Comment by stevenAthompson

Comment by stevenAthompson 2 months ago

> Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone.

Like every other right, your freedom ends where other peoples freedom begins. You can install whatever you'd like on your phone... unless it prevents others from exercising their rights. That's how we all get to stay free from the "might makes right" crowd.

Joining your phone to a botnet belonging to a hostile foreign power might very well prevent others from enjoying the very rights you're trying to preserve.

You have a point about avoiding the slippery slope though. I do hope that the deciders are taking that risk seriously.

archagon 2 months ago

Nobody has thus far provided any evidence of a “botnet.”

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stevenAthompson 2 months ago

Sometimes we aren't the boss and we don't get to see the evidence. That doesn't mean there isn't any.
Can you think of any reason a government engaged in cyberwarfare might want to ensure there was informational asymmetry? I sure can.

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- archagon 2 months ago
  
  OK. Has the government indicated that there is classified evidence?
  
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  gpm 2 months ago
  
  Yes. It was even submitted to the court here ex-parte (without letting TikTok see it), though the court apparently declined to consider it.
  What exactly it says... obviously we don't know.
  
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- dagenleg 2 months ago
  
  "We have evidence but it's secret". Hey, we've seen this one before, it's a classic!
  At this point, the credibility of the trust-me-bro evidence can fall anywhere on the scale between "Iraqi WMDs" to "Imminent invasion of Ukraine", and there is just no way to know.
  
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  stevenAthompson 2 months ago
  
  There are mountains of evidence that Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon are the CCP, and it's already been publicly illustrated that the CCP controls Tiktok. You have to have a cyber security background to understand the attribution, but a ton of it is TLP green (public). If that's something you care about just Google it.
  That said, it's not your job to understand it.
  We both, presumably, voted. That was our input to the process. We don't get to be consulted about every decision thereafter.
  The people we voted for were briefed in private by SME's who know more about nation state attribution than we likely ever will and had access to sources they can't reveal to us. They then made this decision.
  That said, if you don't trust the people elected (of either party since this was bipartisan), don't trust the experts, can't agree on the facts, and don't even agree on what constitutes a reliable source there's no point in having a conversation.
  At that point you're beyond the utility of conversation as you no longer share a common frame of reference with your fellow man. There can be no argument in good faith with someone who is completely faithless.
  I'm curious what you would actually accept as a reliable source? Is there any means by which you could be shown sufficient evidence? What have you put in the place the rest us keep a relatively common framework for 'reliable source'? Tiktok, maybe?
  
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ethbr1 2 months ago

To me, the 'profiles on the next generation of leaders, throughout their formative years' argument is stronger than the botnet one.
I don't particularly trust Google or Apple to firewall a malicious and determined nation-state actor (0 days being 0 days), but it seems lower probability than the technically trivial data collection.

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