Pandora’s iPhone, by Stuart Carlson, 2016. Still spot-on in 2026:
A backdoor for the good guys simply does not exist. Once you build it, hackers walk through, authoritarian governments walk through, and the rest follows.
The UK is pressuring for chat control right now. EU Chat Control initiatives keep popping up. We need to keep saying NO to this!
The problem is, that nearly no OS is perfect. Even grapheneOS and copperheadOS. If a three letter agency wants to get access to the systems running a privacy OS, they will somehow get it. Who should block the door to the devs home? They raid them, acquire the signing keys with their methods and deploy a backdoor in the next OTA update.
It is always about thread level and alternative options. If they get Apple, you move to Android, then to graphene, then to sailfishOS and whatever comes next. If you care about it. But the thing is…. Who cares? Privacy and security enthusiast, for sure. Freedom of the press people? Hopefully But these people don’t always know about that shit, and those are to protect.
Oh shit not the ETC
What’s the ETC or behind it? What else could be worse?
And why isn’t the FBI part of the repressive regimes man?
the cia? oligarch pedophiles?
why isn’t the FBI part of the repressive regimes man?
Or the hackers
It’s a respectable and necessary “intelligence agency” when we do it, nefarious and unjust spying when they do it. Same old propaganda.
I guess the difference is that FBI makes Apple install the backdoors, while the rest of the bigger guys just reap the spoils afterwards.
The world is so vast and complicated, you just cant comprehend what good things your representatives are trying to do for you with your simple, tired, working class, simple brain.
Its hard work running a government, not that you would ever know because youre not in the big club. That’s why good things are hard to accomplish.
Your government loves you so much its worked its butt off towards this common goal with other nation states across the world simultaneously. Why arent you grateful?
Now go on back to your increasingly more expensive apartment, you got to get a lot to do before you get to your shift at your 3rd part time job. Oh and the retirement age went up again. Youre welcome.
As far as threats go, I would swap FBI and Hackers.
Etc. could have been fraudsters and/or scammers.
This is fucking slop lmao
A famous Carlos cartoon from long before the adoption of AI?
Doubtful.
I never said it was AI slop but that’s an etymologically interesting thing you’ve got going on there, if I was a scientist I’d look into it
My conspiracy mind sometimes thinks that Apple has said backdoor and has given the keys, but plays a pretend game with the govt as if they didn’t
“If you don’t have anything to hide, why would you be against this?” – Americans
Agreed! Police will now be going through the streets daily. If they find your front door locked, you’re going on a list, because you’re clearly hiding something.
picture would be better if there were fingers taking wallets and passpy
it wouldn’t because they don’t need to.
All the big tech companies regularly meet with the US regime and do anything they ask.
If you need a Chat use the anonymous https://securebit.chat/, showing the middle finger to control initiatives.
Looks like a scam, no, thanks.
I think reinventing SimpleX Chat is already a lost cause
“Authoritarian governments” as if the US is isn’t exactly fucking that
Authoritarian? The US currently even outscored North Corea.
Outscored where? Based on what?
On repressive policy
I’m not saying I don’t believe the US has repressive policies, but I am questioning any source that claims to have detailed enough info about NK internal policy to accurately rank them compared to other countries
The thing is, being repressive becomes more and more expensive past a certain point. It’s not cheap being the prison capital of the world or building a surveillance state. The US is one of the only countries that can even afford to do as much repression as it does.
That’s why we use our prison population for slave labor, helps to offset the cost!
Maybe to some extent, but prison slavery only provides about $9 billion in services and produces over $2 billion in goods annually.
For comparison, the total cost of the U.S. prison system is approximately $445 billion annually.
According to?..
I think it’s more like a “protest the regime and have a 50+% chance of getting executed for it” thing
Something which the good people at Radio Free Asia have assured me is totally real and definitely happens
And the odds of getting killed at a protest here are what, only 30%? Bullshit. It’s a propaganda thing, the US has always been a violent repressive menace to world peace.
The odds of getting killed at a protest aren’t 30%. If that were true we would have hundreds of thousands dead each year.
Based on what? Statistics provided by the same government we’re talking about?
It’s a ridiculous claim. If it were 30%, even just off anecdotal data from social media, people you know at work, friends, you would hear about tons of people dying. I’ve been to numerous protests, I would have personally seen dozens to thousands of people dead.
And the 50% claim I’m responding to is no less ridiculous or baseless, the difference in how people respond to them is pure chauvinism
You said, “And the odds of getting killed at a protest here are what, only 30%? Bullshit. It’s a propaganda thing, the US has always been a violent repressive menace to world peace.”
The U.S. has done many reprehensible things. But I’m talking about your specific claim that the odds of getting killed at a protest in the U.S. are 30%, which is false.
Can argue with ml
Allow me to facetiously talk about the US the way people from this country typically talk about the DPRK:
How do you know they don’t kill hundreds of thousands of protestors a year? The repressive
governmentregime hides any information that makes it look bad, such as job reports, climate reports, and war casualties. They’ve got concentration camps all over and people dissappear all the time.
I pray you understand I’m trying to create a picture that’s comprehensible for the average. ml user here
What you think/claim you’re doing doesn’t matter at all, this is presenting the US federal government as less of a threat to our privacy than some other “repressive regime” somewhere else in the world and that’s 100% bullshit
Ah yes those people worried about getting executed for opposing their government face the same threat as someone in the US worried for their privacy
One struggle
People in the US are summarily executed by law enforcement without consequence, pretty well documented actually
Are they legally executing people protesting the government at a comparable rate to, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia?
Black Panthers, BLM organizers, anti ICE protestors
And how many of those are they executing /day?
Build the alternative and use it.
You’re either the dictator of your computer or you’re not. A government ‘forcing’ companies to hand over logs describing what happened on their commercial platform means you have not even begun the fight. It’s a complete farce.
It’s a distraction from the fact all these companies are rolling in capital by manipulating their users–oh, but I want to be manipulated by daddy Apple or daddy Discord, just not daddy national-government. What?
It’s a fucking larp. How many of you will agitate against this, but you will still use your fucking Discord/Apple/Google/Meta whatever?
Oh, the government is going to hunt you down for using different software that is non-compliant with legislation? What? In what fantasy land? Wake me up when there’s boots on the ground invading people’s homes by authorities to check what software I’m running on my computer. It’s never going to happen.
EDIT: Sorry, the more I look at this cartoon the more this pisses me off. It’s painting Apple as an innocent. It’s fucking not. Come on, dear artist, labour more to paint mega-corp dictatorships as benign, aloof, white, middle-class targets. Get fuckt.
me and a lot of us on lemmy do whenever possible.
the problem comes from the societal changes that spawn off of that shit when most normies are using it and/or don’t care.
like how i can be super careful i don’t upload my picture, but then the first normie takes it and my face is suddenly on a database. or public surveillance camers etc.
or how facebook mindrot culture is now mainstream even if we don’t use it.
You are absolutely correct, which is why this and even your comment is a distraction. Regardless of how much we dislike the sophisticated surveillance regime you can’t deny material reality: it exists.
The correct thing to do is to materially destroy it. Its current existence is the threat, not a theoretical oh, it might be compelled to do something to me. The actual fact it could do something to you now is the issue. It is doing things to you right now. Every user of these commercial entities labours freely for these trillion-dollar companies.
E.g.: A Google android phone provides data to Google which they use in their commercial mapping-software, which they sell access to. “Oh, but I get free-access to Google maps; if my mobile-computer spies on me to improve Google maps then it’s beneficial to be spied on.” Such reasoning is trotted out ceaselessly, but it ignores the commercial nature of Google: other companies (& governments) are required to pay a license to use it. You’re a rube labouring for free. You are an employee of Google, only you don’t realise it; neither does the law. You materially impoverish yourself whilst enriching a capitalist corporation. The data you’re giving away has value. Even if you want to deny that value consider the following: you pay for the hardware, the data connection and the electricity that enables the extraction of that data. !Socialise the losses privatise the profits! Free access to Google maps isn’t charitable. It’s a requirement to extract labour from you that improves Google maps. (EDIT 3: this is an important point that I wish to impress upon the reader: that improvement allows Google to demand higher prices from other commercial entities [& governments]. If the product stagnates then the price does too. To prevent this you are required to purchase increasingly sophisticated mobile-computers to extract increasingly sophisticated data sets.
Have any of you used commercial software recently? Consumer computers are fucking super-computers, yet Microsoft windows and Adobe’s PDF reader lags like a motherfucker dancing in molasses under the ocean in a pit of sand–just wtf!)
You might as well praise your employer for providing shelter whilst at work. How charitable of them. Gee golly, I sure am pleased my employer lets my use a building whilst I labour for the owners. Gee golly, they’re so charitable that they’re not demanding a rent. (Satire.)
I will reiterate: it exists now. Ask yourself what can you do now to weaken what it is you’re fighting. This cartoon distracts from the fact that Apple is a private surveillance-corporation. Don’t use Apple controlled computers. That is the correct line.
Yes, your data will be inadvertently collected by rubes, but this cartoon says nothing about that fact. This cartoon is just a distraction. It shouldn’t be applauded by those who want privacy. It should be critiqued for what it is: a distraction.
EDIT: Apple would love this cartoon. Apple do not want to share their power with any government. This cartoon creates social-pressure to ease governmental oversight of their private, for profit fiefdom. This cartoon only aids Apple. Critique this cartoon.
EDIT2: just look at the fucking cartoon: Apple’s mobile-computer is on the left, brightly light. It’s white like virgin snow. It’s painted as a good thing. Apple’s mobile-computer is a private prison. It’s anything but good.
FINAL EDIT: on the topic of Google maps. I was shocked to learn that a store’s manager refused to comply with Google’s terms for being listed on Google’s maps. The shock was not from their refusal, but the requirements Google were demanding. They wanted a video that showed how to access the store (located within a larger commercial building) and privileged information. This was dressed up as attestation that they were in fact an employee of the store and therefore the data was valid and correct. However the privileged information they wanted was absurd: passwords to store safes and company logins.
That was what I was told by the manager. For those who work within businesses do these requirements sound familiar? Is Google actually demanding such information as a requirement for new listings?
i wholeheartedly agree with you. my great question is how.
how the fuck we take computing back and convince a critical mass of people this is wrong as fuck? because it looks like we are barely able to resist.
I would say liberate yourself first. Buy computers that can or already are liberated (that is to say computers running libre software). Once liberated you will understand how it is done and can then teach others how to do it too.
You should not be concerned about politics here. Already the people are rendered mute under Western democracies.
Even if you don’t think it’s folly to persuade others, what are you persuading them of? To use software that you yourself don’t use? Build it. Use it. Promote it. Can’t write software? Donate to the orgs that are writing libre software. Can’t run it? Haven’t you liberated your computer? If you have you can run it. Can’t promote it? Are you not able to communicate?
Ditch Apple and Google. Use GrapheneOS. Use a linux powered mobile-computer like Pine Phone. Use encrypted overlay networks to communicate over the internet like i2p (it has a Java implementation and a C++ implementation), tor, hyphanet or my personal favorite: GNUnet. Heck, use all of them!
I will preemptively address an infantile critique of GrapheneOS: it uses Google branded hardware. File off the logo if it disturbs you so much. This critique fails to address the reality: hardware is subsidized by technological behemoths like Google because their product is not the hardware, but the software that is built off data collected by the hardware. An argument could be made that taking advantage of that subsidization maliciously damages Google more than purchasing non-subsidized hardware. Something to think about. Regardless, Foxconn makes both Google Pixels and Apple Iphones. The branding blinds people of the reality.
Anyway… rambles, rambles. It’s not about convincing others, it’s about you doing what you think is the correct thing to do.
Really great comment! I do not agree with the edit, tho. Apple’s dude is the one with they on his and, on an Apple device. Doesn’t look like Apple is depicted as an innocent agent here, to me
Apple seems too small and innocent in this image
my little trillion-dollar corporation can’t be this cute!
The door should say: Made in China, designed in the USA.
Yes, like the MAGA hats
that’s a good image to convey the message to people propagandized by the us, but yes, “fbi” and “repressive regimes” are one and the same here
your domestic government poses much more of a threat to your privacy than some foreign “repressive regime” far away
I took it as “repressive regime” to mean the administration itself, (not some foreign government), as in more normal times the fbi was a separate entity. And would even investigate the president for crimes. But given the current consolidation of power and that checks and balances have been compromised, I suppose the distinction is moot now.
