coffeeClean

@coffeeClean@infosec.pub

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I see a lot of downvotes on your comments on this thread and I wonder if it’s due to differences in nationality/geography/jurisdiction.

  Guess I should answer this. The enormous class of people with mobile phones (likely 100% of those in this channel) are happy to be in the included group and any chatter about expanding the included group to include those without a phone (a segment they do not care about), they think: “that extra degree of egalitarian policy to support a more diverse group will cost more and yield nothing extra to me.”

  Which is true. But the ignorance is failure to realise that as mobile phones become effectively a basic requirement for everyone, the suppliers will have even less incentive to win your business. The duopolies and triopolies can and will increase prices more and reduce service quality as a consequence of that stranglehold. Most people are too naïve to realise the hold-out non-mobile phone customers are benefiting them even from the selfish standpoint of the mobile phone customers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I see that the relevant websites (FCC and lifelinesupport.org) both block Tor so you can’t be poor in need of the Lifeline and simultaneously care about privacy. Many parts of the US have extremely expensive telecom costs. I think I heard an avg figure of like $300/month (for all info svcs [internet,phone,TV]), which I struggle to believe but I know it’s quite costly nonetheless. One source says $300/month is the high end figure, not an avg. Anyway, a national avg of $144/month just for a mobile phone plan is absurdly extortionate.

  About Lifeline:

  Lifeline provides subscribers a discount on qualifying monthly telephone service, broadband Internet service, or bundled voice-broadband packages purchased from participating wireline or wireless providers. The discount helps ensure that low-income consumers can afford 21st century connectivity services and the access they provide to jobs, healthcare, and educational resources.

  So they get a discount. But you say free? Does the discount become free if income is below a threshold? In any case, I’m sure the program gets more phones into more needy hands, which would shrink the population of marginalized people. That’s a double edged sword. Shrinking the size of a marginalized group without completely eliminating it means fewer people are harmed. But those in that group are further disempowered by their smaller numbers, easier to oppress, and less able to correct the core of the problem: not having a right to be analog and be unplugged.

  This topic could be a whole Lemmy community, not just a thread. In the US, you have only three carriers: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. I’ve seen enough wrongdoing by all 3 to boycott all 3. I would not finance any them no matter how much money I have. T-Mobile is the lesser of evils but it’s wrong to be forced to feed any of the three as an arbitrary needless precondition to using the library’s public wifi.

  US govs do not (AFAIK) yet impose tech on people. I think every gov service in the US has an analog option, including cash payment options. That’s not the case in many regions outside the US. There are already govs that now absolutely force you to complete some government transactions online, along with electronic payments which imposes bank patronisation, even if you boycott the banks for investing in fossil fuels and private prisons. And if you don’t like being forced to use their Google CAPTCHA (which supports Google, the surveillance advertiser who participates in fossil fuel extraction), that’s tough. Poor people are forced to use a PC (thus the library) to do public sector transactions with the gov, as are a segment of elderly people who struggle to use the technology. There is also a segment of tech people who rightfully object, precisely because they know enough about how info traverses information systems to see how privacy is undermined largely due to loss of control (control being in the wrong hands).

  So the pro-privacy tech activists are united with the low-tech elderly and the poor together fighting this oppression (called “digital transformation”) which effectively takes away our boycott power and right to choose who we do business with in the private sector. A divide and conquer approach is being used. Giving the poor cheaper tech and giving assistance to the elderly is a good thing but the side effect is enabling the oppression to go unabated. When really the right answer in the end is to not impose shitty options in the first place. It’s like the corp swindle of forced bundling (you can only get X if you also take Y). You should be able to get public wifi without a mobile phone subscription.

  The UDHR prohibits discrimination on the basis of what property you have. The intent is to protect the poor, but the protection is actually rightfully bigger in scope because people who willfully opt not to have property are also in the protected class.

  It’s all quite parallel to Snowden’s take. The masses don’t care about privacy due to not really understanding it.

  “Ultimately, arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” ― Edward Snowden

  The idea that activists need both free speech and privacy in order to fight for everyone’s rights is lost on people making the /selfish/ choice to disregard privacy. All those mobile phone users who don’t give a shit about mobile phones being imposed on everyone are missing this concept. The choice to have a mobile phone is dying. It’s gradually and quietly becoming an unwritten mandate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You edited in the “wait five or ten minutes” after I had already replied.

  I know five min was in the original version. Not sure if I added the ten but certainly it was not after you complained about timeframes. You are seriously paranoid and should get help for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why are you even in the library to begin with if you’re so opposed to how they manage their network?

  How does one know how they manage their network before entering the library? The libraries that have ethernet /never/ advertise it. Only wi-fi is ever advertised. I have never seen a library elaborate on their wifi preconditions (which periodically change). This info is also not in OSMand, so if you are on the move and look for the closest library on the map, the map won’t be much help apart from a possible boolean for wifi. Some libraries have a captive portal and some do not. Among those with captive portals, some require a mobile phone with SMS verification and some do not. But for all of them, the brochure only shows the wifi symbol. You might say “call and ask”, but there are two problems with that: you need a phone with credit loaded. But even if you have that, it’s useful to know whether ethernet is available and the receptionist is unlikely to reliably have that info. Much easier to walk in and see the situation. Then when you ask what will be blocked after you get connected, that’s another futile effort that wastes time on the phone. It really is easier and faster to pop in and scope out the situation. Your device will gives reliable answers than the staff. But I have to wonder, what is your objection to entering a library to reliably discover how it’s managed in person?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Stop lying.

  I said “wait five or ten minutes”. I’m seeing a 9m1s span. I don’t really feel compelled to be more accommodating than that. Maybe you can write to Jerry and ask to configure it so edits are blocked after 1 minute if it really bothers you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My client says it was created at 21:24:02 GMT and modified at 21:25:12. Instead of using a stopwatch which you somehow screwed up, just mouse over the time. The popup will show you a span of 1 minute and 10 seconds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a new post so of course I’m going to edit it a few times in the span of the first minute or two as I compose my answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The proof is not in law; it’s in the money trail. If the library’s funding traces to a tax-funded government, it is a public service that encompasses all services offered by that institution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I’ve done the same in one case. Librarian green lit me plugging into the rj45 but it turned out to be a dead port.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How is it so hard to understand that that’s actually a crucial part of my thesis? Of course I understand it because it’s the cause for the problems I describe.

  If that weren’t the case, I would only have a problem with the mobile phone precondition.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Time to wake up to reality. Everyone has access, the method of access isn’t discriminating, nor do you have any say in it.

  That’s not reality. The reality is everyone has partial access, and some people have full access.

  In other words, it’s public, free for all, and the way they set it up.

  It’s not free. We paid tax to finance this. The moment you call it free you accept maladministration.

  If you don’t like the free service, don’t use it. It not being how you like it isn’t wrong in any way, that’s your problem.

  You’re confusing the private sector with the public sector. In the private sector, indeed you simply don’t use the service and that’s a fair enough remedy. Financing public service is not optional. You still seem to not grasp how human rights works, who it protects, despite the simplicity of the language of Article 21.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Could I be in the wrong? No, it must be literally everyone else in this entire thread / national library network.

  Is your position so weak that you need to resort to a bandwagon fallacy?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Their terms require a phone so yes, on their terms.

  I keep a copy of everything I sign. The ToS I signed do not require a mobile phone. It’s an ad hoc implementation that was certainly not thought out to the extent of mirroring the demand for a mobile phone number into the agreement.

  Why would they make an exception for anyone?

  Because their charter is not: “to provide internet service exclusively for residents who have mobile phones”.

  And why would they want to deal with paper agreements for WiFi?

  Paper agreements:

  • do not discriminate (you cannot be a party to an agreement that you cannot reach)
  • are more likely to actually be read (almost no one reads a tickbox agreement)
  • inherently (or at least easily) give the non-drafting party a copy of the agreement for their records. A large volume of text on a tiny screen is unlikely to even be opened and even less likely to save it. Not having a personal copy reduces the chance of adherence to the terms.
  • provide a higher standard of evidence whenever the agreement is litigated over

  You don’t have to be a member to use WiFi, someone else could have given you the password if there even is one

  That’s not how it works. The captive portal demands a phone number. After supplying it, an SMS verification code is sent. It’s bizarre that you would suggest asking a stranger in a library for their login info. In the case at hand, someone would have to share their mobile number, and then worry that something naughty would be done under their phone number, and possibly also put that other person at risk for helping someone circumvent the authentication (which also could be easily detected when the same phone number is used for two parallel sessions).

  If someone is doing something illegal it’s gonna involve the library if you get caught (that’s why the phone number but maybe they are just being shitty with it). Not worth the risk.

  Exactly what makes it awkward to ask someone else to use their phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You have, throughout your comments, repeatedly spoken down toward librarians and libraries.

  Again, you’re not quoting. You’ve already been told it’s not the case. You need to quote. You replied to the wrong message.

  but you’re certainly not painting them as “trying their best”

  There are many librarians with varying degrees of motivation. I spoke to one yesterday that genuinely made an effort to the best of their ability. I cannot say the same for all librarians. When I describe a problem of being unable to connect, some librarians cannot be bothered to reach out to tech support, or even so much as report upstream that someone was unable to connect.

  “worth having an adult conversation with instead of misrepresenting my situation intentionally”

  This is a matter of being able to read people. I don’t just bluntly blurt out a request. I start the conversation with baby steps (borderline small talk) describing the issue to assess from their words and body language the degree to which they are likely to be accommodating whatever request I am building up to. Different people get a different conversation depending on the vibe I get from them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’ll have to quote me on that because I do not recall calling them baddies. I have spotlighted an irresponsible policy and implementation. It’s more likely a competency issue and unlikely a case of malice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a you and your hardware problem, not a public library IT problem. You need to purchase hardware that is adequately supported by your chosen Operating System.

  Forcing people to buy more hardware is yet another variation of discrimination against the poor. Imposed needless consumerism is also reckless from an environmental standpoint. If you choose not to step your competency up to the level needed to serve the public without costing them more money, you’re only getting off the hook in the view of right-wing conservatives.

  Not being “your problem” is simply a problem of an ill-defined contract that allows irresponsible policy.

  This is a you and your hardware problem. Buy hardware that is adequately supported by your chosen Operating System.

  It’s not a hardware problem. It’s an ethics problem, and the problem is on your part whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. If you lack the higher level of competency needed to support ethical consumers, you should either gain the competency our leave your line of work.

  This one is a semi-serious complaint however I’ve never seen a portal system where the Librarian’s didn’t have the ability to issue a day pass for use.

  Not a single public library in my area has that option as an alternative authentication. If you have no phone, they are helpless.

  Aside from that you sound like someone who should be technically able to stand up an ephemeral phone number for the purpose of receiving SMS.

  I’ve not heard a burner phone called that before, but there is no way to get a phone nor an active SIM chip gratis in my area. You can get a pinger number online, but it only works if you’re already online. Apart from that, your suggestion is absurd as an official policy in response to public complaint about phoneless people being officially excluded.

  Same as above.

  It fails here too, for the same reason.

  What an absolutely petty complaint.

  What an absolutely pathetic failure to support a claim to the contrary.

  I’d bet that as soon as you enter a code your VPN stops being blocked. They’re not trying to block VPN they are preventing you from sidestepping their ToS.

  This is not a /me/ problem. You are responding to a list of demographics of people who are being excluded by a public service. If not every single person has a gratis VPN, this is a broken argument.

  I’ve dealt with Patrons like you before and the instant someone starts yammering at me about ClearNet / Tor I know exactly what kind of person I’m dealing with.

  You selected your path for whatever reasons you chose and the inconveniences that come with that path are yours to deal with. Suck it up buttercup, you weren’t promised that a privacy respecting internet lifestyle would be easy or convenient.

  Inconveniences are borne out of the kind of incompetent infosec that you’re peddling. A competent tech firm can do this job without violating the GDPR and without violating human rights.

  BTW if you’d plugged your laptop into one of my systems you’d have gotten vlan’d into the same Captive Portal System that the WiFi has which is precisely how any publicly available Ethernet port should function. Your little length of wires coated in vinyl with plastic shoved on the ends still wouldn’t have gotten you where you wanted to go.

  And that would still be violating peoples’ Article 21 rights to equal access. Imposing a mobile phone is among the injustices I’ve mentioned. I would still favor the ethernet regardless of the captive portal for many of the reasons I’ve mentioned. I avoids discriminating against people without functioning wifi h/w.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have to say I didn’t downvote you as you’ve been civil and informative so far. But I’m not sure how to cite/quote from the UDHR as though it’s not law. For me it doesn’t matter. From where I sit, many nations signed the UDHR because it has principles worthy of being held in high regard. When the principles are violated outside the context of an enforcement body, the relevance of legal actionability is a separate matter. We are in a forum where we can say: here is a great idea for how to treat human beings with dignity and equality, and here that principle is being violated. There is no court in the loop. Finger wagging manifests from public support and that energy can make corrections in countless ways.

  I guess I’m not grasping your thesis. Are you saying that if a solid national law was not breached, then it’s not worthwhile to spotlight acts that undermine the UDHR principles we hold in high regard?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can’t claim shit about equality for all and access without materials, when discussing byod. Make up your mind.

  There is PC access, and then there is byod access. It’s a false dichotomy to demand choosing one or the other, and harmful to people’s rights if you simultaneously argue that one replaces the other. They are different services for different purposes. Don’t let the fact that some tasks can be achieved with both services cause you to lose sight of the fact that some use-cases cannot.

  Everyone has access

  Everyone has PC access. Not everyone has BYoD WAN service.

  byod is covered for 99% as extra convenience.

  It’s not just convenience. It’s controlling your own applications. If the public PC doesn’t have a screen reader and you are blind, the PC is no good to you and you are better served with BYoD service.

  You aren’t being treated poorly, instead, you have unreasonable expectations.

  This remains to be supported. I do not believe it’s reasonable to only serve people with phones. Thus I consider it a reasonable expectation that people without a subscribed mobile phone still get BYoD WAN service.

  Data persists both in the cloud, or on a memory stick. Free options exist.

  The PCs will not execute apps that you bring on a USB stick. Also some library branches disallow USB sticks entirely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not equal access. Everyone has equal access to the PCs, but not everyone has equal access to BYoD internet service.

  Is someone claiming we only need PC access? If so, then you won’t mind if we scrap wifi altogether, right? BYoD internet service enables people to keep a data store with them which then connects periodically. That’s a different public service for difference purposes than a shared PC where your data does not persist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  After reading your post, I would say, no harm intended, just don’t do it again.

  You’ve missed the thesis. This is not really about staying out of trouble. Or more precisely, as an activist up to my neck in trouble it’s about getting into the right trouble. The thesis is about this trend of marginalising people with ethernet ports and either no phone and/or shitty wifi gear/software. It’s about exclusivity of public services funded with public money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The UDHR is not a treaty, so it does not create any direct legal bindings.

  Sure, but where are you going with this? Legal binding only matters in situations of legal action and orthogonal to its application in a discussion in a forum. Human rights violations are rampant and they rarely go to The Hague (though that frequency is increasing). Human rights law is symbolic and carries weight in the court of public opinion. Human rights law and violations thereof get penalized simply by widespread condemnation by the public. So of course it’s useful to spotlight HR violations in a pubic forum.

  The article you quote may have been excluded, overwritten or rephrased in your jurisdiction.

  I doubt it. It’s been a while since I read the exemptions of the various rights but I do not recall any mods to Article 21. The modifications do not generally wholly exclude an article. They typically make some slight modification, such as limiting free assembly (Art.20 IIRC) to /safe/ gatherings so unsafe gatherings can be broken up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I answered this in another reply. The PC room was closed. In my area the PCs are closed part of the day for some reason (in several libraries), when the library is open for books and wifi.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Great example of getting mad at a bitch eating crackers.

  I merely unplugged my ethernet cable from the wall.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I guarantee that a librarian would have helped you if you told them you didn’t have your phone on you.

  I did tell the librarian I did not have a phone. It’s what led up to green lighting my request to plugin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You need to read Article 21. And as you read it, keep in mind it’s a public library.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That “right” is exclusively available to people who:

  • have a mobile phone
  • who carry it with them
  • who have working wifi hardware

  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no such limitation on Article 21.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can use it but on their terms.

  Not without a phone.

  Captive portal is likely making you agree to not abuse the service.

  Nothing about a captive portal requires wifi. There are many ways to get that agreement. Neglecting to make the agreement part of the ToS when you become a member is just reckless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So the protected class they are discriminating against here is “doesn’t want to use wifi”?

  The UDHR specifically protects people from discrimination on the basis of property. You cannot treat someone different under the UDHR for owning less property than someone else. Only serving people who bought a mobile phone and paid for a subscription violates that provision.

  You had the means to access the Internet, you chose not to use them.

  I did not have a mobile phone on me. I could have gone home to fetch my phone because incidentally I happened to have a phone with service. But I would not have had time to return to the library and complete my task before it closed. I’ve gone over 6 months with no phone service at all sometimes. If I were in one of those time periods, connecting would have been impossible. My phone access is touch and go. I let my service die whenever nothing critical comes up that demands it for a period of time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you were trying to bypass one of their security measures.

  I was not carrying my phone. Thus bypassing the reckless policy of a tax-funded public resource to exclusively serve people who entered the private marketplace to obtain mobile phone service, in violation of article 21¶2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone should let the IT staff know so they can properly block those services on ethernet as well.

  Someone should let the IT staff know that wi-fi does not work for everyone, including:

  • People running free software whose wifi NIC has no free driver and firmware
  • People without a mobile phone to perform the mandated SMS verfication
  • People with a mobile phone but who want to exercise their GDPR right to data minimization
  • Pro-environment people who prefer not to spend 30 times more energy needed for wi-fi radios
  • People who want the security of other wi-fi users not eavesdropping on their traffic by simply pointing a yagi antenna from a block away (on a network that blocks the VPNs that would protect them from that on wi-fi)