Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-tsa-plans-big-digital-id-push-in-2024

"The US’s leading transportation security organization, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is taking significant steps towards a more digital future. And, of course, that means more surveillance and tracking."

"In a four-part action plan released by the TSA, the agency plans to extend its mobile driver’s license initiative and more widely utilize facial recognition technology in airports. This includes up-scaling their current pilot program testing digital identities and mobile licenses — used at TSA checkpoints — to at least nine states. It follows a previous announcement in May that disclosed the TSA’s examination of the potential for digital license and ID implementations across 25 domestic airports."

"Parallel with these digital ID efforts, the TSA also commits to amplifying the utilization of facial identification systems under their PreCheck service, a program aimed at preemptively assessing threats and facilitating a quicker airport security process for enrolled travelers. The service is somewhat controversial as it allows the agency deeper access into data and information about an individual and their lives – some of which go beyond what travelers believe they have access to."

#privacy

https://reclaimthenet.org/how-a-typo-in-a-geofence-warrant-further-endangered-privacy

"Namely, a “suspected typo” in a geofencing warrant is to blame for extending surveillance of everybody and their phone in a given physical location from a supposedly restricted one – to in one instance “two miles over San Francisco,” reports say.

That would include businesses, private homes, and places of worship.

The incident highlights the problems related to this legal/law enforcement tactic, and its implementation, and reminds those willing to listen why it is wrong to begin with – warrant order typos or not."

"It turns the rule of “innocent until proven guilty” on its head, and is therefore, as critics concerned with civil liberties insist, clearly unconstitutional."

#privacy

https://nichegamer.com/prison-architect-2-announced/ Eh, 3D? I liked the 2D style of the game. Well, I suppose you might be able to do some interesting things in 3D.

Considering that Amazon once seemed to think that anime themed figurines were radios, I wouldn't expect too much out of them.

I've never really been a fan of the way that platforms really push for collecting phone numbers.

https://lifehacker.com/twitter-used-your-phone-number-to-send-you-ads-now-wha-1838906777 A possible reason why they do so is for marketing, of course (also, security is not the only reason they might use to push someone to give them their phone number...).

I don't think Twitter in particular was even that aggressive about it prior to 2018. #privacy

You might remember that I dug back to something like 2009, and even back then, I could catch sight of him farting in the direction of the First Amendment.

Whenever I hear about Blumenthal, it involves him wanting to do something that is very clearly unconstitutional.

While these platforms might be slightly more convenient, at first, they often get obsoleted by newer platforms, or they get weird, or have odd ideas of what content they don't like, and then there is the inevitable process of dragging an audience to another site, and changing a bunch of things.

A proper #blog would give someone so much more control and it would pay off in the long run when something inevitably crops up.

Medium is another example, really. I never got why people insisted on using that, over a real blog, even when they had a real readership.

It's worth mentioning that "safetyism" is inherently racist, imperialistic, repressive, and totalitarian. It's very "let your betters tell you how to do things" and nagging you.

@caseynewton

https://qoto.org/@olives/111191543236620885 I haven't particularly specifically written much about "AI chatbots", but I go over it briefly here in my dive into bad faith conflations between fiction and reality.

https://qoto.org/@olives/111516011246609826 I've also been over here why puritanical anti porn rhetoric does not have a basis in science.

It's quite easy to fall into the "bothsidesism" trap too, where some random guy who doesn't really understand how things work might offer up his "hot take" (perhaps, someone looking at superficial associations and offering up garbage, or otherwise not factoring in anything other than a narrow slice of what they're looking at) and someone might try to "juxtapose" that against a more informed take.

https://qoto.org/@olives/111448111216663879 Also above the horrid "grrr, there are subhumans generating porn of fictional minors" take, there is also the "let's just focus on whether this increases or decreases crime" take which is, maybe better, although it still misses some key points (and is also prone to bothsidesism where some idiot, perhaps an ethicist or some other ignorant person, puts forth their own hot takes, and don't have qualms about doing it as they're not treating people as people). So, this unpicks that, although I haven't spent a great deal of time on that either, really.

I could comment further but it's not really a line of discourse which I really want to get into a dive about right now.

I suspect that OpenAI is most likely to run into the things which particularly rub people the wrong way, as far as copyright is concerned, more so than the "open source" options. I think it comes down to OpenAI trying to build more of a brand off "professionally finished style images".

Interesting theory that validating AI would cost so much that someone might as well just hire humans to do the job.

I mean, yeah, we're also probably tired of how the original concept of copyright has also gotten ridiculously stretched, thereby depriving the public from being able to use a work, practically ever.