Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Of course it does, because anonymity benefits the predator more than it does the prey, until the prey hire predators to guarantee their safety.

edited 27th Feb '15 7:48:27 AM by Fighteer

This quote from that article made me laugh for the delicious irony: "I have been scammed more than twice now by assholes who say they’re legit when I say I want to purchase stolen credit cards."

Gee, maybe you shouldn't be purchasing stolen credit cards in the first place??

... You're assuming that he didn't mean "I claimed that I wanted to buy stolen credit cards, and more than twice so far the people offering me to give such to me turned out to be complete frauds".

It's funny that anyone would expect honesty from thieves.

I get the reason Libertarian paradise isnt coming anytime soon, or ever. But arguments for eliminating anonymity are somewhat overblown. Cash is the ultimate in anonymity, yet I never noticed it undermining the government's ability to enforce contracts.

You still need record keeping with cash transactions, and that's how the government targets them, along with things like reporting requirements for banks receiving large cash deposits.

edited 27th Feb '15 9:02:26 AM by Fighteer

Of course, and contracts themselves are legal documents, with the legal identities of the parties fully revealed. You can do that online already, although not over Tor, of course, nor should you be able to. That isnt what Tor is for.

One of the elements involved in the Silk Road's downfall was the fact that drug dealers needed real names and addresses to ship their products to, and kept that information despite the rules of the site, because there was no way to prevent them from doing so. This had the effect of defeating the major selling point of the whole Tor/bitcoin business model.

edited 27th Feb '15 9:06:13 AM by Fighteer

Technically, that's not Tor's business model, because Tor isnt marketed for that purpose. Your point regarding Silk Road/Bitcoin/Online Ann Rand Wannabe's is on target, though

Meh. I can't in good conscience support 100% anonymity in actual business transactions. Those kind of have to trace to accounts.

Largely anonymous, in that people are restricted from divulging details unless it's the subject of a criminal investigation? Certainly. Just because the data exists doesn't mean it should be readily available without good reason.

edited 27th Feb '15 7:04:01 PM by Pykrete

According to his lawyers, Edward Snowden is willing to come back to the U.S. under the condition he is guaranteed a fair trial.

I'm sure that if some people in the government had their way Snowden wouldn't even get a Kangaroo Court.

Halifax testing ECG wearable for identity authentication: "We have to think a lot about creating, losing, restoring, renaming and managing our passwords. Users and vendors are interested in finding better ways to deliver protection that will not be difficult to use. Technologists have been proposing fingerprint and iris recognition capabilities as next steps in the digital age but there is something else in the mix. The heart. What if you could seamlessly unlock devices using electrical signals emitted by the heart? The Nymi wristband was engineered to do just that."

And from what I've seen on The BBC — it's just another layer of authentication; because also a PIN code will also be needed for some platforms.

Remember the Mall of America protests back in December? It turns out the MOA had been spying on protestors as early as 2009, using a fake Facebook account and friending activists to create dossiers about them.

edited 25th Mar '15 8:11:42 AM by speedyboris

So, is that legal? Is the company public or private?

They're private.

I'm hardly a legal expert, but I don't see anything that is actually criminal in Mall of America's behavior; further, this seems to be a common thing. Many organizations, public and private, collect dossiers on known political activists based on social media, up to and including catfishing to get access to non-public information.

On the one hand, if you raise your voice in protest, you can reasonably expect that you will come to the attention of authorities whose interests you are challenging. This falls in the category of "natural consequences". On the other hand, it is somewhat disturbing that the uses of this information might go beyond simple peacekeeping, such as for targeted harassment and arrests of people who have committed no crimes.

edited 25th Mar '15 8:30:22 AM by Fighteer

The question is whether or not those crimes were committed. People at protests have a bad habit of getting caught up in the mob, and some go overboard. I've seen plenty of "Innocent people being persecuted just for protesting!" who were arrested because their idea of a peaceful protest involved peeing on government buildings and hurling rocks at police.

There tends to be a general escalation in which the protesters assemble, police gather to monitor the protest, some of the protesters start committing crimes, police move to arrest those protesters, the rest of the protesters rise to the defense of their "innocent" brothers, and then it's a thing.

edited 25th Mar '15 9:03:50 AM by TobiasDrake

I'll note that it's hard not to pee on government property when the police lock you in without access to toilets.

While that is true, we should also consider the fairly realistic possibility of having undercover agents or moles sabotaging the protests.

edited 25th Mar '15 9:27:07 AM by Quag15

False Flag Attacks are a Stopped Clock. While they do happen, if every time the internet accused a thing of being one was actually true, there would be no more protests because the Illuminati would have already rooted out all resistance on the planet.

edited 25th Mar '15 9:52:28 AM by TobiasDrake

Well, unlike the Illuminati, we have actual proof of them having occurred. Of course, the world is amply supplied with idiots who will use protests as an excuse to commit crimes, so you can't reasonably default to either explanation. Let's not forget about good, old-fashioned escalation during the protests themselves, either.

edited 25th Mar '15 9:55:12 AM by Fighteer

Yes, they do happen, which is why I compared them to a stopped clock. Conspiracy theories have also proven true on occasion. But it's still something I'd like to see evidence of before making any sort of accusation, because it's too easy an accusation to make. Every police activity is unjust if you assume that every criminal is a plant.

You are correct that "crimes occur during a protest" does not axiomatically mean that there's a False Flag Operation at work.

What Mall of America did may not have been illegal, but I believe it was a violation of Facebook's User Agreement. They should have their access revoked.