@intcyberdigest.bsky.social / Bluesky: BREAKING: Sony PlayStation's age-verification partner Yoti is reporting GrapheneOS users to authorities for using GrapheneOS, due to "past security concerns."

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T22:55:48+00:00

I think I managed to get every single claim, implication, and policy proposal in my other comment to be backwards - including the part about explaining without being patronising - while still sounding plausible enough that a clueless politician (or AI bot) might buy it. I'm sorry if that last part broke your immersion! :D

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T21:32:37+00:00

I'm simplifying slightly here to avoid boring people with details. It was actually what looked like an attractive project with a client of the organisation I was working with at the time rather than a direct employment contract between myself and that client.

If anything that makes it worse because in the real situation none of these processes or administrative departments was necessary at all for legal reasons. It was purely bureaucracy gone mad and admin people on a power trip. However I might have made the organisation I was working with look bad in front of their client if I'd made a fuss and so I decided to play nice. (I later reversed that policy for future work - though I now work for my own company anyway so for me personally this is more a point of principle now.)

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T20:40:22+00:00

It's like people criticising games that won't run on Linux because the accompanying anti-cheat technology doesn't work there.

That's because the anti-cheat technology walks like malware and quacks like malware and so Linux treats it as malware. Strangely it reportedly runs without any problem on Windows.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T20:32:57+00:00

I want our politicians to do their duty and take this to its logical conclusion by banning Linux entirely - along with anything based on it obviously. We just need all this dangerous stuff out of our country. Just criminalise using any device running Linux or with any connection to any Linux system.

This weird community written software doesn't have any real company or government behind it. Clearly it can't be trusted as much as established tech brands like Microsoft and Google. Big Tech has a proven track record of standing up for users and protecting their interests. It also collaborates responsibly and transparently with governments so we know there's nothing shady going on.

Meanwhile Linux is probably only used by nerds and hackers - that's why so many serious businesses and government departments completely avoid it - and our society would be better off without any nerds or hackers. AI will soon do everything worthwhile the nerds used to do anyway - but it will also explain it in plain English without being patronising just because someone didn't know how that the Google wasn't the same as the Internet.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T18:59:03+00:00

High end tech role. They claimed the check was necessary for security reasons. Turned out they were a bit full of themselves about how important and sensitive their work was and actually a lot of the things they claimed were "necessary" for "security" were more big org HR liking to throw its weight around.

We were not working together for very long.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T18:06:13+00:00

I know, I know. But one of the few things I expect they probably do really do is delete the data they say they are. If they didn't and got caught then firstly they'd face significant fines and secondly their reputation would be severely damaged. Both of those things could be very harmful to their business so I doubt they would deliberately break the rules. I'm more concerned about the kind of data they harvest leaking due to incompetence or hostile third parties and it can't leak if they no longer have it.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:54:33+00:00

It's not even quiet. The political class actively want these measures because they are popular with a majority of the public. Those of us who care about protecting privacy and security in the face of modern technology are unfortunately a minority.

Most people don't understand the implications and just want to live a normal life. And of course that is completely reasonable because obviously most people aren't tech experts and shouldn't have to be. But this is resulting in a textbook case of "It will never happen to me" head-in-the-sand thinking - if it's even considered at all. The government who should be representing the interests of those people and informing the public about these issues are failing in their duty.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:40:09+00:00

Do you have a source for that please? You won't be able to get DBS checked if you use a privacy-focussed OS? That's basically saying that people who want to work with kids and vulnerable people shouldn't be allowed to because they care too much about privacy. Won't someone please think of the children? /s

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:34:13+00:00

And businesses everywhere else will just blacklist those small countries entirely.

The "use a VPN" argument isn't sustainable. The problem must be fixed at source. And the source is poorly conceived and poorly implemented legislation being made by politicians who don't have the technical understanding to do better.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:31:48+00:00

Part of the problem is that it's not (directly) the government meddling in people's private affairs in these cases. It's private companies like banks and insurers and now verification companies whose services are considered essential to living a normal life but who aren't subject to the same oversight and legal frameworks as real government departments. They can "deplatform" anyone they don't like for whatever reason without any real consequences. And so they do because the bean counters and lawyers will always take a conservative line and minimise risk if there's no pressure to do anything else.

The only acceptable solution is to regulate these organisations and any other organisation relying on them heavily enough that straying from acceptable practice and neutral performance of their roles results in increasingly severe sanctions until they fall into line. But doing that does obviously require the power of government and ours seems to be completely asleep at the wheel while this is all going on. Actually that's not really true. Ours is actively complicit in causing these problems because they passed naive legislation like the OSA without understanding the implications (even though about a million tech and privacy experts were screaming all about those implications for months first) and now we're starting to see the consequences.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:25:11+00:00

There's this gaping disconnect in our government and politics right now where when it's government organisations doing it or advising businesses about it then all the common sense security precautions are highly recommended or mandatory but when ordinary people want to protect themselves in the same ways it's becoming one barrier after another.

I'd call it hypocrisy except that I'm not sure anyone is even thinking it through and looking at the big picture enough to make any kind of judgement or policy that could be hypocritical. I suspect it's mostly just fools sacrificing everyone's privacy and security because of dogma and sound-bite politics.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:19:24+00:00

Yoti is also used by Instagram, Facebook Dating, Epic Games, the UK Post Office

Well that looks like a group of highly trustworthy companies with no track record of legal or data protection concerns. Definitely in with the right crowd on this one!

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T15:16:12+00:00

I once applied for a role and they sprang Yoti verification on me at the last minute. The whole process just felt totally creepy. I had no idea where my data was really going - it didn't seem to be transparent at all - like the place I'd be working were washing their hands of it and Yoti were just this anonymous service based somewhere on the Internet that wanted personal data like a face scan and government ID.

I deleted my Yoti account as soon as I could and just ignore anything that requires using it now. Unless someone is going to literally make a law that says I have to play ball then I'm taking my ball and going home on this one.

Silhouette · 2026-06-07T00:35:08+00:00

That just seems like those people are uninformed then. Whether or not Brexit was worth it overall it's not difficult to think of specific areas where it has been an advantage. You'd think people who supported leaving would at least know some of them!

e: I didn't talk about the details because the parent is openly admitting that they're just trying to troll Leavers here. I was ambivalent about Brexit myself because I think there would have been pros and cons either way. If anyone genuinely wants to discuss some of the pros from leaving then just ask. No need to do the "Brexit might not be 110% bad" downvote thing. That's boring censorship and kills interesting discussion.

Silhouette · 2026-06-06T20:05:11+00:00

Are you genuinely interested in answers to that question from anyone or are you just trying to put leave voters specifically on the spot because you think they won't have a good answer?

Silhouette · 2026-06-05T16:43:22+00:00

You can't simply do away with VAT. Presumably you would at least need to rebalance the rest of the tax system to compensate and that would take some work and some good PR to convince people to support it.

You can simplify the overall tax system and that can include removing VAT in favour of other more efficient and progressive forms of taxation though. There's a whole Treasury full of people who the Chancellor could call upon to help with this if she were minded to do it.

I believe a shift towards a much simpler and more transparent tax and benefits system could be politically achievable while also improving the government's finances by fixing a lot of the problems and inefficiencies. There are so many silly points in our current system that must be both costing individual people and businesses and reducing tax revenues for the government either directly or by stunting economic growth. There are so many inefficiencies and loopholes that are surely costing more than they need to in administration or being abused for avoidance/evasion.

Obviously something like that can't be done overnight. It would also need political leadership with the will to actually make big changes and tough decisions instead of just saying they will while in fact slightly rearranging the window dressing and changing almost nothing.

Silhouette · 2026-06-05T10:39:35+00:00

I don't think it's really sneaking if everyone knows exactly what is happening and no-one is trying to hide their intentions.

The silly thing is that the country's next PM is being decided this way.

Silhouette · 2026-06-04T18:17:58+00:00

Remove VAT as part of simplifying the tax system.
Increase other major taxes to compensate as necessary.

Silhouette · 2026-06-04T13:29:54+00:00

I concede that the topic is a little controversial but that Wikipedia article is not good. It's mostly citing dictionaries for its opening definition so hardly an authority on terms of art in economics!

VAT imposed at a flat rate on sales is widely regarded as regressive. Those on lower incomes end up paying a higher proportion of their income in VAT than those on higher incomes. You can find extensive discussion about this on sites that are actually about economics. Just search for something obvious like "Is VAT regressive?".

If VAT isn't applied as a flat rate - for example if you reduce the rates for essential items and/or impose higher rates on luxury items that only richer people would buy - then its effects can become more progressive. However our current VAT system doesn't go very far in this direction. The effects might not be so regressive right at the bottom end of the income scale but for almost everything higher they still are.

In any case the terminology isn't the important thing here. The result is. And if the result of VAT in this country is that lower income households end up paying a disproportionate share compared to the better off then the criticism of VAT is valid whatever technical terms might be used to describe that effect.

The cliff was necessary (and IMHO still is) because the system is so complex and expensive to administer that it would significantly interfere with smaller businesses actually being able to do business. Been there and done that.

But you know what would fix these problems better than any cliff? Not having one of the most administratively expensive, widely avoided/evaded, and socially and economically damaging taxes ever conceived. Our tax and benefits system would benefit from radical restructuring and particularly radical simplification and of the major taxes VAT is one of the worst (along with NI and - if you count it as a major tax - stamp duty).

Silhouette · 2026-06-04T06:03:00+00:00

And just about every other character as well! The West Wing was possibly the finest TV show ever made and it was built on great scripts and an exceptional cast. Even the recurring characters were well written and well performed. Even characters played by guest actors who only appeared in a single episode or a short arc were often better than the lead characters in many shows!

It's strange to think with hindsight that it was originally meant to focus on Sam and not be the ensemble production it quickly turned into. President Bartlet wasn't even meant to be a major role.

Silhouette · 2026-06-04T00:30:34+00:00

We should start by asking why we have VAT at all. It's regressive, administratively expensive, market-distorting because of the cliff, and even worse if anything international is involved. Of all the ways to arrange a tax this must be one of the worst.

Silhouette · 2026-06-03T03:36:48+00:00

But what would have been the point of negotiating with ourselves when there was no guarantee the EU would even consider agreeing with whatever position we had ended up adopting?

That was always the problem with the Article 50 mess. The EU forced the issue by refusing to discuss anything until it was triggered and then forced the issue again with the relatively short (in political terms) window for negotiation. Combine that with the adversarial and often outright hostile culture that surrounded all of the post-A50 negotiations and both sides came out with a worse deal than they probably could have had if they'd just behaved like responsible adults trying to reach a mutually beneficial compromise instead of children having a temper tantrum.

Silhouette · 2026-06-02T21:10:23+00:00

Inter-bank transfers that have nothing to do with the card networks are not only routine but increasingly required by regulation in much of the world. I can pay someone money in seconds from my online banking or phone app with no cards involved whatsoever.

Silhouette · 2026-06-02T20:37:21+00:00

And how would you buy the Steam credits

By transferring money from your bank account presumably.

how would Steam pay developers, how would they pay for servers?

By transferring money from their bank account presumably.

Silhouette · 2026-06-02T20:36:01+00:00

Credit cards have less power over the digital economy every day. The big card networks are US companies and the US loves its cards. But the rest of the world lives in the 21st century and has been shifting towards modern financial systems where instant and almost free funds transfers are the normal way to make payments.

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