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matheusmoreira 18 hours ago [-]
> Until recently, only spies and criminals had to worry this obsessively about their private statements being picked up by electronic equipment.
> But soon, the average person might need to deploy surveillance countermeasures.
Already there. If you want privacy and anonymity online, you're looking at literal terrorist cell tier tradecraft. That means pulling up documents written by people from the "counterterrorism community" and "intelligence community" and learning how all of these "clandestines" operate.
Unlinking one's identity from one's actions and speech requires some serious OPSEC now. It requires constant, never ending effort. It requires perfect execution and discipline.
inigyou 18 hours ago [-]
Using GrapheneOS makes you a terrorist now. I'm a terrorist.
Alive-in-2025 16 hours ago [-]
Since the courts decided you have to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone (because they decided that's not giving up your password and they can't compel you to give up your password), what if you use your fingerprint to wipe your phone? But you don't tell anyone ahead of time when they force you to use it. I'm sure you'd be arrested at the least.
I can't be the only person who has thought of this.
Tangurena2 10 hours ago [-]
A password is considered (by courts) to be testimony. Face, gesture or fingerprints are considered things like keys which you can be forced/compelled to turn over when commanded by law enforcement. Therefore, only passwords, which will require a court order to unlock, are secure enough for now.
petesergeant 8 hours ago [-]
> A password is considered (by courts) to be testimony
For now. It doesn't seem like an especially natural fit. Regardless of the merits of being able to compelled to turn over your password, relying on labored interpretation of laws is not a good idea: 14th amendment was always a very shaky basis for abortion rights, as the 2nd is a very shaky one for personal gun rights.
inigyou 12 hours ago [-]
Fingerprint and PIN unlock, but only PIN unlocks it and fingerprint is always duress? That's a good idea.
stronglikedan 7 hours ago [-]
At that point, just don't have biometrics configured at all. It would be waaay to easy to accidentally wipe your phone. Just have an unlock PIN and a duress PIN. You're going to be charged with destroying evidence either way if you use the duress method, so you may as well use the method that won't accidentally wipe your phone with a single misplaced finger.
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
The point is that you don't wipe your finger. The police wipes your finger against your will.
stronglikedan 7 hours ago [-]
> you have to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone
Nitpick, but that's only if you have biometric authentication configured in the first place, which you aren't compelled to do.
BoppreH 13 hours ago [-]
IANAL, but I would bet that's still destruction of evidence. Judges are human, for better or worse, and can see the intention behind cute tricks like this.
It might work if your fingerprint was used while you were unconscious, but any solution that starts with "setup a trigger that wipes a device" is already on shaky grounds.
mdp2021 11 hours ago [-]
> "setup a trigger that wipes a device" is already on shaky grounds
It isn't on shaky grounds: you protect your private device from everyone, not just from some "law enforcement". If you want to protect your private device from any party (e.g. thieves, trivially), it will also be protected against law enforcement agents as a side effect.
BoppreH 9 hours ago [-]
What trigger would you setup to protect against thieves? I can't think of any that has the right sensitivity (not triggering if I start running to catch the bus), and won't escalate the violence (like my fingerprint wiping the phone in front of an armed robber).
And remember that the context here is you explaining your digital booby trap to a judge who thinks you might have deliberately destroyed evidence.
mdp2021 7 hours ago [-]
> What trigger would you setup to protect against thieves?
"Wipe the data after a number of failed logon attempts".
I understand that this does not fit completely with the "in front of law enforcement" idea, but it opposes your «any solution that starts with "setup a trigger that wipes a device" [would be] already on shaky grounds»: we can very legitimately setup triggers that wipe devices in the possibility that the device falls into random hands.
inigyou 12 hours ago [-]
AFAIK it's legal to set up a trigger that wipes a device. It isn't legal to choose to wipe your device after you know the government wants the data. Tricking the government into wiping it is still allowed, especially if you tell them not to do that.
kelvinjps10 9 hours ago [-]
isn't this what that guy did and he got in trouble for it?
I'm talking about the one when asked for the pin gave the pin that would wipe the data from his graphene os phone
inigyou 8 hours ago [-]
No he gave the duress PIN while implying it was the correct PIN. That was the crime. Also they only caught him because he bragged that it was the duress PIN after the wipe.
BoppreH 11 hours ago [-]
That matches my understanding too. Unfortunately it sounds like the poster was suggesting to wipe the device after the government requests access, and was probably not planning on telling the officers about the trigger.
inigyou 11 hours ago [-]
With fingerprint unlock it's not your choice. That's what makes it clever. The cop can grab your finger and hold it to the scanner while you tell him not to do that.
Nextgrid 11 hours ago [-]
Presumably you must disclose that "doing that" would wipe the device... and you better hope this is caught on some neutral party's camera so there is a record of you saying that.
That happened because he chose to give the duress PIN. Cops are allowed to just grab your finger and scan it against your protest. You can say "don't do that, it'll wipe my phone" and they'll do it anyway and it'll wipe your phone, and now it certainly isn't your fault.
brookst 9 hours ago [-]
“One simple trick” stuff rarely survives contact with the court system. Tech people like to imagine law is code, but it’s not. Nor should it be.
DennisP 7 hours ago [-]
One simple trick that's proven to work is to just leave biometrics disabled and refrain from giving your password.
There are all sorts of situations where people go free despite the wistful desires of prosecutors, due to the details of what happened and what the law actually says.
inigyou 8 hours ago [-]
This may be true for hackers but courts have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to the letter of the law.
The law here is destruction of evidence. The guy destroyed evidence by giving the wrong password to the police. If the police had destroyed it of their own accord, he'd be free. If the duress PIN was 1234 and the police just tried it, he'd be free.
7 hours ago [-]
dns_snek 8 hours ago [-]
Can you come up with a plausible argument for how that applies in this scenario? What they said doesn't hinge on some sort of "clever" technicality.
red-iron-pine 6 hours ago [-]
see also: sovereign citizen approaches
nisegami 11 hours ago [-]
What does it matter? The state certainly isn't going to throw up its hands and say "you got us". They're still going to try to make it out to be your fault and even if you do successfully argue it wasn't of your volition, they've still robbed you of years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.
inigyou 10 hours ago [-]
Well that applies to anything you do that the state doesn't like, so may as well just give up and kill yourself? Or what's your plan?
close04 11 hours ago [-]
> they've still robbed you of years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.
Intentionally giving a duress PIN which you know will wipe evidence - information you were just asked for by some law enforcement - just robs you of more of years and money. The law is lopsided and gives some more power than others. There's no point debating why it's like that, try to change the law before you break it or find ways to not need to break it at all.
graceful6800 7 hours ago [-]
Using a duress PIN or other duress feature is now considered destroying evidence so YMMV
ern_ave 6 hours ago [-]
Write your duress PIN on the back of the phone. I guarantee you the first cop that sees it will go, "LOLOL!!!! HIS PASSWORD IS RIGHT THERE!!! LOLOL" and immediately enter it.
amelius 13 hours ago [-]
Best approach is to shadow-ban the user when they do a secret gesture before logging in. No wiping necessary. Easiest implementation is to just log them into a shadow account.
inigyou 12 hours ago [-]
GrapheneOS rejected the shadow account idea because it would be very obvious to everyone that it was a shadow account.
amelius 11 hours ago [-]
But it wouldn't be illegal, I suppose. That's what counts, in the end.
inigyou 11 hours ago [-]
The threat model of GrapheneOS is that the law is irrelevant and the attacker will do anything to get your data.
reedf1 11 hours ago [-]
This would still be destruction of evidence - virtually your only defense against that would be if it was not triggered by you.
bloak 11 hours ago [-]
Since you seem to know about this, what are the actual rules about "destruction of evidence" in your jurisdiction? What does the accused need to have known for a crime to have been committed?
(Common sense tells me that the accusation might make sense both in cases in which the accused knows about a crime and in cases in which the accused knows about a police investigation, even in the absence of a crime, but deleting nude photographs to stop a customs officer from seeing them, for a random example, would that be a crime?)
reedf1 7 hours ago [-]
Generally any material you intentionally delete after you are told to hand over evidence is considered to be the most incriminating version of that material in a court of law.
shevy-java 10 hours ago [-]
How can they reason that evidence was destroyed when they can not prove it ever existed in the first place?
joebates 9 hours ago [-]
They don't need to reason that evidence was destroyed. They just need to reason they there was an attempt to destroy potential evidence, whether or not there was actually any evidence. Any kind of interference with an investigation in any way is likely subject to prosecution.
inigyou 10 hours ago [-]
How can they in the GrapheneOS duress pin case?
dwedge 8 hours ago [-]
I used GrapheneOS without a sim card for 4 months and the battery life was great. I put a sim card in, and since then (2 months) the battery dies twice as fast no matter which profile it's in, and dies faster even on airplane mode. I left it at 80% the other day and went out, came back 6 hours later and it was dead and red hot.
Maybe it's just a dodgy phone, maybe it's not doing something on the less-trackable sim connection, but I realised I can never really know.
2 hours ago [-]
NewJazz 6 hours ago [-]
What model do you have?
The pixel 6a does terribly when it is in 5g mode, something abput the hardware is broken or bugged. My friend who has a 6a has to keep it in 4g only mode or sacrifice battrry life.
dwedge 3 hours ago [-]
Pixel 9 but it could be another obscure bug that only shows up with that Sim
red-iron-pine 6 hours ago [-]
lasts for days with a pixel 9. literally don't need to plug it in for a couple days at a stretch
might just be an older phone and older battery
dwedge 3 hours ago [-]
It's a 9 and I had exactly the same experience until I put the Sim in. Maybe I should try first taking the Sim back out and second reinstalling it
matheusmoreira 18 hours ago [-]
We're all terrorists here.
Own a general purpose computer you can run arbitrary software on, not just corporation and government approved software? You're clearly a money laundering drug trafficking child molesting terrorist.
xnzakg 14 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, the arbitrary software is probably running under Intel's ME or AMD's PSP.
Noaidi 9 hours ago [-]
This is why we should all be stopping, or at least minimizing, the use of our phones. The point is it’ll make the corporations more mad and that will get the government to change. money changes everything
Thank you, I will devour it, but it seems to misrepresent a naïve point: simple Bayes. Id est,
> Law enforcement officials in Catalonia say they associate Pixels with crime because drug traffickers are increasingly turning to these phones
And that is correct behaviour under frequentistic reasoning (and still abysmal behaviour in the non-expressed potential case that it be done indiscriminately): if in a population a tool is related to many criminals and the very few sane people, that tool is a justified element for suspicion. But for suspicion only, in the coldest terms: the Sane use it, and using it is a sign of sanity: for that reason, of course you do not /assume/ that those who use that tools are criminals.
To have a knife raises suspect in the land of the stabbers and raises little suspect in the land of the scouts.
Only the bad tail of the curve mixes "suspect" and "assumption"; and only the worse tail of the curve thinks that since stabbers use knives we should do without them. Especially in this dire case in which obviously for reasons of Dignity, we will not, all capitals, ___will not___, keep spying devices on us. It is difficult to find examples and similes stronger than the actual case.
The article in fact fumbles into a very bad sentence:
> You might be wondering: if I don’t have anything to hide, why should I bother using GrapheneOS? That[!!!] a fair question
No, that is a very stupid question: Dignity imposes privacy, and we have ___everything___ to hide to the zombie apocalypse of cretins.
Statements like this are a stretch. This was not the fact of using the OS, but specifically the fact of wiping it. The situation is atrocious enough as is, no need to make up additions.
jahnu 16 hours ago [-]
“Chief, we got a citizen here with a suspiciously small online footprint. Investigate further?”
Borg3 14 hours ago [-]
And this is what I worry about. Seriously. My online footprint is minimal.
I just hope gov will be still incompetent and lazy...
11 hours ago [-]
inigyou 11 hours ago [-]
IIRC ICE has detained people trying to enter America without social media apps.
jbxntuehineoh 8 hours ago [-]
wise move, they could be radical anarcho-boomerists
red-iron-pine 6 hours ago [-]
it's kinda like how the old FBI email monitoring thing, CARNIVORE, automatically flagged anyone talking about BSD for a 2nd scan
mdp2021 15 hours ago [-]
I met the parent comment downvoted: I don't know why, given e.g. the rule from the current administration in the USA that, for visitors, the absence of social network profiles is to be taken as cause for suspicion.
slipperybeluga 11 hours ago [-]
I've applied to jobs recently that require listing LinkedIn profile. Don't see how that is legal. I always put something like idonthavesocialmedia.com but I imagine it's a strike against me according to see brainless HR drone who sees it as problematic
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 18 hours ago [-]
Friend of a friend retired several years ago from Intel. He'll go into detail about all the ways you're being spied on. He won't let you into his house with a smartphone; you have to turn it off and leave it in your car.
I used to think he was just paranoid...
everybodyknows 15 hours ago [-]
How about a Faraday box, by the door? Take to the next level with acoustic insulation, just in case there's a record-now, upload-later mode.
nbernard 13 hours ago [-]
> How about a Faraday box, by the door?
Not as easy as one may think. If you put a phone in a generic waterproof metal box (metal junction or biscuit box for instance) and call it with another one, most of the time it will still ring...
pluc 12 hours ago [-]
A Faraday box that doesn't block signals is just a box.
inigyou 11 hours ago [-]
The point is how do you know it's a Faraday box?
wackro 11 hours ago [-]
Presumably if you're driven by paranoia to buy or make a Faraday box you will be paranoid enough to try putting your phone in it and calling it
nbernard 10 hours ago [-]
The problem is a Faraday box only attenuates signals. And it usually does not attenuate all frequencies identically.
So your test may seem successful, but the box not be enough closer to a tower, or if your neighbor added a new AP, or if cell phone frequencies changed since you bought and tested it. Moreover, if you have to open and close it often, you have to be careful that the attenuation doesn't degrade.
All that to say that the "Faraday box solution" would mean testing it regularly with professional instruments and all that. It is far simpler and cheaper to ask guests to leave their phones in their cars.
ChoGGi 9 hours ago [-]
I bought a Faraday box for my car keys. I made sure it was big enough for my phone, then used a network monitoring app.
aidenn0 8 hours ago [-]
Car keys usually use a wavelength of 1 meter; networking on your phone is going to be typically shorter than 15cm (though varies widely based on geographic region and carrier). A faraday box for your phone might not work for your car keys.
matheusmoreira 17 hours ago [-]
> He'll go into detail about all the ways you're being spied on.
Don't doubt it for even a second.
Der_Einzige 15 hours ago [-]
The fun part about this comment is that we don't know if "Intel" is the company, or the term for the IC. I'm pretty sure it's equally likely to be either meaning, and no surprise based on whichever is correct.
red-iron-pine 6 hours ago [-]
there is quite a lot of industrial espionage happening with Intel and AMD, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are, in fact, extra paranoid
vasco 15 hours ago [-]
The likelihood is 100% that it is the company.
lukan 13 hours ago [-]
Not likely.
exodust 17 hours ago [-]
> He won't let you into his house with a smartphone
His mistrust might be about the phone's owner and the recording apps they might use, more than the smartphone itself.
Socially it's much safer to direct suspicion at "the smartphone" rather than the people invited to your house.
Hoodedcrow 14 hours ago [-]
To be fair, most phones have invasive Google/Apple/Chinese OEM services that work with high privileges and are invasive on their own, without apps. The share of people using degoogled OSes is small enough to assume it isn't the case. And, to be fair, if someone has a degoogled phone, you'd probably know that by now (I say as also a degoogled user XD)
close04 14 hours ago [-]
A visitor who wants to record will just have a second recording device. Asking nicely to leave the phone behind could only protect from spying the phone owner never intended.
purplemoonx 10 hours ago [-]
This is paranoid. It is not that hard. HN famously can’t keep people out of here. They make new accounts. It’s not enough to IP ban. It’s impossible to retarget people even without vpn, all I need is a different cell tower.
I interact at various levels of anon all the time, it’s easy just cover your:
-Network (geo/IP)
-Device (useragent, cookies)
-Fingerprints (browser vendor, screen size)
And you’re off to trolling
datadrivenangel 9 hours ago [-]
Good luck keeping law enforcement from finding your location if they really don't like you.
purplemoonx 9 hours ago [-]
Thankfully I live in SF where we still have personal rights not some authoritarian shithole like Canada or the UK
vaylian 8 hours ago [-]
Palantir and Flock have entered the chat
purplemoonx 7 hours ago [-]
Mainstream News has entered your mind. It likes it here, and is going to stay a while.
calvinmorrison 7 hours ago [-]
or just get on the alternet. If you and your peers care about communicating and you dont feel like doing state witch craft, the easiest thing is to just setup your own opt in systems and not use facebook, etc. run your own IRC server, file share, whatever. self host. it's easier than ever. Don't use discord, run your own communities, etc.
adolph 9 hours ago [-]
> Unlinking one's identity from one's actions and speech
This is an odd formulation. What is one's identity other than one's actions (physical body) and speech (mental state serialized into language)?
s0ss 9 hours ago [-]
They’re talking about having personas for different purposes. Very simplified Example: Only talking about topic XYZ over tor with good opsec; talking about topic ABC openly.
shiandow 8 hours ago [-]
Identity is what links them together.
14 hours ago [-]
txrx0000 9 hours ago [-]
While this is true, it's not an all-or-nothing game. A little bit of countersurveillance is better than none, even if you're not that savvy. We can win by gradually raising the per capita cost of surveillance until it's infeasible to surveil everybody. Individual digital sovereignty will be achieved eventually, but we won't get there in a single step. Start small and iterate. Even simple things like periodically wiping browser cache or changing the apps you use can meaningfully raise the cost.
nextlevelwizard 16 hours ago [-]
>We and our 1255 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store and access personal data on your device
you don't say...
purplemoonx 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
mawadev 14 hours ago [-]
I feel like sooner or later we all hollow out a little more. All this data is either used to prevent crime or to influence your thoughts and what you do in the world. Outsourcing your thinking to something else leads to digital dementia. What is the point of all of this technology?
Tangurena2 9 hours ago [-]
> What is the point of all of this technology?
It is the over-reaction to 911. The 3-letter agencies were all traumatized by not knowing in advance that they pushed every single anti-privacy initiative possible. Like the PATRIOT ACT which was already written when 911 happened.
The current administration has shown that they use all these recording stuffs in order to persecute their political enemies.
yubblegum 3 hours ago [-]
> It is the over-reaction
That is in fact a matter that is subject to serious debate.
Pretext.
pylua 11 hours ago [-]
It gets it wrong a lot and is automated. How would you feel about being falsely accused or misunderstood ?
Also, it lays the groundwork to absolutely crush dissent in the future .
red-iron-pine 6 hours ago [-]
> influence your thoughts and what you do in the world
it is explicitly meant to do this -- that's the point of marketing and propaganda.
marketing exists to change consumer behavior. what do you think google or facebook intended to do w/ all of the data it's slurping up?
if they could beam a laser at your head to do full on mind control they would, and would auction off timeshare of the lasers to the highest bidder. failing that, they have to use more subtle methods
tweakimp 13 hours ago [-]
Somebody makes a lot of money and generates a lot of power with it.
noir_lord 12 hours ago [-]
> What is the point of all of this technology?
When I look at something these days I ask the question "On the whole does this benefit society?"
Society here been scale specific, so local community, wider community, population of my country, population of the world.
I.e. bin policies changes by my local council aren't going to affect someone in Africa and so on.
Depressingly the answer is almost always in aggregate... No.
We seem to be determined to allow the worst of us to make things worse for us to their own benefit.
Thanks, very interesting. Basically the authors blast high-power (~92 dBA) ultrasound around 25kHz and hope that microphone non-linearities will overwhelm the audible signal.
This will sure make all the dogs in 20m radius mad. Hence the solution for the stealth recorder -- bring a dog, then complain about the ultrasound jammer (or at least to be aware of a jammer)
From the paper, it looks like the authors did not consider safety of animals, only human hearing safety.
ticulatedspline 19 hours ago [-]
As someone frequently annoyed by those stupid bird/deer/insect ultrasound emitters I hope this doesn't become common, with my luck I'll be able to hear them.
Der_Einzige 15 hours ago [-]
My neighborhood is full of these anti-social devices which are entirely designed to try to prevent dogs from shitting on their lawns. The noise they make is always at a pitch I can hear and my dog always ignores them.
My dog has no problem shitting on their lawns, and even sometimes pees on the devices.
So I'd like to find any actual devices which work on dogs (well I have no use for it but just to be sure they actually exist), because circa the original iphone I remember that there were apps which could reliably make its microphones do it (and impact dogs as expected).
bloak 12 hours ago [-]
Which country are you in? Here in GB it is expected that dogs will be under control, and in any case their owners are responsible for any damage they do. Cats on the other hand ... people have devices to scare away cats, though I'm not sure how well they work. Interestingly, cat owners have them in some cases ... to keep their own cat away from certain areas?
ticulatedspline 9 hours ago [-]
yeah I've seen birds nesting on the device itself in places. Other animals acclimate to them, they might work if the animal has basically no reason to want to go there, if they want to they will.
The Home Depot here uses one in the garden area and I can't shop there for more than a couple minutes. our wal-mart used to have one in the produce section, fortunately finally removed.
Worst superpower ever.
lukan 12 hours ago [-]
"My dog has no problem shitting on their lawns, and even sometimes pees on the devices."
Give him a treat from me, that made me smile. (I also hate those devices)
18 hours ago [-]
mercurywells 21 hours ago [-]
How would this affect people with cochlear implants?
toofy 1 days ago [-]
we desperately need a separation of corporations and state the same way we have a separation of church and state.
we need a government that is antagonistic towards corporations that are abusing us.
it’s wild how much influence they have and how little pushback the government ever gives them when they clearly abuse us from every direction.
NegativeK 1 days ago [-]
We need PII to be so toxic that companies run screaming from the liability unless they have explicit consent[1] and a legit reason to house it.
A company selling me widgets wouldn't store or let another company store extra information about me if it subjected them the widget seller to HIPAA. Or better yet, something more stringent.
We don't need the government to be antagonistic toward corporations; we just need a government that makes the corporations internalize the risk they're making us take.
[1] The fact that ToS are enforceable when every court in the country knows that only a vanishly small percentage of people ever read them, much less understand them, means that they're not doing their job.
pull_my_finger 23 hours ago [-]
> We need PII to be so toxic that companies run screaming from the liability
This is how healthcare workers used to treat health information protected by HIPAA, but it seems like the big corporations don't really even care about it. Nothing ever comes from violations besides slap on the wrist/cost of doing business penalties. You can't do anything without waiving all your rights, granting permission to be recorded, granting permission to use your photograph for anything they want, allowing your recorded audio to run through AI for transcription (and whatever else they want to do), granting permission to share your data with their partners, associates, and some vague description of "anyone we decide at a later date". That's before you can even sign-up, receive care, have a service rendered, enter into a business establishment.
There's pages of fine print documenting it all in vague terms that ambiguously safe guard the provider from any liability, but half the time, you don't even get to opportunity to (not) read it. It's just a link to go elsewhere and (not) read it. They add as many steps between you even reading what rights you're giving away, so that even the people who had a mind to do so would get fatigued, and they make you do it while there are people queuing up behind you, or you're almost done with your purchase/subscription, etc.
Everything is so consumer hostile (and expensive in America), but no "better" service can swoop in, because the established Big corps get to break all the rules or can afford the token penalties to give them an unstoppable market share no honest disruptor/competition could ever overcome. On even ground, no competent person would choose to be abused by our resident monopolies vs a reasonably similar priced local upstart, and a lot people would even pay (a little) more for a better experience/product/service.
MSFT_Edging 10 hours ago [-]
I just stopped writing my social down on doctor intake forms years ago after numerous "whoopsie we were hacked" letters, that almost seemed like a scam themselves(always nearly identical).
No doctor ever complained. You don't need to enter most of that info.
SoftTalker 22 hours ago [-]
I avoid all that by avoiding the corporate health care system.
spicyusername 21 hours ago [-]
lol, what
dzdt 18 hours ago [-]
If you are healthy and kid free, you can just not go to the doctor.
ileonichwiesz 14 hours ago [-]
I like to avoid the risks of processed foods by simply not being hungry.
slfnflctd 10 hours ago [-]
That is a position of privilege not everyone has, and it is almost certainly temporary for those who do have it.
thunderfork 16 hours ago [-]
"if you are in the air and not descending, you can just not care about gravity"
deepsun 19 hours ago [-]
Explicit consent will be everywhere, like you won't be admitted to a grocery store without it. Take any modern TV -- there's a privacy policy you have to accept the first time you turn it on. Or California Prop 65 notice on every product.
So no, requiring explicit consent won't fix anything.
omgwtfbyobbq 19 hours ago [-]
The government needs regulation to allow access without granting consent in certain cases. Not quite as far as declaring something a utility, but better than almost completely unregulated.
Most of the videos talk about reducing burden on clinicians. Specifically: sharing, accessing, updating patient history. Providing clinicians and patients guidance through the medical process through AI agents (that have access to your PII). the kaiser permanente guy highlighted ai's use in guiding billing codes. Dr. Oz spoke about getting pre-authorizations near instantaneously
I'm not sure how that gets accomplished without reducing liability or loosing restrictions. I wouldnt be surprised to see a continued attack on our healthcare privacy
BobbyTables2 18 hours ago [-]
Weren’t electronic health records supposed to solve this problem almost 20 years ago?
I would have figured there would have been a massive financial interest in providers not having to waste time dealing with tedious Q&A and data entry with new patients…
wanda 12 hours ago [-]
Pretty difficult when a lot of government people are in it looking for any opportunity to get into bed with private sector for their own individual gain, and when corporations have far more spending power and far less bureaucratic lag than governments. Governments are also just as hungry for data as corporations are.
And if you think a government has any interest in protecting their people, well, that is simply inaccurate in practice.
The government exists to organise and pacify its people, to prevent unpredictable or counter-productive behaviour. Primarily to protect the government from its people.
Regulation doesn't protect people, it protects the government, corporations, or both, in the same way HR protects the company from its employees. The people benefit coincidentally, if at all.
w10-1 1 days ago [-]
> we need a government that is antagonistic towards corporations that are abusing us
Please don't. The entire civilized world for all of history and before has been built on the uncomfortable alliance between power/capability and governance/legitimacy. Protection-seeking is the primary support system for tyranny which is happy to induce the chaos they protect you from.
We just need enough negative feedback for any kind of abuse that it stops, because regulations have to be slow to be accurate and thus invite abuse innovation. The main part of that negative feedback is effective competition so people can vote with their feet.
So, ask not for antagonism but for real alternatives.
sillyfluke 1 days ago [-]
The second paragraph by itself is enough, the first is a tad hubristic and vague. The good things that got us here are not necessarily the things that will get us there, there being wherever we ideally want to end up...
>The main part of that negative feedback is effective competition
The comment you responded to allows for "corporations that abuse us" to include those that actively try to prevent effective competition. You don't really explain why being antagonistic to those corporations would be a problem.
w10-1 22 hours ago [-]
> You don't really explain why being antagonistic to those corporations would be a problem
Yeah, sorry. Yes, corporate activities that reduce competition or corrupt regulators should have their agents and causes ripped out branch to root; they're like diseases which attack the immune system, doubly bad.
But the premise that a corporation or a country that does bad things means you are justified in antagonizing or destroying the entire company or the people is typically enlistment and leverage for protection rackets.
Warring with others is a cycle that doesn't end, and mainly elevates military resource providers. Warring with yourself - attacking your own organs - is self-destructive (which is why enemies stimulate it).
As for here vs there, 20th-century totalitarian systems all stemmed from people wanting to believe promises of a better world, and the promotors being unbound by facts of the present. "Here" is a much more tractable problem, where our medicine (or immune systems) could get better at stemming the diseases we have, like the lack of negative feedback for abusing people (more generally for exporting costs, esp. to the future), or the corruption of discourse that mediates agreements about governance. My goal would be to leave the world more free, peaceful, nature-healthy than I found it. Antagonism doesn't help for that, and side-tracks people into regressive emotions.
harimau777 20 hours ago [-]
Still better than being at the mercy of the corporations.
1 days ago [-]
pstuart 24 hours ago [-]
Considering the state of the federal government under the current regime it's a challenge to identify safe government and business relationships.
metalman 22 hours ago [-]
your inventing a concept of universal power dynamics and history with no basis.
Humans have created a myriad of sociatal structures, and with the current luxury of our post scarcity techno industrial manufacturing capabilities there is no reason to have all of the forever wars and suffering from lack.
What you describe is slavery, not civilisation.
That would be child abuse, as corporations are born out of the state as statutory entities. Corporations used to be chartered to do specific jobs like build a bridge or whatever. Charter max was 20 years. This is why the first and second national banks ran for only 20 years each.
WarmWash 8 hours ago [-]
Corporations are the ones who make money for the government.
The people elect the leaders, and the corporations bankroll the operations. Every time a new hot startup comes about, the government anticipates an army of highly paid (read: top tax bracket) individuals being cultivated.
dns_snek 8 hours ago [-]
> Corporations are the ones who make money for the government.
No they don't, people do, always have and always will. The owners of these corporations simply have an undue level of control over the collective wealth created by the people.
WarmWash 7 hours ago [-]
Can you explain how the people do?
What you said sounds nice, but is it actually the case? Because as far as I can tell, we're all out here being willfully delegated work by corporations rather than taking the risk of doing it ourselves.
hdgvhicv 33 minutes ago [-]
How much money does a corporation with no employees make?
physPop 1 days ago [-]
but you don't have separation of church and state... thats a poor comparison. religious dogma eats into nearly all public discourse.
phkahler 1 days ago [-]
The separation is not total but its more than used to exist.
slfnflctd 10 hours ago [-]
Depends what you mean by "used to". The 17th century or before? Sure.
However, I would argue that in the US, we "used to" have far better separation prior to the 1970s, and even better than that before the 1930s. It has significantly deteriorated over the past 100 years, and the deterioration has continuously accelerated during my lifetime.
hamper653 17 hours ago [-]
"The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway.
The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. "
hamper653 17 hours ago [-]
"The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital."
MomsAVoxell 23 hours ago [-]
I would be fine with the NSA recording everything I do, if I had access to it as a backup. I think it would be a valuable service a government could perform for me - assuming there were a way to make sure the data was not accessed without my side of the key. I would also think it pretty neat, were I able to use it as a backup over my life, for my own purposes - if I could do it without involving the spooks. Like, let me use the technological spy infrastructure, and if I happen to commit a crime, well then - come on in, inspect my data by all means.
This, I think, is the only circumstance where it is justifiable - but of course, it is not reality. We have absolutely no agency over the activities of Pine Gap, etc.
However, corporations - for some reason - are given a pass.
What the world really needs, is for hackers to get user-facing operating systems which just really do, backup everything. It's okay, you can choose not to use it.
I'd love to have every single phone call I've ever made available, at this point in my life.
dTal 9 hours ago [-]
That's like saying "I would be fine with people shooting at me, if only the bullets were replaced with quarters and they were carefully handed over instead of fired at high velocity".
MomsAVoxell 8 hours ago [-]
First of all, there is currently zero good, democratic, public control over the oppressive apparatus currently recording everyone, and everything. It is a fascist utopia of human rights violations, the western intelligence apparatus.
So, let's not bumble over inapt euphemism. There is for sure a far worse scenario that can be offered - but there is a far better outcome, if an intelligence super-state is to be accomplished 'to protect the people', then the people need the means by which to protect themselves, from it.
That is for sure not happening right now. We are all having our human rights violently violated, every millisecond of a handle.
So, what I am proposing - and not at all surprised is being misunderstood - is that I don't mind them recording the details of my life, as long as I am the first and foremost customer - i.e. completely private in the recording system - until and unless there is some democratic order from the state which requires me to unlock the timeline. In which case, I'm fine with it - because I ain't no terrorist, and I'd be a happier person if, instead of the government using weapons to protect me, it instead just made sure my legacy was backed up in the big human digital cloud that is now propelling itself through the universe.
You know, instead of Zuck/Musk/&co., it were just a wide open, well maintained, public good.
No, this does not mean I want NSA-spooks spying on me. That is different from being recorded. The only time I want my fully backed up data made available publicly, is when I need to defend myself against claims of criminal behavior.
I don't believe in the secret intelligence apparatus, one bit. I'd be far happier with an open intelligence apparatus, invested in, by the people I elect to maintain democratic principles. The anti-thesis to the surveillance state.
cindyllm 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ramijames 1 days ago [-]
I wish that I could upvote this twice.
ziofill 15 hours ago [-]
It’s not that wild: governments are made of self-serving people, and money from the industry finds its way into their pockets.
toasty228 1 days ago [-]
I was watching a documentary about the first food regulations in the US today, lobbyists are as old as the state here, good luck getting them out, the entire system was designed by and for them
13 hours ago [-]
xnzakg 14 hours ago [-]
Huh, almost as if the governments get something out of allowing the companies to abuse us...
MomsAVoxell 23 hours ago [-]
I would be fine with the NSA[1] recording everything I do, if I had access to it as a backup.
I think it would be a valuable service a government could perform for me - assuming there were a way to make sure the data was not accessed without my side of the key. Like, it is only after I have been arrested that the data is accessible to the court in which I will have been presented to face accusations of a crime.
I would also think it pretty neat, were I able to use it as a backup over my life, for my own purposes - if I could do it without involving the spooks. Like, let me use the technological spy infrastructure, and if I happen to commit a crime, well then - come on in, inspect my data by all means.
This, I think, is the only circumstance where it is justifiable - but of course, it is not reality. We have absolutely no agency over the activities of Pine Gap, etc.
And there's the corporations who - for some reason - are given a pass. If governments can steal your data, so can Mr. FatCat and his team of merry department heads.
What the world really needs, is for hackers to get user-facing operating systems which just really do, backup everything. It's okay, you can choose not to use it.
I'd love to have every single phone call I've ever made available, at this point in my life, for review. This kind of super-wide view of things would be quite enlightening, I'm pretty sure.
[1] - just for the record, I think the problems that the NSA are trying to solve are obsolete; that there are far greater solutions to fallacies which support the utility of it as an organ of government; I am in the camp that this is a massive human rights issue, also.
tsoukase 5 hours ago [-]
Privacy, as security, is spread on a spectrum, depending the threat actor capability. FAAM account and content linking and LLMs' deep online search easily uncover anyone using non-advanced tools.
octocop 13 hours ago [-]
commenting for digital footprint
nubinetwork 17 hours ago [-]
> Apple is rumored to be developing an AI pin or pendant that would serve as an iPhone’s constant eyes and ears; many other products of this type are on the way. AI accessories could one day be as widespread as AirPods.
But why? Don't we already have phones, watches, glasses, tags, and airpods? If they were making a siri version of alexa/echo, then maybe that would make sense, but do we really need a specific apple device just to ai?
nextlevelwizard 16 hours ago [-]
One of the few reasons to use iPhone is that it doesn't constantly surveil you. If Apple would just pivot and say "next iPhone will constantly record everything it hears and sees to process for our AI (Apple Intelligence(tm))" a lot of people would drop iPhone.
Apple Watch is just extension of screen and notifications from the phone, so there is no overlap.
AirTags have nothing to do with AI stuff.
AirPods apparently now have some translation stuff, but again no constant monitoring.
Apple does not produce glasses and seeing the backlash to Meta's glasses I don't think they will. A pin or pendant might be more acceptable, although hiding it will be just as big of an issue as with the creepy Meta glasses, but any AI thing Apple makes should be a separate product if they want to maximize profits.
bean469 13 hours ago [-]
> One of the few reasons to use iPhone is that it doesn't constantly surveil you.
Curious, do you have a source for this apart from Apple's marketing?
> Apple Watch is just extension of screen and notifications from the phone, so there is no overlap.
Where did you got that impression?
Apple Watch have lots of apps.
It can make phone call and do voice recording without the phone nearby.
eek2121 13 hours ago [-]
Some models have built in cellular as well, so it's possible to use one without your phone entirely.
nextlevelwizard 8 hours ago [-]
All of which are extensions of the phone functions
nubinetwork 14 hours ago [-]
> Apple does not produce glasses and seeing the backlash to Meta's glasses I don't think they will
Word has it that they're working on them, but no idea until wwdc 2027.
nextlevelwizard 8 hours ago [-]
Unless those glasses are just display for iPhone or at least lack cameras it will not go well for them
16 hours ago [-]
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
Obama was promoting The Age of Surveillance Capitalism over seven years ago now. Industry insiders have known all this since 1999. Yet almost every single person I know carries a cellphone and drives a car with telemetry, things that are entirely optional. Most humans use Meta products regularly; also optional. For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
PS: Something in this vein that many people are unaware of is that the 6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication). I haven’t heard a single AFK person talk about this.
JohnFen 1 days ago [-]
I don't think people want this. I think people want the other benefits that those things bring, and increasingly feel that it's impossible to escape being surveilled anyway so do their best to ignore the whole issue.
Being resigned to something is not the same as wanting that thing.
margalabargala 1 days ago [-]
> I don't think people want this
There was a comment made here a month or two ago, about someone from a SE Asia country (I forget which; maybe Bangladesh?) talking about how their government installed AI traffic enforcement cameras all over, and they went from one of the deadliest, most chaotic road systems in the world to Singapore-level rule-following in the space of just a couple months.
As a result, the cameras have become quite popular because there's less traffic, travelling is easier and more predictable, and road deaths have plummeted.
I imagine there are a number of similar situations in every country, where the deployment of AI surveillance has a sufficiently measurably positive impact that it becomes popular.
> their government installed AI traffic enforcement cameras all over
What does the AI actually do? Identify specific cars and their drivers, or something? What actual enforcement actions were taken as a result, and against how many drivers before it stopped?
One might wonder how much of the effect was placebo (i.e., people conforming simply due to the belief of being surveilled).
margalabargala 23 hours ago [-]
> What does the AI actually do? Identify specific cars and their drivers, or something?
Yes, exactly. It identifies cars and drivers who are committing traffic violations, and issues citations.
I don't have the specific numbers you ask for, seeing as I can't even remember the country, but it's not difficult to imagine that if sufficiently many such cameras are installed that most moving violations on major roadways are caught and punished, then yes, people will come to (reasonably) believe that the cost of committing the violation is close to the price of the fine, rather than close to zero.
It's one thing to blow by a pedestrian crossing the street, it's another to do so knowing you'll probably be charged $150 (or whatever) for having done it.
andai 19 hours ago [-]
There was an article on the front page today titled something like "incentives are for schmucks", which I didn't like very much.
In this case, incentives are for people who'd like to reduce traffic deaths.
UpsideDownRide 17 hours ago [-]
So it's something AI, somewhere, you cant verify it, nevermind us. But you feel comfortable stating it both as a fact and a good thing to have.
margalabargala 17 hours ago [-]
If you see someone stating something as being "a good thing to have", you accidentally replied to the wrong comment.
If you read "one can see how someone might not object to this" and understand "this is a good thing to have" then I'm afraid the issue is you contributing the stats that news agencies like to publish about American reading comprehension trends.
mohamedkoubaa 21 hours ago [-]
Please don't call license plate scanners AI
margalabargala 20 hours ago [-]
Why not? If they use a machine learning approach. AI is more than LLMs.
It's a trained model, just like Claude.
8 hours ago [-]
knollimar 13 hours ago [-]
Using the broader label to imply good things about the narrow thing sucks. Like being pro "technology" means nothing
margalabargala 5 hours ago [-]
What narrow thing? "AI" has been used to refer to ML models for longer than LLMs have existed.
Your choice to see "AI" and assume some narrow definition is a personal issue that you could correct on your own if you chose.
Filligree 7 hours ago [-]
The word means what it does. I’m not changing my use of language just because some people misunderstand the dictionary definition.
nektro 14 hours ago [-]
aaand that's enough internet for today
cosmic_cheese 1 days ago [-]
Sometimes it’s also a pain to opt out.
The outrageous prices of used (low telemetry) cars make them a poor value proposition, for example. Depending on the model, a used car can be a decade old with half of its lifetime miles on it already and the seller will still want $14k or something crazy like that. When you factor in the parts of its history that carfax doesn’t cover and the stream of repairs you’re likely to be saddled with, finding a 0%-2% financing deal on something new at ~$20-24k begins to look a lot more attractive.
ColdStream 22 hours ago [-]
All successful negative things have a claim to virtue that they hide behind.
bamboozled 1 days ago [-]
Agree, you’re either a digital hermit or you’re part of the problem / system
therealdrag0 1 days ago [-]
It’s enticing to believe we coulda gone another way. Such as having a paid versions of these services. But free is just Soooo enticing. It hacks peoples brains.
lux-lux-lux 1 days ago [-]
That cellphone and car and television and most other things that spy on you were most certainly not free.
ColdStream 22 hours ago [-]
Alas this is the structure of power. Either you have to do a total rejection of its benefits or you end up being sucked into the system as others practically force people into it for fear of being left behind.
forgetfreeman 1 days ago [-]
The really obnoxious part is that with the possible exception of maps all of the other "services" touted as vital parts of a digitally connected existence are so enshittified at this point that the original value proposition for all of them is absent. So we're left with this zombie rhetoric around being disconnected while "connecting" means you spend hours every day staring at bot content and ads.
harimau777 20 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure that's really true. The two that come immediately to mind are Facebook or Discord for organizing with friends and language translation while traveling.
forgetfreeman 18 hours ago [-]
I mean I might give it to you for Discord but Facebook is an easy win here. There's so much bot crap on Facebook Meta keeps getting dragged in front of congress over it.
therealdrag0 1 days ago [-]
You really spend hours a day staring at bots and ads?
esseph 1 days ago [-]
Most do.
forgetfreeman 1 days ago [-]
Fuck no, I stopped using my phone for anything besides maps and phone stuff before the pandemic. You peddling the idea that that isn't what all of the social platforms are these days?
asmodeuslucifer 1 days ago [-]
By leveraging mobile network infrastructure – towers, spectrum, antennas, and some hardware – ISAC can detect, locate, and track objects (including passive ones with no electronics). This will enable a wide range of use cases such as UAV airspace monitoring, autonomous vehicle safety, industrial automation, and immersive AR experiences. Commercial deployment is expected alongside 6G rollouts in the 2030 timeframe
I wonder how precise this will be? A flying object sounds reasonable but could it actually track say individual people walking on a street further down the line?
pbmonster 12 hours ago [-]
From the hardware side, extremely precise. Most discussions assume the sweet spot for ISAC is in "Frequency Range 3" (7 - 24 GHz, decent penetration and range, very good resolution), and in that range you can pin down objects with millimeter precision (both position and velocity). So, not only can you detect people walking down the street, you can detect them breathing when they stand perfectly still.
This, of course, requires 6G base stations to be spaced pretty tightly (hundreds of meters apart) and to feature sophisticated phased array antennas. But both can be assumed in cities (they're planning to completely replace WIFI with 6G, so every current WIFI access point will become a 6G micro cell). Walking humans can be detected much easier, but radar SNR is funny, that only gives you 4x-6x the detection range.
Software (signals processing) for all that will be... a lot of difficult work. Object separation/tracking, multipath reflections, clutter suppression, ect.
quietsignal 16 hours ago [-]
Although this is a preprint it shares some discussion and ideas on how to mitigate potential privacy challenges of ISAC.
I suspect while not individually, it will provide another data point that can be collaborated.
One should never underestimate the power of combining data sets.
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
Thank you, this deserved a link. I was being lazy.
Escapade5160 21 hours ago [-]
As someone who regularly attempts to give up a cell phone, it is not optional. A not insignificant number of things require it. It is the expectation society is now built around and therefore it is not an option. A car without telemetry is for the time being still optional. I take very good care of my old vehicles hoping I never need a new one.
preg_match 1 days ago [-]
There are multiple things we need to acknowledge:
- Consumers largely do not know these things. They are either not disclosed, or buried within a TOS that they cannot read. This is all done on purpose. The reason the TOS is obtuse, long, inaccurate, and updated weekly is so you won't read or understand it.
- In most markets there is no choice. For smartphones you do not have a choice, both Apple and Google do extensive surveillance. If you want to bank, get a job, and all around be successful, you have to swallow the surveillance cost. If you want a new car, again, no choice. If you work a job, again, no choice on the computer or software.
- It is not reasonable to expect consumers to do extensive research on everything they buy. Consumers have lives, children, jobs. They're not going to sit and spend 10+ hours researching every thing they buy, especially when most of that research is fruitless.
- There are tradeoffs with everything. Yes we can use Linux, I sure do. But for other consumers, now they need to spend a lot of time understanding that. Yes we can use Graphene OS, but certain apps won't work.
zahlman 1 days ago [-]
The outrage isn't feigned; it just comes from a minority of people. The masses aren't established to "want this"; they may just not care.
goatlover 22 hours ago [-]
They care to the degree they become aware of it and it's potential misuses.
ColdStream 21 hours ago [-]
This is something Richard Stallman has pointed out many times before. You need to tell people about these things, most of them simply do not know the extent of the issues but once they do know it, most are at least sympathetic to the cause.
grvdrm 1 days ago [-]
Traversing life without a cell phone is a fun experiment. Here and there I forget mine and spend a day without the distraction - glorious way to spend time.
anigbrowl 5 hours ago [-]
6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication)
Yikes, was not aware of this
dingocat 1 days ago [-]
> Most humans use Meta products regularly; also optional. For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
This is a perfect example of the revealed-preference fallacy. The use of providers like Meta does not reflect a well-informed, freely chosen preference. Meta spends a ton of money to squash competition, remove viable alternatives, and to make their products addictive.
loeg 1 days ago [-]
> This is a perfect example of the revealed-preference fallacy.
The fallacy here is that you think people should have difference preferences than they actually do. "People disagree with me? They must be ill-informed."
zbentley 1 days ago [-]
It is sometimes true that a large group of people hold a preference due to being misinformed, though. I don’t think a kneejerk assertion that GP is assuming their opinion is true and anyone who disagrees is an idiot is merited here.
Meta has done a lot of shitty things to acquire and addict users, and is analogous to a massive regional monopoly in the U.S. Both of those indicate that users of Facebook might be less than rational (in the economic sense) about their choice of social media product.
tdeck 1 days ago [-]
It's hard for me to take this perspective seriously when you describe a cellphone as "entirely optional". Our society is structured around the assumption that you'll have not just a cellphone, but a smartphone. Without acknowledging that, how can we have a realistic discussion? Many businesses require you to use a smartphone in some way. Some government services also require one.
Before cellphones, there were payphones everywhere for people to use when they needed to get into contact. Now there are hardly any left in most countries, so your ability to communicate would actually be worse than in the pre-cellphone era. Sure you could ask someone to use their phone, but if a stranger asked me that these days I would likely refuse.
Bender 1 days ago [-]
The only reason I take my cell phone with me is in the event my truck breaks down. I have lost count of how many times I forgot it at home. I've had business tell me to install some app but I just tell them no or make them do the work for me. If they want money they will fill in the information. Over the years I have been parting ways from businesses that I can not walk in and talk face-to-face with someone and for good reason as it is getting harder and harder to reach a real person in customer support for online businesses. People are getting accounts disabled or deleted with no recourse.
MSFT_Edging 6 hours ago [-]
A few years ago I bought a couch at Ikea, I wanted to get it delivered. They held out a QR code to a task rabbit link, after fighting with the code and bad reception and not wanting to make an account, they gave me the backup delivery method which was a day later but a whole lot cheaper and likely an actually insured delivery company.
The look of confusion on people's face when I don't want to scan a random code or install an app. It's my phone damnit, my phone shouldn't need software so you can sell me things.
iamnothere 1 days ago [-]
I don’t carry a cell phone, although I technically own one (it usually stays at home). For a while I had to tell a cashier that I don’t have a phone on occasion, but I’ve noticed that many places seem to be backing off on pushing their apps or requiring a phone for some part of the transaction.
I used to carry a legit dumbphone (not one of the new Android/AOSP “dumbphones”) and that worked just as well. It’s even trendy now!
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
I do not carry a cellphone. I am employed and live in a major city. I never think about not having one. I know multiple other people, also employed, living both rurally and in cities, who do not carry cellphones.
It is entirely optional.
anonzzzies 1 days ago [-]
Less and less though and you need to go through quite a bit of trouble sometimes already. Banking, gov apps, I know more and more companies you cannot enter nor clock in without smartphone etc. Sure, you can just resign, move country, try to find another bank; in the end you will run out of options as they are all moving there.
tdeck 1 days ago [-]
> I am employed and live in a major city. ... . I know multiple other people, also employed, living both rurally and in cities, who do not carry cellphones.
This doesn't mean much. I know multiple people who fit this description, live in the US, and can't speak or read English. However, speaking English isn't meaningfully optional. You will face constant limitations and problems in every aspect of life. There are people who don't use electricity, so I guess by your definition that's optional too?
> I never think about not having one.
Sure you don't.
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
Genuinely. Thinking back on it now, the only times I notice it is in some restaurants that don’t have paper menus out by default. I need to ask for one, which feels very odd and kind of awkward. This is the only instance I can think of.
tdeck 1 days ago [-]
What happens when you're meeting up with someone? With the folks I know who don't have a phone, this is always a real pain point because they don't have a way to communicate or receive changes of plans, "I'm going to be late", etc...
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
We agree on when to meet and where, and then we both actually show up. The whole last-minute plan changing thing is a pretty recent phenomenon, I believe.
mixmastamyk 4 hours ago [-]
How I operate as well. But noticed most people can not do this anymore. They will not pay attention to the details and (try to) call at the last minute to find the location.
nec4b 1 days ago [-]
Do you never have problems with transportation like breakdowns or accidents stopping the traffic for a while or having some sort of emergency where you need to drop everything an take care of it?
JacobKfromIRC 4 hours ago [-]
Not who you replied to, but I do sometimes have problems like this, and as a result I am sometimes an hour late with no warning. It's bad, but it only happens very rarely. This also sometimes happened when I did use a smartphone, if it ran out of battery (though, in hindsight, why didn't I bring a charger?).
jrmg 1 days ago [-]
So many stores and (all?) banks require two-factor login now, where an SMS sent to a phone is the second factor. How do you cope with this?
JacobKfromIRC 4 hours ago [-]
Not all banks require SMS. I use Chase bank and the two factors are my debit card and my PIN. I don't use any app, but instead just go to the ATM or talk to a human. Some things, like wiring money, have an extra charge if you don't use the app.
A major downside of this is that if someone did figure out how to withdraw a bunch of my money from my account, I wouldn't notice until I go to the bank, which I only do once per month or so. I wish my bank had an option to send me an email on every transaction, but as is I have to go to the ATM and request an email with the recent transaction info.
Partially as a result of this limitation, and partially because I enjoy playing the "Where's George?" game (which involves using cash), I pay for everything with cash and only use my debit card for withdrawing cash. I've heard that it's possible to get an ATM-only card for this purpose, so I will probably do that eventually, so that if someone gets my card information they will not be able to make online transactions.
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
I do not carry a cellphone, but I own an old one with no data plan that remains off and in a drawer except for when used for things like this. I am not sure I have run into any stores that require 2 factor. Mostly just official stuff like banks.
doctorwho42 1 days ago [-]
My work has multiple systems that require 2fa on a regular basis. It's actually quite annoying, and the alternative options to 2fa don't work for every system.
JacobKfromIRC 4 hours ago [-]
Oof, this is a problem at my workplace. Crew [1] and Connecteam [2] (workplace communication apps) both require an SMS code to sign in. Technically, you don't have to have a cell phone, because you can use a VoIP service, but it means that someone who does have a cell phone has to replace it with a VoIP service instead of just getting rid of it.
The glorious day in the future when Oauth is confined to the dust bin of history and logging in to anything doesn't require a web browser redirecting 10 times.
sd9 1 days ago [-]
Counterpoint: I could not do my job without one. Clients expect support over WhatsApp.
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
For sure, but you still do retain the option to leave it at work, unless you have some kind of 24/7 sales job. I do think privacy at work is not an option for most people.
esseph 1 days ago [-]
> Clients expect support over WhatsApp
Seems very country / region specific?
forgetfreeman 1 days ago [-]
"Our society is structured around the assumption that you'll have not just a cellphone, but a smartphone."
Except it really isn't, it just seems that way when you spend a bunch of time on your phone. As part of an utterly graceless transition to middle age I bailed on social media and have aggressively refused to engage with service-related apps of any kind (fuck mychart, drive-thru mobile apps, and the horse they rode in on). To the extent that I use my phone at all these days it's to check text messages, field calls, and (rarely) navigate via maps. I've reverted to the Old Ways (mailing paper checks, calling ahead to get live humans to explain shit, etc) and it's been pretty frictionless. I've yet to encounter a situation where I was prevented from doing anything because I didn't phone.
SoftTalker 22 hours ago [-]
> mailing paper checks
Actually compared to signing in to a website, 2FA, dismissing the popups to explore new features, entering payment info, then confirming---writing a check and putting it in an envelope takes less time.
forgetfreeman 20 hours ago [-]
Depends on how long it takes me to find my checkbook but yeah pretty much, and it's a lot less irritating.
NooneAtAll3 1 days ago [-]
the main solution is the same as with many other problems - education on what's wrong + making the right way as easy as possible
it's easy to fall into complain hole, as that seems to fulfill the 1st part
but 2nd part is as much or even more valuable
fn-mote 1 days ago [-]
> making the right way as easy as possible
I wish I knew what you were talking about here.
It seems like the easy way would be to forbid the collection of this data… but that is obviously not happening, so I need a different part 2.
NooneAtAll3 1 days ago [-]
consider what GP complained about - everyone carrying phones that data is collected from/by, and useing Meta products
making easier the alternatives to phone tracking means promoting life outside phones, promoting cellphones/OSes that don't spy on you and explaining ways to minimize tracking (like disabling apps' access to the internet)
making easier the alternatives to Meta means promoting competitors, promoting communication/image/information channels outside Meta, promoting life outside Meta products
defeatism is even worse than grumbles - it fulfills neither of the goals
lux-lux-lux 1 days ago [-]
Offering ‘just don’t use modern communication’ as a solution when ‘ban data collection and retention’ is right there feels like a way to derail the conversation rather than an honest proposal.
ryu2k2 1 days ago [-]
People wouldn't want this if they were adequately educated.
BirAdam 1 days ago [-]
So much this. When my son turned 12, I told him how some of the various social media sites and smart technologies work, and he’s avoided social media altogether ever since (he’s now an adult). He always uses ad blockers and content filters, and he generally made good decisions around phone use, and other tech use from a privacy respecting perspective.
Prior to this discussion, he was eager to be on social media apps because other kids his age were on them. People respond to knowledge about these topics, but there isn’t a mainstream popular individual talking about it. Everyone is so silo’d, it would be quite difficult to reach people, and depending upon the political leanings of such a person, half the population would reactively go the opposite direction… on what really shouldn’t be partisan.
Godsend69 1 days ago [-]
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vouwfietsman 1 days ago [-]
No, this is not the way to go. Consumers cannot possibly understand all potential ways in which they can be screwed over, and even if they could, it is entirely likely that there are no good choices because consumers will have to choose between e.g privacy violation or environmental destruction, or privacy violation of some degree vs another degree.
This is why governments exist.
ColdStream 21 hours ago [-]
And one wonders why there is a large amount of rhetoric toward anti-government is being thrown around nowadays. Cannot have the money train being controlled.
doctorwho42 1 days ago [-]
Now with super sized data centers (touted as primarily for 'AI'), you don't even need to choose between privacy violation and environmental destruction!!! So efficient!
9rx 1 days ago [-]
> Consumers cannot possibly understand all potential ways in which they can be screwed over
In a democracy, consumers and the government are the exact same thing. Since they ostensibly do not understand all of the potential ways in which they can be screwed over, how is calling themselves government going to magically change that? Maybe you are imagining a dictatorship instead, where the government is only a subset of all consumers, but even then the dictators are still just feeble consumers themselves remaining within the subset of all consumers. Being a dictator doesn't make you omniscient; still only human like all the others.
Government exists to clean up the outliers who are not behaving in line with the wishes of the consumers, but that cleanup can only occur when their undesirable behaviour is out there for all to plainly see. You cannot enforce what you don't recognize.
> consumers will have to choose between e.g privacy violation or environmental destruction, or privacy violation of some degree vs another degree.
Temporarily, perhaps, but in a functioning market one of those consumers feeling underserved will rise up to offer what's missing, eventually satisfying consumers again. However, ironically, consumers often consider that undesirable behaviour and use government to block that rising from occurring. For some reason consumers prefer to protect the market incumbents even when they claim to not like what the incumbents are doing.
vouwfietsman 1 days ago [-]
> In a democracy, consumers and the government are the exact same thing.
This is a straw man. Consumers are represented by representatives who should have their interests in mind, e.g the consumer votes for someone who in turn votes for outcomes. This means that there can absolutely be a difference in knowledge between the government and its citizens, and so no, they are not the exact same thing. One group is trying to do their job of being a citizen, while the other group should be doing their job of representing the interests of the citizens that voted on them in whatever is relevant. One job clearly should not involve making sure your privacy isn't constantly and covertly violated by foreign nationals, and one job clearly should. Which is which is an exercise for the reader.
> but in a functioning market
Great! Where can I find me one of those?
9rx 17 hours ago [-]
> Consumers are represented by representatives who should have their interests in mind
Exactly. Representatives are merely messengers, so they can only represent the consumers when sharing the message of the consumers to the extent that the consumers have already recognized. Furthermore, representatives are only consumers themselves, so even if you imagine them not as representatives but dictators who step up and act for the people based on how they believe the people want to be overseen rather than from working with citizens they still have all the same blind spots.
> Great! Where can I find me one of those?
Where consumers don't like protecting the market incumbents. But, make no mistake, consumers love nothing more than protecting market incumbents. It gives them something to complain about when idly chatting with each other. Great? Something tells me you wouldn't find it great at all.
harimau777 20 hours ago [-]
I don't think they are optional in today's world. There's a lot of places where it would be prohibitive to try to live without a smartphone and what does it even cost to remove telemetry from a car?
cluckindan 1 days ago [-]
5G edge devices already have support for mmWave and beamforming. The ability to track the micromovements of a person’s trachea as they think in words (”internal monologue”) and reconstruct their thoughts from movement data reduces to a software problem: the hardware is there and the algorithms have been established in literature.
zhoBEENG 1 days ago [-]
That is very interesting. I wasn’t aware of their ability to act as acoustic sensors. It makes sense, but it’s not my field so I hadn’t thought about it.
Any link to the trachea vibrations to reproduce inner monologue source?
I think the major shift with the 6g standard is that general purpose sensing is now explicit to the design and intended use of the system.
22 hours ago [-]
ramijames 1 days ago [-]
For anyone that didn't read that book, I can't recommend it highly enough.
lotsofpulp 1 days ago [-]
I have seen enough instances of government authorities abusing their power (or even civilians using the courts against another civilian) to know that the best defense you have in a situation where you are the victim is to have your own recording.
Easiest example is having your own dash cam (don’t know why all auto manufacturers don’t have Tesla style camera recordings, especially given that all new cars come with cameras anyway).
Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
986aignan 1 days ago [-]
> Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
Maybe you could use a trusted timestamping service to stamp keyframes or stills from your video while you're recording? If the time of the recording is not in question, it would bound the kind of video editing people could plausibly claim that you could've done.
It's not foolproof - if you have enough face data of the person you want to frame and you've been to the room where the conversation takes place, you could have made a fake video beforehand and spliced it into the conversation at the time of the recording. But that would at least take a lot of preparation and quite a bit of luck and timing to find a place in the conversation that's just long enough to copy your edited version in without arousing suspicion. For dashcam videos it would be difficult to merge your edit with existing traffic, etc...
XorNot 1 days ago [-]
> Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference
There's a pretty substantial legal difference between the contested opinion of two people in court versus deliberately fabricating evidence to try and deceive a judge.
Suddenly your civil matter is now a criminal one.
neonstatic 1 days ago [-]
> For all the feigned outrage, people want this, and will work hard every day to pay for the next iteration of the surveillance apparatus.
My sad realization is that the Buddhists were right all along. The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance. What you are describing here is greed. People want to get useful things for free. This is the core of the problem. If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted. Instead, they want stuff for free and they choose to be willfully blind to the spying.
bilegeek 20 hours ago [-]
> If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted.
The spying may have started with free products, but it has metastasized into every aspect of life, free or not. It always does.
> choose to be willfully blind to the spying
Many don't. They also, by and large, don't have a choice. Data brokers, Flock cameras, WiFi-based radar[1]. You really can only do so much as an individual before the only escape is being a hermit in a cave.
> The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance
Which then gets distilled into the only drivers of corporations. Corporations that then destroy all moral options for individuals.
Funnily enough I've found for the most part the counter to all this spying also tends to be free products. Signal, pi-hole, ublock origin, graphene OS, Opnsense, Linux, etc. I have yet to find paid-for apps that are superior to the free ones in this regard. If I want an image editor I'm using Gimp, not Photoshop. Libreoffice is better than Microsoft Office if you don't want to be spied on. Most of the cost is learning about the alternatives and how to use them.
dackdel 18 hours ago [-]
hey i just want to be able to install graphene os on my iphone hardware. if only.
lifestyleguru 1 days ago [-]
Almost every person installs security cameras hoping that one day they will "catch the criminal" unaware that the footage probably is used in all possible ways all the time, yet in case when the crime against them finally happens the footage might not be admitted as a proof.
bossyTeacher 1 days ago [-]
> yet in case when the crime against them finally happens the footage might not be admitted as a proof.
Or there is simply not enough staff available to carry out the procedures needed to apprehend and charge the individual. Or a myriad of other things. People think law enforcement is easy.
lifestyleguru 1 days ago [-]
If a right or affluent person is a victim of crime the resources will be available, funny is that people who think they are outsmarting someone with their security cameras are rarely among them.
XorNot 1 days ago [-]
No I install security cameras as a deterrent measure to keep people at my door front measured in their interactions, particularly when it may just be my wife at home alone.
They are mounted extremely obviously for this purpose.
I greatly hope they never catch anyone doing anything.
lifestyleguru 1 days ago [-]
It's delightful to have paranoid neighbours who install cameras to enforce appropriate behavior in the neighbourhood. They always assure the camera doesn't record anything outside of their property and that they never check the recordings. Given the reason why they installed camera one can absolutely believe them. It's very calming.
seventytwo 24 hours ago [-]
What a wild, victim blaming take.
Zero people want to be surveilled. They want the other benefits that come with technology and reluctantly accept, as a cost, some lower of privacy.
inigyou 18 hours ago [-]
The German CDU (basically their Republican party) is currently campaigning with the slogan "More mass surveillance!"
cyanydeez 1 days ago [-]
so obama was doing what in 2019? are you an LLM trained in 2023?
a3w 24 hours ago [-]
I see no 2019. They changed it to 1999. So, six years before he was a senator. Could be, but seems implausible.
In this thread, the world's most brilliant minds are confused as to how to solve this problem.
If you're looking for the ones responsible for bringing this on, just look in the mirror.
How can you say both "oh, people won't need jobs anymore! I'm excited that technology is going to replace what I do" and "oh, I can't speak up about the things my company is doing, I need this job!" in the same breath?
> Meanwhile, only a few academics and small companies are defending us from these technologies. “The thing about cat-and-mouse games is that we know how they usually end up for the mouse,” Hartzog said. “And in this case, the cat includes some of the most powerful corporations to ever exist.”
This again points to how these problems have less to do with tech than with our socioeconomic system. The obvious solution (or step towards a solution) is to just shatter all such large tech companies. There should not be any companies powerful enough to do things like this.
21 hours ago [-]
hamper653 17 hours ago [-]
> Some historians have argued that the ensuing radar arms race was more consequential to the war’s outcome than the Manhattan Project.
No kidding?
pmkary 8 hours ago [-]
Shocker.
shevy-java 10 hours ago [-]
What is more shocking is how deeply undermined democracies are.
A good example is the age sniffing. You literally have the same restrictive law coming up in all democracies, with only miniscule differences. This is not a coincidence.
crabbone 13 hours ago [-]
Looking at this from a perspective of someone who's searching for a job, I can promise you that even if you are recorded, there's next to zero chance your recording is being analyzed in any meaningful way.
You'd imagine that if this global surveillance was so ubiquitous, finding a match between an employee and employer would've been an... easier problem. However, even though supply is only a little larger than demand, the nature of this supply is to oversaturate the matching system, which then defaults to... I don't even know what, perhaps dropping 99% of all applications at random? Only taking 1% of those who applied sooner? Must be something like that.
Anyways, recording everything is a way to overwhelm the system with useless data. It would be much scarier if recording was selective.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
The EFF or some other watchdog should put out some public ads that depict corporations as a creepy person stalking someone:
It's a lot more disgusting and universally hated when you hear about a peeping tom, or a pervert, or a jealous ex hounding someone,
but when faceless corporations and governments do it to EVERYBODY 24/7, everyone's like, ehh.
I mean, right now, just think about me, clicking on your HN profile, googling your name, going through all your public photos.. Don't you find me repulsive just talking about that?
tdeck 1 days ago [-]
This puts me in mind of the infamous GMail Man commercial that Microsoft put out:
Infamous because of what GMail is doing, or infamous because Microsoft does the same?
tim333 1 days ago [-]
It's about intention. I don't want someone threatening or evil going through my info but don't mind stuff being public in general, like this comment for example.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
Yes, but when the surveillance is sweeping, global and total, you can’t really be sure about “intent”, current or future.
jareklupinski 1 days ago [-]
i get a little thrill knowing im that important to someone :)
mrheosuper 14 hours ago [-]
You are important to me, please send your whole photo album to me so i can appreciate it.
8 hours ago [-]
fragmede 1 days ago [-]
Right? There are 8 billion humans on those planet. You are 0.0000000125% of humanity. No one outside your family and friends even knows you, nevermind gives a shit about you, unless you stick out in some way. If GP wants to take a tour of my GitHub or my blog and send me a thoughtful email, I'd be delighted!
jagged-chisel 1 days ago [-]
How about when that thoughtful email becomes a visit from law enforcement because your projects don’t align with the current administration’s views? When something you said offers support for anyone other than The Party’s chosen ethnic group?
XorNot 1 days ago [-]
"what if the government becomes a dictatorship" is a stupid question: you either stood up and opposed it, or you let it happen.
My privacy is important as a matter of consent.
But I should not have to hide my sexuality or identity, nor my politics and if my support of a marginalized group exists then what is the point of hiding it while they are oppressed? What benefit does that bring?
Encouraging people to be private in their views and anymore and anonymous in their "support" is exactly how fascists crush their opposition.
inigyou 11 hours ago [-]
The benefit is not getting murdered by the government hope this explanation helps
Barrin92 17 hours ago [-]
>But I should not have to hide my sexuality or identity, nor my politics
You shouldn't but you can't and will never be able to know what the future looks like. You could be in libertine Berlin of the 1920s and be hunted down by fascists a decade later because of your ancestry or sexuality.
And don't think that can't happen quickly again, it's not much of a hyperbole given the way the world is going. And nowadays, once you put something on the internet, good luck getting rid of it. So I'd be very careful with what I disclose, it's not paranoia any more. I'm European and flew to the US earlier this year and got asked to disclose my social media profiles. I have none, deleted them a decade ago. Is that sane or moral? No but if that's how the US rolls these days imagine where else your data can end up.
14 hours ago [-]
fragmede 1 days ago [-]
How about it? I am not that interesting or powerful at all. Yes, there's a worst case scenario where the government raids my house and I get shot, and I wouldn't like that, but I refuse to live in fear of the bogeyman.
antics9 1 days ago [-]
No. Why should I find you repulsive?
You might find something I wrote interesting. Then whatever public info there is on me helps you to get to know me a bit better. You may stop there and forget about me, or you may try to reach out.
There is nothing wrong about that.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
> Why should I find you repulsive?
Me googling your shit might lead to your real name, your family photos etc
Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic
or just because you like to let the sunlight in doesn't mean you want random pedestrians peering in through your windows..
I can't believe this needs to be spelled out here: "Public" life is compartmentalized.
Permit 1 days ago [-]
> Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic.
This has never happened to me. Out of the space of “bad things that can happen to me” I don’t have time to worry about things with such a small probability of occurring.
exe34 1 days ago [-]
I think if you're a fat middle aged man, it's not likely to happen to you personally. But you must have daughters, nieces, a mother, or some sort of female presence in your life. It happens to people like them.
akoboldfrying 20 hours ago [-]
It's more likely to happen a woman than to a man, but it's still very unlikely to happen to a woman.
defrost 20 hours ago [-]
Very unlikely?
An estimated 2.7 million Australian adults have experienced stalking since the age of 15, according to new results from the 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey (PSS) released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
William Milne, ABS head of crime and justice statistics, said “We found one in five women and one in 15 men have been stalked.
“Women were almost eight times more likely to be stalked by a male than by a female, while men were stalked by a male and by a female at a similar rate.”
At about 1 in 5, it's probably happened to somebody in your family.
mrheosuper 14 hours ago [-]
But it has happened to other people. A stalker in Japan geo-located victim location from the reflection in the eye from public picture
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
Don't put on the Internet what you don't want found as it's always and forever public, I thought everyone knew the first rule.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
Oh boy. It's NOT about whether something's "public" or not:
It's about someone "connecting the dots" between ALL your public activities.
Someone following you OUTSIDE their "space" that you visited and then invading your other spaces.
People don't usually want to mix their social circles. e.g. nobody likes a snoopy overprotective parent following their [teen] kids around wherever the children go with their friends.
Nobody likes their spouse coming uninvited on a night out with the guys/gals.
Or, when you reply to someone on HN or Reddit, and they don't like what you say about 1 specific topic, then they go and downvote ALL your comments about everything else you said!
That's perfectly legal. It's allowed. Nothing's stopping it. And hey, you commented publicly so you were "asking for it", right?
BUT IT'S A FUCKING DICK MOVE
antics9 1 days ago [-]
You can easily find my home address by starting with my HN profile.
I do understand what you are getting at. I just don’t find people repulsive by being curious of me; even if they find materials I myself did not make public.
As an aside, I sometimes stumble upon websites of people who write and show pictures of themselves and their family. I find them beautiful[0] to visit and hope more people would do that, as was more common 20 years ago.
> I just don’t find people repulsive by being curious of me; even if they find materials I myself did not make public.
If they do it just to reach out to you with good intentions then it's fine. But if they do it to dox you or harm you in any other way, then it's not fine.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
Or extracting financial gain from my data without my consent.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
Someone would only be able to connect the dots based on what you publicly put out there. If you don't put anything out, there's nothing to connect the dots, unless you buy some sort of dark web leaked dataset. None of your analogies are comparable to online public information because you decide what to put out online, and I never said anything about legality so not sure why you bring that up.
iamnothere 1 days ago [-]
You don’t necessarily decide what to put online. Friends may upload photos of you, data brokers make your information available to “people search” websites, if you buy a house your information is available unless you put it in a blind trust, etc. If you go beyond the web to private services then you have companies like Flock and retailers who use facial recognition, who make their data available to subscribers and partners.
Disturbed people with access to this data can use it to harm people, like the Ebay exec who stalked a critic or the occasional police officer who stalks a romantic interest.
esseph 1 days ago [-]
> unless you buy some sort of dark web leaked dataset
Customers of such datasets: banks, insurance companies, HR companies, marketing firms, governments, etc.
fuzzfactor 1 days ago [-]
>Why should I find you repulsive?
There could be a number of reasons. Am I not trying hard enough?
bossyTeacher 1 days ago [-]
I think people's idea of privacy is very simplistic and personal and relies on the disgust of a human peering over your files. Most laypeople don't have the same disgust of machines peering over their personal files that is why the weirdo video recording elicits a negative response but Meta or Alphabet doing it doesn't. Plus the fact that they "depend" on Meta and Alphabet tech makes it easier to give them a pass not unlike fans of [insert your favourite celebrity] who happily look away or justify the celebrity's bad actions.
Terr_ 21 hours ago [-]
Or people naively assume that the machine is wayyyy more impartial and privacy-isolated than it really is.
Laurel1234 1 days ago [-]
I think people would find it disgusting, it's just very hard to know what data is being used and how and sold to whom by these companies. It's a very opaque by design.
XorNot 1 days ago [-]
You've tripped right over the difference though.
Corporations aren't people. They do not and cannot present a personal threat to you.
Even your trailing example falls flat on this: for the activity to be distressing you had to recontextualize it back to the individual level.
MSFT_Edging 6 hours ago [-]
A corporation can file a frivolous lawsuit that can bankrupt me before it could even get thrown out as frivolous.
Lio 15 hours ago [-]
It might be worth revisiting the definition of the term "Banana Republic" and the history of the United Fruit Company[1].
Corporations have toppled democratic governments, run dodgy drug trials and given breast feeding mothers just enough free powdered milk to stop being able to feed their babies.
We have large online retailers, Temu and Shein, accused of using forced labour aka slavery.
Even a well known SaaS operation like eBay was caught sending live spiders to woman who criticised them[2].
Corporations are entities with legal rights but are motivated solely by profit. Without laws to regulate them they would unemotionally run right over you.
Corporation are, and I choose my words carefully, absolute cunts.
They can 100% can present a threat to you. We wouldn't have the concept of corporate manslaughter if they didn't.
Additionally, overthrowing the lawfully elected government of Iran to save the oil interests of Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP) from being nationalized. This is the source of the US-Iran conflict.
We don't make a gift link the primary URL because we always want that to be the canonical URL for the article. But it's good to have a variety of options for paywall workarounds.
I clicked that link and I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not like I donate money by doing that. And they still are very useful resource, even if they're not good enough for Wikipedia (if they indeed tampered with some old archives, it's pretty obvious why)
spicymaki 1 days ago [-]
Thank you for the heads up! DDOS attacks are pretty concerning, but even more concerning is the potential alteration of content. Diabolical. That said, journalism needs funding more than ever, please if you can, try your best to pay for it.
zzo38computer 1 days ago [-]
I think that archive links should be made to include a cryptographic hash of the file; this can prevent alteration of content (including of the original file that it is copied from) but also can allow alternative sources of the file to be found (or verified to be correct) according to the hash. (If someone is concerned they want their username removed, they could perhaps edit their copy of the file first and then archive it, although they should have someone to trust if it matches the original one or not, if it has been modified in this way (or any other way, e.g. removing some scripts and CSS etc).)
rendaw 1 days ago [-]
Why is it obvious why they tampered with old archives? Why did they tamper with old archives?
throw0101a 23 hours ago [-]
> Why is it obvious why they tampered with old archives? Why did they tamper with old archives?
> On 20 February 2026, the English Wikipedia banned all links to archive.today, citing the DDoS attack and evidence that archived content was tampered with: Discussion had discovered that instances of Nora's name were replaced with Patokallio's and that "Nora" was likely an appropriated identity—the name belonged to a real person, whose only connection to archive.today had been a prior content takedown request.[18][17][19] The community's decision was made despite concerns over maintaining content verifiability—partly undermined by the discovery of the alterations— while removing and replacing the second-largest archiving service used across the Wikimedia Foundation's projects. The Wikimedia Foundation had stated its readiness to take action regardless of the community verdict.[18][20] Patokallio expressed his satisfaction with the outcome.[3]
> Specifically, AT's maintainers reportedly tweaked snapshots of a third-party blog post that Patokallio referred to in his February 2026 article about the DDoS attack. AT changed the name of a "Nora" person in said post to Jani Patokallio, making it look as if he had written some comments there. Eagle-eyed Wikipedia editors spotted the alterations, which have since then been reverted, but the action made it easy for them reach a final decision.
"it's pretty obvious why" here refers to why Wikipedia would reject them as a source.
s3p 24 hours ago [-]
Looking for the answer to this myself as well. Seems like a bit of conjecture
cluckindan 1 days ago [-]
Maybe not, but it could be using your browser as a part of a DDoS network. The admins have also been tampering with archived articles.
chucksmash 1 days ago [-]
A DDoS against a blog that iirc was attempting to dox the archive.today maintainer.
The bit about tampering with archived pages is news to me though. Wish the wiki discussion included receipts. Is "two users report they were redirected to tehrantimes.com" what is being referred to when they say archived pages are being tampered with?
faidit 1 days ago [-]
It looks like the "tampering" was mostly just removing the username of the person submitting the links, so they wouldn't get banned by paywall sites, and archive.today has always done this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
And it looks like in some instances they changed their own alias to the name of the blogger they're in dispute with, in a fit of pique.
You have to scroll down to get hints because the conversation has been redacted, and the evidence is not provided with side-by-side comparisons.
I understand the ethical concerns about linking to the site but the blanket accusations of "tampering" seem a bit disingenuous, since no article content was ever changed afaik.
snailmailman 1 days ago [-]
In addition to that kind of “benign” tampering, there was also tampering other webpages to insert the name of the person who was doing the exposé on archive.is. Either to slander that person further (in addition to the DDOS archive.is was already attempting) or to dox the person.
faidit 1 days ago [-]
Thanks I had edited my post once I saw that - buried deep in the discussion.
I don't get why they couldn't just say what they did instead of disingenuously implying that article content had been "tampered".
Given the breadth of misinformation out there today, shoddy evidence and misleading language makes people give archive.today the benefit of the doubt, and actually hurts the case against them.
neuralkoi 23 hours ago [-]
Nobody really knows who runs the site. One concern I have after reading this thread is that they start pulling a 1984 at some point.
arcfour 1 days ago [-]
Not mine, UBlock has blocked that since day one, thankfully
dyzone 1 days ago [-]
DDoSing who? Doesn't CORS help here?
ceehex 1 days ago [-]
cors stops the browser from reading the response but the request still gets processed by the server
dyzone 15 hours ago [-]
Browsers use OPTIONS preflight request to do CORS validation. Servers shouldn't do too much work in an OPTIONS request. Should be a simple if statement, no db operations, which is usually where the bottleneck is.
hsuduebc2 1 days ago [-]
If you would open the second link provided you would get an answer.
>This decision was agreed on after a request for comment with more than 200 participants concluded in February 2026, and is due to multiple concerns, including the site using editors' and readers' computers to run a denial-of-service attack and evidence that the website has tampered with some archived pages
arvid-lind 1 days ago [-]
Alternate take: you can click that link. We are not on Wikipedia and the OP isn't a link to Wikipedia.
eikenberry 23 hours ago [-]
They recommend archive.org instead but archive.org's version of that article gets masked by an error page preventing you from reading it where the archive.is link works fine.
So there isn't a choice here if you actually want to see the article (without subscribing to the atlantic).
24 hours ago [-]
MagicMoonlight 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
hsuduebc2 1 days ago [-]
I was wondering what was the angle of thede sites.
rensike 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
1vuio0pswjnm7 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
NooneAtAll3 1 days ago [-]
where's archive link when it's needed the most...
eimrine 1 days ago [-]
copy the original link then go to archive .is then paste the link into the second field than choose any result. not a rocket science. the article is not interesting tbh.
canadiantim 1 days ago [-]
Why does the Atlantic get shade?
s3p 24 hours ago [-]
It's not shade the article is just paywalled
lorreyfum 9 hours ago [-]
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satansdeer 1 days ago [-]
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amelius 1 days ago [-]
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TitaRusell 1 days ago [-]
Honestly I can live with it because I know that my country will never turn into a theocracy or a dictatorship. That would require people to bow to a higher power than themselves and develop actual beliefs lol.
ricardobeat 22 hours ago [-]
You don’t need the country to become a dictatorship. Private companies will gladly do the job of surveillance and selling your data.
But also, lower your guard long enough and it might be taken over by any of two or three religious groups that only seem to be growing.
eli_gottlieb 15 hours ago [-]
Theocrats have not been known to believe in a power higher than themselves. They just believe that you believe.
a3w 24 hours ago [-]
I do believe people still vote for dictatorship if they think it will fuck over others much harder, then themselves, and "they deserve it".
inigyou 18 hours ago [-]
The Germans voted for Hitler because the economy was shit and Hitler was the only one daring to say he'd fix it.
elil17 7 hours ago [-]
He didn't win just because he said he'd fix the economy. Antisemitism and nationalism were part of his political platform from the beginning.
I think it's very important that people continue to recon with the fact that millions of Germans voted for Hilter and supported his rise to power despite because he wanted to enact antisemitic policies.
He also did a coup, so there's that.
18 hours ago [-]
mohamedkoubaa 21 hours ago [-]
A government with total control over the population can turn into whatever it pleases, whenever it pleases. A catalyzing crisis can always be manufactured.
goatlover 22 hours ago [-]
An autocracy or illiberal democracy is perfectly possible. It's happened to several countries recently. And Russia at this point is a dictatorship.
frangonf 1 days ago [-]
Everything you think will be recorded via neural decoding from your meta smart glasses and apple neural headsets in the near future.
doubled112 1 days ago [-]
I’d imagine some people would actually find that useful if they offered a backup and restore feature.
No more “why did I come in this room again?” moments.
esseph 1 days ago [-]
Don't fucking encourage this lol
doubled112 1 days ago [-]
Don’t look at me. I won’t even put a TV online because they want to watch me back.
What I do know, however, is that most people seem to be willing to give up everything for a little convenience.
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qphe95 17 hours ago [-]
We are literally in the golden age of privacy with AI generated private apps, so I wouldn't worry too much about this.
> But soon, the average person might need to deploy surveillance countermeasures.
Already there. If you want privacy and anonymity online, you're looking at literal terrorist cell tier tradecraft. That means pulling up documents written by people from the "counterterrorism community" and "intelligence community" and learning how all of these "clandestines" operate.
Unlinking one's identity from one's actions and speech requires some serious OPSEC now. It requires constant, never ending effort. It requires perfect execution and discipline.
I can't be the only person who has thought of this.
For now. It doesn't seem like an especially natural fit. Regardless of the merits of being able to compelled to turn over your password, relying on labored interpretation of laws is not a good idea: 14th amendment was always a very shaky basis for abortion rights, as the 2nd is a very shaky one for personal gun rights.
Nitpick, but that's only if you have biometric authentication configured in the first place, which you aren't compelled to do.
It might work if your fingerprint was used while you were unconscious, but any solution that starts with "setup a trigger that wipes a device" is already on shaky grounds.
It isn't on shaky grounds: you protect your private device from everyone, not just from some "law enforcement". If you want to protect your private device from any party (e.g. thieves, trivially), it will also be protected against law enforcement agents as a side effect.
And remember that the context here is you explaining your digital booby trap to a judge who thinks you might have deliberately destroyed evidence.
"Wipe the data after a number of failed logon attempts".
I understand that this does not fit completely with the "in front of law enforcement" idea, but it opposes your «any solution that starts with "setup a trigger that wipes a device" [would be] already on shaky grounds»: we can very legitimately setup triggers that wipe devices in the possibility that the device falls into random hands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/us/duress-password-phone-...
There are all sorts of situations where people go free despite the wistful desires of prosecutors, due to the details of what happened and what the law actually says.
The law here is destruction of evidence. The guy destroyed evidence by giving the wrong password to the police. If the police had destroyed it of their own accord, he'd be free. If the duress PIN was 1234 and the police just tried it, he'd be free.
Intentionally giving a duress PIN which you know will wipe evidence - information you were just asked for by some law enforcement - just robs you of more of years and money. The law is lopsided and gives some more power than others. There's no point debating why it's like that, try to change the law before you break it or find ways to not need to break it at all.
(Common sense tells me that the accusation might make sense both in cases in which the accused knows about a crime and in cases in which the accused knows about a police investigation, even in the absence of a crime, but deleting nude photographs to stop a customs officer from seeing them, for a random example, would that be a crime?)
Maybe it's just a dodgy phone, maybe it's not doing something on the less-trackable sim connection, but I realised I can never really know.
The pixel 6a does terribly when it is in 5g mode, something abput the hardware is broken or bugged. My friend who has a 6a has to keep it in 4g only mode or sacrifice battrry life.
might just be an older phone and older battery
Own a general purpose computer you can run arbitrary software on, not just corporation and government approved software? You're clearly a money laundering drug trafficking child molesting terrorist.
According to?
> Law enforcement officials in Catalonia say they associate Pixels with crime because drug traffickers are increasingly turning to these phones
And that is correct behaviour under frequentistic reasoning (and still abysmal behaviour in the non-expressed potential case that it be done indiscriminately): if in a population a tool is related to many criminals and the very few sane people, that tool is a justified element for suspicion. But for suspicion only, in the coldest terms: the Sane use it, and using it is a sign of sanity: for that reason, of course you do not /assume/ that those who use that tools are criminals.
To have a knife raises suspect in the land of the stabbers and raises little suspect in the land of the scouts.
Only the bad tail of the curve mixes "suspect" and "assumption"; and only the worse tail of the curve thinks that since stabbers use knives we should do without them. Especially in this dire case in which obviously for reasons of Dignity, we will not, all capitals, ___will not___, keep spying devices on us. It is difficult to find examples and similes stronger than the actual case.
The article in fact fumbles into a very bad sentence:
> You might be wondering: if I don’t have anything to hide, why should I bother using GrapheneOS? That[!!!] a fair question
No, that is a very stupid question: Dignity imposes privacy, and we have ___everything___ to hide to the zombie apocalypse of cretins.
I used to think he was just paranoid...
Not as easy as one may think. If you put a phone in a generic waterproof metal box (metal junction or biscuit box for instance) and call it with another one, most of the time it will still ring...
So your test may seem successful, but the box not be enough closer to a tower, or if your neighbor added a new AP, or if cell phone frequencies changed since you bought and tested it. Moreover, if you have to open and close it often, you have to be careful that the attenuation doesn't degrade.
All that to say that the "Faraday box solution" would mean testing it regularly with professional instruments and all that. It is far simpler and cheaper to ask guests to leave their phones in their cars.
Don't doubt it for even a second.
His mistrust might be about the phone's owner and the recording apps they might use, more than the smartphone itself.
Socially it's much safer to direct suspicion at "the smartphone" rather than the people invited to your house.
I interact at various levels of anon all the time, it’s easy just cover your:
-Network (geo/IP)
-Device (useragent, cookies)
-Fingerprints (browser vendor, screen size)
And you’re off to trolling
This is an odd formulation. What is one's identity other than one's actions (physical body) and speech (mental state serialized into language)?
you don't say...
It is the over-reaction to 911. The 3-letter agencies were all traumatized by not knowing in advance that they pushed every single anti-privacy initiative possible. Like the PATRIOT ACT which was already written when 911 happened.
The current administration has shown that they use all these recording stuffs in order to persecute their political enemies.
That is in fact a matter that is subject to serious debate.
Pretext.
Also, it lays the groundwork to absolutely crush dissent in the future .
it is explicitly meant to do this -- that's the point of marketing and propaganda.
marketing exists to change consumer behavior. what do you think google or facebook intended to do w/ all of the data it's slurping up?
if they could beam a laser at your head to do full on mind control they would, and would auction off timeshare of the lasers to the highest bidder. failing that, they have to use more subtle methods
When I look at something these days I ask the question "On the whole does this benefit society?"
Society here been scale specific, so local community, wider community, population of my country, population of the world.
I.e. bin policies changes by my local council aren't going to affect someone in Africa and so on.
Depressingly the answer is almost always in aggregate... No.
We seem to be determined to allow the worst of us to make things worse for us to their own benefit.
This will sure make all the dogs in 20m radius mad. Hence the solution for the stealth recorder -- bring a dog, then complain about the ultrasound jammer (or at least to be aware of a jammer)
From the paper, it looks like the authors did not consider safety of animals, only human hearing safety.
My dog has no problem shitting on their lawns, and even sometimes pees on the devices.
So I'd like to find any actual devices which work on dogs (well I have no use for it but just to be sure they actually exist), because circa the original iphone I remember that there were apps which could reliably make its microphones do it (and impact dogs as expected).
The Home Depot here uses one in the garden area and I can't shop there for more than a couple minutes. our wal-mart used to have one in the produce section, fortunately finally removed.
Worst superpower ever.
Give him a treat from me, that made me smile. (I also hate those devices)
we need a government that is antagonistic towards corporations that are abusing us.
it’s wild how much influence they have and how little pushback the government ever gives them when they clearly abuse us from every direction.
A company selling me widgets wouldn't store or let another company store extra information about me if it subjected them the widget seller to HIPAA. Or better yet, something more stringent.
We don't need the government to be antagonistic toward corporations; we just need a government that makes the corporations internalize the risk they're making us take.
[1] The fact that ToS are enforceable when every court in the country knows that only a vanishly small percentage of people ever read them, much less understand them, means that they're not doing their job.
This is how healthcare workers used to treat health information protected by HIPAA, but it seems like the big corporations don't really even care about it. Nothing ever comes from violations besides slap on the wrist/cost of doing business penalties. You can't do anything without waiving all your rights, granting permission to be recorded, granting permission to use your photograph for anything they want, allowing your recorded audio to run through AI for transcription (and whatever else they want to do), granting permission to share your data with their partners, associates, and some vague description of "anyone we decide at a later date". That's before you can even sign-up, receive care, have a service rendered, enter into a business establishment.
There's pages of fine print documenting it all in vague terms that ambiguously safe guard the provider from any liability, but half the time, you don't even get to opportunity to (not) read it. It's just a link to go elsewhere and (not) read it. They add as many steps between you even reading what rights you're giving away, so that even the people who had a mind to do so would get fatigued, and they make you do it while there are people queuing up behind you, or you're almost done with your purchase/subscription, etc.
Everything is so consumer hostile (and expensive in America), but no "better" service can swoop in, because the established Big corps get to break all the rules or can afford the token penalties to give them an unstoppable market share no honest disruptor/competition could ever overcome. On even ground, no competent person would choose to be abused by our resident monopolies vs a reasonably similar priced local upstart, and a lot people would even pay (a little) more for a better experience/product/service.
No doctor ever complained. You don't need to enter most of that info.
So no, requiring explicit consent won't fix anything.
Most of the videos talk about reducing burden on clinicians. Specifically: sharing, accessing, updating patient history. Providing clinicians and patients guidance through the medical process through AI agents (that have access to your PII). the kaiser permanente guy highlighted ai's use in guiding billing codes. Dr. Oz spoke about getting pre-authorizations near instantaneously
I'm not sure how that gets accomplished without reducing liability or loosing restrictions. I wouldnt be surprised to see a continued attack on our healthcare privacy
I would have figured there would have been a massive financial interest in providers not having to waste time dealing with tedious Q&A and data entry with new patients…
And if you think a government has any interest in protecting their people, well, that is simply inaccurate in practice.
The government exists to organise and pacify its people, to prevent unpredictable or counter-productive behaviour. Primarily to protect the government from its people.
Regulation doesn't protect people, it protects the government, corporations, or both, in the same way HR protects the company from its employees. The people benefit coincidentally, if at all.
Please don't. The entire civilized world for all of history and before has been built on the uncomfortable alliance between power/capability and governance/legitimacy. Protection-seeking is the primary support system for tyranny which is happy to induce the chaos they protect you from.
We just need enough negative feedback for any kind of abuse that it stops, because regulations have to be slow to be accurate and thus invite abuse innovation. The main part of that negative feedback is effective competition so people can vote with their feet.
So, ask not for antagonism but for real alternatives.
>The main part of that negative feedback is effective competition
The comment you responded to allows for "corporations that abuse us" to include those that actively try to prevent effective competition. You don't really explain why being antagonistic to those corporations would be a problem.
Yeah, sorry. Yes, corporate activities that reduce competition or corrupt regulators should have their agents and causes ripped out branch to root; they're like diseases which attack the immune system, doubly bad.
But the premise that a corporation or a country that does bad things means you are justified in antagonizing or destroying the entire company or the people is typically enlistment and leverage for protection rackets.
Warring with others is a cycle that doesn't end, and mainly elevates military resource providers. Warring with yourself - attacking your own organs - is self-destructive (which is why enemies stimulate it).
As for here vs there, 20th-century totalitarian systems all stemmed from people wanting to believe promises of a better world, and the promotors being unbound by facts of the present. "Here" is a much more tractable problem, where our medicine (or immune systems) could get better at stemming the diseases we have, like the lack of negative feedback for abusing people (more generally for exporting costs, esp. to the future), or the corruption of discourse that mediates agreements about governance. My goal would be to leave the world more free, peaceful, nature-healthy than I found it. Antagonism doesn't help for that, and side-tracks people into regressive emotions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kpRIRxwmrU
The people elect the leaders, and the corporations bankroll the operations. Every time a new hot startup comes about, the government anticipates an army of highly paid (read: top tax bracket) individuals being cultivated.
No they don't, people do, always have and always will. The owners of these corporations simply have an undue level of control over the collective wealth created by the people.
What you said sounds nice, but is it actually the case? Because as far as I can tell, we're all out here being willfully delegated work by corporations rather than taking the risk of doing it ourselves.
However, I would argue that in the US, we "used to" have far better separation prior to the 1970s, and even better than that before the 1930s. It has significantly deteriorated over the past 100 years, and the deterioration has continuously accelerated during my lifetime.
The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. "
This, I think, is the only circumstance where it is justifiable - but of course, it is not reality. We have absolutely no agency over the activities of Pine Gap, etc.
However, corporations - for some reason - are given a pass.
What the world really needs, is for hackers to get user-facing operating systems which just really do, backup everything. It's okay, you can choose not to use it.
I'd love to have every single phone call I've ever made available, at this point in my life.
So, let's not bumble over inapt euphemism. There is for sure a far worse scenario that can be offered - but there is a far better outcome, if an intelligence super-state is to be accomplished 'to protect the people', then the people need the means by which to protect themselves, from it.
That is for sure not happening right now. We are all having our human rights violently violated, every millisecond of a handle.
So, what I am proposing - and not at all surprised is being misunderstood - is that I don't mind them recording the details of my life, as long as I am the first and foremost customer - i.e. completely private in the recording system - until and unless there is some democratic order from the state which requires me to unlock the timeline. In which case, I'm fine with it - because I ain't no terrorist, and I'd be a happier person if, instead of the government using weapons to protect me, it instead just made sure my legacy was backed up in the big human digital cloud that is now propelling itself through the universe.
You know, instead of Zuck/Musk/&co., it were just a wide open, well maintained, public good.
No, this does not mean I want NSA-spooks spying on me. That is different from being recorded. The only time I want my fully backed up data made available publicly, is when I need to defend myself against claims of criminal behavior.
I don't believe in the secret intelligence apparatus, one bit. I'd be far happier with an open intelligence apparatus, invested in, by the people I elect to maintain democratic principles. The anti-thesis to the surveillance state.
I think it would be a valuable service a government could perform for me - assuming there were a way to make sure the data was not accessed without my side of the key. Like, it is only after I have been arrested that the data is accessible to the court in which I will have been presented to face accusations of a crime.
I would also think it pretty neat, were I able to use it as a backup over my life, for my own purposes - if I could do it without involving the spooks. Like, let me use the technological spy infrastructure, and if I happen to commit a crime, well then - come on in, inspect my data by all means.
This, I think, is the only circumstance where it is justifiable - but of course, it is not reality. We have absolutely no agency over the activities of Pine Gap, etc.
And there's the corporations who - for some reason - are given a pass. If governments can steal your data, so can Mr. FatCat and his team of merry department heads.
What the world really needs, is for hackers to get user-facing operating systems which just really do, backup everything. It's okay, you can choose not to use it.
I'd love to have every single phone call I've ever made available, at this point in my life, for review. This kind of super-wide view of things would be quite enlightening, I'm pretty sure.
[1] - just for the record, I think the problems that the NSA are trying to solve are obsolete; that there are far greater solutions to fallacies which support the utility of it as an organ of government; I am in the camp that this is a massive human rights issue, also.
But why? Don't we already have phones, watches, glasses, tags, and airpods? If they were making a siri version of alexa/echo, then maybe that would make sense, but do we really need a specific apple device just to ai?
Apple Watch is just extension of screen and notifications from the phone, so there is no overlap.
AirTags have nothing to do with AI stuff.
AirPods apparently now have some translation stuff, but again no constant monitoring.
Apple does not produce glasses and seeing the backlash to Meta's glasses I don't think they will. A pin or pendant might be more acceptable, although hiding it will be just as big of an issue as with the creepy Meta glasses, but any AI thing Apple makes should be a separate product if they want to maximize profits.
Curious, do you have a source for this apart from Apple's marketing?
Go nuts
Where did you got that impression?
Apple Watch have lots of apps. It can make phone call and do voice recording without the phone nearby.
Word has it that they're working on them, but no idea until wwdc 2027.
PS: Something in this vein that many people are unaware of is that the 6G standard for cell towers is planned to include ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication). I haven’t heard a single AFK person talk about this.
Being resigned to something is not the same as wanting that thing.
There was a comment made here a month or two ago, about someone from a SE Asia country (I forget which; maybe Bangladesh?) talking about how their government installed AI traffic enforcement cameras all over, and they went from one of the deadliest, most chaotic road systems in the world to Singapore-level rule-following in the space of just a couple months.
As a result, the cameras have become quite popular because there's less traffic, travelling is easier and more predictable, and road deaths have plummeted.
I imagine there are a number of similar situations in every country, where the deployment of AI surveillance has a sufficiently measurably positive impact that it becomes popular.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/world/asia/vietnam-traffi...
What does the AI actually do? Identify specific cars and their drivers, or something? What actual enforcement actions were taken as a result, and against how many drivers before it stopped?
One might wonder how much of the effect was placebo (i.e., people conforming simply due to the belief of being surveilled).
Yes, exactly. It identifies cars and drivers who are committing traffic violations, and issues citations.
I don't have the specific numbers you ask for, seeing as I can't even remember the country, but it's not difficult to imagine that if sufficiently many such cameras are installed that most moving violations on major roadways are caught and punished, then yes, people will come to (reasonably) believe that the cost of committing the violation is close to the price of the fine, rather than close to zero.
It's one thing to blow by a pedestrian crossing the street, it's another to do so knowing you'll probably be charged $150 (or whatever) for having done it.
In this case, incentives are for people who'd like to reduce traffic deaths.
If you read "one can see how someone might not object to this" and understand "this is a good thing to have" then I'm afraid the issue is you contributing the stats that news agencies like to publish about American reading comprehension trends.
It's a trained model, just like Claude.
Your choice to see "AI" and assume some narrow definition is a personal issue that you could correct on your own if you chose.
The outrageous prices of used (low telemetry) cars make them a poor value proposition, for example. Depending on the model, a used car can be a decade old with half of its lifetime miles on it already and the seller will still want $14k or something crazy like that. When you factor in the parts of its history that carfax doesn’t cover and the stream of repairs you’re likely to be saddled with, finding a 0%-2% financing deal on something new at ~$20-24k begins to look a lot more attractive.
https://www.ericsson.com/en/6g/isac
This, of course, requires 6G base stations to be spaced pretty tightly (hundreds of meters apart) and to feature sophisticated phased array antennas. But both can be assumed in cities (they're planning to completely replace WIFI with 6G, so every current WIFI access point will become a 6G micro cell). Walking humans can be detected much easier, but radar SNR is funny, that only gives you 4x-6x the detection range.
Software (signals processing) for all that will be... a lot of difficult work. Object separation/tracking, multipath reflections, clutter suppression, ect.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1069
One should never underestimate the power of combining data sets.
- Consumers largely do not know these things. They are either not disclosed, or buried within a TOS that they cannot read. This is all done on purpose. The reason the TOS is obtuse, long, inaccurate, and updated weekly is so you won't read or understand it.
- In most markets there is no choice. For smartphones you do not have a choice, both Apple and Google do extensive surveillance. If you want to bank, get a job, and all around be successful, you have to swallow the surveillance cost. If you want a new car, again, no choice. If you work a job, again, no choice on the computer or software.
- It is not reasonable to expect consumers to do extensive research on everything they buy. Consumers have lives, children, jobs. They're not going to sit and spend 10+ hours researching every thing they buy, especially when most of that research is fruitless.
- There are tradeoffs with everything. Yes we can use Linux, I sure do. But for other consumers, now they need to spend a lot of time understanding that. Yes we can use Graphene OS, but certain apps won't work.
Yikes, was not aware of this
This is a perfect example of the revealed-preference fallacy. The use of providers like Meta does not reflect a well-informed, freely chosen preference. Meta spends a ton of money to squash competition, remove viable alternatives, and to make their products addictive.
The fallacy here is that you think people should have difference preferences than they actually do. "People disagree with me? They must be ill-informed."
Meta has done a lot of shitty things to acquire and addict users, and is analogous to a massive regional monopoly in the U.S. Both of those indicate that users of Facebook might be less than rational (in the economic sense) about their choice of social media product.
Before cellphones, there were payphones everywhere for people to use when they needed to get into contact. Now there are hardly any left in most countries, so your ability to communicate would actually be worse than in the pre-cellphone era. Sure you could ask someone to use their phone, but if a stranger asked me that these days I would likely refuse.
The look of confusion on people's face when I don't want to scan a random code or install an app. It's my phone damnit, my phone shouldn't need software so you can sell me things.
I used to carry a legit dumbphone (not one of the new Android/AOSP “dumbphones”) and that worked just as well. It’s even trendy now!
It is entirely optional.
This doesn't mean much. I know multiple people who fit this description, live in the US, and can't speak or read English. However, speaking English isn't meaningfully optional. You will face constant limitations and problems in every aspect of life. There are people who don't use electricity, so I guess by your definition that's optional too?
> I never think about not having one.
Sure you don't.
A major downside of this is that if someone did figure out how to withdraw a bunch of my money from my account, I wouldn't notice until I go to the bank, which I only do once per month or so. I wish my bank had an option to send me an email on every transaction, but as is I have to go to the ATM and request an email with the recent transaction info.
Partially as a result of this limitation, and partially because I enjoy playing the "Where's George?" game (which involves using cash), I pay for everything with cash and only use my debit card for withdrawing cash. I've heard that it's possible to get an ATM-only card for this purpose, so I will probably do that eventually, so that if someone gets my card information they will not be able to make online transactions.
[1] https://crewapp.com/ [2] https://connecteam.com/
Seems very country / region specific?
Except it really isn't, it just seems that way when you spend a bunch of time on your phone. As part of an utterly graceless transition to middle age I bailed on social media and have aggressively refused to engage with service-related apps of any kind (fuck mychart, drive-thru mobile apps, and the horse they rode in on). To the extent that I use my phone at all these days it's to check text messages, field calls, and (rarely) navigate via maps. I've reverted to the Old Ways (mailing paper checks, calling ahead to get live humans to explain shit, etc) and it's been pretty frictionless. I've yet to encounter a situation where I was prevented from doing anything because I didn't phone.
Actually compared to signing in to a website, 2FA, dismissing the popups to explore new features, entering payment info, then confirming---writing a check and putting it in an envelope takes less time.
it's easy to fall into complain hole, as that seems to fulfill the 1st part
but 2nd part is as much or even more valuable
I wish I knew what you were talking about here.
It seems like the easy way would be to forbid the collection of this data… but that is obviously not happening, so I need a different part 2.
making easier the alternatives to phone tracking means promoting life outside phones, promoting cellphones/OSes that don't spy on you and explaining ways to minimize tracking (like disabling apps' access to the internet)
making easier the alternatives to Meta means promoting competitors, promoting communication/image/information channels outside Meta, promoting life outside Meta products
defeatism is even worse than grumbles - it fulfills neither of the goals
Prior to this discussion, he was eager to be on social media apps because other kids his age were on them. People respond to knowledge about these topics, but there isn’t a mainstream popular individual talking about it. Everyone is so silo’d, it would be quite difficult to reach people, and depending upon the political leanings of such a person, half the population would reactively go the opposite direction… on what really shouldn’t be partisan.
This is why governments exist.
In a democracy, consumers and the government are the exact same thing. Since they ostensibly do not understand all of the potential ways in which they can be screwed over, how is calling themselves government going to magically change that? Maybe you are imagining a dictatorship instead, where the government is only a subset of all consumers, but even then the dictators are still just feeble consumers themselves remaining within the subset of all consumers. Being a dictator doesn't make you omniscient; still only human like all the others.
Government exists to clean up the outliers who are not behaving in line with the wishes of the consumers, but that cleanup can only occur when their undesirable behaviour is out there for all to plainly see. You cannot enforce what you don't recognize.
> consumers will have to choose between e.g privacy violation or environmental destruction, or privacy violation of some degree vs another degree.
Temporarily, perhaps, but in a functioning market one of those consumers feeling underserved will rise up to offer what's missing, eventually satisfying consumers again. However, ironically, consumers often consider that undesirable behaviour and use government to block that rising from occurring. For some reason consumers prefer to protect the market incumbents even when they claim to not like what the incumbents are doing.
This is a straw man. Consumers are represented by representatives who should have their interests in mind, e.g the consumer votes for someone who in turn votes for outcomes. This means that there can absolutely be a difference in knowledge between the government and its citizens, and so no, they are not the exact same thing. One group is trying to do their job of being a citizen, while the other group should be doing their job of representing the interests of the citizens that voted on them in whatever is relevant. One job clearly should not involve making sure your privacy isn't constantly and covertly violated by foreign nationals, and one job clearly should. Which is which is an exercise for the reader.
> but in a functioning market
Great! Where can I find me one of those?
Exactly. Representatives are merely messengers, so they can only represent the consumers when sharing the message of the consumers to the extent that the consumers have already recognized. Furthermore, representatives are only consumers themselves, so even if you imagine them not as representatives but dictators who step up and act for the people based on how they believe the people want to be overseen rather than from working with citizens they still have all the same blind spots.
> Great! Where can I find me one of those?
Where consumers don't like protecting the market incumbents. But, make no mistake, consumers love nothing more than protecting market incumbents. It gives them something to complain about when idly chatting with each other. Great? Something tells me you wouldn't find it great at all.
Any link to the trachea vibrations to reproduce inner monologue source?
I think the major shift with the 6g standard is that general purpose sensing is now explicit to the design and intended use of the system.
Easiest example is having your own dash cam (don’t know why all auto manufacturers don’t have Tesla style camera recordings, especially given that all new cars come with cameras anyway).
Of course, now that video editing is cheap and difficult to spot, who knows if your evidence will make much of a difference.
Maybe you could use a trusted timestamping service to stamp keyframes or stills from your video while you're recording? If the time of the recording is not in question, it would bound the kind of video editing people could plausibly claim that you could've done.
It's not foolproof - if you have enough face data of the person you want to frame and you've been to the room where the conversation takes place, you could have made a fake video beforehand and spliced it into the conversation at the time of the recording. But that would at least take a lot of preparation and quite a bit of luck and timing to find a place in the conversation that's just long enough to copy your edited version in without arousing suspicion. For dashcam videos it would be difficult to merge your edit with existing traffic, etc...
There's a pretty substantial legal difference between the contested opinion of two people in court versus deliberately fabricating evidence to try and deceive a judge.
Suddenly your civil matter is now a criminal one.
My sad realization is that the Buddhists were right all along. The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance. What you are describing here is greed. People want to get useful things for free. This is the core of the problem. If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted. Instead, they want stuff for free and they choose to be willfully blind to the spying.
The spying may have started with free products, but it has metastasized into every aspect of life, free or not. It always does.
> choose to be willfully blind to the spying
Many don't. They also, by and large, don't have a choice. Data brokers, Flock cameras, WiFi-based radar[1]. You really can only do so much as an individual before the only escape is being a hermit in a cave.
> The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance
Which then gets distilled into the only drivers of corporations. Corporations that then destroy all moral options for individuals.
[1]https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-...
Or there is simply not enough staff available to carry out the procedures needed to apprehend and charge the individual. Or a myriad of other things. People think law enforcement is easy.
They are mounted extremely obviously for this purpose.
I greatly hope they never catch anyone doing anything.
Zero people want to be surveilled. They want the other benefits that come with technology and reluctantly accept, as a cost, some lower of privacy.
You gotta be on somebody's books
The lowdown a picture of your face
Your injured looks The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
If you're looking for the ones responsible for bringing this on, just look in the mirror.
How can you say both "oh, people won't need jobs anymore! I'm excited that technology is going to replace what I do" and "oh, I can't speak up about the things my company is doing, I need this job!" in the same breath?
please check this out
This again points to how these problems have less to do with tech than with our socioeconomic system. The obvious solution (or step towards a solution) is to just shatter all such large tech companies. There should not be any companies powerful enough to do things like this.
No kidding?
A good example is the age sniffing. You literally have the same restrictive law coming up in all democracies, with only miniscule differences. This is not a coincidence.
You'd imagine that if this global surveillance was so ubiquitous, finding a match between an employee and employer would've been an... easier problem. However, even though supply is only a little larger than demand, the nature of this supply is to oversaturate the matching system, which then defaults to... I don't even know what, perhaps dropping 99% of all applications at random? Only taking 1% of those who applied sooner? Must be something like that.
Anyways, recording everything is a way to overwhelm the system with useless data. It would be much scarier if recording was selective.
It's a lot more disgusting and universally hated when you hear about a peeping tom, or a pervert, or a jealous ex hounding someone,
but when faceless corporations and governments do it to EVERYBODY 24/7, everyone's like, ehh.
I mean, right now, just think about me, clicking on your HN profile, googling your name, going through all your public photos.. Don't you find me repulsive just talking about that?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oR4jTvxPruw
My privacy is important as a matter of consent.
But I should not have to hide my sexuality or identity, nor my politics and if my support of a marginalized group exists then what is the point of hiding it while they are oppressed? What benefit does that bring?
Encouraging people to be private in their views and anymore and anonymous in their "support" is exactly how fascists crush their opposition.
You shouldn't but you can't and will never be able to know what the future looks like. You could be in libertine Berlin of the 1920s and be hunted down by fascists a decade later because of your ancestry or sexuality.
And don't think that can't happen quickly again, it's not much of a hyperbole given the way the world is going. And nowadays, once you put something on the internet, good luck getting rid of it. So I'd be very careful with what I disclose, it's not paranoia any more. I'm European and flew to the US earlier this year and got asked to disclose my social media profiles. I have none, deleted them a decade ago. Is that sane or moral? No but if that's how the US rolls these days imagine where else your data can end up.
You might find something I wrote interesting. Then whatever public info there is on me helps you to get to know me a bit better. You may stop there and forget about me, or you may try to reach out.
There is nothing wrong about that.
Me googling your shit might lead to your real name, your family photos etc
Just because it's all public doesn't mean you want the cashier from the supermarket following you around to your family picnic
or just because you like to let the sunlight in doesn't mean you want random pedestrians peering in through your windows..
I can't believe this needs to be spelled out here: "Public" life is compartmentalized.
This has never happened to me. Out of the space of “bad things that can happen to me” I don’t have time to worry about things with such a small probability of occurring.
It's about someone "connecting the dots" between ALL your public activities.
Someone following you OUTSIDE their "space" that you visited and then invading your other spaces.
People don't usually want to mix their social circles. e.g. nobody likes a snoopy overprotective parent following their [teen] kids around wherever the children go with their friends.
Nobody likes their spouse coming uninvited on a night out with the guys/gals.
Or, when you reply to someone on HN or Reddit, and they don't like what you say about 1 specific topic, then they go and downvote ALL your comments about everything else you said!
That's perfectly legal. It's allowed. Nothing's stopping it. And hey, you commented publicly so you were "asking for it", right?
BUT IT'S A FUCKING DICK MOVE
I do understand what you are getting at. I just don’t find people repulsive by being curious of me; even if they find materials I myself did not make public.
As an aside, I sometimes stumble upon websites of people who write and show pictures of themselves and their family. I find them beautiful[0] to visit and hope more people would do that, as was more common 20 years ago.
[0] https://www.pement.org/
If they do it just to reach out to you with good intentions then it's fine. But if they do it to dox you or harm you in any other way, then it's not fine.
Disturbed people with access to this data can use it to harm people, like the Ebay exec who stalked a critic or the occasional police officer who stalks a romantic interest.
Customers of such datasets: banks, insurance companies, HR companies, marketing firms, governments, etc.
There could be a number of reasons. Am I not trying hard enough?
Corporations aren't people. They do not and cannot present a personal threat to you.
Even your trailing example falls flat on this: for the activity to be distressing you had to recontextualize it back to the individual level.
Corporations have toppled democratic governments, run dodgy drug trials and given breast feeding mothers just enough free powdered milk to stop being able to feed their babies.
We have large online retailers, Temu and Shein, accused of using forced labour aka slavery.
Even a well known SaaS operation like eBay was caught sending live spiders to woman who criticised them[2].
Corporations are entities with legal rights but are motivated solely by profit. Without laws to regulate them they would unemotionally run right over you.
Corporation are, and I choose my words carefully, absolute cunts.
They can 100% can present a threat to you. We wouldn't have the concept of corporate manslaughter if they didn't.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
2. https://apnews.com/article/786117108cdfefb40e691b1b3420c689
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
...is this for real
Holy fucking hell. Someone please, I can't
No CAPTCHA, no geo-blocking, no archive.today annoyances
No Javascript, text-only
Option 1
Option 2 Option 3 Option 4They might be trying to make contact, but they're shadowbanned. Neither party knows the message is being blocked.
@dang, please consider updating.
We don't make a gift link the primary URL because we always want that to be the canonical URL for the article. But it's good to have a variety of options for paywall workarounds.
I don't know what's going on behind those 5 buttons, but this was the first, and who knows?
[0] https://www.archivebuttons.com/articles?article=https://www....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
See section "Blog capture tampered with":
* https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-a...
Also:
> On 20 February 2026, the English Wikipedia banned all links to archive.today, citing the DDoS attack and evidence that archived content was tampered with: Discussion had discovered that instances of Nora's name were replaced with Patokallio's and that "Nora" was likely an appropriated identity—the name belonged to a real person, whose only connection to archive.today had been a prior content takedown request.[18][17][19] The community's decision was made despite concerns over maintaining content verifiability—partly undermined by the discovery of the alterations— while removing and replacing the second-largest archiving service used across the Wikimedia Foundation's projects. The Wikimedia Foundation had stated its readiness to take action regardless of the community verdict.[18][20] Patokallio expressed his satisfaction with the outcome.[3]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today#Attack_on_Gyrova...
> Specifically, AT's maintainers reportedly tweaked snapshots of a third-party blog post that Patokallio referred to in his February 2026 article about the DDoS attack. AT changed the name of a "Nora" person in said post to Jani Patokallio, making it look as if he had written some comments there. Eagle-eyed Wikipedia editors spotted the alterations, which have since then been reverted, but the action made it easy for them reach a final decision.
* https://www.tomshardware.com/software/search-engines/wikiped...
The bit about tampering with archived pages is news to me though. Wish the wiki discussion included receipts. Is "two users report they were redirected to tehrantimes.com" what is being referred to when they say archived pages are being tampered with?
And it looks like in some instances they changed their own alias to the name of the blogger they're in dispute with, in a fit of pique.
You have to scroll down to get hints because the conversation has been redacted, and the evidence is not provided with side-by-side comparisons.
I understand the ethical concerns about linking to the site but the blanket accusations of "tampering" seem a bit disingenuous, since no article content was ever changed afaik.
I don't get why they couldn't just say what they did instead of disingenuously implying that article content had been "tampered".
Given the breadth of misinformation out there today, shoddy evidence and misleading language makes people give archive.today the benefit of the doubt, and actually hurts the case against them.
>This decision was agreed on after a request for comment with more than 200 participants concluded in February 2026, and is due to multiple concerns, including the site using editors' and readers' computers to run a denial-of-service attack and evidence that the website has tampered with some archived pages
So there isn't a choice here if you actually want to see the article (without subscribing to the atlantic).
But also, lower your guard long enough and it might be taken over by any of two or three religious groups that only seem to be growing.
I think it's very important that people continue to recon with the fact that millions of Germans voted for Hilter and supported his rise to power despite because he wanted to enact antisemitic policies.
He also did a coup, so there's that.
No more “why did I come in this room again?” moments.
What I do know, however, is that most people seem to be willing to give up everything for a little convenience.