Notices by ar.al🌻 (aral@mastodon.ar.al), page 3

Google headlining “Digital Wellbeing” festival, major whitewashing of surveillance capitalism going on right now.

If you want to help me call bullshit on this on birdsite, RTs etc. welcome: https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/1124245429523238912

#SurveillanceCapitalism #Google #FuckGoogle #whitewashing #privacywashing #privacy #HumanRights

So our team just flipped a ~ 28% agree / 72% disagree initial vote to a 52% agree / 48% disagree vote after our presentations and debate at the Straits Times Educational Forum in Singapore on the motion “Entrepreneurs today do more harm than good.”

Gives me hope to see that change is possible once people actually get to hear diverse viewpoints. Here’s hoping we can follow-through with The Straits Times and Singapore Management University to implement some of the alternatives that we discussed.

Looks like they posted another interview I did with French media a few days ago. This time with L’ADN:

Google, c'est comme la cigarette : c'est votre choix mais il impacte les autres

https://www.ladn.eu/tech-a-suivre/donnees-personnelles-pourquoi-arreter-services-gafa/

Small Technology

https://ar.al/2019/03/04/small-technology/

We need an antidote to surveillance capitalism that is so anathema to the interests of Big Tech that it cannot possibly be co-opted by them.

#SmallTech

Blockchain: decentralisation centralised on my coin.

Hint: the core of decentralisation isn’t about having a billion copies of the same database. It’s about a billion people each having their own, unique database.

PS. In a truly decentralised system, no one makes a billion dollars. *watches all the right libertarians make for the door*

PPS. A venture capitalist would never invest in a truly decentralised system. Why? See PS, above.

#blockchain #VentureCapital #bullshit

It’s time to draw a line in the sand.

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/line-sand

This.

Thank you, @dsearls

Via @LPS

Privacy is not a science, it is a human right

https://ar.al/2019/02/14/privacy-is-not-a-science-it-is-a-human-right/

My response to a dangerous turd of an article by Bart van der Sloot (co-founder of Amsterdam Privacy Week – sponsored by Palantir and Google – and docent teaching “Privacy and Big Data” at Tilburg University)

Mr. Sloot attempts to reframe privacy as a “science” and shame those who work to protect it for having a “pro-privacy agenda” & not being “neutral”. He also calls for “new rules” to disallow such biased behaviour.

German Regulators Just Outlawed Facebook's Whole Ad Business

https://www.wired.com/story/germany-facebook-antitrust-ruling/

Some good news to kick off the weekend with.

#SurveillanceCapitalism

Google’s also peddling a data collector through Apple’s back door

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-data-collector-through-apples-back-door/

Almost as if… they’re both surveillance capitalists acting exactly as you would expect surveillance capitalists to act.

Via @laura

“I'm not interested in punishing people for using any particular provider. If Geary nags people for using Gmail or whatever the evil company of the month is, then people will just stop using Geary.”

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/merge_requests/26#note_422142

“When you’re neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu

The services of surveillance capitalists, if included at all in ethical technology, should come with tobacco-style warnings.

#OpenSource #SurveillanceCapitalism

We are not going to compete with the mainstream car industry by promoting engine replacements. We are going to compete with the mainstream car industry by building better cars that are safer and more sustainable. But those cars aren’t going to grow on trees. We must fund the organisations that will create them from the commons for the common good.

#EthicalTechnology

Q. What should I use to protect myself from surveillance on a Chromebook?

A. A hammer.

#Privacy #SurveillanceCapitalism

World: Google, you are so smart, impartial, and benevolent, please write all our protocols and standards.

Google: Oh yeah, btw, we don’t think you should be able to protect yourself from being tracked on our browser.

Google to break uBlock Origin on Chromium.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897&desc=2#c23

#SurveillanceCapitalism #Google

Remote Code Execution in apt/apt-get

https://justi.cz/security/2019/01/22/apt-rce.html

#debian #ubuntu #security #apt

How sloppy OPSEC gave researchers an inside look at the exploit industry

https://www.cyberscoop.com/mobile-zero-days-lookout-shmoocon-2019-android-barracuda-ios-stonefish/

“Those government developers were testing out the WhatsApp malware on their own devices, and it was storing their discussions on the program’s servers.

The nation-state essentially had hacked itself and accidentally dumped highly sensitive information on the open internet—including details of its interactions with the secretive vendors who sell spyware to governments.”

HT @lorenzofb@twitter.com

The #EFF: “we are the leading nonprofit defending digital privacy”

Also #EFF: “we’ve partnered with the world’s largest #SurveillanceCapitalist who makes billions by violating your privacy to train the people who will make the policies that defend your privacy – come be a Google Policy Fellow!”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/work-eff-summer-apply-be-2019-google-public-policy-fellow

This is institutional corruption at its worst.

Is anyone else sick of this bullshit?

Via @schestowitz

I was wrong about Google and Facebook: there’s nothing wrong with them (so say we all)

https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

It’s always difficult admitting you’re wrong. But sometimes you have to in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So, today, I admit that I was wrong about Google, Facebook, & surveillance capitalism in general being toxic for our human rights and democracy … it simply cannot be true given how they are endorsed by some of the most well-respected organisations in the world.

You have a limited amount of time in this world. You decide whether to spend it being “neutral” (legitimising trillion-dollar surveillance capitalists) or working with those of us trying to raise awareness about their abuses so we can actually regulate them and get funding for ethical alternatives that don’t rely on them. If you’re doing the former don’t you dare criticise those doing the latter. We’re not the ones punching down and we don’t owe you an explanation for doing the right thing.

Whitewashing As A Service.

“RightsCon is the world’s leading conference on human rights in the digital age, brought to you by Access Now … RightsCon offers organizations and businesses the perfect opportunity to generate exposure, goodwill, and growth.”

In case you were wondering if they know exactly what they’re doing or not.

Links:

* https://www.rightscon.org (first half of quote)

* https://www.rightscon.org/sponsors/ (second half of quote and screenshots)

A quick example of developing with #TLS (#HTTPS) on #localhost without certificate errors using mkcert:

https://source.ind.ie/hypha/spikes/deployment-1#simple-tls

(Part of the #Hypha Deployment 1 Spike: https://ar.al/2019/01/05/hypha-spike-deployment-1/)