thenexusofprivacy

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US Senate to Vote on a Wiretap Bill That Critics Call ‘Stasi-Like’ in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Some of us do! But on the other hand when I sent out an action on this to a large group of local activists, I didn't mention the StaSi, because I had a feeling that most people wouldn't know what it was referring to.

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US Senate to Vote on a Wiretap Bill That Critics Call ‘Stasi-Like’ (www.wired.com)
 

If you’re in the US, now’s a great time to contact your Senators. You can either call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use the Senate directory to look up your legislators’ contact info.

“Stop the FBI from expanding warrantless surveillance of innocent Americans. The House reauthorization contains the largest expansion of FISA Section 702 since it was created in 2008. Please oppose it -- and please oppose any attempt to reauthorize FISA Section 702 that doesn’t include warrant requirements, both for Section 702 data and for our sensitive, personal information sold to the government by data brokers.”

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How The Surveillance Bill Could Help Trump Crack Down on the Media (US, FISA Section 702) (www.rollingstone.com)
 

I'm not wild about the headline -- it's the Biden administration that's pushing for this bill, so why let them off the hook? It's one of those rare issues that cut across partisan lines, with reformers and surveillance hawks in both parties working together. Still, the article makes some very good points.

The legislation, which would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, includes a provision that would broaden the types of businesses that agencies can compel to help the government spy without a warrant..... The fact sheet says the change closes “a dangerous loophole,” and calls it a “carefully crafted and narrowly tailored fix.”

But experts say the provision is extremely broad — and that it could potentially allow agencies to enlist office landlords, security guards, and cleaning crews as spies, without a warrant, and demand they help the government tap into communications equipment to facilitate data collection.

Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yep. I very much agree with all of you. Here's how I phrased it in Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse

Of course, if and when Meta sees the fediverse as a significant threat, they'll ruthlessly stamp it out.

But right now, they've got a huge potential longer-term opportunity to coopt the fediverse as a basis for decentralized surveillance capitalism. It might not work out, of course, but even if it doesn't keeping a neutered fediverse around might still be useful to Meta as long as it's not a threat to their dominance (just as Google subsidizes the Firefox browser).

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Menstruation cycle tracking app breached users' privacy, B.C. class-action lawsuit alleges (bc.ctvnews.ca)
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12947530

VANCOUVER - A British Columbia Supreme Court judge says a class-action lawsuit can move forward over alleged privacy breaches against a company that made an app to track users' menstrual and fertility cycles. The ruling published online Friday says the action against Flo Health Inc. alleges the company shared users' highly personal health information with third-parties, including Facebook, Google and other companies.

Can we improve the Fediverse Allow-List Model? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Agreed, and a very good point. "Visible to people on allow-list servers" is very much along the lines of local-only posts ("visible to people only on this server"). I think of it as "scoped" visibility, although leashed or moored might well be a better term.

Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Exactly. There's a core disagreement about whether making a public post means consenting to it being used for all purposes without consent (the multiple battles about consent-based search), but relatively few people are confused about whether bad actors will use it without consent.

Can we improve the Fediverse Allow-List Model? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A very interesting idea! Actually it seems to me there are two interesting ideas here:

  • endorsements. Something like this (whether it's from feeler servers or other sources) is clearly needed to make consent-based federation scale. IndieWeb's Vouch protocol and the "letters of introduction" Erin Shephard discusses in "A better moderation system is possible for the social web" are similar approaches. You could also imagine building endorsement logic on top of an instance catalog like the FediSeer (of The Bad Space) or infrastructure like FIRES.

  • restricting visibility of a boost to servers the original post is federated with. This is something that's long overdue in the fediverse! Akkoma's bubble is a somewhat-similar concept; Bonfire's boundaries might well support this.

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Powerplay: FISA Sham Reform Bill Released, vote expected on Thursday (US-related) (www.republic-sentinel.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/12134548

Patrick Eddington has a good summary:

"Unlike the House Judiciary Committee bill passed by that body in December by a 35-2 bipartisan margin, the new bill 1) does not mandate a warrant before FBI personnel can sift through the FISA Section 702 database for information on U.S. Persons and 2) still allows federal law enforcement agencies to buy data on U.S. Persons from data brokers--no warrant required.

The bill also allows for FBI agents to go through the Section 702 database for information "relevant to an existing, open, predicated full national security investigation.""

There were reports that intelligence agencies will have a secret briefing for Congress this afternoon, although Eddington now says it might not happen. In any case, a vote is expected Thursday.

If you're in the US, now's a critical time to contact your legislators. This issue crosses party lines, so even if your representatives usually don't listen to you, they'll be paying attention to the number of calls they get on this one! Eddington has instructions on how to do it via Congress' site, or Demand Progress has a handy web page.

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Copy, Acquire, Kill— How Meta could pull off the most extraordinary pivot in tech history (www.fromjason.xyz)
 

What if Meta's hidden objective behind the Threads-to-Mastodon initiative is a play on app.net? And, what if threads.net is a measured step towards what could be the greatest pivot in all of tech?