The technical term is “dummy load”, most antennas are around 50ohm “impedance” which in an incredibly roundabout way means the antenna is indistinguishable from a 50ohm resistor at whatever frequency it’s tuned to…which means you can replace the antenna with a 50ohm resistor.
This all assumes you care about leaving the radio functional (radio amplifiers will burn up if they can’t dissipate the energy they’re creating) and in most cases it’s probably fine to just cut the trace as close to the source chip as possible. That said, if the system is especially evil and well engineered it’ll throw errors in some cases so better to leave everything functional but unable to hear or transmit.
Here in Spain there’s minimal surveillance outside the big cities. My town (circa 40K residents) has no public cameras in town (I lived in the UK and they were everywhere).
But cameras are not the only concern, what’s about internet traffic analysis, piracy, ability to rent something or get some service like sim or home internet without documents and stuff
Or even transportation, like busses, trains, etc
Don’t get me wrong, i’m asking so I can have a better picture of how the stuff really works
Twitter/X is such a cesspool. The end of nitter is an occasion to completely stop using Twitter, and instead go to the fediverse, subscribe to a newspaper.
I can see the abuse but what if this actually worked in a best case scenario? So dna is found say from a rape and that DNA is used to create a image of the person and then they find that person and then do DNA tests to match them. The image is not used as evidence but used to find the person. Honestly it seems like a good use, if it’s limited to that.
Dude facial recognition catches the wrong people all the time. It is not as infallible as they make it out to be and this is just adding an entire extra level of mistakes they can make.
Facial recognition tech is bogus and because of its technical limitations, unintentionally(?) racist. (ie the cameras are not designed well to take good photo/video of dark skin, leading to high false positive rates when it comes to dark-skinned people) edit: even further, the cameras are often too small of a resolution for quality matching.
Further, facial reconstruction based on DNA isn’t exactly super accurate on its own.
Don’t assume it wouldn’t be abused since the police have a shit track record. If anything like this we’re to be used then strict laws restricting how it can be used need to come first since the police are dumb and can’t be trusted to invent new applications of technology. They’re the last group that would be leading this.
I don’t know a lot about DNA, but i know about facial recognition.
Facial recognition is highly inaccurate. It would be easy for people from the same country to “match” at facial recognition despite being totally unrelated.
If “face generation from DNA” is only roughly accurate (ex: nose size or skin tone), then anybody from the same ethnic origin could be a match. Basically, the more you look like the “average person”, the more likely you would fit the generated face.
Doesn’t it sound a lot like technology-enabled profiling?
I think this is a bad idea, especially the way it’s being developed, but let me play devil’s advocate for a second. What if it were only used to narrow a search radius, the same way cell pings are used to narrow a search radius? Cell pings are already used to direct resources. Being near a crime obviously doesn’t mean you committed the crime, but it does narrow down where to look, and once you start looking you can find real evidence more efficiently. You could pair this with other techniques to narrow down the search, and then find real hard corroborating evidence. Also, since they need DNA in the first place they’d need a DNA match from the suspect preventing random people from getting charged.
Now to stop playing devil’s advocate, there are just so many ways this can be abused, and the police are the worst organization to lead it. They are not technology experts, they’re not even legal experts, and they’ve been shown over and over again to be easily biased, so even if they need corroborating evidence, that doesn’t mean they won’t be biased by the face match and then “find” evidence, or even plant it, plus, even just being accused can be hugely disruptive, and traumatizing when they target a non match. Imagine you’re innocently going about your day and you suddenly get snatched up for questioning and forced to give a DNA sample.
If anything like this were to be used in any way you would need so many safe guards and it’s obvious the police don’t care about setting any of those up. You’d need a double blind approach to evidence gathering, extreme oversight, and a very restrictive legal framework and course close guarding and anonymization techniques on any personal data, and probably more things I’m not thinking about. The police are so irresponsible to treat this like a whatever thing that isn’t incredibly sensitive and invasive and needing tons of safe guards to not be a massive violation of privacy and a dangerous biasing vector that could easily catch up innocent people.
Pardon the YT link, I haven’t dove into peertube yet. Here’s a very timely case where a man was misidentified by facial recognition, imprisoned, where he was sexually assaulted.
And that’s just one specious technology, add in the very immature process of trying to guess what people look like based on DNA and it gets a big “No Thanks” from me. I don’t trust cops to put reasonable guardrails in place when their incentive structure is driving them to put people in prison as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
No. It just does not work that way. The article specifically mentions that there’s no proof whatsoever that the company can actually generate a face from DNA. It’s like looking at a textbook on automotive design and predicting exactly what a specific car built 20 years from now look like. General features? Sure - four wheels, a windshield, etc. Anything more specific? Nope, not at all. And this is before we get into environmental factors - think of scratches or aftermarket spoilers on a car. Humans are similarly influenced by their environment, even down to the level of what we eat or the pollutants in the air we breathe.
What the cops did is as close to bullshit fantasy as makes no difference. Asking a fortune teller to draw you a picture would be only slightly less accurate. This is so insanely problematic those cops ought to be up on charges.
I am on the same boat. Somewhat similar thing was already done by those forensic sketch people that drew how a person might look like after x years if they had earlier photo. It’s not like those sketches meant they are irrefutable proof, just a method to potentially find what you are looking for and then investigate further.
That said, this feels like grasping at straws. I cannot fathom how with only DNA sample you could get an accurate portrait that face recognition could then match.
Cops only like technology when they can abuse it to avoid having to do real investigative police work.
They don’t care to understand the technology in any deep manner, and as we’ve seen with body cams, when they retain full control over the technology, it’s basically a farce to believe it could be used to control their behavior.
I mean, on top of that, a lot of “forensic science” isn’t science at all and is arguably a joke.
Cops like using the veneer of science and technology to act like they’re doing “serious jobs” but in reality they’re just a bunch of thugs trying to dominate and control.
In other words, this is just the beginning, don’t expect them to stop doing stuff like this, and further, expect them to start producing “research” that “justifies” these “investigation” methods and see them added to the pile of bullshit that is “fOrEnSiC sCiEnCE.”
After the murder of Michael Brown, body cams were lauded by centrists as a way to prevent police from unlawfully killing people. And there’s never been a single police shoo- oh wait
TBH: Tech companies are not much different from how you described cops.
They don’t usually bother to learn the tech they are using properly and take all the shortcuts possible. You see this by the current spout of AI startups. Sure, LLMs work pretty good. But most other applications of AI is more like: “LOL, no idea how to solve the problem. I hooked it up to this blackbox, which i don’t understand, and trained it to give me the results i want.”
Beat me to the punch, I was saying just as much, considering the history of forensic science in general. It won’t be long before they’re producing bogus “research” to justify it at a new investigative method.
The reliability of bloodstain-pattern analysis has never been definitively proven or quantified, but largely due to the testimony of criminalist Herbert MacDonell, it was steadily admitted in court after court around the country in the 1970s and ’80s. MacDonell spent his career teaching weeklong “institutes” in bloodstain-pattern analysis at police departments around the country, training hundreds of officers who, in turn, trained hundreds more.
…
In 2009, a watershed report commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences cast doubt on the discipline, finding that “the uncertainties associated with bloodstain-pattern analysis are enormous,” and that experts’ opinions were generally “more subjective than scientific.” More than a decade later, few peer-reviewed studies exist, and research that might determine the accuracy of analysts’ findings is close to nonexistent.
I wouldn’t call him mental ill. Maybe he’s a small time crook, sells and smokes weed and has a little bit of paranoia.
Truth be told, in my criminal past (mostly online fraud, but some real life crime too), I have had similar thoughts. But hey, don’t do stupid shit in countries which you don’t know.
You’re mostly correct. But they reason i’m paranoid because I just don’t think it’s a right thing to spy on people. I’m more kind of a free spirit and share love guy, and I don’t like the idea of living in the world of lies being constantly observed
Edit: In addition, you never know what’s going to be illegal tomorrow, you don’t need anything to hide to feel disgusted about governments spying on people
Then you should really only consider mass surveillance via cameras as a “big” concern. I’m not much of a travel guy, cause being handicapped has it’s downside, but afaik there aren’t many cameras spread across Europe, mostly near/on main train stations, public transport and similar public places. Use a cap/hat and maybe sunglasses. I haven’t heard of any AI/biometrical real time/logging/analyzing being used in production yet (but it’s being discussed). Don’t use public wifi, get an anonymous simcard (roaming data esims for some crypto-dollars) and a GrapheneOS Pixel smartphone (use it only when needed). Pay by cash and be nice to other humans. And don’t think too much about stuff you can’t control! Don’t let you get mad and restrict your life too hard because of stupid politicians and governments xD
Have fun exploring Europe! Take a look at Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Netherlands. Poland and the Czech Republic are nice too, but it’s harder there to communicate in English IME.
oh: and as a drug user, usually prescribed opioids (no abuse, I need them and have a prescription), but (a)busing weed (got a script too, but usually buy from the dealer/vape HHC currently) and hallucinogens/“fun”-drugs (LSD, Shrooms and Special K), I only had problems in Germany because of THC (haven’t had a script at this time). But usually it’s OK to party, but don’t be too open about your use. Funniest moment was in Amsterdam. Some friends and me were sitting on a bench near a little garden, drinking beers and smoking some Js. When the police drove by, we first wanted to hide the Joint, but remembered ah, no public booze in Amsterdam, and had to hide our beers instead. It’s usually the other way round :P
About pixels and sim cards, I don’t really use sim cards. For services that require phone numbers I use modems attached to my homeserver(of course no name), and access them with Lora mesh network(radio)
Your answer is actually really what I wanted to hear, good opinion on the current situation 👏
Drugs are fun, but I don’t really worry about this, do rarely, don’t like weed, i’m safe 😄
My biggest problem with drug usage would be not the authorities, but more general mood of the regular people. I don’t like countries that are hostile to people partying, getting drunk, or high
It’s hard to explain, it’s just I’ve beeed to places that feel fun when you’re high, and the opposite and they start calling the police (so I just think this stuff is very mean, and don’t want to be around people like that)
I know Europe is probably like the best place for digital privacy, but at the same time for me it’s unsettling to see that some of the European cities are the most surveiled cities in the world, and how even countries in Europe are trying to ban e2e encryption
Add the 5-9-14 eyes, strict anti piracy rules in some countries, stories about people getting arrested for messaging something, or doing something political, and you will get a pretty grim picture
My main problem with this, I don’t like being surveiled, nobody needs to have a thread model against being surveiled, because this is just nuts
Probably my stand is a little bit radical, I usually don’t carry a sim card, use Lora for a remote access to my home server, I would never go to the land of free or use any of their services, same with the land of China
Probably lukewarm take: Social media shouldn’t be a utility because it provides no social value or improvement of quality of life in the same way other genuine public utilities like electricity, water, sewer services, or general access to the internet, might. It’s also putting the government in a position in which it functionally would have to provide a platform for everyone equally, Neo-Nazis, climate deniers, anti-vaccers, and every other person with “insert terrible belief here” included.
Ultimately, saying social media should be a public utility is like saying casinos and strip clubs should be public utilities. Just because it’s fun to use doesn’t mean it’s good for society or come anywhere close to meeting the definition for the level of necessity typically attached to something as a public utility.
When businesses ask you to contact their help-desk via WhatsApp, it’s a utility. When people call and message friends, family, and colleagues almost exclusively on WhatsApp or Messenger, it’s a utility.
It’s also putting the government in a position in which it functionally would have to provide a platform for everyone equally, Neo-Nazis […]
Godwin’s Law People preaching [insert terrible belief] on a government platform would be removed and charged for hate speech just as much as they would be if preaching these things in public spaces. If your government gives people with terrible_belief.jpg the chance to preach on public property, that’s not a public property issue, that’s a government issue.
Ultimately, saying social media should be a public utility is like saying casinos and strip clubs should be public utilities.
No, it isn’t. If anything, turning certain popular social media apps into public utilities would limit them from being pure dopamine hits. Let other websites exist to fill the cesspool void. Not the one my grandma uses.
When businesses ask you to contact their help-desk via WhatsApp, it’s a utility. When people call and message friends, family, and colleagues almost exclusively on WhatsApp or Messenger, it’s a utility.
Except…no, it’s not. That’s an extremely naive understanding of what a “public utility” is. A public utility is not defined by how many people use something. Public utilities are essential services that typically operate on economies of scale. That is to say services without realistic replacement and which have large upfront creation and maintenance costs and which only make sense to provide access to a large number of people. You can’t replace electricity with some alternate source of power. It’s electricity. Same for water. They’re fundamental services that are required for other services to exist. Without electricity you don’t have phone or internet. Without water you can’t have sewer systems or indoor plumbing.
WhatsApp, by comparison, is trivially easy to replace. A business chooses to use WhatsApp for customer service. They could just as easily setup a Discord server or just establish an 800 number for you to call. They have immediate drop-in replacements. Arguing otherwise is sort of like arguing that Coke should be considered a public utility because a business serves Coke products. They don’t have to serve Coke. They could serve Pepsi. Or anything else.
Also, your reasoning is kind of skewed, because in order to even use something like WhatsApp, you need other, already existing services. Namely internet access. It makes literally no sense to say “WhatsApp should be a utility” without first arguing that “internet access for all individuals at a national level should be a public utility.” Which I would personally argue is something that does qualify as a utility, far more than any specific social media services or app, and the fact that it isn’t is a huge problem for the United States.
Godwin’s Law People preaching [insert terrible belief] on a government platform would be removed and charged for hate speech just as much as they would be if preaching these things in public spaces.
Oh, okay, “Godwin’s Law” is it? Cool. Here’s an actual law. Like a literal piece of legislation that exists: it’s called the First Amendment. I don’t know if you’re just speaking from a non-American context, or just don’t know how “freedom of speech” is codified into law in the United States. Maybe you’re a kid or something and just haven’t learned that in school yet. But freedom of speech in public places is universally protected under the constitution. Like, there are still public Klan rallies in certain parts of the country. This is what allows those to happen. If the United States government maintained its own social media service, it would functionally not have the power to moderate any content that was not explicitly illegal. Bigotry and hate speech are not illegal under the constitution.
First off, I think you are being very rude. I didn’t call you names or make assumptions, so please treat this with more respect than a Twitter thread.
WhatsApp, by comparison, is trivially easy to replace.
Olvid, a French alternative to WhatsApp, was made in 2019. It took a law passing last month banning all ministers from using non in-house messaging services to stop people from using WhatsApp. I wouldn’t consider that “trivially easy”.
Also, your reasoning is kind of skewed, because in order to even use something like WhatsApp, you need other, already existing services. Namely internet access.
You didn’t mention Internet access and so neither did I. I’m happy we both agree it should be a utility.
I don’t know if you’re just speaking from a non-American context, or just don’t know how “freedom of speech” is codified into law in the United States.
I already said this is a “government problem”. I said this in reference to the US government, because this isn’t really an issue for most countries :/
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