Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices

Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by lucb1e on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:43PM (#25241181)

> Doubly so, if they pop up where they shouldn't be in the first place - like e.g. IoT

Hanlon's razor, "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", does seem to apply to that particular one, though. But I'm no war historian or politician or something; while the security of these devices is stupidity to the point of criminal negligence, I find it hard to say for sure whether some of this might be on purpose.

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Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by TeMPOraL on Saturday November 28, 2020 @06:20PM (#25241428)

I have my own razor[0], that I tend to call Hanlon's Handgun: "Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by systemic incentives promoting malice". I think it applies here more than Hanlon's Original.

Also, I wasn't thinking about security. I was thinking about intentional abuse of data, that starts with collecting and processing data that doesn't need to be done for a device to function.

[0] - Introduced in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21691282, named after me in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21691718 :).

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Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by fsflover on Sunday November 29, 2020 @03:44AM (#25243861)

You razor is also described here (and called "moloch"): https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.

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Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by TeMPOraL on Sunday November 29, 2020 @05:02AM (#25244130)

Yeah :). That's one of my favorite articles on the Internet and meditating on these meditations had a big role in shaping my current set of beliefs.

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Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by nmlnn on Saturday November 28, 2020 @07:52PM (#25241956)

That's just something people repeat over and over again until it seems true. In reality it just provides cover for malicious actors/actions.

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Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by bilbo0s on Saturday November 28, 2020 @10:22PM (#25242689)

I agree.

The CIA, NSA, DHS, etc are all much, much smarter than me, and I would use IoT to compromise targets if it were my job. So there's that data point.

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