ancianita
ancianita's JournalDOJ Boss Joins UK, Australian Gov't To Ask Facebook To Ditch Its End-To-End Encryption Plan
Government back doors have always begun with "think of the children!" or "Evil porn!"
While I am the first to respect the work of the FBI, this situation shows a repeat of Big Players' history of privacy overreach with us tech consumers, only one of which is the "back door" to our privacy.
That same back door is the entry point for lots of criminal activity -- as we've seen since the last election, not from just scammers or spammers, but whole bot and hacker farms from other governments. Sure, big data of the U.S. has been hit, but so have the rest of us, whether it's voter rolls or our credit rating data. Yet, when it comes to children, Facebook's done most of the heavy lifting in enforcement.
Here is Techdirt's outraged take on Barr speaking for the U.S and allies.
TD: Now, multiple governments feel they can't solve crimes without on-demand access to people's communications -- something they have never had in the history of crime-solving and communications. But here we are, listening to Barr and his buddies make a pitch for encryption backdoors while standing on the backs of child porn victims.
Barr makes this pitch while acknowledging that Facebook probably does far more than all US and UK law enforcement agencies combined to combat child porn.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg...
... Facebook currently undertakes significant work to identify and tackle the most serious illegal content and activity ... In 2018, Facebook made 16.8 million reports to the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) – more than 90% of the 18.4 million total reports that year. As well as child abuse imagery, these referrals include more than 8,000 reports related to attempts by offenders to meet children online and groom or entice them into sharing indecent imagery or meeting in real life. The UK National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that, last year, NCMEC reporting from Facebook will have resulted in more than 2,500 arrests by UK law enforcement and almost 3,000 children safeguarded in the UK.
And yet, Barr wants to complain. Barr and his UK/Aussie counterparts want to claim this isn't enough. What's really needed is insecure communications on a platform used by billions. And to make this claim, Barr again points to something Facebook does as evidence that Facebook isn't doing enough.
While these statistics are remarkable, mere numbers cannot capture the significance of the harm to children. To take one example, Facebook sent a priority report to NCMEC, having identified a child who had sent self-produced child sexual abuse material to an adult male. Facebook located multiple chats between the two that indicated historical and ongoing sexual abuse. When investigators were able to locate and interview the child, she reported that the adult had sexually abused her hundreds of times over the course of four years, starting when she was 11. He also regularly demanded that she send him sexually explicit imagery of herself. The offender, who had held a position of trust with the child, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Without the information from Facebook, abuse of this girl might be continuing to this day.
Our understanding is that much of this activity, which is critical to protecting children and fighting terrorism, will no longer be possible if Facebook implements its proposals as planned. NCMEC estimates that 70% of Facebook’s reporting – 12 million reports globally – would be lost. This would significantly increase the risk of child sexual exploitation or other serious harms. You have said yourself that “we face an inherent tradeoff because we will never find all of the potential harm we do today when our security systems can see the messages themselves”. While this tradeoff has not been quantified, we are very concerned that the right balance is not being struck, which would make your platform an unsafe space, including for children.
"For children." That's the leverage. Barr wants Facebook to abandon its encryption plans to save children. Sure, that's admirable, if you're willing to overlook the considerable downside of creating a backdoor for governments or simply removing the encryption offer altogether.
Facebook's encryption plans offer a whole new layer of security for lawful users -- some of which are targeted by authoritarian/corrupt governments. Many governments around the world pose as much of a threat to their citizens as criminals do. And a great many people believe their communications should be private, which means not being read/scanned by Facebook, much less any government that happens to stroll by waving some paperwork.
All Barr wants is for Facebook to abandon its encryption plans ... He wants every government in the world to be able to access the content of users' messages.
He may only be aligned with three-fifths of the Five Eyes in this letter, but ensuring US/UK/Australian "lawful access" means giving every other two-bit dictatorship the same level of access to users' communications.
This is a not-very-subtle smearing of every tech company that deploys encryption to protect its users from criminals and governments that behave like criminals. This is the abuse of the phrase "lawful access" to portray the possession of a warrant as a golden ticket to everything law enforcement wishes to obtain.
To be historically clear, a warrant has NEVER guaranteed access to communications. It has only allowed law enforcement to search for them. The implementation of encryption doesn't change this equation.
But Barr and others keep pushing this in hopes of persuading the public -- and the tech companies they patronize -- that secret communications are something new and far more dangerous than anything law enforcement has ever encountered prior to the rise of social media and smartphones.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191003/20514643121/doj-boss-joins-uk-australian-govt-asking-facebook-to-ditch-end-to-end-encryption-plan.shtml?fbclid=IwAR06PBYM9ygTqqk6sx5b9UPk8Q5e4vRiR5coqc8l_GkkVipTypby3bvxsEk
Zuckerberg In Damp-Down Mode To Keep His Core Business Model
Of course WSJ will report what Fuckerberg does. Wall Street uses the different but nonetheless supercomputer Big Data business models -- the kind that suck money to those supercomputer owners, and shrink our economy. Facebook's algorithms make profit on a platform where we complain and infight about the economic conditions that Wall Street's algorithms create, and the politics that obscure them both.
As part of the new rules, Facebook will allow publishers of information found to be false by outside fact-checkers to appeal to the company, said the people familiar with the changes...
The new rules follow Facebook’s acknowledgment last week that it will continue exempting politicians from fact-checks, on the grounds that such comments are newsworthy ...
... the changes demonstrate the company’s continuing struggle to limit the spread of so-called fake news and other misinformation without being accused of stifling free speech.
Ms. Holan said she expected that the changes as described would only affect the overall fact-checking program at the margins, but noted that publishers of false statements have a history of arguing that they are opinions.
“There are cases where the line between fact and opinion are not as bright as you might think,” she said.
There are a slew of critics that Fuckerberg is contending with, but his core business model trundles on with no challenger, except Jaron Lanier, five years ago, in his Who Owns the Future? , and this year, in his Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-create-fact-checking-exemptions-for-opinion-and-satire-11569875314?mod=rsswn
By Ending Silicon Valley's Worldview Of Human Obsolescence, We Could Earn $20,000
In order for the AI and robots to work, Google, Facebook and Intel Agencies need everybody's data.
Giving away everything, all our data, for absolutely nothing has got to end.
In a world where the manipulation machine is shut down, there will still be paranoid and conspiracy theorists, but there will not be a commercial incentive to incite these constantly, all the time, 24 hrs a day.
They will not drive advertising, or mainstream news -- or the amplified extremes of our politics!
Crazy politics cannot build or maintain a wealthy country.
One way you make a working economy and a working democracy: get paid for your data, and because you exist -- and no one gets left out.
The Yang model isn't the same, but will only bolster the current manipulation business model of Silicon Valley.
Get ready to read increasing Silicon Valley's attacks on this idea.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-privacy-jaron-lanier.html?fbclid=IwAR3oi_xC517oWIio4S999SjNAqFxO-jWzn4ukb6BOAFgHLmObzwTg0y2-jo
https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/pTThgNXl2jcD6UJtcuIaXsoxAbg=/1072x720/filters:no_upscale()/
The Whistleblower Is Not The Only One Who Needs Safety -- Adam Schiff Has Been Repeatedly Hit
First, they moved on Schiff with the bot armies to slash at him and the public's trust.I've been so sick of the attacks, I've posted this notice to Facebook commenters as often as I see a thread full of haters-for-rent. I also tell them that Brad Pascale has probably been spending on social media digital "individuals." Just speculating, cuz I haven't evidence. Yet.
Here's what Snopes has found out about bot use against Schiff:
Hamilton68, a live dashboard created by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative of The German Marshall Fund, monitors the Russian operation. Around the time of the vote on the second memo’s release, Schiff’s name was a top topic and the hashtag #littleadamschiff was popular among Russian bot accounts:
?w=600
Some of these are real people, others are bots, and some present themselves as innocent news aggregators, providing “breaking news alerts” to happenings worldwide or in specific cities.
The latter group is a key tool for moving misinformation and disinformation from primarily Russian-influenced circles into the general social media population.
As of 6 February 2018, this network was in full swing, with Russian bots and trolls utilizing President Trump’s derogatory nickname for the congressman with the hashtag #LittleAdamSchiff.
Fake news and rumors circulated reporting Schiff’s sister was married to the son of billionaire philanthropist (and frequent target of conspiracy theories) George Soros — despite the fact that Schiff does not have a sister.
The false information wended its way from the message board 4chan to a corollary of disreputable web sites and social media posts.
https://www.snopes.com/.../fake-news-bots-target-author.../
About Hamilton68: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Securing_Democracy
Second, Trump steps up, tweets tough talk about old school offing of anyone he wants to label a "spy."
-- sends henchmen to Ukraine to "find" "enough" evidence to gaslight impeachment processes and persons with.
-- declares Pelosi no longer speaker of the house.
-- turns on Adam Schiff with his full force pretend presidential outrage -- in tweets -- to resign, and be investigated for "fraud and treason" (Seriously, the ridiculousness of tweeting as presidential behavior, I think I'll never get over.).
-- demands to know who the Whistleblower is, or else.
Third, social media allow these collective attacks, saying that massive negativity still stays within FB's "community standards." I have written to FB about this, read about theirs and Google's business model, and will make a good case for deleting (not suspending) social media accounts in the future.
Finally, to fellow DU'ers. Never, ever underestimate the violence that can follow such a process. When we worry about the safety of the Whistleblower, please don't underestimate the similar danger to the safety and security of those who help the Whistleblower.
Retaliation, from the alt-right forces in this and other countries, starts early and lasts until after impeachment is complete. Just when people breathe a sigh of relief, or celebrate, thinking "it's over" or "we won" ...
they take "active measures."
This won't end after Democrats win.
It's not the new normal, either.
No. It can never be the new normal.
Good, no-drama Obama democracy (and even boring governance) is normal.
Rachel's Cartoon Show
I wonder, while we're amused, if this is also meant for an audience who can only understand this way.
THIS. Joe Brenner, former IG of the NSA
In response to the whistleblower's revelation of the fact of Trump's WH counsel storing the president's phone transcripts to the National Security Council password-coded secret server.
Indeed. Where were the lawyers?!
White House Counsel Members Who Hid Trump's Call Transcripts In Stand-Alone NSC Server
Annie Donaldson
Gregory Katsas
Makan Delrahim
Uttam Dhillon
Stefan Passantino
John A. Eisenberg
Patrick F. Philbin
Kate Comerford Todd
Michael Purpura
Pat Cipollone
I only know of one, John Eisenberg, from Kirkland & Ellis out of Chicago.
Adam Schiff is coming for them and their password-coded National Security Council server. I find it hard to believe that 16 intel agencies couldn't crack that server.
Regardless, familiarizing oneself with their names might come in handy as Schiff's House Intel Committee conducts further investigation.
The Circle of Empathy -- Language and Thoughts To Help Us Explain Our Politics
Jaron Lanier is an old and new tech systems explainer with a hippie heart and scientific mind.
Lanier's talk is long (so maybe better for listening to while doing other things), but worth thinking about.
I keep wondering how Andrew Yang fits into this world, and how he would lead this world to live with the non-exploitative kinds of tech that Lanier consistently keeps explaining.
To me, Lanier shows the more human side of our binary (and two-party) conflicts, and how we can translate human empathy from our politics to our capitalism. He shows how tech can never render us obsolete, because we create, but they steal the new, our data. This is not sustainable economics (In other videos he explains what can sustain tech an AI run systems).
Just like a Congressional house divided cannot stand.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
Number of posts: 36,053
