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LCA: Jacob Appelbaum on surveillance and censorshipLCA: Jacob Appelbaum on surveillance and censorshipPosted Jan 26, 2012 19:45 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435)In reply to: LCA: Jacob Appelbaum on surveillance and censorship by felixfix Parent article: LCA: Jacob Appelbaum on surveillance and censorship
> Intent is impractical. How do you differentiate medicinal alcohol,
> religious alcohol, and recreational alcohol? How do you differentiate baby > monitors and spycams? How do you differentiate debugging tools, routers, > firewalls, and censorship / spying?
Well, you can start with how their marketed... In the alcohol example, are the sellers saying, "Use this to treat your wounds", or "Use this on the sabbath to celebrate the lord", or "Use this to get drunk off your ass! Woohoo!"? It's pretty simple, really... (Not that I think this is at all a good example, since I find none of those 3 uses objectionable, and none of them should ever be illegal...)
If someone says, "Buy this security camera to protect your property", or "Buy this camera to monitor your baby", that's one thing... However, if they say, "Buy this camera to illegally spy on women in the bathroom! It's specially designed to be hidden from view, so your victims will never notice it!", that's very different, and their intent is quite clear...
I'm not saying we even try to go after the vague cases... There need not be any debating over intent... If they're not directly and actively marketing it for nefarious uses, then leave them alone... But, if they ARE, why not go after them?
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LCA: Jacob Appelbaum on surveillance and censorship Posted Jan 26, 2012 20:42 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
what if the marketing just says "100 proof alcohol'?
and marketed by who? by the creator to the wholesaler, from the wholesaler to the retail store? or from the store to the consumer?
what if the same product is marketed in multiple ways?
if you just go by marketing, then just about all cars would be banned as the advertisements show them driving at illegal speeds (or does fine print in the advertisement satisfy you, and what does that do to your 'marketing test'?
LCA: Jacob Appelbaum on surveillance and censorship Posted Jan 26, 2012 21:14 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
> what if the marketing just says "100 proof alcohol'?
Then, it's the equivalent of marketing something as a generic tool with no specific marketed use, which if perfectly fine... (Again, I still really hate this example, because it's sort of implying there's any "wrong" use of alcohol, which I strongly disagree with...)
> what if the same product is marketed in multiple ways?
Then, how about you go after the ones specifically encouraging the illegal uses and marketing it for those specific uses? If someone repackaged "metasploit" say, as "ScriptKiddiesHelper", and actively marketed it to script kiddies for the express use of illegally cracking into hosts, I'd have no problem with them being stopped or even arrested, since they're actively promoting illegal behavior... That doesn't mean they should go after metasploit itself, however!
Remember, the example that started all this from the article was about a company that was specifically marketing a device to repressive governments that allows them to spy on their citizens and place malware on their machines... I don't think there's anything wrong with going after them... They are obviously soulless scum... But, that doesn't mean whatever software they're using underneath for this nefarious use should be gotten rid of... For instance, it says they're at least using Linux; but, Linux itself isn't marketed for such use...
> if you just go by marketing, then just about all cars would be banned as
I do think such commercials are pretty stupid, really... But, I don't know if you can say they're really marketting the cars for illegal use, either... Even without the fine-print disclaimers, excessive speed isn't necessarily always illegal... On the Autobahn, on a race track, on a private road, you can go any speed you like... Not to mention, most people see speeding as one of those 'minor' semi-crimes, like jaywalking, which everyone does and no one really cares about... It's not seen as "evil" or immoral, really...
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