US Government is being pressured to pass a sneaky piece of legislation that (once again) threatens the totality of online freedom and privacy. This time they are doing it in the name of preventing sexual predation on children. Clearly this is a topic that is highly relevant to users of HIVE and STEEM, plus anyone who values privacy and their own security (ironically, as we shall see, including children). As usual, this looks like a thinly veiled strategy to stifle online dissent and increase their own power and that of their cronies. Let's take a look.
As Wired covered recently, the 'Earn it' Act (Presumably not connected to Steemit inc.) seeks to move to centralise access to online information even more than has already been done. The guilt complexes and fears of so many people have already opened the door for the once mostly free internet to be a pale shadow of it's former self and to potentially limit the expansion and evolution of humanity in troubling ways. There would be no way that a government could even consider such draconian measures as continual surveillance of just about everyone, everywhere (as already exposed by US Gov whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and William Binney) if the people of the nation were not oblivious, gutless and in lockstep denial enough to allow it to happen - and here we are.
The reality that many people are unable to even describe who Edward Snowden is, is testament to the success of the massive distraction operation that the mainstream media has been acting out for decades.
EARN IT?
A bipartisan pair of US senators today introduced long-rumored legislation known as the EARN IT Act. Meant to combat child sexual exploitation online, the bill threatens to erode established protections against holding tech companies responsible for what people do and say on their platforms. It also poses the most serious threat in years to strong end-to-end encryption.
source: wired
Ok, well - who wouldn't want to protect children, right? Surely only bad people.. hmm.
Though the principles the companies are pledging to adopt don't specifically impact encryption themselves, the event had an explicit anti-encryption message. The cumulative effect of this morning's announcements could define the geography of the next crypto wars.
Oh, sounds important.
Riana Pfefferkorn, the associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, outlined fears about the privacy and security implications of an earlier leaked draft of the EARN IT Act in January. After a preliminary assessment of the version of the bill introduced on Thursday, she told WIRED that she sees well-meaning revisions aimed at reducing concerns that EARN IT could violate First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights related to speech, privacy, and lawful search. But she says the bill remains fundamentally problematic.
"I see this as being an attempt to cure procedural problems while throwing a bone somewhat to civil liberty, privacy, and security concerns," she told WIRED. "But looking at the additional language it’s clear to me that this is still going to be a vehicle for the attorney general to wage his war on encryption. And it's kind of a black box. One of my fears is if this were implemented, what’s to stop China from saying 'in addition to monitoring for child sex abuse images, turn this on for Uighur freedom activists too.'"
AHA.. OK, so by using people's emotional drive to protect children as a trigger, these anti-freedom empire builders in government get to try to shut down dissent. I see.
"Encryption remains the elephant in the room," James Brokenshire, the United Kingdom's security minister, said during the DOJ press conference. "I’ve got to say that putting our children at risk for what I believe are marginal privacy gains is something I really struggle to believe any of us want."
Really? The UK 'security minister' claims that encryption only provides 'marginal privacy gains'? Haha.. Does he think we are all brain dead? How's that military without encryption working out for you? Or how about the financial system without encryption? How about all those private, multi billion dollar business deals being broadcast unencrypted? Clearly, at best, he can only mean that corporations, military and other 'authorised' people will have access to strong encryption, but social networks and 'the public' won't - so that we can 'be kept safe'.
In essence, this is all about power balance. The controllers know that the artificial hierarchy they rely on to feel big and strong is under threat from the wider world who are wanting their power back and are done with being under the yoke of those who too often seek to enrich themselves and crush everyone else. Understandable really. It is despicable to me that these 'people' would try to use the sexual predation of children as an excuse to gain personal power. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised though, since:
- It has been proven that the UK and US government (plus NASA and numerous other similar groups) have a FAR higher percentage of child rapists among their ranks than the general population.
- Jeffrey Epstein's case has exposed how far the governments of many nations are embroiled in child abuse and are being blackmailed.
- The loss of end to end encryption allows a massive centralisation of power to take place, in face of growing movements to decentralise the web being led by technology sectors such as cryptocurrencies, blockchains and social ecosystems such as HIVE.
How Can We Really Defeat Child Abuse?
Child abuse is clearly one of the most serious problems facing humanity today. To solve any such problem means going deep and going to it's roots - to the causal factors involved. This kind of deep awareness and deep change is exactly what the modern 'healthcare' and 'governance' systems seem to be allergic to, as they repeatedly introduce ineffective measures to temporarily deal with symptoms.
The bottom line is that child abuse would not take place at all if:
- People lived from their heart and were self empowered and honest.
- People were raised to value themselves and the sentience/free will of children.
- People made self exploration and evolution a priority instead of watching TV.
- People supported decentralisation that can lead to personal empowerment, rather than passing off personal responsibility to centralised power 'authorities' who can be corrupted and commit horrific evil in the shadows with no fear of being discovered.
- Genuine child abusers were deeply understood and helped to evolve or otherwise genuinely separated from society in a transparent way that cannot be corrupted by corrupt governments. e.g. False accusations of child abuse are a very effective way for corrupt political strategists to dispose of opponents.
Clearly this is one of the most complex challenges faced on Earth - how can we both have liberty and also protect children when they can be born at will and are meant to be freely guided by their parents and their own will?
While the full scope of the answers here are well beyond the scope of this post (though CAN be answered in full), what is easy to demonstrate is that the solution to this problem is NOT to lose all privacy and encryption! As an example, you can see in the following recent documentary from VICE, how organised child abusers can be and are caught online, despite the presence of encryption:
Loss of encryption is likely to put more people at risk than it will help and ultimately only means that corporations and governments will gain power over the will of the people. From my perspective, the motives of anyone pushing for this needs to be carefully examined.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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The issue of child abuse has been on for so long and I am thinking will it be possible to stop it
All of our challenges can be solved with deep enough understanding and right action.
Definitely
True
Among other things, The Earn It Act violates the 4th amendment and people should be taking these people to court. It should go to the Supreme Court. I encourage people to look at the constitution and to make something happen. We can fight back.
While we certainly should try, the fact is that no one can force the Supreme Court to take a case. They can, and often do, just decline to review a case, leaving the decisions of Appellate courts standing.
True.
We the people must govern ourselves. There is no other way that I can see to break free from the chains of the criminal governments.
Matrix-8 is a way to do this. Bottom up multi-level real time Democrity, by the people, for the people.
Agreed
Decentralisation is needed, yes. I have read about 2/3 of the very long introductory post describing matrix 8. From what I can see it is based on anonymity but makes no mention of how anonymity will be supported while also demonstrating meaningful metrics with regards 'the will of the people'. If accounts are anonymous, what is to stop me creating 1 billion accounts?
I will do my best to explain. There will be what are called cause groups, where people group together based on causes they are interested in. These groups will not be anonymous. These groups will spark discussion and ideas. When an idea is ripe for action, people will then move into the anonymous 8-PAC's to discuss further, deliberate and come to an actionable accord, basically agreeing upon the next actionable step. A delegate will be elected from the eight who will then meet with another seven delegates to further discuss, deliberate and agree on a more concentrated accord for the 64 people from the eight 8-PACS's. Depending upon the number of people in the Matrix-8 platform, this may go up several more levels. When resources are needed to action the concentrated accord, the individual members will be asked to "pony-up" a share pf the required resources. If you have a billion (or ten) sock-puppet accounts, then to remain credible in the system each would need to pony-up. This is partly how this would be taken care of. Also there will be a reputation system which will also i think take care of dummy accounts.
I will ask John Huckel @matrix-8 to join this discussion to explain better, as i don't fully understand yet.
I much appreciate your feedback brother.
OK, no problem. I think that document needs to be thinned down by about 80% in order to be readable for most people ;)
The key issues with any such system tend to focus on dealing with fraud, efficiency potential for overpowering.
Agreed
You might like to read this too @joeyarnoldvn:
https://peakd.com/hive-153630/@atma.love/anonimity-in-matrix-8
@ura-soul A reply here from John Huckel @matrix-8 (he sent it to me asking me to post it as he's having trouble logging in):
Hello US,
Your point is well taken. And I think AL answered it well.
The assumption is that this system will be used to do actual Things in the Real World. So, once everyone in the Matrix comes to a well-defined Business Plan regarding some subject, they will know precisely how much money, at least the initial steps will take. That number divided by the number of Participants in the Cause Group will determine how much will be expected from each Participant. If there were a bunch of Zombies as Participants, they would immediately be outed if they didn't make their Donations to the Cause. It would be an annoyance to the real Participants, but after the Zombies were washed out of the Cause Group, everyone else could get back to business. If then, the re-figured assessment per Participant was agreeable, the Business Plan would go forward. If not – they would have to go back into Deliberations to come up with a cheaper Plan, or actively recruit new Participants to their Cause Group until they could afford to put the current Business Plan into effect.
One of the reasons that the Anonymity question rears its problematic head is in part my fault. Almost all my focus has been in explaining what is new about my system: the ability for individuals to both Deliberate and Vote in anonymity. We haven't seen that before; it is only since the advent of the Internet that it has been logistically possible. BUT... at this point, I assert that, although it has not been tried before, it is logistically possible! Using the Congress of the United States as an analogy - to pass a law, or in our case to approve a Business Plan, both the House of Representatives, and the Senate are necessary.
The anonymous Matrix-8 Platform side of the equation is the House of Representatives; the open, broad base of the Cause Group is the Senate. Our Senate is in the form of a Chatroom, where like Facebook everyone can see your picture and everyone can know your name. Quite different from the US Congress – our House of Representatives is made up from the very same folks who make up the open Chatroom, or Senate.
But there will be no House of Representatives formed, until there are sufficient people in the Senate; and it's when the Chatroom atmosphere ceases to be productive regarding the Cause, that the same participants in the Senate morph themselves into Participants in the House of Representatives. When they move from one state to the other, it's like they move through a semipermeable membrane – their names, reputations, college degrees, etc. don't make it through. (And in fact – they will be chastised if in the House of Representatives they attempt to sway the argument by divulging what they have been told to leave behind.)
Chatrooms are great for defining the Cause – in fact they are necessary - but they fall apart--often, unfortunately into useless name-calling--once they get too big for real Deliberations to continue.
Please Google "The Iron Rule of Oligarchy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy "It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an 'iron law' within any democratic organization as part of the 'tactical and technical necessities' of organization." I assert that this--aside from being inevitable--is a good thing! On almost every subject there are recognized Experts - the Elite. To ignore them, or to exclude them from Deliberations is the height of foolishness. So in the Chatrooms it is they who will best initially delineate the Cause and suggest various specific solutions. But they don't get to Vote – other than as Participants within the Matrix-8 Platform.
I hope that this explains that while fictitious Participants might be a nuisance, it is unlikely that they would survive the open free-for-all of the initial Chatroom, then be able to navigate the intimate atmosphere of the 8-PAC's without being found out. And if these Zombies made it through those tests and even paid their share of the costs of the Business Plan – so what? The fact that this system is designed as a solution to large groups being able to practice Real Time Democrity, any small percentage of Evil Doers would have a minimal effect.
Please let me know if this answers your question. And I am very interested in answering any further questions you may have.
Together we can get this done,
John Huckel
Thanks to you and John for the reply here. I do not agree that oligarchy is either necessary or a good thing - almost all of the most evil actions we have seen on the Earth have been done by a state, which by the definitions provided by the alleged 'iron law' were the result of 'experts' and oligarchy.
In any case, as I understood the model being proposed, the ultimate decision made as a result of the matrix process is one that is not enforced on anyone and which simply directs the funds of those involved towards an outcome. So it seems the matrix is a way of organising and directing discussion towards an outcome, as opposed to being anything that can be compared to oligarchy, as such (provided the decisions are not of a kind that are intended to subvert the free will of others - such as might occur if a large number of fascists or nazis used the system to direct their resources).
The issue of anonymity is clearer with your explanation here, though I am not sure of a way that an application can be run to manage or host such anonymity that could not ultimately be tracked somehow by whichever entities have access to it's data. Even the anonymous browser 'tor' has been subverted to a certain degree since there is always a hardware requirement and always therefore an attack vector that can be exploited.
I will introduce my own 'iron law' here if you like. The more power gets concentrated into a system (centralisation), the more of a target it becomes for subversion and manipulation.
Power itself does not corrupt since power is only the 'ability to act' and is absolutely necessary for life to continue at all. The corruption comes in the form of heartlessness and denial that leads to false beliefs and rigid thought frameworks that do not respond to reality or accept reality as it is. There are numerous possible ways to resolve this problem, but it cannot ultimately be done with technology as it is a matter for the soul and heart of individuals and they need to solve it for themselves in their own right time.
This!!
Power corrupts no one. The corrupt seek power, and all power they gain they seek to use to increase their power. The absolutely corrupt seek to gain absolute power.
Lord Acton (IIRC) who originally authored the aphorism 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely' was corrupt, and sought thereby to mislead the naive to gain more power.
The actual truth is that 'The absolutely corrupt seek absolute power.'
Thanks!
Ah, yes - I agree. I wrote a post that even I thought was profound a while ago on STEEM that talked about this and why the belief that 'power corrupts' is one that 'the establishment' would want as many as possible to buy into! What a plot twist!
I'm not sure if you read this post https://peakd.com/hive-153630/@matrix-8/welcome-to-new-age-dapps-a-solution-to-what-ails-us in which John writes:
I think @openseed are working on a way to keep some data within a community (in this example it could be the user details) private within that community, yet still be able to within the community what is chosen to be shared and I guess each user would have their own set of private keys. I;m certainly not technically qualified to answer this. I'm hopeful however that we will find some people who will find the solutions. I've also referred this to John for a further reply. Thanks LOTS for your continued engagement.
Edit: I just made a Matrix-8 Q&A post which includes a glossary and a link to this thread: https://peakd.com/hive-153630/@atma.love/matrix-8-questions-and-answers
@ura-soul
John's response to your last comment can be found here:
https://peakd.com/hive-153630/@atma.love/anonimity-in-matrix-8
@ura-soul - you might also like to view, and perhaps join in this in depth ongoing thread which offers some valuable insight: https://peakd.com/informationwar/@valued-customer/re-atmalove-q7zmj1
#matrix8challenge
Interesting
Treat everything you post online like a postcard.
Assume all encryption can be or will be broken at some point.
The primary purpose of the internet has been surveillance.
Child safety begins at home, with the parents.
If that relationship becomes compromised, by divorce spousal abuse etc., it is unlikely to be fixed by the "system".
I agree that online information should be considered public, in general - since there is no foolproof digital security. I'm not sure the purpose of the internet has always been surveillance, though, since it can clearly be so many things to so many people. I'm sure there were some people who wanted it for that purpose all along though, for sure.
To be fair, the Internet can be used for almost everything, I would argue its been quite effective at behaviour modification.
I have to disagree the primary purpose of the internet is surveillance. If you simply look at the money, the primary purpose of the internet is pr0n.
Parents take note.
Adult entertainment is one of the best ways to lure the masses into the surveillance system.
Power and internet access will be one of the last services to be cut.
I am LOLling at the thought of tens of thousands of boys adjusting their laptops so their surveillors are sure to have a clear view while they fap.
Ah love!
There is a black mirror episode that shows exactly what you describe.
(spoiler alert, it doesn't end well)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709230/
I truly believe this is going to be remembered as the next "Patriot Act." It's pretty fucking terrifying honestly.
Agreed.
Great article. Unfortunately, this is an issue that the government has been trying to own for a long time. The freedom of the internet is a hard pill for them to swallow.
Welcome to Hive.
Thanks. Yes, it is a key feature in the struggle for freedom against those who claim to own freedom!
As usual, government proposes disarming victims as a means of reducing attacks. As usual, what the government says is the opposite of what it does. Disarming crime victims increases attacks on them, the opposite of what government says it's going to achieve.
Thanks!
the question is can child abuse be defeated
No. The question here is should we give up privacy and human rights to inhuman and inhumane institutions.
The answer is no.