claiming that they need to do it to "protect" or "help" certain people or groups
Whenever you hear something along the lines of "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help (or protect) you." or "It's for the children!" you can be sure that disaster is imminent.
We must all do whatever we can to help in the fight to preserve Section 230, and to remove the misguided mess that is SESTA/FOSTA while we are at it.
I think the best solution is to basically avoid the "moderation at scale" problem entirely and go with the "protocols, not platforms" idea that Mike Masnick has been promoting for quite some time. The issue then becomes: How is this best accomplished? It would be a difficult prospect in the best of situations, but even more so in the face of the entrenched interests like Facebook, Twitter, et al, who have made it quite clear that they will stop at nothing to maintain their market positions.
Yes. When the police, who are public employees, can hide their disciplinary records from the public, who collectively is their top-level employer and boss, thereby avoiding accountability for their actions, it is a police state.
Looks to me like much of the AC's complaints are about public / private corruption. Unless, of course, you believe that public / private corruption is just an inherent component of capitalism.
...have spent decades trying to convince the voters that they have principles and are not the self-centered, control freak, authoritarian hypocrites that many of us know them to be.
The worst part is that they have been largely successful.
Another good example of one of the primary functions of governments: transferring money from the taxpayers to
1) Themselves
2) Their family
3) Their friends
4) Their business associates
5) Their campaign contributors
6) Those who will hire them as "consultants" if they ever leave government
etc, etc, etc.
“On the advice of my lawyer, I respectfully decline to answer on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, which—according to the United States Supreme Court—protects everyone, even innocent people, from the need to answer questions if the truth might be used to help create the misleading impression that they were somehow involved in a crime that they did not commit.”
This is a little more difficult of a response to memorize, but it is largely more effective than the traditional responses many have gleaned from their favorite law and order TV series.
We still have much to do to end the disastrous "war on drugs." The laws "legalizing" marijuana in some states, but always with absurd regulations, restrictions, and limitations, are but one small step in the right direction. Court decisions like this one are another. The journey is very long, and the various governments and government agencies are doing everything they can to make it as long and difficult as possible.
The evidence is suppressed and the state no longer has the evidence it needs to convict this driver of drug trafficking.
... is calling a new law something that it absolutely is not. In this case they are calling it a "reform bill," when it is really a law that clearly specifies the magic words a cop needs to say to obtain a get-out-of-jail-free card for clearly criminal behavior. It is really a "How to commit crimes and skate" law.
The robbery comparison is completely appropriate, since civil asset forfeiture is indistinguishable from organized crime armed robbery, up to and including the distribution of the take, where (in this case) the soldiers get 75%, the Capos / Consiglieres get 20%, and the Don gets 5%. In the other Mafia, the percentages might be different, but that would be the only difference.
If the Harris / Biden / Pelosi / Schumer team get their way and pass some kind of "Domestic Terrorism" law, this kind of thing will quickly become commonplace, but instead of merely being accused of multiple felonies, these people will be accused of being terrorists. In addition to wrong-speak being severely criminalized, wrong-write and wrong-think will come under serious attack also. I doubt the attacks will be limited to those who criticize the police, either. Political dissent and criticism will also become "domestic terrorism," or possibly incitement, treason or sedition.
Just as the War on Terror has been disastrous abroad, it will be an even worse disaster when it is targeted at us.
Always use all the security measures that are available to you.
Use phone disk encryption, even though, as has been discussed, there are holes in it. Also use phone SIM card encryption, if your phone allows it. This requires an additional password from you on each power-up, but all security measures require some small inconvenience. Don't take your primary phone with you unless necessary. Don't keep your primary phone powered up unless necessary. You can carry a $20 flip phone without even having a SIM card installed, and it can still call 911, although in many cases that might just make a bad situation worse. But 911 can call ambulances as well as LEOs, so there is that. Write important phone numbers on your arm (lawyer) or on edible paper (friends) if you are going where arrest might be likely (protest).
While these measures may not make it impossible for LE to break into your phone, they will make it extremely difficult, and will limit the amount of information available if they do break in.
Use full disk encryption on your home computers and laptops.
Use a VPN on your phone and computer. Riseup / Bitmask is a well regarded outfit. This will hamper over-the-air or on-the-wire snooping, as well as provide some measure of anonymity to end web sites.
Use Tor whenever you can, on phone and computer. It can be a bit slow, but often not too bad. This also will hamper over-the-air or on-the-wire snooping, as well as provide some measure of anonymity to end web sites, even more so than VPN.
Use a password manager, so you can have different, long, random passwords for all online accounts. This is basic infosec. KeePassXC is cross-platform, and well regarded. It is what TAILS uses. REMEMBER your master password!!
Maintain separate email accounts to compartmentalize some of your online activities.
Use Enigmail (or some other OpenPGP Public Key Encryption scheme) for all your email, and encourage all your email correspondents to use it, too.
Use TAILS, a privacy and anonymity oriented OS that can boot and run from a USB stick. It routes all communication through the Tor network.
These last two are what Edward Snowden used in his heroic information dumps to various media outlets about US spying on it's citizens.
Some of these things are too simple to ignore (VPN, basic phone security). Some require a bit of effort and / or have a bit of a learning curve (Tor, TAILS). Some require others to participate in order to be effective (encrypted email). And some are just plainly a bit of extra hassle. But security does not come without at least some small cost, and chances are that you and most of your friends are well capable of employing them all. There is an abundance of information on the Internet about all of these. It is usually just initiative and the will that is lacking.
If you are into making New Year Resolutions, implementing some of these security measures might be a good one.
(Section 230, like copyright, remains an area where there is bipartisan horribleness)
These are not the only areas of "bipartisan horribleness," and Techdirt does a great job of bringing many of the other areas to light. If anyone does the New Year Resolution thing, might I suggest resolving to discontinue supporting those "bi-partisans" who have contributed to the horribleness for so long and instead begin supporting alternatives that might make some of the horribleness go away?
But won't a sufficiently long and sufficiently random password make even NAND mirroring / brute-forcing time prohibitive? Scroll about half way down the article to the bullet points for the tl;dr; part. I know the article in the link is a few years old, and large scale parallel processing is definitely a thing, but I don't think that computer processing speed has gotten fast enough to render the concept irrelevant, has it?
Thanks, Tim! This answers my previous question about how the cops are getting around phone encryption. It is not the encryption itself that is being broken, but rather a faulty implementation of the decryption process that is being exploited. This should be a quick and easy fix, if Apple and Google care to bother with it. Of course, one has to wonder if this faulty implementation was intentional. This may be yet another situation where Hanlon's Razor is not appropriate.
Over on the Android side, it's a bigger mess.
Of course, this is no surprise. It has always been thus.
Whoever replaces him presumably can't be as terrible as he was.
I think this may be a presumption based on facts not in evidence. While Trump was clearly a loose cannon authoritarian, it is just as clear that Harris / Biden are long-time establishment authoritarians. They both have a lot of experience and a lot of connections and influence that may very well make them more effective authoritarians.
On the post: Dozens Of Human Rights Group Tell Congress: Do Not Gut Section 230 On Our Behalf; It'll Do More Harm Than Good
Whenever you hear something along the lines of "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help (or protect) you." or "It's for the children!" you can be sure that disaster is imminent.
We must all do whatever we can to help in the fight to preserve Section 230, and to remove the misguided mess that is SESTA/FOSTA while we are at it.
On the post: Facebook's Post-Insurrection Purge Catches A Bunch Of Left Wing Accounts In Its AI Net
Re:
I think the best solution is to basically avoid the "moderation at scale" problem entirely and go with the "protocols, not platforms" idea that Mike Masnick has been promoting for quite some time. The issue then becomes: How is this best accomplished? It would be a difficult prospect in the best of situations, but even more so in the face of the entrenched interests like Facebook, Twitter, et al, who have made it quite clear that they will stop at nothing to maintain their market positions.
On the post: NYPD Still Blowing The Public's Money To Keep The Public From Seeing The NYPD's Misconduct Records
Police State?
Yes. When the police, who are public employees, can hide their disciplinary records from the public, who collectively is their top-level employer and boss, thereby avoiding accountability for their actions, it is a police state.
Here is another good indicator.
On the post: House Republicans Have A Big Tech Plan... That Is Both Unconstitutional And Ridiculous
Re:
Looks to me like much of the AC's complaints are about public / private corruption. Unless, of course, you believe that public / private corruption is just an inherent component of capitalism.
On the post: House Republicans Have A Big Tech Plan... That Is Both Unconstitutional And Ridiculous
The Republicans and Democrats...
...have spent decades trying to convince the voters that they have principles and are not the self-centered, control freak, authoritarian hypocrites that many of us know them to be.
The worst part is that they have been largely successful.
On the post: Broadband Monopolies Keep Getting Money For Networks Never Fully Deployed
Another good example of one of the primary functions of governments: transferring money from the taxpayers to
1) Themselves
2) Their family
3) Their friends
4) Their business associates
5) Their campaign contributors
6) Those who will hire them as "consultants" if they ever leave government
etc, etc, etc.
On the post: Court Says There's Nothing 'Reasonably Suspicious' About The Odor Of Marijuana In A State Where Marijuana Is Legal
Re: Re: It might be reasonable for impairment behind the wheel.
Correct. From https://www.criminalattorneystpetersburg.com/news/a-new-way-to-take-the-fifth/:
“On the advice of my lawyer, I respectfully decline to answer on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, which—according to the United States Supreme Court—protects everyone, even innocent people, from the need to answer questions if the truth might be used to help create the misleading impression that they were somehow involved in a crime that they did not commit.”
This is a little more difficult of a response to memorize, but it is largely more effective than the traditional responses many have gleaned from their favorite law and order TV series.
On the post: Court Says There's Nothing 'Reasonably Suspicious' About The Odor Of Marijuana In A State Where Marijuana Is Legal
Still a long way to go
We still have much to do to end the disastrous "war on drugs." The laws "legalizing" marijuana in some states, but always with absurd regulations, restrictions, and limitations, are but one small step in the right direction. Court decisions like this one are another. The journey is very long, and the various governments and government agencies are doing everything they can to make it as long and difficult as possible.
Which shouldn't be illegal to begin with.
On the post: Louisiana Legislature Approves Tepid Police 'Reforms' That Won't Do Much To Give The State Better Police
A standard legislative practice...
... is calling a new law something that it absolutely is not. In this case they are calling it a "reform bill," when it is really a law that clearly specifies the magic words a cop needs to say to obtain a get-out-of-jail-free card for clearly criminal behavior. It is really a "How to commit crimes and skate" law.
On the post: South Carolina Justices Seem Unimpressed By Government's Inability To Honestly Answer Questions About Forfeiture Abuse
Re: Not something you want to hear as a lawyer
The robbery comparison is completely appropriate, since civil asset forfeiture is indistinguishable from organized crime armed robbery, up to and including the distribution of the take, where (in this case) the soldiers get 75%, the Capos / Consiglieres get 20%, and the Don gets 5%. In the other Mafia, the percentages might be different, but that would be the only difference.
On the post: EFF Tells Louisiana Court Satire Is Still Protected Speech Even If The Government Doesn't Get The Joke
Louisiana
Where the State Supreme Court decided this.
When a satirist does it on a satire web page, it is funny. When the Louisiana State Supreme Court does it, it is just plain horrifying.
On the post: Amazon Ring App Found To Be (Again) Exposing User Locations, Home Addresses
Ethical behavior?
From the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and their ilk? Not likely!
People need to learn to just say "No!" to all this IOT junk. Much easier than buying it and then filing a lawsuit, although maybe not as profitable.
On the post: Arizona Prosecutors Pretend 'ACAB' Is Gang Lingo To Hit Protesters With Felony Gang Charges
Likely to get worse
If the Harris / Biden / Pelosi / Schumer team get their way and pass some kind of "Domestic Terrorism" law, this kind of thing will quickly become commonplace, but instead of merely being accused of multiple felonies, these people will be accused of being terrorists. In addition to wrong-speak being severely criminalized, wrong-write and wrong-think will come under serious attack also. I doubt the attacks will be limited to those who criticize the police, either. Political dissent and criticism will also become "domestic terrorism," or possibly incitement, treason or sedition.
Just as the War on Terror has been disastrous abroad, it will be an even worse disaster when it is targeted at us.
On the post: Still Not 'Going Dark:' Device Encryption Still Contains Plenty Of Exploitable Flaws
Do what you can, when you can
Always use all the security measures that are available to you.
Use phone disk encryption, even though, as has been discussed, there are holes in it. Also use phone SIM card encryption, if your phone allows it. This requires an additional password from you on each power-up, but all security measures require some small inconvenience. Don't take your primary phone with you unless necessary. Don't keep your primary phone powered up unless necessary. You can carry a $20 flip phone without even having a SIM card installed, and it can still call 911, although in many cases that might just make a bad situation worse. But 911 can call ambulances as well as LEOs, so there is that. Write important phone numbers on your arm (lawyer) or on edible paper (friends) if you are going where arrest might be likely (protest).
While these measures may not make it impossible for LE to break into your phone, they will make it extremely difficult, and will limit the amount of information available if they do break in.
Use full disk encryption on your home computers and laptops.
Use a VPN on your phone and computer. Riseup / Bitmask is a well regarded outfit. This will hamper over-the-air or on-the-wire snooping, as well as provide some measure of anonymity to end web sites.
Use Tor whenever you can, on phone and computer. It can be a bit slow, but often not too bad. This also will hamper over-the-air or on-the-wire snooping, as well as provide some measure of anonymity to end web sites, even more so than VPN.
Use a password manager, so you can have different, long, random passwords for all online accounts. This is basic infosec. KeePassXC is cross-platform, and well regarded. It is what TAILS uses. REMEMBER your master password!!
Maintain separate email accounts to compartmentalize some of your online activities.
Use Enigmail (or some other OpenPGP Public Key Encryption scheme) for all your email, and encourage all your email correspondents to use it, too.
Use TAILS, a privacy and anonymity oriented OS that can boot and run from a USB stick. It routes all communication through the Tor network.
These last two are what Edward Snowden used in his heroic information dumps to various media outlets about US spying on it's citizens.
Some of these things are too simple to ignore (VPN, basic phone security). Some require a bit of effort and / or have a bit of a learning curve (Tor, TAILS). Some require others to participate in order to be effective (encrypted email). And some are just plainly a bit of extra hassle. But security does not come without at least some small cost, and chances are that you and most of your friends are well capable of employing them all. There is an abundance of information on the Internet about all of these. It is usually just initiative and the will that is lacking.
If you are into making New Year Resolutions, implementing some of these security measures might be a good one.
On the post: New Year's Message: Make The World A Better Place
There are alternatives
These are not the only areas of "bipartisan horribleness," and Techdirt does a great job of bringing many of the other areas to light. If anyone does the New Year Resolution thing, might I suggest resolving to discontinue supporting those "bi-partisans" who have contributed to the horribleness for so long and instead begin supporting alternatives that might make some of the horribleness go away?
On the post: Still Not 'Going Dark:' Device Encryption Still Contains Plenty Of Exploitable Flaws
Re: Re:
But won't a sufficiently long and sufficiently random password make even NAND mirroring / brute-forcing time prohibitive? Scroll about half way down the article to the bullet points for the tl;dr; part. I know the article in the link is a few years old, and large scale parallel processing is definitely a thing, but I don't think that computer processing speed has gotten fast enough to render the concept irrelevant, has it?
On the post: Brexit Deal Copied And Pasted Recommendations For Netscape, Outdated Encryption
Re: politics of politics.
Easy. You just be a telecom provider, IPS, Internet platform or similar and write the ability to do so into your TOS.
On the post: Still Not 'Going Dark:' Device Encryption Still Contains Plenty Of Exploitable Flaws
Re: Re: Ah Ha!
Leaving physical or digital keys under doormats defeats the best locks. Proper implementations of encryption do not do this.
On the post: Still Not 'Going Dark:' Device Encryption Still Contains Plenty Of Exploitable Flaws
Ah Ha!
Thanks, Tim! This answers my previous question about how the cops are getting around phone encryption. It is not the encryption itself that is being broken, but rather a faulty implementation of the decryption process that is being exploited. This should be a quick and easy fix, if Apple and Google care to bother with it. Of course, one has to wonder if this faulty implementation was intentional. This may be yet another situation where Hanlon's Razor is not appropriate.
Of course, this is no surprise. It has always been thus.
On the post: No Surprises Here: Presidential Commission On Law Enforcement Repeats Calls For Anti-Encryption Legislation
Re: Bill Barr's replacement
I think this may be a presumption based on facts not in evidence. While Trump was clearly a loose cannon authoritarian, it is just as clear that Harris / Biden are long-time establishment authoritarians. They both have a lot of experience and a lot of connections and influence that may very well make them more effective authoritarians.
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