worse because it's almost entirely emotional. Statements like
| this:
|
| _" When you say "law enforcement", who exactly do you mean?
| Employees of the United States? Of Oregon? Of Crow Wing County,
| MN? Of Italy? Of China? How are you going to sort out the
| jurisdictional disputes, and how are you going to ensure that
| only "good" law-enforcement organizations get to snoop?"_
|
| are just knee-jerk. You sort it out the same way you do any issue
| of public authority. Legislation, regulation, courts, etc.
| Privacy is not binary. Technically it's perfectly possible to
| design differentiated systems that can be adjusted and provide
| transparent access when needed. And that's probably what we need
| the most, not just when it comes to crime but also user choice.
| Way too often these days you have extreme solutions on one end
| that result in users opting for unsafe choices just due to
| usability. There needs to be much more debate about how systems
| are designed so that they give authority access when needed in a
| way that has checks built in and protects users as much as
| possible.
|
| Authority has legitimate interest in preventing crime, this has
| wide public support in many cases, and individuals have
| legitimate interest in privacy, but neither is limitless. Any
| system designed for communication ought to reflect that or else
| we're just wasting resources on ideological debates.
| furyofantares wrote:
| I'm in agreement with the conclusion but not sold by this
| explainer.
|
| How do you sort jurisdiction, and how do you ensure Signal
| employees can't snoop are problems, but if I was intent on trying
| to find a solution to allow governmental snooping I would not
| just throw my hands up at them. It's not actually fundamentally
| impossible to make compromises here.
|
| First, "how do you sort out jurisdiction?" isn't really a
| fundamental argument, it just sounds hard. And "Signal employees
| would necessarily be able to snoop" is plain wrong, a snoopable
| copy of each message could be encrypted such that it requires
| cooperation between parties to snoop: Signal itself plus sender's
| local and/or federal authority.
|
| Sender's rough location or origin is compromised here, but Signal
| employees can't snoop.
|
| You could also require multiple agencies with potential
| jurisdiction to cooperate in order to decrypt. If a federal
| agency claims jurisdiction they would need to convince both
| Signal and the local authority to unlock a message that the
| federal authority can then decrypt.
|
| I have lots of concerns with such a scheme and I hate it a lot!
| But I think it I would not be at all convinced by this explainer
| if I felt we should strive for snoopabilty.
| college_physics wrote:
| Privacy is more than ok. Can there be democracy without privacy?
| Can there be enterprize without privacy (commercial secrecy)
|
| That we have tolerated the "privacy is dead" mantra for so long
| shows how weakened the reflexes of society, how lacking its
| immune system.
|
| The bad guys will find ways to evade the rule of law no matter
| what. Compromising the foundations of digital society with that
| pretext might be too high a price to pay
| guilhas wrote:
| Not for serving politicians, companies with public money
| contracts, listed companies CEOs, NGOs and charitable
| organizations receiving or giving a relevant number of millions
| in donations
|
| These people are far too corrupt to be left wandering by
| themselves
| Xeoncross wrote:
| The 'government' is responsible for a couple orders of magnitude
| more harm than 'criminals'. We're talking hundreds of millions
| deaths worldwide over the last century.
|
| I'm much less concerned about the government knowing what the
| 'criminals' are talking about (there are plenty of other ways to
| track them) than I am with the government knowing what the
| citizens are planning on standing up for/against.
| robryk wrote:
| What are you comparing with (both for government and for
| criminals)? In case of criminals it's easier to imagine a
| similar world where just criminals don't do crime; however,
| that comparison fails to take into account indirect effects of
| crimes (which are both negative -- e.g. costs spent on
| protection against crime -- and positive -- more incentives to
| influence the society so that crime is less beneficial).
|
| In the case of government, I find it hard to see what do you
| mean by "same world, but without government". If everyone
| behaved the same in absence of government, nothing would really
| change. If we take into account changes in people's behaviour
| due to lack of government, then how do we stipulate that no
| government forms in that world? Are we imagining a world where
| everyone knows that forming any government will end the world
| and thus no one does that? In that case I'm hard pressed to
| even guess the sign of the difference in magnitude of harm, let
| alone its order of magnitude.
| kodyo wrote:
| Is there an organization you can think of other than a
| government that is capable of bringing about a Chinese Great
| Leap Forward, a Soviet Holodomor, or a German Holocaust?
|
| Money laundering and drug trafficking are rounding errors.
| bbreier wrote:
| East India Company
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| ... which had an army bigger than Britain's.
| theCrowing wrote:
| He is right but I hate people talking about the government like
| it's some random entity. You are able to vote, you can decide
| who is the government AND here comes to the kicker you can even
| be IN the government. You just prefer to not be, you prefer to
| build artificial stuff to circumvent what your elected
| government does. It's so counterintuitive.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I don't really like this idea that voting will fix all
| problems and dangers in government. In fact, voting could be
| a cause of the danger. It is called tyranny of the majority.
| tensor wrote:
| And that's why governments are more complex than straight
| democracy. I love how people bring up the tyranny of the
| majority as some counter to modern democratic government,
| all the while providing no viable alternative.
|
| What, do you want the tyranny of the minority? Are you
| proposing some sort of fascism?
| kodyo wrote:
| Why would I want to be in the government unless I wanted to
| impose my will on someone else? People like that are the
| people I least want to be governed by.
| spritefs wrote:
| Correct in theory but completely wrong in practice
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the
| government
|
| This is (in many cases) a lie. The system is set up in a way
| that only the political class can realistically run for
| political office.
| theCrowing wrote:
| proof it. the last election cycle tells a different story.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| More so to circumvent the dim-witted will of my neighbors.
| kodyo wrote:
| The idea that dim-witted neighbors get to have a say in how
| you live your life is kinda gross.
| theCrowing wrote:
| And he thinks you are the dim-witted neighbor so to get an
| actual idea if you or he is dim-witted you need outside
| data.
| britneybitch wrote:
| https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014/08/12/study-you-
| have...
|
| > the preferences of the average American appear to have only
| a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact
| upon public policy
|
| What Signal is doing is infinitely more effective than voting
| for this year's media-approved career politician.
| theCrowing wrote:
| And one simple bug or a bad actor could bring it all down.
| thelamest wrote:
| Counter: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-
| oligarchy-... (and it isn't a left vs right thing, Vox is
| replying to a whole bunch of coverage from all angles; I've
| mostly seen Gilens&Page posted from the left).
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I have the ability to participate in a handful of governments
| by voting. There are countless government officials around
| the world who might like access to my signal conversations. I
| don't have any say for most of them. That's why I'm glad I
| can use a service like Signal offers.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| How do I vote out the FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF? The politicians change
| and they all stay the same or get more powerful
| theCrowing wrote:
| Well, get elected write a bill and find allies. That's how.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Who would have thought it could be so simple?
| theCrowing wrote:
| Nobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and
| prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.
| kragen wrote:
| we have a working solution to the problem of the cia
| snooping on political dissidents and for some reason you
| want us to abandon it and switch to a solution that won't
| work
|
| why is that
| 8note wrote:
| Using government is an effective solution. It's slow, but
| it's a dedicated political campaign that overturned roe v
| wade.
|
| Cryptography isnt a solution to this because wrench
| attacks will continue to exist
| theCrowing wrote:
| No, you believe you have a working solution, but you
| can't verify it. You know how you could verify it?
| tensor wrote:
| I don't think that poster is saying to ban Signal. A
| minority of people want to ban Signal. As it is Signal is
| legal and that's good. Democracy is also good. And yes
| people should participate in democracy rather than simply
| posting angry internet comments. Participating in
| democracy is also good.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Wow, it's so simple and easy, how has no one thought of
| that before and tried it?
| theCrowing wrote:
| Nobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and
| prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why aren't _you_ doing it, then?
|
| Oh, right, because it's impossible.
| theCrowing wrote:
| But I am, we fought a lot of battles and won over the
| last years with the previous German government, got the
| new one to adopt most of our (CCC) proposals and are now
| fighting again because of some proposals are again
| overreaching.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Simplistic "but hard" proposals beget sarcastic replies.
| I could enumerate some reasons why what you said is
| overly simplistic and ignores some harsh realities but I
| expect the response to be another variant of "no one said
| it would be easy". I guess no one is allowed to have an
| opinion on a topic without being prepared to martyr
| themselves for it?
| theCrowing wrote:
| So as with the topic at hand you assume a certain outcome
| even in discussions you try to derail with low effort
| jibs, got it.
| eternalban wrote:
| This is a classic problem. You have political and
| institutional elements in every system. (In the old days,
| the institutional elements were the clerics of various
| religions.)
|
| _A_ solution is to indoctrinate bureaucratic elements of
| government to follow political leadership, but this trick
| only works in authoritarian systems, like USSR, and
| requires periodic show trials and executions, or in the
| military (thus: bootcamp).
|
| This is one of the areas where machine intelligence could
| end up saving the day for humanity. Bureaucracies can
| potentially be replaced in toto by informational systems at
| some point. I think only then will we get to try actual
| democracy democracy.
| 8note wrote:
| Your vote is one vote among many. You need to convince
| everyone else to vote with you too, including the
| politicians that get elected.
|
| Otherwise, you need to run for yourself.
|
| You won't get what you want done if you don't participate,
| and voting is the bare minimum of participation you can do
| kodyo wrote:
| Voting does fuck all and everybody knows it. The only
| beneficiaries of the ability to vote are the tyrants who
| get to blame the result of their depravity on the people
| they oppress: the "voters."
| from wrote:
| There are 2 million civilian federal employees (nearly all of
| which are unfireable) and many who spend all their days
| promulgating rules that make everyone else's lives more
| expensive, more annoying, and involve more government forms.
| Elections do not replace these people.
| chimineycricket wrote:
| I think it's idealist to think any of these things will help
| even one bit with the problems Parent is talking about.
| theCrowing wrote:
| And it's not idealist to believe the opposite?
| chimineycricket wrote:
| No because that's not ideal. But it is realistic.
| theCrowing wrote:
| agree to disagree.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| The world seems to have a number of governments that don't
| respond kindly to criticism from their own citizens, so that
| leaves other governments the job of restraining them.
| schappim wrote:
| For those who haven't read the post, the summary of Tim's Post
| is: Reid Blackman's article in the NYTimes argues
| that Signal App is dangerous because bad people could use it to
| plan nefarious activities and the legal authorities wouldn't be
| able to eavesdrop on them. However, it is impossible to address
| the downside of the app without completely shattering the upside
| of protected privacy. Blackman's claims about Signal's ideology
| are irrelevant because the math doesn't care - people are
| justified in wanting privacy, and there have been no credible
| proposals for taking away just the bad people's privacy. Signal
| is not the only end-to-end encrypted way to communicate, but it
| is a great piece of software and privacy is good.
|
| I'm really torn on this issue, as I understand both sides of the
| privacy debate. I am both a strong proponent of privacy, but I'm
| also an ecommerce business owner.
|
| Unfortunately, the same tools I use personally (VPNs, disposable
| email addresses, parcel lockers, etc.) are also utilized by
| fraudsters to make fraudulent orders. At this time, crypto
| payments appear to be the only viable way I can guarantee my
| customers' privacy and protect my business; however, the real-
| world market penetration for crypto is too low, and there are
| numerous other issues.
|
| This puts me in the sad position where "[complete] Privacy is NOT
| OK" for my business. I am currently exploring 3D Secure 2, what
| other options do I have?
| tredre3 wrote:
| > At this time, crypto payments appear to be the only viable
| way I can guarantee my customers' privacy and protect my
| business
|
| How does crypto protect your business?
| ls15 wrote:
| There is no chargeback
| sabellito wrote:
| How would having a backdoor to Signal help with your fraud
| issue? Are you sure you're a strong proponent of privacy?
| schappim wrote:
| I am attempting (poorly) to emphasize that this conversation
| requires more nuance. It is possible to be pro-privacy while
| simultaneously understanding why it is sometimes necessary to
| reveal private information.
| sabellito wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, and I also would love a
| middle-ground.
|
| However, as the article explains better than I could,
| there's no way to get the upsides of privacy while
| mitigating the downsides.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Even if signal puts in a backdoor to allow wiretapping (and
| criminals) access the next thing that happens is someone makes
| another application that doesn't have it. Communication
| applications based on encryption aren't "hard" in the sense the
| maths is well established and a root of online business and a
| leaky system is worthless to businesses and many customers. Those
| that don't care will carry on with signal, everyone else will
| leave.
| [deleted]
| hwestiii wrote:
| Ticking time bomb, 2022 Edition?
| eointierney wrote:
| Privacy is a fundamental Human Right. Only as the Law and all
| practices comply do they obtain our legitimacy. All else is
| nonsense
| nhchris wrote:
| An unaddressed point: These things are usually framed as a
| _change_ - communications are "going dark", law-enforcement is
| powerless, radical privacy-first ideology, etc...
|
| But it's not a change - conversations were private-by-default
| back when they mostly happened offline (yes, a govt. agent could
| have been eavesdropping, just as they can still plant a bug or an
| infiltrator today), and encryption is just restoring what we used
| to have before conversations moved online.
| masterof0 wrote:
| The feds have been working hard to push the "freedom isn't free"
| agenda in order to persuade the public that Chinese style is
| acceptable if we are the ones doing it. You can see the effort on
| YouTube(through major podcasts and channels), TikTok, now the New
| York Times, among other places (for example, the ex-CIA guy that
| trended in YT for a while, who claims the government needs to
| surveil us to "keep us safe", and the CIA is "good", Snowden is a
| traitor, and all the deep state talking points, etc...). Straight
| propaganda, such as the one coming from Tass or XinHua news, is
| insane.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I really need to cancel my NY Times subscription
|
| They haven't really had much variation in content since the
| invasion of Ukraine, and the only variation are these random
| WTF-who-paid-for-this articles
| Nicksil wrote:
| > [...] now the New York Times [...]
|
| Also this: (Note: This is under the _opinion_ section,
| however.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34176590
| philippejara wrote:
| It never fails to amaze me how people are currently ok with
| effectively wiretapping communication, compared to how it was
| treated back when wiretapping was a thing. That you have the NYT
| blatantly publishing something this brazen while ignoring
| completely the repeated surveillance scandals in the last decade
| is mind boggling. I know I should be charitable but there's no
| explanation I can find other than they're trying to create a
| second "x man bad" with elon for the guaranteed traffic now that
| trump is effectively neutered and irrelevant.
|
| Even during the heyday of the patriot act the mentality didn't
| seem _this_ bad for americans, granted that could be my memory
| failing.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| >they're trying to create a second "x man bad" with elon now
| that trump is effectively neutered and irrelevant.
|
| Where did you get that Elon and Trump here from?
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