I just want to make sure that we do agree on a few things.

1. Requiring actual ID verification and/or face scans is bad and cannot be effectively anonymized.
2. That many of the current bills do not require ID verification or face scans. This includes the California one that the systemd merge request cites as well as the Colorado one that it mostly identical.
3. The laws in their current form are poorly written and clearly misunderstand how modern general purpose computers work and are referred to.

Given that, I think we can ultimately agree that the NY, UK, Germany, and I think also the Brazil laws are bad and cannot be fixed with simple updates to language.

So let’s focus on the law’s that do not require actual verification since that is what the systemd change cites.

What issues do you have outside of that they are poorly written and ineffective or that they are a slippery slope/frog in a pot/tip of the spear?

This is not about my comfort this is about what these laws actually require rather than some imaginary law that has not even been written yet.

I figured that someone might latch onto that “necessarily” and that’s the great thing about open-source. If that distro/application/os does misuse your data then don’t use it or fork it.

However… ive read the associated analysis of the California bill that reads directly on legislative intent:

quoting he Cali Senate Judiciary Committee analysis : file:///home/jspaleta/Downloads/202520260AB1043_Senate%20Judiciary.pdf

Why are we listening to a person who tried to link a file directly from their downloads folder?

Also the original post that the article is referencing on the fedora forums is suggesting that we remove all networking support from baseline linux as some way to comply/circumvent the law.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t take anything said in that forum post seriously.

Sure I can chime in here.

You did actually read the post correct? Not just the title? The original poster, Jef, is talking about implementing a Unix socket or a dbus protocol similar to what apple already has. They are literally just referencing their definition for a struct.

So no this will not be ID verification, it won’t ask for face scans, and it won’t necessarily send the data anywhere.

The article is just using the big A word as some boogeyman to generate clicks and further rile up the community.

The systemd change is benign and this is not proof of your slippery slope theory.

Edit: I swear literacy rates in the linux community must be dropping.

Ahhh. And then you have people like me who have been seeding for years but are way too socially anxious to even start any of that process. (:

So if you are a passing trans woman you either:

A. Risk retribution from the law and use the women’s bathroom.

Or

B. Follow the law and get called out for being a women in the men’s bathroom.

This law really just criminalizes using the bathroom if you are not 100% heteronormative.

Might as well just go back to poodle skirts and khakis.

Wonder if they will draft trans women and force detrans them.

I don’t know that I agree with this analogy either. Since Highway patrol’s job is to stop drunk drivers. But an ISP just maintains the “road” and makes sure that it is available as much as possible.

And people down voted me when I called out the Sam Bent blog post for what it is. A hit piece.

That only bans the use of anthropic for government use. So no government entities or contractors could use it. We already do this for some other companies. BOD 17-01

Edit. Granted what they are doing for anthropic is slightly different since it is an executive order not a BOD.

But. That’s the point. If no one breath tests then the car does not start. Hence it being an ignition interlock device. The whole point of the device is to stop drunk people from driving. If there is a sober person then obviously the drunk person should not do the test since that would lock the car.

“lawyers” can’t bring charges for this law. Only the AG. If people don’t like what the AG is doing then they can just start a recall election.

Even if systemd is managed by someone outside of Cali that does not automatically except them from all Cali laws. When a person decides to distribute software that comes with the legal responsibility of the locations where the software is distributed.

Why does your computer need to ask for your full name or office location? You don’t have any issues with those fields? Or is it because you understand that those are optional just like this field is?

If you don’t want to put your bday in then don’t. fork the software and remove what you don’t want. That is the great thing about open-source.

If you don’t trust the maintainer of systemd then why are you using their software in the first place?

You are right it is obvious that zuck wants to hoover up as much data as possible. But what if, instead of this being a data gathering ploy (since the law forbids the data to be used for anything else), this is them trying to put the responsibility of controlling what children look at online onto the parents?

While I don’t think that FB should be held resonsible for all the ways they fucked up the youth, I also think that the parents are to blame as well.

Are you implying that only people who are affected by something are allowed to contribute to open source projects? If this were some nobody developer in California would that really make you any more likely to accept that this merge request is okay?

Equating this law with hiding jews during the holocaust is crazy.

This whole article/blog post reads as “How dare this person follow the law. ;(”

I really don’t understand the pushback on this one person for submitting the change request. When it is the lawmaker that put this law into place that we should be criticizing. The post repeatedly uses how the contributer said that the change was “hilariously pointless and ineffective.” As some sort of gotcha as to why the merge should not have been accepted but does not explain why the maintainers should not follow the law other than “law bad”.

It also consistently calls out the various peoples’ places of work and experience as some sort of boogeyman for why they should not be allowed to contribute to open source. If these people were universally accepted to be bad actors in the community then they would not be accepted as reviewers for these projects. This just attacks their character to try to prove a point.

I am not sure on what interval they do but from what I have read online and from talking with someone I know who has one. They constantly phone home. Even when parked and turned off. This means that it will drain your battery and if you don’t drive for long enough (from what they said a week or two) then you can end up with a dead battery. Additionally, when driving, the device requires the driver to re-blow every 45-60 minutes. So the driver needs to pull over and test again otherwise their alarm will go off.

As far as what tampering prevention mechanisms they have I have no idea. I would assume they keep that as secret as possible.

Edit: the devices (at least the ones from intoxalock) require the driver to pay a subscription fee to keep the device working (about 100$/month) and also costs a 75$ fee for each time the driver needs to get it unlocked after a failed test.

The device doesn’t just phone home while driving. It does it constantly. It’s likely that any tampering would alert the vendor and by proxy the court.

Not sure that I would really agree that these are backdoor. Since disabling the vehicle remotely is kinda the express intention of this device. Just a consequence of how they designed them to not be circumvented by the operator.

You are right that operating system is not defined. But the definition of operating system provider is this: “(g) “Operating system provider” means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.” (emphasis mine)

Which should clearly exclude embedded devices.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043