Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best
mullvad.net
mullvad.net
Soon enough (and already the case, if you're one of the unlucky ones) you won't even be able to browse it without explicitly allowing Google to track you on every single website you try to access through your Google-approved, constantly monitored handheld device, linked directly to your identity.
Commercial VPNs are not a solution, they're merely kicking the can down the road, and shrinking the number of people that will complain once they will, finally, come for them too, first by requiring strict accountability to providers and age verification, then outright banning any that do not comply.
So far I have UK, China, Singapore.
But maybe I should accept less rights when traveling.
Ireland... I'm disappointed.
It's such a shame that there's no solution for deniability on SSDs because of wear leveling.
There's been no court cases about plausible deniability with VeraCrypt, so we don't have any real insight into how it would play out.
You (and me) can bitch all you want, but reddit has well prepared for us whining and being sad will change nothing.
Mark my words: KYC will be required on HN in about two years. Not because dang will want it, but because that's the direction the world is going to.
Doesn't matter. They want your passport.
Very weird world we live in!
Of course people are deficient by the billions.
Internet WILL be completely KYCed and very soon. That's kind of inevitable.
But the systemic clusterfuck must be fixed at some point. We can't mingle with the monkeys for too long.
Hypoteses non fingo (Newton)
I deal with the objective.
Such as, no Man accepts identification when accessing information.
That is completely different from any "opinion".
Use a VPN, perhaps Mullvad or IVPN to appear to sites as if you are from a freer country (or state) to bypass the KYC.
Yes I understand. They are better prepared to fight the surveillance state than I am. And yet they caved in instead of putting out some resistance.
For me, ditching Reddit was what changed.
We are clearly the minority and reddit is happy to pay the price of us leaving the platform.
Garry Tan, president & CEO of YC, on Flock support: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims" [1]
The tech/VC people want it, because that's where the money will be.
Oh Persona is also used on Reddit [2].
Persona.
A YC backed company.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48628264
[2] https://help.withpersona.com/articles/7F6BaF9h8Fxf0XWkwQscXN...
[1] https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2026/02/age-verificat...
We moved here because it was the best place available: we'd move elsewhere in case this place will not be available.
It's just that a small minority will continue to protect child abuse^W^W^Wresist utopia.
Speak for yourself; I would drop HN like a bad habit and never look back.
But yes, we're not normies.
If you do business with totalitarian states, there's a good chance you become one.
It’s very accurate to assume that ALL US based tech companies are part of mass surveillance, no matter what promises you hear, companies can be forced to cooperate without the public knowledge. Same with European ones, as the article stated, they are not that far, so don’t assume much even when you see the cliche “based in Switzerland!! Trust us give us your money”. The only safe way is to host your own, maintain your own, encrypt at rest and while transferring on your own, trust no one and nothing, and it’s a good start.
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=Backdoor&si...
the presenter now works at intel.
then politicians thought what to do - put restrictions on kids using social media.
It may be ambiguous to refer to internet surveillance by so-called "tech" company intermediaries as "commercial" surveillance because the intermediaries monitor all internet use, not only commercial use. In other words, surveillance of non-commercial activity. There is no way for the public to verify how the data collected is used, hence restriction on data usage, cf. restriction on data collection, becomes pointless
HN commenters seeking to defend so-called "tech" companies in the past have made nonsensical analogies to, for example, banks that have traditionally tracked credit or debit purchases
But these issuers did not monitor card holders' non-commercial activity
They had profitable business operations outside of surveillance
The so-called "tech" companies generally don't. Whatever non-surveillance operations they conduct are subsidised by surveillance. Perhaps this is what is meant by "commercial" surveillance. Surveillance to generate profit
Generally no one pays anymore for what these companies mainly produce: software
It is a sad state of affairs when software, e.g., web-based software, is given away for free as bait to lure in surveillance targets
But that's the entire Silicon Valley "business model" in a nutshell. They wish they had something better
Enter the new "AI"
I trust Mullvad 100x more than my ISP, so it's a good decision to use Mullvad and it benefits my privacy.
It's not like your ISP or Mullvad can see content of sites, either they can just see the DNS requests.
What ISP sees without a VPN: news.YCombinator.com, apple.com, Wikipedia.com
What ISP sees with a VPN: Mullvad server
What VPN sees when you use it: news.YCombinator.com, apple.com, Wikipedia.com
>From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to access websites that may contain pornographic material?*
>80% support
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/52693-how-have-britons-rea...
>The Essential poll found majority support for a range reforms to improve online safety including: [...] enforcing age verifications for pornography and gambling sites (79%); enforcing age verification for social media (76%)
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/...
they don't hear about all of the potential downsides, knock-on effects, chilling effects, etc. unless they are part of niche groups like HN. and even if they do, in passing, they often lack the technical knowledge to really understand the implications.
i.e., they are consenting, but it isn't informed consent.
i imagine there would be an interesting picture if these numbers were presented in buckets by occupation, or by results in tech competency test, etc.
(similarly, as an example, my opinion in a poll about some complex medical procedure would not be very informed. i would be relying solely on what i hear on the news or read in a quick article, with no fundamentals to really assess and form an opinion of my own)
Not that I know how to do it better, but it's definitely an issue, possibly one that could be solved somehow.
What we've lost is the integrity of this system entirely. No candidate can truly be trusted to implement an age verification system without first getting a check from big tech
Dishonest polls do not demonstrate popular support.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/User:Louis/Manufacturing_suppo...
Only which age you wanted the ban to start
Constant polling and reporting of opinion, and always phrased in terms of effect instead of how they aim to do so.
Once properly informed "do you want to go through an ID check on all websites and apps that you use?" people wise up quickly to the issue. But state sponsored media is pretty adamant about moving this topic forward.
I keep seeing this claim, but where is it coming from?
"parents" are not do-I-look-like-I-know-what-a-jay-peg-is boomers you and others who make this claim believe them to be. the people who are having children now grew up with iPhones. to them, the Internet is not that newfangled thang they heard about on CNN/Fox.
so, show me the data. not a poll with vague ass questions like "are you concerned about your children's safety on the Internet?". I want to see the percentage of people who answer yes to an unambiguous question like "do you consent to submit your ID and/or scan your face to access any random website ~~to fight terrorisds~~ ~~to protect our democracy~~ to protect your children?"
California, for example, has all those propositions they vote on, about various things they're allowed to decide. the recent age verification bullshit, however, doesn't seem to have been put up to a vote.
mullvad has one of the best, if not the best, track records when it comes to vpns over its nearly 2 decades of being in business. it feels wrong to lump them under the same "a VPN Company" label with the likes of Hola VPN or whatever, despite it being technically true.
In Canada, they straight up tell you that the AI will be used to profile you, from every transaction you do all the way to analyzing your sentiment
> AI could analyze public sentiment on social media and other platforms to gauge public opinion.
https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-governmen...
Brace yourself!
- i keep seeing the same arguments everywhere "ThEy WaNt To CoNtRoL Us" etc
- how do you propose catching terrorists then?
It starts "I support" and ends action.
It's just the most recent and egregious misuse of anti-terrorism laws - doing the sort of thing that they claimed it never would be used for when they were brought in.
Secret courts, evidence the defence isn't allowed to see nevermind challenge, judges trying to restrict what the defence can say, long prison terms for simply holding up a sign.
The treatment of Julian Assange was a warning of what was to come.
These are worrying trends.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/palestine-action-lawyer-faces...
You had the bizarre situation that some of defendants dismissed their lawyers because the lawyers were constrained in what they could say in the defence of their clients - so the defendents did there own closing speeches.
There have been over 3000 people arrested for showing support for this proscribed organisation, and over 700 charged, but none actually prosecuted yet. It was only just decided two weeks ago that the government's act of proscribing Palestine Action was lawful.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/15/arrested-pro...
Obviously, I think the Terrorism Act shouldn't silence speech like it does. Palestine Action are a pack of bumbling thugs, and the government's real reason for proscription is that those idiots successfully broke into an RAF base. Egg on face for military so government strikes back with proscription.
The law does allow for these sorts of penalties you describe. But I think you will find that if the CPS does prosecute these cases, especially against people who literally stood in front of police stations and displayed those four words and no more, i.e. they dared the government to prosecute them for speech, I don't think they will be "put in prison for a long stretch". They may not even be prosecuted at all. They would have to do more, i.e. actually break into places and physically damage them, like Palestine Action have repeatedly done, to get a long prison sentence. But the threat of prison for speech is there in the law, that's why I don't like that law.
I would argue the state harassment of these protestors is the actual terrorism - using state violence for political means.
As you say there is also an underlying reason - but it's not the painting of the planes on the RAF base - it was well underway before then. The main driver was the Filton case.
A really concerning development recently is that the judge has decided to sentence people on the basis of terrorism, despite the people not being convicted for terrorism charges - just criminal damage.
Now they are recorded as terrorist for life - despite no jury ever convicting them of that.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/inside-the-palestine-action-tr...
That's what the IRA did when they bombed the UK - they not only threatened the safety of the public, they also deliberately inflicted massive economic damage to push their political objectives.
Breaking into RAF Brize Norton was the icing on the cake. That's why the Home Secretary moved to proscribe the group the very next day. She hadn't felt the need to do that for the year or so since the Elbit break-in, nor the Leonardo break-in, but the moment some chucklefucks reveal the UK is so incompetent it can't defend its own RAF bases from intruders, those fuckers are going down. The group's past violence and destruction gave her the ammo to make the proscription stick.
On the other hand, protesting the company - e.g. shouting at them, or holding a sign - is merely speech. I can't ever see that as being terrorism, which why I completely disagree with the Terrorism Act. Praising the violent group in public is speech too. It is just a nonsense that this speech is also criminalised, and that the maximum penalties are so high. A draconian law like that has a chilling effect on speech just by existing, even if nobody is ever prosecuted for their speech. But that said, watch for the outcome of these 700 charges against protestors, I bet they will be insubstantial or be dropped, and nobody who just held a sign will go to prison. The process itself is punishment.
The whole point of a jury is that you are, in the end, judged by your peers, not by the state.
It's a key protection from abuse of state power.
When the jury convicts they are giving the power to the judge to pass sentence within the remit of that conviction.
If the jury convicts for one thing, and the judge sentences for another, then you could go to prison for life for a parking fine - it's clearly an abuse of process.
The courts have a narrow scope. This specific trial did not need to decide if the Elbit wreckers were terrorists or not.
The government has a wider scope, and literally voted Palestine Action into being a terrorist organisation. That decision was then affirmed by the courts on appeal. If Palestine Action had not been going around breaking into arms manufacturers, they could well have overturned the governments' proscription. But Palestine Action going around doing smashy smashy smashy let the appeal judges see that the government were right. At no point did Palestine Action ever need to smash anything -- they chose to smash things up. They were banking on getting the benefit of committing political violence (intimidating suppliers et al into leaving "the enemy") while not suffering the consequences (being designated terrorists). In short, they fucked around and are now finding out.
Judges don't need jury trials to find facts, they do bench trials without juries at all. A jury doesn't "give power to the judge"; the judge already has the power. The jury only finds answers to questions of fact, and even then the judge can bring in findings of fact from other cases if they so wish, so they jury did their part but they don't run the show.
A key principle of justice is laws are not retrospective - you can't be put into prison for something that was legal at the time.
Again, yet another example of a failure of natural justice in this case.
>Judges don't need jury trials to find facts, they do bench trials without juries at all.
Again you missed the point - trials without juries are for minor things where the person on trial is unlikely to be deprived of their liberty. Juries are there to stop the state from imprisoning people at a whim - indeed they are fully able to choose to refuse to convict, without needing to explain why, even if the facts clearly show the defendents did it.
The safe guard is about 'juries of peers' personal opinions - not about the letter of the law - as the establishment can control that.
Seems like your investment in the outcome is blinding you to the obvious abuse of process.
I can see why the establishment was keen to make examples of these people - however that's not a good reason to undermine the very foundations of justice.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/803/pdfs/uksiem_202...
Again, courts try specific cases. Palestine Action thought it could get away with a campaign of terror, provided it colluded in secret and tasked "unrelated" people with each outrage, and they could all take the relatively minor hit for each incident. The government has seen past that facade, all these "unrelated" people know they're acting in concert for a larger campaign.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Final-op...
> We have balanced the free speech and freedom of assembly rights of individuals including: (i) the rights of the many law-abiding citizens wishing peacefully to protest, hold placards and otherwise support Palestine Action, and (ii) the “chilling effect” that proscription may have upon those wishing to support the Palestinian cause, but who may be dissuaded from doing so by fear of committing offences under the 2000 Act. [...] We have concluded [...] on the basis of authority from the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR), states enjoy a wide margin of appreciation in relation to the prohibition of indirect support for terrorism [...] We have decided that these factors are outweighed by the matters to be placed on the other side of the balance, including:
> (i) Palestine Action is not an organisation engaged in activities falling within the well-established tradition of peaceful protest,
> (ii) Palestine Action is, instead, an organisation that is concerned in terrorism as defined in the 2000 Act and is engaged in causing serious damage to property using weapons, including sledgehammers, presenting very real risks of injury to members of the public,
> (iii) Palestine Action’s “Underground Manual” published in late 2023 advocates the disruption and destruction of and damage to its targets, and avoiding detection,
> (iv) Palestine Action’s nationwide campaign was escalating and was not being pursued with any restraint,
> (v) that campaign was intended to close down the operations of companies pursuing lawful businesses, and has involved direct criminal action against businesses and institutions, including key national infrastructure and defence firms that provide services and supplies to support Ukraine, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the “Five Eyes” allies and the UK defence enterprise, and
> (vi) a key benefit of proscribing Palestine Action was to prevent it from funding terrorism and to degrade its covert infrastructure characterised by secret cells
So even though it is sad that peaceful protestors cannot technically pledge their support for Palestine Action, and the law does have a chilling effect on people who have done no real wrong by protesting with signs... the court found proscription was proportionate, because Palestine Action actual is carrying out a multi-year nationwide campaign of violence and destruction against arms companies and anyone related to them, with the deliberate political aim of shutting down these legitimate businesses. Elbit, Thaler, Leonardo et al are getting no special favours, they're just getting the same protection that every business deserves - the right not to be smashed up by illegally conspiring saboteurs.
Anyway, the lawyer in the Elbit case has just been accused of contempt of court - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgqjrj4wz9o - for peddling unproven conspiracy theories in front of the jury. Let's see how that goes.
It is not the job of the citizenry to prove that surveillance doesn't curb terrorism in order to preserve privacy. It is the job of the government to prove that surveillance DOES curb terrorism to such a degree that privacy MUST be degraded.
Only then we can have a conversation.
cf UK manchester bombers.
In the end the only effective way to stop terrorism ( since it's so easy to just drive a car into a crowd of people ), is to create a society where people don't want to do it - which is what we mostly have - as terrorism, while terrible, is fortunately still quite rare.
More people die in the US from cars every month than died from 9/11.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Yes, who cares what it originally meant:
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
how did police ever do anything over the past hundreds of years?
no one said "without using tech".
The cure you propose is worse than the disease. I don't want you to prevent me from stubbing my toe by cutting my foot off. You're just going to have to find another way and do the best you can under those constraints.
Watching Andor again, I couldn't help but think that if the Empire had just included facial recognition in the intake of their labour death camps they could have prevented a lot of terrorism (Andor wouldn't have instigated the prisoner uprising, and the rebellion may not have won if he hadn't escaped).
On the other hand, if you're not one of the pro-Empire viewers, maybe you consider the rebels freedom fighters rather than terrorists.
Terrorists are not mustache-twirling villians planting bombs in old-folks homes just to provide a simple target for the protagonist to foil.
They are simply anyone who uses terror as a means of control.