Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
micahflee.com
Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
37 comments
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It sounds like he's just a dev who's in over his head but either doesn't want anyone to take his baby or doesn't want people to see his sloppy and possibly insecure code. It's probably a hack job behind the scenes and he's not really as sure of its security, so he might be opting for security through obscurity.
But this isn't really taking up space. Someone else can make a better app. If this guy isn't the one to really make a useful crowd sourced anti ICE app, that's not a problem. Let's get that OS crowd together and work with local groups and make something better. In the meantime, this is a statement.
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I agree that there should be an alternative, open-source project, though I know I'm not all that qualified to support outside of financially, (which I would).
I disagree that this isn't taking up space. Notoriety is a huge asset, especially for tools like this that rely on crowd-sourced information. It would be far better, all other things being equal, to start with the user base and name of ICEBlock than to make a competitor and need to promote it enough to get people to use it over ICEBlock. I highly doubt that a competitor will get anywhere close to the same media attention that this got.
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It sounds like he’s just a dev who’s in over his head but either doesn’t want anyone to take his baby or doesn’t want people to see his sloppy and possibly insecure code
I'd bet it's a LOT more along the lines of the second guess, because it's now cost his wife her job and has gotten him quite publicly tagged along with it. He's got a large portion of himself invested in it, and of course it will sting and suck for a bunch of folks to come along and point out, both gently and horribly, knowing OSS folks, all the shortcomings and then make changes.
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It doesn't really seem like there's any "secret sauce" there. What's to stop someone who knows more about development from making a better version?
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There are lots of better versions that exist. Unfortunately they haven't received the same amount of traction, which is important for this type of app. Here's one: https://fire-app.net/
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I'm down to do it, I just need to figure out a way not to get deported over it.
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Has anyone else already read the whole thing and could save us a little time?
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- The creator is not an immigrant
- Nothing preventing malicious users from flooding the app with false reports
- Author estimates 98% of reports are false positives, whether malicious or not
- Dev demonstrates lack of understanding of basic privacy and security principles live at HOPE conference
- Doesn't distribute Android version due to previously-mentioned lack of understanding
- Refuses open sourcing while demonstrating that he doesn't understand how that works either
- Overall does more harm than good
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An excerpt
Jen asked:
There's a lot of secure software, that probably people in this room work on, that is developed in the open, and that is used primarily by at-risk users, including things like Tor, Signal, SecureDrop. That's great, because it makes it easy for folks to contribute. Maybe you don't want that, I understand that can be hard. But it also makes it easier for people to audit and gain assurance that the app is doing what you claim without having to have, you know, EFF reverse engineer it. Would you be open to making the app open source?
His answer: "Absolutely not."
Why? "I don't want anybody from the government to have their hooks in how I'm doing what I'm doing. Once you go open source, everybody has access to it. So I'm just going to keep the codebase private at this time."
He also claimed that the government can't learn everything about how an app works by reverse engineering it, which isn't true.
I agree with Jen. His answers are very concerning.
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The first one seems irrelevant. The second is sort of inevitable without making it hard to report anything.
Everything else is just exactly what people were saying from the start. I dont know why people keep defending this privacy nightmare of an app.
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All activism is activism theater if it does not serve to direct counter-battery fire
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Mobilization is the spark; organization is the fire. If you have the first and not the latter, you’re not moving the needle. Governments love mobilization because they can co-opt it. They can waste people’s energy via constant mobilization without established organizations.
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Aren't they going to dismantle any organization that works to undermine them ?
Maybe even shortcircuit it covertly to serve their own ends ?
I think the mobilization has to point toward something self-organization, an air-tight logic of action that operated randomnly enough that they don't see it coming and therefore their bureaucracy can't stop it or recuperate it
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Isnt that they same App that got completely obliterated by a single Mastodon post by GrapheneOS?
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Doesn't seem like it? https://grapheneos.social/search?q=iceblock&type=statuses
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It was BlueSky, not Mastodon and is linked in the article: https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3lt2prfb2vk2r
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What a clown. I myself noticed his reasoning for only being on iOS is dumb and he pretty much misunderstood how notifications work, but it seems he's mostly clueless about a lot of things.
37 comments
An important part of the effort is culture and esthetics. “ICE SUCKS DONKEY BALLS AND YOU SHOULD AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE INFESTED RAT FASCISTS THEY ARE” is a message worth amplifying, even if the tool to actually do the avoidance is flawed.
Yes, it’s theater. But theater is praxis too.