Stallman predicted a similar outcome, and although he (and many others) thought the end of computing freedom would be due to copyright/DRM, I wouldn't be surprised if "the children" is what eventually pushes things over the edge.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
in a situation like the attach in US capitol this year
...and as much as I'd like to see at least that amount of "watering the liberty tree" directed at Big Tech, it unfortunately would likely lead to even more authoritarian outcomes. Any future fights for freedom will need to happen online and non-violently, but on platforms that are also under their control.
I’m having a hard time finding a reading of this that isn’t advocating violence against tech workers. Is that what you intended?
But it is especially a stretch in the context of January 6th which involved violence directed at people. And the rest of the paragraph laments that future action must be nonviolent.
I did not find it very hard to assume a not-the-worst-possible reading of the comment. What's with the comment police here lately that's labeling various comments? I hope this ain't becoming the new twitter
It is a Thomas Jefferson quote:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
In the context of January 6th it’s hard to make a leap to metaphorical server blood. Datacenters still have people inside them, no mention of servers was made. Only a quote from a man who waged a real war.
> tech workers are replaceable.
Speaking as a tech worker, no, my life is not replaceable.
> I did not find it very hard to assume a not-the-worst-possible reading of the comment.
The not-the-worst-possible reading being what? Mobs attacking data centers?
> What's with the comment police here lately that's labeling various comments? I hope this ain't becoming the new twitter
I feel the same way. So let's tone down the rhetoric. If this post was metaphorical hyperbole it is the kind that got a president impeached.
That's specious reasoning. Someone who posesses an action movie likes action movies, while someone who posesses child porn likes child porn. One is ok, the other is pretty vile and illegal for a reason.
I don't agree with Apple on this but let's be clear on what is and what isn't
Unless it's planted. [0] Or sent to you. [1] Or (farther out there) happens to be embedded on a site you visited and ends up in your browser cache.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/world/europe/vladimir-put...
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/alex-jones-sandy...
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/see-photos-shared-with-you-...
On top of that, at this stage you are right. How long before they move it to every file in your device's storage "because of the children!"
You don't have to be paying for iCloud, either. There's a free tier, so I'd imagine almost all iPhones are using some tier of it.
iCloud account break-ins aren't exactly rare. An accusation, even if false, could ruin an innocent person's life.
I know multiple people (most of them in their 50s or older) who started paying for iCloud because they thought it was their only option.
i was quite surprised to see this was the default or at least was setup unknowingly to me.
Or are you saying that malicious activity is only interesting if it was on an Apple device?
Until people are actively encouraging people dying for people getting killed by paying for gladiator matches, I agree with you it's not the same thing, but I don't think the person you're answering to is talking about action movies.
yet
„Microsoft removes content that contains apparent CSEAI. As a US-based company, Microsoft reports all apparent CSEAI to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) via the CyberTipline, as required by US law. During the period of July – December 2020, Microsoft submitted 63,813 reports to NCMEC. We suspend the account(s) associated with the content we have reported to NCMEC for CSEAI or child sexual grooming violations.“
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/dig...
This is a wild and in my opinion a wrongheaded analogy. Possessing CP is a crime by itself. It doesn't matter if the person possessing is actually a molester or not. It is just like the possession of drugs being illegal and it does not matter whether the person has actually taken or plans to take those drugs.
Does not matter if someone else put it there without your knowledge. Or maybe it matters, but then it's on you (for all intents and purposes) to prove that it was without your knowledges.
The purpose of strict liability in possession is to prevent the defense that someone does not know the legal status of an item in their possession. It does NOT prevent the defense that someone does not _know_ something to be in their possession.
For example, it is not a defense to have drugs and claim "but I didn't know they were illegal". It is a defense to claim "I did not know they were there."
In drug cases with actual possession, it is difficult to support a defense of "I didn't know they were there", which is why charges typically result in criminal liability. They drugs were physically on you, and unless you have evidence that someone planted them, it is unlikely you could establish reasonable doubt.
But in cases of electronic material for networked devices, there is most certainly an affirmative defense to counter actual possession and constructive possession. Computer devices are hacked all the time, and network & device logs exist. For example, if a prosecutor agrees to the fact that a defendant had no knowledge of the material, a judge would toss the case and a jury would not convict you. The law is not meant to pedantically convict you of non-crimes.
Actually it's legislators and the courts that come up with these laws and they are complicated. The question is if these laws reduce child abuse or simply increase spying, and in the end what is the acceptable balance between these two.
The real crime is child abuse. Material related to that is also illegal because it presumably creates demand for the abuse. Whether that's actually true I don't know.
> if you polled the US that any sizable portion
No, but they also would agree to that they should have an option to keep their data privately. Maybe the public should be polled about this tradeoff?
For example the case of virtual CP has an interesting legal history https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center...
It is fine if this is your argument, but you don't have to wrap this argument in with the very legality of CP. You can acknowledge something is and should be a crime while also being against these type of automated dragnets to find people guilty of said crime.
But there is a clear tradeoff between the two so saying that would be a useless platitude. If we really see the internet as an extension of our vocal chords, then we should have individual rights to it, especially considering the fact that the internet infrastructure is not provided by the governments themselves, only the spying is.
I think it is more similar to drugs, possesing one doesn't mean you are consuming it, yet it is an illegal substance and production, transportation and distribution are understandably not allowed.
Filming an action movie does not require actually murdering people.
I'm not defending Apple. I'm saying it's absurd to act like "merely" distributing explicit photos taken without the subject's consent is a victimless crime.
That is because the consumption of child porn induces people to create it. The consumption of action movies does not induce people to murder anyone.
Some proportion of existing content has been discovered, tagged, and hashed. The legally and technically savvy members of the audience would likely know this. In such an environment, "old standard" content would be seen as riskier to hold or exchange. A completely fresh, new abuse image is the least likely to trip any automated monitoring system.
I could also easily see warez-ratio style "you've got to share something new to get access to our content" patterns, to try to discourage law-enforcement infiltration of their groups and to ensure "if I go down, I take you with me" legal leverage.
The first seems pretty arbitrary -- why is it worse to scan files you're sharing with the cloud locally than in the cloud (except potential performance/battery impact, but that seems moot).
If Apple brings this feature to the desktop, it seems likely they'd be using it the same way: files stored in their cloud.
I m just imagining the situation where these companies took the initiative to scan all their users data in a situation like the attach in US capitol this year. Creating new affordances for spying always leads to their abuse in the first chance when an extreme circumstance occurs. So there is no excuse for creating those affordances just "because they can"