Sorry for the non-PC (and non-PC) analogy, but that's like saying that just because things are built to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act that being in a wheelchair is just as good as being able-bodied.
Bullshit. The 20" CRT I had circa Y2K did 1600x1200 (or maybe even 2048x1536, but I wouldn't have used it at that because text would have rendered too small to read) and certainly cost no more than maybe $200.
Hell, even the 22" 1680x1050 LCDs I replaced it with only cost $150 each on Black Friday 5 years ago.
Now yeah, it's true that I wasn't necessarily running every game at full detail, lighting and AA settings at those resolutions, but I was indeed using all those pixels.
"At 720p?" Hah! I haven't ran a PC game at a resolution that pathetically low in over a decade. (The fact that modern HDTV-derived LCD resolutions suck makes people forget that PC gamers were running 1600x1200 (or higher!) on CRTs in the '90s.)
Hey, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM no matter how ineffective it is. Surely, since the laws are entirely fair and symmetrical, the expectation of privacy remains when using encrypted communications no matter how ineffective that encryption is... right?
I haven't tried it out yet, but ZRTP apparently provides strong (PGP-based) encryption for VoIP. So why not just quit using cellphone "voice calls" entirely? There exist cellphone plans that provide enough data cheaply enough to make this work economically.
Not to mention, given the exponential growth rate of the Internet's data, if you have the capacity to store data for year N (this year), then storing the data for year N-1...N-N (all years from the beginning to last year) is trivial.
A post in a thread a few days ago gave a good list. (I'd link back to it, but I can't find it.)
RequestPolicy
NoScript
RefControl
Ghostery
HTTPS-Everywhere
BetterPrivacy
Cookie Monster
I didn't list Lightbeam because while it is good at visualizing tracking, it doesn't actually stop it.
I also currently use
AdBlock Plus
Self-Destructing Cookies
DuckDuckGo search provider
I'm also looking into running a YaCy server so that I don't depend on centralized (and therefore inherently trackable, even if some say they don't) search engines at all.
The current Supreme Court ruling about FISA is based on a lie.
The NSA is allegedly allowed to wiretap conversations between a US citizen and a foreigner, but it is also wiretapping conversations entirely within the US (via third parties, such as GCHQ). I haven't heard a ruling on that yet.
And of course, the Supreme Court has reversed itself before -- sometimes it itself is wrong.
You're talking about the situation where an app legitimately requires a permission (e.g. a text messaging app requiring text messaging permission). I'm talking about the situation where an app illegitimately "requires" a permission (e.g. a live wallpaper app requiring text messaging permission). "If you don't want to grant the privileges that the app says it needs, then don't install the app" does not work because Stupid End User thinks "ZOMG PRETTY PICTURES!...PERMISSIONS? LOL WUT?" and installs the damn thing anyway.
Given that the vast majority of Android apps illegitimately require permissions, this kind of permissions management is absolutely necessary to protect SEU from himself (at least SEU's less-stupid friend can disable the permissions for him, instead of trying to explain why he ought to quit using his favorite spyware-infested live wallpaper). If that harms the developers of the spyware-infested apps, the too fucking bad for them, they deserve it.
The fundamental thing here is that the needs of SEU outweigh the needs of the developer, period.
Funny you mention Windows, because that is kind of what it's like. If you're developing a Windows application you have to accept the possibility that -- for example -- the user might firewall your program (so making it add-supported won't necessarily work) and that there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
I should have certain hardware and permissions to the OS. If you feel you can't trust my application then don't install it.
You're one of those dumbass programmers who designs Windows applications that require Administrator access to run, aren't you?
It becomes a support nightmare and a functionality nightmare and a programming nightmare to try and code around every single user's specific desires as to what hardware/permissions I should access.
If accepting the inevitable reality that the user is going to decide what happens on his own device is a nightmare for you as a developer, then go find some other line of work. The world will be better off without your malware.
You misunderstand me. The setting in question was one within the app itself (referring to "there is a switch in their app to turn this off"), not the system setting. It's inherently and trivially possible for the app to show a switch that doesn't actually do anything.
I assume by treason, you refer to things like providing aid / comfort to enemies of the United States. Things like providing arms to the Muslim Brotherhood....
Not even that. I mean that the NSA, with its Unconstitutional Orwellian agenda, is itself now an enemy of the United States, and that Obama has given the NSA aid and comfort by failing to disband and prosecute its leaders.
So Americans would accept that they don't get a say if, for example, China or Russia tries to do the same thing? Because, you know, it's lawful according to them?
It's not up to Americans whether they "accept" China or Russia's spying. That's China or Russia's decision (respectively); Americans' only recourse is to attempt to physically prevent it.
Regardless of country, if you don't like getting spied on by foreigners, the only thing you have to blame is your own country's counterintelligence agency's failure to prevent it.
Obtaining the necessary warrant might prove to be impossible without obtaining communication-based proof beforehand.
Then the target of the investigation goes free. This is the correct and reasonable outcome, by design.
But at the same time I can't figure a better way to prevent impactful, unlawful acts from happening (from terrorism to major drug smuggling and so on and so forth).
Then you don't prevent them. That is the cost of living in a free country, and it's an entirely reasonable one, which I, for one, am perfectly happy to pay.
And by "better" I don't necessarily mean "let's go full legal and there you have it" - that's probably way worse from an outcome perspective. What if (again, as I said above, theorizing here) the NSA stops collecting that data and within 3 years the amount of bombs going off increases tenfold, while at the same time drug usage increases by millions of souls, meat trafficking gets out of control, etc.? Then it will be widely regarded as being "the worst decision that could possibly be made".
That is nothing more than a load of fear-mongering totalitarian bullshit, without a shred of evidence to support it. (In other words, it isn't even a theory -- it's a hypothesis, and an exceptionally poor one.)
The higher national security, the greater the costs (and sacrifices of personal privacy). It's valid for pretty much every country in the world. A balance must be stricken, but weights on both platters are variable and subjective
In the United States we already struck that balance (weighted strongly towards freedom at the expense of security). Attempting to change that balance without the consent of the people (expressed via amending the Constitution) is treason.
Do you really think everyone that download those applications that enable access to this hidden code know what they are doing? People will download it because they saw it on the media, use it, and go to Google Play and start giving bad reviews for applications that have bad behaviour
In this case, the people who are too stupid to use it are also too stupid to know or care why they'd even want to in the first place. It's not as if this is a game or something; it's a settings menu. Nobody's installing it for fun.
what will happen if the access to the IMEI number is hidden giving fake numbers and for some reason a crap application used that to identify the user and for some reason privacy is broken, accessing data of other users?
You answered yourself. They key words were "crap application."
Also, I wish IMEI access was a disable-able permission. Either it isn't, or it's a permission that absolutely nothing on my phone has tried to request.
The bottom line is scenarios like you described, where restricting an app's permission could ever cause a worse problem, tend not to be plausible.
I remember they advised the Cyanogenmod team to not enable multi window feature for all applications because not all of them work without problems with dynamic screen sizes and they didn't want to alienate developers on Google Play with bad reviews for something that doesn't follow the Android APIs. There is a reason Samsung multi window feature only works with some applications and not all of them
I've never used either Cyanogenmod or Samsung's multi window feature, but I would have assumed it just reported the next-smaller screen size class (i.e., a 10-inch tablet in landscape mode would display two apps side-by-side by pretending to each app to be a 7-inch tablet in portrait mode). That sort of thing should be inherently compatible with all apps (at least, all apps that adhere to Google's UI standards).
Have you ever used the feature being discussed? It not only provides a list of what permissions the apps want (and switches to turn them on and off), it also tells you how long ago the app actually tried to use the permission. For example, on my Nexus 5, Chrome last used my location December 6, read the clipboard 5 days ago, and has never tried to use the camera or record audio. What this means is that these features are optional, and it's perfectly reasonable to disallow them and continue using the app without it even noticing they're missing.
Now, there's an even more important use case: I don't have a whole lot of apps that require permissions for user-hostile reasons (because I avoid installing them in the first place), but there are a few. Fruit Ninja, for instance, wants access to the user's location for no good reason other than evil tracking & advertising purposes. Just now I tested it to see what would happen if I turned off that permission. Guess what? The game still played perfectly fine. There was absolutely no downside for me, the user, in turning the tracking off. Contrary to your assertion, I expect this is what will actually happen in the vast majority of cases (until developers start purposefully sabotaging their apps when the misfeatures fail to work).
"Breaking the app" to me means losing core functionality.
Well in that case, your question presupposes its own answer. -- if it means making the app unusable by definition, then obviously there's no reason not to uninstall it instead.
However, what the OP and I meant by "breaking" was more akin to "breaking a horse."
Twitter recently updated their app to ask my location. Fortunately there is a switch in their app to turn this off, but really I shouldn't have to count on their charity...
More to the point, you shouldn't have to count on their trustworthiness. Who's to say the app doesn't actually leave the location reporting turned on regardless of that setting?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we need an extension that sets your user-agent to whatever is at the top of a list like this.
Sorry for the non-PC (and non-PC) analogy, but that's like saying that just because things are built to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act that being in a wheelchair is just as good as being able-bodied.
Bullshit. The 20" CRT I had circa Y2K did 1600x1200 (or maybe even 2048x1536, but I wouldn't have used it at that because text would have rendered too small to read) and certainly cost no more than maybe $200.
Hell, even the 22" 1680x1050 LCDs I replaced it with only cost $150 each on Black Friday 5 years ago.
Now yeah, it's true that I wasn't necessarily running every game at full detail, lighting and AA settings at those resolutions, but I was indeed using all those pixels.
You weren't talking about games (which indeed are not "expired milk" just because they're old); you were talking about hardware.
Your claim is like saying a TV built in 2013 is just fine because it can barely display black-and-white 480i.
"At 720p?" Hah! I haven't ran a PC game at a resolution that pathetically low in over a decade. (The fact that modern HDTV-derived LCD resolutions suck makes people forget that PC gamers were running 1600x1200 (or higher!) on CRTs in the '90s.)
Hey, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM no matter how ineffective it is. Surely, since the laws are entirely fair and symmetrical, the expectation of privacy remains when using encrypted communications no matter how ineffective that encryption is... right?
I haven't tried it out yet, but ZRTP apparently provides strong (PGP-based) encryption for VoIP. So why not just quit using cellphone "voice calls" entirely? There exist cellphone plans that provide enough data cheaply enough to make this work economically.
Not to mention, given the exponential growth rate of the Internet's data, if you have the capacity to store data for year N (this year), then storing the data for year N-1...N-N (all years from the beginning to last year) is trivial.
DARPA built the Internet, and is funded by taxpayers.
A post in a thread a few days ago gave a good list. (I'd link back to it, but I can't find it.)
I didn't list Lightbeam because while it is good at visualizing tracking, it doesn't actually stop it.
I also currently use
I'm also looking into running a YaCy server so that I don't depend on centralized (and therefore inherently trackable, even if some say they don't) search engines at all.
You're talking about the situation where an app legitimately requires a permission (e.g. a text messaging app requiring text messaging permission). I'm talking about the situation where an app illegitimately "requires" a permission (e.g. a live wallpaper app requiring text messaging permission). "If you don't want to grant the privileges that the app says it needs, then don't install the app" does not work because Stupid End User thinks "ZOMG PRETTY PICTURES! ...PERMISSIONS? LOL WUT?" and installs the damn thing anyway.
Given that the vast majority of Android apps illegitimately require permissions, this kind of permissions management is absolutely necessary to protect SEU from himself (at least SEU's less-stupid friend can disable the permissions for him, instead of trying to explain why he ought to quit using his favorite spyware-infested live wallpaper). If that harms the developers of the spyware-infested apps, the too fucking bad for them, they deserve it.
The fundamental thing here is that the needs of SEU outweigh the needs of the developer, period.
Ah, you mean McCarthyism? I wasn't around for it, but I'm sure it was bad....
...But this dwarfs McCarthyism in scope (and un-Constitutionality, if such a thing can be expressed as a continuous rather than boolean value.)
Funny you mention Windows, because that is kind of what it's like. If you're developing a Windows application you have to accept the possibility that -- for example -- the user might firewall your program (so making it add-supported won't necessarily work) and that there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
You're one of those dumbass programmers who designs Windows applications that require Administrator access to run, aren't you?
If accepting the inevitable reality that the user is going to decide what happens on his own device is a nightmare for you as a developer, then go find some other line of work. The world will be better off without your malware.
You ought to be able to re-download Play applications you've paid for anyway (unless you don't plan on reinstalling the Play Store, of course).
You misunderstand me. The setting in question was one within the app itself (referring to "there is a switch in their app to turn this off"), not the system setting. It's inherently and trivially possible for the app to show a switch that doesn't actually do anything.
Totalitarian FUD is totalitarian FUD, whether you call it "theory" or not.
What is not theory is that we lived the "other outcome" from 1776 to mid-2001, and the terrorism rate was just fine.
(Note that the terrorism rate continued to be just fine since then; it was the "other outcome" interval that ended.)
... and then abolish the Department of Big Brother, right? 'Cause otherwise your proposal is evil and insane.
Not even that. I mean that the NSA, with its Unconstitutional Orwellian agenda, is itself now an enemy of the United States, and that Obama has given the NSA aid and comfort by failing to disband and prosecute its leaders.
It's not up to Americans whether they "accept" China or Russia's spying. That's China or Russia's decision (respectively); Americans' only recourse is to attempt to physically prevent it.
Regardless of country, if you don't like getting spied on by foreigners, the only thing you have to blame is your own country's counterintelligence agency's failure to prevent it.
Then the target of the investigation goes free. This is the correct and reasonable outcome, by design.
Then you don't prevent them. That is the cost of living in a free country, and it's an entirely reasonable one, which I, for one, am perfectly happy to pay.
That is nothing more than a load of fear-mongering totalitarian bullshit, without a shred of evidence to support it. (In other words, it isn't even a theory -- it's a hypothesis, and an exceptionally poor one.)
In the United States we already struck that balance (weighted strongly towards freedom at the expense of security). Attempting to change that balance without the consent of the people (expressed via amending the Constitution) is treason.
In this case, the people who are too stupid to use it are also too stupid to know or care why they'd even want to in the first place. It's not as if this is a game or something; it's a settings menu. Nobody's installing it for fun.
You answered yourself. They key words were "crap application."
Also, I wish IMEI access was a disable-able permission. Either it isn't, or it's a permission that absolutely nothing on my phone has tried to request.
The bottom line is scenarios like you described, where restricting an app's permission could ever cause a worse problem, tend not to be plausible.
I've never used either Cyanogenmod or Samsung's multi window feature, but I would have assumed it just reported the next-smaller screen size class (i.e., a 10-inch tablet in landscape mode would display two apps side-by-side by pretending to each app to be a 7-inch tablet in portrait mode). That sort of thing should be inherently compatible with all apps (at least, all apps that adhere to Google's UI standards).
Have you ever used the feature being discussed? It not only provides a list of what permissions the apps want (and switches to turn them on and off), it also tells you how long ago the app actually tried to use the permission. For example, on my Nexus 5, Chrome last used my location December 6, read the clipboard 5 days ago, and has never tried to use the camera or record audio. What this means is that these features are optional, and it's perfectly reasonable to disallow them and continue using the app without it even noticing they're missing.
Now, there's an even more important use case: I don't have a whole lot of apps that require permissions for user-hostile reasons (because I avoid installing them in the first place), but there are a few. Fruit Ninja, for instance, wants access to the user's location for no good reason other than evil tracking & advertising purposes. Just now I tested it to see what would happen if I turned off that permission. Guess what? The game still played perfectly fine. There was absolutely no downside for me, the user, in turning the tracking off. Contrary to your assertion, I expect this is what will actually happen in the vast majority of cases (until developers start purposefully sabotaging their apps when the misfeatures fail to work).
Well in that case, your question presupposes its own answer. -- if it means making the app unusable by definition, then obviously there's no reason not to uninstall it instead.
However, what the OP and I meant by "breaking" was more akin to "breaking a horse."
More to the point, you shouldn't have to count on their trustworthiness. Who's to say the app doesn't actually leave the location reporting turned on regardless of that setting?