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361 points gloxkiqcza | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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torginus ◴[] No.45011561[source]
I genuinely do not understand where how the idea of building a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored, can even as much as seriously be considered by an allegedly pro-democracy, pro-human rights government, much less make it into law.

Also:

Step 1: Build mass surveillance to prevent the 'bad guys' from coming into political power (its ok, we're the good guys).

Step 2: Your political opponents capitalize on your genuinely horrific overreach, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public as fighting against tyranny (unfortunately for you they do have a point). They promise to dismantle the system if coming to power.

Step 3: They get elected.

Step 4: They don't dismantle the system, now the people you planned to use the system against are using it against you.

Sounds brilliant, lets do this.

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IanCal ◴[] No.45012976[source]
I'm not a fan of the OSA but proponents of it will *keep winning* if you *keep misrepresenting it*.

You can, and should, argue about the effects but the core of the OSA and how it can be sold is this, at several different levels:

One, most detailed.

Sites that provide user to user services have some level of duty of care to their users, like physical sites and events.

They should do risk assessments to see if their users are at risk of getting harmed, like physical sites and events.

They should implement mitigations based on those risk assessments. Not to completely remove all possibility of harm, but to lower it.

For example, sites where kids can talk to each other in private chats should have ways of kids reporting adults and moderators to review those reports. Sites where you can share pictures should check for people sharing child porn (if you have a way of a userbase sharing encrypted images with each other anonymously, you're going to get child porn on there). Sites aimed at adults with public conversations like some hobby site with no history of issues and someone checking for spam/etc doesn't need to do much.

You should re-check things once a year.

That's the selling point - and as much as we can argue about second order effects (like having a list of IDs and what you've watched, overhead etc), those statements don't on the face of it seem objectionable.

Two, shorter.

Sites should be responsible about what they do just like shops and other spaces, with risk assessments and more focus when there are kids involved.

Three, shortest.

Facebook should make sure people aren't grooming your kids.

Now, the problem with talking about " a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored," is where does that fit into the explanations above? How do you explain that to even me, a highly technical, terminally online nerd who has read at least a decent chunk of the actual OFCOM guidelines?

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1. alansammarone ◴[] No.45013874[source]
This is mostly true. It fails to mention "is the user a kid" is unverifiable without imposing identify verification, which implies that all speech (which is already monitored) is now self-censored, effectively turning the state in a surveillance state. You don't need to be throwing people in jail for that, having a credible means of identifying anyone online is enough.
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2. IanCal ◴[] No.45015801[source]
Age checks are not fundamentally required by the OSA. It's really, really important that if you want to argue against it you argue against what's actually in it.
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3. alansammarone ◴[] No.45020104[source]
I was not arguing against OSA, I was arguing about your point that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with "if there are kids involved, care should be taken". Yes there is, because we can't know if there are kids involved without turning into a surveillance state.
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4. IanCal ◴[] No.45023263{3}[source]
Again that is a second order thing and is also not true. If it was all examples by ofcom would include age verification.

It’d be like saying an 18+ limit for buying booze means full DNA tracking because otherwise we don’t know if people are over 18 or just look it.

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5. alansammarone ◴[] No.45025130{4}[source]
What? I'm not sure I follow your point, and I'm not sure why you're referencing something that is unrelated to my statement, so I'll just make my point in clearer way and leave it at that.

I completely disagree that even a tangentially related, much weaker concept ("having a list of IDs and what you've watched") is "second order" effect. This is a question relative to one's values, which is at the heart of the discussion, but as I'm concerned that cartoon version is a zeroth order effect - much more relevant than all the other points you make, which are at best less important (some might be completely irrelevant to me).

I couldn't care less about the technicalities cooked up by ofcom. Those will be left for a judge to decide and will depend on the political winds. Again, I'm just answering your point - "requiring X if kids are involved" is on the face of it obviously absurd and bad. And the analogy with alcohol, even though not great, might help make it clearer: to the extent that it is enforced, it is absolutely the case that it introduces a much weaker form of mass government surveillance.

The distinction clarifies the idea: if every store was required to check your ID digitally, in real time, and storing that information (which, mind you, makes it trivially accessible by anyone, in particular law enforcement), then the government has arbitrary power to stop anyone from buying anything ("oh, I see your ID is associated with X - sorry, we can't serve you right now" - replace X with your favorite group, idea, arbitrary law), to track their every movement (since you need to buy things fairly often), etc.

The scale and functioning of the internet is what distinguishes it from the physical space.

Just because you have a good master, doesn't mean you're free. You're only free when you're not not subject to anyone's good will towards you. I'm not an anarchist - there are real problems and there are laws that are necessary to solve these problems, your examples are clearly neither and so are on the face of it, absurd and laughable.

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6. IanCal ◴[] No.45026786{5}[source]
Second order effects do not mean they're less important, perhaps that's the misunderstanding.

> I couldn't care less about the technicalities cooked up by ofcom.

Then you will be incapable of discussing it with anyone looking at how things are implemented and will continue to make assertions that don't match what they're seeing.

> if every store was required to check your ID digitally, in real time, and storing that information

Which has no parallel to what's in the OSA.