Cypherpunk Politics [was: REAL-ID Coming]

Cathal Garvey cathalgarvey at cathalgarvey.me
Wed Mar 4 03:02:24 PST 2015


 > wth are you talking about? ireland is the bridgehead of fucking
 > facebooks tentacles.

 > The irish data protection officer is a goddamn joke.

Underfunded, understaffed, but also the only reason why Facebook's 
facial recognition database was rolled back in Europe. Well, we're told 
it was rolled back, which I don't believe for an instant. Point being, 
the DPC has done a fantastic job with the shoestring our government 
gives it.

All of which is beside my point: I wasn't saying the Irish government's 
great and that Ireland's a safe-haven from spying; it's not. We have 
GCHQ sitting on all of our fibres, and we *do* host some of the world's 
biggest NSA assets: Facebook, Google, Amazon, etcetera.

My point was that our *government* does not engage, as far as we know, 
in mass surveillance, and that receiving government funding in Ireland 
to study and deploy privacy projects would therefore be less worrisome 
than receiving the same funding from the UK or US, which presents the 
well-trodden paradox of being "funded by the adversary".

On 04/03/15 10:35, stef wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 07:16:18AM +0000, Cathal (Phone) wrote:
>>   +1. More than this, whatever your feelings on governments per se, not all governments are particularly bad when it comes to privacy, spying, etcetera.
>>
>> There is plenty wrong with the Irish kleptocracy, but as far as we currently know domestic mass surveillance isn't in play over here.
>
> wth are you talking about? ireland is the bridgehead of fucking facebooks
> tentacles. the irish data protection officer is a goddamn joke. the whole
> country has major parts of its gdp only because of their incredibly flexible
> spine that they use to adjust to the silicon valley doing their EU money and
> data laundering, besides the UK there's not much more complicit states than
> the irish when it comes to EU wide mass surveillance.
>

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