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Joined 9 days ago
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Cake day: August 27th, 2025

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  • It’s not clear how the spyware gets onto the phone, though. Typically the user needs to download something that happens to have spyware in it. Unless the USA government includes this spyware in heretofore legitimate government apps so that a significant number of people install the spyware unintentionally, I don’t see how this spyware is of practical value. Including it in government apps might be their plan, though, even though there is a high chance that the malicious app(s) would be banned. But the USA government could threaten Apple or Google into letting the app remain available for download. Dark times.




  • We all know “proof of age” or “age verification” is synonymous with mass surveilance

    Is it? I was under the impression that websites would use private identity verification companies like iDenfy to perform age verification. The identity verification company would need to use a government API to verify the person’s existence and age, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the identity verification company is reporting to the government which people have initiated age verification, or for which websites.





  • Sometimes policy issues arise after an election cycle, in which case the voters didn’t have an opportunity to vote for or against the candidates based on their position on the policy issue. Was that the case with age verification in the UK?

    In a healthy democracy, future elections decide the fate of these policies, which can be reverted. Even the USA’s complete prohibition on recreational alcohol, which was popular with voters at the time, and codified into the constitution itself, later became unpopular with voters, and was repealed. So as long as the democracy remains healthy, there is always an opportunity for bad policies to be repealed.