Posted by bilsbie 2 days ago
As simple "I care about privacy" need is not a reason to bother with setup for a regular person. So it could work only if it's as easy, as current internet. And for profit businesses provide it.
As for another protocol all together: there are some experiments already, but again, why use those?
I consider mesh-nets for home use... We already use walkies in the house...
Ask yourself. I won't. Will you?
False dichotomy, both parts are equivalent.
They are going to force it by creating artifical problems, waiting for the public's reaction and coming up with prefabricated solutions.
Every little incrementalist step that led us to the current state of affairs, was implemented this way.
The user agent should simply send the user’s age of the parental lock is set up and the websites required to respect this.
Parental controls and the OS should be robust enough to not let kids bypass it (e.g.: by installing a browser that skips the header, or blocking proxy websites)
Done.
Cellphones only because those are the devices kids can have on them all the time and can easily use in private unsupervised.
For me the main goal is to go from “any kid can do whatever on internet, unsupervised” to “it takes effort and subterfuge to get to some stuff”.
I don't know what their retention time is on circulation records, but beyond aggregate statistics for culling materials that aren't circulating I bet it isn't too long. Now I want to go check.
My library also only keeps 24 hours of video surveillance because they didn't want to be able to fulfill requests from the cops for footage of patrons. I really liked that.
Edit: In the patron portal it permits me to disable "borrowing history" and says it permanently deletes my records. I do contract IT work for them so next time I'm engaged I'll ask about the details. They're moving to Koha later this year (free / open-source ILS) so I could go look at the code to see what it does (which is nice).
On the theme of their privacy fanaticism:
Over a decade ago the library got a grant to do outdoor public WiFi in the park behind their building. As part of that grant they needed to report the number of distinct users using the WiFi each day. Their UniFi controller tracks MAC addresses of associated stations. I used a query against the underlying MongoDB to get the usage reports to satisfy the grant.
To minimize the potential of tracking individual users the library director had me write a script to grovel thru MongoDB, do a SHA-1 hash of each public MAC address tracked concatenated with a randomly-generated salt for that day, then write back the first 48 bits of the hash over the original MAC. The library gets their daily statistics and long-term traffic trend data, they don't double-count associations for the same device in the same day, but they can't track individual people over a span of multiple days.
Now that devices randomly-generating MACs are mainstream it's much less necessary. I thought it was really cool she thought this. (The whole salting/hashing bit was my idea. She just wanted to be able to fulfill the grant reporting requirements amd be unable to track people.)
Write your own books.
Make your own music.
I do see folks who look homeless using the computers, so I assume there must be a special accommodation for them.
But, if you’re just a regular middle class joe looking for anonymity on the internet, I don’t think the library is the place for you—it’s tied to your library card which knows your address, and anyway what would you want to be private that you would be ok to broadcast in an open library setting? Nobody watching corn or browsing whatever successor to Silk Road.
Usually the login screen says something about fairly restrictive terms of use, even for the WiFi on a personal device, and I don’t know if you can install software on the library computers.
When I look around at library patrons using the computers, it’s usually lower income folks applying to jobs or similar, and people playing chess.
What???
I mean, Nazis have always been attracted to punk because they like the loud noise but are too stupid to understand lyrics, but they tend to get their shit kicked in by punks more often than not. I don't think that's the same thing.
In the UK, there was also the Rock against Communism movement which came out of the far right faction of punk and was a response to Rock against Racism.
- Brother Mouzone / Ed Burns & David Simon, The Wire (2003) S2E10 "Storm Warnings"
The scene is apparently on YT, though ... you'll have to sign in to confirm your age to view it best I can tell:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCioIwagYxM>
(If this link works, you'll get the full unbowdlerised quote. For those unfamiliar with the series, the speaker is Black.)
Privacy is not an on and off switch or an all or nothing. You have to defend the privacy you have and also fight to expand it as a human right.
That said, I am very concerned about how things work privacy wise today (even without ID check).
So if they know, then why all the fuss and the the need to enforce ID on the Internet? Just for the heck's sake?
Ah, that's for legitimization. In other words, "by producing your digital ID, you herein fully acknowledge the fact that you're a slave to the system in which all we knew about you illegaly, is now known legally"?
It is enabling control infrastructure for governments whom are becoming increasingly undemocratic in a society where the elite gets more and more influence and where the middle class is becoming ruined.
If I misbehave here, dang can just ban me. There's no reason HN needs to know my real name. The only reason to mandate blanket age and identity verification is to control online speech.
You are required to identify yourself for an electricity account because it is essentially extending you credit. You use the electricity first, and then they bill you for it later. They also only identify the person who is receiving the bill. You could have a house with a dozen people in it but the electric company only knows the name of the person responsible for the bill.
You are free to identify yourself on the internet right now. People who are intelligent and/or believe in freedom and free speech are opposed to this authoritarian power grab.
Requiring ID to buy a prepaid SIM card has become the norm across the developed world. There are still a few holdout countries, but they won’t hold out for long.
Harmony is another word for suppression of dissent, and that's the effect it'll have.
There's a long history of tools being promoted for one purpose and used for another. Tools supposedly intended to restrict "porn" get used to restrict LGBT healthcare and resources. Tools supposedly intended to promote "harmony" on social media get used to track down activists and protestors.
The obvious response to such overreach is to refuse to allow such tools to exist. It's not that the tools invite abuse; it's that all use of such tools is abuse.
Neither won't they ever fathom the fact that governments inevitably become full-on fascist to the meek bleating of a critical mass of ther ilk (check the sympaties to the Chinese surveillance below).
Not in Australia