Notices by sam floreani (floreani@hachyderm.io)

every time I mention Palestine in the DRW newsletter I get at least one (usually more) angry responses with a "why wont you stick to tech/privacy/security" vibe

surveillance and AI tech—fueled by data collection of Palestinians—are amplifying the genocide. Israel exports its tech around the world, 'battled-tested' on Palestinians. Israel has contracts with large data-extractive tech companies. these *are* privacy and security issues.

sigh. today I am researching and writing about 'gender detection software', which I knew was transphobic rubbish but damn, the more I learn the worse it gets. now to parse the horrors into something that doesn't read like me rage vomiting on a page (or does, but in a readable way)

people have laughed (laughed!!) when I've suggested that privacy and security practices were important for activists and organisers, dismissing it as overkill in a relatively ~chill~ country like Australia.

but protest is *increasingly* being criminalised here and our right to protest is under threat. while obviously we can and should fight this, people can *also* do digital security community care and implement practical anti-surveillance organising tactics

Yesterday, a NSW Labor Party MP said "I don't want to see protests on our street at all, from anybody."

Today, the NSW Police Commissioner has announced "Operation Shelter" to capture "all intelligence available to us about community sentiment, potential protest activity, and potential demonstrations that might take place in the future."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-11/nsw-police-announce-operation-shelter-to-respond-to-protests/102962382

wow, I'm sitting in on a consultation call for Australia's Digital ID bill and it is the single most tedious and monotonous thing I've heard in a long time. for something that stands to impact everyone in Australia, and is right up my alley (privacy, security, identity, etc) they've really outdone themselves with making it so. fucking. boring.

if this is a tactic to discourage engagement with the consultation process, it's working

@dragestil a different thing! This one is for the legislation governing the government's digital ID system, which is intended to be a way for people to verify their identity online with government services and eventually private sector organisations

journos love to use 'hacked' in a headline but for real I'm less worried about hacking (read: usually data breaches caused by poor privacy and digital security practices) and more worried about how the company is lawfully going to collect, use and exploit my data ok

so you're telling me that Worldcoin, that dystopian silver ball that scans people's eyes to collect biometric data to go into a crypto project to create a "World ID", the one that manipulated people from lower-income communities to sign up in the beta period to reach the 2mil users for launch, that was co-founded by none other than Sam Altman

...is now being peddled as a way to distinguish between human and AI content? A problem that Altman played no small part in worsening?