Comment by keyme
4 years ago
Dear humans,
1) You willingly delegated the decision of what code is allowed to run on your devices to the manufacturer (2009). Smart voices warned you of today's present even then.
2) You willingly got yourself irrevocably vendor-locked by participating in their closed social networks, so that it's almost impossible to leave (2006).
3) You willingly switched over essentially all human communication to said social networks, despite the obvious warning signs. (2006-2021)
4) Finally you showed no resistance to these private companies when they started deciding what content should be allowed or banned, even when it got purely political (2020).
Now they're getting more brazen. And why shouldn't they? You'll obey.
Great, so what's the solution? What are you doing to fix it? Do you roll your own silicon? Do you grow your own food (we have no idea what someone could be putting in it)? Are you completely off-grid? Or are you as completely dependent on society writ large as everyone else?
Making holier than thou comments about everyone else being sheep isn't helpful or thought provoking. Offer an alternative if it is a bad one (looking at you Mastodon). So here's mine: we need to change the power of digital advertising. Most of the most rent seeking companies generate revenue primarily selling ads to get more people to buy more crap. I want a VAT on all revenue passing through the digital advertising pipeline. My hope is that if these things are less profitable, it will reduce the over-sized impact these companies (social, infotainment [there is no news anymore], search, etc.) have on our economy and life. People are addicted to to fomo and outrage (faux?), I don't that that will ever change but we can try to make it less profitable.
> Great, so what's the solution?
Seriously? Perhaps heed the warnings? Whenever Apple tightened the reigns, thousand of apologists came to their defense. I wouldn't even have minded if they kept their obedience to personal decisions. But they extended their enlightenment to others.
> Perhaps heed the warnings?
And then take what actions, exactly? “Guys this is trouble” is …fine, but without “and we should therefore do”, it’s just kind of spitting into the wind.
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The solution is to go back to the original spirit of the Internet, when it was a set of open standards connecting people and organizations. Somehow it got forgotten and now we have a bunch of commercial companies giving you the same stuff in exchange for your privacy and who increasingly control everything you do.
The spirit of the internet won’t generate secure hardware or a transparent software stack.
Also, that spirit existed only in an adversary free environment. You may as well say the solution is for everyone to be nice to each other.
The solution is to build new technologies that are privacy preserving, transparent, don’t place trust in a central authority but are resistant to attack.
This is possible but nobody has built it yet.
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Indeed. And, amusingly enough, most of the open standards stuff still exists too.
It's when we substituted corporate mobile transmission for the "internet".
It became, "Sorry, AT&T carrier, AT&T rules."
Dumping Facebook and its products as I and others have done is one strong step forward but people can't even manage this. It's deeply disappointing. Techno bears its seeds in rebellion but everybody throwing techno parties is coordinating on what is essentially an Orwellian state. Punks too, they're cozied up to this framework of oppression and can't see it for what it is.
I think people have a hard time seeing the ethics in the technology they choose to use. Maybe the next wave of net-natives will be able to rediscover that common thread of rebellion and resist. It's insidious, I'll give you that. It's not obvious what is being surrendered with every participation on these platforms but it doesn't take a genius to see clearly.
> Dumping Facebook and its products as I and others have done is one strong step forward
A strong step forward that gets nullified when Facebook buys the alternative app you're using, or when the app you're using does things as Facebook does.
You can propose all individual options you want, this is a collective issue that won't get fixed just by calls to individual action.
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Tech(or more specifically, cloud technology and social media) is the modern "opium of the masses".
What we have been doing would have worked if the majority would have followed.
Chose open standards, use and contribute to FOSS, avoid social networks, get involved in your local community, etc.
No need to go to extreems or complicated plans, corporations follow the customers.
But nobody did listen. Quite the opposite. I never had a facebook account, and now today people are boasting when they leave FB. But 10 years ago ? Oh we were the paranoid extremists .
Even today my friends regularly pressure me to get whatsapp.
The solution won't be technological, it will be in realm of laws and regulations. We are weak peasants and don't have any power over big tech, but we can change legal environment for them.
IANAL but we (via our elected representatives) can push a law that prohibit restrictions on execution of users' code on their own devices. Or we can split app stores from vendors and obligate them to provide access to third-party stores, like we do with IE and windows.
Also, it's completely doable to stop NSA/Prism totalitarian nonsense.
What we can do as tech people?
- raise awareness
- help people to switch from big tech vendor locks
- help people harming BT by installing adblockers, pihole etc
- participate in opensource (with donations or work)
- probably something else
This. You can't change mass behavior by individual pleas. Especially when the behavior generates outsized profits that can be used to advertise and lobby in its support.
The most pressing things that should be supported, to have the world I think we want:
1. Mandate open app stores. Your device, your choice. *
2. Mandate open browsers. Your device, your choice. The internet is fundamentally an extension of the OS at this point, so an free (as in speech) connection choice is a requirement for an open OS. *
3. Mandate open apps. Your device, your choice. Installing unsigned apps can be warned, but not prohibited (outside of enterprise devices).
4. Mandate configurable tracking. Your device, your choice. There must be a clear option to disable all tracking, along with an API / payment ecosystem for apps to detect this and request alternative payment. I.e. "free if advertising on + $5.99 if advertising off".
5. Mandate right to repair. The manufacturer must provide necessary technical specifications (hard or soft) for a base level of modification and repair. If the manufacturer no longer supports the device, everything must be released to the public.
* Selection must be offered at time of device setup. Installing alternatives can be warned, but not prohibited (outside of enterprise devices).
Lawmakers are more likely to enforce the direction this discussion is objecting to.
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Do ANYTHING.
Buy a feature phone or a phone from a vendor who doesn't have this power.
Switch to Linux.
Stop buying from companies that abuse you.
Elect politicians who care about your rights.
You know what's not helpful? Attacking the messenger, regardless of how sanctimonious you think he is.
https://prism-break.org/en/ is a great start. in the absence of strong regulatory oversight, personal defense is a good measure.
> Great, so what's the solution?
I'd argue: avoid using proprietary networks, avoid vendor lock-in with software and hardware, and use hardware that one is allowed to use their own software on. Champion using open and federated protocols for social tools.
I think solutions exist, but honestly, it isn't easy.
> Making holier than thou comments about everyone else being sheep isn't helpful
I would offer the GP comment isn't necessarily a holier than thou comment, it's a comment of frustration. Frankly, I feel the same frustration.
It's tiring to hear snide remarks of "ohh yeah, we can include you for something because you don't have an iPhone". Hell, I have openly heard, even on this forum, that people don't include folks on social conversations with EVEN THEIR OWN FAMILY because of the dreaded "green bubble". (FYI, MMS is entirely done over HTTP and SMS! How is Apple's MMS client so bad that it can't handle HTTP and SMS?).
Or there is the "why don't you have WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram/etc." and people think your some sort of weirdo because you don't want to use those networks.
So to be honest, when I see something like that, I think "Well I'm not surprised, this is what happens when you are locked out of your own hardware".
> What are you doing to fix it?
While GP may not be doing anything, others are helping and actively working for alternatives. For example, I have been working to get the Pinephone to have MMS and Visual Voicemail support so I can use it daily. I an very fortunate to work with a lot of very talented and motivated folks who want to see it succeed.
It's incredible how people are going to blame absolutely everything on ads. We're talking about a company for which ads are only a small part of their revenue doing something following government pressure, and somehow ads are the problem.
How about not supporting it as a start? Approximately half the country, and a majority of tech workers, were happy with #4 and in fact encouraging it.
What am I doing to fix it? Nothing!
I'm dependent, just as you say, and have no illusions about that.
Getting into this situation wasn't my decision (it was a collective "decision" of our society), and getting out of this won't be due to anything I'll personally do either.
The only difference between me and the average joe is having understood that we have a problem earlier than most.
I bought a pinephone recently, that's one fairly simple way to prevent corporations from scanning your life.
Pretty cheap, too.
> Great, so what's the solution? What are you doing to fix it?
Nothing, because my phone is rooted Android.
With outdated Linux kernel, non-updatable and closed.
The fact that even the 'smart' people from HN can't wait for their new M1 laptop to arrive convinced me that humans are a lost cause.
So, it’s not that other platforms are any better!
Are you sure intel, AMD, Arm or windows TPM aren’t snitching on you? Do we need to make our own silicon from ingot?
There’s no technological solution to this problem, only social and legislative.
Have people already forgotten that Microsoft implemented the tech to routinely scan your cloud storage a decade ago?
>The system that scans cloud drives for illegal images was created by Microsoft and Dartmouth College and donated to NCMEC. The organization creates signatures of the worst known images of child pornography, approximately 16,000 files at present. These file signatures are given to service providers who then try to match them to user files in order to prevent further distribution of the images themselves, a Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News. (Microsoft implemented image-matching technology in its own services, such as Bing and SkyDrive.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/your-cloud-drive-really-pr...
Didn't the Windows 10 TOS extend that scanning to local storage as well?
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>windows TPM aren’t snitching on you?
The TPM FUD has really gone out of hand.
1. there's no such thing as "windows TPMs", whatever that means.
2. TPMs basically has zero access to the rest of the system. It's connected via a LPC bus, so there's no fancy DMA attacks to pull off. Over that bus the system firmware sends various hashes of the system state (eg. hash of your bootloader), but that's about it.
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Is this the real reason why there is the Windows 11 x64 silicon cut-off?
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor
Not too lost 'cause you can run Linux on M1.
Until the manufacturer decides otherwise.
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The selling point of Macs is the Apple ecosystem and UX. If you avoid Apple, what's the point of M1? Linux on equivalent AMDs is cheaper and more compatible.
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This is a moot point unless you always verify and check all hardware and software that you use, including communications devices.
You don't need to verify everything yourself. You can verify any small part and rely on the community to verify the rest. Or pay someone to verify. However, for all that you need verifiability, which Apple lacks.
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I don’t think that’s his point. The point is Apple made a laptop that did away technologies that allow PC ecosystem/choices we see today. The M1 MacBook feels like an iPhone, but sized as a laptop.
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Not at all. Here we have a manufacturer that thinks he would be allowed to scan the contents of your machine. If you scan a machine, you can read everything on the machine.
FYI: M1 Macs can run Linux.
Do you?
What do you recommend instead?
Current generation of desktop/laptop processors are plenty powerful. I’m unconvinced they cannot fulfil today’s computing needs.
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The fact that you think people waiting for Intel and Windows 11 are any better off makes me think the same.
"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people" - Super Hans :)
> closed social networks
It’s not clear that governments would give the open social networks an easier ride either. It could be argued that distributed FOSS developers are easier to pressurise into adding back doors, unless we officially make EFF our HR/Legal department.
The other problem is workers have a right to be paid. The alternatives are FOSS and/or distributed social media. Who in good conscience would ask a tech worker to give away their labour for free, in the name of everyone else’s freedom?
In a world of $4k rent, who amongst us will do UX, frontend, backend, DevOps, UO, and Security for 7 billion people, for anything but the top market rate?
The real alternative is to attack the actual problem: state overreach. Don’t attack people for using SnapChat — get them to upend the government’s subservience to intrusive law enforcement.
> … who amongst us will do UX…
imho, we have everything in the foss world working tightly except great UX/UI. in my experience in the open source world – which is not insignificant – great UX is the only thing stopping us from a paradigm shift to actual tech liberation.
even outside of corporate funded work/commits, we see an astounding number of people donating incredible amounts of their time towards great quality code. but we still thoroughly lack great UX/UI.
i’m not talking about “good”, we have some projects with “good” UX, but very very few with great.
there are many reasons and I’d be happy to share what some of them are, but in my mind great UX is unquestionably one of two primary things holding us back from actual truly viable software liberation.
There are tons of OSS projects with great UX... just not for "normies". That's the issue: Most OSS contributors write software primarily for themselves, and if their needs don't align with those of the general population, the end product will not be very attractive to the masses.
> It could be argued that distributed FOSS developers are easier to pressurise into adding back doors, unless we officially make EFF our HR/Legal department.
How could this be argued?
> It could be argued that distributed FOSS developers are easier to pressurise into adding back doors
All millions of them at the same time?
Of course not.
You'd only need a few important ones, and all you'd have to do is compromise them in one way or another. This can be done via coercion, via money, or by physically or virtually breaking into their system(s).
For example, if money can be an incentive, you can stimulate a FOSS dev to add a NOBUS vulnerability in code. Also, since all the code is public, organizations like NSA can do in-house fuzzing, keeping the findings to themselves.
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But the nature of FOSS software is such that if an undesirable feature is added it can be taken out by the user or the project can be forked.
UO?
>Who in good conscience would ask a tech worker to give away their labour for free, in the name of everyone else’s freedom?
Here's the hope: the tech workers doing it for 'free' because they're scratching their own itch. So it would not be an act of onerous charity. The techies make some free open source decentralised clone of Reddit, say, then some folks among knitting communities, origami enthusiasts, parents groups, etc. copy it for free and pay to run it on their own hardware.
If it seems like this scanning is working as advertised, this will be a great marketing stunt for Apple. Actual predators will stop using Apple products out of fear of getting caught and they will be forced to use Android.
Now any person who owns an Android is a potential predator. Also, if you are trying to jailbreak your iPhone, you are a potential predator.
Some 'predators' are dumb. They'll keep using iPhones, get caught, and have their mugshots posted in the press. Great PR for the policy makers who decided this. Such stories will be shoved in the faces of the privacy advocates who were against it, to the detriment of their credibility.
Yeah, and a lot of shortsighted people (even here) will be happy, because they are not 'predators'.
Of course, they won't be shown photos of victims of brutal dictatorships like Russia, Belarus, China, etc. They love it that phone manufacturer keeps their phone free of malware.
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The twitter comments also mentioned scanning for political propaganda etc. This could work against Apple if normal folks don't want all their stuff scanned on behalf of unnamed agencies.
Or they will just get one step deeper into the dark, by using a designated device for the dirty stuff. Potentially only used within tor/vpn with no connection to "normal"-life.
Congratz, investigations got a bit harder, but now all people have to life with a tool that will be used against them when needed. No sane person can believe that this isn't used for other "crimes" (how ever those are defined) tomorrow.
I think having a manufacturer that is able to read the contents of your device at any point is good marketing. Although, I know some Apple users that would certainly buy that excuse.
This sort of scanning has existed for well over a decade, and was originally developed by Microsoft (search PhotoDNA).
The only thing that's changed here is that there is more encryption around, and so legal guidelines are being written to facilitate this, which has been happening for a long, long time.
(I don't disagree with your overall point, and child porn is definitely the thin edge of the wedge, but this isn't new and presumably shouldn't be too surprising for any current/former megacorp as they all have systems like this).
That's a very strong frog slowly boiling attitude.
"It's been happening for a long time already, the only difference now is a 0.1 degree increase", says the frog while being boiled alive.
First they came for kiddie porn, and I did not speak out -because I had no kiddie porn. Then they came for Pepe the frog memes. I did not speak out -because I was held in solitary confinement pending trial and successful completion of the re-education camp.
Nothing is ever new. You can always find some vague prototype of an idea that failed to become ubiquitous ten years ago.
When I read that this shouldn't be surprising, it has an aftertaste of "Dropbox is not interesting/surprising because ftpfs+CVS have existed for well over a decade"
> Nothing is ever new. You can always find some vague prototype of an idea that failed to become ubiquitous ten years ago.
This has been standard practice for well over a decade amongst all big internet platforms.
Like, one can argue that regardless, people's messages should not be readable for any reason, but that's gonna be a tough one to get through a court of law.
The obvious difference here is that backdooring encryption is an all or nothing affair, which may require new thinking (it definitely does).
But the ship around this particular form of backdooring has most definitely sailed.
Like, the only reason Apple is new to this game is because they haven't been in the storage/media sharing business for as long as their competitors.
I honestly don't like too much these smug takes
> 1) You willingly delegated the decision of what code is allowed to run on your devices to the manufacturer (2009). Smart voices warned you of today's present even then.
99% of the population will delegate the decision of what code is allowed to run to someone, be it the manufacturer, the government, some guy on the Internet or whatever. For that 99% of the population, by the way, it's actually more beneficial to have restrictions on what software can be installed to avoid malware.
> 2) You willingly got yourself irrevocably vendor-locked by participating in their closed social networks, so that it's almost impossible to leave (2006).
"Impossible to leave" is not a matter of closed or open, but it's a matter of social networks in general. You could make Facebook free software and its problems wouldn't disappear.
Not to mention that, again, 99% of people will get vendor-locked because in the end nobody wants to run their own instance of a federated social network.
> You willingly switched over essentially all human communication to said social networks, despite the obvious warning signs. (2006-2021)
Yes, it's been years since I talked someone face to face or on the phone and I cannot send letters anymore.
> 4) Finally you showed no resistance to these private companies when they started deciding what content should be allowed or banned, even when it got purely political (2020).
No resistance? I mean, it's been quite a lot of discussion and pushback on social networks for their decisions on content. Things move slow, but "no resistance" is quite the understatement.
> Now they're getting more brazen. And why shouldn't they? You'll obey.
Is this Mr. Robot talking now?
But now more seriously, in December the European Electronic Communications Code comes into effect, and while it's true that there's a temporary derogation that allows these CSAM scanners, there's quite a big debate around it and things will change.
The main problem with privacy and computer control is a collective one that must be solved through laws. Thinking that individual action and free software will solve it is completely utopic. A majority of the people will delegate control over their computing devices to another entity because most people don't have both knowledge and time to do it, and that entity will always have the option to go rogue. And, unfortunately, regulation takes time.
Anyways, one should wonder why, after all these years of these kinds of smug messages, we're in this situation. Maybe the solutions and the way of communicating the problems is wrong, you know.
Not GP but...
>99% of the population will delegate the decision of what code is allowed to run to someone, be it the manufacturer, the government, some guy on the Internet or whatever. For that 99% of the population, by the way, it's actually more beneficial to have restrictions on what software can be installed to avoid malware
I do not agree with this. You are saying people are too stupid to make decisions and that is amoral in my opinion.
>"Impossible to leave" is not a matter of closed or open, but it's a matter of social networks in general. You could make Facebook free software and its problems wouldn't disappear.
Data portability is a thing. This was the original problem with FB and thats how we got 'takeout'.
>Yes, it's been years since I talked someone face to face or on the phone and I cannot send letters anymore.
>Is this Mr. Robot talking now?
Using the extreme in arguments is dishonest. We are talking on HN where it is a selective group of like minded people(bubble). How does your delivery driver communicate with their social circles? Or anyone that services you? You will find different technical solutions are used as you move up and down the social hierarchy.
>The main problem with privacy and computer control is a collective one that must be solved through laws.
Technology moves faster than what any law maker can create. We do not need more laws as technology advances but rather an enforcement of personal rights and protections enabling users to be aware of what is happening. It appears you are stating "people aren't smart enough to control their devices" and "We need laws to govern people" vs my argument that "people should be given the freedom to chose" and "existing laws should be enforced and policy makers should protect citizens with informed consent".
> >99% of the population will delegate the decision of what code is allowed to run to someone, be it the manufacturer, the government, some guy on the Internet or whatever. For that 99% of the population, by the way, it's actually more beneficial to have restrictions on what software can be installed to avoid malware
> I do not agree with this. You are saying people are too stupid to make decisions and that is amoral in my opinion.
How much of the code running on your data do you personally inspect? (Don’t forget device firmware) When your browser ships an update, do you reverse-engineer the binary? Do you review all of the open source code you use looking for back doors?
Would it be accurate to say that you don’t do that because you’re stupid? I don’t think that’s reasonable, any more than it would be to say you should carry around a test kit for any food you are planning to buy at the supermarket.
> Technology moves faster than what any law maker can create.
This is a common claim but it’s too simplistic. Laws do get passed relatively quickly when there’s a clear need - think about how things like section 230 arrived relatively soon after the rise of the web - but in most cases it’s more a clarification of existing laws. For example, cryptocurrency wasn’t mentioned in previous laws by name but the IRS had no trouble taxing it under existing laws.
Privacy shows why the “just let people choose” approach doesn’t work: you the individual have no negotiating clout with Facebook or Google, and there are many cases like revenge porn where the problem is only visible after the decision has been made.
Laws are how societies agree to function. If you don’t like the laws, you need to get involved because there simply isn’t a way to get good results by demanding that the system accommodate people who don’t show up.
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> > 99% of the population will delegate the decision of what code is allowed to run to someone
> I do not agree with this. You are saying people are too stupid to make decisions and that is amoral in my opinion.
No, it's just saying that most people have other priorities. If you want to make the world a better place, educate more people so that their priorities change towards caring more about the software that runs on their devices, instead of attacking people with weird non-sequiturs.
> I do not agree with this. You are saying people are too stupid to make decisions and that is amoral in my opinion.
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that it's impossible for all people to make informed decisions on all the issues that surround them, because of both knowledge and time. And it doesn't just happen with computer and privacy, see food, for example. Do you make all decisions about what's allowed or not in your food chain? It's impossible! Unless you dedicate quite a lot of time to it, you can't know if certain foods have certain ingredients, and whether those are harmful or not. That's why we have regulation on food. We trust that regulation because we need to do more things than just worrying constantly about our food.
In the same way, most people delegate control on what can run on their device because they don't have the time or knowledge to inspect constantly what is running on their devices.
> Data portability is a thing. This was the original problem with FB and thats how we got 'takeout'.
And did takeout solve any problems? No, because it's not a technical issue.
> Using the extreme in arguments is dishonest. We are talking on HN where it is a selective group of like minded people(bubble). How does your delivery driver communicate with their social circles? Or anyone that services you?
The GP used the extreme by saying that "essentially all human communication" has been moved to social networks.
But yes, we do agree that HN is not the real world. So I'd love to know what were the warning signs to people like a delivery driver, or basically anyone that wasn't active in computer circles. Not to mention that, before, social networks, most communication was done through channels controlled by third parties (phone, letters, television). From a non-technical standpoint, things didn't change that much.
> We do not need more laws as technology advances but rather an enforcement of personal rights and protections enabling users to be aware of what is happening.
"Enforcement" is done through laws and regulations.
> It appears you are stating "people aren't smart enough to control their devices" and "We need laws to govern people"
I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that people shouldn't need to invest a significant amount of time constantly verifying that their devices and networks are doing what they say they are doing, and that laws and regulations should be applied to corporations instead so that people can reasonably trust that the ones offering those devices and networks are doing things somewhat correctly.
And again, this has been done already with quite a lot of things. There are regulations for cars, food, furniture, clothes... Not because people aren't smart to control what they use, but because it's impossible for any one person to have the time and knowledge to control everything that they use.
Imagine applying your argument when talking about, say, carcinogenic substances on food. You could argue that the best way to fight that is for people to grow their own food and check that their food doesn't contain those substances, or trust that some company that sells them food is doing it for them. Or, you could push for regulation and organisms that ensure that those substances don't make their way into the food chain.
Well, this is the same. Most people have other things to do instead of learning to ensure that their devices are secure and private and then checking that for everything they get their hands on. You need regulations so that there's a consensus on what can you expect, and then enforcement so that the products you get actually comply with those regulations.
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> "Impossible to leave" is not a matter of closed or open, but it's a matter of social networks in general. You could make Facebook free software and its problems wouldn't disappear.
Not true. If you have interoperability between different networks, you can leave. This is how ActivityPub (e.g. Mastodon, PeerTube, PixelFed) works.
> Not to mention that, again, 99% of people will get vendor-locked because in the end nobody wants to run their own instance of a federated social network.
You just switch to any other instance, because Mastodon doesn't prevent you from doing that.
> The main problem with privacy and computer control is a collective one that must be solved through laws. Thinking that individual action and free software will solve it is completely utopic.
We need both. You cannot force Facebook to allow interoperability when there is no other social network.
> If you have interoperability between different networks, you can leave
If all your friends are in a Mastodon instance and you think that instance is scanning your messages, you'll find it hard to leave because leaving the instance for another that doesn't share messages with that one means stopping communication with your friends.
> You just switch to any other instance, because Mastodon doesn't prevent you from doing that.
Controlled by another third party. Not to mention that, with enough users, there will be feature divergence so "switching" won't be that easy.
Want a real world example? See email. Open protocol with multiple client-server implementations. However, most people use one of the major providers (Google, Microsoft...), there are incompatibilities between clients and even if you "can switch", it's not that easy nor gets done often. Yes, you can switch to ProtonMail or something more secure if you want, but that won't solve the problems of the 99% of people that will use general providers and won't even know they can't switch.
> We need both. You cannot force Facebook to allow interoperability when there is no other social network.
Right now you could force Facebook to be interoperable and be open source and still 99% of the people would be on the original Facebook instance. Again, it's not a technical issue.
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You could go back even further if you wanted. Possibly to the first handwritten letter delivered by a third party. That's where all the potential for censorship and tampering started.
Truth is even if our tools evolve, our chains evolve faster.
Case in point being the Black Chamber run by the Thurn und Taxis post in Brussels in the 16th Century.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230298125_11
Signals intelligence intercept and analysis centres have been called Black Chambers for a long time, including the first such group in the US, predecessor to the NSA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber
It's over the top comments like this that make me visit ycombinator less and less each week.
What do you think is over the top with it? The manufacturer just told you he will implement a complete read permission on your device.
I don't think this is a fair characterization; it should not be most people's life goal to fight for their privacy against big companies. Some people make it theirs, and that's fine, but I think it's def not something to expect from most people, in the same way that you don't expect everyone to be actively fighting for clean tap water or drivable roads.
Instead, we as a collective decided to offload these tasks to the government and make broad decisions through voting. This allows us to focus on other things (at work, with our actual job, at home, you can focus with what matters for you, whatever that might be).
For instance, I tried to avoid Facebook for a while and it was working well, I just missed few acquaintances but could keep in touch with the people who matter for me. Then suddenly they acquired Whatsapp. What am I to do? Ask my grandmother and everyone in between to switch to Telegram? Instead, I'm quite happy as a European about the GDPR and how the EU is regulating companies in these regards. It's definitely not yet there, but IMHO we are going in the right direction.
Is this anything new, though? The communications haven't been E2E protected ever since people started using phones.
No, but stock phones haven't always been spying on users client side.
Because E2E didn't exist when the phone was invented but there have been significant improvements since then.
Not POTS, but cell phones could have been E2E at least since cellular switched to digital.
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Probably because for most people they estimate the risk to be low enough (correctly or not). If I was a politically sensitive person in China for instance I’ll definitely be more weary.
First they came for the Communists. And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists. And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews. And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me. And there was no one left To speak out for me
I would trade all my personal privacy if that meant eliminating pompous drivel producing dolts like you from all aspects of my life.
Fuck you.
Could you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments? We ban accounts that post like this, obviously.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(1) happened with the first multitasking OS, or possibly when CPUs got microcode; Android and iOS are big increases in freedom in comparison to the first phones.
(2) and (3) are bad, but a tangential bad to this: it’s no good having an untainted chat layer if it’s running on an imperfect — anywhere from hostile to merely lowest-bidder solution — OS. (And most of the problems we find in software have been closer to the later than the former).
(4) for all their problems, the American ones held off doing that until there was an attempted coup, having previously resisted blocking Trump despite him repeatedly and demonstrably violating their terms.
Re (1): That's technically true, but missing the point when viewed holistically. Those first feature phones were mostly just used to make quick calls to arrange an appointment or discuss one or two things. They were not a platform to mediate a majority chunk of our social lifes like today's phones are.
That also seems to miss the point, as for most of the stuff you’re describing the phone is a thin client and the computation is on a server, and that would still be true even if the phones themselves ran only GPL-licenced code and came with pre-installed compilers and IDEs.