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From the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Sen. Ron Wyden has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice concerning disruptions to 911 emergency services caused by law enforcement's use of cell-site simulators (CSS, also known as IMSI catchers or Stingrays). In the letter, Sen. Wyden states that:
Senior officials from the Harris Corporation—the manufacturer of the cell-site simulators used most frequently by U.S. law enforcement agencies—have confirmed to my office that Harris' cell-site simulators completely disrupt the communications of targeted phones for as long as the surveillance is ongoing. According to Harris, targeted phones cannot make or receive calls, send or receive text messages, or send or receive any data over the Internet. Moreover, while the company claims its cell-site simulators include a feature that detects and permits the delivery of emergency calls to 9-1-1, its officials admitted to my office that this feature has not been independently tested as part of the Federal Communication Commission's certification process, nor were they able to confirm this feature is capable of detecting and passing-through 9-1-1 emergency communications made by people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech disabled using Real-Time Text technology.
The full text of the letter can be read here.
Researchers of CSS technology have long suspected that using such technologies, even professionally designed and marketed CSS's, would have a detrimental effect on emergency services, and now—for the first time—we have confirmation.
So not only does it snoop on all calls in the area, it also disrupts emergency calls. And why is everything about Stingrays, even their existence, such a huge secret, even to the point of dropping prosecutions?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday August 28 2018, @09:33PM (6 children)
Distributed community moderation takes the moderation opinions of the best and brightest, the moderation opinion of the average joes, and the moderation opinions of opinionated idiots, and aggregates them for a moderation result that is often astonishingly correct, considering that any person basically off the street can register an account and start moderating with no qualifications whatsoever.
Of course, the system is imperfect, and sometimes the not-so-great moderators carry the moderation for a particular post.
Often, if a post is initially modded down against the spirit of moderation, it will be later modded up. The site's moderator guidelines [soylentnews.org] say, in part, "Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it." Thus, those following the guidelines will often promote posts that need it irrespective of whether they agree with them or like them. Right now the post is showing as "0, Troll" which means it's been modded down, then up at least once each.
The surveillance state, pervasive corporate surveillance, and constant attacks on the privacy of individuals aren't a conspiracy theory, but rather are pretty well supported [aclu.org] by [theguardian.com] evidence [theintercept.com]. Anyone who thinks that mentioning this is "trolling" probably is in the minority, especially on a site such as this one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @09:55PM (4 children)
Democratic moderation is great, but there has been much political troll modding recently. As in entire threads being systematically modded Troll.
They're not hiding anything from me; the site is small enough that I can read everything at -1, but there are more people who will collectively organize a down modding campaign than there are people that care about up modding.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @11:23PM (3 children)
If you pay attention you'll notice there was a massive user drop off in the recent past. Some still float around, probably quite a few lurk, but people are tired of the same old arguments that go nowhere.
I think it was the repeated spamming of lame arguments by the resident ancap troll, the nasty violence posts, and the d**k n****rs spam. Obviously some little turd just couldn't handle being wrong and downmodded for repeatedly spamming the site so he decided to just spam the worst shit he could. I bailed on the site for a little while, and I continue to consider leaving altogether.
There used to be enough active users on both sides that bad moderation would usually be corrected. If your post was left downmodded it was a good indication that it was just bad. Recently the downmods are just stupid and the upmods are often pretty bad as well.
The extreme moderation of submitted articles also seems to have taken a toll in the ultimate irony of the catchphrase "soylent news is people" and the about section's "We are a volunteer-powered news aggregation site that deliver articles about technology, science, and general interest. .... Now, go forth and submit stories, comment, moderate, and be free!"
I've seen many articles in the queue that never reach publication, and while I agree there needs to be a minimal moderation of submissions to prevent blatant garbage there is now a concerted effort to minimize any controversy. Free indeed, we are now subject to the whims of the editors and stories where I really want to see the community's thoughts have been censored.
I'm poisoning the well with this list, but from the current submission queue I grabbed the most controversial articles. Let's see what gets through.
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28635¬e=&title=Trump%E2%80%99s+tweet+echoing+white+nationalist+propaganda+about+South+African+farmers%2C+explained [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28639¬e=&title=The+Biggest+Threats+to+Humanity [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28653¬e=&title=Reddit+moderators+spotted+Iranian+fake+news+campaign+months+ago [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28664¬e=&title=DNC+votes+to+limit+influence+of+superdelegates+in+presidential+nominating+process [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28672¬e=&title=The+Oscar+Wilde+of+YouTube+fights+the+alt-right+with+decadence+and+seduction [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=28673¬e=&title=The+United+States+didn%27t+sign+the+Paris+Climate+Accord%2C+but+beats+the+whining+signers+-+Washington+T [soylentnews.org]
The Emperor's New Clothes has never been a more fitting analogy for a variety of the current problems we are facing.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 29 2018, @12:20AM
Users were always subject to the whims of editors. They kind of have to take the submissions and post them. Otherwise the submissions just sit around in the sub list.
There is a concerted effort to minimize the posting of blatant garbage. As there should be. Users leave over trashy political stories.
And yet, if users want to talk about immigrants in Sweden, the exploits of the alt-right, or some other flamebait topic, they can write a journal about it. If they can't be arsed to make an account with a throwaway email, that's their problem.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @04:17AM
I hadn't noticed. I have been watching for high account numbers to see how the site is growing. ie not much at all, we are still a small community. What are we up to ~6k people?
The green site survived a whole lot worse, what with hot grits, goatse.cx, Natalie Portman and the Penis Bird people if I remember correctly. I think crazy story guy was allowed to linger for too long, but the DN idiots were frustrated in their efforts pretty quickly. I am getting annoyed at what appears to be block troll modding by a group of people that is willing to put in that much time to downmod things they politically don't agree with. But it will take a lot worse to get me to stop reading here.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 31 2018, @04:17AM
Yay, a concern troll. What exactly is the point of complaining about the site because of people who obviously are working counter to the goals and wishes of the site and its community? Should SN block all the stupid people in the world? Are you perhaps one or more of the very trolls you claim to be concerned about?
Many of those stories have serious problems with them such as a lack of content (at least three have that problem), narcissistic submitters who can't tell a story with even a moderate amount of objectivity (aristarchus being a particularly notorious example who shows up twice in your list), and links to websites with nasty behavior (such as TMB linking to the Washington Times).
Shitty != controversial.
How would that even work as an analogy? Or perhaps the "more fitting" in this context merely means that the analogy is purely delusional?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @09:56PM
I figure there are some here who have a vested interest in trying to quell such discussion.