Where I speak some advantages Signal has over the bigger richer rest of tech:
“We don’t have to be full of shit. We’re not a surveillance company. I’m not trying to pretend Facebook is good. I don’t have to toe a party line that is divorced from reality”
PSA: We've received questions about push notifications. First: push notifications for Signal NEVER contain sensitive unencrypted data & do not reveal the contents of any Signal messages or calls–not to Apple, not to Google, not to anyone but you & the people you're talking to. 1/
I keep brooding on the way the xz backdoor was enabled in significant part via weaponizing the FOSS culture of shitty behavior and abuse.
Yes, there're other pathologies at work here (the big tech capitalist pillaging of the commons, etc).
But what is striking is that the uncool, mean standards of FOSS conduct that many of us have decried for years, & that many defended as authentic, tough, etc., ended up not just being exclusionary loser behavior, but a significant attack surface.
So many shady orgs cynically presenting child abuse as an "online problem" & peddling expanded surveillance as the solution while counting on the unpleasant emotional weight of the topic to distract us frm demanding evidence re claims that surveillance helps kids (there's none).
Great column from @ShiraOvide, looking at differences between private messengers. Note Telegram isn't listed, because Telegram is not a private messenger.
And note that Signal is the gold standard, providing the foundation for the rest.❤️
UK Home Office's recent attack on e2e encryption moves into the realm of baseless propaganda, diverging significantly from much of the rest of UK gov & from established expert consensus, complete w media salvo
Let's review, it's important to recognize what they're doing...1/
(Speaking of the near-unfathomable profitability of the surveillance business model, take a min to contemplate what the ability to pay tens of billions to cement their dominant position means vis-a-vis the revenue that dominant position redounds to Google.)
Notable that this longstanding problem, which I and a few others have been naming for ~a decade, is now common sense.
It's true. AI is fundamentally a technology controlled by Big Tech. But the current 'solutions' to this problem would extend, not dilute, Big Tech control. 1/
If I wanted court drama I'd read Stendhal, who understood how power works and spent hundreds of pages illuminating characters whose desire for it blinded them to this reality.
I'm not arguing w the fact that AI poses risks. I AM ceaselessly annoyed by the pattern
This is not new or novel. It was women - @timnitGebru, @mmitchell_ai, me, et al - who rang the AI alarm years ago & were retaliated against, pushed out for doing so.
Telegram is notoriously insecure and routinely cooperates with govs behind the scenes while talking a big game about speech and privacy. Even their limited opt-in (roll their own) encryption is sus. The more you know 🌈
WOW. I'm so moved, a bit stunned, and more than anything sincerely grateful to those who came together to ensure sunlight on the dangerous OSB Spy Clause, and to those in the UK gov who synthesized the facts and acted on them.
I knew we had to fight. I didn't know we'd win ❤️🙏
Requiring a "skilled person" write a report before mass surveillance is imposed does little
Especially given that the UK gov HAS ALREADY heard from hundreds of skilled experts restating longstanding consensus: there's no such thing as a safe backdoor.
Integrating a chatbot w no connection to truth into search, a service people use to learn new info, is a wretchedly bad call that will likely have serious consequences.
IMO we'll look back at this moment with the same cringe we now reserve for NFTs.
Which is not to say "AI" and NFTs are analogous. But the religious fervor and willingness to say any old ungrounded thing in service of hyping this tech is drawing from the same Web3 well.
Paul Robeson's 1956 testimony before the House Unamerican Activities Committee is always worth revisiting for its clarity and bravery in the face of government-sanctioned unconstitutional repression of expression.
In which I connect Charles Babbage & his 19th c. blueprints for digital computation to industrial labor control & the creation of a regime of denigrated, disciplined "free" labor.
All of which has its roots in plantation slavery. 1/
I did not sign this statement, tho I agree “open” AI is not the enemy of “safe” AI
I can't endorse its premise that “openness” alone will “mitigate current+future harms from AI,” nor that it’s an antidote to concentrated power in the AI industry 1/
This paper is really important, presenting empirical evidence of the imbrication bet. AI & the surveillance biz model. This is notable particularly given that most production surveillance tech is proprietary, its existence and use hidden from the public.
When I talk to people outside the US, they're rarely aware of how bad it's gotten. In part because state-level authoritarianism is rarely reported in int'l media.
E.g. there's now a proposal to jail teachers/librarians who possess 'banned books' !!!
When faced w/well-meaning legislation to scan for 'harmful content,' undermine e2ee in the name of child safety etc., we are derelict/naive if we don't contend with the reality of who will use theses laws, how.
