Is digital privacy a lost cause?

I've been around on lainchan and other (similar) forums for a while now. As everyone here knows, this 'subculture' holds the notions of digital privacy and anonymityin high regard. The variations on threads discussing the best ways to maintain and secure privacy and anonymity are nearly endless. As of late I have been less and less active on these forums because of an increasing sense that it is all finally pointless: privacy and anonymity appear to me to be a lost cause. I would like to be wrong, but this is how it appears to me. Some general observations which have led to this view: - You are always eventually reliant on hardware, software and/or services produced and maintained by others. Even those who are most conscious when it comes to these matters can ultimately be found to do the same. The reliance is merely reduced and obfuscated. - You can (almost) never have the certainty that a piece of information, once digitised, is permanently gone. The only exception is when it comes to hardware you own, like HDDs and SSDs. But let's be honest, the majority of the information which we consume and produce is not stored or located exclusively on these media. Ultimately, digital privacy and anonymity appear to be a never-ending uphill battle. Like Sisyphus' punishment, any effort to secure privacy or anonymity is like pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down once the goal is in sight. With digital privacy this very goal is simply impossible to truly achieve, rendering any effort pointless. In this thread I would like to discuss this notion of mine. I would like to be proved wrong, but since I'm convinced of this idea, you will see me defending it in this thread for as long as I hold this conviction.

>>10601 You're not wrong, but it's all about maximizing the amount you're able to do with the least amount of effort (i.e. switch to foss you trust, use browser extensions that enforce privacy, use a vpn, etc) As many people here that are smarter than me will tell you, there's a million ways you're still vulnerable, but that's still much less than what the average person is vulnerable to.

You're not going to get any disagreement from me at this point... Not with the way the internet is now. And I don't see a way to revert it back or fix it. Not when all the incentives are against it. There's so much momentum and complexity in favor of what are frankly intrinsic and unavoidable problems of a massive information network. It's inherently and fundamentally a machine of surveillance, dehumanization, and degradation. The techno-utopians couldn't have been more wrong. It's not a resource for humanity, it's a carbon monoxide leak in the basement. Slowly poisoning us, plus making us go insane and paranoid in the process. Making our entire culture black out and lose their memories. The dream has been miscarried. A network made for rapidly exchanging inconceivable amounts of data in which most average users can't have enough ownership or basic competency is doomed to become exploitative. It's going to become a massive conduit for spying and psyops and manipulation. Those of us who are lucky enough to be competent and have the resources to use it right—most of us are conscripted into the cause of making it worse. Of min-maxing the most awful qualities of not just the network, but mankind itself. Crusaders for egalitarian security and FOSS are too rare and too spurned to ever take it back. Many of the brightest are still too naive, and they do massive damage with good intentions. Building systems to help people, but the networks they make are so powerful that they are doomed to instantly fall into the hands of those who would abuse them. If we want something built right, it would probably be easier to start over from scratch with a new network. For which there are quite a few threads about that subject around here. I'm personally getting very interested in LoRa mesh networks using fresh new protocols (or tunneling a new, open protocol through the systems already in place for LoRa). There's also some very interesting stuff going on with New Packet Radio, but development is slow and basically seems to be leaning towards just being a bridge for the standard, awful, ruined web. But there are certainly interesting possibilities there. I also think radically reduced bitrates (enforced by the physical laws of the radio frequencies being used) can vastly improve the quality, privacy, and ease of securing such a network. Which is paradoxical. I don't want all this bandwidth anymore. Software is like a gas which fills the shape and volume you put it in, and all the futuristic capabilities we now have are not used for us. They're used for some of the most disgusting and evil bullshit tech ever built. What are we going to use 5g for? Something good? No, it's just going to become a giant pipeline for poorly-secured internet-connected appliances to spy on everyone. And for unprecedentedly complex algorithms to collect data and game out everybody's lives, until they are too predictable to have meaningful freedom. I know, I know—"640k ought to be enough for anyone." But we already see that increasing capacity is only being used by one side of the fight. We won't have popular control or benefit coming out of the new hyper-networks.

>>10601 >Is digital privacy a lost cause? No, the agencies that illegally spy on you are incompetent, understaffed, and over budget bureaucracies. It's a miracle anything gets done. Even small countermeasures can greatly increase the difficulty for them. >>10602 >it's all about maximizing the amount you're able to do with the least amount of effort This.

>>10601 What you seem to be referring to is perfect anonymity and perfect privacy, which, yes, is unlikely, at least if you've ever used the Internet before learning a lot of skills and want to be able to even just function in modern society (my university's website doesn't let me log in with lynx, for example). Realistically though, most surveillance is low-effort catch-all stuff. If you do things like block JS by default and only unblock what you need, not use any social media, use a Google alternative, etc., you're already avoiding 90% of all the surveillance that's out there. Good privacy and anonymity is quite possible, as long as no three letter agency targets you personally. In which case, get off the net, melt all your electronics, and attempt to acquire a spy manual of a country that's opposed to yours.

Thank you for your responses. First of all, I'd like to say I'm surprised by the generally positive reactions to my post. I expected to encounter far more resistance than I have thus far. Maybe I overestimated the amount of 'techno-utopians' and idealists on here, or maybe they have yet to respond. The general sentiment thus far, then, seems to be that while perfect anonymity and perfect privacy are unattainable, it is a matter of maximising privacy as much as possible. The way privacy was understood, however, seems to frequently be framed in relation to the state or surveillance from above. This wasn't necessarily the kind of privacy I was thinking off. I consider the (impossibility) of (perfect) privacy rather in more broad terms. It's the very efficiency and reliability of infrastructures and systems that is great importance as well, not just state/corporate actors: information can't be transferred ever more quickly with means and methods of storage becoming ever reliable. At the same time, this can lead to an overabundance of information, rendering it useless. Having sensitive information regarding your privacy in this sea of information could thus be considered a peculiar way of anonymity as well. Returning to maximizing privacy, though, what is there to gain? The ground which can be won is becoming ever smaller. There is constantly less room for improvement. Why waste effort when the result is insignificant in the end? Wouldn't efforts to get off the net be more effective? Most of our use of modern, internet-connected technology is non-essential, anyway. Finally, in response to >>10603 You won't get any disagreement from me either, except for a question which I would like to raise: how are those novel efforts going to prevent ending up the same way? Efficiency is going to be a significant problem, in the sense that current network solutions 'just work'. How could the alternatives possibly compete with existing solutions, which have monetary and popular backing? Do you consider a small but dedicated user base a success here? I have tried my best to respond to all the points made thus far. If I've left anything important out or misrepresented anything, I will address it in another post. I remain interested in your opinions.

>>10604 What about the ones that legally spy on you? >>10601 People make opensource hardware. Eventually someone will get college kids together to make a super computer out of IC chips then live in a commune under the sea far away from the powers that be, living on algae. Each diy sub containing a part of the 'super computer'. Seriously though people will stop using the Internet eventually. And cell phones. Just as soon as the powers that be stop arresting people over weed and other stupid things you'll start getting tickets in your email and such telling you about how you violated a federal law for researching the wrong thing on wikipedia, or buying tools when the algorithms didn't like 'your type' having a tool. Then people will run away from this soykaf. But no really, we're fuarrrked because people are so near sighted they won't even notice being shipped off to this invisible jail and will even be thankful for feeling 'safe' in it as they contemplate suicide. Jus' kiddin' because >>10604 is correct and society will fall like Rome/Greece soon. Nothin' to worry 'bout.

>>10604 >No, the agencies that illegally spy on you are incompetent, understaffed, and over budget bureaucracies. Yeah the agencies that literally rule the planet are incompetent, they could never defeat me, a random nobody.

>>10611 Such a delusion to think that if an intelligence agency focused on you that you'd stand a chance over time. Larping like that just shows ineptitude, really. >>10604 >Even small countermeasures can greatly increase the difficulty for them. source? seems like the type of conjecture that will just get a "trust me/I can't say" response.

Trying to be a good person is also a never ending battle but that does not mean it is not worthwhile. Nor is the appeal of these sorts of forums just their respect for privacy.

>>10611 >>10612 >Yeah the agencies that literally rule the planet are incompetent, they could never defeat me, a random nobody. >Such a delusion to think that if an intelligence agency focused on you that you'd stand a chance over time. Bureaucracies cannot commit significant resources to countering every random nobody. They are too preoccupied with existing responsibilities, their own overhead, and the constraints of their own legal system. These weaknesses of counter-insurgencies have proven true in revolutions in countries across the world, such as China, Greece, Indochina, and Algeria. The idea that the NSA or whoever has the resources to actively break into every computer AND identify all subversive elements AND prosecute them all is extreme paranoia. >>10612 >source? All documented insurgencies imply this is true. Every hardened system that requires a research project or technician attention stretches the resources of the counterinsurgency thinner.

>>10615 Yeah, but they don't target every nobody, they target those who are a threat to their power. If you, dear lainon try to do that they would find every little thing you did sift threw your isp logs, emails, social media accounts, and use every little bad detail about you to attack you. http://phrack.org/issues/52/5.html

>>10616 And most they do not ever have to target due to everyone thinking that they'd be the only one misbehaving. In other words, the powers that be are 99 percent a mind game.

>>10616 >>10617 >Yeah, but they don't target every nobody, they target those who are a threat to their power. You can be a threat to power without making yourself a target. The bureaucracy can only justify targeting a relatively small amount of zealots because they're incompetent, understaffed, and over budget. Ignore the mind games and waste as much of your adversaries resources as possible without presenting yourself as a worthwhile target. The people working on and using stuff like Tor, GPG, TarSnap, and GNUnet are greatly increasing the difficulty of mass surveillance. The government wasted time and money shutting down Lavabit and the result was none of the requested information, bad public relations, and a new service using an encrypted email standard. The FBI has wasted years fighting with Apple over phone encryption. They hate this and they don't have the strength to fight all of it.

I would not say a lost cause. But a perpetual warfare evolving with technical progress.

>>10615 >Bureaucracies cannot commit significant resources to countering every random nobody. >They are too preoccupied with existing responsibilities, their own overhead, and the constraints of their own legal system. Okay, maybe I misconstrued your point. So do you think this is more of an issue related to 1. where you live 2. what that local govt sees as "bad enough" to flag someone I mean, surely, my list of "soykaf not to do" would be different if I was in China vs, say, Iceland/Sweden.

>>10620 >I mean, surely, my list of "soykaf not to do" would be different if I was in China vs, say, Iceland/Sweden. Right, but the list wouldn't necesssarily be shorter for China. I'm sure there are things you can do in China that you can't do in Iceland.

>>10606 Hey, I'm the Network 23 guy. >How are those novel efforts going to prevent ending up the same way? Efficiency is going to be a problem, won't be user-friendly, how could they compete for popular backing with existing solutions? I think you basically got it all correct there. Yeah, I do consider a small but dedicated user base a success honestly.. I think the scale is kind of what does it. I don't want to make a "security by obscurity" argument here, but I think it's meaningfully different. This would be a reversion to something like the early computer networks; not only would it be a niche interest, but it would also have hard physical limitations that keep it from scaling up too big and taking on too much volume. These limitations are built-in to the radio frequencies used, and they are very fundamental laws of physics, so it's fairly safe to say that future developments won't change it much. Even compression is limited by these properties of radio. Having a niche user base does a couple things; it limits the amount of sheer development horsepower being poured into it, which reduces the overall complexity of the network. I think that true network security became impossible when it got too complex for any single average user to have a meaningful understanding of just what the hell is going on when they use the system. Hell, very few single experts know all of it. A niche interest also means that only fairly passionate, technically-minded people are going to want to get into it, so that lifts the average user competency. I think that fundamentally secure systems could be developed if they were built solidly FOSS from the start and stayed simple (both in hardware and software), had very firm mechanisms to prevent future bloat, and were used by non-dummies. This may be a lot to ask, but a man can dream. The low bitrate would keep protocols and languages used simple as well. For instance, you can't push a god-damn assload of JS malware over a LoRa connection for adtech purposes like every single modern website does. We would go back to mainly text and simple data, which is honestly what we still use the internet for most of the time today; the very high ceilings of modern networks are not primarily for the user's sake. They're filled with surveillance and adware and streaming videos. And that's about it. Keep it basic and there's not so much of a lane for data about the end user to move back across the network. A third factor is that these data-ham networks that I've seen some work on are systems with entirely zero wired infrastructure. No ISP, no actual physical address to trace the connection to. Well, you could foxhunt an individual node with a yagi wand and some patience, but that's a bit different. It's a mesh of equal units, forwarding FOSS-encrypted packets that propagate through infrastructure that has no centralized ownership. Almost like a tor network with absolutely no wires or stationary hardware, and also it doesn't exist layered on top of a preexisting network. It wouldn't reach mainstream commercial acceptance... Or at least I hope not. Kind of like the internet was when it was good. It would be more populist and naive. It would be a bit of a hobby, like combining ham radio enthusiasm with running a bulletin board on an old Amiga in your living room. I doubt the ARRL are going to ever lift their prohibition of deliberately encrypted transmissions on their frequencies, but they are a bunch of old and dying men who spend all their days pretending to be morse code operators in WWII or something. They gotta go eventually. But even still, I doubt any state would want to let such a network be built outside of their control. Who knows. Anyway, I think LoRa falls under part 15 rules, so you can probably encrypt on it anyway. But you might be locked in to some proprietary part of their protocol. I still have a bit to learn about it.

A man is standing in the rain. Through windows lit with warm light, he beholds a banquet of nobility, gentry, academy and slavery. Pompous officers capital and governing, guard the soiree. Blind is their scrutiny of the rain man, rejoicing! For he is unhindered by their watchful eyes, free to enjoy this banquet any way he pleases: shoes wet, lights distant, a life's work.

>>10618 Pretty much this, every rock we can throw in their way is one more rock they have to clear. Right now they are so overextended the sheer weight of daily operations might cause them to collapse.

>>10625 i like this post, are you quoting something?

>>10627 No, this is how I feel about the privacy fight. Not much point left in it, unless you hate the banquet as well.

Everyone is already enslaved by the botnet so everything you do is pointless.

>>10634 What do you mean? I don't think that I'm alone when I say that I don't use any "botnet" services and proprietary programs.

>>10635 You are using the internet, which means you use proprietary botnets.

>>10615 >All documented insurgencies imply this is true. True, but that's usually a known group of people. Once we know who they are and where they congregate, surely intel gathering is at least more targeted. This argument is multi-faceted, if we're talking about "lone wolf" types then, yes, I'd agree. IMO it just depends on what they're doing. People can stay anonymous and private at an individual level much easier than someone who is actively attacking some idea or asset. Obv depending on the interest of the govt / community opposed to them. This thread is a good read for sure.

>>10625 This is beautiful. >search portions of the paragraph in quotes >no results Did you actually write this? God damn

It isn't because you can find away past it. Legally mandated? Your as good as a dude in Hiroshima in 1945. Anyway else? You'll find yourself ontop like Al Capone in 1930s Chicago.

Look into Known-Traveller-Digital-Identity-Programm. They want you to self-report all data on yourself to create a digital identity which permits to travel.This includes bank data, degrees, traveling history, hotel bookings, etc. You're also supposed to allow google&co to sumbit all data they have on you. If you dont supply enough you get in the wringer and they can squeeze you at the airport for more data. Theres currently a trial run in canda and the netherlands.

>>10647 >Once we know who they are and where they congregate, surely intel gathering is at least more targeted. >we

>>10647 >Once we know who they are and where they congregate, surely intel gathering is at least more targeted.

>>10624 >I doubt the ARRL are going to ever lift their prohibition of deliberately encrypted transmissions on their frequencies ARRL is a hobbyist organization, it is the law (Part 97) that stops people from encrypted transmissions on amateur frequencies. But yes, ARRL could lobby and they are full of fogeys. >I think LoRa falls under part 15 rules, so you can probably encrypt on it anyway It just depends on what band you're on and what power you're using. But torrenting movies is also illegal. > locked in to some proprietary part of their protocol. LoRa the physical protocol is proprietary and only one company makes the chips. People have more or less reverse-engineered it. I think you could put it on an FPGA or something. Because it's designed for IoT botnet use with very low bandwidth you might have to. At some point I determined that in a noisy urban environment you *might* get 300bps at 1km with one of the existing chips in a naive no-gain setup. None of the groups I've seen working with LoRa besides the IoT botnet companies (e.g. Lorawan, Symphony Link) seem to know what they're doing when designing a radio protocol. Do you know of anything going on in this space?

>>10601 Looking on the brightside, there are now more people who need digital privacy and anonymity not just to post in the darkness, but to protect their money in the form of cryptocurrency. Obviously there is a lot of snake oil, but this could generate demand for secure systems. Some anon said that the management engine revelations ruined computers for him and I kind of feel it. Like, you spent all this time securing your browser or your OS but Intel put a giant unremovable botnet inside your CPU. And now your car is also a botnet phoning home 10 times a second. There is definitely a lot to be concerned about, but per >>10602 you can still make things better for yourself. For better or for worse I think the situation has pushed people more towards friends and networks they can count on over pure anonymous cyberspace. And even trying to control space in the real world. But to me one of the worst parts is this siege mentality we have, where we're constantly under assault by Google, the CIA, or the "botnet", and it keeps us from thinking clearly about what we actually can improve and acting on it.

Life's nothing but a song anyway - realize that and dance to it. Don't tell me you'd go to a concert because you want to listen to its end - shouldn't you go there because you want to hear all of the music? A mistake lots of people make is that they see something in it - an end, a meaning in life. One day you'll be old and you'll think to yourself: "So was this all a good gamble? Was my life worthwhile? Or did I waste it not realizing that all I had to do was dance?" Tell me, what is the purpose of this? Is it truly a lost cause? Well, is life? Life is ultimately meaningless - you will die one day. Your children will die. There will be a day when everything will die - everything will be destroyed. But for some reason I'm happy and so are other people. Nothing we do leads anywhere: You win. Now what? You have your privacy, what other problem is there that you want to solve? Tell me, dear lainon, would you go to a concert because you want to listen to its end? Maybe you'll understand if I try to be less existential and more crypto-philosophical about it - why do hackers try? Why do malware-writers try? Why do we try at all? Software is becoming more and more secure and complicated everyday, these days it takes too much effort. Why should I spend several hundreds of hours researching how a particular system works just to write some malware that will be taken care of within a couple of days (if I'm lucky enough)? Does security exist just so we can create a perfect malware? Or does malware exist just so we can create a perfectly secure system? Sisyphus' punishment is indeed a very accurate description of this chase-for-perfect-privacy. It is a perfect description for anything in life, especially because every single experience in life is nothing but a subset of it. And yet there are people who, although aware of how absurd life is, are very happy and full of joy. Don't try. If you have to try, perhaps you don't really want it. It doesn't mean that it must come easy to you in order for it to be the right thing, but if the endurance through the process does not feel worth it and you are not compelled to do it, don't try. If the thought of not doing the thing, of life without it, of never having tried it at all terrifies you - try. And if you're going to try, go all the way. But please do be aware that there is no end to reach. Godspeed

>>10601 "Who hurt you anon?" In all seriousness though, corporations always forge into the unknown for selfish reasons and for the profits to be held. This is nothing new. We can bring privacy to the user, but we must work together. It must be done in stages. My biggest life-goal is oriented around this fact. I'm not even soykafting around, I am determined to do this, or die trying. Bringing some semblance of privacy to smartphones is a massive challenge and a major first step. That will be an insane undertaking, but it starts with forking and de-botnetting android OSP. Possibly utilizing Copperhead OS's code, or the fork that was created from that is also valid. Applications like signal already exist. Fdroid exists. Copperhead OS has shown us that an android phone can be secure, even though it was designed to be the exact opposite. Tackling the firmware level is an additional challenge, but this is not an all-or-nothing situation. Work can be done, and will be done. I would appreciate the help as well. A board like this one would be an excellent place to start a project capable of increasing and distributing privacy to the masses. tl;dr - don't be disillusioned, but rather - be determined.

>>10601 I don't know all that much about online security - I'm only on sec/ to kill time but this sounds like something that necessarily has to continue evolving. It's not useless, you just have to keep up to date right? I dunno, that makes sense to me, though I guess I'm advocating for an arms race with the NSA which very well might be untenable.

We will always be on our back heels because we control so little of the physical production of this technology. All we have at best is some FOSS boards, which are good, but will never see wide spread adoption since they won't be produced at competitive rates. As long as most of our hardware, and more importantly, physical infrastructure, is produced and controlled by capitalists it will always be used for their interests. I can only see this fact changing after some sort of left wing libertarian revolution (since right wing libertarians tend turn into the worst capitalists once wealthy enough - see Peter Thiel and Palantir). Only in the context of massive outages and insurrection could I see full mesh networks getting any traction.

One of the biggest crimes you can think of is human trafficking. Imagine with all these spyware by compliant OEMs but there

>>12078 >butchered post ..'still there's no big names out there just shows how incompetent humanity is.

>>10601 Privacy is a lost cause. The more security measures you use the more unique you become, you'll be as conspicuous as somebody wearing a balaclava and a tinfoil hat in the middle of a crowd. Unless you want to use Tor everywhere and get blocked on every other website and put on a watch-list because your ISP sees you using Tor nodes on the daily.

>>10601 i honestly fuarrrking feel so the new generation has only known surveilance, me included, im 18 and yet i do not remember a time before facebook, google, twitter and everyone spying on you now the next generation is going to grow up around alexa listening to everything they do and they will just grow complacent we are going to see a generation that doesnt know what it feels like to not have everything about you shared 24/7 and its going to be really hard to get rid of something that you are so used to i still use an android phone, simply because im so used to it i just cant get rid of it the next generation is going to feel like this about google homes and alexas and other spyware that spies on you even when you are offline they will be used to the convinience and take it for granted

>>10604 the agencies arent really the main issue anymore google and amazon process more data than the nsa could ever dream of and with a few laws passed they could get acsess quickly to that nightmare

>>10601 >Government spying >No we can't do that, people will call us out and scream at us with "tyranny" and "1984" on their banners so we will just have the Big tech do the job for "legal purposes" and we can then threaten to sue our Big tech friends to give up the data to us. This way, we are able to spy on people by Proxy. And here we are... 2020 is the plot twist of 1984.

>>12080 yes, these are the conclusions I have reached.. best option is one main official identity where you don't stand out but don't reveal much either, and then go full paranoid / anonymous user when needed for sporadic missions

>>12080 You take the wrong approach. You don't deny giving out data. You fill in the requests with as generic as possible crap.

>>10634 Block them, don't use them. :-) https://codeberg.org/crimeflare/cloudflare-tor/src/branch/master/not_cloudflare/cidr_data https://codeberg.org/crimeflare/cloudflare-tor/src/branch/master/cloudflare_inc >>12080 They won't list you if they have nothing :-) >>12500 Blocked. This was a nice reminder: https://www.socialcooling.com/

>>12542 >They won't list you if they have nothing :-) Ah yes more layers of fuarrrkery to use your dead grandma's ISP contract with an anonymous VPN over Tor to soykafpost on anime websites full of mentally ill NEET LARPERS, all while spoofing your typing style and giving out intentionally misleading and inconsistent opinions, no geographical or otherwise specific info and no display of personality whatoever so the glowies don't take interest in you since all they see is pointless garbage that may as well not exist. Based and redpilled my dear friend this is clearly the correct way to enjoy the internets, you got them good. Please notify me through your favorite steganographic trick when you've brought the establishment to its knees.

>>12546 You're making an awful lot of assumptions there lainon. Especially that last bit where you reach some pretty wild and bizarre conclusions.

>>10601 Defeatism is more dangerous than the actual difficulties you list. Right now obfuscation is required precisely because there is push back against direct and effective spying. The fact you didn't make your CPU isn't that important when there's a massive amount of corrective forces preventing it from being too hostile to the user. End to end encryption is more than enough 99% of the time for 99% of things.

>>10601 Perfect privacy is extremele hard to achieve in this modern world, but like others have said, that doesn't mean you have to totally give up. Even if you can't completely avoid tracking and surveillance, I think that there's still a big difference between trying to do what you can to protect your privacy and going full botnet. But obviously, if you have done or are doing something that could make for example NSA or CIA target specifically you, then good luck. There are small things that you can do fairly easily without too many downsides (at least in my opinion). Don't use social media. Don't buy "smart" devices that you don't need. Use a VPN and browser extensions that reduce tracking. Use linux instead of windows. Try to be less dependent on your smartphone. I know that none of these will completely protect you from tracking, but I still believe that if you do enough of these small things to try to protect your privacy, it's at least a big improvement over not caring at all. Personally I've tried to seriously think about ways to protect myself from tracking in places where it doesn't have a crippling effect on my life. I think the hardest part is my smartphone. I can't really go back into not using one unless I want to give up pretty much all my irl contacts. Here where I live, having a whatsapp account is pretty much required. Getting a phone that has good support for lineageos could maybe help a bit. I wish that matrix would seriously take off, I think that it's the most promising open source and secure messaging system. It has a client that looks attractive, is quite easy to use and has quite a lot of features, which are all crucial if you want something that's marketable to normal people. I have given up using social media except that I have a linkedin account. I have normal person friends who apparently use snapchat quite a lot. I have decided not to use it even though it might mean that I'm missing out on something. There are maybe some sacrifices that you have to make if you don't want to go full botnet these days. I think that one way to reduce the amount of tracking you are exposed to is to try to limit the amount of different services and devices that you use. I'm never gonna get any "smart" device in addition to my smartphone, unless it's something that I really absolutely need. What I fear is that there will be a future where tracking will be embedded into everything and there will literally be no escape apart from going into the woods.

>>10601 I don't know if I'm veering off topic here but the most discouraging thing about the culture of this site and ones like is people using "security" as an excuse not to take part in life. It's never going to be 100% safe and you need to take a risk at some point. One Lain said a few months ago that they avoid going outside at all costs because there are security cameras. I hate those things too but they are a fact of life and unless you're planning a burglary or something, I wouldn't worry too much.

>>12580 Sure, however facial recognition software does make mistakes and does make police assault innocent people. It's up to people to decide for themselves. Civil disobedience is appropriate anyway. There are highly unethical programs running by authorities where they try to predict crime before it happens, and they do act upon the prediction, de facto circumventing the justice system. Here's your encouragement.

>>12580 You'll realize very soon that the majority of people on this site are just LARPing.

>>12583 Fair enough. Of course, cops being cops and the phenomenon of mistaken identity existed before but there were never this many eyes on us before the technology. I've become quite paranoid about altercations between citizens escalating myself because one asshole is bound to be filming it and the asshole next to him is likely to call 911, now that everyone has the devices in their hands. >>12584 Why would someone LARP as a hikikomori? Usually those are the people LARPing about something better.

Corporations and governments are just systems. They're not individual people deciding what to do. No matter how much you think companies/governments are good or bad, they're neither. They don't have the concept because they're like a neural network. The reason why privacy isn't a lost cause is because you don't have to be perfectly anonymous to show the mechanism that you value privacy. In fact, being in a society that's slowly eroding privacy, if you were to be anonymous you would have no impact on the way society is heading. As with most systemic things, you find out one day about something being done by the system that you don't agree with. But to change that takes decades. So if you give up now it really will be a lost cause. If you form good habits about valuing your privacy, life will be no harder than if you hadn't but at least you'll be showing systems around you that privacy is valued and they will have to take that into consideration. Most importantly. You have to tell and show people you value it. Ask a waiter why they need your phone/address/name for COVID. Ask how long it's kept. It takes 2 minutes to do it and suddenly puts it into the mind of that waiter forever. Tell companies you chose a competitor because their privacy policy was better. Takes 2 minutes but puts into the companies system that they lost customers. You can very slowly influence the system. You just have to actually do something. No matter how small. >digital privacy and anonymity appear to be a never-ending uphill battle The first part of this stuck with me: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Wittes-and-Liu_Privacy-paradox_v10.pdf It's feeling like privacy is being eroded but in actuallity privacy was highly increased in certain aspects. The example it gives is a young man buying a dirty magazine in a shop. Now you can just get porn for free online and no one around has to know. To that person, he now has increased privacy from the people around them and doesn't feel shame or embarassment.

>>12594 >you can just get porn for free online and no one around has to know. yeah except the 200 domains that were logging the soykaf out of you

>>12595 Well that's where the discussion of privacy becomes more nuanced. It would be foolish to suggest everyone has the same threat model. Because fancy terminology or not, that's what it boils down to. Whom do you want to protect yourself from? As humans, we react to other humans a lot more strongly than to machines. So a teenager hiding porn from their religious parents has more privacy using internet porn than magazines/dvds.

>>10698 >neurosuggesting only Intel products have this Virtually no consumer grade CPU in existence is not bugged in some way, even the oldest ones. Since their functions are always undocumented, one can assume they're able to report your every sensitive detail. This is no reason to give up on privacy all together, but is a sobering fact nonetheless.

>>10698 That issue that I wish would get fixed in some way is those wireless management tools they started putting into devices that lets an "admin" lock your computer wirelessly when either compromised/stolen (like anti-theft). While this would require a platform/generation/model specific exploit to be abused, the problem is if some dude had found a way to just brick everyone's motherboard in a 1-mile radius. One simple explanation is Emergency Threats on literally every smartphone. Some people could even force emergency notifications on you if they happen to know the right frequency+datagram to transmit. Same way with anti-theft, anyone can brick legacy devices with just the right datagram+frequency and I find it annoying if this actually happens. Not impossible, I mean there was a UEFI golden key leaked recently. Kinda makes me think of considering a libreboot just to avoid the global device-brick event.

>>12611 One of the worse thing about this is that there won't be a sufficient motion for that crap to change until it actually happens and suddenly the normal people panic when they realize our concerns were perfectly well-founded. It'll also need to be big enough that it cannot be simply hushed-up.

>>12594 Before widespread high speed internet pornography, let's say 25 years ago. You could walk in a shop, buy your magazine with cash, go home. There won't be an permanent digital trail attached to you specifically, but your purchase instead. Sure, CCTV was a thing then but was rarely stored forever. As 2020, if you go to an popular pornography streaming site where most of pornography is watched, the site will be suggesting tailoring content, specifically for you using different identifiers that will likely make you an unique from all other users (this does not only include your web browser fingerprint, IP but also your habits on a website). The data website collects about you, will be stored likely forever, sold for advertising purposes, shared with third parties for other than advertising purposes or might even be breached and exposed to public.

>>10601 >Is digital privacy a lost cause? Is living a happy life a lost cause? We're just going to die anyway.

>>12614 This post is stored permanently in the blockchain, Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA! Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!

>>12614 CCTV is still rarely stored forever. Most CCTV is still of the kind that is hooked up to one system and automatically overwrites because its too expensive for some store to hold onto video data forever. I'm sure that over the last 25 years more and more are now connected to networks that are silently sending it to a data centre in Utah or similar but the majority will still be legacy systems that is hard to store.

>>12596 In the end porn is a tool used by corporations to suck your money and attention for their benefits.

>>12618 Live facial recognition eliminates need for keeping records, a metadata of Lain 80% accuracy face pattern visiting Shinjuku on Tuesday at 4 PM occupies less disk space than 1080p footage. Now add a city-wide networks like in London, China and Russia, and there is literally nowhere to hide.

>>12618 What kind of thought-terminating cliche do they use these days justify these 1984-style mass surveillance systems.to their populace and henchmen? Is it still national security, or did they replace it with some more globalist nonsense? Did they switch to the pandemic yet? What's next? Climate change? LMAO

>>12614 You're saying this as if that's not obvious. Do you really not understand how not being seen buying porn is different to watching porn online in terms of embarassment/shame? Privacy doesn't only mean digital privacy. BUT now that you don't have to be seen buying porn irl, the digital world has more options for privacy. You can download porn through VPN/Tor/Torrents and have basically no one know what you watch.

>>12637 As a clarification, I obviously don't think mass data collection and surveillance is moral. I think it's predatorial on the people who don't know about it. But you can not just ignore the effect social structures have on people. We're biological and react most strongly to other humans. To most people, some faceless company/algorithm knowing that they watch scat porn is WAAAAAAYY less of an issue than if a single person (neighbour/shop owner/babysitter/family) knows. I also haven't heard anyone talking about the following idea. I think we should exploit our biological predespositions against surveillance. Humans are very very good at recognising faces and seeing eyes. Cameras without a person holding them don't light up our senses in the same way. I propose this: all CCTV cameras in public spaces should have large googly eyes above the lens. Not to restrict the cameras view but for people to instantly see where all the cameras are with all their biological alarm bells going off. Imagine walking through a city centre and seeing all those eyes on buildings. How much more would people be aware of surveillance?

>>12638 The idea has merit. Which is why I suspect opposition and attempts at ridicule would be significant.

>>12638 Make it like those paintings where the eyes seem to follow you as you move, except actually put the camera there.

>>12638 Sounded very German. >I propose this: all CCTV cameras in public spaces should have large googly eyes above the lens. Well you can start a local campaign anytime but sorry since the government and its politicians are likely too busy off-shoring their soykaf and swapping yachts to evade tax, while only doing government work that benefit them and their group and their companies. I mean it's false hope, UN? or some other huge organization? No one will listen at ideas like that. Even that organization don't listen to Greta "mainstream" Thunberg then why should the world change for the better any day? They don't just listen, they're the bosses here and I'm pretty sure humanity is fuarrrked either way. Honestly thought this was the /hum/ board but there you go.

>>12679 I was actually thinking of that as more of a protest thing. Go around at night setting that up.

>>12682 Paint a ball with googly eyes and cover it with glue, then throw it at a camera. You could get all the cameras in a city in one night.

>>12500 >what is PRISM: the post

>>12696 >damn, i can't believe ed really said that

>>12696 I really like this because it shows that Snowden is a real person, not a cover identity, sockpuppet or bot. It's the same with Satoshi Nakamoto's old posts.

>>12705 It's like any post on /b/ 12 years ago. The vocabulary, the rhythm, everything, only written by this "iconic" personality. Makes you wonder who that other retard you might be arguing with anonymously on any given night really is.

>>12705 >he doesn't know https://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/the-tarzie-snowden-reader/

>>12710 Snowden's information was proven to be accurate with the leak of nsa and cia exploits, intel me, spectre, meltdown, heartbleed, shellshock, echelon and the backdoors in the windows source code leak.

>>12711 The article doesn't say the leaks are inaccurate, the article says some/all of it is a controlled leak. I'm not convinced and wish the article was sourced because the biased language already makes me suspicious.

>>12712 The leaks contain zero-days worth billions to trillions of dollars. It would be braindead to trade these exploits for a couple propaganda pieces.

>>12712 What's there to believe? Citizenfour states this outright. He the data to Glen Greenwald with specific instructions to not release everything and then delete it.

>>12546 >>12542 this not every situation blocking is easy *and* you might have a fuarrrk ton of data collected on you before you realize on what a nightmare it truly is hell you can get the basics(adress, ancestry, relations, age, name) given away as a fuarrrkign kid. and yea, you really shouldnt fuarrrking need to do all that stuff just to be safe. and even then, your loved ones and other people still are very much non safe, they just dont get the scale of all this

>>10601 >Is digital privacy a lost cause Yes. Until we get rid of all the digital part. Which is obviously going to be a problem. We stepped in a bear trap.