- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
The UK government is giving Apple and Google three months to build on-device scanning infrastructure. This isn’t about child safety; it’s about the end of private devices and the death of the “nothing to hide” fallacy.
Maybe so. Maybe so.
But I’m not so sure there is a long term tech solution. It’s a political problem. Ultimately, if the gov requires let’s say a trust attestation for the use of web sites, they will have to comply, or leave the market. Sure, you can run Linux. But now you can’t use it to bank, to shop, to access gov services, to pay your bills… If they push hard enough, even mundane shit like get a weather forecast or w/e. Google would already love this. It locks everybody in.
A gov can make life VERY difficult for noncompliance, by leaning on the things you want to do. Sometimes, a site that isn’t local like a bank can say, fine, we’ll leave that market. But the bigger the market, the less they wanna do that. What happens if the US follows the UK into this? And then Australia or Japan piles on? Plus, some things are local by definition. Like your bank. If it’s required to block non-trusted (I threw up in my mouth a little bit…) devices, it will have to do that.
I’m not sure Linux can save us. Maybe it can buy us a little time. But in the end, this needs a political solution. Not a tech one.
There will be two forms of the internet. One will be the clearnet, where everything is monitored and controlled, and the other will be Tor and I2P, where you still have freedom to be an actual person. Also, mesh networks like MeshCore and Reticulum.
The internet can be gated because it requires you connecting to central infrastructure and a central operator has to assign you an address where something like reticulum requires no central authority because it’s based on public-private keys and so anybody can connect to the network permissionlessly