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Comment by cyode | Hacker News Reader

Pulled from IMDB, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox voices the consternation perfectly:

> Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful, isn't it?

> Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.

> Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.

> Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.

> Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.

> Lucius Fox: At what cost?

> Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.

> Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.

> Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.

> Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.

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That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect in real time. And that’s before even considering BLE and the Find My network. Imagine the “God mode” dashboards they could have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).

Imagine a Google Maps / Google Earth where you can see everyone’s location and identity in real time, with tagging/targeting/following capabilities and quick links to thorough personal profiles.

Or Palantir of NOTHANKS.

And see everyone they interacted with in the last 24 hours

Not only that: also nth-order interactions (Alice—Bob, Bob—Charlie, Charlie—Deborah, …), connectivity clustering, time spent in same location heatmaps, etc.

but one can choose not to use a device which is tracked, I cannot opt out of other people's cameras.

These devices are very few in reality. One reason why I keep investing in almost every company that makes a Linux based smartphone. Still need the 2FA and digital magazine for the loo.

Even large retails install bluetooth tracking in their buildings now. Was interviewing for one of them and they ask what you would use that style of tracking for to support the consumer. Giving the consumer a reason to use it helps validate and maximize the meta data.

I'm sorry but I just don't think that's the threat at all. I think these companies actually realize the existential risk and harm this data has, and do a lot to anonymize it quickly & effectively. If the government was actively backdooring Apple or Google to get realtime data like this, it would be found, and it would be a shitstorm that would greatly impact these companies.

We really need to get a little more discerning in our hatred. Apple especially I think is a real piece of work. But there are so many worse hideous monsters out there. Clearview AI just signed with DHS for access to a facial tracking database. Flock is out here basically giving playbooks to law enforcement to tell them to use only the most vague indirect reason when asking for data. There's so many other even less visible but incredibly dangerous data-broker foes to society, doing such harm.

Google and Apple have a level of caring far far far far far far above the vile anti-human campaign happening now. I just think you are off by a million miles, that you're not even on the right planet, for where the actual real harm is coming from.

Amazon?

The past gives a lot of lessons, all negative ones. Power people are endlessly greedy for more power, there is no end in that spiral. All top folks are like that, if you look for the signs you can see it in their behaviors outside PR rooms. Sociopaths to the last one, all big names and then some more.

So, when in doubt, feel free to have good faith in these behemoths. I don't. Secret court orders for example can force any company into anything, and it can be pro bono for some gov contract later. Why would they disclose this, ever? We had Snowden and others.

Come on lets be realistic here, all that data is a wet dream and ultimate goal of any 3 letter agency all around the world.

Those companies are all in the same unethical goddamn country, controlled by the same unethical goddamn goverment.

Where is the real harm coming from? America is the answer.

Google literally has a partnership with Palantir, whose software is underpinning ICE activities right now.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alphabet-palantir-team-superc...

I hate it!

But that seems far different to me than directly making their own products whose express purpose is to send data to the feds / local law enforcement.

Google is not a huge data broker selling your data to the world. They keep that inside, & sell ads based in data they have. But if they started trying to be a data seller or data provider, like Amazon has been, I think they realize that would almost surely be a huge crisis.

There's many good reasons for all the big tech hate. But I do think that Google and Apple have extremely strong incentives to not become a go-to everyday source for law enforcement, I think the person I was responding to has a level of suspicion that is wildly over critical & hyper rampant, and I think we would know if stuff was that bad, and I think we would all be a lot more pissed & many people would have found the door out by now.

Go back a little bit further to another Morgan Freeman movie - Se7en (1995) and a big plot point was that it is unthinkable for big brother to be keeping records of what library books people are checking out. Times sure have changed...

Having rewatched that movie recently I found it absurd that all the killer would have had to have done to evade capture was purchase books with cash.

Slight digression and spoiler alert, but, IIRC, wasn't it a significant part of the plot that he wanted to be caught?

I'm going off memory, but I thought the library books led them to John Doe's apartment, something he was not planning for, and required him to change his plans somewhat. He did want to be caught, but not that soon, before he had finished his work, and required a hurried escape.

Ahh, okay. That makes sense.

Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted?

Unfortunately a very realistic depiction of how many of the brands advertising their security the strongest often have the most ridiculously broken security (flock)

I rewatched recently. That's what he says all right.

He also says "aflongaflongkong". https://youtu.be/0ukMXA0SJaM

He says "What's wrong with a phone call?".

They should have used base64 encryption.

There are performance concerns with base64. Hardware-assisted null-key encryption offers security that's a non-strict superset of base64 encryption and with superior performance.

null-key encryption is write-once, read-never, so you don't have to cache it.

How about ROT13? Ideally applied twice for twice the encryption.

ROT13 is cheap enough that you can afford to apply it many more times. I use one million iterations to store passwords securely.

640k oughtta be enough for anybody.

Md5 encryption would be far superior.

I mean it is technobabble but in some way it is also poetic.

It's funnier than typical technobabble because they're literally saying its not encrypted. The writers knew what they were doing, I'm sure

Or its encrypted with no key meaning theres no way to open it

The Nolan Batman movies are absolutely risible in retrospect. It's hard to believe how seriously everyone took them back then.

They’re good entertainment, not a documentary haha

Not a single person in the world took any of them "seriously."

They're blockbuster movies about a comic book.

I mean, one actor took their role so seriously they locked themselves up in hotel room for a month in isolation to prepare for their role as Joker. Many people in film took it seriously.

Just because a piece is fictional or imaginative doesn't mean it can't be taken seriously

You're conflating an actor taking their role seriously to a viewer taking fiction seriously.

Film critics, viewers, media writers, online video essayists, etc all took the films very seriously

Hah. People absolutely took them seriously and still do. They are pitched as if they're serious important art about issues. People discussed it like it was King Lear.

Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted?

You know movies aren't real life, don't you?

Wait until he sees the main character is a super hero

Batman is technically not a super (as in superhuman) hero, though. He's just rich and determined.

Wait till he sees a billionaire sacrificing himself for others.

Technically not a super hero. He's whatever Gotham needs him to be

"Null key" is technobabble, which I appreciate more than an actual real world technology reference which is wrong or gets outdated.

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