forapurpose

> OCCRP tech here.

Thanks for your hard work! It would be great if you could share more in this discussion.

> The data exists in at least four different legal regimes.

Doesn't redundancy have a negative effect in this scenario? I would think four legal regimes would very approximately quadruple exposure. If they can't get you in one regime, they'll get you in another.

No legislation (really, 'no additional legislation' - we're not starting from zero, nor is anarchy desirable) has as much consequence and is not qualitatively different than a little or a lot of legislation; there are downsides and unintended consequences to every option. There is still political and economic power to be had and which is exercised. The question is, do we want that power to be controlled democratically or to be arbitrarily exercised by the most powerful?

The latter is often appropriate; people should be free to do what they want unless others are affected significantly. But when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech, I don't think so.

> the personally identifying information is what used to be available in the phone book

I think on HN we know well that changes in technology greatly affect the value and power of information.

I agree that it makes sense in the abstract that ostensibly private organizations conduct themselves as they see fit. But in the U.S. the practical reality is that the Democratic and Republican Parties are effectively official institutions. If voters' only input was to choose between two people secretly selected by these organizations, it wouldn't be very democratic. And imagine that happening in the many U.S. voting districts where the same party always wins - it would be completely undemocratic.

On the other hand, IIRC my history, before maybe the 1970s the U.S. parties did use more private processes, selecting candidates in the 'smoke-filled room' (the image is of fat old men smoking cigars and making deals). Some say the quality of candidate was better then.

> We are also way more sensitive about our personal information than we used to be

That's not the typical narrative. I think people share far more than they ever did before, and when asked about privacy they express much less interest than previously (though that is changing a little now): People share things on social media that were never public before; they allow corporations and government to monitor and record their activities at scales that are orders of magnitude beyond what was done before. The threat of big brother and totalitarian government used to be a widespread concern (the book 1984 being an obvious example); now that it's happening, few seem to be bothered.

Gates does wonderful things with his philanthropy. I notice that he doesn't invest in any social issues or in politics, even when the politics is directly related (e.g., does he lobby the politicians or try to move the public regarding education funding?). Why not? Is it a policy?

Prior generations of philanthropists invested heavily in peace and justice, for example, including the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Certainly our society today has major problems in those areas - arguably we have great success with tech, which he does invest in, and have been terrible and social and political issues. Also, those problems in some ways directly harm Gates' goals (for example, U.S. political and racial issues greatly affect U.S. education), in other ways they lead to policies, such as nationalist economics, that will reduce economic activity and thus investment in these issues, and in yet in other ways the problems impose costs on people that dwarf the benefits Gates' programs provide - the oppression of Western-backed dictators and the cost of potential warfare being among them.

I realize I've assumed it's a policy of Gates', but does anyone have real knowledge about why he avoids those issues?

> it just infeasible economically to give everyone good service

Sounds like their problem, not mine. I've experienced, again and again, needlessly obnoxious, abusive behavior from airline employees. Would it be economically infeasible for them to be polite and professional? As someone pointed out, Southwest provides pretty good service.

Does Incognito mode solve this problem? I thought it mostly prevented data from being stored on your local computer; I did not think it was effective against tracking.

I think these are great points, and the second paragraph, in some form, should be in the Guidelines. It's refreshing and encouraging to read them.

To be clear, I wasn't asking why that particular comment was downvoted; I'm talking about a much broader pattern.

> if you really think all controversial speech is funded

Not what I said at all. That Russian grassroots propaganda campaigns exist certainly does bear up to scrutiny.

OK, so who are you referring to as the "single centralized power"?

Here's a few ways of thinking about it:

1. Escalation, the instinctive response of angry humans, is generally a bad idea in international relations (or any relations). I once read a veteran practitioner express it this way: 'The job of international relations is to prevent a B-level problem from becoming an A-level one'. The U.S. and China, for example, have a very large number of interactions on an enormous number of issues; if someone retaliated every time they were unhappy - and then of course the other side would re-retaliate - that would be all that was happening, lots of treasure would be wasted, war would be risked, and positive things wouldn't get done. That doesn't mean that you do nothing, but you need to respond in a way that doesn't escalate the situation - it's not always easy to thread that needle, but that's what the professionals are there for. Another reason retaliation is bad is that it puts the other side in control of your actions - they can provoke you into doing what suits them, when it suits them. You want to act at the time and place and using the means that best suits you, not dance to their tune.

2. The U.S. does take action against them, but not in public. This helps prevent escalation - the Chinese government isn't publicly challenged and forced to respond.

3. Espionage is, in one sense, like a state of war. The U.S. is already doing all they can to shut down Chinese espionage and to spy on China, and vice versa. China isn't breaking any rules in the context of espionage (AFAIK), and if the U.S. could do more, they'd already be doing it.

> you can barely afford to survives yourself

Italy is a modern, advanced, wealthy economy - I would guess they are more wealthy than any country in the history of the world before 1970. They can do far more than afford to survive, and they can help those in need. Current people in Italy benefit from a long history of 'humanitarianism' by their predecessors; it's not an exceptional behavior, it's the norm.

Human beings are more important than money. Also, those human beings will grow the economy in the future - in the near future. In the long run they also keep the demographics from getting exceptionally old.

> The assumption that all immigration is good immigration is not true.

I'm not sure what that means, nor did I hear anyone say it.

> Isn't it also racist to hear someone say "fathers need to be parents too" and jump to the conclusion that the speaker is singling out about black men?

If that were the issue, it's not racist. The response isn't based on the speaker's race but on the content. But it arguably could be 'jumping to a conclusion'.

But I don't think it's that either. The comment said that such statements are often thinly-veiled racism, which is true. Racism is infrequently expressed literally; there is a lot of 'dog whistle' communication and policies. For example, there's a semi-famous interview with a Republican strategist who said that, during the Reagan years, they realized they could no longer make outright racist statements, so they adopted school busing as an issue and expected that everyone would get the message - they couldn't outright say, 'you don't want your kids going to school with black kids, and we're the party that will stop that kind of thing', but they could talk about busing.

Today, when Republican state governments take away voting locations in minority areas, and create ID and registration requirements that disproportionately affect minorities, it's pretty thinly veiled. In fact, those are some of the same tactics were used before the Voting Rights Act (the tactics returned immediately after Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated parts of the Act). Some Republicans openly say that it's to prevent Democrats from voting.

I think it is to African-Americans, women, and other minorities. For example, broad stereotypes and criticisms are made, and frequently comments that say, for example, that racism is a problem, is voted down (my GP comment was voted down to -2, for example) and commonly harshly criticized. When those issues come up, most comments criticize any differing perspective before they are expressed. On the surface, there is very little interest in listening to other points of view - though I suspect that is the intent of the inflammatory commenters, to shut down discussion.

Well, they are centralized powers, but I agree they are not the only powers. Who are you thinking of?

When corporations and governments run social media campaigns, isn't that a single centralized power influencing the narrative?

She buys into an assumption that the hate speech is grassroots, meaning that it is from ordinary citizens.

There is a lot of evidence that much comes from powerful parties such as governments and political actors, who seek to promote conflict, division, and/or the far right (EDIT: and others too, but the far right seems especially prominent). For example, one report I read said that the Russia government's Facebook activity for the 2016 U.S. election focused "overwhelmingly" on race,[0] and recently I read that Russian government Twitter bots sent thousands of tweets criticizing NFL anthem protestors.[1] I'm going to try to find the links and add them. (None of this is surprising: During the Cold War the Soviets tried to aggravate U.S. racial division; for example, a former officer said that they would send racist hate mail to African-American leaders, then 'leak' to the press that the leaders had received hate mail.)

The real question is how powerful the technology is. How effectively can you manipulate public opinion? I hardly see that issue discussed.

[0] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-... More coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-...

[1] https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/22/russian-twitter-trolls-nfl... which links to https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russian-trolls-inflamed-nfl...

EDIT: Minor edits to make my comments more consistent with the citations.

They add:

> Additionally, blocking a user who has access to a profile key will trigger a profile key rotation.

People who don't know you can't use the new sender privacy beta feature, but if you are willing to risk spam then you can allow everyone to use it:

> users who want to live on the edge can enable an optional setting that allows them to receive incoming “sealed sender” messages from non-contacts and people with whom they haven’t shared their profile or delivery token. This comes at the increased risk of abuse, but allows for every incoming message to be sent with “sealed sender,” without requiring any normal message traffic to first discover a profile key.

Asking where the money will come from is buying into the way the GOP frames the issue: It assumes there is a shortage of money.

The U.S. is the wealthiest, highest earning country in the history of the world, with no real peer. #2 is the U.S. last year. When the U.S. was much poorer, it provided quality, inexpensive college education. Other countries that are not as wealthy do it. There is no shortage of money.

> I hope that MLK would have ...

I once said similar things. Then I learned that MLK was told similar things then - he was constantly told that he was creating trouble by inflaming things. I strongly encourage you to read his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" to see not only that the same things have always been said, but his response - it transformed my understanding of these issues.

> partially healed wounds ...

> re-opening those wounds and undoing any healing that had already begun.

I think we should question the assumptions that the wounds were as healed as perhaps is widely thought by people who aren't in minorities. What makes you say they are healed to the extent you think? When I ask people who have those experiences personally and directly, they almost always have a starkly different view of the amount of 'healing'.

Part of MLK's response is that, unless compelled to address it, people don't take them seriously and they linger. Racism has lingered in the U.S. for centuries. IME, people who aren't directly affected by problems tend to project their experiences onto them - they unconsciously infer that 'I don't see bad things' means 'it's not bad'.

Finally, a bit of a tangent: MLK is often adopted by white Americans because his message, misunderstood, makes them feel comfortable. MLK was very much about making people uncomfortable, and he believed (again, see the Letter) that that was the only way to foster change. (And IIRC, even after the Voting Rights Act, surveys showed that MLK had more people in the U.S. who thought negatively about him than positively.)

It's true that other people have problems, but that doesn't reduce the amount of discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities, or help the problem. An assumption behind the parent's "bet" (no evidence is given) is that discrimination against African-Americans isn't especially problematic. I think that needs to be supported against the mountains of evidence that say otherwise; IMHO, it is like claims of climate change denial - it's easy to make the claims, but the evidence is overwhelmingly otherwise.

A sad fact of HN is that there are no voices of African-Americans, or at least very few and they don't share their experiences (not that I blame them; it's a hostile place). Other people with no experience like to share their opinions, but that is as valuable as me talking about what it's like to work at Microsoft - I've never worked there so my opinion isn't worth a lot. The lack of people experienced in this subject is both an outcome of generations of discrimination - African-American families often lack the wealth, income, and educational history associated with higher education and SV jobs - and a cause of it: We don't understand the problems. We're just BSing in the dark.

> This should appeal to CentOS and Fedora users who consider using RHEL, but don't because it's too hard to switch.

It's hard to switch from Fedora and CentOS to RHEL? Isn't CentOS almost exactly the same bits, minus the branding and a few proprietary pieces?

A story from several years ago was the restoration to their original colors of Renaissance and later artwork, such as Old Masters and in particular the Sistine Chapel. Many people were confused and disappointed that the artwork had vivid colors, rather than the yellowish patina which they had acquired with age and which viewers had grown up associating with the art - as if, until the impressionists, people lived in a sepia-toned world and had no experience of or interest in colors and their beauty (that was only in Oz, I suppose).

> a secure remote compute arrangement is sort of a natural extension from Qubes

I see what you mean, but on the other hand it's a threat to the endpoint security she's worked so hard on. If Intel offered a solution that allowed remote users to run code on your machine, no matter how secure they claimed it to be the response here would rightfully be 'what could go wrong?' Can it be made secure enough?

(I'm aware that Intel already offers such things, including via SGX which others in this discussion say is utilized by Golem.)

Will the negative results be peer reviewed?

> we are hopeless at determining who is trustworthy and who isn’t

We are not at all hopeless. We're not perfect, but we do pretty well. Just because people make mistakes sometimes doesn't at all mean that everyone is hopeless. Bad software is written, but we can produce good software. People trust the wrong person, but democracy and human rights has blossomed and spread.

Your proposals about politicians are interesting in that Trump likely wouldn't agree to facing the consequences of his actions.

> if you poke a bear with a stick and it mauls you, nobody will blame the bear

I think that analogy goes against your argument: The bear is a wild animal unable to make rational decisions. Amazon is an extremely powerful company lead by some of the leading businesspeople in the world. The difference between Amazon and the bear is exactly why Amazon is solely responsible for its decisions.

> misapplying

That'a s matter of opinion; IMHO, it was and is not at all misapplied.

> The RoC also promotes Mandarin

Until around 1990, they promoted it brutally, fitting the description of the GP. IIRC the history, in the first free elections in Taiwan in the early 1990s, one appeal of the winner is that he spoke the local dialect.

So Darwin was very lucky? The questions remain for any field: Is there evidence, and is the implication that the leading scientists are consider very lucky?