California, Brazil, UK issue...my 2 cents

Zare

Zare

In all these jurisdictions the foundation should employ lawyers to contact relevant agencies. The foundation should work with lawyers to outline what FreeBSD is, and how it is used and what is the difference between accessing online services from a FreeBSD computer as opposed to a vendor-based smartphone. The letters should not be a statement, but explanation, and way to ask for cooperation on the matter, next steps, and a platform to legitimize FreeBSD in these areas.

It should be also explained that all data is mutable on FreeBSD by design. The owner of the installation controls everything, unlike the owner of the smartphone. The owner of the smartphone cannot access Firefox or Discord data directly. The owner of FreeBSD can.

I believe the reason for these laws is to stop the influx of personal data of children towards social network companies, enabled by these smart-device vendors.

At every level of comparison, FreeBSD fails to compare to ecosystems that these laws are targeting. Let's compare Android - it harvests user data per default. FreeBSD doesn't. Nor it has any provisions to do so, on the installations and at the foundation infrastructure. Google includes this harvested data in its business model. Again, the Foundation is not a commercial entity.

If these laws are there to remove capability of commercial entities to profit on private information of children, yes for us it is downright absurd to claim FreeBSD has anything to do with this, it's not apples oranges but apples vs chainsaws, wholly different sport. But lawmakers are for sure not aware of that and neither are their technical 'experts'.

At these official, legal comm, it should be underlined that FreeBSD is the polar opposite of the mindset of these commercial companies. The operating system is there to allow the owner to control each, and every aspect of the computers inner workings. For the child's parent, who is an IT expert, FreeBSD is as safe as a toddlers toy.

100% truth is that people who are experts in the trade and who want to protect their children from digital threats only give them access to devices they fully control. FreeBSD, Linux, plays great part here. Closing emphasis would come down to killing off FreeBSD/Linux users with these laws makes them revert back to same companies these lawmakers are currently pissed at.
 
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FWIW, as I mentioned in the CA thread I did eventually send snail mail to Governor Newsom. I made the points that these would probably not deter young people, that they did give an advantage to MS and other large companies, and that in a way it seemed like a first step to intrusive surveillance. I added something like in the opinion of many on technical forums, and had to throw in that if he does run for president, clever Republicans can easily use this against him. I doubt it will even get past the aide who opens it, but ya never know. (Yes I realize I'm being absurdly optimistic).
 
Zare said:
In all these jurisdictions the foundation should employ lawyers to contact relevant agencies.
Click to expand...
Agencies? In California, the laws were passed by the legislature. It can only be changed by the legislature. So you need to contact about 120 elected legislators. Note that because of short term limits (6 years for the lower house, 12 for the upper house), many of the legislators will no longer be in office, and even less likely to be in office when a new law that changes the current one is to be passed.

The law was approved by the governor, but he has no influence on the content, nor on how it is enforced. Our current governor (Gavin Newsom) will only be in office for the rest of the year, and can't be reelected.

The law can be enforced by the state attorney general (AG), or by any of the district attorneys (DA) of the the 58 counties in California. You could contact all 59 of them. They would ignore you, or politely reply that no criminal prosecution involving the law is current pending.

There is no "relevant agency". I assume in Brasil the situation is similar.

The rest of your post is not wrong, but irrelevant. The law is in force. The fact that you think it should not apply is nice, but not important. Whether I personally agree with you, my opinion is also not relevant.

scottro said:
FWIW, as I mentioned in the CA thread I did eventually send snail mail to Governor Newsom.
Click to expand...

Governor Newsom signes about 1000 laws per year. He has staff, but given that he is from the same party as the overwhelming majority of the legislature (and all the agency heads), they don't check each other very much (he does veto some laws). He is also not in charge of enforcing this law. Your letter might have had a small effect if sent before the law was signed by him, but I doubt. The point to fight this law was a few years ago, when the legislature was discussing it. Where were the staff lobbyists for the FreeBSD foundation (and the Linux infrastructure and ...) at that time? They should have been in the hallways of the Sacramento legislature at the time. Oh wait, the FreeBSD foundation doesn't even have a staff lobbyist? Never mind then.

And I'm by the way not at all being facetious. I have done lobbying work for some of my other hobbies (for example school funding and other issues), testified before the state Board of Education, visited a handful of legislators and a few dozen staff members. This is where people have actual power.
 
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I think the children are a selected defense because nobody can reject it with a straight face. The actual goal is control of public information. It's 1 following phase after the ban on p2p information sharing. Everything must be commercialized. 1 public word not exploited is financial loss of the giants.
This also complies with the AI hype. Non-profit sharing of real knowledge is the Enemy.
 
"the children" in this case means all adults being required to prove they're not children. This will likely be put into practice by signing in with an "approved" provider's account. The approved providers will of course be the usual suspects (Microsoft, google, etc). For the likes of Microsoft and others, the thinking may be that this may achieve what "secure boot" failed to. In reality it could have the opposite effect - pushing more towards alternatives.

Though it's really just another move towards the surveillance state and should be resisted - it likely won't be however, because there are those who will see this in a positive light (exactly as intended). It's opponents will be obviously be cast as those not wanting to protect children, etc.
 
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