Spying

Moved to Aldershot.

Spying on citizens is something belonging to Communist-run Countries and Unions.

Poor deluded fool.
Every country spies on its citizens. In the past they mostly only used to spy on those of particular interest (in the west), with the Communist regimes performing much more invasive spying (such as the infamous BND) because, well, people who don’t have a legitimate mandate tend to fear their populace and need to keep them oppressed.

These days, spying is everywhere because, well, because the technological means to do so now exist and pretty much “because they can”. The only major difference is that when governments used to spy to keep tabs on their citizens, most of the spying these days (Prism aside) is to better profile you to sell you crap. It shouldn’t be a surprise given that one of the major internet players (mainline browser, search engine, mobile OS) exist not for these benign actions, but to serve up an ever growing barrage of adverts. That colours their entire world view, and generally makes the internet a shittier place (though, bonus points to Elon Musk for actively lowering the bar on purpose).

Yes, the governments can access this information too, and I’m sure there’s a warehouse in Utah with a bunch of digital connections from me … some of them dead links these days, and some of them completely wrong due to mixing up me and mom, but it’ll be there in amidst the morass of digital bollocks that gets collected.

Think about how many apps run at start up, how many phone home, how many might be able to infer your location (reading your SSID or those of your neighbours might be enough, doesn’t always need GPS).
Covid highlighted how background Bluetooth scanning can be used and abused (and, look, these days Android doesn’t broadcast any Bluetooth ID until you explicitly tell it to do so).
We are all roaming datapoints and somewhere that information is being collected. Not because we are threats, not because we are trouble, but simply because it can be collected, and the legal process hasn’t really gotten to grips with it (and upholding the GDPR is patchy at best (read “completely useless” if we’re talking the UK’s ICO)). What happens to that data next is the potentially scary part. For now it’s mostly used to select advertising. But, twenty years from now that data will still exist. It’s like people losing their jobs because somebody uncovers a dumb tweet they made many years ago as a semi-drunk student. This stuff doesn’t fade or dissipate. It just builds and builds. And now that we have reasonably competent AI bots that can analyse huge amounts of data faster than humans to draw some valid conclusions and hallucinate some invalid ones, where will it end?

So what are we then?

Sleepwalking into our own future dystopia.

There are plenty of good alternatives.

You think. Are you sure? Really really sure? Because sooner or later the scourge of advertising gets its slimy tentacles into everything. Hell, Microsoft has suggested placing advertising into the Windows Start menu. And to make your spam “more relevant”, it’ll need to analyse your behaviour. That’s a polite way of saying “spy on you”.

Don’t fear your government, fear capitalism. It’s worse. At least most (Western) governments are supposed to have ethics and morals. Capitalism eschews both in favour of profit.

Stuff like this, maybe? https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/23/gm_insurance_class_action/

You might like this…

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/tracker-beeper/

Every mouse movement sent to Google.

He went to the Daily Mail… 🤣

Paranoia?

Errm, no. Paranoia is groundless fear.

Windows Location Awareness Service, plus the phone home can-i-see-the-MS-servers check the OS does, regularly.

On your phones – do they really need to check in with a, OS selected, timeserver¹ that regularly? Seems a bit excessive to me, but then the stuff at work has this difficulty connecting to ad servers.

Don’t fear your government, fear capitalism.

Fear, no. Distrust, most certainly. How much? How far can you spit into a gale?

¹ At work they all², through the wonders of NAT, talk to our internal NTP servers. A bit of "if destination port = UDP 123 then destination IP = < local NTP >

How far can you spit into a gale?

Mewing miles, but only downwind…

Fear, no.

Hmm. Fear? Yes, I’m afraid so. “Within a private, for profit, military industrial complex, peace is the enemy.”

Paranoia is groundless fear.

When is a fear groundless? All around me I see signs of infantilization, by which I mean an attempt to keep people stupid and misinformed. Stupid people are easier to rule and sell to. It is not to save ink or bandwidth that mum, dad, kid have replaced mother, father, child . Am I paranoid to fear baby-talk and quiz-show hosts?

Where would the National Lottery be without the stupid? We need them.

Gavin That’s why I wrote No to paranoia.

Where would the National Lottery be without the stupid? We need them.

Taxing the rich would be a far better way to fund things – and deciding what to fund democratically, rather than by whoever it is decides what the lottery funds. The problem with the stupid is who they elect, which rather wrecks democracy – or would, if FPTP hadn’t wrecked it first.

The problem with the stupid is who they elect, which rather wrecks democracy

It’s amusing and horrifying in equal measures to read the Daily Mail comments.
“Enough of this, Reform!” and that’s primary who the Tories are pandering to right now, what with the hundreds of millions spaffed on getting some migrants out of the country. The amount of money being poured into this, it’s soon going to get to the point where giving them a council flat and a work permit would be cheaper, easier, and more useful all around.

To put it into context, irregular migrants in 2023 → about 35K, roughly the population of Fleet, Hampshire.

Legal migration (minus those who left) on 2023 → something like 672K, more than the population of Cornwall.

Taxing the rich would be a far better way to fund things

No, we can’t tax the rich, the entire system is set up to help to alleviate the tax burden of the rich. Anything else would be the turkeys voting for Christmas.

It is not to save ink or bandwidth that mum, dad, kid have replaced mother, father, child .

Once upon a time the first set of words were personal familiar words, and the second set were public formal words. I would find it odd if a child referred to their own creator as “mother”.
Somewhere along the way the familiar words started getting used in public contexts. I think to give a sense of “I’m your friend” (which is a blatant lie). Over here McDonald’s does something a bit like this when using “tu” instead of “vous”. It’s an unwanted attempt at familiarity. We probably ought to regard such advances with great suspicion, but few people will as sadly the double whammy of Brexit and Covid amply demonstrated that there are far too many people who couldn’t manage a coherent argument to save their lives.
That’s why: Brexit is Brexit and Get Brexit Done and Stop The Boats. Short three word mantras so nobody has to actually think, they just parrot it over and over.

Anything else would be the turkeys voting for Christmas.

Indeed, which sums up why our alleged democracy is no such thing.

Anything else would be the turkeys voting for Christmas.

Which also the reason why the ever repeated “downsizing of the workforce” always entails a set of managers deciding which workers they are going to get rid of, when in fact the highly paid turkeys should be targeting bums closer to their desks.

Short three word mantras so nobody has to actually think, they just parrot it over and over.

So, we could do well telling Brexit etc supporters to FRO ?? :)