SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Facebook is helping to round up blasphemers, that is to say those who insult or deny islam, and deliver them to justice in Pakistan. By engaging in illegal speech on social media they leave a trail of evidence which the government is able to request and Facebook complies with. The anti-blasphemy laws are also useful in cracking down on dissent in general as the penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan is now death.
In recent months, Pakistan's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, has increased pressure on Facebook and Twitter to identify individuals suspected of blasphemy. On 7 July, Facebook's vice-president of public policy, Joel Kaplan, met with Khan to discuss the government's demand that Facebook either remove blasphemous content or be blocked in the country.
On Monday, Facebook confirmed that it had rejected Pakistan's demand that new accounts be linked to a mobile phone number – a provision that would make it easier for the government to identify account holders. Currently, opening a Facebook account in Pakistan requires only an email address, while mobile phone users must provide fingerprints to a national database.
That social media would become the means for a government crackdown on free speech is a bitter twist for platforms that claim to want to increase openness and the free flow of ideas.
The advent of social media once heralded an opening for religious debate in Pakistan. Platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Viber allowed individuals in conservative, rural areas to engage in discussions that were once possible only for students and urban intellectuals, unconstrained by the conservative norms of their communities.
"Until recently, social media afforded a measure of privacy where you could discuss the hypocrisy of people whose behavior was loathsome but who wore the thick garb of piety," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a prominent academic and activist.
"Now the state is saying that we will track you down wherever you are and however you might want to hide," Hoodbhoy added. "Pakistan is fast becoming a Saudi-style fascist religious state."
The problem with engaging in potentially illegal speech on social media, of course, is that online speech leaves evidence.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:32PM (18 children)
We anti-social network privacy advocates have been saying for years.
When you combine this with the fingerprint requirement for cell phones, the push for paperless money, and the ever increasing push for biometric data up to and including DNA samples, you start to put society into a very dangerous position where all dissidents as well as racial, socioeconomic, and political undesirables can be collectively purged, whether by purging their genes from the genepool, stopping their ability to financially function in society, or using the profile you have built up on them to find or create laws you can use against them based on their proclivities. You can already find examples of this having been done, whether in China, or America, or Australia, or Europe. And now they have the technology to close that noose even tighter, because most people don't have what it takes to game the databases and the system and survive in the gaps in-between.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:41PM (13 children)
What does it take to game the databases? And what are the gaps?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:51PM
Say that you like books and movies that you really don't like
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:08PM (5 children)
Lying plus Bayesian poisoning of data.
An example of lying would be to put a commercial mail box on your drivers license. This is increasingly difficult since they are now categorizing addresses, but the gist is that you give an address held by some friendly party. Never an address of where you sleep. Usage makes it easier. I've been lying so long that the lies are deeply entrenched in the databases, which helps verifying false information as true. This is why I have multiple false addresses that have been used for so long that they are never questioned by the processes. Not even Patriot Act bullshit has flagged them. They get better with age :)
It may take some effort to cultivate. Renting a small place for a few months allows you to get utility bills. From there you could register that address with a few banks, voter registration*, the DMV**, and your passport. At the same time you have a commercial mail box that is registered as the mailing address for all of them. After you "leave" the rental place, you don't need to worry about any mail going there. With almost all places today going green with email & SMS, the chances of you missing communication are small. For actual snail mail you still have the commercial box.
*Voter registration is a special case. Mostly likely you can register as homeless, and you should do so. That bullshit commission put together by the Orange Anus is now trying to suck up all of that information collected. Very satisfied that I registered as homeless using some cross street information that did at least place me in the correct area for my "representatives" that allegedly give two shits about me. Whatever voter information was or maybe stolen from California does not affect me.
**DMV is also special because once you have a drivers license with an address it is rarely, if ever, questioned. Except by cops, those fuckers love to try to trip you up by asking questions. Be prepared with some answers that will appease them.
Bayesian poisoning can also be fun. An example of that could be a VPN or proxy since all of that traffic is mixed when coming out the endpoint. Bayesian poisoning on steroids is pretty much what TOR is. All of the information being collected against TOR endpoints can be considered a "gamed" database. I've also thought of creating a web surfing bot that emulates human behavior to create normal usage patterns from many people on a single connection. My traffic isn't even part of it since that is transmitted through the proxies.
Another great example would be exchanging cell phones with others on a regular basis. All of the metadata sucked up the wireless carriers is the greatest threat, since it does contain your real location. The solution is to make sure that phone is moving so often, and visiting other residences, resulting in Bayesian poisoning. You cannot determine a real identity without a whole lot of extra effort. You can pay some kid to go buy you a burner phone, and then pay a homeless person $30 bucks and the new phone to get his current phone. I use SIP and have forwarding/DISA setup that allows me to put the number of the new phone in, and I can use it with my VoIP number with nobody telling the difference. Tracing me would be very difficult for anyone but probably the NSA and the FBI with their mediation switches exposing where my VoIP number exists. Even then all they have is the owner of the equipment and get to find out that all of the addresses listed are not where I sleep and spend my time. Searching the homeless person's cell phone for tracking data gets you a needle in the haystack. Just which location is me, and which location is somebody else? You can have a lot of phone rerouting your communications over wireless networks in coffee shops, bars, etc.
Gaming the credit reporting agencies is even easier. Just let the thieves have it. I never talk with debt collection agencies anyways, so I don't care if the debt they are collecting on is real or not. If a mime is murdered in a forest, and there is nobody around, did it make a sound? What I now have is a credit report where there are at least 10 other people that have been using it. I'm either 22, 47, or 68 years old depending on which credit reporting agency you ask. Did I just tell you the truth about those ages? Of course not! That's the whole point here :) Always lie, everywhere, all of the time.
I'm not sure you could game Facebook or Twitter, but the best answer there is to simply not play at all. Those are megacorps that only care about money, and not about principles like privacy, freedom, and anonymity. Most of those principles are not in their best interests either. Anything information shared with these companies must be treated as information made public.
Lie. Lie. Then lie some more.
All of that being said, the cracks are being filled in. The best solution is to vote with your wallet and just leave to another country. If that is not possible, then I suggest fierce resistance to the extent of destroying their equipment whenever you have the opportunity.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:18PM (4 children)
If you can register the commercial box then why bother with a renting accommodation?
Something is missing.
Leave the phone hidden in silent mode on various buses? or unsuspecting random commuter? ;)
(because you know where the commuter ends up)
The problem with phones is that the OS is spying and the radiomodem can be used to break the main processor through direct memory access.
I'll hope it's encrypted otherwise the voice can be used for identification. That's how they caught Escobar the druglord.
Where the phone stays still every 24 hours during at least 6 hours is likely your place of sleep..
Just follow the IMEI code.
Do credit reporting agencies not verify their data in any qualified way?
Maybe it could be fun to make agencies be sure on various data and discredit each other when they exchange data because they think the other is lying.. ;)
And you can game Facebook and Twitter, you just have to use expendable IP address and fake interests etc.
Destroying their equipment, how? it usually consist of servers in locked facilities.
Having that equipment process data with negative value.. priceless ;)
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Friday July 28 2017, @01:44AM (3 children)
You can't. They started categorizing the addresses and investigating them through the U.S postal service. They can tell if it is a commercial mail box, and of course, a P.O box isn't suitable for pretty much all commercial validation methods in place.
If you can find a mailbox company that is operated from land zoned as residential, you have a chance. However, that is very rare. Almost all commercial boxes have many identifying points that disqualify them from use.
What makes matters difficult is proving ownership or control over a physical address. They want copies of rental agreements or leases, in addition to utility bills listing it as a service address under your name. Easiest thing to do is find somebody renting and ask them to let you take over a utility bill while you rent. Not that abnormal for a group of roommates to do such a thing because you really do need at least that lease agreement PLUS a utility bill. Lease agreements can be faked, but utility bills can be verified.
It keeps its original number and SIM card when you give it to somebody else. Your VoIP number is what is static. Every time you change a phone, you are registering that phone number with your communications system and forgetting the previous number. In fact, any calls from the previous number need to be dropped completely or have SIT tones played to them.
Ideally the phone started off owned by somebody else and will have considerable amounts of information already there. You are just adding some of your own, mixing it in, and then later giving the phone to somebody else that will mix in even more information.
No such thing on the PSTN. I'm not trying to evade the NSA or anything, but the casual kind of corruption where somebody tries to get my address from a license plate, doxxing, or the government fucking lost 1.2 million records with sensitive information on it. Or some bombastic fucking douchebag hires a White Nationalist to investigate "election fraud", or how he somehow *didn't* lose by 3 million votes to that nasty woman.
At some level I'm not trying to hide at all. People can find me, they can call me, email me, etc. What they cannot do is determine where I live, or where I'm at from my technology.
Yes, and that IMEI code changes often enough the real game is figuring out which IMEI code I'm using that day. It's not fool proof or absolute by any means, and works better the more people that are involved. In order to find me now you would need to call me first, have me answer, trace the phone call back to my VoIP equipment, call me on a separate line to inform me that I need to cooperate with an investigation and deliver the identity of the VoIP equipment owner, have me turn myself over with an IP address for the current connection, trace the IP address, subpoena the ISP (of which I'm also on the inside of that) for the service address and customer info, and then, after all of that, drive to where I'm at to pick me up. Assuming I'm still there because I'm made aware of anyone looking into it :)
I'm not saying it's impossible to find me, but highly improbable for anybody not law enforcement. Certainly not from a casual database search, that much I can tell you. Since I've *always* lied, from the very first day, on ANY government or corporate forms, my physical address is not listed in databases with my identity associated with it. In all seriousness, only cell phone logs reveal my location, and my cell phone changes often enough. Even if you figured out my email address from Soylent and then tracked it, the owner information is shielded and the servers are operated out of state. Getting though that... takes us back to credit card and financial information.... which takes us back to all the lies during the unPatriot Act interrogations.
Quite a trick to associate my residential address with my name. None of that even compares to the difficulty of finding me in South America where I have no cell phone on me, no communications, there are no property ownership records, and it would be one hell of a hard days hike through nature and then thousands of feet up a mountain side to knock on my door. When I get there I don't even care if somebody eventually gets the coordinates. Only nation state resources can come at me, or any private group willing to put together an expedition to come find my little village. If somebody's address is the top of Mt. Everest, how many people do you think will ever make the trip to visit :)
Nope. They're fucking incompetent idiots that will take negative information at face value and publish it, while positive information is very difficult to get onto your report. I'm absolutely serious that the three of them are contradictory in my case. There are addresses in states I've never lived in, and no matter how hard I tried, I never could convince Transwhatever that I wasn't a 72 year old man on the East coast.
You live by the sword, you by the sword though. I never used it as a young man always paying cash for all debts, so when I went to use it to buy houses I first needed to evict all the identity thief fuckers that were already on it. My credit went very high before Great Depression II, and then when it became clear it was just one big fucking game where the Elites don't suffer the consequences, I abandoned it and refused to pay on any debts to any banks. Period. All things considered, they've lost more money in the last 10 years then I lost in my houses. Fuck the banks.
Good lord. Why though? I'm not interested in consuming any information from them, whatsoever. Anything good will be from friends and family, and they can tell me when we meet up and I watch them be addicted to the phones for 20 minutes. It's so nice when the meat puppets visit :)
Physical destruction may be impossible, but we can certainly fuck with the networks tremendously, hack into databases to corrupt their values slowly, etc. In the case of physical equipment in the field, like security cameras or biometric capture devices (Minority Report) that is what a small throwaway drone with a thermite charge is for. Melt a hole through pieces of equipment and then have it fly itself to a dumpster before overwriting the flight software with zeros. Those things are getting cheaper all of the time. Realistically, a group with 100k of funding could take out a small cities worth of CCTV and traffic cameras.
Really, it's a war already. The Information War, and asymmetric information is a bitch.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @09:18PM (2 children)
But how do you go from renting a place to commercial box once you end the lease?
Is it possible to setup a outhouse with a mailbox on a pole as an address? perhaps with a bill from "Drinking Straw Soda Utility Inc"..
Still vulnerable to OS spying and takeover via the radiomodem. Which can then ask.. "where am I".
What is your policy to deal with credit score companies in the USA?
Regarding drones. They sure have possibilities. Though now they are supposedly going to be registered.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday July 31 2017, @08:59PM (1 child)
You use the commercial mailbox for everything. The rental place was just for a few lines on some forms. After you've been "approved" you make sure that all mail is being directed towards the commercial mailbox. You can use a forwarding address registered with the post office to get any mail accidentally sent there. However, missing mail is something you take a risk on. It's important to ensure that communications go across email, SMS, or telephone.
In my experience, most of the time the mailing address works.
As for the latter, I would imagine yes. As long as the property was up to code, zoned for it, etc. you could use it.
Your other questions:
-- Cell phones are still vulnerable. My preference would be to get rid of them completely, but there isn't enough wireless coverage. Yet.
-- The credit reporting agencies can suck my balls. My policy is that I don't use it. Cash. When they also demand credit inquiries I tell them upfront that I don't care if they do. If they want to charge me more money, for any reason, than I walk. When you can pay out cash for the entirety of the lease, then you are really not financing anything. They still stupidly use the credit reporting agencies as a judge of character. I make sure they now that it doesn't work with me. My money and I can just leave for the door :)
-- Drones..... if they want to enforce registration be my guest. They don't have the tech or skilled manpower to completely secure residential airspace. Since I'm talking about guerilla warfare with them, the regulations don't matter. These are throw away drones just big enough to deliver the payload to the target.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:56AM
Regarding physical mailboxes. Had this thought of robot + scanner. No need to collect it.. ;)
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday July 28 2017, @10:41AM (5 children)
There's some good stuff in this thread, but the best resource on exactly this question is Data and Goliath [slate.com], a book by Bruce Schneier.
By his taxonomy, there are 4 ways to defeat online tracking:
The linked article gives his summaries.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @09:23PM (4 children)
Just want to add a footnote in case someone buys Ethernet/WLAN equipment like IP-cameras nowadays..
Make sure your firewall only allows connections out that you explicitly permitted rather than a list of destinations to deny. This is because many devices nowadays will autoconfigure once they get power and phone home. There will be a record and someone will know how to hack into one of your devices from that very moment.
And you will have a hard time to know in advance just what destination your device will try to connect to.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday July 31 2017, @08:53AM (3 children)
Good idea. Wonder if my humble home router is capable of doing that...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 31 2017, @03:22PM (2 children)
First check that you actually have the source code for what it's running etc..
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday July 31 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
I'm ashamed to say you overestimate me -- totally stock router from my ISP, doubtless full of proprietary garbage.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 31 2017, @05:57PM
Put some other computer as firewall between the fiber/cable/DSL etc and your internal network.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:59PM (2 children)
Um, is this:
1. We anti-[social network] privacy advocates
or
2. We [anti-social network] privacy advocates
or
3. We anti-social network [privacy advocates]
or
4. We anti-[social network privacy] advocates
or
5. We [anti-social] network privacy advocates
or
6. We anti-social [network privacy advocates]
????
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:19PM
Applying logic: anti-social generally refers to a personality type that does not easily mesh with popular culture, a very possible meaning. Followed by the very clear phrase "network privacy advocates" and paired with the idea that network privacy already implies a negative stance towards social media garbage.
Either anti-social is redundant, or it is a likely self-description of someone who doesn't like social media. I'm going with the latter because it makes sense in a snarky way: we "anti-social" people have been warning you for a long time about the need for network privacy!!!
See, you just didn't use enough brackets.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:36PM
What are context clues?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:35AM
"...and then they came for me, and there was nobody left to say anything."
Social Media has enabled something far worse than Hitler and the Nazis to now affect the whole world. Only a matter of time in your location.