UK cyber vigilantes generating mock IDs of local MPs to protest Online Safety Act (cybernews.com)
from besselj@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 04:00
https://lemmy.ca/post/49157482

#technology

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Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works on 04 Aug 04:11 next collapse

I’d love to hear some informed commentary on the legality of this, if it’s legal, it’s surely an oversight in the law.

Edit : just to be clear, I’m talking about creating the ID, rather than using it.

zonnewin@feddit.nl on 04 Aug 05:31 next collapse

Of course it’s not legal. This is called identity theft.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works on 04 Aug 05:43 next collapse

Using the ID, sure. But what about providing the service?

OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml on 04 Aug 06:06 next collapse

Depends.

You can argue that it’s basically art/political speech. You’ve done it to draw attention to flaws in the approach and to highlight how ineffectual the current system is, and that if you actually wanted to do make fake IDs you’d take a much less high-profile approach. As such, there’s no actual criminal intent required.

Don’t know if a judge would buy it though.

Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works on 04 Aug 06:09 next collapse

Yeah, I think the creator of this is playing with fire personally.

Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 06:15 next collapse

Especially a UK one.

FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Aug 07:25 collapse

Civil disobedience is done with full knowledge you are breaking the law.

Grimtuck@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 06:14 collapse

I think it would fall under forgery which is definitely illegal and doesn’t require you to use the ID.

CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 18:09 collapse

Given that many online services currently asking for ID have a proven track record of massive data leaks I’d argue that demanding people upload photos of their ID is complicity in identity theft too.

zonnewin@feddit.nl on 05 Aug 11:23 collapse

That would be a bit harder to make stick, but I would agree.

ohulancutash@feddit.uk on 04 Aug 05:50 collapse

On the criminal side, It’s identity fraud, and also an offence under the Misuse of Computers Act, gaining access to a system unauthorisedly. Civilly, it’s almost certainly a violation of the ToS.

Auth@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 04:33 next collapse

Yeah this is not worth the risk. Identity fraud of a politicians can be a serious crime. The pay off for this is a minor inconvenience for some desk worker and a few slop articles written about you.

Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk on 04 Aug 18:26 collapse

It can be used by AI age verification tools on a bunch of websites. So yes I guess that is fraud. But these tools claim not to store the data in the verification process. If somebody could prove a made up ID was used then I suspect they’re in bigger shit for a GDPR leak.

aurelar@lemmy.ml on 05 Aug 15:31 collapse

It’s a case of mutually assured destruction: to charge someone with impersonation, they would have to admit that they saved data that was supposed to be only for age verification and then deleted.

underline960@sh.itjust.works on 04 Aug 04:44 next collapse

Rather than In addition to this, they should leak all the websites that MPs are visiting.

If it’s anything like the United States, we’re sure to find some embarrassing search histories (at the very least).

No privacy for me. No privacy for you.

ohulancutash@feddit.uk on 04 Aug 05:47 collapse

Neil Parish MP: I’m resigning after porn moment of madness

MrNesser@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 06:16 collapse

Well he did it love in the commons not surprised he’s going

fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com on 04 Aug 11:02 collapse

“My OpenAI credits got hugged to death, please use a known postcode (like one from Keir Starmer’s constituency, WC2B6NH) in the meantime,” the author asks.

While the OSA is dumb, this is also bad design, and why applications are going to use so much power.

Cache the image creation results. Use a random address generator. This would drop the LLM use to the bare minimum.

ayyy@sh.itjust.works on 04 Aug 17:36 collapse

That’s…exactly what they are doing and telling you to use a known post code so you hit the cache…

fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com on 04 Aug 23:07 collapse

They’re using ChatGPT for fake address generation if it even needs a cache for that part. There are plenty of libraries to do that locally. They should only need to cache generated images, which is the only thing a model would be useful for here.