The internet, as it was before the one-way ratchet started to close, feels more and more like a lightning in a bottle that nobody in power wants repeating ever again. Everything in the past couple years has been going towards the centralization into a small number of services, walled wastelands that require you forfeit any kind of anonymity to even browse, tightly coupled to the countries they operate in, and especially for tech corpos, practically an extension of surveillance agencies through PRISMesque programs.
Soon enough (and already the case, if you're one of the unlucky ones) you won't even be able to browse it without explicitly allowing Google to track you on every single website you try to access through your Google-approved, constantly monitored handheld device, linked directly to your identity.
Commercial VPNs are not a solution, they're merely kicking the can down the road, and shrinking the number of people that will complain once they will, finally, come for them too, first by requiring strict accountability to providers and age verification, then outright banning any that do not comply.
Spoiler alert : Singapore won the race years ago. Cameras everywhere, and mostly : the singaporian civilian population is educated to surveil peers so that they don't commit incivilities. Here is an article about it : https://gcctvms.com/smart-city-surveillance-singapore-camera...
I’d rather live in Singapore any day than US. I actually think a bit of surveillance and law enforcement is necessary. People in US think they can do whatever they want with no repercussions because “that’s their God given right”. Look at all the garbage in their streets. Try telling someone in US that they parked on 2 spots and see how quickly you get punched in the face. And so on. I’d rather have cameras and strict law enforcement than everyone thinking they can do whatever they want. I lived in Singapore and it was wonderful. Very safe and clean, could walk alone in the middle of the night with zero worries.
There’s a difference between Singaporean, Chinese surveillance, and US surveillance.
In the former countries you get surveilled, and in exchange you get to live in a safe, harmonious, and relatively prosperous society where you can leave your belongings out of sight knowing they’ll be there when you come back.
In the US you get no such benefits. The surveillance serves only the government.
I remember watching a video of LKY explaining how Singapore installed 'pee detectors' in elevators to stop people urinating. The point being that a little bit of surveillance to bootstrap civic sense can be a positive thing. Now, look at Singapore today, and it's almost unthinkable an average citizen would urinate in an elevator.
As someone from the UK I envy the safety of these countries. We have overbearing surveillance too but nothing to show for it. Phone gets snatched? Thief will never be caught. Leave your laptop out of sight for a moment? It will be stolen. If surveillance isn't serving the people, who is it serving?
Why are you not living there anymore? I understand the trade-offs, but I hate the feeling of constant surveillance. And knowing that I'm a minority in this subject, I'm aware that I'm probably going to be at the loser side in this battle. However, I'm still sad thinking that I could be a criminal in the future by being naked at my own house.
This assumes your government, or whoever is monitoring and handling said surveillance info, is doing so with good intentions and adequate security/privacy.
Maybe dang doesn't want it, but his boss definitely wants it.
Garry Tan, president & CEO of YC, on Flock support: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims" [1]
The tech/VC people want it, because that's where the money will be.
Right, it's dystopian if they do it, but utopian if we do. If anything I'd trust Chinese surveillance more. It's accountable to the government not the whims of profit motive and private individuals.
Yeah... I have been reading threads upon threads of normies who discussed how to take better pictures of their passports to submit to Persona in order to keep using reddit.
We are clearly the minority and reddit is happy to pay the price of us leaving the platform.
Governments are casting a wide a net but it all seems aimed at a foreign influence and espionage Cold War going on. The thought of using this for crime in most countries is tertiary and the real reasons for implementing these systems are so embarrassing to their respective governments that they will rarely mention what's actually going. In Canada there has been two recently large omissions, one is the Chinese government influencing Canadian elections and the other was Indian spies killing Indian immigrants on Canadian soil. Maybe this will all result in mission creep, but the upside will be getting to pay for things with your face.
VPNs are great and all but many that are well advertised here in North America are a huge source of attacks, abuse, etc. so it’s pretty desirable just to block them. They sometimes have agreements with residential ISPs to get around the bans.
The largest provider of residential ISP, BrightData, has installed them on smart TVs made by Samsung and LG, millions of them, unknown to the people who purchase and use the TVs.
I've very sympathetic to this message, but "not even the Pentagon’s employees can expect to have their privacy respected" doesn't make sense. When you sign up, you sign up to hand everything over, including your private life.
The interesting question is whether non-Western countries will develop their own internet governance models that are neither US-dominated nor China-firewall style. The .ng ccTLD (Nigeria) is a real, functional namespace that offers an alternative to .com. The internet was supposed to be distributed. Maybe the future is genuinely distributed governance, not a single blocs approach.
"There are two types of mass surveillance. Commercial, which you can read about here. And mass surveillance carried out by states and rulers."
It may be ambiguous to refer to internet surveillance by so-called "tech" company intermediaries as "commercial" surveillance because the intermediaries monitor all internet use, not only commercial use. In other words, surveillance of non-commercial activity. There is no way for the public to verify how the data collected is used, hence restriction on data usage, cf. restriction on data collection, becomes pointless
HN commenters seeking to defend so-called "tech" companies in the past have made nonsensical analogies to, for example, banks that have traditionally tracked credit or debit purchases
But these issuers did not monitor card holders' non-commercial activity
They had profitable business operations outside of surveillance
The so-called "tech" companies generally don't. Whatever non-surveillance operations they conduct are subsidised by surveillance. Perhaps this is what is meant by "commercial" surveillance. Surveillance to generate profit
Generally no one pays anymore for what these companies mainly produce: software
It is a sad state of affairs when software, e.g., web-based software, is given away for free as bait to lure in surveillance targets
But that's the entire Silicon Valley "business model" in a nutshell. They wish they had something better
The country that really refined mass surveillance in the digital age, China, has seen tons of investment from people who want to see big returns and for the workers to be kept in line (by force if necessary) and many countries want that sort of "prosperity" for themselves, which means sucking up to the investor class, which includes people like Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison.
If you do business with totalitarian states, there's a good chance you become one.
That’s why I said it before, only delusionals think we live in democracy, there’s no democracy, no freedom, no transparency, none of the values you hear daily are actually in use, it’s just a facade to trick people and maybe to make them relax their measures to maintain their own privacy compared to non democratic ones. In fact, it’s better to be straightforward and be oppressive where people might fed up and revolt at some point rather than those sneaky tactics, coupled by making people lives very expensive to live where “privacy” becomes an auxiliary commodity, plus giving the public some distraction like concerts and other carrots after all that whipping.
It’s very accurate to assume that ALL US based tech companies are part of mass surveillance, no matter what promises you hear, companies can be forced to cooperate without the public knowledge. Same with European ones, as the article stated, they are not that far, so don’t assume much even when you see the cliche “based in Switzerland!! Trust us give us your money”. The only safe way is to host your own, maintain your own, encrypt at rest and while transferring on your own, trust no one and nothing, and it’s a good start.
I think part of it has been that parents have been sold the 'only way' is age verification laws. As part of being a parent you're responsible for what your child does, even online. But monitoring everything they do is nearly impossible as kids are pretty sharp and will find that friend whos parents let them do anything and use their electronic devices. This presents itself as a 'valid' solution for the type of people that don't think about the ramifications of it. I mean, we have to have ID to buy cigs and alcohol and numerous other things, so why would this be bad?
I don't think asking the average person whether they would consent to constantly have their face scanned to access the Internet would yield the result you believe it would, no matter the excuse.
"parents" are not do-I-look-like-I-know-what-a-jay-peg-is boomers you and others who make this claim believe them to be. the people who are having children now grew up with iPhones. to them, the Internet is not that newfangled thang they heard about on CNN/Fox.
so, show me the data. not a poll with vague ass questions like "are you concerned about your children's safety on the Internet?". I want to see the percentage of people who answer yes to an unambiguous question like "do you consent to submit your ID and/or scan your face to access any random website ~~to fight terrorisds~~ ~~to protect our democracy~~ to protect your children?"
"Won't somebody think of the children" is as old as time and works. That's why it's used so often. If it were ineffective at convincing people to give up their rights, it wouldn't be a thing.
and what I'm saying is that I'm not seeing the data to back up that claim.
California, for example, has all those propositions they vote on, about various things they're allowed to decide. the recent age verification bullshit, however, doesn't seem to have been put up to a vote.
>From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to access websites that may contain pornographic material?*
>The Essential poll found majority support for a range reforms to improve online safety including: [...] enforcing age verifications for pornography and gambling sites (79%); enforcing age verification for social media (76%)
it really difficult to take this polling at face value. average people typically hear only one side of the argument: "age verification will stop kids from accessing harmful sites".
they don't hear about all of the potential downsides, knock-on effects, chilling effects, etc. unless they are part of niche groups like HN. and even if they do, in passing, they often lack the technical knowledge to really understand the implications.
i.e., they are consenting, but it isn't informed consent.
i imagine there would be an interesting picture if these numbers were presented in buckets by occupation, or by results in tech competency test, etc.
(similarly, as an example, my opinion in a poll about some complex medical procedure would not be very informed. i would be relying solely on what i hear on the news or read in a quick article, with no fundamentals to really assess and form an opinion of my own)
This is a problem with current implementations of democracy. It's free elections, but it's not informed elections. The average voter has very little clue about what they are voting for. Arguably it's impossible to know in a representative democracy.
Not that I know how to do it better, but it's definitely an issue, possibly one that could be solved somehow.
That just seems like a cheap way to wriggle out of any inconvenient poll numbers. Most people support access to abortion? Well how many people actually demand it? Most people support medicare for all? Well how many people actually demand it?
This feels a bit out of touch. These policies have a lot of public support here in the UK. All of our parent friends are lauding it despite my complaints.
By ignoring key implementation details. That's what has been happening in Romania with this topic for the last year.
Constant polling and reporting of opinion, and always phrased in terms of effect instead of how they aim to do so.
Once properly informed "do you want to go through an ID check on all websites and apps that you use?" people wise up quickly to the issue. But state sponsored media is pretty adamant about moving this topic forward.
You sure about that? The average person couldn't care less about privacy and would gladly hand over a significant amount of data to whatever company asks. The sentiment on hacker news isn't the norm.
It is from a VPN Company, so YMMV. But I do agree there is surveillance happening, but the amount of data is way too much to fully examine. Makes one wonder if this is one of the reasons the US Gov. (and others) are so into AI.
mullvad has one of the best, if not the best, track records when it comes to vpns over its nearly 2 decades of being in business. it feels wrong to lump them under the same "a VPN Company" label with the likes of Hola VPN or whatever, despite it being technically true.
It's just a matter of time until police will ask their digital avatar of you if you're becoming a problem, how your week and month and year has been, what you're up to next week.
You don’t need to wonder, it’s a fact that the interest and investment in AI is primarily driven by the ability to mass surveillance and other mass XYZ.
In Canada, they straight up tell you that the AI will be used to profile you, from every transaction you do all the way to analyzing your sentiment
> AI could analyze public sentiment on social media and other platforms to gauge public opinion.
What's so wrong about expecting police to get warrants and do police work legally and aboveboard? If Law Enforcement doesn't follow the law, how can we trust them to impartially investigate and enforce it? Giving more power to unaccountable groups with a well-documented and lengthy history of malfeasance is just a bad idea, we should be reforming and abolishing these institutions to create a transparent and just legal system in line with the liberal democratic principles that underly our whole civilization rather than the type of surveillance state most associated with totalitarian regimes that terrorize their own people.
The funny thing is that quite often people who actually perform attacks are well known to the security services ( because they have been frequently referred to them - rather than some online trawl ).
cf UK manchester bombers.
In the end the only effective way to stop terrorism ( since it's so easy to just drive a car into a crowd of people ), is to create a society where people don't want to do it - which is what we mostly have - as terrorism, while terrible, is fortunately still quite rare.
It is not the job of the citizenry to prove that surveillance doesn't curb terrorism in order to preserve privacy. It is the job of the government to prove that surveillance DOES curb terrorism to such a degree that privacy MUST be degraded.
Of course it curbs terrorism. But it's not worth it. Think of everything that improved when the Taliban came into power. Crime went down. Public services improved. It wasn't worth it.
The cure you propose is worse than the disease. I don't want you to prevent me from stubbing my toe by cutting my foot off. You're just going to have to find another way and do the best you can under those constraints.
How much of this is actually to "catch" terrorists? Its mostly for surveillance, intimidation, suppression. Usually it's the state that defines who a terrorist is, and usually terrorists are ALL people opposing the current regime.
Last I checked River->Sea is 6 words. Unless it's a phrase about a different subject, but I can't imagine since the UK only tends to arrest sign holders as part of protecting Bibi's interests.
The four words you're referring to are "I support Palestine Action", and there's nobody in prison "for a long stretch" just for saying that.
There have been over 3000 people arrested for showing support for this proscribed organisation, and over 700 charged, but none actually prosecuted yet. It was only just decided two weeks ago that the government's act of proscribing Palestine Action was lawful.
Obviously, I think the Terrorism Act shouldn't silence speech like it does. Palestine Action are a pack of bumbling thugs, and the government's real reason for proscription is that those idiots successfully broke into an RAF base. Egg on face for military so government strikes back with proscription.
The law does allow for these sorts of penalties you describe. But I think you will find that if the CPS does prosecute these cases, especially against people who literally stood in front of police stations and displayed those four words and no more, i.e. they dared the government to prosecute them for speech, I don't think they will be "put in prison for a long stretch". They may not even be prosecuted at all. They would have to do more, i.e. actually break into places and physically damage them, like Palestine Action have repeatedly done, to get a long prison sentence. But the threat of prison for speech is there in the law, that's why I don't like that law.
the terrorists are using signal messenger, in game chat messages and all sorts of sophisticated tooling, they are literally getting trained by it. how do you propose beating someone tech savy without using tech?
"Terrorists" are by far the least likely to cause me a problem directly in the US. I'm more likely to die by police or be imprisoned by the State than I am to die in a terrorist attack.
Soon enough (and already the case, if you're one of the unlucky ones) you won't even be able to browse it without explicitly allowing Google to track you on every single website you try to access through your Google-approved, constantly monitored handheld device, linked directly to your identity.
Commercial VPNs are not a solution, they're merely kicking the can down the road, and shrinking the number of people that will complain once they will, finally, come for them too, first by requiring strict accountability to providers and age verification, then outright banning any that do not comply.
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