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if this sounds familiar it should fake news isn t something new it s just a new manifestation of the techniques employed by politicians and particularly tabloid journalists ever since politics and journalism has existed of course neither the politicians or journalists would be happy to acknowledge this spin sounds much better than misinformation and yet the relationship is very close spin helps create a fake narrative that is every bit as damaging as actual fake news and far harder to detect disprove or oppose as with trolling the effect of all of this is much greater if the accounts spreading it have both credibility and large numbers of followers that means that the ones that matter are the big blue tick accounts rather than the dodgy anonymous trolls and again the structure of social media that allows information to be spread so rapidly via those big blue tick accounts and again this is not the focus of of the online safety bill safer to focus on the obviously villainous than acknowledge our own role in villainy who gets a free press pass one final thought if the online safety bill gets passed and it almost certainly will it will mean that the press is the only bit of the media that is not regulated broadcast media has had statutory regulation for a long time with ofcom as the regulator after the online safety bill the same will be true about social media and yet those of us with memories long enough to remember the leveson inquiry will remember the vehemence with which the press resisted any idea of statutory regulation of the press as though it were an intolerable affront to free speech i don t think they were necessarily wrong but they should be clear that statutory regulation of social media is every bit as much of an affront to free speech indeed in many ways a worse one as it is the ordinary people rather than the relatively privileged peoples who run the newspapers and magazines whose free speech is being curtailed that ought to matter a gaping void as it is the online safety bill looks likely to attack the symptoms rather than the causes of online harms unless it finds a way to address the underlying problems and to confront the massive blind spot it has for the role of politicians and journalists it will be just yet another massive game of whac a mole doomed to failure and disappointment that frankly is what i expect to happen the bill will be passed everything will trumpet how we re finally taming the wild west but nothing will really happen trolls will continue trolling new ones replacing those who do get caught and misinformation will continue to spread the powerful will still be unscathed and the hate will still spread and a few years later we will have another go with the same result posted on march 16 2022 by paulbernal64 posted in uncategorized 2 comments in praise of hiding the new government anti encryption campaign no place to hide has a great many problems it s based on many false assumptions but the biggest of all of these is the whole idea that hiding is a bad thing it can be of course when bad guys hide from the authorities which is what the government is grasping at but in practice we all need to be able to hide sometimes indeed the weaker and more vulnerable we are the more we need places to hide the more predators we face the more we need places to hide and if we believe and the government campaign is based on this assumption that there are a lot of dangerous predators around on the internet that becomes especially important places to hide become critical learning how to hide becomes critical having the tools and techniques not just available for a few specially talented or trained individuals but for everyone including the most vulnerable becomes critical this means that the tools and systems used by those people the mainstream systems the most popular networks and messaging services are the ones where safety is the most important where privacy is the most important geeks and nerds can always find their own way to do this it s no problem for an adept to use their own encryption tools or to communicate using secure systems such as signal or even to build their own tools they re not the ones that are the issue here it s the mainstream that matters which is why the government campaign is so fundamentally flawed they want to stop facebook rolling out end to end encryption on facebook s messenger when that s exactly what s needed to help we should be encouraging more end to end encryption not less we should be teaching our kids how to be more secure and more private online and letting them teach us at the same time they know more about the need for privacy than we often give them credit for we need to learn how to trust them too posted on january 21 2022 by paulbernal64 posted in uncategorized 1 comment who needs privacy you might be forgiven for thinking that this government is very keen on privacy after all mps all seem to enjoy the end to end encryption provided by the whatsapp groups that they use to make their plots and plans and they ve been very keen to keep the details of their numerous parties during lockdown as private as possible so successfully that it seems to have taken a year or more for information about evidently well attended work events to become public some also seem enthused by the use of private email for work purposes and to destroy evidence trails to keep other information private and thwart foi requests sue gray even provided some advice on the subject a few years back on the other hand they also love surveillance 2016 s investigatory powers act gives immense powers to the authorities to watch pretty much our every move on the internet and gather pretty much any form of data about us that s held by pretty much anyone they ve also been very keen to force everyone to use real names on social media which though it may not seem completely obvious is a move designed primarily to cut privacy and for many years they ve been fighting against the expansion of the use of encryption indeed a new wave of attacks on encryption is just beginning so what s going on in some ways it s very simple they want privacy for themselves and no privacy for anyone else it fits the general pattern of one rule for us another for everyone else but it s much more insidious than that it s not just a double standard it s the reverse of what is appropriate because it needs to be understood that privacy is ultimately about power people need privacy against those who have power over them employees need privacy from their employers something exemplified by the needs of whistleblowers for privacy and anonymity citizens need privacy from their governments victims need privacy from their stalkers and bullies and so on kids need privacy from their parents their teachers and more the weaker and more vulnerable people are the more they need privacy and the approach by the government is exactly the opposite the powerful themselves get more privacy the weaker ordinary people and in particular minority groups and children get less or even no privacy the people who should have more accountability notably the government get privacy to prevent that accountability whilst the people who need more protection lose the protection that privacy can provide this is why moves to ban or limit the use of end to end encryption are so bad powerful people and tech savvy people like the criminals that they use as the excuse for trying to restrict encryption will always be able to get that encryption you can do it yourself if you know how the rest of the people the ordinary users of things like facebook messenger are the ones who need it to protect themselves from criminals stalkers bullies etc and are the ones that moves like this from the government are trying to stop getting it the push will be a strong one trying to persuade us that in order to protect kids etc we need to be able to see everything they re doing so we need to effectively remove all their privacy that s just wrong making their communications open to the authorities to their parents etc also makes it open to their enemies bullies abusers scammers etc and indeed those parents or authority figures who are themselves dangerous to kids we need to understand that this is wrong none of this is easy and it s very hard to give someone privacy when you don t trust them that s another key here we need to learn who to trust and how to trust them and we need to do our best to teach our kids how to look after themselves to a great extent they know kids understand privacy far more that people give them credit for and we need to trust that too posted on january 17 2022 january 17 2022 by paulbernal64 posted in uncategorized tagged crime encryption internet privacy surveillance leave a comment bt s walk me home tech solutionism at its worst magical thinking it s all too easy to see a difficult societal problem and try to solve it with a technological magic wand we tend to treat technology as magical a lot of the time arthur c clarke s third law from as far back as 1962 that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic has a great deal of truth to it and is the route to a great many problems this latest one bt s idea that women can opt in probably via an app to being tracked in real time as they walk home alone is just the latest in a long series of these kinds of ideas click on the app and you have a fairy godmother watching you ready to protect you from the evil monsters who might be out to get you more surveillance doesn t mean more security that s the essence of this kind of thinking by tech we can sort everything out and as so often the method by which this tech will solve everything is surveillance it s another classical trap the idea that as long as we can monitor things track things gather more data we can solve the problems if only we knew if only we were able to watch everything would be ok this is the logic that lies behind ideas such as backdoors into encryption still being touted on a big scale by many in governments all over the world which mean just as bt s walk me home would actually reducing security and increasing risks for most of those involved just as breaking encryption will make children more vulnerable getting women to put themselves under real time surveillance at their key moments of risk will be likely to make them more vulnerable rather than less look at the downsides it will make them easier to identify and easier to locate they will be effectively registered on the system through downloading and activating the app it will record their location their regular routes and the times they use them their phone numbers and more it will identify them as vulnerable and make them even more of a target this again is a classical trap of tech solutionism it s easy just to look at a piece of tech in terms of how it s intended to be used and in terms to the intended user in this case that the people tracking the relevant woman will be only people who have her best interests at heart and who will only intervene in the best way as the system intends the good police officer acting in the best possible way all systems and all data will be misused this is in itself magical thinking and the opposite of the way we should be looking at this we have to be aware that all systems will be misused history show this particularly in relation to technology just as one example there are a whole series of data protection cases involving police officers misusing their authorised access to data from the bignell case in 1998 where officers used their access to a motor vehicle database to find out details of cars for personal purposes onwards it must never be forgotten that wayne couzens was a serving police officer when he abducted raped and murdered sarah everard this kind of a system will also create a database of vulnerable women together with their personal details their phone numbers their home addresses the routes they take to get home including when they use them and that they feel vulnerable coming home this will be a honeypot of data for any potential stalker and again we must not forget that wayne couzens was a serving police officer and that he planned the abduction rape and murder of sarah everard carefully systems like this would be a perfect tool for another would be wayne couzens and also to smaller scale creeps and misogynists the plethora of stories about police officers and others misusing their position to pester women and worse that have come out in the wake of the abduction rape and murder of sarah everard should make it abundantly clear that this isn t a minor concern a route to victim blaming and infringing women s rights perhaps even more importantly systems like this are part of a route to blame the victim for the crime if only she d used her walk me home she would have been ok could be the new if only she hadn t dressed provocatively it puts pressure on women to let themselves be tracked and monitored as well as making it their fault if they don t use this tool to save themselves this in itself is an infringement on women s rights not just the right to be safe which is fundamental but the right to privacy to freedom of action and much more it s treating women as though they are like pets to be microchipped for their own protection registered on a database so that men can protect them and if they don t take advantage of this well they deserve what they get avoiding the issue and avoiding responsibility all of which brings us back to the real problem male violence tech solutionism is about attempting to use tech to solve societal problems the societal problem here is male violence so long as the focus is on the tech and the tech that can be used by the women the focus is off the men whose violence is the real problem and so long as we thing that problem can be solved with an app we fail to acknowledge how serious a problem it is how deep a problem it is and how serious a solution it requires it also means that many of those involved avoid taking the responsibility that they have for the problem the police the home office men avoiding responsibility has become an art form for the metropolitan police and for cressida dick in particular some of the officers who shared abusive messages with wayne couzens are still working at the met and those are just the ones that we know about this problem is deep set it is societal societal problems need societal solutions the bottom line here is that this a massive societal problem and that is something that won t be solved by an app it requires a societal solution and that isn t easy it isn t quick and it isn t something that can be done without pain and sacrifice the pain and sacrifice though should not come from the victims at the moment and with solutions like bt s walk me home it is only the victims who are being expected to sacrifice anything that is straightforwardly wrong the starting point sh...