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Pandora’s iPhone, by Stuart Carlson, 2016. Still spot-on in 2026:
A backdoor for the good guys simply does not exist. Once you build it, hackers walk through, authoritarian governments walk through, and the rest follows.
The UK is pressuring for chat control right now. EU Chat Control initiatives keep popping up. We need to keep saying NO to this!
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that’s a good image to convey the message to people propagandized by the us, but yes, “fbi” and “repressive regimes” are one and the same here
your domestic government poses much more of a threat to your privacy than some foreign “repressive regime” far away
I took it as “repressive regime” to mean the administration itself, (not some foreign government), as in more normal times the fbi was a separate entity. And would even investigate the president for crimes. But given the current consolidation of power and that checks and balances have been compromised, I suppose the distinction is moot now.
Love the weird scale of threat depicted here.
-smol bean megacorporation
-regular bean fbi man
-Big Hacker, the big hacker lobbyist
-giant evil FOREIGNER with their evil UNIFORM and MEDALS
-ect, other guys, artist kind of blew his load drawing all those evil medals
Like the scale implies I should be most worried about the biggest guy, but I live in America. The feds are the biggest threat to me. You can tell this wasn’t drawn by a leftist because…well, almost everything, but mostly because of how normal they seem to think the FBI is, and how small a deal being spied on by them apparently is compared to being spied on by someone that doesn’t have the capacity to send a death squad to my apartment at any moment.
Yeah the choice of scale is very weird, why are hackers larger than the FBI? Also doesn’t really seem mutually exclusive
Because whoever made this (naively) trusts their government
That’s only because the FBI guy and the Oppressive Regime guy have become the same guy
Astronaut behind astronaut, Always have been
Probably more of a “Corporate wants you to find the difference…” than the astronaut one.
Almost as though the cartoonist just drew a load of their stock characters and then added labels instead of putting thought into it.
The content grind comes for all
I also love the idea that all these people are waiting, specifically, for YOUR phone. This is masterful propaganda. Only thing missing is Putin drawn with bat wings, bloody fangs, and black eyes, and Zelensky as an angel blocking Putin.
“Authoritarian governments” as if the US is isn’t exactly fucking that
Authoritarian? The US currently even outscored North Corea.
Outscored where? Based on what?
On repressive policy
I’m not saying I don’t believe the US has repressive policies, but I am questioning any source that claims to have detailed enough info about NK internal policy to accurately rank them compared to other countries
The thing is, being repressive becomes more and more expensive past a certain point. It’s not cheap being the prison capital of the world or building a surveillance state. The US is one of the only countries that can even afford to do as much repression as it does.
That’s why we use our prison population for slave labor, helps to offset the cost!
Maybe to some extent, but prison slavery only provides about $9 billion in services and produces over $2 billion in goods annually.
For comparison, the total cost of the U.S. prison system is approximately $445 billion annually.
According to?..
I think it’s more like a “protest the regime and have a 50+% chance of getting executed for it” thing
And the odds of getting killed at a protest here are what, only 30%? Bullshit. It’s a propaganda thing, the US has always been a violent repressive menace to world peace.
The odds of getting killed at a protest aren’t 30%. If that were true we would have hundreds of thousands dead each year.
Based on what? Statistics provided by the same government we’re talking about?
It’s a ridiculous claim. If it were 30%, even just off anecdotal data from social media, people you know at work, friends, you would hear about tons of people dying. I’ve been to numerous protests, I would have personally seen dozens to thousands of people dead.
And the 50% claim I’m responding to is no less ridiculous or baseless, the difference in how people respond to them is pure chauvinism
You said, “And the odds of getting killed at a protest here are what, only 30%? Bullshit. It’s a propaganda thing, the US has always been a violent repressive menace to world peace.”
The U.S. has done many reprehensible things. But I’m talking about your specific claim that the odds of getting killed at a protest in the U.S. are 30%, which is false.
Allow me to facetiously talk about the US the way people from this country typically talk about the DPRK:
How do we know they don’t kill hundreds of thousands of protestors a year? The repressive
governmentregime hides any information that makes it look bad, such as job reports, climate reports, and war casualties. They’ve got concentration camps all over and people dissappear all the time. There’s just no way we can trust their numbers.Can argue with ml
Public forum discussions aren’t just about persuading the person you’re interacting with directly, they’re about persuading every single person who reads that interaction for as long as it exists. The only reason not to try is because you suspect you’ll come out of it looking worse to observers, not just losing the argument with one person but inadvertently reinforcing their position to third parties and popularizing their views over your own.
I pray you understand I’m trying to create a picture that’s comprehensible for the average. ml user here
What you think/claim you’re doing doesn’t matter at all, this is presenting the US federal government as less of a threat to our privacy than some other “repressive regime” somewhere else in the world and that’s 100% bullshit
Ah yes those people worried about getting executed for opposing their government face the same threat as someone in the US worried for their privacy
One struggle
People in the US are summarily executed by law enforcement without consequence, pretty well documented actually
Are they legally executing people protesting the government at a comparable rate to, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia?
Black Panthers, BLM organizers, anti ICE protestors
And how many of those are they executing /day?
Something which the good people at Radio Free Asia have assured me is totally real and definitely happens
What’s the ETC or behind it? What else could be worse?
And why isn’t the FBI part of the repressive regimes man?
the cia? oligarch pedophiles?
It’s a respectable and necessary “intelligence agency” when we do it, nefarious and unjust spying when they do it. Same old propaganda.
why isn’t the FBI part of the repressive regimes man?
Or the hackers
I guess the difference is that FBI makes Apple install the backdoors, while the rest of the bigger guys just reap the spoils afterwards.
Oh shit not the ETC
Apple seems too small and innocent in this image
my little trillion-dollar corporation can’t be this cute!
The door should say: Made in China, designed in the USA.
Yes, like the MAGA hats
As far as threats go, I would swap FBI and Hackers.
This illustration is completely wrong.
The man representing hackers isn’t in a fur suit.
Furries never hurt anyone. We don’t bite hard 🤭🦊
Always keep in mind that your own state is almost always the group of actors having the most power over you. They are the ones who can hurt you or just make you jump though an infinite amount of hoops without any fear of consequence.
Normal people really can just ignore everyone who is or comes after “Hackers”. Focus on your own government. That’s where the real risks are.
oh hey, its me, E T C
“If you don’t have anything to hide, why would you be against this?” – Americans
Agreed! Police will now be going through the streets daily. If they find your front door locked, you’re going on a list, because you’re clearly hiding something.
The scale is backwards lol.
Build the alternative and use it.
You’re either the dictator of your computer or you’re not. A government ‘forcing’ companies to hand over logs describing what happened on their commercial platform means you have not even begun the fight. It’s a complete farce.
It’s a distraction from the fact all these companies are rolling in capital by manipulating their users–oh, but I want to be manipulated by daddy Apple or daddy Discord, just not daddy national-government. What?
It’s a fucking larp. How many of you will agitate against this, but you will still use your fucking Discord/Apple/Google/Meta whatever?
Oh, the government is going to hunt you down for using different software that is non-compliant with legislation? What? In what fantasy land? Wake me up when there’s boots on the ground invading people’s homes by authorities to check what software I’m running on my computer. It’s never going to happen.
EDIT: Sorry, the more I look at this cartoon the more this pisses me off. It’s painting Apple as an innocent. It’s fucking not. Come on, dear artist, labour more to paint mega-corp dictatorships as benign, aloof, white, middle-class targets. Get fuckt.
Really great comment! I do not agree with the edit, tho. Apple’s dude is the one with they on his and, on an Apple device. Doesn’t look like Apple is depicted as an innocent agent here, to me
me and a lot of us on lemmy do whenever possible.
the problem comes from the societal changes that spawn off of that shit when most normies are using it and/or don’t care.
like how i can be super careful i don’t upload my picture, but then the first normie takes it and my face is suddenly on a database. or public surveillance camers etc.
or how facebook mindrot culture is now mainstream even if we don’t use it.
You are absolutely correct, which is why this and even your comment is a distraction. Regardless of how much we dislike the sophisticated surveillance regime you can’t deny material reality: it exists.
The correct thing to do is to materially destroy it. Its current existence is the threat, not a theoretical oh, it might be compelled to do something to me. The actual fact it could do something to you now is the issue. It is doing things to you right now. Every user of these commercial entities labours freely for these trillion-dollar companies.
E.g.: A Google android phone provides data to Google which they use in their commercial mapping-software, which they sell access to. “Oh, but I get free-access to Google maps; if my mobile-computer spies on me to improve Google maps then it’s beneficial to be spied on.” Such reasoning is trotted out ceaselessly, but it ignores the commercial nature of Google: other companies (& governments) are required to pay a license to use it. You’re a rube labouring for free. You are an employee of Google, only you don’t realise it; neither does the law. You materially impoverish yourself whilst enriching a capitalist corporation. The data you’re giving away has value. Even if you want to deny that value consider the following: you pay for the hardware, the data connection and the electricity that enables the extraction of that data. !Socialise the losses privatise the profits! Free access to Google maps isn’t charitable. It’s a requirement to extract labour from you that improves Google maps. (EDIT 3: this is an important point that I wish to impress upon the reader: that improvement allows Google to demand higher prices from other commercial entities [& governments]. If the product stagnates then the price does too. To prevent this you are required to purchase increasingly sophisticated mobile-computers to extract increasingly sophisticated data sets.
Have any of you used commercial software recently? Consumer computers are fucking super-computers, yet Microsoft windows and Adobe’s PDF reader lags like a motherfucker dancing in molasses under the ocean in a pit of sand–just wtf!)
You might as well praise your employer for providing shelter whilst at work. How charitable of them. Gee golly, I sure am pleased my employer lets my use a building whilst I labour for the owners. Gee golly, they’re so charitable that they’re not demanding a rent. (Satire.)
I will reiterate: it exists now. Ask yourself what can you do now to weaken what it is you’re fighting. This cartoon distracts from the fact that Apple is a private surveillance-corporation. Don’t use Apple controlled computers. That is the correct line.
Yes, your data will be inadvertently collected by rubes, but this cartoon says nothing about that fact. This cartoon is just a distraction. It shouldn’t be applauded by those who want privacy. It should be critiqued for what it is: a distraction.
EDIT: Apple would love this cartoon. Apple do not want to share their power with any government. This cartoon creates social-pressure to ease governmental oversight of their private, for profit fiefdom. This cartoon only aids Apple. Critique this cartoon.
EDIT2: just look at the fucking cartoon: Apple’s mobile-computer is on the left, brightly light. It’s white like virgin snow. It’s painted as a good thing. Apple’s mobile-computer is a private prison. It’s anything but good.
FINAL EDIT: on the topic of Google maps. I was shocked to learn that a store’s manager refused to comply with Google’s terms for being listed on Google’s maps. The shock was not from their refusal, but the requirements Google were demanding. They wanted a video that showed how to access the store (located within a larger commercial building) and privileged information. This was dressed up as attestation that they were in fact an employee of the store and therefore the data was valid and correct. However the privileged information they wanted was absurd: passwords to store safes and company logins.
That was what I was told by the manager. For those who work within businesses do these requirements sound familiar? Is Google actually demanding such information as a requirement for new listings?
i wholeheartedly agree with you. my great question is how.
how the fuck we take computing back and convince a critical mass of people this is wrong as fuck? because it looks like we are barely able to resist.
I would say liberate yourself first. Buy computers that can or already are liberated (that is to say computers running libre software). Once liberated you will understand how it is done and can then teach others how to do it too.
You should not be concerned about politics here. Already the people are rendered mute under Western democracies.
Even if you don’t think it’s folly to persuade others, what are you persuading them of? To use software that you yourself don’t use? Build it. Use it. Promote it. Can’t write software? Donate to the orgs that are writing libre software. Can’t run it? Haven’t you liberated your computer? If you have you can run it. Can’t promote it? Are you not able to communicate?
Ditch Apple and Google. Use GrapheneOS. Use a linux powered mobile-computer like Pine Phone. Use encrypted overlay networks to communicate over the internet like i2p (it has a Java implementation and a C++ implementation), tor, hyphanet or my personal favorite: GNUnet. Heck, use all of them!
I will preemptively address an infantile critique of GrapheneOS: it uses Google branded hardware. File off the logo if it disturbs you so much. This critique fails to address the reality: hardware is subsidized by technological behemoths like Google because their product is not the hardware, but the software that is built off data collected by the hardware. An argument could be made that taking advantage of that subsidization maliciously damages Google more than purchasing non-subsidized hardware. Something to think about. Regardless, Foxconn makes both Google Pixels and Apple Iphones. The branding blinds people of the reality.
Anyway… rambles, rambles. It’s not about convincing others, it’s about you doing what you think is the correct thing to do.
Should be “scammers” not “hackers”.
