Contact tracing apps are a nice idea, but there are too many drawbacks:
1) Technical limitations, mainly of Bluetooth, which most of the apps seem to focus on, make their accuracy and usefulness questionable to begin with.
2) Data abuse is inevitable. Governments and data collection (read privacy abusing) companies have proven this at every opportunity. See Point 1) in the DP-3T Privacy and Security Attacks on Digital Proximity Tracing Systems.pdf
3) Many people will simply not use them because they are aware of points 1) and 2).
When you combine points 1) and 3), I doubt that any data that is collected will be of sufficient quantity and accuracy to have any significant value at all.
As an aside, do people in Norway really believe that the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (and anyone they may have already given the data to) will really delete the data? This is an actual question, not a snark, since I am unfamiliar with Norway, it's government in general, or the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in particular.
Re: Re: Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither ar
Which is why we needs laws saying that whenever a cop (or any other government type) is fired for cause (which has to get much easier, but that is another subject) they can no longer work for the government in any capacity, and not work for government contractors / subcontractors, etc. I don't think preventing them from working in any security capacity (think bouncer, bodyguard, private facility security guard) would pass Constitutional muster, but I think we should be able to keep them out of the public sector completely, so at least the general populace would not be at further risk from them again.
Add to this the fact that good cops are actually fired when found.
This is very telling. Radley Balko and others have documented many examples of this, and there are surely many, many more that didn't make the news. Add to this the likelihood that most good people would never consider being a cop in the first place, and, if they do, they are usually filtered out during training, and you can get an idea of the full scope of this structural, cultural problem.
Cops are not bad by nature.
Certainly not all, but many, if not most (see above). For someone who is "bad by nature," being a cop has thus far been a prime opportunity to "legalize" their violent criminality.
Brian Krebs has long been an excellent source for information on a wide range of telecom and Internet-related security issues. You can count on his finger being pointed in the right direction. Give him some time to dig into this, and we will likely see an article on the nuts and bolts of what happened. Karl has explained why it happened.
With a loophole big enough to drive a funeral procession through.
"in the process" of seeking approved credentialing.
Doing nothing.
It won't be searchable. All information will be sanitized by the DOJ before publication
Useless, even if the underlying data were accurate, But, of course, there is no way to verify even that, so this is just more wasted bits on a rusty disk.
Sergeants Benevolent Association's (SBA) show of support for the new executive order.
Tells you all you need to know, right there.
I'm not sure this even qualifies as a "veneer of change." After all, veneer is a layer of real wood, just very thin. This is more like Saran™ Wrap: completely transparent and applied with the object of preserving "as is" that which it is covering.
2 - If it is broke, but worth fixin', then fix it.
3 - If it is broke and was defective by design to begin with, throw it away and make a new, better one. Design it properly, learning from the mistakes of the previous version, build it well, using the highest-quality materials available, and then maintain it so that it will last.
No kidding! I know next to nothing about Snapchat, since I do not participate in it, but I do know a bit about Photoshop, GIMP, etc. Is there any reason to take the photo as anything more that a safety-baiting fake?
With secret courts issuing secret warrants and secret attorneys supposedly standing up for our rights (are rights even a thing in this scenario?), and maybe making secret objections, which would be heard by the secret courts, in secret sessions, of course, I don't see how this helps the situation any. Or is that a secret, too?
This is standard practice, to use a particularly heinous case with a particularly despicable villain to justify actions that would otherwise be (and should always be) considered out of the question. This moves the Overton Window on what is justifiable in terms of violating everyone's privacy and security in the wrong direction. We must resist the "OK, but just this once" response, no matter the circumstances of the particular case at hand.
And, no, this may not be a good answer, since it might delay the catching of a dangerous predator, but it is the right answer. It is the answer we must insist on giving.
Fortunately, the TAILS folks seem to be pretty good about updates.
DEA: "Since we are ineffective and increasingly irrelevant in attacking people's rights less directly via the misguided "war on drugs," let's start attacking people's rights more directly via an expansion of the "war on the First Amendment."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Call on health system versus smoking...
Yes, the "drug war" was basically started by Nixon to attack political enemies. It has been continued as an ongoing attack on many categories of "undesireables." It is one aspect of the broader war on individual rights.
Portugal, Uruguay, the Netherlands, and several of the US states have started to rein in this abomination, to varying degrees. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, by economic, health, and crime metrics.
eBay's global intelligence center (GIC), a contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC, and a senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team
In addition to employing this group of apparent psychiatric ward escapees, it seems eBay is trying to emulate the NYPD.
And also unrelated to the concept of a free society.
A group of 35 federal legislators want to know why.
This tells us a lot about the ≤506 other federal legislators. Granted, maybe the 35 shouldn't have made it a largely performative demand, but rather simply a public statement of outrage.
this authority does not grant the agencies you lead to surveil American citizens
This tells us the 35 federal legislators need a proof-reader.
the surge in encrypted messaging app downloads during recent days.
This is a great sign! Encryption should be the default!
It's not acceptable for citizens to feel forced to protect themselves from their supposed protectors.
Americans should not have to take proactive measures to protect themselves from government surveillance
Again, this shouldn't be an issue because it should be the norm, just as opaque paper envelopes are the norm..
raising the purchasing age or increasing tobacco taxes were less trade-restrictive options
They actually tried to make this argument?
I wonder what they would have said if Canberra had raised the purchasing age to 150 years and increased the taxes to 53 gajillion AUD per pack? "Cool! It sure beats that scary warning wrapper!"
For the foreseeable future, this will still be a valuable survival skill, and possibly (if things actually start changing for the better) a good policy to keep the pressure on to keep change headed in the right direction and discourage backsliding. Just as mistrust of government in general should be a constant state for the same reasons.
This will only be a bad idea when you live in Mayberry and are named Pollyanna.
Getting the cops out of the schools is a great start! Then, if we could just get government out of the school business (or get the schools out of the government clutches, however you want to phrase it) we would really be onto something.
This part of the enforcement framework seems promising:
First violation -> injunction / specific performance with penalties for second violation to be determined by severity of first violation. Second violation -> enforce previously determined penalties.
Limiting class actions to non-profits seeking injunctive relief forecloses the possibility of financially motivated lawsuits
I am not so sure about this. Unfortunately, non-profit does not necessarily mean non-financially motivated. A lot of non-profits have many very highly paid administrators and employees, all of whom are highly motivated to maintain an income stream to support their salaries, expenses, perks, pensions, etc.
And, while this enforcement framework seems to be thinking in the right direction, the devil is always in the details, which in this case might be the actual privacy law itself. Who is covered or exempted? What is covered or exempted? Can you be required to waive some or all rights to use a product or service? Here are three very simple questions that do not have any simple answers. But those are topics for future discussions.
I have never understood why essentially totalitarian dictators like Duterte, Castro, Kim, Jinping, etc always try to maintain a facade of "legality" by using twisted laws, compliant courts, and obedient prosecutors and judges. I have read, but still do not fully grok, that the charade is usually necessary to maintain support from a sufficiently large "base" to remain in unchallenged power. But there seems to be some serious dissonance between playing these transparent games on the one hand, and executing people with anti-aircraft artillery (or committing similar, but less spectacular, atrocities) on the other.
pattern of violence against black citizens has not only been seen by the courts
Depending on when you start counting, it seems it has taken the courts about 160 - 244 years to detect this pattern.
I think I detect another pattern, one of willful ignorance by statist courts. When we talk of reforming or replacing parts of a corrupt, racist system, let's not forget this part.
On the post: Privacy Concerns Lead To Deletion Of All Data Collected By Norway's Contact Tracing App
A nice idea, but . . .
Contact tracing apps are a nice idea, but there are too many drawbacks:
1) Technical limitations, mainly of Bluetooth, which most of the apps seem to focus on, make their accuracy and usefulness questionable to begin with.
2) Data abuse is inevitable. Governments and data collection (read privacy abusing) companies have proven this at every opportunity. See Point 1) in the DP-3T Privacy and Security Attacks on Digital Proximity Tracing Systems.pdf
3) Many people will simply not use them because they are aware of points 1) and 2).
When you combine points 1) and 3), I doubt that any data that is collected will be of sufficient quantity and accuracy to have any significant value at all.
As an aside, do people in Norway really believe that the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (and anyone they may have already given the data to) will really delete the data? This is an actual question, not a snark, since I am unfamiliar with Norway, it's government in general, or the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in particular.
On the post: Minneapolis City Council Votes Unanimously To Disband Its Police Department
Re: Re: Re: 'If you're not willing to compromise then neither ar
Which is why we needs laws saying that whenever a cop (or any other government type) is fired for cause (which has to get much easier, but that is another subject) they can no longer work for the government in any capacity, and not work for government contractors / subcontractors, etc. I don't think preventing them from working in any security capacity (think bouncer, bodyguard, private facility security guard) would pass Constitutional muster, but I think we should be able to keep them out of the public sector completely, so at least the general populace would not be at further risk from them again.
On the post: Court Cites George Floyd Killing While Denying Immunity To Officers Who Shot A Black Man 22 Times As He Lay On The Ground
This is very telling. Radley Balko and others have documented many examples of this, and there are surely many, many more that didn't make the news. Add to this the likelihood that most good people would never consider being a cop in the first place, and, if they do, they are usually filtered out during training, and you can get an idea of the full scope of this structural, cultural problem.
Certainly not all, but many, if not most (see above). For someone who is "bad by nature," being a cop has thus far been a prime opportunity to "legalize" their violent criminality.
On the post: T-Mobile Merger 'Synergies' Culminate In Massive 12 Hour Nationwide Outage
Brian Krebs has long been an excellent source for information on a wide range of telecom and Internet-related security issues. You can count on his finger being pointed in the right direction. Give him some time to dig into this, and we will likely see an article on the nuts and bolts of what happened. Karl has explained why it happened.
On the post: Trump's 'Safe Policing' Executive Order Does Nothing To Address The Root Causes Of Police Misconduct
This is just more paper in a drawer.
This is just more paper on a wall.
With a loophole big enough to drive a funeral procession through.
Doing nothing.
Useless, even if the underlying data were accurate, But, of course, there is no way to verify even that, so this is just more wasted bits on a rusty disk.
Tells you all you need to know, right there.
I'm not sure this even qualifies as a "veneer of change." After all, veneer is a layer of real wood, just very thin. This is more like Saran™ Wrap: completely transparent and applied with the object of preserving "as is" that which it is covering.
On the post: Minneapolis City Council Votes Unanimously To Disband Its Police Department
I prefer Option 3
1 - If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
2 - If it is broke, but worth fixin', then fix it.
3 - If it is broke and was defective by design to begin with, throw it away and make a new, better one. Design it properly, learning from the mistakes of the previous version, build it well, using the highest-quality materials available, and then maintain it so that it will last.
On the post: Cars, Guns, Cider, And Snapchat Don't Cause Crime
Re: Time for a deepfake...
No kidding! I know next to nothing about Snapchat, since I do not participate in it, but I do know a bit about Photoshop, GIMP, etc. Is there any reason to take the photo as anything more that a safety-baiting fake?
On the post: Tradeoffs: Facebook Helping The FBI Hack Tails To Track Down A Truly Awful Child Predator Raises Many Questions
Re:
With secret courts issuing secret warrants and secret attorneys supposedly standing up for our rights (are rights even a thing in this scenario?), and maybe making secret objections, which would be heard by the secret courts, in secret sessions, of course, I don't see how this helps the situation any. Or is that a secret, too?
On the post: Tradeoffs: Facebook Helping The FBI Hack Tails To Track Down A Truly Awful Child Predator Raises Many Questions
Another notch on the ratchet
This is standard practice, to use a particularly heinous case with a particularly despicable villain to justify actions that would otherwise be (and should always be) considered out of the question. This moves the Overton Window on what is justifiable in terms of violating everyone's privacy and security in the wrong direction. We must resist the "OK, but just this once" response, no matter the circumstances of the particular case at hand.
And, no, this may not be a good answer, since it might delay the catching of a dangerous predator, but it is the right answer. It is the answer we must insist on giving.
Fortunately, the TAILS folks seem to be pretty good about updates.
On the post: Congressional Reps Demand Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Stop Surveilling Protesters
Re: I'm all for defunding the DEA
DEA: "Since we are ineffective and increasingly irrelevant in attacking people's rights less directly via the misguided "war on drugs," let's start attacking people's rights more directly via an expansion of the "war on the First Amendment."
On the post: Australia Triumphs Definitively In Long-Running Battle With Big Tobacco Over Plain Packs For Cigarettes
Re: Re: Re: Re: Call on health system versus smoking...
Yes, the "drug war" was basically started by Nixon to attack political enemies. It has been continued as an ongoing attack on many categories of "undesireables." It is one aspect of the broader war on individual rights.
Portugal, Uruguay, the Netherlands, and several of the US states have started to rein in this abomination, to varying degrees. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, by economic, health, and crime metrics.
On the post: eBay Execs Thought Sending Dead Pigs, Live Spiders To Small News Website Was A Good Idea
In addition to employing this group of apparent psychiatric ward escapees, it seems eBay is trying to emulate the NYPD.
On the post: Congressional Reps Demand Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Stop Surveilling Protesters
Where do I start?
And also unrelated to the concept of a free society.
This tells us a lot about the ≤506 other federal legislators. Granted, maybe the 35 shouldn't have made it a largely performative demand, but rather simply a public statement of outrage.
This tells us the 35 federal legislators need a proof-reader.
This is a great sign! Encryption should be the default!
Again, this shouldn't be an issue because it should be the norm, just as opaque paper envelopes are the norm..
On the post: Australia Triumphs Definitively In Long-Running Battle With Big Tobacco Over Plain Packs For Cigarettes
Really?
They actually tried to make this argument?
I wonder what they would have said if Canberra had raised the purchasing age to 150 years and increased the taxes to 53 gajillion AUD per pack? "Cool! It sure beats that scary warning wrapper!"
On the post: More Schools Are Ending Contracts With Cops Following Protests Over The Killing Of George Floyd
On the post: More Schools Are Ending Contracts With Cops Following Protests Over The Killing Of George Floyd
Getting the cops out of the schools is a great start! Then, if we could just get government out of the school business (or get the schools out of the government clutches, however you want to phrase it) we would really be onto something.
On the post: Can You Build A Privacy Law That Doesn't Create Privacy Trolls?
This part of the enforcement framework seems promising:
First violation -> injunction / specific performance with penalties for second violation to be determined by severity of first violation. Second violation -> enforce previously determined penalties.
I am not so sure about this. Unfortunately, non-profit does not necessarily mean non-financially motivated. A lot of non-profits have many very highly paid administrators and employees, all of whom are highly motivated to maintain an income stream to support their salaries, expenses, perks, pensions, etc.
And, while this enforcement framework seems to be thinking in the right direction, the devil is always in the details, which in this case might be the actual privacy law itself. Who is covered or exempted? What is covered or exempted? Can you be required to waive some or all rights to use a product or service? Here are three very simple questions that do not have any simple answers. But those are topics for future discussions.
On the post: Philippines Spits On Free Speech, Convicts Journalist Maria Ressa For Criminal 'Cyber Libel'
I have never understood why essentially totalitarian dictators like Duterte, Castro, Kim, Jinping, etc always try to maintain a facade of "legality" by using twisted laws, compliant courts, and obedient prosecutors and judges. I have read, but still do not fully grok, that the charade is usually necessary to maintain support from a sufficiently large "base" to remain in unchallenged power. But there seems to be some serious dissonance between playing these transparent games on the one hand, and executing people with anti-aircraft artillery (or committing similar, but less spectacular, atrocities) on the other.
On the post: Carnegie Mellon Researchers Design 'Nutrition Label' For The Internet Of Broken Things
Re: what if...
That is what Princeton IoT Inspector is for.
On the post: Court Cites George Floyd Killing While Denying Immunity To Officers Who Shot A Black Man 22 Times As He Lay On The Ground
Depending on when you start counting, it seems it has taken the courts about 160 - 244 years to detect this pattern.
I think I detect another pattern, one of willful ignorance by statist courts. When we talk of reforming or replacing parts of a corrupt, racist system, let's not forget this part.
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