omginternets

I can think of several things:

1. Administer first aid

2. Gather witnesses

3. Preserve evidence

4. Coordinate with other units to grid-search for suspicious persons or vehicles

5. In some cases, gather evidence/testimony that enables immediate pursuit

You know… police work.

I think this falls squarely under the adage that “90% of everything is shit.”

Want to be a developer? It’s dead simple. You can just install node.js and pull in a bunch of random dependencies.

I mean, the whole purpose of legal liability is to make them care. Isn’t this just the system working as intended?

If anything, my conclusion is that security researchers shouldn’t have any qualms about releasing vuln info. By all means, give the concerned party an opportunity to act in good faith, but when they invariably don’t, send it..

It’s useful as a signal to dispatch a unit.

Respectfully, you’re dodging part of the question.

How would you feel if my org stated “all lives matter” and pretended not to see the problem?

I’m not taking about animated CSAM. It’s odd that you’d focus on that.

What do you mean by "weak" and "strong", here?

Meh, if you're not able to list even a single risk, then you clearly haven't thought of this very much.

Surely you can imagine the harm of sharing the video of someone's rape? Don't you think we should try to avoid this for the sake of those who have already suffered?

I think a lot of us are coming down from the high of buying expensive surveillance devices.

> Maybe you are arguing that we need such a program?

Yes. I’m arguing that there should be some appropriate path for people like you, and that path doesn’t have to take the form of a college degree. Note that I wouldn’t object to it taking the form of a college degree either. I am agnostic.

This rhetorical tactic has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

The exact phrases in question are:

1. Black lives matter.

2. Trans rights are human rights.

3. No nazi bullsh*t.

Phrases 1 & 2 are well-recognized political slogans, and I don't like some of the organizations that have very vocally rallied behind these slogans.

Do you think that makes me a nazi? If not, how welcome do you think this makes me feel?

The exact phrases in question are:

1. Black lives matter.

2. Trans rights are human rights.

3. No nazi bullsh*t.

Phrases 1 & 2 are well-recognized political slogans, and I don't like some of the organizations that have very vocally rallied behind these slogans.

Do you think that makes me a nazi? And if not, how welcome do you think this makes me feel?

Sure. Proposition accepted.

Now please consider this: the reason why so many devs are disenchanted is because they are being told that the software industry is like that 1%, when in fact, 99% of it isn't.

With this in mind, perhaps we should teach people about this "software engineering" vs "software plumbing" distinction. I suspect we are doing a bad job of orienting young professionals because of some outdated status hierarchy such that "engineering is for nobles" and "plumbing is for the pleb", which leads us to present software engineering as the ideal to strive for. Rather, we should identify the people who show an appetite for the noble profession of plumbing and steer them in that direction. While we're at it, we can paint a more realistic picture of their economic prospects, job security, work-life balance, etc.

There is no need turn this into yet another theory-vs-practice debate. That's a false dilemma. The best work gets done when both players collaborate.

That's fair, but if you'd gander a look at another comment of mine in this thread (the long one), I'm not sure what to do with that. This is a very utilitarian argument, and I suppose I need convincing that the benefits really do outweigh the cost, because we're about to gamble with child rape victims.

I am aware of the purported benefits of decriminalizing certain kinds of CSAM, but utilitarian arguments are suspiciously silent on the subject of costs.

Have you thought of any dangers in this approach, and how they can be avoided?

I mean this in the gentlest way possible. I'm really trying to think this through, and would appreciate your input.

I think you may be reading into my position on a separate, but related question: what exactly should be illegal with respect to CSAM possession?

You've pointed out exactly the kind of incoherences in law that I was hoping to bring to mind. Agreed, on the surface there is little difference between possession of snuff vs CSAM. I'm not sure what to do with that observation, though, because I have trouble assessing:

1. Is surface-level analysis is correct? Or is there something bigger at play?

2. What is the appropriate level of punishment vs rehabilitation?

To the first question, there are obvious differences between child abuse and murder, but I can't think of an example in which one of those differences would also lead to a different conclusion about the nature of the recording. Similarly, I don't think the act of recording the crime is significantly changed by any of the differences between child abuse and murder.

With that in mind, what do we do? Do we consider video-taping murder as bad as video-taping child abuse? My own gut-check reveals that I rationally think murder is worse than rape, but then again, rape somehow seems more taboo. If I consider the taboo element, I reach the opposite conclusion: that rape is worse than murder. Adding in the "child" element, I observe a main effect of making everything worse, but the interaction of "rape" getting disproportionately worse than "murder".

Again, this is just me, but I would like to understand where these conflicting feelings come from. My sense is that rape triggers us on a symbolic level... something about Man betraying Woman. I'm old-fashioned enough to think archetypes matter, so I'd like to get a bead on this before formulating any policy opinions.

Whenever I see this, my immediate thought is that such brothels are owned, operated and surveilled by three-letter agencies. Do we have any evidence of their involvement, in this case?

If you'll forgive this tangent, I am not sure it is a good idea to maintain a "worst of" list. I can already imagine pedos competing for first place.

I think you're right that we should be able to debate this question, but I also have a hard time believing that circulating CSAM has no detrimental effect whatsoever. I find it quite credible that the production and distribution of original child-abuse content can earn a social reward for pedophiles, and in so doing, encourage them to continue or expand their practice. I also find it credible that it can form the basis of a "street cred" system that binds online communities of child abusers together.

On car forums, you're cool if you're the first to do a particular mod. In pedo communities, I'd expect you to be "cool" if you violate a new, hitherto-unseen kid, or violate one in a new and creative way.

>But that's already illegal and people who do this are laughably bad at ITSEC. Like seriously, read the stories of CSAM making "studios" who got caught.

Separately, this doesn't follow. Catching criminals with laughably bad OPSEC doesn't exclude the existence of successful criminals with very good OPSEC.

My take is a bit different to yours. I think they didn't anticipate a concerted effort to undermine like-mindedness of the people comprising institutions in an attempt to make an egalitarian society. It's not that long ago that people appreciated the difference between social exclusion and custodianship, and recognized that some amount of gatekeeping is essential to institutional function.

To be clear, that same gatekeeping can be and has a times been perverted into social exclusion, but the problem at hand IMO is the discarding of the baby with the bathwater.

I did indeed misread, and we are in perfect agreement! My apologies!

>The proposed European Constitution went a long way to fix this

Uhh... what?

Firstly, it was rejected by more than just the French and the Dutch. Secondly, the reason it was rejected is precisely because, for lack of democratic process, it structurally favors this kind of authoritarian opacity.

The proposed constitution doesn't even begin to fix this; it is instead the very cause.

Speak for yourself.

There are few things more practical than a good theoretical grounding when your job is to:

1. design and implement a database

2. design and implement a p2p consensus protocol

3. design and implement a programming language

4. train and validate an artificial neural network

5. reason about concurrency

etc.

At some point, we really need to start distinguishing the kind of programmer who writes REST endpoints all day from the one who engineers the systems other programmers treat as an abstraction. Both are respectable jobs, but the former is closer to plumbing than engineering. The former is also less well-paid, has less job security, more on-call duty, less intellectual substance, less technological innovation (but arguably more commercial innovation), more grunt-work and a lower barrier-to-entry.

The 'techno' prefix in 'technocrat' does not refer to information technology, or even science. It instead refers to a technical specialist in the exercising of governmental or managerial authority.

I can't think of a single instance in which a technocracy has produced a good outcome.

I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of post-war urban planning in France. In particular, the "HLMs" of the 60's and 70's are known for their explicit interest in providing for quality-of-life in communal living. What happened instead is that these utopian plans didn't survive contact with reality.

I beg to differ, but that's also missing the point. The more important point is how profoundly undemocratic the EU is as an institution, and how you'd expect a continent with recent experience of totalitarianism to be very careful with such things.

Have we already forgotten that a fair few countries rejected the EU constitution by referendum, only to have it shoved down their throats? Have we forgotten that Europe managed to produce some of the most brutal totalitarian states, and this within living memory? Are we really going to write this off as mere "maladministration"? Have we learned nothing?

I can already hear the objections. "But omginternets, this time the government is enforcing the right ideas!"

We're going to end up proving the Americans right. Let that sink in.

That's a very bizarre reading of this thread of conversation.

It's a dog whistle. It is exactly the same as if I were to say to you, "all lives matter" or "make America great again".

PS: we know you know this.

I think there's room for protecting people's public image so long as they have not been convicted.

I can't help but wonder what it would take for Europeans to develop a sense of mistrust in top-down governance.