BrianKrebsAug 30, 2023

We're big supporters of the EFF, but I can't get on board with the idea that somehow it's wrong or a slippery slope for Tier 1 ISPs to be blocking Kiwifarms.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it

ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech—No Matter How Awful It Is.

Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service providers and platforms, to upstream ISPs (sometimes...

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Show threadZalasur 🐸🇺🇦Aug 30, 2023

@briankrebs This has been s major sticking point for me and why I've withheld from supporting them directly. At best, it's very naive of them to take this position. At worse, it's tacit support for Kiwifarm's online harassment activities.

They seem to forget that people's rights end where other people's noses begin, as the old saying goes.

Show threadDial Tone, Busy Signal *biiip*

@zalasur @briankrebs it would only be naive if important factors were left unconsidered, and shouldn't be considered support of terrible people due to the details included in their statement.

There are good reasons to take this position, and they have presented them, with evidence. This isn't just an ISP thing. Apple, for example, claiming to be able to censor things in people's phones (in this case, CSAM) was going to be a huge mistake, and I'm glad people shouted that down.

Aug 30, 2023 at 12:40pmWeb
Show threadZalasur 🐸🇺🇦Aug 30, 2023

@simSalabim So, you think it's ok for a platform to actively engage in targeting and harassing minority groups, and putting people's lives in real, tangible danger with no repercussions whatsoever? That they should be able to engage in such activities without restriction?

Because that's what kiwifarms did. All this fact-based evidence that the EFF presented seems to gloss over those difficult-to-ignore realities. That's why it's naive (at best).

Show threadZimmieAug 31, 2023

@simSalabim @zalasur @briankrebs Apple’s system was explicitly not designed to look at data at rest. It would only have kicked in when the data was sent from a device specifically into iCloud. Use some other backup/sync service or no such service at all? The scanning wouldn’t ever be attempted.

Even with the scanning in place, it would have been an unequivocal win for privacy. At the time, they did not have end-to-end encryption on images (so Apple employees could potentially look at your photos), and they were convinced they would need this scanning to enable it. Fortunately, everything seems to have worked out in the end, because we got end-to-end encryption of images without the scanning.

For this situation, I think we need more information. Is Hurricane Electric filtering traffic? Is it entirely declining to service a given middleman based on that middleman’s customers? At this point, it doesn’t look like anyone outside HE knows.

Show threadZalasur 🐸🇺🇦Aug 31, 2023
@briankrebs I think you might be replying to another post in error. 🙂
Show threadDial Tone, Busy Signal *biiip*Aug 31, 2023

@zalasur @briankrebs I want to follow this up myself, for the record, to add that the above was a considered opinion that admittedly wasn't fully formed.

I do think the EFF's stance is important, but I also agree that the upstream layers of accountability have failed. As said in another thread, cops, lawmakers, tier 2+ providers have failed repeatedly, if they even bothered.

We do need exceptions to the things we "should never do" when it is called for, which it likely was, in this case.