Why Free Software Evangelist Richard Stallman is Haunted by Stalin's Dream (factordaily.com) 375
Richard Stallman recently visited Mandya, a small town about 60 miles from Bengaluru, India, to give a talk. On the sidelines, Indian news outlet FactorDaily caught up with Stallman for an interview. In the wide-ranging interview, Stallman talked about companies that spy on users, popular Android apps, media streaming and transportation apps, smart devices, DRM, software backdoors, subscription software, and Apple and censorship. An excerpt from the interview: If you are carrying a mobile phone, it is always tracking your movements and it could have been modified to listen to the conversations around you. I call this product Stalin's dream. What would Stalin have wanted to hand out to every inhabitant of the former Soviet Union? Something to track that person's movements and listen to the person's conservations. Fortunately, Stalin could not do it because the technology didn't exist. Unfortunately for us, now it does exist and most people have been pressured or lured into carrying around such a Stalin's dream device, but not me.
I am suspicious of new digital technology. I expect it to have new malicious functionalities. It has happened so many times that I have learned to expect this, so I have always checked before I start using some new digital technology. I asked to find out what is nasty about it and I found out these two things. It was something like 20 years ago, and I decided it was my duty as a citizen to refuse, regardless of whatever convenience it might offer me. To surrender my freedom in this way was failing to defend a free society. This is why I do not have a portable phone. I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, "Could you please make a call for me?" If I am on a bus and it is late and I need to tell somebody that I am going to arrive late, there is always some other passenger in the bus who will make a call for me or send a text for me. Practically speaking, it is not that hard.
I am suspicious of new digital technology. I expect it to have new malicious functionalities. It has happened so many times that I have learned to expect this, so I have always checked before I start using some new digital technology. I asked to find out what is nasty about it and I found out these two things. It was something like 20 years ago, and I decided it was my duty as a citizen to refuse, regardless of whatever convenience it might offer me. To surrender my freedom in this way was failing to defend a free society. This is why I do not have a portable phone. I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, "Could you please make a call for me?" If I am on a bus and it is late and I need to tell somebody that I am going to arrive late, there is always some other passenger in the bus who will make a call for me or send a text for me. Practically speaking, it is not that hard.
Using other people's phones (Score:5, Insightful)
That works because everyone else is carrying Stalin's dream.
If nobody did, it'd be like the times before everyone had a cell phone. Life was quite tolerable then too.
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Yeah, how could he not see the huge flaw in this?
Not to mention that voiceprinting could pair his voice with his location even without a unique identifier like SIM.
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The flaw is an inherent social logic flaw, you can never really make yourself safe, you can only strive to make others safe and by doing so, making yourself safe. You must be active in protecting the privacy of others if you want to protect your own, even when being very active protecting the privacy of others, ensure as a result of your activity, you now have far less privacy than most. You accept your loss and continue to strive for others because that is the only way you will get yours back.
I expect my
Like aniti-vaxxers (Score:2)
Sure is easy to do without cellphones/vaccines/etc. when everyone else around me is paying the cost in privacy and cash/very small chance of reaction/etc. I'm a genius and not a freeloader/freeloader/freeloader on society.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go help an old person on Medicare and SS write a post on their subsidized phone about how they are tired of all the welfare queens.
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In fairness, back then, pay phones everwhere. They've just disappeared because everyone is already carrying a phone.
Faraday cage (Score:2, Interesting)
Why doesn't he just use a phone case that is a faraday cage with sound proofing and only take it out when he needed it?
Surely someone invented small faraday cage phone cases by now. Or else just use a ton of aluminum foil and test call it.
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Because the Faraday cage would prevent the phone from RECEIVING calls? Likewise, shutting off digital data stops text messages, doesn't it?
Sure, but that's the point. You turn your phone off and put it in a Faraday cage - doing this you will know that even if the phone is not really off, it won't be able to communicate or use radio signals (gps, wifi) to track your location. When you want to make a call, receive a call (at some prearranged time), or use data services, you take the phone out of the cage and power it up. This of course would make you visible, but those tracking you would only see your location at point of time of your choosing.
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The smartphone saves up its tracking data burst until the smartphone is networked again.
Any past moments to that location get sent. Soft power off does not turn the OS and its tracking off.
Every time the Faraday cage is removed a map of the users movements is created.
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Last I knew text messages were actually sent through in the regular pings that your phone and the surrounding cell towers exchange. Those packets always had some empty space in them and your text messages were packed into that space, which is why the character limit was always so small. There was a lot of grumbling around here back then that the cell phone companies were charging a premium for making use of that bit of bandwidth that was just going to waste anyways.
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In the very early days of mobile communication, at least here in Germany, text messages were for free because the two TelCos (D1 and D2) didn't think you could make money out of it and assumed it to be just a curiosity.
Then they realized that people were using text messages instead of making a call (maybe in 1-5% of cases) and they started introducing fees for text messages. You are right, it is just part of some anyway required communication and it should've been free... but hey, if you can make money, why
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https://www.amazon.com/FawkesB... [amazon.com]
and don't call me Shirley
Re:Faraday cage (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a serious answer:
Because when he takes the phone out of the Faraday cage, it'll instantly start spying on him again. The phone would be his, the billing would be tied to his name, and his whereabouts would be tracked when it came out. Also, the phone and apps are proprietary, which he refuses to use and support.
Oh and also he believes credit cards to also be an intrusive form of surveillance so he doesn't have any. It's hard to pay for phone service without one.
Let someone else do it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting -- I remember the first time I read Utopia (probably in high school?), my objection was that Moore's premise of living a perfect life in a perfect society relied on letting somebody else fight all the wars.
I respect Stallman and I'm glad he's out there, but I smell a whiff of that here: it's "not that hard" for him to live without the convenience of a cell phone because he's able to assume someone else will be.
Re:Let someone else do it (Score:4, Interesting)
Before the days of cell phones, there were many more pay-phones around, and many businesses were fine with letting you use their phone to make a (local) call if there wasn't a pay-phone nearby. It is only because everyone else has adopted cellphones that these other options have gone away. Therefore, I don't see his approach as hypocritical; just living in the world we are in.
Re:Let someone else do it (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, there was a time when no one had cell phones and we all got along fine. In many ways it was better.
Re:Let someone else do it (Score:5)
You know, there was a time when no one had cell phones and we all got along fine. In many ways it was better.
Meh. I didn't get my first cellphone until I was almost 30, so I had plenty of experience with the pre-cellular life. We got along fine only because we spent a lot of extra time and effort on pre-planning. Want to meet your friends or relatives somewhere? Better get it all set up in advance, and with a high degree of precision. If one of you makes a mistake and is off by a smallish amount on the time or the location, you're not going to meet. Break down on the road? If you can't fix it on the spot you're going to have to hitch a ride to where you can get help, or hope a cop comes buy to radio for a tow truck. And if you were on your way to meet someone, they'll have no idea why you didn't show up.
Those are just two examples. Those who have grown up with the freedom provided by cell phones have no idea how much extra effort it took to get around. Some who grew up without phones have forgotten, or are just engaging in the Golden Age [rationalwiki.org] fallacy.
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Considering that i dont carry a cel phone and manage fine you are 100% wrong mr addict.
i wish you could go back in time and see how ridiculous you sound.
Want to meet your friends and relatives somewhere? Arrange it. You have to anyways. If you are late, you are late. If you don't show because your car broke down, oh well. Maybe i am crazy, but i dont really care if friends or relatives don't know where i am every waking second..
Break down on the road? Well I live in the city, so i would hail a cab, take a b
Not a fair comparison (Score:2)
I call it Commuter's Dream. (Score:2)
" I call this product Stalin's dream. "
Without the location data, Google Maps and others would be unable to lead you around the other morons in traffic.
It allows us to see at which times a restaurant, a Pool or other facilities are used by less people.
I don't want to miss that.
Failing to offer an alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
What I'm really reading here is someone who has the resources to organize and offer an alternative to Stalin's Dream but isn't. I understand and agree with his misgivings but I disagree with his choice to take no action.
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Correct, he could, at any time, just choose to set up his own national high bandwidth high security reliable wireless network, and create a hundred a million user friendly wireless devices that allows users to make and receive calls and exchange other data via this network without letting the operator know where they are, but nooooooooooooooooooooooooo, he'd rather just complain about it.
Actually, what he does have is an audience of very talented individuals. One does not need to create a highspeed wireless network to achieve the goal of enjoying privacy. A peer-to-peer encrypted wireless voice/text network for a single town or city would be enough because it would get the idea off the ground.
My point is not about succeeding, it's about trying.
I've never come across a person who makes Slashdotters lose their collective marbles as much as Stallman.
He has excellent points on issues when he talks about technology but his perspectives on how to resolve issues (by insisting on absolutes) are view
What an ass (Score:2)
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Re:What an ass (Score:4, Informative)
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No, it's not that no one's carrying them, it's that everyone is carrying them and he'll find a kind soul to lend him a phone.
The problem is, if everyone did this (there are a lot of people without cellphones), then despite you ask
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Are you kidding? "Sure, that'll be 75c."
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Why wouldn't it be OK to use someone else's?
He's not saying mobile phones are *inherently* bad. He's saying that the kind of phones sold by carriers today track your movements and possibly eavesdrop on you in other ways. Lending your inherently compromised device to someone else doesn't change that one way or the other.
Sure, if everybody gave up smartphones to protect their privacy, he couldn't do this. But if everyone did that, carriers would offer more secure phones instead.
We've all Walked into this Situation Gleefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Our loss of privacy was handed away gleefully, as if we were kids given candy.
Since early on, I advocated that whatever the level of transparency, it should be mutual. If government can read my conversations then I should be able to read theirs, as it pertains to mine. The same for commercial organizations. Of course, some level should be set. I mean regardless, I don't want them watching me poop. But then again, if it's my doctor and I can see that my doctor is doing this to monitor my health then I could be leanient even on that. So it's not a trade between privacy and security -- it's a balance of mutual privacy that we need.
On the other hand, I think the issues of fake information, information overload, and relationship destroying social media comments are all bigger issues.
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Our loss of privacy was handed away gleefully, as if we were kids given candy.
Literally [bbc.co.uk].
Stalin's Dream. (Score:2)
Sounds like the worst carnival ride *ever*.
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I wouldn't let him use my phone. (Score:2, Interesting)
Already full 1984 (Score:2)
Soft power off on a cell phone that keeps tracking the user.
Battery power that stays on to keep tracking the users even when they think the smartphone is not powered.
Political ads, search services, social media and browsers that track the users.
PRISM thats ready to help any gov collect it all.
Junk crypto standards in an OS sold as full tested and trusted.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
Leftist is a term used by people who have run out of arguments. And probably thoughts.
There are no leftists in America that want Stalin's Dream. The people running tech companies are hard core Libertarians who would run over their own dogs if that dog was getting in between them and their stock options.
That's Capitalism, sport, nothing leftist about it. Tech wants to spy on you and sell your information. There is nothing liberal about that.
Find a new word, "leftist" fails as an insult because it is meaningless to everyone outside of the Glenn Beck/Alex Jones/Q-Anon crowd.
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"hard core Libertarians"??? Seriously?
Have you followed the policies of most of the people? They are anything but libertarian! They are statists through and through and advocate control of everyone else (except themselves and their friends). They are advocating policies of "you work, I eat" - the same ones that the Democrat slave owners of the old south advocated - but they are using flowery language like "Democrat socialism" to attempt to hide it from people who are not paying attention. Socialism is
Socialism != communism (Score:5, Informative)
Socialism is an evil and immoral philosophy that advocates treating human beings as chattel
No, it is not. Look up the definition: "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.". Just like any political ideology it only becomes immoral if it is taken to extremes but that is just as true of capitalism as well.
Like most things in life generally what works best is a balance. The community needs to provide some regulation on production, distribution and exchange to provide protection for its weakest members but, at the same time, not too much regulation otherwise it stifles and prevents the innovation and entrepreneurship that we all rely on to make our lives better. I'm not a fan of socialism because its proponents tend to take it, in my opinion, far too far towards the regulation/control side of things. However, it is by no means an "evil and immoral philosophy" nor does it advocate "treating human beings as chattel". You are thinking about communism which is not at all the same thing.
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Socialism creates a system in which everyone cares about the decisions that other people make.
It may indeed, but care cannot automatically be converted into mandating behaviours.
Socialized medicine, for example, takes everyone's money and spends it on the group's health costs. I, as a dedicated taxpayer, now care when idiots start smoking - I have to pay for their cancer care, and I feel cheated by the poor decisions of others. It is only natural, in this scenario, that I should feel that people should b
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It's amazing that people still think guys like Hitler and Stalin were socialists.
Re:Amazing you don't (Score:5, Informative)
They both pushed right wing societal values such as attacking and even killing homosexuals, certain races and such, as well as governance by those with merit . At that when Stalin took charge, a lot of what is usually considered leftist in America was prosecuted. He even believed in capitalism, as long as the government was the capitalist running industry. Like most successful capitalists, he did hate the free market, as that means competition.
Neither one believed in the people and especially having the regular people involved in governance through democracy and neither made any moves in the direction of communism, which has as one of its basic tenants to not have government.
People are complex and can not be simply divided up into the right wing and left wing.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Informative)
Kinda like he the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of the Congo are both democratic republics, right?
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Why, that's preposterous
Indeed and yet people still believe it. Remember that poem about the Nazis about how they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up etc? Do you know how it starts? Here let me find it for you:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a socialist.
But apparently in your mind the fact theycalled themselves socialists trumps the fact that thay actually mass murdered socialists.
Do you believe everything pe
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Both political leaning parties have their subset of crazies, who takes the polices too far.
When is it too far? Well, I would like to define it when people are getting hurt or suffering, because they don't fit nicely in the party lines, or because they reject an idea that isn't backed by the party.
Communist governments, have done this basically by persecuting the people who couldn't fit well in such a society. These subversives are often people whos lot in life doesn't jive with what the government says the
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Moderate groups are not the answer, because a moderate group will often just be some combination of both, but their views can be so strict that harm can happen as well.
I don't think you understand what it means to be moderate. It doesn't picking picking extreme ideas from one side or the other. It means ideas that are compromises that actually may have a chance of being accepted by both sides. E.g.,
You can be for immigration control, but also for amnesty for current undocumented Americans.
You can be pro-choice, but only for very early terms.
You can be anti-racist, but still acknowledge even a racists group's right to free speech.
This is where almost all Americans live. In
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There are no leftists in America that want Stalin's Dream.
More to the point, the US left's interest in technology does not go beyond ranting on Twitter. There are no Elon Musks among the Stalinists, people who would be actually able to tap our cellphones and use our speech against us if they wanted to.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberal means 'pro liberty', more or less, the opposite of (leftist/marxist/socialist/progressive/American 'liberal').
Liberal means holding a broad worldview and being open to new ideas. It's not about liberty, per se. And that means having your eyes wide open and caring about the freedoms and rights of people other than yourself and not just your own interests.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It means individual freedom, but for everyone rather than the elite.
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Freedom with responsibility really just means ensuring that the freedom is for everyone. What else would you be responsible for?
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So when you see a medication that says to apply liberally, you do it for freedom? No, liberal means broad and wide-ranging. As in, not narrow(-minded). Good for you that you found it shares a Latin root, but they are still separate words with separate meanings.
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What straw man thing is it that you think a safe space is? I guarantee you're probably wrong.
Also, are you using the word classic as shorthand for ignorant deep-South?
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What straw man thing is it that you think a safe space is? I guarantee you're probably wrong.
Safe space: a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm.
Someone who is guaranteed to not be exposed to criticism is not emotionally strong and certainly isn't able to cope with different world views. Thus not a classic liberal.
Also, are you using the word classic as shorthand for ignorant deep-South?
That you use the South as a slur says more about you than Southerners. I suspect that you'd cal me names if I did something similar
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you want to write something like this? It's like proudly having a text saying "I'm ignorant" on ones forehead.
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Liberal means 'pro liberty', more or less,
Not in the USA it doesn't.
In the USA it means "somebody who wouldn't want to live in Texas".
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Libertarians are the classical liberals. American 'liberals' are socialist authoritarians.
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Libertarians are Republicans without religion. Same pro-corporate worldview.
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Libertarian was originally a socialist construct. Look up socialist libertarian or libertarian socialist.
Here, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=soci... [duckduckgo.com] or https://duckduckgo.com/?q=libe... [duckduckgo.com].
Now it is just as impractical as any political philosophy that ignores the authoritarians, but still to claim that libertarian-ism is a right wing thing is weird as the right means by definition supporting the aristocracy, or today, the rich
From wiki,
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asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production
In practice, this usually means something pro-corporate or anti-environment. Tell me how that does not disproportionately benefit the elite.
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Sounds to me more like abolishing the board of directors. All these idealized systems have problems in the real world. Socialist things like co-ops still end up with someone running things even if in theory the whole community gets a vote and it's a shared effort.
Re: Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
This. These people aren't spying because of their party. They are spying because it pays them billions to.
...unless we're in China.
This is not an argument for either "side" per se, but rather a note of comparison:
In generally free societies, you get spied on for profit (if they can), and little-to-nothing more. The worst they do with your data to is sell what they learn about you to advertisers, who them toss up ads that hopefully get past ad-blockers and try to entice you out of some of your money.
Now let's contrast that with a totalitarian-oriented society, where that data, coupled with omnipresent external cameras, facial recognition, a bit of AI to back it up, and a government-owned/run social credit rating [wikipedia.org] that can either make your life easier (if you're a 'model citizen'), or infinitely harder (if you don't sufficiently conform)?
Now - which of the two do you figure to be the most dangerous to individual life and liberty?
To be honest, I don't much mind carrying a smartphone in the US (half the time I'm out of any cell range anyway, given my rural locale). By contrast, I'd be scared shitless to carry one around if I were a citizen and resident of, say, Shanghai.
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Do you think that advertisers are the only ones who want your data and are willing to pay for it? I can imagine far worse than that.
Actually yes, I do think that only advertisers want my personal data. Your speech must be so much more important than mine. I genuflect in your august presence.
Re: Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
You health insurers, your employers, and everyone who wants your money, your labor, or your vote, without necessarily having anything else to offer. Basically, everyone. Not everyone can afford it, yet.
Are we at the point where you will get charged an extra 10% because you have shown enthusiasm for a product, or paid a bad price before, or live in a wealthy area?
Are we at the point where your dentist will use your posts to see how much discomfort you are in, so that he can inflate the treatment?
Are you going to get a bad life insurance because you enjoy jetskying?
Are your kids going to have trouble getting into a specific talent school because they got into a fight when they were 10?
Is your coworker going to forward to your boss a statement you made on the clock, or a statement about some quality the boss has, or just something random the boss may dislike?
Is your work/school laptop/phone configured to spy on you on demand, and is the security going to be porous enough to let everyone and his grandmother join in?
Etc, etc, etc.
Most of the above has happened. The rest will, soon enough.
And that's without errors. With errors, your wife name will match that on a known (male!) terrorist, and you will spend three ours in a detention room abroad, or your house will match the location of a stolen item, you will be placed at the scene of a crime in the next state, and what not. Bounty hunters have already broken into the wrong person's house...
All of these can happen without the technology we accept into our houses and pockets. But with the technology, every idiot can get on the game. And with enough monkeys on the branch, any branch will break.
Re: Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
The wife name matching a terrorist name, and having to spend hours in a detention room in a Canadian airport happened to me. My wife's first name name is Alison, she goes by Allie, and I assume she matched an Ali from a former USSR republic (my last name is Slavic)
She is a redhead, out one year daughter was with us, and we were told the name of the list was male. It still took them hours to clear us.
Of course, you do not have to believe me.
Re: Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Informative)
Luckily America would never have things like no-fly lists, border searches all over the country, millions of people imprisoned or political crimes such as possessing a prohibited plant.
It would also never have internal intelligence agencies or police forces that are very military in nature and tools.
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Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most leftists, he's fine with using Stalin's Dream as long as it's invading your life and not his
Bullshit.
He's saying quite clearly no one who cares about their freedom and/or privacy should carry around one of these devices. He's right.
He's also (indirectly implying or saying) that most people choose convenience over freedom. He's right about that too.
Finally, he's making the point to those who might care _almost_ as much about their freedom as convenience that, as long as there are so many people willing to trade their freedom for convenience, those who care about such things can piggy-back off of them to get almost the same level of convenience without compromising their location 24/7/365.25. He's right about that as well.
He is not saying "Freedom for me, not for you" he's merely mentioning a useful workaround that he probably himself hopes will become untenable someday (because everyone "sees the light" and stops carrying surveillance devices around). He's also implicitly acknowledging that that is most likely a pipe-dream, and he's right about that most of all.
But nice try on the right-wing anti-leftist spin against a guy who had the audacity to share his source code with the world, and write a license to help others do the same. I'm sure Putin likes you very much.
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They're not getting that level of convenience from anyone once it becomes known what they think of the people they turn to...
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:5, Insightful)
It's strange that he doesn't just carry a pre-paid phone with the battery taken out. I don't carry a cell phone either but, I keep a pre-paid one in my car (or sometimes laptop bag if I'm traveling) with the battery taken out. No tracking, no listening and I basically get a portable pay phone that doesn't need quarters to operate.
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He's a well-known tech guy. He (and we) should be able to get someone to rig up a physical switch to make/break the battery contact connection, right? All the privacy/security people complain about this, but it seems like this would be a simple thing to agitate for.
Even that can track you (Score:3)
Me? I don't care so much for tracking. I'm more worried about economic attacks on me and mine, e.g. things like cutting my access to medical care, education, my wages, etc. Take care of those things and the tracking problems
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.... I'm more worried about economic attacks on me and mine, e.g. things like cutting my access to medical care, education, my wages, etc. Take care of those things and the tracking problems solve themselves.
I was about to say "THIS! (How is it that this only at a +2?)", but I started to ask my self "How does the tracking actually get solved?" And while I agree, while one might be able to create a local culture such that only the 'tallest blades of grass are mowed' by the blades of tracking locally, on a global scale it seems there will always be power struggles that any of us one day need to speak out against. Moreover, giving China's newly rolled out social tracker, it seems likely that tracking will soon
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Is there an app that can screw with the data?
eg. Make your location jump around randomly all over the world when you're not actually using mapping to get directions.
Encrypted communications can be made very convenient using this tech, he should be for that.
The answer isn't to not own a phone, it's to use the phone against the data spies. Use it to take back your freedom.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. If you want to be able to receive phone calls, then the phone network has to know approximately where you are at all times. GPS tracking is a secondary, independent feature. Even if you could make an app that would spoof your GPS location in such a way that even the (presumed compromised) operating system was fooled (good luck with that...), all it takes is a trivial cross-check with network data to realize that fact and fall back to the "accurate to within a few dozen/hundred meters" network tracking.
And of course it does nothing whatsoever to prevent the use of the microphone as a remote listening device.
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And to add to the other AC's comment - if you're blocking the transmission of signals, then you're also blocking their reception, and can't receive phone calls. Which defeats on of the major reasons for carrying a phone with you.
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You can carry a phone just to signal out, not to be 'on-call'. I rarely ever receive phone calls.
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And how many of the calls you make are to other people's cell phones?
You do make a legitimate argument from a personal perspective - assuming you would be okay with *never* receiving calls, but most people seem to consider being available to their loved ones, at least in an "emergency", to be one of the most important reasons to own a cell phone.
And really, a phone only does two things: it lets you make calls, and it lets you receive them. Everything else is the PDA the phone is built into. If it can't do
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I suspect the phone doesn't even need to transmit 'telemetry data' per se. One probably can do triangulation at the tower, and phones are constantly chirping.
The best answer might be satellite phones.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:4, Informative)
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...After all, Profit > People for Republicans.
Don't get too smug. Open borders == death to working class, but it's OK since new immigrants tend to vote Democrat. Power > Citizens for Democrats. I do wish that there was a part for the working class in the US.
Re:Bad for me, but not for thee (Score:4, Insightful)
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Like most leftists, he's fine with using Stalin's Dream as long as it's invading your life and not his
If he was fine with Stalin's Dream as long as it is invading our lives and not his, he wouldn't be making public statements about it. There ARE security concerns with mobile devices, there's no denying that Google, the phone companies, and the carriers are using our data for their own purposes. Wasn't it only last week that it was revealed that all of the major telecommunications carriers in the US were selling location data on their subscribers without any notification to those subscribers or consent? A
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What is really crazy is that there are groups of people in the US whose sole purpose is to police speech and make sure that other people both say unoffensive correct things and rally groups of supporters to target those who do not.
In other words, Twitter users...
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The point isn't an actual level of public ownership. It's simply getting people used to depending on the state for everything, so they can be controlled-and pushing this narrative through socialist programs. This would probably take the form of fascism more than anything, with the state needing to use these large conglomerates to implement this, and the people being dependent to the point where there is no revolt.
If the state provides all healthcare, food, UBI, etc; you're not going to complain when then tr
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stubborn and anti-social without benefit
That's our rms to a T. /s on the "without benefit". ?
Well
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> So RMS won't carry a cell phone himself, but he will borrow someone else's, placing a call or a text to people he knows. Which would then be traceable back to a location. That doesn't make sense.
It's called being a hypocrite.
All he has done is defer the problem.
He's fine with someone else trading their freedoms when it's convenient for HIM but when it comes to him trading his freedom it's now inconvenient. That's a REAL nice double standard you got there.
Standing for your principles doesn't let you off
Nothing wrong with buming a phonecall (Score:3)
It's not a problem to NOT borrow use of somebody's phone. Some of us are old enough to have lived during a time when everybody didn't have a phone or internet.
The world functioned so well it was able to invent all the stuff you use today so you can "innovate" your silly stuff on top of that along with the help from us old timers.
He loses none of his rights if he uses your cell because you already gave up your rights. There is no hypocrisy here. He can do just fine without it and he can deal unlike everybody
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/whoosh
If was serious about his principles he wouldn't be using ANY mobile phone: his OR others.
He's compromising his principles by leeching off of the very system he is complaining about. See the problem now?
> It's not like he can bloody prevent people from owning/using cellphones, is it?
He doesn't have. (It wouldn't work anyways.) Cell phones are here to stay -- for better or for worse.
You have to pick and choose your battles. He is SO focused on one TINY little insignificant battle that he is miss
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Re: in the neighborhood and can I give a speech (Score:2)
Quite some time ago, I read an article about this sort of thing...how he travels for talks and such. To paraphrase what I remember, he doesnâ(TM)t book the flight, the host does that for him. The host also books the accommodations and arranges transportation. He just asks for a little spending money for meals (cash, no credit card). He wonâ(TM)t use a credit card, or pay expenses and submit a reimbursement request. Basically her said that, if at any time he is asked for a credit card (like ch
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I consider smoking tobacco to be stupid for a variety of reasons and do not and will not do it myself, but I'm not going to prohibit anyone else from making up their own mind. Can it be said that I can get the b
It's a hardware problem (Score:2)
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Absolutely - just like forcing people to give up their money for free in exchange for food is totally Stalinist.
If you don't like the price I charge for my code (GPL compliance) then don't use it, or try to convince me to sell it to you under other terms. It's as simple as that. Or do you think you are entitled to steal my code and give me nothing in return?
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Nobody's claiming it's free - rather they're claiming it's Free, as in "you can't lock up this software"
If you want free code that you *can* lock up inside your own proprietary product, then by all means restrict yourself to using BSD or any other "glorified public domain" license. It's a really simple distinction, and only an idiot would claim confusion.
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If that were the deal, it would be a bad one. But it's not - you chose to give up your privacy and security for your own personal convenience. You could easily choose otherwise, just as he did. Now, if enough people chose that route then borrowing someone else's phone would stop being viable, and there might be a market for phones you could easily and confidently turn off. But that's a world that doesn't currently exist.
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The tracking will not stop when the smartphone GUI says its "off"