Olives @olives@qoto.org
Software Engineer. Psy / Tech / Sex Science Enthusiast. Controversial?
Free Expression. Human rights / Civil Liberties. Anime. Liberal.
Joined May 2023
Olives
boosted
As some pointed out, limiting #KOSA's enforcement to just the FTC doing it, wouldn't really fix the bill. Though, Blumenthal still wants AGs to be able to do so (despite them being even more prone to political grandstanding).
It's worth considering that, at best, it would likely lead to status quo, or worse, they'll be chasing every little possible moral panic (and historically, there have been quite a few involving minors), and it is very likely to be leveraged to disproportionate ends (which are in themselves harmful to many users on these platforms). There is also a possibility that it might be leveraged to political ends, and if you're a Democrat, that could take the form of another Republican president in the future.
Olives
boosted
When you agree to look at someone's code review and discover it includes thousands of lines changed
Olives
boosted
https://gothamist.com/news/lawsuit-claims-nj-prosecutors-secretly-monitored-attorney-client-calls
"A man who was incarcerated in Hudson County, New Jersey, alleges jail officials and prosecutors there illegally listened to private conversations he had with his attorney while awaiting trial.
Yursil Kidwai says in a federal class-action lawsuit that jail officials secretly monitored phone conversations between him and his lawyer, which are privileged under New Jersey law, and then prosecutors used information shared in those calls to help build a sexual assault case against him. He later took a plea deal and is currently serving a six-year prison sentence, according to NJ.com, which first reported on the lawsuit.
His lawsuit also accuses jail officials and prosecutors of doing the same to others incarcerated in the Hudson County Correctional Facility.
Kidwai is asking the court to mandate that county officials stop monitoring attorney-client calls and implement training and policies that ensure the practice doesn’t continue. His suit also asks for monetary damages.
The lawsuit does not challenge the outcome of Kidwai’s criminal case."
One I haven't mentioned but which could be relevant is that deaths (perhaps, from Covid, if it is widespread enough) in the family can also contribute to poorer mental health.
I don't typically write for #ukpol. However, some of the puritanical anti porn takes (seems to mainly be cops with their "hunches", and basically asserting that porn must be bad, even though there is no actual evidence of this) are getting so detached from reality that I have to comment on it briefly. No, not on the fediverse, thankfully.
As for the other bits, there is a very obvious reason why online crime would increase during Covid. That is, because, uh, everyone is online and there isn't a whole lot else to do...? Also, locking up populations is not exactly great for mental health, and the mental health system was even driven to the brink of collapse (probably depriving mental health resources from many). And remember, that mental health, or services for that matter most likely, don't just spring to normality immediately, just because a situation has been lifted.
I've even seen allegations the "Conservative Party" has historically explored trying to dissuade people from using mental health services in order to save money. Crime (including child abuse) tends to be associated with poverty, it can be reasonably inferred that the economic devastation wrought by Brexit might be associated with an increase in crime as well.
Also, covid style lockdowns might deprive individuals from social inclusion.
So, right off the bat, we have far more compelling explanations.
There are other potential variables as well, such as potentially compromised international co-operation due to the "special military operation" involving Russia and Ukraine. Also, a lot of these modern platforms, when you think about it, are not really that old (especially, when you count uptake). Even the Web as a whole is not that old, when you think of the world in decades, rather than rapid yearly cycles.
Also, the folks over at the Home Office might periodically practically alter what constitutes an image based crime. Anecdotally, I've also noticed quite a few "he did something in 2020" type crimes being reported in British news articles, this might also bias numbers (I think that cops going out of their way to chase old low level image based crimes (i.e. viewing) is probably not the best use of their resources, although I don't know a whole lot about this particular phenomena).
That's not all someone could come up with, of course.
https://qoto.org/@olives/111516011246609826 I've written about the more particular subject of how porn is not really some big evil (and even sort of how it intersects with human rights... sort of) before. Also, why a lot of the words I just wrote (in the above paragraphs) shouldn't matter for not engaging in censorship (or invading someone's privacy).
Also, platforms are typically becoming *more* censorious in terms of porn, or porn themes, as time goes by. That is typically what we see. So, either diversity actually reduces crime, or it is unrelated. Take your pick. It also calls into question the more censorship angle... It's also an annoyingly zero sum initiative, it's contentious, controversial, and wastes a lot of resources chattering about something that isn't going to work in the real world.
I've written about what might actually be helpful, although it'd be hard for me to immediately come up with something for the U.K. Typically, it comes down to educational initiatives (or enforcement action to deal with online predators?).
It's honestly quite upsetting that someone would ignore *literally everything else* going on in the country to peddle a "I hate porn" agenda. Not surprising at all. But, nonetheless, disappointing.
Someone's past antics as minors (on social media) potentially being used against them is a pretty good argument for why people should value their #privacy more.
Olives
boosted
https://reason.com/2023/06/12/ohio-cops-raided-afromans-house-looking-for-a-dungeon-because-of-a-bizarre-confidential-informant-tip/ Looking for an imaginary dungeon where he apparently kept women chained up.
Another British #ECHR case. Have they considered the possibility that such incidences occur due to the existence of a black market here...? That if cannabis was legal, this wouldn't happen?
As some pointed out, limiting #KOSA's enforcement to just the FTC doing it, wouldn't really fix the bill. Though, Blumenthal still wants AGs to be able to do so (despite them being even more prone to political grandstanding).
It's worth considering that, at best, it would likely lead to status quo, or worse, they'll be chasing every little possible moral panic (and historically, there have been quite a few involving minors), and it is very likely to be leveraged to disproportionate ends (which are in themselves harmful to many users on these platforms). There is also a possibility that it might be leveraged to political ends, and if you're a Democrat, that could take the form of another Republican president in the future.
Whenever I write "U.K. Home Office", I'm tempted to post a picture of Priti Patel's smug face.
Olives
boosted
https://qoto.org/@olives/111191543236620885 It looks like I also have to offer up my dive into bad faith conflations between fiction and reality to the #chatcontrol tag too. Well, just in case.
It's a useful one to keep in mind just in case a bad faith actor deliberately? tries to invoke AI panic.
https://qoto.org/@olives/111516011246609826 That said, I've been over science that tears into puritanical nonsense before.
Olives
boosted
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-unveils-its-new-street-level-surveillance-hub
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans’ #privacy."
Olives
boosted
"Keyword warrants that let police indiscriminately sift through search engine databases are unconstitutional dragnets that target free speech, lack particularity and probable cause, and violate the privacy of countless innocent people, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other organizations argued in a brief filed today to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
Everyone deserves to search online without police looking over their shoulder, yet millions of innocent Americans’ privacy rights are at risk in Commonwealth v. Kurtz—only the second case of its kind to reach a state’s highest court. The brief filed by EFF, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), and the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (PACDL) challenges the constitutionality of a keyword search warrant issued by the police to Google. The case involves a massive invasion of Google users’ privacy, and unless the lower court’s ruling is overturned, it could be applied to any user using any search engine.
“Keyword search warrants are totally incompatible with constitutional protections for privacy and freedom of speech and expression,” said EFF Surveillance Litigation Director Andrew Crocker. “All keyword warrants—which target our speech when we seek information on a search engine—have the potential to implicate innocent people who just happen to be searching for something an officer believes is somehow linked to a crime. Dragnet warrants that target speech simply have no place in a democracy.”"
Olives
boosted
"The case concerned a request for public access to exchanges the Commission had with Thorn, an organisation which describes itself as an NGO, in the context of drafting a proposal for a Regulation on preventing and combatting child sexual abuse. The organisation has developed and sells tools for detecting child sexual abuse material.
The Commission gave access to a number of documents but refused to disclose (parts of) some documents saying that disclosure would undermine the commercial interests of the organisation.
The Ombudsman inspected the documents and found that the extent to which the Commission had refused access was unreasonable. The Ombudsman also noted that the Commission does not seem to have considered all elements that are relevant to assess whether there is an overriding public interest in disclosure. In light of this, the Ombudsman found that the Commission’s refusal of access constituted maladministration. She recommended that the Commission reconsider its decision with a view to giving significantly increased, if not full, public access to the documents at issue. In light of the related ongoing legislative procedure and the resulting time-sensitivity of this case, the Ombudsman urged the Commission to implement her recommendation swiftly."
Olives
boosted
"These inexpensive field tests use color reactions to indicate the presence of compounds found in certain drugs. However, the well-documented problem is that the compounds these kits test for are not exclusive to illicit drugs and are, in fact, found in dozens of legal substances. Over the years, officers have arrested and jailed innocent people after drug field kits returned presumptive positive results on bird poop, donut glaze, cotton candy, and sand from inside a stress ball. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in Florida stopped using test kits this September after discovering that several common over-the-counter cold medications returned false positives for cocaine."
"Although the true error rate of these kits is not known, the Quattrone Center estimates, based on the incomplete data it could glean from state drug labs and other sources, that as many as 30,000 innocent people a year may be wrongly arrested for drug possession based on their results, making these tests "one of the largest, if not the largest, known contributing factor to wrongful arrests and convictions in the United States.""
""Presumptive field drug test kits are known to produce 'false positive' errors and were never designed or intended to provide conclusive evidence of the presence of drugs," Ross Miller, Quattrone Center assistant director and lead author of the report, said in a press release. "But in our criminal legal system, where plea bargaining is the norm and actual fact-finding by trial is exceedingly rare, these error-prone tests have become de facto determinants of guilt in a substantial share of criminal cases in the United States and, as a result, a significant cause of wrongful convictions.""
Also, while this refers to drugs, it might also be useful to #chatcontrol in showing that false positives can lead to people being wrongfully arrested or convicted.
Have you seen the barely Finnish non-profit yet?
We're mostly ignoring them to avoid giving them attention they don't deserve. If you're curious, they receive millions from a conservative New York based group (which seems to constitute the vast majority of their funding). While this New York group (which appears to receive significant amounts of money from the U.K. Home Office, and yes, the Oak Foundation, according to one of their reports and website material) tries to present a "neutral" veneer at times, they very much only fund groups which align with their ideology / views, and do not fund others.
This group is extremely activist, will actively twist, mislead, and misrepresent, and has been known to attempt to denigrate threats to their ideology. They're also very one dimensional and lacking in subtlety.
They mostly appeared out of nowhere one day, right in time to lobby against, say privacy, however, every time they appear, the cr-p stinks more.
It's kind of annoying how someone might say "someone saw something violent or otherwise unpleasant once", therefore there is a "big problem".
Yes, that is really the methodology I've seen one use. It's *that* awful.
Also, there are like "violent video game" vibes where seeing "violence" (we know how that can be specified) isn't really a big deal.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/privacy-badger-puts-you-control-widgets
"The latest version of Privacy Badger replaces embedded tweets with click-to-activate placeholders."
This isn't the only tool you could use for this, although it is an interesting one. #privacy
Software Engineer. Psy / Tech / Sex Science Enthusiast. Controversial?
Free Expression. Human rights / Civil Liberties. Anime. Liberal.
Joined May 2023
