[HN Gopher] The rise of biodigital surveillance
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The rise of biodigital surveillance
        
       Author : whoooooo123
       Score  : 89 points
       Date   : 2022-10-27 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (compactmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (compactmag.com)
        
       | Bakary wrote:
       | One aspect I find interesting about HN is that most of the
       | posters there are involved in adtech, data-gathering, FAANGs, or
       | adjacent businesses, whilst reaping very high rewards for their
       | troubles. At the same time, they have an enduring interest in
       | adblocking, freedom, liberal or libertarian values and so on.
       | This creates a situation where their economic wellbeing and
       | working life is directly aimed towards enforcing surveillance
       | capitalism and authoriarian tools, while at the same time they
       | receive enough resources to avoid the brunt of the consequences,
       | and their mental landscape deals with the cognitive dissonance to
       | maintain an identity of progressiveness.
       | 
       | It directly mirrors the feudal system with a tiny portion of the
       | population living in unimaginable luxury and employing another
       | much larger but still small portion overall to keep the hierarchy
       | running. In other words, billionaires supported by well-
       | compensated SWE vassals who devise ever more sophisticated tools
       | to extract value and data-powered obedience through surveillance
       | from regular workers.
        
         | ryukafalz wrote:
         | > One aspect I find interesting about HN is that most of the
         | posters there are involved in adtech, data-gathering, FAANGs,
         | or adjacent businesses, whilst reaping very high rewards for
         | their troubles. At the same time, they have an enduring
         | interest in adblocking, freedom, liberal or libertarian values
         | and so on.
         | 
         | I think attributing features of the community as a whole to
         | individuals within that community like this leads to incorrect
         | assumptions. The HN community is varied. I suspect if you were
         | to put an HN reader who strongly values user freedom and
         | privacy and an HN reader working on adtech in the same room, we
         | would not agree on many of these topics.
        
           | Bakary wrote:
           | There are a ton of profiles I've seen over the years. A few
           | seemed to have lifestyles so independent and idiosyncratic
           | that they'd put the Unabomber to shame. Many were involved in
           | fascinating and helpful projects. But I find the assumption
           | that the overall tone is of venture capital, digital
           | nomadism, gentrification and so on to be fairly sensible as
           | well as the idea that as whole the community greatly
           | contributes to increasing authoritarianism.
        
         | Eleison23 wrote:
         | I'm grateful to have served a career that has mostly kept my
         | conscience clear.
         | 
         | I began life as a NOC operator at a regional ISP, when ISPs
         | were merely an on-ramp to Al Gore's Paradise in the Cloud.
         | 
         | I helped many employers and clients connect to the Internet
         | somewhat securely. If the Internet is evil then so am I. I've
         | never worked for FAANGs or adtech or data-gatherers.
         | 
         | Late in my career I came around to academia. Worked for a NASA-
         | JPL project at a university. Now I work for an online program
         | manager.
         | 
         | The data we collect from students is protected by FERPA, and
         | I'd say we make an effort to collect as little as possible, and
         | the students offer it all voluntarily. Win/win.
        
         | muaytimbo wrote:
         | A lot of positions even within FAANGs have nothing to do with
         | Surveillance.
        
         | cr4nberry wrote:
         | > This creates a situation where their economic wellbeing and
         | working life is directly aimed towards enforcing surveillance
         | capitalism and authoriarian tools
         | 
         | Adtech doesn't have to be surveillance capitalism
         | 
         | If we're talking about personalized adtech, sure. But if we're
         | talking about just adtech in general, not necessarily
        
           | franga2000 wrote:
           | "adtech" implies targeting and/or personalization, otherwise
           | it wouldn't have the "tech" part - just "advertising".
        
             | cr4nberry wrote:
             | Whenever I've heard it used it's referring to general ads
             | infra, which includes personalization. But there's also a
             | lot more to it
        
         | whoooooo123 wrote:
         | Do "most" posters at HN work at FAANG or in adtech? There's a
         | lot of those people here for sure, but I can't believe they're
         | anything close to the majority.
        
           | Bakary wrote:
           | I don't have actual stats of course but intuitively if you
           | tally:
           | 
           | - All the FAANG/FAANG suppliers
           | 
           | - All startups or established projects that involve data
           | gathering, advertising, SEO, skinner boxes, dopamine
           | response, parasocial relationship manipulation, optimizing
           | time spent on controlled platforms and products
           | 
           | - All projects that facilitate the above as suppliers or
           | second-order businesses
           | 
           | - All gig economy/surveilled/taylorized work facilitators
           | 
           | - All coding work that involves ranking and surveilling
           | people for life altering services such as loans, insurance,
           | healthcare
           | 
           | - All coding work done to optimize the wealth of the noble
           | class (themselves the main beneficiaries of surveillance)
           | 
           | ...there's probably not much left. Even if you maintain a
           | strict definition and include only direct adtech shenanigans
           | I wouldn't be surprised if that were a huge number in and of
           | itself.
        
             | sosborn wrote:
             | I think your assumptions are incorrect, but it would be
             | really fun/interesting to test our thoughts out with a user
             | survey.
        
         | Silhouette wrote:
         | _One aspect I find interesting about HN is that most of the
         | posters there are involved in adtech, data-gathering, FAANGs,
         | or adjacent businesses, whilst reaping very high rewards for
         | their troubles._
         | 
         | That seems quite a strong statement. Has there been some sort
         | of survey that motivated it?
         | 
         | (Full disclosure: I've been here a long time. I make my living
         | from building tech. I have no interest in doing that kind of
         | work for any employer at any price, nor in running my own
         | business interests that way. I'm well aware that this probably
         | leaves lots of money on the table in both cases and I have
         | absolutely no problem with that. And my cognitive dissonance
         | can look at itself in the mirror just fine when it wakes up in
         | the morning before browsing an adblocked version of the web
         | over breakfast.)
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | TheLoafOfBread wrote:
       | EU is issuing biometric passports where are loaded your
       | fingerprints and some EU states started to issue biometric
       | citizen IDs, where are fingerprints stored too. So it is kind of
       | already going on?
       | 
       | Additionally citizen IDs are nothing new, at least in Eastern
       | Europe, where you will get one when you reach 15 years of age.
        
         | franga2000 wrote:
         | Aren't those stored on the card/passport, not in any central
         | database? They already have your photo printed on them (as well
         | as stored digitally in some cases). I don't really see a
         | difference between a fingerprint reader comparing against the
         | print stored in the ID card and a camera comparing your face to
         | the photo printed on it.
         | 
         | Of course there is the case of a rogue terminal surreptitiously
         | saving your fingerprint or photo, but even before we had
         | automated facial recognition at border crossings, you'd still
         | have to hand in your passport to be scanned (to read the MRZ)
         | and stamped, so a rogue terminal could have been saving photos
         | all along.
        
           | TheLoafOfBread wrote:
           | On passport, but also in the database of the department.
           | Thing is that my country government administration sucks and
           | those databases are not shared, so when you will get citizen
           | ID with your fingerprints and photo, then you will go to get
           | your driving license, you will need to get them photo again,
           | because internal affairs department and traffic department
           | does not talk to each other despite the fact, that they have
           | offices in same building.
        
             | franga2000 wrote:
             | Ok yeah, that horrible. In Slovenia, your fingerprints (for
             | biometric passports) are sent along with the print order to
             | the manufacturing facility and then deleted. For all photo
             | IDs (passport, ID card, driver's license, weapon permit),
             | your photo is either scanned and sent along with the order
             | or uploaded to a database that deletes it after 2 weeks.
             | Nothing is ever stored permanently or accessible by anyone
             | other than the people and systems directly involved in
             | getting your document made. *
             | 
             | * That is, of course, what the law says. I have no reason
             | to believe "the government" is breaking that law, but no
             | way to verify either. It would probably be discovered and
             | leaked very quickly if they were though.
        
         | untech wrote:
         | Wait, what are the other options? How do they do identification
         | without IDs in other countries? I heard that you can use
         | driver's license as an ID in the US, but isn't it issued based
         | on an actual ID? And not everyone can drive, no matter how
         | auto-centric the US might be.
        
           | whoooooo123 wrote:
           | My only government-issued ID in the UK is my passport and my
           | driving license. In theory if I didn't drive or leave the
           | country I wouldn't need an ID at all.
           | 
           | Although the crackdown on illegal immigration means that I
           | now need to prove my right to work in the UK whenever I take
           | a new job. I'm not sure how I'd do this if I didn't have a
           | passport.
        
         | pfortuny wrote:
         | In Spain you get your fingerprints printed when receiving the
         | (essentially compulsory) ID card... And this is seens as "good"
         | and "normal"...
         | 
         | Sigh.
        
       | rekabis wrote:
       | > In other words, you are literally nobody until you are
       | vaccinated.
       | 
       | Considering the vital importance of herd immunity, the cost
       | savings inherent in being overall healthier, and the reduced
       | chance that an unvaccinated person becomes a Petri dish for
       | evolving new and deadlier strains, I am all for this.
       | 
       | If you hate your community and everyone in it so much that you
       | want to hurt and possibly even kill them with the pathogens you
       | carry, maybe you should find a different community to be in.
       | 
       | A vaccination card could very well be the entrance fee to a
       | kinder and healthier community where people actually care about
       | each other, and want to keep everyone else safe and alive. That,
       | to me, is a massive bonus that vastly outstrips any possible
       | downsides.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | > A vaccination card could very well be the entrance fee to a
         | kinder and healthier community where people actually care about
         | each other,
         | 
         | A vaccination-connected universal ID card will cause people to
         | care about each other and to want to keep each other safe? This
         | is a very strange thought process.
         | 
         | Do steel bars make people want to stay in jail in order to
         | protect the community? Are they the entrance fee to creating a
         | loving population of inmates?
        
           | rekabis wrote:
        
             | samatman wrote:
             | You are making a case for your own poor mental health, and
             | nothing else.
        
         | swader999 wrote:
         | You can't get herd immunity from vaccination with a virus like
         | corona. This was known from the beginning. It mutates too fast.
         | You end up training your immune system for an extinct variant
         | and it responds poorly when presented with the latest variant.
         | Herd immunity works great for measles and polio, the binding
         | mechanism really doesn't survive mutations well for these
         | virus.
         | 
         | And ethically, you are proposing these walled societies where
         | children risk their health with poorly tested treatments to
         | save the older generation? I find that abhorrent.
        
           | Bellamy wrote:
           | Where we're you when all the experts and politicians were
           | talking (some still are) about herd immunity in beating
           | corona?
        
             | swader999 wrote:
             | Censored lol.
        
           | rekabis wrote:
           | > You can't get herd immunity from vaccination with a virus
           | like corona. This was known from the beginning. It mutates
           | too fast.
           | 
           | There was a three or four month window, right when the
           | vaccines were first released, when a 95+% implementation of
           | the initial vaccine shot could have produced a reasonably
           | close facsimile of herd immunity, such that it would have
           | made it several orders more difficult for the virus to
           | effectively mutate. It could have conceivably cut the
           | subsequent death toll in half, if not more.
           | 
           | Unfortunately, politics and antivaxx disinformation got in
           | the way of that. And people continued to die in droves due to
           | selfishness and lies.
        
             | muaytimbo wrote:
             | You are making numerous claims throughout this thread
             | without a single citation.
             | 
             | Where can I find a study that supports this: "There was a
             | three or four month window, right when the vaccines were
             | first released, when a 95+% implementation of the initial
             | vaccine shot could have produced a reasonably close
             | facsimile of herd immunity, such that it would have made it
             | several orders more difficult for the virus to effectively
             | mutate. It could have conceivably cut the subsequent death
             | toll in half, if not more.
             | 
             | Unfortunately, politics and antivaxx disinformation got in
             | the way of that. And people continued to die in droves due
             | to selfishness and lies."
        
               | swader999 wrote:
               | Simply remember what happened. No citation needed.
        
               | muaytimbo wrote:
               | lolol, "There was a three or four month window, right
               | when the vaccines were first released, when a 95+%
               | implementation of the initial vaccine shot could have
               | produced a reasonably close facsimile of herd immunity,
               | such that it would have made it several orders more
               | difficult for the virus to effectively mutate. It could
               | have conceivably cut the subsequent death toll in half,
               | if not more."
               | 
               | This is a statement that has many claims: 1. 95%
               | implementation (whatever that means) in a specified time
               | window of initial vaccine could've produced herd immunity
               | 2. This herd immunity would've made it "several orders of
               | more difficult" for the virus to mutate 3 The estimate of
               | a 50% reduction in death toll.
               | 
               | I certainly can't remember something that didn't happen,
               | herd immunity that *would've made mutation more
               | difficult" or a "50% reduction" that didn't happen.
               | 
               | Your memory must be better than mine, it remembers
               | statistics and estimates from counterfactual events.
        
             | swader999 wrote:
             | No, you couldn't have physically deployed it faster than it
             | mutates. Need at least six months and like you say, only
             | had 3-4.
        
               | tlb wrote:
               | What physical limit do you mean? There are lots of things
               | that are deployed by the billions on short time scales.
               | Seasonal foods or fresh flowers are an example of how
               | feasible it can be to deliver billions of Xs around the
               | world in weeks.
        
             | ISL wrote:
             | Agreed, though it would have been necessary to deploy the
             | vaccines globally, especially in the least-wealthy parts of
             | the world.
             | 
             | In the case of Omicron, there's a good chance that the
             | vaccines would have needed to reach a community in Botswana
             | ahead of the initiation of the chronic infection that may
             | have produced BA.1, BA.2, etc.
             | 
             | First-world extensive deployments would have killed off the
             | first-world propagation of variants through Delta in short
             | order, but everything changed with Omicron.
        
         | Eleison23 wrote:
         | Yeah, I get it, even my bishops have said that vaccination is
         | an act of mercy.
         | 
         | But how many acts of mercy do we owe our brothers and sisters?
         | 
         | Five? A dozen? Per year? Per month?
         | 
         | It was inevitable that the COVID-19 vaccines should require a
         | followup and a booster and there were variants that mutated and
         | then we just had a neverending cycle of vaccine opportunities.
         | 
         | In the '60s when polio was a spectre, it just began to be civic
         | duty to get your round of shots. You got the polio and you got
         | the pertussis and you got x y and z. Then people were taking in
         | their babies so they could load up on vaccines before they were
         | even threatened and then stuff was eradicated.
         | 
         | But what's the endgame for that? How many is enough? Who's
         | gonna recommend fewer vaccines? Not the manufacturers. Not the
         | pharmacies or physicians. Are insurance companies gonna put a
         | rate limiter on vaccines? I don't know. It's hard to tell what
         | is truly Medically Necessary and what is just putting on a
         | show.
        
           | rekabis wrote:
           | >Yeah, I get it, even my bishops have said that vaccination
           | is an act of mercy. > >But how many acts of mercy do we owe
           | our brothers and sisters? > >Five? A dozen? Per year? Per
           | month?
           | 
           | Except all it is, is a little prick in the arm. Quite
           | literally. Nothing more than that. Unless you are lucky, at
           | which point your arm gets sore, and you have a bit of a
           | temperature and feel under the weather for a day or so, which
           | is evidence that the vaccine is producing an extra-robust
           | immune response from your body, ensuring you are getting the
           | full benefit of the vaccine.
           | 
           | Would I take it monthly, if a formulation was designed for
           | that purpose? Yeah, I would. Why? Because I'm not a
           | sociopath. I CARE about the people in my community. I don't
           | want to be that Typhoid Mary that causes ANY deaths at all,
           | much less a superspreader event that kills multiple people.
           | 
           | It's _all about_ putting the community first, and my trivial
           | inconveniences (of getting the vaccine, and its effects)
           | second. Because those inconveniences of the vaccine are truly
           | trivial. It's a few minutes out of my day, and a little bit
           | of crankiness for a day or two if the immune response was
           | robust.
           | 
           | Against the loss of someone else's life, or that someone
           | getting hit with Long COVID that cripples them for months or
           | years, I CALL THAT A BARGAIN.
           | 
           | >It was inevitable that the COVID-19 vaccines should require
           | a followup and a booster and there were variants that mutated
           | and then we just had a neverending cycle of vaccine
           | opportunities.
           | 
           | The precedent has already been there for decades. The point
           | being, people who are at risk (the elderly) and those who
           | take care of at-risk people are ALREADY taking yearly shots
           | for the flu. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS at strongly limiting
           | transmission. They themselves get much less likely to be hit
           | with the current strain, and even if they do get hit, it ends
           | up being less severe and less transmissible. These people
           | protect themselves and those vulnerable people around them by
           | getting the yearly flu booster shots.
           | 
           | >But what's the endgame for that? How many is enough?
           | 
           | Now that - thanks to politics and anti-vaxx paranoia - we
           | have missed the opportunity for broadly-similar herd immunity
           | (there was only a tiny 3-4 month window when the vaccines
           | first came out), it will never end. COVID has gone endemic
           | because we couldn't vaccinate quickly enough, and completely
           | enough. We can place that outcome squarely at the feet of the
           | anti-vaxxers who refused to get vaccinated, and the politics
           | that made roll-out issues and vaccine wastage such a big
           | problem.
           | 
           | >Who's gonna recommend fewer vaccines? Not the manufacturers.
           | Not the pharmacies
           | 
           | They have no input into the process, nor should they.
           | 
           | >physicians.
           | 
           | If these are the same people who collect and publish data on
           | in-the-wild vaccine effectiveness, then yes. They CAN be the
           | people who show when enough is enough. And all that
           | information is collected and collated through orgs like
           | America's Center for Disease Control, who then provide that
           | data to people like immunologist (this being his career
           | specialty) Dr. Fauci, who can then craft public policy that
           | aligns with whatever real-world peer-reviewed data they have
           | on hand.
        
             | h4n1 wrote:
             | "all it is, is a little prick in the arm. Quite literally.
             | Nothing more than that."
             | 
             | Alright then, I'll just poke myself with a sewing needle
             | and you can count that as a vaccination, if that's quite
             | literally all it is.
        
         | realce wrote:
         | > community where people actually care about each other
         | 
         | Sounds like a community of absolute arrogance and security
         | theater disconnected from the realities of natural life.
        
           | rekabis wrote:
           | >Sounds like a community of absolute arrogance and security
           | theater disconnected from the realities of natural life.
           | 
           | Sounds like a lot of communities around the world, like
           | Japan, where people proactively mask up with even the
           | slightest tickle in the throat in order to avoid passing
           | whatever they've caught onto anyone else.
           | 
           | Community-first attitudes are a hallmark of societal
           | stability over the long term, as people think of the
           | community first, and themselves second. Everyone benefits
           | because the community is put ahead of selfishness and
           | solipsism.
           | 
           | Pathologically individualistic "me, me, me" attitudes lead to
           | a very superficial community that cannot effectively meet
           | threats to its health and survival. Everyone reaches for "why
           | should I make the sacrifice when I don't immediately
           | benefit?", which means no-one will make the sacrifice move.
           | 
           | I find it very ironic that the military holds so many of the
           | second group, when its ethos teaches the first. In a military
           | unit, your first instinct is to jump on top of that grenade
           | so that you protect your teammates at the cost of your own
           | life. You put the team first, so that the team can survive
           | with or without you. This only works if every single member
           | of the team conforms to that same ideal. Yet the amount of
           | antivax in the military - which is no different than refusing
           | to protect your teammates because jumping on top of that
           | grenade would hurt your own "personal freedoms" - is
           | surprisingly prevalent.
        
         | graphe wrote:
         | By this narrow definition, we should be happy to contribute to
         | welfare, but never to accept it. Pretty useful for an
         | authoritarian.
         | 
         | If you hate your community and everyone in it so much that you
         | want to hurt and possibly even kill them with the guns you
         | carry, maybe you should find a different community to be in.
         | 
         | If you hate your community and everyone in it so much that you
         | want to hurt and possibly even kill them with the knife you
         | carry, maybe you should find a different community to be in.
         | 
         | If you hate your community and everyone in it so much that you
         | want to hurt and possibly even kill them with the sharps you
         | carry, maybe you should find a different community to be in.
         | 
         | Now all the citizens are submissive, cannot think for
         | themselves, because they refused to stand up for their rights.
         | Who knows what could have happened if a country stood up for
         | their citizens.
        
           | rekabis wrote:
           | Guns, knives, and sharps don't go leaping out of your hands
           | to kill anyone simply because these people are in your
           | presence. You need to _intentionally use or mishandle_ these
           | items for them to be lethal.
           | 
           | Viruses, on the other hand, can make you a lethal object to
           | anyone who comes close to you simply by you breathing without
           | a mask.
           | 
           | And that's why we have laws on the safe storage, handling,
           | and public carrying of these items. We have RESTRICTIONS on
           | their usage, in the same way a person can be restricted from
           | being a Typhoid Mary who only has to be in the physical
           | vicinity of someone else in order to kill them.
           | 
           | Your logical fallacy is: Slippery Slope.
        
             | graphe wrote:
             | You intentionally ignored the first section of
             | authoritarians. If this is a slippery slope, how do
             | authoritarians get their power of not through a slippery
             | slope?
             | 
             | If you actually cared about people and a zero covid policy
             | would you would move there or isolate yourself forever so
             | you can't infect anyone even if you really vaccinated? I
             | got my vaccine but I don't pretend it prevents corona, the
             | only zero covid policy is what China is doing. Do you
             | support them?
        
               | rekabis wrote:
               | >If you actually cared about people and a zero covid
               | policy would you would move there or isolate yourself
               | forever so you can't infect anyone even if you really
               | vaccinated?
               | 
               | Your logical fallacy is: Appeal to Extremes, and Reductio
               | ad Absurdum
               | 
               | I cannot be a part of a community unless I am in that
               | community. And once I am in that community, there are
               | people I need to protect in that community. Or to be more
               | precise, I need to protect that ENTIRE community as best
               | as I can and within my own capabilities, while remaining
               | a part of it. It is irrational and impractical to have
               | everyone who wants to protect others to isolate
               | themselves wholly via extra-community physical distance -
               | we need hundreds of planet Earths in order to do that.
               | 
               | And because I am not a community of one, there are also
               | others - like my octogenarian parents - that I need to
               | take care of. They depend on me in ways I can only
               | satisfy through being physically there for them, to
               | physically assist them. And while I have vaccinated
               | myself, I also depend on everyone else I come in contact
               | with - frequently do to things for my parents that they
               | cannot do themselves anymore - to be vaccinated and to
               | mask up as well. To protect themselves as best as
               | possible, to put the needs and lives of the community as
               | a whole ahead of their own trivial inconveniences.
               | 
               | >You intentionally ignored the first section of
               | authoritarians. If this is a slippery slope, how do
               | authoritarians get their power of not through a slippery
               | slope?
               | 
               | Your logical fallacy is: Circular Reasoning.
               | 
               | Apathy and learned helplessness explains the rise of most
               | Authoritarians quite well just in of itself, no slippery
               | slope needed.
               | 
               | >Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief,
               | bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the
               | people) - a proposition is claimed to be true or good
               | solely because a majority or many people believe it to be
               | so.
               | 
               | Concerning the effectiveness of vaccines or masking up?
               | Sorry, not yours. The real-world scientific evidence has
               | no counterpart that has survived the test of disproof.
               | 
               | >Appeal to consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam) -
               | the conclusion is supported by a premise that asserts
               | positive or negative consequences from some course of
               | action in an attempt to distract from the initial
               | discussion.
               | 
               | Concerning the effectiveness of vaccines or masking up?
               | Sorry, not yours. The science has survived plenty of
               | tests of disproof on this one.
               | 
               | >Fallacy of relative privation (also known as "appeal to
               | worse problems" or "not as bad as") - dismissing an
               | argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be
               | more important problems. First World problems are a
               | subset of this fallacy.
               | 
               | See: Polio. Spanish Flu. Smallpox. Rinderpest. Hepatitius
               | B. Measles. Whooping Cough. The list goes on and on.
               | 
               | Or are historical facts not your concern?
        
               | Vecr wrote:
               | What are you even talking about? Do you have any models
               | that so far have been consistent with reality to support
               | the idea that current ideas of vaccination and surgical
               | mask wearing would actually meaningfully protect
               | octogenarians from getting a SARS-CoV-2 (virus that
               | causes COVID-19) infection before they die? What people
               | like Vincent Racaniello, Daniel Griffin, and Paul Offit
               | say is that immune memory pretty much can't be formed to
               | any protective extent in people that old, so the correct
               | strategy is for immune compromised, old, and otherwise
               | high-risk people to make plans with their doctors to
               | immediately take Paxlovid after infection is first
               | detected, or otherwise to be infused with Remdesivir
               | (Veklury) if that's not possible. For people like this,
               | repeated boosting is just one step forward, and (a couple
               | months later) one step back. The immune memory and
               | anamnestic response never becomes enough. As far as
               | anyone can tell, current vaccination strategies can't
               | halt transmission anywhere in the world in real-life
               | conditions, and it's highly unethical to give someone a
               | biologic when the risk of that biologic outweighs the
               | risk of not getting that biologic, or getting a less
               | risky alternative.
        
         | goatcode wrote:
         | If you have a sensible set of statistics that you believe
         | justify surrender of personal sovereignty of identity to this
         | degree, I would invite you to ponder a set of statistics that
         | you would think completely monstrous, but still arguable,
         | toward such a surrender. There is someone out there who
         | believes the opposite to you, and if you think the creation of
         | a power that benefits your opinions should take place, know
         | that it could be used by this hypothetical person to benefit
         | his opinions.
         | 
         | If you're ok with all that, then you have a justifiable
         | position. If not, then you do not.
        
           | rekabis wrote:
           | > If you have a sensible set of statistics that you believe
           | justify surrender of personal sovereignty of identity to this
           | degree, I would invite you to ponder a set of statistics that
           | you would think completely monstrous, but still arguable,
           | toward such a surrender. There is someone out there who
           | believes the opposite to you, and if you think the creation
           | of a power that benefits your opinions should take place,
           | know that it could be used by this hypothetical person to
           | benefit his opinions.
           | 
           | Your "personal sovereignty" argument is equally applicable to
           | a sociopath who wants to maim and kill at will.
           | 
           | Because that's what Plague Rats are: sociopaths that care
           | only for their own "rights", and are more than eager to let
           | everyone around them die in order to avoid a trivial
           | imposition that would significantly improve safety.
           | 
           | If you want to be a part of a community, you also have an
           | obligation TO that community, to keep it safe from any
           | pathogens you risk transmitting.
           | 
           | If you cannot do your duty of care to that community, find a
           | different community to be in, then. Because you have
           | demonstrated you don't give a single shite about anyone but
           | yourself.
        
             | goatcode wrote:
             | >Your "personal sovereignty" argument
             | 
             | What is this you're talking about? I talked about personal
             | sovereignty OF IDENTITY. If you're going to strawman, at
             | least strawman based on a correct reading of your target's
             | point.
        
             | brnaftr361 wrote:
             | You're assuming there are only communities who _want_
             | paternalistic interference.
             | 
             | That is not the case.
             | 
             | You seem like you're possessed by the delusion of
             | objectivity. There is no such thing.
        
               | goatcode wrote:
               | >There is no such thing.
               | 
               | Effectively, that is true; and the closer you get to
               | absolute objectivity, the scarier it becomes to the
               | average person (which was the crux of my point, so I
               | appreciate your pointing out what you did). Fitting that
               | the dude would have mentioned psychopaths, in that light.
        
         | cr4nberry wrote:
         | > If you hate your community and everyone in it so much that
         | you want to hurt and possibly even kill them with the pathogens
         | you carry, maybe you should find a different community to be
         | in.
         | 
         | Interesting how you default to thinking about this as a binary:
         | it's either you _love_ your community or _hate and want to
         | kill_ your community. There 's no indication of any sort of
         | nuance, no indication of acknowledging that maybe there are
         | other people in your community who might feel differently. And
         | even if they did, their feelings are irrelevant because you're
         | already dead set on insisting that you "know what's best for
         | them"
         | 
         | If you hate your community so much that you'd insist on shoving
         | your own beliefs down everyone else's throat and demonizing
         | anyone who disagrees as _killing the community_ , maybe you
         | should find a different community to be in?
        
           | rekabis wrote:
        
             | cr4nberry wrote:
             | > Get out of here, you sociopathic Plague Rat. You hate
             | everyone around you, and wish them to die. I don't. I want
             | to _protect_ the people around me, and am very willing to
             | take a tiny jab in the arm to do so.
             | 
             | Please stay out of the USA. That's all I have to say
        
       | JoeAltmaier wrote:
       | It's a mistake to use biometrics for authentication. Perhaps as
       | weak identification it's acceptable.
       | 
       | It's a username, not a password. Because it's public, shared (you
       | leave bits of bioinformation everywhere you go) and not
       | deliberately changeable.
       | 
       | A password is none of those things.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | macawfish wrote:
       | I hope people realize this includes things like gait and gesture
       | recognition and RF fingerprinting across multiple RF spectrums.
        
       | overthemoon wrote:
       | Just talking about the US here, but what about our current
       | identification systems are so deficient that we need this?
        
         | cr4nberry wrote:
         | SSNs are incredibly insecure (and also used in a way they were
         | never intended). I don't think we need biometrics to replace
         | them, but _if_ there 's a push to replace them, people will
         | likely push for biometrics as hard as possible
        
       | Kon-Peki wrote:
       | > The stated mission of ID2020 is to provide digital identities
       | for all people worldwide by 2030
       | 
       | I'm guessing the stated mission has been changed once or twice
       | since it was founded.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | beckingz wrote:
         | Sounds like they were years ahead of their time.
        
       | michaelmcdonald wrote:
       | > This may at first glance sound sensible. But consider: If an
       | impoverished family doesn't accept the health NGO's preferred
       | interventions for its children, these children may not be
       | provided any other opportunity to establish a "legal, broadly
       | recognized identity" necessary to access things like primary
       | school. In other words, you are literally nobody until you are
       | vaccinated.
       | 
       | Author is making quite a leap that the _only_ way to receive a
       | digital ID is to get vaccinated. If a program like this ever does
       | take off you will see alternative methods of identification
       | acquisition. Case in point: I don't need a driver's license to
       | get a state issued ID. Functionally they are the same in terms of
       | proving I am who I say I am, but one affords additional benefits
       | of stating I can drive.
        
         | giantg2 wrote:
         | The way it works today is they you either get the school
         | vaccinations or a sometimes limited exception, otherwise you
         | don't get to attend. It seems like they're just putting a layer
         | on top of this.
        
           | t0bia_s wrote:
           | Since primary school is mandatory in my country, they have to
           | accept all kids, with or without vaccination. Kindergarten
           | aren't mandatory, so it is up to them if they accept
           | unvaccinated kids or not.
           | 
           | There are exceptions for kids that cannot be vaccinated
           | because of medical reasons which is argument for those
           | parents who does not want to vaccine their kids and still
           | want get them to kindergarten regardless their health
           | condition.
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | Primary and secondary school is mandatory here too. They
             | won't let you go without shots, or an exception (medical,
             | or in some states a religious/belief one). The alternative
             | is that you're home schooled (even private schools are
             | required to mandate the shots).
        
               | t0bia_s wrote:
               | How mandatory is primary school when it require medical
               | intervention? Isn't education unconditional right?
        
               | giantg2 wrote:
               | It's legally mandatory. That's why they'd be required to
               | home school (standards are set by the state), or face
               | charges.
        
       | chatterhead wrote:
       | "China is using all the means available to an authoritarian state
       | to reach its 5-year R&D plan to make the biotechnology sector 5%
       | of its GDP by 2020." - Tara O'Toole statement to Senate
       | subcommittee 2019
       | 
       | Social Credit Systems are just lakes of aggregated data
       | accessible by a government. From your health to how you choose
       | you will end up a model in a prediction system.
        
       | hitpointdrew wrote:
       | Yeah, hard pass.
        
       | treetoppin wrote:
       | Making things legible to the state is one of the ever going
       | projects of any state. So while I think it's important to make
       | sure that refusal to participate in one of these projects doesn't
       | preclude you from still receiving the services of the state, it's
       | also isn't surprising that the state wants to make its
       | constituents more legible to itself. The balance falls in
       | figuring out how to firewall these different functions to prevent
       | certain kinds of identity from making it so you can't receive the
       | services that are the whole reason why you have a state.
        
         | RandomLensman wrote:
         | Blanket refusal to get an ID card or passport will get you into
         | trouble in some countries as a citizen (e.g., Germany).
         | Possible fines etc. aside, establishing your ID in a lot of
         | situations will get quite difficult.
        
         | csdvrx wrote:
         | > it's also isn't surprising that the state wants to make its
         | constituents more legible to itself
         | 
         | And not just the state, and it's enlisting the help of private
         | companies.
         | 
         | From the article:
         | 
         | > The privacy risks, including the possibility for constant
         | surveillance and data harvesting, will fade into the background
         | when you are about to miss your flight if you can't skip to the
         | front of the line
         | 
         | Personally, when going to Mexico, I was asked to submit to a
         | photo verification to board the plane. I asked to opt out. I
         | was told it was impossible.
         | 
         | Later, after verification, I realized I was lied to and
         | manipulated: data was obtained under false pretense, under
         | threat of being unable to board, and to top it out, with a lie!
         | 
         | Next time in the airport, I will only unmask to TSA agents, and
         | only those who require I do, never to the gate because as said
         | in the article all it takes is one leak and then it's
         | impossible to undo:
         | 
         | > But as Nick Corbishley, author of a recent book on digital
         | IDs, points out, decisions made in the moment may carry long-
         | term negative consequences: "If biometric data is hacked, there
         | is no way of undoing the damage. You cannot change or cancel
         | your iris, fingerprint, or DNA like you can change a password
         | or cancel your credit card." Unless we collectively decline to
         | participate in this new social experiment, digital IDs--tied to
         | private demographic, financial, location, movement, and
         | biometric data--will become mechanisms for bulk data harvesting
         | and tracking of populations around the globe. Welcome to the
         | new abnormal.
        
           | graphe wrote:
           | Is there any hope for those of us that used Facebook when it
           | came out then deleted it? Seems like they already have all
           | our data now. My DNA is everywhere and my fingerprints are
           | technically everywhere too. Wouldn't be hard to get it.
        
           | collegeburner wrote:
           | yeah the nasty thing is the private company loophole works.
           | like the TSA puts in these stupid ass measures everybody
           | hates then is like "oh well you can get clear if you don't
           | like it!"
           | 
           | it's supposed to be illegal for the feds to use private
           | companies to do what they can't but for some reason this
           | hasn't gotten killed in court. literally the agency shouldn't
           | exist nor should airport security like it does now.
        
       | jscipione wrote:
       | The 4th Amendment right to privacy has been so badly violated by
       | the US Federal Government and TSA that the Constitution is no
       | longer valid - the contract is beyond broken, the US government
       | has descended into absolute dictatorship and it is the duty of
       | all Americans to "dissolve the political bands which have
       | connected them with another." "it is their right, it is their
       | duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for
       | their future security."
        
         | whatshisface wrote:
         | > _The 4th Amendment right to privacy has been so badly
         | violated by the US Federal Government and TSA that the
         | Constitution is no longer valid_
         | 
         | Without the constitution, would you be holding all the cards or
         | would the Army?
        
           | jscipione wrote:
           | We have a Constitutional Convention, enact a new Constitution
           | and a new Capital, then release all the dirty secrets from
           | the old (current) government similar to how documents were
           | released in the early 1990's when the Soviet Union fell
           | apart.
           | 
           | The armed services, being part of the old government would
           | lose their authority along with the rest.
           | 
           | This assumes a peaceful transition of power, if violence is
           | used instead all bets are off.
        
         | kupopuffs wrote:
         | Remember the Alien and Sedition Acts?
        
           | jscipione wrote:
           | I remember them being controversial at the time and expiring
           | without opposition.
        
             | dragonwriter wrote:
             | > I remember them being controversial at the time and
             | expiring without opposition.
             | 
             | Controversial, sure, but the other part is only half right.
             | 
             | The "Alien and Sedition Acts" consisted of four separate
             | acts passed in 1798, by their popular names:
             | 
             | 1. The "Alien Friends Act" had a two year term and expired.
             | 
             | 2. The "Sedition Act" had a two year term and expired.
             | 
             | 3. The "Naturalization Act" had no fixed term but was
             | repealed and replaced in 1802.
             | 
             | 4. The "Alien Enemies Act" had no fixed term, and remains
             | in force with some amendments.
        
         | mindslight wrote:
         | While I wholeheartedly agree with where you're coming from
         | (most rights listed in the Bill of Rights are being violated in
         | some blatant manner), the problem is that vein of thought has
         | now been claimed by an authoritarian movement idolizing an
         | empty huckster who wears a diaper. Something similar happens to
         | every good political critique - when it finally starts getting
         | traction in the wider sphere, it's taken over by opportunists
         | leading morons, and the whole thing just goes sideways.
         | 
         | I've reacted by becoming much more conservative, voting for
         | deep state supporting candidates because at least they're the
         | devil we know. I guess I'll just keep my head down politically
         | and keep working on communications technology that might
         | extricate us from the state gradually. Because replacing the
         | state top-down with fascist madmen certainly isn't going to
         | lead anywhere good.
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | There is nothing friendly or helpful or optimistic about digital
       | identity schemes, they are domestic passports for movement, and a
       | pervasive, specific and ongoing threat against you as an
       | individual for giving the appearance of non-compliance, or even a
       | lack of enthusiasm for compliance. It's dominion. Honestly, a
       | digital ID scheme is what the next global, multi year or even
       | decade long land war will be fought over. I know we have a
       | convention about avoiding discussions of violence, but digital
       | ID, just like the ID schemes of early 20th c Europe and Russia,
       | is the thing that you either nip in the bud in the present, or
       | the number of lives that will be lost over it just grows every
       | single day as the cancer of these systems establishes itself in
       | our societies.
       | 
       | There is zero hyperbole in this. I've worked on digital identity
       | solutions, and fundamentally, they are not a consumer product
       | anybody actually wants because their use cases are _all_ about
       | enforcing rules _against_ the identity subject. The only way the
       | tech survives is it must be mandated, and then it 's a question
       | of whose problem does it solve?
       | 
       | The only people that a global digital identity solves a problem
       | for are the people administering it, literally against the whole
       | world. The survivors will ask, "how did it all happen so fast,
       | what were the warnings?" and this obscure comment will be the
       | hunger stone and harbinger. I'm literally saying millions of
       | people will die, partially because of my inability to be
       | persuasive, but mostly because of your misunderstanding of what
       | this technology does and of what it is the effect.
        
         | hooverd wrote:
         | Not that I'm in favor of it, but India, with its ~1.3 billion
         | pop and Aadhaar hasn't fallen over just yet.
        
           | motohagiography wrote:
           | Arguably, the caste system maintains social order in India,
           | and so digital ID for castes who are educated to be treated
           | poorly isn't a change. The change would be for westernized
           | countries where everyone used to be taught they have freedom
           | and human dignity.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | strong agree -- federated Identity is still possible, and
         | political speech with anonymity too
        
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