[HN Gopher] Internet of Snitches
___________________________________________________________________
Internet of Snitches
Author : nicolaslem
Score : 297 points
Date : 2021-08-12 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (puri.sm)
(TXT) w3m dump (puri.sm)
| swah wrote:
| Who are the unlucky ones that will be double-checking the AI-
| tagged images for child pornography, all day long?
| turminal wrote:
| The same ones that already do this for everything that gets
| posted to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter...
|
| Underpaid, overstressed and overworked people. Imagine what a
| job like this does to ones mental health.
| CharlesW wrote:
| https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/
| notquitehuman wrote:
| It's the same people who make sure that scamware doesn't show
| up in the App Store. Apple does a good job with that, don't
| they?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Hopefully people with better conditions than the Facebook
| moderators.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I have two issues with automatic surveillance. One is of course
| false positives. When you scan everything, even a small false
| positive chance will mean a LOT of people get swept up by false
| positives. Scan enough things, and soon everyone will be victims
| of false positives.
|
| This is compounded because people don't understand probabilities.
| Take DNA... if someone says "the chance of this DNA match being
| wrong is one in a million", people will assume the match is
| correct, because that seems like a really small chance of a false
| positive.. however, if you are matching that DNA to everyone in
| the United States, that one in a million ends up with over 300
| matches that are wrong.
|
| Second, perfect enforcement of laws is not always ideal. If we
| catch everyone who breaks the law, how can we ever decide as a
| society to change the law? For example, if we had 100% effective
| anti-marijuana laws, no one could have ever tried marijuana and
| we would not have been able to determine that we actually don't
| want it outlawed. If no one can ever break a law, we have no way
| of testing whether a law is good or not.
| skybrian wrote:
| Compare with the current Internet of snitches, where people flag
| posts and want something to be done about it.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Purism's accurate take on Apple's recent CSAM-scanning
| announcement is preaching to the choir since the typical consumer
| use-cases for an iPhone versus a Librem phone don't overlap well.
| Still, I'm glad Purism continues to stake-out and explain its
| entire reason for existing.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| What do you mean? I've owned iPhones for 13 years and ordered a
| Librem earlier this week. I'm determined to use it as my daily
| driver, no matter how buggy it turns out to be when it arrives.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| The refund thing is odd... but I benefit from their mobile UI.
| goatcode wrote:
| It's interesting how much this topic has blown up, especially
| compared to how it usually does, after pedophiles are targeted.
|
| It's also interesting that at least one prepared response will be
| found to my point above.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| So how are we going to stop this if it becomes a reality for 99%
| of phones sold?
|
| I'm very poor- like on and off homeless poor- and I would be
| willing to pay up to $200 for a free phone, but I couldn't go
| higher. I dearly hope that it doesn't become the case that any
| "free" phone isn't a luxury like current privacy oriented phones.
| stalkersyndrome wrote:
| This is a great article.
|
| What I'm about to say is a bit controversial and cannot be
| implemented by majority, or even a large minority. Maybe a subset
| of HN that isn't already in this mindset:
|
| Treat all devices as adversarial as you possibly can within some
| sensical reason. Use Tor, for example, but expect that everything
| you do is being logged and that sometime in the future if a
| vulnerability, exploit, whatever is discovered that can trace
| these logs back to you, that you know what you're in for. Apply
| this to whatever else you feel like could have a negative impact
| on you.
|
| Obviously this is now coming to light because of Apple but this
| has been an issue long before.
|
| To put it into more morbid terms: assume that the government
| thinks you're storing CP and they're going through your trash,
| and behave accordingly.
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| I think it's good advice to assume your device is doing things
| against your best interests, especially when running software
| from MS, Google, etc.
|
| There are a few easy things you can do like use e2e encryption
| wherever possible and trust as few things (devices, companies,
| apps) as you can get away with.
|
| TOR has dubious value given the effort put in by various actors
| to de-anonymize its traffic.
| soco wrote:
| Does this leave anything possible?
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| Privacy and security.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Kitten videos.
|
| That's about it.
| ghoward wrote:
| And then someone will come along and claim that kitten
| videos are animal abuse. I wish I was being sarcastic.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I like Tor, but is just too slow. I use wireguard/proxies
| instead, a subpar alternative security wise but with better
| performance.
| markenqualitaet wrote:
| Y tho? Your advice reads like a recipe for a bad time.
|
| Mitigation is required, if you actually do have something to
| hide.
|
| Freedom however is endangered, if you personally mitigate this
| or not. I think for most people the best course of action would
| be to speak out against this, boycott the companies or get
| politically active, educate others about the threat to all of
| us.
|
| And evading hostile tech's reach is really not a practical
| every day thing. I mean look at the shitshow of browser
| fingerprinting. Behaving vastly different than most will leave
| a trace of its own, even if it's just the absence of common
| information.
|
| The best personal protection is being part of a healthy,
| democracy valuing collective not okay with this surveillance.
|
| And if you are about to explode the next big story, I would
| probably advice migrating somewhere hostile to the country you
| are about to piss off. It's not like they turn on your fridge
| because you bought LSD for you and your boyfriend; I mean
| generally buying drugs happens in public Telegram groups these
| days... Politicians love spending money on surveillance tech,
| but not law enforcement people. Nothing is gonna happen, if you
| don't mess with powerful people's egos.
|
| The real damage of these trends is the self censorship and
| permanent premptive self-surveillance you automatically do in
| the face of it. Like treating every device as hostile! You are
| killing off the mental freedom more and more, creativity,
| possibilities. No one is going all to prison, but no one isn't
| in prison a little bit.
| [deleted]
| SixDouble5321 wrote:
| I think the main difference between you and OP, is your
| optimism and OP's cynicism are opposite.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| What will be really painful is that you won't even be able to
| prevent data egress, since these devices will just hit Amazon
| Walk, or connect via some hidden 6G modem, or use DNS over HTTPS
| to hide the network names.
|
| And you'll pay for it, too!
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| > This "Internet of Things" has promised people convenience, yet
| we know that convenience has already come at the cost of personal
| privacy.
|
| I really wonder if the privacy implications of the "internet of
| things" are so dangerous that the internet of things should never
| be realized to its full potential. There is the always present
| temptation for governments to co-opt it as a surveillance
| apparatus. It really is the perfect tool for Big Brother style
| rule.
|
| The cost may be too high.
|
| Edit: grammar
| dotcommand wrote:
| The selling point of IoT is the data. It's the reason for the
| heavy investment in big data/neural networks/nvidia/etc.
| Preparing for the IoT world where there isn't much privacy but
| lots and lots of data.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Also consider most of those devices after 2-3 years as
| insecure. Many running a decade old version of linux at its
| core, and the other bits of software usually just as old.
| Written by someone whos job was outsourced 4 years ago. Never
| to be updated again. Just assume someone is going to do things
| with it that you do not want them doing. That the gov wants in
| on the action is just another in the list of threat actors.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Whenever I want an IoT type device, I would rather home brew
| it. Technically my stuff would be more of a local network of
| things since I rarely expose stuff over the internet,
| especially due to lack of static IP.
| jlengrand wrote:
| What I really wonder is, once virtually everyone has crossed the
| rubicon to reuse the article's expression, how long it will take
| for whoever decides NOT to be tracked to look guilty?
|
| How long before people without phones, doorbells or smart watches
| get frowned upon?
|
| At the rate we're accelerating, it wouldn't be crazy to see it
| happen in a couple years.
| legrande wrote:
| Good old fashioned police-work is needed instead of back-doors
| into our favorite apps.
|
| The Internet and app ecosystems can't work properly if they're
| weakened by LEAs. People would just not use them if they know
| they're being watched. I'm not saying the majority would switch
| to Linux phones either (like Librem 5 & Pinephone), simply that
| the two dominating app-stores (Play & Apple Store) would be
| phased out and people would probably fund independent FLOSS app
| stores to replace them.
|
| In the end, the people will speak out and respond to back-doors.
| In-fact we need FLOSS app stores right now (Similar to
| F-Droid[0], but baked in as the default store), and they need to
| be funded properly & they need sound economic incentives to
| continue. No more 'free' apps where you pay for them with your
| data. It's possible to have FLOSS apps that are not _gratis_
| where people pay for them with _money_ , not their _data_.
|
| (The reason I suggest we switch to FLOSS app stores is that the
| apps can easily be checked for back-doors or malicious code since
| the code is open source. It makes the apps readily available for
| audits too)
|
| [0] https://f-droid.org/
| wrycoder wrote:
| As far as I know, a FLOSS store for Apple devices is very close
| to impossible.
| sschueller wrote:
| CSAM also doesn't prevent children from being exploited. It's
| an archive of past abuse. The police should focus and finding
| creators of such abhorrent material and put them in prison.
| [deleted]
| lancesells wrote:
| This would seemingly help police catch more of these
| abhorrent people in less time. I think the question is does
| that outweigh the eventual abuse of the much larger
| population of non-abusers.
|
| Personally, I've been heading toward a life more free of the
| internet and technology. This move by Apple is speeding that
| up.
| md_ wrote:
| I think there are a few theories here:
|
| 1. CSAM production may be incentivized by consumers (either
| because they pay for it or because they serve to encourage
| the producers).
|
| 2. CSAM may (as, famously, with Backpage) be an advertisement
| for real-world meet ups and further abuse.
|
| 3. Having pictures of one's own abuse further disseminated is
| itself abusive and morally wrong.
|
| Obviously producers should _also_ be prosecuted, but while I
| do think the American approach is in many ways informed by
| puritanical beliefs, there are perfectly rational reasons to
| pursue the spread of such material.
| syshum wrote:
| >here are perfectly rational reasons to pursue the spread
| of such material.
|
| sure but people should also keep in mind that pursuit could
| massively backfire, like in the case of backpage, where the
| shutdown of the site actually made is HARDER to find and
| recuse children being abused because now the traffickers
| are using more secure, more underground platforms...
| waterhouse wrote:
| Does reason (1) mean that we should disincentivize CSAM
| production by funding a large, free, publicly accessible
| and searchable database of CSAM images, to make current
| CSAM producers unable to compete with free? If we believe
| the RIAA and MPAA, anyway.
|
| (2) and (3) can be handled by enforcing a delay of, say, 15
| years between CSAM being produced and it entering the
| database (and censoring any identifying information, of
| course), and by giving people the choice to opt out before
| their pictures are added.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I don't think the theory that consumption drives production
| holds true when talking about child pornography because the
| material can be copied infinitely, it's not a finite
| resource.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Exposure to more people might lure more people into
| becoming buyers; what's what CSAM distribution laws are
| trying to prevent: showing them to more people.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > as, famously, with Backpage
|
| This characterization of Backpage diverges significantly
| from the realities of the site uncovered by authorities
| [1]. Choice excerpt:
|
| > "Information provided to us by [FBI Agent Steve] Vienneau
| and other members of the Innocence Lost Task Force confirm
| that, unlike virtually every other website that is used for
| prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably
| responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes
| proactive steps to assist in investigations," wrote
| Catherine Crisham and Aravind Swaminathan, both assistant
| U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Washington, in
| the April 3 memo to Jenny Durkan, now mayor of Seattle and
| then head federal prosecutor for the district. Vienneau
| told prosecutors that "on many occasions," Backpage staff
| proactively sent him "advertisements that appear to contain
| pictures of juveniles" and that the company was "very
| cooperative at removing these advertisements at law
| enforcement's request."
|
| > "Even without a subpoena, in exigent circumstances such
| as a child rescue situation, Backpage will provide the
| maximum information and assistance permitted under the
| law," wrote Crisham and Swaminathan.
|
| 1. https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-
| governme...
| xfitm3 wrote:
| Backpage had a staff of ~75 employees dedicated to
| manually reviewing all adult ads and they were the #1
| source of trafficking tips until they were shut down and
| the owner jailed.
|
| They truly did good work and were an unfortunate casualty
| of a political pissing contest.
| anthk wrote:
| >. The police should focus and finding creators of such
| abhorrent material and put them in prison.
|
| Good luck with that. They are in Russia/Eastern Europe,
| behind mafias.
| [deleted]
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I hate slippery slope arguments, but....
|
| How long until media players and display devices are hashing all
| of our media to check for copyright violations. Right now it is
| effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that doesn't
| include a computer capable of this.
|
| CSAM is one thing, and from reports it sounds like checking
| hashes isn't really that effective. However, this paves the way
| for hash checks for a variety of scary things.
|
| What happens when governments start distributing lists of hashes
| belonging to "subversive" material (this isn't pipe dream,
| numerous large countries already block subversive material on the
| internet).
| [deleted]
| anthk wrote:
| >How long until media players and display devices are hashing
| all of our media to check for copyright violations.
|
| It has been rumored back in the day that WMP 10-12 would be
| like that.
| jerf wrote:
| "I hate slippery slope arguments, but...."
|
| Slippery slope is vastly oversold as a logical fallacy. It is
| only a fallacy in the absence of evidence that there is a
| slope. If there's a multi-decade trend of which this is only a
| single step, and there's no visible mechanism for making it
| stop here and go no farther, then the logical fallacy is in
| believing with no reason that the trend line will stop here.
|
| It is not a fallacy to speak as if this is only the beginning
| of a huge push into intrusive monitoring. It is a fallacy to
| pretend otherwise.
|
| Slippery slope is also a fallacy if you take one instance of a
| trend and then logically project it to an absurd extreme, but
| this is not what we're doing here. We're simply looking at the
| next obvious, logical, well-evidenced step, with plenty of
| people who obviously want this even if they are a bit too
| discreet to come right out and say it in public.
|
| But it's not a hard leap to see that our rulers today would
| like to be in full control of everything bit of data we receive
| and every bit of data we produce and the only things stopping
| them are technical possibilities and whether or not we'd put up
| with it. I see nothing else stopping them; not scruples, not
| morality, no existential awareness of the sheer staggering
| amount of responsibility they would be pushing on to
| themselves, no concerns about how it may hurt anyone, nothing.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| As in all things, it's important to seek out evidence
| elsewhere that it might exist. For example, the US is already
| significantly "behind" many other developed nations in terms
| of not just how much surveillance and censorship is
| tolerated, but also in other freedom-oriented areas like
| choice to own firearms, choice of whether to have medical
| insurance, etc.
|
| So it shouldn't really be necessary to have any of these
| arguments based on speculated future scenarios when you can
| look to Canada, the UK, Australia, etc, and see that slight
| increases in surveillance, censorship, gun regulation, health
| care availability, etc might actually have some benefits and
| certainly don't necessarily put you in the instant quicksand
| toward fascism/communism/scary scenario X.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > So it shouldn't really be necessary to have any of these
| arguments based on speculated future scenarios when you can
| look to Canada, the UK, Australia, etc, and see that slight
| increases in surveillance, censorship, gun regulation,
| health care availability, etc might actually have some
| benefits and certainly don't necessarily put you in the
| instant quicksand toward fascism/communism/scary scenario
| X.
|
| There are a _lot_ of benefits to living in countries with
| different governance approaches from the in many ways
| ultra- _laissez faire_ approach taken in the US, but I don
| 't think you'll find many takers here for the idea that the
| physical and internet surveillance of the UK and Australia
| are a model to which to look forward.
| abraae wrote:
| > I don't think you'll find many takers here for the idea
| that the physical and internet surveillance of the UK and
| Australia are a model to which to look forward.
|
| Given the binary choice I would rather have the
| surveillance instead of the outrage-driven anti-science
| hordes that have been empowered by those US gifts to
| society Facebook and Twitter.
| anthk wrote:
| >have been empowered by those US gifts to society
| Facebook and Twitter.
|
| Hope you are kidding to us...
|
| FB and Twtr are huge turds full of anti-science mobs
| composed anti-vaxxers sharing fake news everywhere.
|
| There is more science in all the IRC and Usenet subnets
| today than in the whole FB network...
| stevenicr wrote:
| Not a fan of binary choices myself, I'd like to consider
| these options:
|
| 1 - everyone believes every single thing they see on fbk
| feed. 2 - everyone is well versed in how to highlight,
| one-click / tap search ggle,ddg, bing - for more info
| about highlighted thing (taught how to determine what a
| good source is).
|
| See, the first way can work mostly, but many problems
| emerge in short while. The second way empowers people to
| think before acting and to learn more and not buy what X
| is selling automatically.
|
| (I have witnessed first hand the damage done by 'fact
| checking' on fbook - people 100 believe a false post
| because fbk has not labled it as misinfo - for three
| days)
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Oh I know. I'm being downvoted to oblivion already--
| that's the reality of HN being US-centric (I'm Canadian).
|
| But my point is less about taking a stand on any of one
| of those issues and more just that US-based advocates
| making slippery-slope arguments often resort to wide-eyed
| speculation about the future rather than evidence because
| they're unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge what the
| realities are elsewhere in the world.
| namdnay wrote:
| To play devils advocate for a bit, London is an
| incredibly safe city at night compared to say Paris or
| Rome or Madrid or Amsterdam. I'm pretty sure part of that
| is down to the staggering amount of cameras
| anthk wrote:
| How is Madrid unsafe? Have you even been there?
|
| As if London didn't have its own and huge pack of
| chavs...
| Stupulous wrote:
| Personally, I find Australian censorship and UK
| surveillance have already crossed the line. I'm not
| convinced that censorship ever has benefits, so any cost
| seems too much. Surveillance helps catch more criminals,
| but the US hardly has a problem finding people to put
| behind bars.
|
| I don't hate Australian gun control- it is a little
| overzealous but within reason imo. I'm not someone who
| values gun ownership, so others might disagree. In the UK,
| however,
| https://twitter.com/mayoroflondon/status/982906526334668800
| is a line crossed for me.
|
| Even if there is a slippery slope that just ends at those
| levels, I think we should be fighting it. And it's not
| clear to me whether the slope does actually stop there, and
| that the UK and Australia aren't still sliding.
| barrkel wrote:
| What happens in practice, is that police stop
| investigating most crimes where there isn't good CCTV
| coverage. The cost-benefit tradeoff is much more
| favourable in surveillance conditions. After a while, the
| public learns that if they want the police to do
| something about thefts and robbery, they need to support
| more cameras.
|
| (Victim of one motorbike-jacking, one attempted motorbike
| jacking and 5 separate motorcycle thefts in London.)
| joek1301 wrote:
| I think Scott Alexander's piece on slippery slopes and
| Schelling fences [1] does a nice job delineating between
| good- and bad-faith slippery slope arguments.
|
| "Slippery slopes legitimately exist wherever a policy not
| only affects the world directly, but affects people's
| willingness or ability to oppose future policies."
|
| [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelli
| ng-...
| wyager wrote:
| It's not a fallacy at all under Bayesian reasoning; it's a
| very powerful heuristic.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| > Slippery slope is also a fallacy if you take one instance
| of a trend and then logically project it to an absurd
| extreme, but this is not what we're doing here. We're simply
| looking at the next obvious, logical, well-evidenced step,
| with plenty of people who obviously want this even if they
| are a bit too discreet to come right out and say it in
| public.
|
| What makes it easy to oversell as a fallacy is that
| everything you described that defines it is subjective, and
| easily argued about. People disagree a lot on what's "absurd"
| or "obvious" or "well-evidenced."
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Ahh yes, the slippery slope fallacy fallacy: assuming that
| all slippery slope arguments are fallacious.
|
| https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/987274961659232256.
| ..
| godelski wrote:
| > assuming that all slippery slope arguments are
| fallacious.
|
| They literally stated when it is and isn't a fallacy with
| differentiating conditions...
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| > Slippery slope fallacy _fallacy_
|
| I believe the poster you're responding to is making a
| joke.
| godelski wrote:
| Ops. Sometimes those things don't come across as well
| over text. My mistake.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| "Slippery slope" is so overused that we forget the original
| analogy. It needs to have a pressure in one direction and
| very little to resist that pressure. That is, it has to have
| a slope and that slope has to be slippery.
|
| In this particular case, it's a slipper slope on which we
| already have a ton of momentum.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Political leaders feel compelled to provide a "service" in
| which they "solve" societal problems. Not all problems can be
| solved across the board, however, so what happens is a
| sideways motion into violations of privacy in exchange for a
| visible "difference" in handling illegal behavior which was
| previously beyond the reach of law enforcement.
|
| This fallacy is a direct result of the technologies developed
| and discussed here, so we're all culpable for what has been
| already laid down. Maybe keeping this in mind with AI will
| help, but given corporate stakeholders, probably not.
| visualradio wrote:
| Getting rid of patents would probably help.
|
| With stuff like phones there's probably plenty of options
| for mass production of open source hardware modules
| purchasable from electronic hobbyist stores anonymously
| with cash which would allow anyone to build their own
| personal communicator with radio, SIM, wifi, quantum, etc
| modules.
|
| The issue is that competitive mass production of many
| independent compatible modules would required a public
| description of an applied system that everyone can debate
| and discuss and agree to on technical merits, but people
| self-censor and don't want to share ideas for such applied
| systems online because they think some monopolist is going
| to patent everything in order to arbitrarily halt
| development for 20 years.
|
| In order to achieve such a cultural shift it might be
| necessary to reform the religions.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy
| a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this.
|
| Digital Signage Displays come to the rescue, although they cost
| more and some are starting to put Android inside, which however
| can be kept offline as the device would work merely as a
| display. The upside is that they're designed to work 18/7 to
| 24/7 and won't easily break like cheaper Smart TVs; setting up
| a wall of screens in a mall can be a real pain in the ass if
| every month some guy needs to climb up there and swap the one
| that died because of bad capacitors etc. That stuff must last
| or it becomes a huge waste of money.
|
| Then the necessary tuner can be either bought stand alone (and
| kept unconnected), or enclosed in a Linux/Kodi mini-PC in the
| form of a cheap USB dongle.
| https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T2_USB_Devices
|
| The result can be bulky and probably Grandpa wouldn't welcome
| it, but for technical inclined users, the level of freedom and
| security that can be achieved is worth the effort.
| paulcarroty wrote:
| > How long until media players and display devices are hashing
| all of our media to check for copyright violations.
|
| Heard Sony TVs doing it right NOW.
| miketery wrote:
| Why do you hate slippery slope arguments? They tend to be
| right. It's why we have the saying - the road to hell is paved
| with good intentions.
|
| Edit: rather than "tend to be right", I should have said can be
| right given the right argument and evidence.
| umvi wrote:
| The problem is that one man's hell is another man's paradise.
|
| Gun-free America, strong covid public health policies, "hate
| speech", device surveillance, etc ... you name the slippery
| slope and you'll find at the bottom of the slope that it's
| hell for some people and paradise for others. Some people
| prefer highly authoritarian governments that manage (and
| minimize) life risk and others prefer hands off governments
| with self-managed risk.
| coding123 wrote:
| The GOOD news is that there is no One World Government, so
| people are able to buy their transfer to another country to
| better fit their definition of paradise.
| _jal wrote:
| For the vast bulk of people, you may as well suggest they
| move to a different planet.
|
| The even worse problem with this line of thought is the
| econ-101 conclusion - that they must be OK with things if
| they don't demonstrate otherwise by voting with their
| feet. (Not ascribing that assertion to the parent.)
| tobmlt wrote:
| Yep. You've found one of the true purposes of immigration
| law. As with barriers to free competition among employers
| in the market for employees acting to suppress wages to
| benefit companies, so with nation states in their control
| of citizens immigration allowing for higher repression
| and exploitation of various forms.
| randompwd wrote:
| As a native English speaker, I'm having a lot of trouble
| parsing your comment.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| The BAD news is that there are so many government options
| that it will be hard to find a country that will fit you
| perfectly and some countries tend to overreach their
| borders very far so that you cannot escape their tyranny
| even if you move. The WORSE news is that even if they're
| able to find a country that fits them better, they still
| need to invest a lot of money and time to move (if they
| get in at all) and leave their family, friends and home
| behind.
|
| Seriously, moving to a different country is hardly an
| option. In nearly all cases, fighting to keep your
| country good is your best bet.
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| We might not have a world government on paper, but
| governments around the world tend to be largely on the
| same page. Those that aren't following the lead of the
| world hegemony have an unfortunate tendency to get
| invaded, have uprisings of dubious origins, or other
| inconveniences like assassination[1]. Considering how
| long that list is, I don't think it's unfair to assume
| there's many more subtle instances where foreign
| governments decided to cooperate that we don't even know
| about.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involve
| ment_in...
| anthk wrote:
| You can choose gun control, universal healthcare and fight
| device surveillance.
|
| You know, that's called... Europe.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Europe's privacy protections only seem to apply to
| companies. Their governments seem to be perfectly happy
| with invading your privacy as long as they're the ones
| doing it.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| Authoritarianism doesn't only swing in the liberal
| direction. Until the last generation most authoritarian
| policies were of the conservative sort.
|
| And with regards to this specific debate, being tough on
| crime and (largely unnecessary conspiracy level) fear over
| pedophilia are both conservative darlings.
|
| The 2nd amendment has typically been the only love of
| conservatives.
|
| Where were they when the police illegally searched us in
| dozens of ways, or when free speech was limited to easy to
| ignore "free speech zones"?
|
| They've only clamoured to defend free speech once the right
| to freely abuse weaker social classes was at risk of being
| taken away.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| What's at risk of being taken away is the right of weaker
| groups to abuse stronger ones, at least to some degree.
|
| Stronger ones always have and always will abuse weaker
| ones. It's pretty much a tautology. Freedom of speech and
| classical liberalism in general is the only defense the
| weak have.
| enlyth wrote:
| It is coming, and there is nothing we can do about it.
|
| There's a chilling feeling watching this all unfold, as our
| freedoms get taken away and we're powerless to do anything
| other than complain on a programming themed social media
| website.
|
| We'll be labelled as conspiracy theorists, wackos, nutjobs,
| unintegratable people.
|
| That meme you shared with your friend in a private chat? Sorry,
| was a bit too anti-establishment for our tastes.
| majormajor wrote:
| Display devices do this, but for advertising targeting, not
| copyright violation right now.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition
|
| Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of license
| info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions, what
| digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned. Fortunately
| that's basically an impossible thing to wrangle currently, but
| if things like Blu-Rays go away it starts to be more feasible
| ("Oh, you're watching this show in 8K? Please connect your
| Netflix account to verify your access.")
|
| Once the technical capability is there, how can we best stop
| it? That's where I don't have good answers.
|
| Possibly the only thing unique about what Apple is doing is
| that they _announced it._
| jrumbut wrote:
| > Detecting copyright violation would need some sort of
| license info side channel so your TV knew what subscriptions,
| what digital copies, what BluRays, etc, you owned.
|
| An anti-piracy scheme that respected legitimate use would
| need this. History suggests that breaking existing media so
| that you have to buy (or rent) new copies of the same content
| over and over may be seen as a feature rather than a bug.
| tomxor wrote:
| > slippery slope arguments
|
| There is a stronger 2nd argument, but it's buried towards the
| end:
|
| > Now imagine an Internet of Snitches doing it badly. It's easy
| if you try. Some vendors already do a bad job of keeping
| customer data private and will continue that track record, so
| you can expect public leaks of databases that have flagged
| suspected criminals. Other vendors will write bad machine
| learning algorithms (or biased ones) leading to false positives
| and ruined lives.
|
| No slippery slope is needed, CSAM alone is extremely sensitive,
| a false accusation is ruinous... if automated client side CSAM
| scanning becomes a wide spread practice with Apple leading the
| way, it will be an "AI" of the flies... Apple has also
| demonstrated that it's willing to use ML as an unquestionable
| source of truth before with it's in store security, using
| facial recognition which is blatantly wrong to prosecute the
| innocent.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| > If we forget, no other forgetting will ever happen.
| Everything will be remembered. Everything you read, all through
| life, everything you listened to, everything you watched,
| everything you searched for.
|
| -- Eben Moglen, https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/en/2012/moglen-at-
| republica-free...
| javagram wrote:
| This has already been happening since 2012, just for blu ray
| players so far rather than within the TV itself:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think the only reason we haven't seen the MPAA/RIAA suing
| people already, is the backlash from the crazy p2p lawsuits a
| while ago.
|
| Just search HN for TV, and you'll see plenty of companies
| uploading screen shots and file lists and who knows what else.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| Lammy wrote:
| Sadly the "display devices" ship sailed a long time ago. Smart
| TVs were phoning this stuff home way back in 2013:
| https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging...
|
| Of course that was just file names and TV tuner/input metadata
| like channel numbers, not even MusicBrainz/Shazam-style
| fingerprinting like they would probably be capable of these
| days with beefier SoCs and more widespread always-on
| connectivity. Files-on-USB are no longer "en vogue" anyway with
| everyone and everything moving to streaming services where the
| surveillance is built right in by definition. Every time I
| watch something on Netflix/Hulu/Disney they're watching me
| right back even if it's ostensibly for my benefit e.g. for more
| accurate recommendations.
| rblatz wrote:
| No, they 100% have services that buy data from SmartTV
| manufacturers like Vizio and sells this data to advertisers
| to help track attribution and campaign effectiveness.
|
| A big one is iSpot.tv, the TV will use a fingerprint of your
| commercial and determine when/where it was watched, and help
| you tie back the attribution of a customer that visited your
| site.
| coding123 wrote:
| Well, the good news is that the vast majority of those
| monitors and TVs need a WIFI connection, which is optional to
| set up. However, unfortunately, we're on the cusp of devices
| having their own permanent mobile phone network connection.
| Rozzie can confirm.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| All they need is flip a few bytes in the software and all
| newly sold screens only work if they're registered with an
| active, unbanned and non-anonymous account and were online
| in the last 12 hours.
|
| And then you won't just get randomly banned from Facebook
| or Google with no human support staff to talk to, you'll
| also lose access to half your media devices. This is
| already true for Oculus/Facebook (and probably some
| others).
| umvi wrote:
| > What happens when governments start distributing lists of
| hashes belonging to "subversive" material
|
| Soon for any device containing a computer: "We are just
| including this hash check feature so we can do business with
| China, don't worry it'll be disabled by default for western
| countries"
| guerrilla wrote:
| > How long until media players and display devices are hashing
| all of our media to check for copyright violations. Right now
| it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy a TV that
| doesn't include a computer capable of this.
|
| Not my area, but wasn't this part of the point of HDMI... So,
| the slope seems slippery and pretty vertical to me
| armSixtyFour wrote:
| It's right to be critical of the slippery slope argument,
| except that you can take a look at history and see how even in
| western governments in "free" societies have spied on those who
| challenge the status quo. I think we're right to be skeptical
| of surveillance as there is a proven track record of this kind
| of behavior from governments and corporations.
|
| Take a look at a law that's being proposed in Canada right now.
| It includes allowing the government to request take downs for a
| broad number of reasons including otherwise legal speech that
| they consider to be offensive, data retention, what essentially
| amounts to a national firewall etc.
|
| Cory Doctorow, who is from Canada originally, has a good write
| up on it: https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-
| variant/#no-ca...
| zepto wrote:
| Governments already are. The question is what safeguards you
| have against _your own_ government doing this.
|
| If we weren't worried about government overreach, we wouldn't
| be worried about CSAM scanning.
|
| In another thread someone suggested that the 4th Amendment
| might be a protection in the US. I am doubtful about this, but
| I am interested in what actual law might help. Breaking up
| large companies doesn't seem likely to protect us from the
| government.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| As this blocklist issue gains increased contemplation lets not
| forget that this is a "new feature". Lets consider the silent
| remote access subterfuge that has become known as "software
| updates".
|
| Therefore, as the hardware vendor installed local blocklist is
| a "new feature", 1. it does not apply to older computers,
| particularly ones that are not remotely acessible by others to
| install their opaque "updates" and 2. on newer computers these
| lists can only be dynamic if the owner allows "software
| updates".
|
| The moral of the story is (a) not all "new features" are ones
| the computer owner may want, and (b) older computers have
| value, if only becoause they lack the bad stuff that greedy,
| manipulative, overreaching "tech companies" are building into
| new ones.
|
| There is nothing wrong with updates so long as they are
| granular1, transparent and optional2. It is the owner's
| computer and the owner has a license to the software installed
| on it at the time of purchase. Any party wishing to install new
| software on the owner's computers should need the owner's
| permission. Owners should have a reasonable option to deny such
| permission and to review and install updates themselves, or to
| reject individual proposed "new features".
|
| 1 Here "granular" means avoiding a situation where the user has
| to install a feature that she does not want in order to get a
| feature she does want.
|
| 2 Manual installation of updates should always be possible.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| How long ago were you born to not realize this is already the
| case for almost everything you already use?
| noja wrote:
| Your Smart TV is already doing this to sell targeted adverts
| aimed at you based on what you watch.
| meowster wrote:
| A friendly reminder/suggestion to people looking for a TV:
|
| Sceptre makes consumer 4K "dumb" TVs upto 75". Walmart sells
| them.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| Thank you so much!
|
| I remember reddit being stumped by this question years ago.
| memco wrote:
| I heard in some other HN thread that the quality isn't that
| great on these. Was that an issue for you? I looked into
| NEC monitors, but they're a bit pricey. Does anyone know of
| other options?
| bitwize wrote:
| I bought a Sceptre TV. Quality seems fine, but I'm no
| videophile. It could be that when displaying certain
| shades of blue, the display is four or five nits dimmer
| than spec, but I wouldn't know if it was.
| meowster wrote:
| I don't own one, sorry :-/
| wheybags wrote:
| That's not even a slippery slope, the ps3 already did that
| (refused to play video files of Sony pictures movies)
| 2III7 wrote:
| Got any more info on that? I don't recall the PS3 refusing to
| play movies.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > Right now it is effectively impossible for a consumer to buy
| a TV that doesn't include a computer capable of this.
|
| I buy monitors or projectors, no TVs for me.
| LanceH wrote:
| It would be criminal to drop spyware onto a product sold by an
| individual to a company.
| ohiovr wrote:
| 5,000 page long EULAs make it possible.
| nyx-aiur wrote:
| The only thing I see is everyone giving snooping for
| "advertising" a free ride while crying about the same technology
| working against CSAM, scams and malware. I don't get it stop
| complaining about stuff when you only complain about it when it
| hurts your bottom line.
| npilk wrote:
| Something the whole Apple kerfluffle has revealed to me is how
| many services were _already_ scanning for CSAM in the cloud and
| reporting to authorities. E.g. Google, Facebook, Microsoft. I
| consider myself tech-literate and had not known about this.
|
| Are there other types of material or kinds of activity that cloud
| services might already be scanning for, but might not have much
| public awareness?
| judge2020 wrote:
| I guess you could consider Paypal/Venmo which scan for words:
| https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/paypal-venmo-iran-syria...
|
| Another is that Google Photos and Facebook both do
| classification for objects and text within photos - eg. a
| Kohl's ad in my timeline on Facebook has image alt text of "May
| be an image of 1 person, standing, footwear and outdoors". I'm
| sure their detections look for TOS breaking content or other
| pictures showing illegal activities.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| What the heck is "little women bootleg dvd" doing on there?
|
| CP?
| bitwize wrote:
| A film adaptation of _Little Women_ by Louisa May Alcott
| was released a few years ago.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Not sure why the author thought that would be flagged -
| it's in the "not flagged" list of phrases. I can't find any
| other reference to it either.
| truffdog wrote:
| I think everyone who allows users to upload images and is
| medium sized or larger has to- you really don't want to be
| hosting CSAM, for legal and moral reasons.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have to give Apple credit for unintentionally making this a
| well-known topic. Suddenly people are realizing that their
| content is being scanned constantly. Now they care.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Interesting take on the situation. It's even possible that
| Apple did this deliberately to get people talking about
| privacy.
|
| Child porn is an odd hill to die on. Of course pedophiles and
| purveyors of child porn need to be locked away; no one
| disagrees with that.
|
| But to pull this out of seemingly nowhere, and inform all 300m
| iPhone users (plus however other millions use iCloud on Macs)
| that they must submit to a search, because we are all suddenly
| suspects... this is beyond the pale.
|
| Like others, I have baby pictures and kid pictures. I'm
| thinking about a couple of pics my wife took of our 18-month
| old, in the bathtub with her equally young cousins. I am
| wondering whether these pictures might get flagged in some way.
| Apple claims that they are only looking for known pictures
| already in a particular database, but that is cold comfort. If
| somehow one of my pictures pops up because of an A.I. decision,
| and a human decides it qualifies as child porn, my life is
| ruined.
|
| As a side note, I was planning to upgrade later this year from
| a Samsung to the latest iPhone. That plan is now on hold
| pending review.
|
| In fact I'm suddenly much more interested in the Librem phone,
| purveyed by the author of the article. As I recall, it's about
| $2000 USD so I had really not considered it seriously in the
| past. Now I am considering it seriously. I hope a whole family
| of new Linux-based smartphones can jump into this market and
| take advantage of the situation.
|
| It'll be interesting to see how things shake out. Will this
| move by Apple go down in history as a textbook example of
| shooting oneself in the foot? Or will the masses simply grunt,
| and accept the inevitable?
| Popegaf wrote:
| How many do care though? The vast majority has swallowed
| whichever pills were laid in front of them and fully believe
| the "I have nothing to hide" message.
|
| It's not hopeless, the people with money here should be putting
| it where their mouth it and actually buying things or donating
| to projects that make a positive change.
| hypothesis wrote:
| There is hope. Shock to the system is how one disabused of
| trusting to benevolent companies.
|
| Instead of upgrading to next iDevices, I ended up getting a
| much cheaper de-googled device and will split the different
| by donating to privacy advocacy organizations. A bit harder
| for other family members, but I did that before by converting
| everyone to a Linux laptops.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| How come ubiquitous swarms of camera-equipped private and
| governmental drones are not a reality yet? I'd assume technology
| is far enough to make this happen.
| hypothesis wrote:
| There is no need for them to be ubiquitous, just a few large
| drones will do.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
| md_ wrote:
| I'm reminded of Moxie Marlinspike's comment about emails that
| come with a PGP signature.
| ghoward wrote:
| Can you give me a link? I would like to read his comments.
| md_ wrote:
| Oh, I was just joking about the author's prominent pgp key:
| https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html.
| neolog wrote:
| "Snitches" makes it sound like I'm doing something wrong that my
| devices reported me for. In fact, they're spying on everything I
| do.
| [deleted]
| dotcommand wrote:
| The title reminded me of an intro to one of packt's books.
|
| "At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses
| very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our
| works in any form on the internet, please provide us with the
| location address or website name immediately so that we can
| pursue a remedy."
|
| They want their readers to be the their personal snitches online.
| What a crazy world we are headed towards.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I think I would be content with the panopticon if it were All Can
| See All. That way I know there is no selective enforcement. That
| way I know that if a law is overly restrictive I can apply it to
| the guys making the law too.
|
| Actually, no, I'm not okay with that but I'm okayer than with
| others can watch me and I can't watch anyone.
| sailorganymede wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see if there's a market for "dumb"
| technology. I still use my iPod Shuffle because it doesn't buzz
| when I'm listening to music while working. I can imagine regular
| HD TVs that are not "smart" could become popular again.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > Your voice assistant could use machine learning to ...
|
| At least the owner of "Happy birthday" would start to get their
| rightful royalties each time we sing that god awful song. /s
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| You make a good point, but your example is out of date; "Happy
| Birthday To You" melody was recently found to be copied from an
| earlier composition "Good Morning To You" and the copyright is
| therefore invalidated. Decades of royalties for a stolen song!
| sunshineforever wrote:
| "You should have control over your own computers. Your phone
| should be your castle. True control means controlling your
| hardware and software. It means picking hardware that doesn't
| depend on absolute trust in a vendor for its security, but gives
| you control over your own security so you don't have to ask the
| vendor's permission to use the computer how you wish. It means
| using a free operating system that lets you install whatever
| software you want and remove any software you don't."
|
| Has this ever been the case even since the _very beginning_ of
| smartphones?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| No, smartphones have historically been under the control of the
| phone operators. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be true.
| I'm looking forward to getting a Linux I control and which
| provides strong protections.
| ohiovr wrote:
| iDevices = spy devices
| spicybright wrote:
| eyeDevices
| masterof0 wrote:
| What is the alternative? Android phones aren't any better. A
| 2000 dollar phone that barely works? Besides custom open source
| android ROMs, I don't see any other way.
| ohiovr wrote:
| There is no alternative. Eventually Colossus and Guardian
| will have full control of everything.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| That is exactly why:
|
| 1. I only run Linux where possible, and I install myself (and I
| realize I do not control the BIOS, etc). OpenBSD would probably
| be even better.
|
| 2. I assume that Google knows everything that is going on my
| Android phone, Apple knows everything on any Apple device, and
| Microsoft know everything going on on my son's gaming PC.
|
| This is a dangerous trajectory and we'll hear "But think of the
| children!" or the good old "If you have nothing to hide you have
| nothing to fear." ad nauseam.
|
| We've been over the fallacy of these statements already, so I
| will just quote Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up
| essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve
| neither Liberty nor Safety." (Although apparently the original
| context of that quote was not about Liberty at all.)
| zamalek wrote:
| > But think of the children!
|
| This also goes both ways: there are children with phones, in
| terms of reality, not morality. These children are being spied
| on.
|
| That's what people don't get about these backdoors and
| sidedoors (?). There is no way to guarantee that a malicious
| actor hasn't gained control or knowledge of them.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It was never going to be as simple as all or nothing. We have
| to define where to draw the line, and not everyone will agree
| on where the line should be. So this is a good conversation to
| have, and "do nothing" is not an answer most people will
| actually agree on.
| User23 wrote:
| And, perhaps more to the point, with what exactly will said
| line be drawn?
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