Posts by Infused

Ofcom discovers issuing Online Safety Act fines is easier than collecting them

Re: Surprised?

I think politicians like to think the UK has more influence than it actually does.

Re: "UK Laws not global" Shock

I think the US has more clout than the UK.

Meta's proposed $18B settlement in teen harm case throws YouTube and TikTok under the bus, too

It Couldn't Have Happened to a Nicer Business

I doubt many people will feel any sympathy with Facebook & will think they got off lightly, but this does feel like state governments have found a way to circumvent the First Amendment & Section 230. I'm not so sure this is a victory for parents or teenagers.

DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'

Will Everyone Wearing Glasses Have Them Checked Now?

I assume that's what will eventually happen at some point soon in the future?

Britain plots digital bedtime after kicking under-16s off social media

Re: When we label all politicians as bad we enable bad politicians

The comments section of The Register doesn't unfortunately decide the outcome of this.

Re: Reeally....

It looks like the government want Google & Apple to do an age check when you set up a new phone. Plus there are possible restrictions on VPNs being mentioned in the Guardian & the Times. It might be time we all have to admit that we have effectively lost the internet & it's never coming back like it was.

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Re: What "They" Are Able To Do.......

Have a clean laptop with no personal stuff on it basically.

If they implement client side scanning that either uses machine learning or a database to hash match photos they havd a record of, then possibly yes.

Re: Imagine a world.

See Xinjiang in China for where we may be headed.

That's one motivation. But these policies (e.g. the Online Safety Act) survived a change of prime ministers & governments, so I don't think it matters who is in charge. Who is going to give up their mobile phones though? They've become so indispensable to modern life. Only literally everyone in the UK binning theirs will lead to any kind of change.

The Amish probably have got the right idea.

Re: STASI

Exactly. Changing governments, leaders, etc. doesn't change anything.

Re: Zombie Starmer's Victorian internet: An Internet without Things.

I think the whitelisted internet for Brits is definitely the plan.

California passes bill declaring death-by-algorithm to 3D-printed ghost guns

Re: ridiculous

Purchases of nitrates like that are almost certainly being logged.

Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

Re: The state of Utah may be surprised to discover

I think it's New York with the 3D printer filters (though California might have a similar proposal). It doesn't just cover 3D printers; apparently any kind of device using CAD is covered. Plus they want people buying 3D printers to undergo the same background checks people buying guns go through. Unfortunately it seems like the people govern us aren't even useful idiots.

Re: The state of Utah may be surprised to discover

The problem is that it seems every single nation on Earth completely independently & without any co-ordination whatsoever decided to enact virtually identical age verification laws.

Re: Hiding behind morals

Both sides seem to support this nonsense (until it effects their side... what a surprise). And there's nothing people who care about this stuff. In five years time most people will accept it as if this is always been like this.

UK age-gating plans risk breaking the internet, privacy groups warn

Re: And the bad news....

The UK is not the shining beacon of free speech that is often claimed. Historically British governments have had many methods to censor information: licensing printers, seditious libel, knowledge taxes (requiring newspapers to be stamped), wartime censorship, D notices, etc. A lot of stuff about the royal family has been covered up & records destroyed or redacted. I also think the US Constitution isn't worth the paper it's written on. American governments have found so many loopholes around, for example, the Fourth Amendment (e.g. buying data from brokers).

Re: Age gating is a solved problem

Open source is itself coming under legislative attack, even in the suppose freedom loving USA.

Age Verification is Going Global

Thing is it isn't just the UK. Seemingly banning under 16s from social media & requiring age/ID verification to go online seems to become a serious issue requiring immediate legislative action in many different countries around the world. This, is of course, in no way co-ordinated.

Keir Starmer declares 'months' timeline for social media age clampdown in UK

Re: Speech control

If they could read your thoughts, they would.

Re: Trying to put age verification on VPN's is deeply silly

I'd guess they might have exceptions for government, business & education. Just ordinary members of the public would have to prove their age or ID. At this point I don't think we can rule anything out anymore, e.g. a ban on talking about circumvention tools online; forcing VPNs to keep logs, etc.

Ghost gun legislation casts shadow over 3D printing

Re: The problem with scanning ...

We seem to have politicians these days who have no understanding of what is & isn't possible with technology legislation. They seem indifferent to the inconvenience they are causing everyone. Maybe they should abolish Section 230 & crash the American economy as well before people stop voting for them.

'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP

Section 230

There is also a huge risk if American politicians pull the plug on Section 230 & don't replace it, that the ripple effects hit the rest of the world. While cloud services could go dark to avoid liability is probably small, the fact is it is still possibly. I think all the political uncertainty will encourage more moves to digital sovereignty.

Ofcom officially investigating X as Grok's nudify button stays switched on

Re: Wat will Grok take down ?

Technically the images weren't nudes. Problem was there were workarounds to show people wearing virtually nothing (which was the real problem).

Welcome to America - now show us your last five years of social media posts

Reciprocated

Hopefully other countries will apply the same level of scrutiny to American tourists. The era of globalism is truly over. The world is going to get a lot I think.

Australia bans teens from social media, but nobody thinks it'll really work

Coming to a Country Near You...

One thing I can definitely say is that lots of other countries will follow suit.

Re: VPN?

For now. Tbough I think they'll go after VPNs once widespread evasion occurs.

UK finally vows to look at 35-year-old Computer Misuse Act

I find it interesting the CMA was passed only after a member of the Royal Family had been compromised.

GrapheneOS bails on OVHcloud over France's privacy stance

What the Article Didn't Mention

There's a negative campaign being run in the French press claiming GrapheneOS is the criminal's choice of phone. While there have apparently been no official demands for a backdoor, GrapheneOS have decided that discretion is the betted part of valour & have therefore left France. Unfortunately (as other commentators have pointed out) the current political atmosphere is one where governments are taking more active measures against encryption & age verification looks like it will become the default method of accessing the internet. So these battles are going to be replayed in lots of countries around the world.

Charities warn Ofcom too soft on Online Safety Act violators

Re: Amusing.

There are a lot of other organisations behind this other than the Carnegie Group, e.g. Thorn, a group set up by Ashton Kutcher & Demi Moore of all people. It was influential in the EU passing legislation like the DSA.

Yes, Ofcom have powers to disrupt business services like payment processors I believe.

Re: The same process is not universally appropriate.

Yes, & the mainstream media would be quite happy for that to happen as well. I've always felt that having 90% of their advertising revenues sucked away by the likes of Google predisposed them to hostility towards the platforms.

The Werther effect of copycat suicides is named after Goethe's 1775 novel 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'. It was banned in several countries because of its supposed influence in several suicides. I doubt its banned in many places today.

UK Lords take aim at Ofcom's 'child-protection' upgrades to Online Safety Act

Re: Well...

They explicitly said the act will be future proofed. That means it will continually expand in scope to cover anything new that emerges that Ofcom or the government deem a threat.

Re: The UK already had porn blocks. It didn't need the OSA.

Even if Reform win the next election, I think it will be very difficult for them to repeal the Online Safety Act. There would be opposition from all the groups that got it passed & lots of negative headlines about children being put at risk.

Re: Privatized Great Firewall

I get the strong impression a lot of politicians, campaign groups, law enforcement bodies & media companies would be more than happy if the open internet & social media died.

FCC plans to kill Wi-Fi on school buses, hotspots for library patrons

Congress didn't authorise tarriffs either, but Trump imposed them regardless.

End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

Re: Denmark

Even the US has the Kids Online Safety Act waiting for Congress to vote on it. I think the whole west is going down the road to censorship on a widescale. I think governments hope we'll get used to it like we get used to everything.

I think the Encrochat bust (where criminals using encrypted handsets had all their chats intercepted by European law enforcement) has probably pushed some of the bad guys away from encrypted communications. I think other methods of swapping pron will be used (e.g. Bluetooth, USB drives, etc.)

Re: Do they even talk to people in IT?

Anecdotally they called them as the p word or supporters of the p word to their faces in discussions in the run-up to the Online Safety Act.

527,000 signatures so far, but the rate of signing has significantly dropped. Only a few hundred a day I think now. Considering petitions about dropping Brexit (6 million signatures) & rerunning the 2024 election (3 million signatures) gained no traction, this certainly won't.

FCC to telcos: By law you must secure your networks from foreign spies. Get on it

Oh the Irony...

We won't ban the mass surveillance systems the Chinese used to hack us & steal our information, but we will ban TikTok.

The bell tolls for TikTok as lifelines to avoid January 19 US ban vanish

The irony is the IS will ban TikTok for spying on Americans but won't ban wiretapping (which the Chinese hacked through Salt Typhoon).

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

Re: Can probably be ignored.

So it will become risky to base services in the UK, but not abroad. Ofcom will have other options for foreign-based services like geoblocking or financial sanctions.

Alternatively Ofcom could impose a geoblock themselves (which is also an option).

It depends. News organisations naturally have an exemption. (Newspapers were one of the main promoters of the legislation). However, it depends how Ofcom defines a media site. The Register may not qualify. Even if it does, I believe there is some uncertainty if comments under articles are exempt or not.

Record labels gang up to sue AI music generator duo into utter oblivion

AI is clearly going to lead to an evolution of copyright law & it will likely be decided by one of these court cases.

US standards agency reports back on just how good age verification software is

Re: How does it cope if a child has an older friend ...

Problem is western governments are extremely keen on age verification as a means to protect minors from unsafe internet content. This happening even in the US at the state level where things like the First Amendment & Section 230 don't seem to deter state legislatures from passing internet safety laws. Age verification will be everywhere online in the next decade.

UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite tech world opposition

Internet Connection Records

Basically they want to see what people are browsing in real time (or that's how it was sold to politicians).