Redmess
An anti-porn app put him in jail and his family under surveillance: 
A court used an app called Covenant Eyes to surveil the family of a man released on bond.]]
This is some Chinese surveillance state bullshit. Except it's in the US. It is pretty messed up, and that's before going into its flaws.
Optimism is a duty.
Some context from the article:
"Prosecutors in Monroe County this spring charged Hannah’s husband with possession of child sexual abuse material—a serious crime that she says he did not commit and to which he pleaded not guilty. Given the nature of the charges, the court ordered that he not have access to any electronic devices as a condition of his pretrial release from jail. To ensure he complied with those terms, the probation department installed Covenant Eyes on Hannah’s phone, as well as those of her two children and her mother-in-law."
This doesn't sound legal, and I would want some confirmation from another source before believing they did that. Wired is the only source I've seen so far.
Figure of Hourai
Given how the app purportedly works, and that if wired is accurate then it can be tested to show that just having visited pornhub enough in the past ON ANOTHER DEVICE for it to be frequently visited would be enough to trigger background loading on a synced mobile, it's even more stupid.
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Redmess
That seems to be what happened here: Google backloaded Pornhub in the background due to previous use, and that alone triggered the app, even though the user did not actually visit Pornhub.
It is also disturbing how the entire family is under surveillance, and how they are blocked from visiting independent news sites dealing with legal rights.
Optimism is a duty.
Yeah, I think some constitutional rights are being violated here. Provided, of course, that the incident happened as Wired reported.
Redmess
Is there any reason to doubt it? Ars/Wired is usually pretty good at proper journalism, though Ars has gotten a bit more clickbaity in recent years.
Optimism is a duty.
It's so extreme I would expect it to get reported more widely, were it accurate. Not proof it isn't, but reason to want some verification.
Redmess
Apparently the people behind this are actively preventing people from discovering just how illegal it is. And a large group of people just believes that whatever the government tells them must be legal. It's really disconcerting what governments can get away with as long as they do it "officially".
Optimism is a duty.
A procrastination in of itself
The argument for legality is consent, it’s mentioned in the article “Phyllis Emerick, the chief deputy public defender in Monroe County, argues that because Hannah’s husband and his family consented to the surveillance, they gave up their rights to privacy.”
As there is no legal right to parole I guess the argument is that parole conditions don’t have to be reasonable or proportional. As they are not imposed but agreed to a charged individual always nominally has the right to decline.
Parole conditions on people who share a residence with a person on parole aren’t a new things, it’s just that they normally apply to dangerous things like not having guns around, not having your internet activity monitored 24/7.
I suspect that the one area where it may well cross the line is the monitoring of legal communications, I don’t know if there’s precedent for parole only being granted if an individual has all communication with their lawyer being subject to police monitoring.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Planeswalker
I mean, with something as serious as CSA material I'm not surprised they want to monitor the family and make sure the father isn't reoffending, but using an evangelical third-party app to monitor the family is incredibly suspicious. Being blocked from looking at their legal rights is completely unacceptable.
Oissu!
@Redmess
Criminalization of encryption: the 8th December case in France
Here's the context for the trial but the trial itself was mostly about the criminalization of hard drive encryption, the use of privacy tools (Tails, Tor, Signal, Whats App, Proton Mail, etc...) and the teaching of the usage of said privacy tools and OPSEC, and some questions were frankly ludicrous: Are you anti-GAFA?”, “What do you think of GAFA?” or “Do you feel a certain reserve towards communication technologies?”
Given that France is leading toward a heavy surveillance and authoritarian due to the president not having the absolute majority in either the National Assembly or the Senate, and that the Senate voted a law enabling facial recognition and trying to submit it to the national assembly, this is not good news.
Edited by Thesegougou on Jun 15th 2023 at 12:12:36 PM
I'm not crazy, just creatively different.
Figure of Hourai
I feel like something was lost in translation, since that doesn't say the things themselves are criminal, but are evidence of criminal behaviour.
Which is still stupid and terrible (disliking big tech companies and computer literacy are evidence now?), but does not make 'using an encrypted communication system' a crime. <_>
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Yes, it's not illegal per se, but if it makes you suspicious and is used against you in court that indeed constitutes as "criminalization".
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
Figure of Hourai
It's not criminalisation if it doesn't make the acts themselves illegal. That's what criminalisation means. It's misleading, whether by an error in translation or intentionally, to use it otherwise. <_>
Visiting the same distant park every day would be suspicious behaviour that could be used as evidence of criminal intent if you're charged with something that happened in its vicinity, but that doesn't mean 'visiting a park' or 'visiting a park you don't live by' has been criminalised.
In this case, it's terrible, weak evidence (and a horrible justification for 'we need to spy on everyone because they don't want everyone in the world spying on them'), but saying 'France is criminalising encryption' is just sensationalism.
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Whether the wording is correct or not, the message is clear: French authorities don't want you to be using tools that protect your privacy. If you do, they'll automatically assume that you are up to no good.
Related to that, there are politicians in Spain who actually want to ban end-to-end encryption. Here is an article on the topic.
Figure of Hourai
Is there any authority on the planet that will take 'you communicate only in ways that can't be tracked and make it impossible to access any of your data, far beyond even the norm for privacy-aware individuals' well? I thought it was a baked-in flaw of judicial systems that they take privacy attempts as proof that you have something to hide and therefore evidence of wrongdoing. France is just the latest piece of evidence.
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Ironically, the EU has in many ways more legal privacy protections than the US does.
[[Sacramento Sheriff is sharing license plate reader data with anti-abortion states, records show https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article276848586.html]]:
"According to documents that the Sheriff’s Office provided EFF through a public records request, it has shared license plate reader data with law enforcement agencies in states that have passed laws banning abortion, including Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas...
...Automated license plate readers are often fixed to stationary locations, or police vehicles, and can collect thousands of license plate images that then are stored in a digital cloud. Once in the cloud, it can easily be shared with out-of-state agencies that use the same software.
Schwartz said that a sheriff in Texas, Idaho or any other state with an abortion ban on the books could use that data to track people’s movements around California, knowing where they live, where they work and where they seek reproductive medical care, including abortions...
...The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office isn’t the only one sharing that data; in May, EFF released a report showing that 71 law enforcement agencies in 22 California counties — including Sacramento County — were sharing such data. The practice is in violation of a 2015 law that states “a (California law enforcement) agency shall not sell, share, or transfer ALPR information, except to another (California law enforcement) agency, and only as otherwise permitted by law.”"
Traffic cams are a pretty serious source of potential privacy violations. What isn't clear to me so far is whether or not anyone has used such data to convict anyone yet.
French bill allows police access to phones, camera and gps
TLDR: The french senate and National assembly voted for a bill (specifically 3rd article for a minstry of justice reform for 2023/2027), which allows for the police to activate the microphone, camera and geolocalisation of every electronic device.
While it's supposed to be used for people suspected for felony with sentences of 5 years or more and needs the approval of a judge, the police has been given more and more power and support from the government and pretty much considers any protester as criminals. (Sainte Soline, retirement protests, drones, multiple protests banned, etc...)
Edited by Thesegougou on Jul 15th 2023 at 9:10:29 PM
I'm not crazy, just creatively different.
Figure of Hourai
Because nothing can ever go wrong with demanding every electronic device have backdoors that grant total access to all their input features.
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I wonder if there is a way to sabotage it?
I'll try to answer it both in terms of technology and law:
In terms of technology, we're not sure how it works. (is it exploiting a flaw, forcing to install an app, etc...) so the best way would be to update all electronic devices and do little acts (put a tape on the camera side when you're not using it, sealing your phone in an sound dampening place or just keep it home when you're not using it).
In terms of law, I've actually tried to explain to some deputies (mostly right wing, because of course they're the ones voting the law in the first place) that aside from the fact that Pegasus was a thing and spied on the former minister of armies, that this law could turn on themselves by spying on them and that someone could reveal their private information on the dark web. (since it's their boogeyman, why not get a little dirty ?)
I could also note that amusingly, a lot of right/far right wing deputies, senators and ministers have a case and could be sentenced to 5 years and up (but they just get to pay an hefty sum)
IIRC, there was an Obvious Rule Patch that some professions can't be spied on, but since they'll ignore it anyway, the best course in terms of law would be to use it against them and abuse it until they repel the law (or make it either so absurd that no one uses it or just would be the last straw)
Edited by Thesegougou on Jul 17th 2023 at 7:38:16 PM
I'm not crazy, just creatively different.
Figure of Hourai
So, the worst product category for data collection and privacy iiiiis...
Cars, according to Mozilla. Because, somehow, cars are the most intrusive data-gathering-and-selling machines money can buy, with no controls or way to opt out of it.
Hell, some brands have put in their privacy policy that they're collecting information about your sex life. And their idea of consent to data collection is 'being in the car'. Even as a passenger.
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Once a person has served their sentence and fulfilled the terms of any parole, their rights should get restored. That's true no matter what their crime was, with a few very rare exceptions.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"