Afghans Delete Social Media as Taliban Seizes US Surveillance Equipment
theepochtimes.com
theepochtimes.com
Not being affiliated with church did not saved people.
It's easy to point fingers at large-scale evil-doers, but none of those exist in a vacuum, do they?
Do we perhaps want stricter laws to protect people's anonymity? Cause I thought we wanted less laws, in order to allow for greater freedom.
Ah, I got it, we want balance. But just a little tilted this way, if that's okay.
Hard to please.
Needless strawman. No one calling for more privacy is calling for smaller government.
Thats the point potamic made the focus is on the evil large-scale doers do not the potential evil of their tech outside of their control, an argument large scale doers tend to hand wave as not going to happen.
Now that it has happened there is no point debating laws as evil doers are not controlled by laws.
This is the argument privacy advocates have made for years and now it has happened it's too late to protect people by changing laws.
Seeing a problem before it happens and presenting a solution to prevent that problem is not being hard to please, it's the exact opposite.
Wanting to weaken privacy so you can invade peoples privacy but not have other invade that persons privacy is being hard to please and its the attitude politicians take and its the root cause of this problem.
I can be perfectly happy to publish public thoughts under my real name but take objection to large scale tracking, collection of data from private conversations, and back doors to my personal devices.
This all occurred rapidly in the last week due to fears stemming from rumours circulating about Pakistani ISI backed Taliban gaining technical intercept capability.
True or not, the rumours had a significant effect on many Afghans.
So... from Facebook to Facebook?
(Edit: As was revealed before, WA told the creator of the encryption protocol used in Signal to change things about it, when implementing the protocol for WA, which enable WA in theory to hold a third party decryption key.)
[ https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/inform... ]
> In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them. Additional information about WhatsApp's security can be found here.
So only metadata and everything that's not e2e.
Certainly, if the demands were complied with, metadata alone would be sufficient to rebuild your communication network if the Taliban already know who you are and what are you talking about.
This is probably the best info anyway. What you speak about with a suspected enemy of the state is a lot less important for oppressive regimes than the fact that you (regularly) do. The content can be obtained from in person ... discussion. When a service doesn't care about presumption of innocence or torturing a few extra citizens, meta is probably all they need.
Now I do not think Taliban itself would be able to pull it off, but if the ISI is involved it is another story.
This might be what other voices relate to: https://then24.com/2021/06/18/moxie-marlinspike-the-hacker-w...:
> “All messages on WhatsApp are encrypted, but Facebook can, voluntarily or at the request of a government, turn it off for certain users or certain areas. And we cannot know when it does, ”explains Jan Penfrat, political advisor to the activists network.
As to the trustworthiness of those sources, I do not have information.
(Even with e2e encryption, they still have clear text metadata which oppressive governments may find useful - if they know you talked to a known dissident, they may assume you are one too, even if they can’t see what you said.)
Is there somewhere credible I can learn more about the connection between the taliban and the ISI?
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/117472/DP%2018.pdf
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-02.htm
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/08/06/a...
The above is obviously assuming good faith.
Sounds like passing useful equipment to ANA was not really a high priority while withdrawing. I wonder if they already reasoned it would not be of any help anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2021/jul/06/inside...
This equipment was purchased by Afghanistan from the US (using US funds, obviously). So technically, it wasn't US property.. and they had no right to destroy it.
0. https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-08-19/us-biometric-devices-...
As someone with a slightly pacifist streak and a very strong dislike of the military industrial complex, this statement, as obvious as it is, somehow still makes me furious...
I often wonder how people working in these circles or supporting politics in this direction sleep at night. It's so obviously pointless, so obviously destructive, so obviously detrimental to humanity as a whole... I don't know. Maybe I'm just too naive, but I just can't decide if I should feel sad or angry about it.
(sorry for the somewhat unrelated rant)
> It's so obviously pointless, so obviously destructive, so obviously detrimental to humanity as a whole
Pacifism is a nice ideal and easy to defend when talking about an unjustified war like Iraq. But when I see Afghans so desperate to leave they are clinging onto airplanes I think it's obvious that pacifism is just as pointless and detrimental.
No one sleeps easy.
Non-intervention means "if you attack someone else, I will not help them"
Pacifism = "if you attack me, I will not stop you"
Yeah but the Taliban (or the the Afghanis in general, for that matter) didn't attack anyone.
A bunch of radicals made 9/11 happen, and as it happens, the main guy behind it happened to be in Afghanistan and on somewhat okay-ish terms with the Taliban, but the Taliban themselves were perfectly okay to negotiate his extradition if my understanding is correct. That is, they were, until the first bombs started to drop.
For all I care, Afghanistan was a bloody revenge war, nothing but catharsis for the bruised American soul. It was never about the women or democracy or the well-being of the Afghanis in general, because if that was the case, the US might as well have started with Saudi Arabia (which had probably more to do with al Qaeda than Afghanistan to begin with). In my opinion, it wasn't even about OBL, because otherwise the US would've taken the Pakistani coddling with extremists (and ultimately the sheltering thereof) more serious than they did.
Anyway, I'm already ranting again... I just sometimes wish everyone on this planet was a bit more naive, you know, and just believed in the general good of the people. Yes, there are always a few crazy outliers, yes, there are always those who try to gain advantage and power by manipulating the masses by abusing their fear and primal instincts, but in general, most human beings just want to live a peaceful live, not having to worry about drones and bombs and stray bullets and whatnot. And by believing all together in this common good, I think the world might just be a little bit a better place. At least in my pipe dreams...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/05/afghanistan.te...
I wonder how much more stays on FB and other social media, if Afghans request deletion of their account for FB and others. Is it an effective measure at all? How strong is the "right to be forgotten"?
Same info, but less slant.
The further claim that it's not important as they'd just get Taliban biometric data is also ridiculous. None of our tracking has ever been that accurate, false positives in the data alone would be damming.
Granted, the system and culture does make a massive difference in terms of the trajectory and compounding effects of a populace. But these remarks come off as thinly veiled racism, rather than a critique of the political systems involved— and I’m not someone who sees racism behind every blade of grass.
Somehow when it's people with a different skin shade these accusations of racism come up. Racism is a red herring. 99% of the time it turns out to be the case that racism is a lazy explanation for something more complicated or uncomfortable to explain.
Your definition of "racism" is far too narrow if that doesn't count as a racist statement to you.
The notion of "anti-Irish racism" in the UK or USA, or "anti-Polish racism" in Ireland, is widely accepted enough for me to believe that the definition I'm used to isn't unreasonable.
Let's not confuse nationalism with racism, even if the two are quite often intertwined.
Japan in the 1950s and 1960s was viewed as a copy-cat manufacturer of cheap stuff. A few decades later, and things changed.
There was a joke about this shift in the movie Back to the Future.
I'm sure the Gulf states and Pakistan, even China or Iran would be happy to help.
Perhaps if a watchlist fell into the open, then you wouldn't want to be discoverable on social media via normal means. (ie, if someone finds me on a list in the US embassy, I'm safer if I'm a ghost on social media.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times
I'm not claiming this means the story here is false, but frankly I'm surprised posts from this source are even allowed on HN.
Surely a venue such as this, with its careful moderation and strong commitment to civil discourse, would (should) be very tolerant of such content. The only risk to posting such material is the poster should expect a lot of well-researched and thoughtful opposition.
Personally I believe (but rarely practice, because I’m lazy) that reading content from sources you disagree with is useful. Occasionally you’ll spot that you agree with your “enemy”. That’s the gateway to reconciliation, tolerance. We all gotta live here.
Also, I hadn’t encountered The Epoch before. Thanks for the heads up.
Some call the New York Times that
Add a +1 from me that The Epoch Times is basically a hate group (known anti-homosexual agenda among other things), and the propaganda arm of a cult that literally believes aliens from outer space have infiltrated society to instill progressive values.
Yes, the Chinese communists have tried to eradicate them, but that doesn't mean that they are such a great group because of it.
If you've seen the Shen Yun ads across the US, that's also from them, and if you've ever actually gone then you'd get smacked in the face with heavy propaganda (just check the yelp reviews).
And? Is what they have posted about this story false then? So their sources are wrong and are spreading conspiracy theories about this story then?
Rather than bringing up the past behaviours of newspapers and creating associations can you just comment on whether if the article is true or not.
If this particular story that is posted is proven to be false THEN you would have a point. In this case it is true and it is widely reported and also has credible sources for this article. You are welcome to prove otherwise.