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Notes -
Ended up looking at this drama to see if there was a coherent reason for the outrage and mass defederation, and this is what I find:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/meet-raspberry-pis-maker-in-residence-toby-roberts/
“I used to be a police officer tackling serious organised crime and terror threats across the east of the UK,” Toby tells us. “I was a Technical Surveillance Officer for 15 years, so I built stuff to hide video, audio, and other covert gear. You really don’t want your sensitive police equipment discovered, so I’d disguise it as something else, like a piece of street furniture or a household item. The variety of tools and equipment I used then really shaped what I do today.”
I'm not the biggest proponent of a "surveillance state" myself, but unless someone is a complete hardliner on the issue I think there can be some justification to the use of these things if the threat warrants it. Counter-terrorism efforts for example can and do make legitimate use of surveillance technology, and there's no real reason to suspect sinister intent or malpractice here. Really it seems clear to me, reading the comments, that most of the distrust and controversy has to do with him being a cop, and because Mastodon seems to be primarily leftist there's a very strong (and IMO ridiculous) "ACAB" sentiment.
I could agree that Raspberry Pi handled the whole drama badly. That being said, it's hard to criticise them much for it when I find the initial fundament for criticism to be so weak in the first place.
I'm definitely chuckling at the idea of this guy building open source spy gadgets to catch terrorists in some East Anglia police station when he should have been handling a important missing sheep case.
(Or maybe the region's changed since I was a kid and it's a hotbed of murderous extremists now. I always knew that kebab shop was bad news)
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