Month: January 2016

Now we have a second crypto-fascist state politician promoting themselves and their pet cause over everyone’s privacy and security. Unlike the NY State Senator, ASM Jim Cooper just came out and said “Human trafficking trumps privacy”.

Well, if that’s the case, ASM Cooper, why not just introduce a bill to put a full surveillance suite into every private residence in California? After all, most of the human trafficking busts that occur in California seem to be of brothels operating out of private residences. If human trafficking trumps privacy, that should be OK, right?

I’m not going to go into how you can’t outlaw math, or how the issue is more about security than privacy, or any of the other countless arguments in favor of strong, universal end to end encryption. At this point, there’s really only one way to get through to these asshole politicians, since they don’t seem to be responding to reason:

We just need to use Larry Lessig’s idea and kick the bums out. If every legislator who introduces a fascist bill like this gets primaried or actually loses their seat, they’ll think twice about making everyone less safe in the name of law enforcement.

This may just be me getting into the old man yells at cloud phase of my life, but if there’s one thing I don’t need in my house, it’s an internet-connected “smart fridge.” It’s bad enough that pretty much every every smart TV or IoT thing either has shit security or straight-up spies on you, now Samsung apparently wants to know what and how often I eat.

The worst thing is, I’m pretty sure this is just the beginning. Every asshole megacorp in CES is probably going going to be pushing shit like this and then how long will it be until you can’t buy a new fridge or microwave or whatever without the thing wanting my wifi password? How long until they require my wifi password to work?

The worst thing is, its not even about the corporate spying, which leads to the government spying, its that I have absolutely zero faith these things will ship with decent security, and given these companies’ track records with supporting their phones, will bother offering security patches if when holes are found. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my dumb appliances not spying on me.