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by big85 3 days ago
Surveillance which violates the privacy or other rights of lawful citizens is worse than crime, I argue. The criminal fears the police, but the government obeys nobody.

Security cameras in public areas, I don't have a problem. Government mandated scanning software running on my PC, yeah, I have a problem. It amounts to a warrantless search.
1 comments
dgroshev 3 days ago
It's no more "warrantless search" than object recognition in your photo app. Signal deliberately misrepresents the policy, which is about connecting (already existing, local) object recognition to (already existing, local) established adulthood of the user.
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big85 3 days ago
No, it's much worse than you suggest. Quoting the government:

> The government therefore wants Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance.

All smartphones and tablets will be required to detect and block adult content on the device. You can avoid it by showing photo ID, but it's bizarre that the default state should be to assume the user is not an adult until proven otherwise.

Article 1 of the ECHR guarantees that "every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions". "Until they show government ID" isn't in there!

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun to assume this will be used as a precedent to require on-device scanning for illegal content, and further extended from smartphones to desktop PCs. However, I'm not optimistic.

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dgroshev 3 days ago
How is it worse than I suggested? There's no "surveillance", for all intents and purposes it's just a hole in functionality requiring age verification to be filled. Article 1 doesn't guarantee that as a kid I can use my possessions to acquire a bottle of vodka.

You don't need to show a government ID, I never did. Also, I trust Apple-mediated age verification with a single bit output to any vendor much more than a random B2B SaaS.

More generally, the backstop on abusing system is always political. It can't be just a passive immutable barrier with any variation seen as a slippery slope (see the US government just buying commercial intel on citizens). Our political system just saw two ~new national parties spring up in additional to already established three (plus national parties) and MPs revolting at a mild inconveniences to their constituents. We're alright.

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big85 3 days ago
Parental Controls don't bother me. What bothers me is that they should be enabled on my own device against my wishes!
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