Help make mass surveillance of entire populations uneconomical

by doener • 3 years ago

707 257 3 years ago

tivert2• 3 years ago

tl;dr: This is just your typical list of "privacy focused" and "self hosted" alternatives (e.g. use Signal not Facebook Messenger), with some attention-grabbing framing.

Some of the recommendations are pretty suspect, too: how is using Thunderbird for email supposed to "opt you out of PRISM and XKeyscore"?

etiam• 3 years ago

Do you realize that page was established in 2013?

If the reference is keeping all your messages, and potentially your PGP keys, in "cloud" storage at a PRISM provider it's not particularly hard to understand some ways in which using Thunderbird instead is supposed to help. It's a fair point it's not a particularly satisfying mitigation though.

tivert2• 3 years ago

Do you realize that page was established in 2013?

No, but that makes sense. The framing would have been much more apt back then than it is now, with the Snowden stuff being fresh.

If the reference is keeping all your messages, and potentially your PGP keys, in "cloud" storage at a PRISM provider it's not particularly hard to understand some ways in which using Thunderbird instead is supposed to help. It's a fair point it's not a particularly satisfying mitigation though.

The reference is just "instead of Gmail, use Thunderbird" (e.g. https://prism-break.org/en/subcategories/macos-email/). They don't mention PGP in that section at all, though there's a later one about "Email Addons, which does, which is easy to miss (e.g. skipping b/c you don't already use addons).

Their (broken HTML) recommendation to run your own email email server is also suspect, because it's a bad tradeoff. Unless you want a second, unpaid job as email server administrator (with a pager!), you're "protecting" yourself against a rare hypothetical threat (government surveillance) by making yourself vulnerable to a much more common one (run of the mill hackers).

Realistically, they probably should have just said something along the lines of "email surveillance is practically unavoidable," so don't use it for anything you don't want monitored. PGP failed because it's too hard to use, so no one uses it, and any reasonable use of email will mainly involve exchanging messages with some "monitored provider's" servers.

zelphirkalt• 3 years ago

I guess using Thunderbird would get many people away from relying exclusively on the web interface of gmail. Then the next step would be to make an e-mail account at another e-mail provider. Later maybe switch away from gmail entirely.

Qem2• 3 years ago

how is using Thunderbird for email supposed to "opt you out of PRISM and XKeyscore"?

The mail client may help improve privacy if you configure it to erase data in the server as it is downloaded to the client (POP), instead of letting it stay in the server for a indefinite amount of time (IMAP). If people are going to break into your provider, a empty mailbox would limit compromise.

marcrosoft• 3 years ago

The suggestions here are not great. For example file syncing has no mention of syncthing and recommends something I’ve never heard of.

evilspammer• 3 years ago

The site hasn't been updated since 2021-08-02 per the footer, and probably sparsely before that. I think this site was most popular around when Snowden did the leaks and hasn't had as much hype since then.

A more modern alternative is https://www.privacytools.io/ but I haven't checked it in a while and can't vouch for the current contents.

flangola7• 3 years ago

privacytools had a hostile takeover by its long absent domain owner and now pushes several crypto services.

The previous maintainers created and moved to: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/

joshuaissac• 3 years ago

For example file syncing has no mention of syncthing and recommends something I’ve never heard of.

It does mention Syncthing.

From the site:

File Storage & Sync
Prefer
EteSync
Encrypted calendar, contacts and tasks sync.
Syncthing
Direct file sync between devices.

graderjs6• 3 years ago

But if your phone OS / cellular firmware is compromised then e2e or even at-rest encryption won't matter. Anything you can see on your phone can be seen.

I think a more rational alternative is to consider that everything except your unexpressed thoughts and emotions is already logged. At some point, this will become true (if it ain't already), so....then you at least will be ahead of that curve.

So if everything you do is monitored, how do you achieve privacy in such a world? That is the question, I think.

In fact, it's similar to how a corporation or nation needs to think about protecting their own secrets. They have to assume compromise (of people, systems, etc)...how do you confuse and compartmentalize what you want to protect?

LinuxBender2• 3 years ago

So if everything you do is monitored, how do you achieve privacy in such a world?

I might put a physical paper notebook in a reporters pocket then meet with them and buy them a coffee or tea. Or I might give them a USB drive with a self-decrypting file and instructions for how to use it securely.

Or if I am feeling silly I might borrow a few hundred digital billboards and just broadcast the data to everyone and let the public sort it out. FoghornBlowing?

htag2• 3 years ago

1. It's completely possible to treat your phone as an insecure device. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's possible to run a daily Linux system with a reasonable assumption of privacy.

2. When you act as if you are being monitored and judged for your words/actions, you begin to self govern them to be more acceptable to the presumed omnipresent agent. Sometimes the fear of being surveilled is as powerful as actual surveillance.

graderjs6• 3 years ago

But not if we assume compromise.

How would you hide in plain sight? That is the question.

Bruce Lee said: be water. But maybe you need to: Be Hamlet

heavyset_go• 3 years ago

1. It's completely possible to treat your phone as an insecure device. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's possible to run a daily Linux system with a reasonable assumption of privacy.

Your computer is running several operating systems under ring 0 that Linux has no idea about, same goes with many components and peripherals. Those operating systems have direct memory access.

freedomben• 3 years ago

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The likelihood and prevalence of deeply low level monitoring is orders of magnitude less than the likelihood of using modern apps and saas where is virtually guaranteed. It's an additive game and you can dramatically reduce invasions, even if you can't eliminate them.

graderjs6• 3 years ago

likelihood lower

Not if we take the lore around mass survey into account (Snowden etc)

TimTheTinker• 3 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35698547

Even at the hardware level we have real examples of exfiltration.

opportune• 3 years ago

This, given these NSA programs have had 10 years to evolve and expand, and that the NSA can easily get access to effectively the entire planets’ mobile devices by showing up to just two American companies’ HQs with guns and gag orders, it seems almost a certainty that they’ll have OS-level access. So I’d highly doubt any standard mobile device is NSA-safe.

In terms of dimensionality, I actually do not think it would physically be possible for the NSA to warehouse all the raw data they could Hoover (haha get it) up, so that might be a bit comforting. And certainly whatever data they do Hoover up will mostly never be directly seen by a human due to physical constraints on eyeball time available to spy vs produce content. That yields one answer to your question which is to just not attract enough attention they decide to turn on full logging and comb through your life

deafpolygon2• 3 years ago

AI can probably drastically reduce the time it requires to go through a massive trove of data.

kornhole8• 3 years ago

You are talking about targeted surveillance rather than mass surveillance. That is not the purpose of this guide and similar others. There are advanced guides for people in that threat model.

graderjs6• 3 years ago

That's a good point, but I think the trend over time is, what was a targeted tool, is now mass.

akira2501• 3 years ago

So if everything you do is monitored, how do you achieve privacy in such a world? That is the question, I think.

Proposals that suggests users get better at managing their own security are doomed. Most people don't understand the absolute insecurity of their door locks, let alone the state of their digital devices.

One possible answer is noise. There should be "digital noise generators" that create fake digital fingerprints for you everywhere. The goal isn't to make the landscape more pristine, it's to make it so "dirty" that it has no value to anyone anymore.

photochemsyn2• 3 years ago

In general it's a good thing that more and more people are aware of the necessity for good security practices for all online interactions - but the belief that individual technological efforts can defeat large-scale corporate and nation-state monitoring is pretty silly. At best you'll just have an added layer of security against things like theft of credit card information by criminal gangs.

If you actually want to do something like communicate with a journalist while hiding your own endpoint from exposure you have to go to fairly ridiculous lengths, such as acquiring a laptop used only for that purpose and which has no associated identifying information, use random open Wifi networks to log onto, and have a decent understanding of the concepts of public-key, asymmetric and symmetric cryptography.

Note that there is simply no way for two known parties on the internet to hide the fact that they are communicating with one another from government-corporate managers of the Internet - although it's possible to keep the content hidded, to some extent, unless your passwords get compromised, which seems fairly easy to accomplish for such actors via keylogger malware installed through backdoor attacks using secret zero-day exploits and so on.

The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws that provide criminal penalities and which allow class-action lawsuits against corporations and governments that engage in warrantless mass surveillance or the retention and aggregation of customer's personal data in searchable databases.

scarface747• 3 years ago

You mean you want the same government that is interested in putting back doors in phones and other surveillance techniques to pass laws that keep them from doing so?

smolder2• 3 years ago

Yes, our government is not a single homogenous entity. We can theoretically (and sometimes actually) use our legislative representatives to change the behavior of other parts.

jabradoodle2• 3 years ago

Much of the progress that has been achieved by governance was opposed by those with power.

Your view point sounds like we should give up on any form of legislation the rich and powerful would not like.

psychphysic• 3 years ago

Most media now have secure drop and guides on usage.

In the UK atleast such as this BBC page[0]. As do the Guardian, Bloomberg and many more Im sure.

I appreciate that it is an involved process as you say but it doesn't seem excessive especially if you can use your smartphone now that tor browser is on android and iOS.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60972903.amp

sigmoid10• 3 years ago

This might hinder small time criminals and companies at best from finding out who snitched on them. But in an authoritarian regime with state level resources or just a sufficient level of corruption or even just a media corp run by boomers that is vulnerable to phishing, you can't count on discretion for these things. Secure tunnels and end2end encryption are worthless if the endpoints are easy to compromise. The above comment is right that at the very least you should use bespoke hardware that was never associated with you or anyone you know in any shape or form (in addition to the things mentioned on that site). And even then you'd have to make sure that the info you leak can't be traced back to you, at which point it becomes a game of intelligence and counter intelligence. For example, if an organisation suspects their people are leaking info to the press, it could begin to place targeted (mis)information among employees to uncover them. This was done at Tesla last year to track and eventually bust leakers.

Y-bar• 3 years ago

Non-AMP link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60972903

LinuxBender2• 3 years ago

The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws

AFAIK governments empower specific agencies and groups with qualified immunity. How would such laws be enforced if an agency has immunity?

hirundo• 3 years ago

In the U.S. qualified immunity is a creation of the judicial system, and those decisions could presumably be reversed by statute if the political will comes to exist.

Matticus_Rex• 3 years ago

No need to invoke qualified immunity; the data privacy laws that have been passed (e.g. the GDPR) make explicit carveouts for government surveillance. Yes, the carveouts are for the jurisdiction's own government only, but that's the one you should be most worried about mass surveillance from in most cases.

misterprime• 3 years ago

High ranking member of political party 1 does something illegal.
Huge stink and nationwide conversation ensues.
High ranking member of political party 2 does the same damn thing.
Crickets.

You can even reverse the order of the events or parties. It happens a lot. Such laws, unfortunately, simply become political tools.

MSFT_Edging• 3 years ago

The expression of power is in who gets to decide the exception to the rules. Real power is rarely beholden to rules. That's why whistleblowers who call out illegal programs are treated like the criminal, because the laws essentially don't matter when dealing with things at that high of level.

Powerful people can lie, cheat, and steal and face zero repercussions. They hold institutional power so groups like the police will protect them regardless of laws being broken. It's not illegal for a corporation to either literally or metaphorically kill someone, because there is no body that will hold them accountable, but it is illegal to assassinate a CEO and systems will pull all stops to hold the assassin accountable.

Its the real reason why Western style democracy ends up being a busybox for people who like rules. The people who can grant endless exceptions have addresses and beds where they rest their heads but people without power cannot decide on an exception to the rules, regardless how dangerous and damaging that person is.

reaperducer• 3 years ago

The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws

Even your own example — a whistleblower talking to a journalist — illustrates that the fear is not of people who abide by laws, but people and organizations that don't care about the laws.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be laws. But like almost everything involving human beings, the solution is not an if-then binary choice.

You have laws, but you also have mitigations.

amelius• 3 years ago

Note that there is simply no way for two known parties on the internet to hide the fact that they are communicating with one another from government-corporate managers of the Internet

Not entirely true. I could post a message on a popular forum like HN, where the message contains a hidden message.

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

Steganography is a real thing. I've often wondered about those meme powerhouses, like on Facebook.

I used to collect thousands of memes and just blast them to my mother indiscriminately. Then I wondered whether silly-looking memes could be carrying secret messages, or just nasty hidden stuff. I decided to stop helping traffick in that stuff.

Has anyone read/seen Mother Night? That's a real good example of how secret communication can hide in plain sight.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

Yeah the parent's assertion seems incorrect. It's totally possible to hide such messages on the internet.

letitbeirie• 3 years ago

Basically a digital dead drop.

didgetmaster• 3 years ago

Maybe that explains some 'word-salad' speeches by our VP. She really is sending a hidden message to somebody who has the secret decoder ring. Then again, maybe not...

EGreg• 3 years ago

The problem you describe is far more pervasive than that: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362

kornhole8• 3 years ago

This site and many guides like it are intended to help people avoid mass surveillance rather than targeted surveillance. Confounding the two threat models seems intended to confuse and exasperate people.

nunuvit• 3 years ago

Or at least intended to piggy back their own cause onto a superficially related effort.

photochemsyn2• 3 years ago

So, let's say the NSA is collecting data on every person on the web, and they're able to see who is using these 'mass surveillance avoidance tools' and who isn't. The former category then actually stands out and becomes targets of more intensive surveillance because they're using tools that allow them to hide surveillance to a limited extent. Using such tools would flag the 'strong-selector' metadata collection system for further (targeted) examination, i.e.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)

This is of course what an outfit like the STASI or Gestapo would do, isn't it? If you're actually trying to hide from surveillance, the best tactic is to hide in plain sight, maintaining a cover story consisting of bland normal online presence that doesn't draw extra attention.

Of course living in an authoritarian panopticon and having to hide in this manner is an undesirable situation, and the solution is not technological, but rather political in nature. One basic issue is transparency, i.e. the public should be able to see what the intelligence agencies and corporations are up to with their surveillance programs. This is why Snowden's exposure of PRISM, XKEYSCORE, TRAFFICTHIEF, etc. was in the public interest, i.e. legitimate whistleblowing.

petsfed• 3 years ago

I think the lesson to be learned from e.g. the Cambridge Analytica scandal is that given enough computational power, mass surveillance is indistinguishable from targeted surveillance.

I feel like I should be putting on my tinfoil hat saying all of that, but the reality is that these systems are less and less throttled by the availability of human brains to process the data the automated surveillance systems collect. We made a mistake in thinking that labor costs could ever be an effective guard rail for these tools.

jjav• 3 years ago

This site and many guides like it are intended to help people avoid mass surveillance rather than targeted surveillance. Confounding the two threat models seems intended to confuse and exasperate people.

The important thing to keep in mind - and one that I find most nontechnical people don't realize - is that over time mass surveillance and targeted surveillance trend to being the same thing.

Centuries, or even decades, ago mass surveillance was a dictators dream but merely a fantasy. There was no way to do it, not enough people or time, so it was impossible. You could only do targeted surveillance against selected groups or people.

With current technology these are starting to merge. You can actually spy on everyone all the time and store it for later perusal whenever you need to perform a dragnet search in the future.

We're not there 100% quite yet but every year more activities are online and more bandwidth and storage capacity makes it more and more viable to monitor everything and everyone all the time.

The legal and cultural framework to deal with this does not exist. Laws and mindsets are still focused only on targeted surveillance and cover things like search warrants.

kornhole8• 3 years ago

We should push for laws and resist new acts that curtail our rights of privacy and free expression, but that is not a solution. We are generally on our own in making our choices of technology to use. If you go on using proprietary services and networks hoping that someday laws will suddenly fix all the problems, you are seriously deluded or naïve.

salawat2• 3 years ago

You mean... like some sort of a... a Constitution...

One with lines like:

"The Congress shall make no law..."

"The People shall..."

"...shall not be infringed."

"All powers not mentioned here are reserved for the States, or ultimately, the People."

We're beyond the point where good faith can be assumed, and we're down to brass tacks. Our judiciary has shown they are more than willing to creatively reinterpret precedent as they see fit. Our Executive is acting more and more like a dictator with an entire corpus of executive based lawmaking at his disposal (Administrative Law). The Legislature has abdicated responsibility for reigning in excesses in the interest of the little people rather than established incorporated interests and high value donors.

And the People are left with a choice. Amongst all this dysfunction, what should they do?

gnarbarian2• 3 years ago

The laws don't really stop it either. The 4th amendment in the United States hasn't prevented huge dragnet style data collection and partnerships with private entities to provide access to whatever data the government wants.

hellojesus• 3 years ago

Laws like the Bank Secrecy Act where passed specifically to state that 4A doesn't apply if the data is collected from a third party and not the individual directly. Nonsense but we're here.

feedsmgmt• 3 years ago

Why isn't full transparency and an end to criminality a viable solution?

DennisP• 3 years ago

It might be, if it also applies to everyone in the government. Then all of us can keep them accountable.

bawolff2• 3 years ago

but the belief that individual technological efforts can defeat large-scale corporate and nation-state monitoring is pretty silly.

Nation states may have a lot of budget, but they still have a budget. Mass survelience needs to have low per user cost to succeed. It is entirely reasonable to assume small changes if widely adopted could make mass surveilence ecconomically unfeasible.

arendtio2• 3 years ago

The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws that...

Even the GDPR with its huge impact and global implications does not apply to law enforcement agencies. So I wonder who would make such a law?

titzer2• 3 years ago

by encrypting your communications and ending your reliance on proprietary services.

Well, unfortunately, you can't encrypt your location and pretty much every mobile phone is sending detailed GPS, accelerometer, barometer, WiFi, and other sensor data back to the mothership multiple times an hour.

kornhole8• 3 years ago

This is technically easy to fix on any Android or Linux phone. Willingness by people to make the changes is the challenge.

hammyhavoc5• 3 years ago

This is interesting: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/27/qualcomm_covert_opera...

titzer2• 3 years ago

Google Play Services is not easy to rip out, and it installs itself as a "better" location service provider for the device, meaning that app requests for location go through it. And it can and does upload "anonymized"[1] data of all these types constantly as part of its normal operations. You can withhold consent to uploading "anonymized" data by paying careful attention to click-through agreements[2] and explicitly turning off "high location accuracy"[3] in your Android settings.

[1] The technical details of how this data are anonymized, nor how it is analyzed and used to "improve products" are not public.

[2] The implications of each click-through agreement are, as usual, non-obvious.

[3] The name of this mechanism keeps changing and it is harder and harder to find and disable.

hammyhavoc5• 3 years ago

Threat models vary wildly. Someone's location may not be a consideration.

htag2• 3 years ago

You fundamentally cannot have location privacy with cell service. A cell tower will provide service to a limited physical region. When someone dials your number, the telecomm company needs to know which tower to route your call to. If telecomms didn't know where you were then cell service would not work. Sure, WiFi/GPS can provide more detailed location information and are commonly sent into the cloud and this is a problem too.

scarface747• 3 years ago

And they recommend using a Google free Android phone to prevent surveillance. Ignoring the fact that Qualcomm based phones will still leak data.

https://www.nitrokey.com/news/2023/smartphones-popular-qualc...

Zetobal2• 3 years ago

Did you understand the article you just linked or do you just wanna throw shit on a bonfire? They pull GPS data and nothing else.

scarface747• 3 years ago

Yes because worrying about your location being tracked is silly and never used by government - especially in the case where they want to arrest everyone who was protesting in a given area.

cynicalsecurity• 3 years ago

Mass surveillance helped the UK Counter Terrorism Police identify Russian spies Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov in Salisbury investigation who were trying to kill a family of dissidents.

Granted, the website is dedicated to mass surveillance in the IT. But then think, generally speaking, is the mass surveillance on some reasonable level really so bad? It's helping identifying Russian soldiers who are committing war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine. It helps preserve the free and democratic society rather than creates a road to dystopia. Of course, I'm speaking of some reasonable levels, not of something like real-time client device scanning. It doesn't make any sense and it would simply not work.

VWWHFSfQ• 3 years ago

It's a dangerous train of thought. You will end up like China where it's acceptable for the "greater good". And nobody will ever give the power back once they have it.

ChatGTP• 3 years ago

I agree it's dangerous but what are governments supposed to do?

In a world where individuals or very small groups of people are increasingly gaining the power to do potentially catastrophic damage using increasingly powerful technology, what are the actual alternatives? Trust?

How can society functionin going forwards without at least some oversight ?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want society to go this way, but I'm starting to see fewer and fewer options presented to Governments. I can see both sides of the story.

I wouldn't pretend I know the right answer, but I think we have to admit the world has changed quite a bit recently.

inglor• 3 years ago

It is ok as long as you are not the target :)

It is basically only ok if you can guarantee it’s users always use it in good faith which is virtually impossible.

ciabattabread• 3 years ago

I take it you’re not a Florida woman with a miscarriage.

win32k3• 3 years ago

Nice straw man

Tarq0n• 3 years ago

Would it have been impossible to achieve the same goal with targeted surveillance instead?

cal5k• 3 years ago

Yes, it really is so bad. People are unbelievably ignorant of history.

What happens when the state intelligence apparatus has the ability to perfectly surveil the population? Look no further than what the Stasi accomplished - it becomes trivially easy to discredit political opposition, journalists, business leaders, or any other person or group standing in the way of the powerful.

People split hairs about this kind of oversight, or that kind of oversight, but when the powerful are overseeing their own surveillance apparatus - using secret courts, secret warrants, and all manner of other methods for hiding the true scope of the surveillance - I do not believe it can be contained.

win32k3• 3 years ago

But the Stasi was a secret police in a totalitarian state, not a liberal democracy. Apples to oranges. Good faith actors in government, with intense oversight from elected officials, makes your concerns null and void.

layer8• 3 years ago

You know what they say about the end justifying the means.

win32k3• 3 years ago

Completely agree. When used properly and ethically in a democratic society, surveillance is an absolute net positive for society.

sundarurfriend2• 3 years ago

When used properly and ethically in a democratic society

So, for the first five minutes.

542354234235• 3 years ago

Police being able to walk into anyone's home at will to search it would definetly lead to catching some criminal activity. The issue isn't "would this thing lead to catching some criminals". The issue is abuses, government overreach, and innocent civilians being targeted.

“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” William Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The argument to give up your rights is always initially used to target the worst of the worst. Its always terrorists, spies, child murderers, etc. Of course we shouldn't be slowed down by due process when it is for this child murderer. Yet it is then used against those least likely to be able to defend themselves for easy wins. Russian spies first, then its minor crimes committed by immigrants.

Maximus9000• 3 years ago

What's wrong with 1Password? I've seen several famous cyber security pros recommend 1password (like Troy Hunt).

chaxor• 3 years ago

I think most segments against online password companies is that they get hacked so often. The most practical problem is having to switch all your passwords around after such a leak occurs, which seems to be more and more permanent these days. Contrary to popular belief, the best reason to store passwords offline is actually convenience, so that you don't have to change them so often (your single password dump is not a target, but all people's data is).

Invictus02• 3 years ago

1Password doesn't have my passwords, they exist in an encrypted vault on Dropbox which is itself encrypted. The whole thing is extremely secure.

itslennysfault• 3 years ago

My guess would be that it is because it is not open source, but I am surprised that there is no mention of BitWarden.

hermannj314• 3 years ago

Is it legal to have private conversations discussing actual plans for acts of terrorism?

I assume you have to pierce some veil of reality, make a purchase, buy a ticket, etc. before it becomes a crime.

My point is if we can make surveillance costly by filling the airwaves with false positives that are just a group of bots plotting a terrorist act? I assume that is legal to do.

Edit - ok, so it definitely seems like this is not clever at all and almost certainly a crime. Don't do this!

citizenkeen• 3 years ago

Is it legal to have private conversations discussing actual plans for acts of terrorism?

Not in most countries, no.

bragr2• 3 years ago

No, that would likely constitute criminal conspiracy, even if you have no intent to commit it.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

nashashmi2• 3 years ago

(2) Falsely and maliciously to indict another for any crime, or to procure another to be charged or arrested for any crime.

So this means police informants in connection to the police are also committing a crime? Far too often people with recorded criminal activities are baited into getting another person caught for a more severe crime like terrorism, in exchange of being let go.

Cthulhu_• 3 years ago

Only if you don't get caught; plenty of schools have been evacuated because people mentioned comitting a crime without actually intending to execute it.

That said, flooding the systems with false positives is definitely possible, but it would be used as a cover for actual terrorist attacks.

coldtea6• 3 years ago

Only if you don't get caught;

Well, that's true for any crime tho, so doesn't answer the parent's question.

rolph2• 3 years ago

you seem to be describing "swatting"

vvilliamperez• 3 years ago

Not legal.

The problem with conspiratory talk is that while one person may fully not intend on action, it could inspire and/or manipulate others into committing acts. The blame is shared on all for conspiring and creating that environment where acts can emerge.

drdaeman• 3 years ago

What if an unhinged language model generates all this noise talking to other language models, with no humans involved at all? The only human involvement would be an instruction to start spouting some believable bullshit on controversial topics, plus granting access to some private messaging tools and providing a contact list of other language models to talk to.

mkoubaa2• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's illegal unless you're an intelligence operator trying to entrap people, in which case it's your job

coldtea6• 3 years ago

I've read news stories of people caught, charged and everything, just for discussing those things.

So, no actual act is necessary.

slavik81• 3 years ago

There's great sketch by the Whitest Kids U'Know on the legality of such statements. https://youtu.be/gmiKenqLVAU

kristopolous2• 3 years ago

Bachs brandenberg concerto #3 is always a nice choice. One of my faves

prmoustache• 3 years ago

it gets quickly less fun when all your family is woken up in the middle of the night by a SWAT team, your kids are yelled at, your equipment is seized and your partner ask for divorce.

Thrymr• 3 years ago

M-x spook

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/lisp/play/...

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

In general, you can discuss such ideas but agreeing to perform them brings you up against the line of committing crime. In the US, you have to commit some material act in furtherance of the conspiracy, but that can be almost anything.

For example, if you and your friends agree to rob a bank and decide you'll need gloves, ski masks, and some kind of weapon, buying 6 pairs of rubber gloves at the store the next day would qualify as a material act. You don't need to acquire all the expected tools or go anywhere near the bank you discussed robbing.

Nifty39293• 3 years ago

The main problem I see is that people are completely distracted by privacy from corporations - when what we really need to be worried about is privacy from our own governments.

So much ink is spilled talking about cookies, ads tracking, etc. But really what's the worst a corporation is going to do? Try to sell you something?

Meanwhile, we continue to allow our governments to regulate and legislate ever more intrusive invasions of our privacy. And they can put us in jail, or worse.

This also gets blurry as governments take increasing control of companies, to the point that some are just about arms of the government, surveilling us in ways that the government can't (yet) do on their own - and being forced to pass that data to the government under penalty of law themselves.

Applejinx2• 3 years ago

I'm completely uninterested in the distinction you draw here.

Actually, several distinctions. What do you mean 'our OWN governments'? This is a world where hostile foreign governments can wreak absolute havoc… including by popularizing arguments literally the same as the one you're making, for the purpose of undermining that government and fomenting revolution for their own selfish, imperialist purposes.

I can think of two great powers (okay, one formerly great) actively doing this within my lifetime, and the formerly great one was doing it as hard as it possibly could, within the last ten years, and is still doing it.

I don't trust your argument at all. You're leaving out significant things, conveniently.

Nifty39293• 3 years ago

The difference between my own government and a foreign government is twofold: 1. It has always been illegal for a foreign state actor to surveil me, and in any case has no authority over me and can't put me in jail (as long as I'm not in their country). 2. My own government is legally entitled to surveil me and collect my personal data, and can indeed put me in jail.

RetpolineDrama• 3 years ago

True. For all their flaws, Google doesn't have the ability to send men with guns to my house to abduct me if I don't pay them 50% of my income.

Nextgrid3• 3 years ago

But Google built a surveillance machine much more advanced than the gov can even dream of, so the guys with guns just have to go to Google first to get your data and then they can go to your house.

elevation• 3 years ago

While corporations aren't as powerful as the government, they use data for more than "trying to sell you something."

Network effects cause society to coalesce around the same large corporations for social media, online shopping, payment processing, etc to the point that it can be hard to function in society without their services. Once their services are used by virtually everyone, their governance becomes governmental in its impact. On a weekly basis we see programs like the app stores, ad markets, search algorithms, and payment processors enforcing opaque policies that close businesses and end livelihoods, all based on an automated interpretation of the data we share with them.

0x445442• 3 years ago

You speak as if corporations are separate from governments.

Nifty39293• 3 years ago

I did allude to the gap there closing. I still see them as distinct in most countries, including my own. But I fear we're allowing the gap to close further.

As an aside, I think a lot of people want this gap to close, but for entirely unrelated reasons more related to political and economic goals, with the loss of privacy and individual autonomy being an unconsidered consequence of this.

pavon• 3 years ago

Until these companies turn around and sell that data to the government, which doesn't require a warrant since the company is volunteering to provide it, and if they don't want to sell it, the government will happily use one of it's loopholes around warrants to demand it anyway. The government does this constantly with location data[1], browsing history[2], license plate scanners[3], and more.

We should be pushing to close these warrantless search loopholes, but in the meanwhile the only pragmatic way for an individual to maintain privacy is to prevent any and all third parties from collecting the data to begin with. After it has been collected, you have no control and no reasonable expectations of how it will be used.

[1]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government...

[2]https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/can-government-look-yo...

[3]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/cbp-does-end-run...

TheRealDunkirk2• 3 years ago

Until these companies turn around and sell that data to the government...

Yes, the larger issue is that the government has just outsourced a lot of the work to corporations to get around the Constitution. If there were any integrity left in the US government, there would be a reckoning about this. We worry about regulatory capture, but the bigger problem is deep state/military-industrial complex capture.

landemva• 3 years ago

prevent any and all third parties from collecting the data to begin with.

This is what I have been doing. What can you add to this?

On phone disable Bluetooth, disable precise location, disable location and infrequently turn that on for something like photo geotag, use carrier phone number for nothing and use phone numbers from googlevoice or others. Put cars in LLCs or Trusts with address at POBox or UPS. Never use home address for mail unless it is from family. Put utilities in name of LLC or Trust.

Nextgrid3• 3 years ago

I disagree.

Companies are building surveillance infrastructure that is:

* way ahead of governments in terms of technical capability (NSA and top-level intelligence agencies are outliers, but your average government IT departments are too incompetent to be of any threat)

* widely accepted and not regarded as malicious - not even the NSA can get people to voluntarily include some malicious Javascript on the vast majority of public-facing webpages, yet Google Analytics managed exactly that

* profitable and self-sustaining - the government doesn't have to spend money on building and maintaining it, nor needs to justify its budget/spending

Those companies however are still at the mercy of governments, either via violence/coercion (in the US, they have to obey a national security letter by law, or armed goons will show up) or mutually-beneficial relationship (a lot of companies either outright sell this surveillance data to the highest bidder, or don't outright sell it but will be happy to let the government in on it in exchange for a good relationship and favors in the future).

coldtea6• 3 years ago

So much ink is spilled talking about cookies, ads tracking, etc. But really what's the worst a corporation is going to do? Try to sell you something?

Cooperate with domestic and remote governments, work with the deep state, influence elections and work with candidate teams, and so on. There are also companies with more reach and resources than entire countries.

Plus, corporations have been known to downright spy, threaten, beat up, and murder people when multi-billion interests are threatened (e.g. by local populations wanting clean water or better working conditions).

seaners• 3 years ago

What sort of argument is this? I prefer a corporatocracy to a democracy? You elect officials for your government, you have no say in what Google does.

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

The main problem I see is that people are completely distracted by privacy from corporations - when what we really need to be worried about is privacy from our own governments

Governments have grown to rely on corporations to spy on their own citizens, so being worried about corporate surveillance is being worried about government surveillance.

However, between the two (for the vast majority of people), corporations pose a more realistic threat than governments do.

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

You write this as if corporations don't lobby on behalf of their owners, and as if 'trying to sell you something' couldn't be any more dystopian than someone at a store counter greeting a prospective customer.

Corporations lobby governments to provide security, in part because some corporations want to sell security products and governments (at multiple different scales) are the biggest customers for that. Those who do not themselves sell security sometimes demand security not so much for the safety of customers and staff as for the customers that they would like to have. Security is big business. Before dismissing this as some marginal phenomenon, you might want to reflect on the proportion of the economy that revolves around security. Though a few years old now, this article raises a number of surprising questions that I've yet to see effectively answered: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Glenn_Lo...

lettergram• 3 years ago

I used to semi-joke the real way to break these systems is to have multiple AIs on everyone’s phones constantly talking to each other. You do this over encrypted chat and tag if it’s real or not. Only display the real ones to the users.

Then when you send a message it can be hidden. And it becomes too expensive to review.

monkeynotes2• 3 years ago

Getting regular folk, myself included, off of these popular platforms - especially Gmail isn't economical for most people. Just changing your email address and migrating to another provider isn't an easy sell.

Whilst the motivation of this project is commendable it's not going to reach the volume of folks needed to make a difference.

vladharbuz• 3 years ago

Why? Signing up for FastMail or Migadu and redirecting your mail is very easy. If you use a custom domain, you don’t even have to change your address when you migrate to a new provider.

psd12• 3 years ago

I spent several days evaluating mail providers and migrating. It is work.

monkeynotes2• 3 years ago

Signing up for FastMail or Migadu and redirecting your mail is very easy...
If you use a custom domain...

I'd suggest trying to talk the average American into doing that. You'd have to be quite out of touch with everyday people to think this is a battle you can win.

bragr2• 3 years ago

This seems great until you dig into some of the recommendations. A tool to save webpages is not an alternative to a news reader. A dynamic DNS service is a not an alternative to Google public DNS, etc, etc

I can't see the this making any kind of dent on the average person with these kinds of recommendations.

pickledish• 3 years ago

Word, I was a bit surprised by the "email" section as well. As a better alternative to Gmail, I would have expected to see e.g. protonmail or fastmail, but instead saw... thunderbird, an email client? Which doesn't make a lot of sense

Applejinx2• 3 years ago

If it is actually a malicious site trying to herd people toward exploitable behaviors it'd be following the Nigerian Scammer tactic of pre-screening by allowing simple errors to scare off more savvy inquiries.

This would go along with the rather crude emotional appeal.

That said, it hardly seems an efficient way to exploit people… though there are useful points. If you can get somebody credulous to use something that's compromised, and you're acting like a baleen whale and accumulating whole populations of credulous government-suspicious folks whom you've steered towards some mechanism where YOU can surveil them, that's got to have some usefulness.

People absolutely don't take into account the effectiveness of loosely manipulating entire populations in selective ways. You never need to select an individual and 'make' them take any action at all. You only have to cultivate the conditions for the outcome you want. Facebook might have discovered this first, but the idea sure caught on quick.

hammyhavoc5• 3 years ago

It makes plenty of sense.

On https://prism-break.org/en/all/#email, they state "For more email providers, take a look at Privacy-Conscious Email Services. Please decide for yourself whether if you trust them with your data. For more discussion about safe email providers, please see issue #461.".

They even state that Thunderbird is a "Extensible, cross-platform email client.". The implied idea being to use Thunderbird to access a "Privacy-Conscious Email Service".

I use Gmail as an email client more than than I use it as an email provider because it has an External Accounts function. I apply Google's "App Script" system to my email to do things that you could do in Outlook's full-fat client or maybe in Thunderbird with some extensions.

cptskippy• 3 years ago

I started going through the list and found several "wait, why is this to be avoided?" mentions. I started looking around for an explanation on their site and can't find anything.

There doesn't appear to be any clear explanation or rationale. There is however the every unhelpful libertarian mantra "... do your own research ...". Whenever I hear those words uttered I immediate question the legitimacy of the source.

Hiding your research (or lack of) and telling people to do their own is a manipulation. It's telling people to either take you at your word or invest a lot of time and energy into research which might yield a similar conclusion.

Research is meaningless unless it's documented and shared so others can evaluate it.

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

Hiding your research (or lack of) and telling people to do their own is a manipulation

Yep. And even worse, since those people are also telling you what conclusion they want you to reach, they're encouraging people to engage in the illusion of research (starting with a conclusion and looking for confirming data points) rather than real research.

8K832d7tNmiQ• 3 years ago

Should've add (2021) at the end because the site itself hasn't been updated in years.

stefncb• 3 years ago

That would imply it's out of date, which it apparently isn't. The website itself doesn't need updating if it stays relevant.

hammyhavoc5• 3 years ago

Plenty is out of date on it.

They also still link to https://prxbx.com/email/ from https://prism-break.org/en/all/#email, which doesn't consider https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/protonmail-logged-ip-addre...

jonhohle• 3 years ago

It would be helpful to have some description regarding why some entries made the naughty list. For example, is there evidence that iOS sends data to PRISM? Has any analysis shown that Safari leaks any more data than Firefox?

swapfile2• 3 years ago

It probably goes along the lines of:

"It is impossible to download and examine iOS's source code, which means that it is impossible to prove that iOS is not spyware. Any program which does not make its source code available is potential spyware."

Which I agree with. I'm not going to trust and put as much personal data as a smartphone usually contains into a proprietary black box.

KennyBlanken2• 3 years ago

Yeah, this bit:

"Apple iOS devices are affected by PRISM. Even using the software tools we recommend here, your privacy may be compromised by iOS itself. The operating system of any device can unfortunately lever out any privacy protection that a program tries to offer you."

...made me conclude that these people are idiots. You don't need to activate iCloud on an iPhone and you can use standard stuff like IMAP and WebDAV to sync contacts and calendars etc. There's also a huge list of telemetry controls you can shut off in the OS.

Not to mention they have the best physical and OS security of any mobile device.

Suggesting that a small homebrew Android ROM, maintained by anonymous individuals, which hasn't seen any security updates in almost a year, is comparable in terms of end-user privacy is ludicrous.

amatecha• 3 years ago

I didn't use iCloud yet Apple Customer Support was able to directly send a "remote access request" to my iPhone, years ago, which I simply had to press "accept" and they were able to remote-control my phone and see everything on screen. There's no reason the OS can't allow that exact same comprehensive remote access, without asking my permission. There's also no reason Apple can't surreptitiously introduce new back doors with any given iOS update -- especially considering the new "urgent update" functionality they recently introduced.

itherseed• 3 years ago

I was surprised to find Authy in the "Avoid" column of the 2FA apps in Android. Anybody knows why? I prefer something open source like Aegis that I can backup myself but didn't hear anything bad about Authy in particular.

turnsout2• 3 years ago

Yeah, kind of surprising. I guess it's a private company that manages your 2FA code backups, and they could theoretically lock you out.

I avoid Authy for a different reason: after upgrading phones, my backup password (which is 100% correct, trust me) is not unlocking my archive. I switched over to iCloud Keychain and will never look back.

thekingshorses• 3 years ago

I use google authenticator. I backup the QR code in the TrueCrypt vault when I add a new account to the google auth. I am not sure how secure it is, but I am very scared of losing access to google authenticator.

pipingdog• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33444223

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

That makes it clear. Authy is an unacceptable piece of software.

raybb• 3 years ago

Relatedly, does anyone know about 2fas.com ? They have a very nice app and a lot of installs but it's unclear how well vetted the oss is.

avodonosov2• 3 years ago

An important part of the problem is that super complex software and hardware stacks are required today for even basic tasks. This limits customer's chioce, essentially forcing customer to use these bloated, insecure, obscure products.

Even browsing the plain text Hacker News forum requires a web browser, so complex that only few companies in the world can produce it. And runs on super complex OS.

I wish we had something like "basic computing / commnication device" specification. Simple, limited and transparent, that everyone can produce. With small software, That would allow to exchange messages and browse information online. Not all data formats, but a limited set of formats, good enough for basic communications.

Better a frozen spec, not a moving target. (Or a very careful evolution, with very rare release of new versions)

Good publishers, web sites, etc, could test their systems against the "basic comp / comm device".

jraph• 3 years ago

Even browsing the plain text Hacker News forum requires a web browser, so complex that only few companies in the world can produce it.

This not take anything out of your point, but HN can be browsed with simpler browsers like lynx, w3m, Ladybird or NetSurf, which are all written by a small set of people.

(they do rely on quite complex operating systems though)

avodonosov2• 3 years ago

Maybe the main lock-in is in drivers for proprietary hardware. Platform software like bare bones Linux / Android and Firefox is probably not the root of the lock-in.

If so, maybe it's better to think of two devices: trusted device, and fancy device.

The trusted device is a simple, low power and cheap device, maybe without even a camera. Just touchscreen, wi-fi and mobile internet. Fully open drivers, and hardware spec. Running bare bones Linux / Android, Firefox. Easy to root and reinstall the full software stack. There can be an open specification for at, as a "basic comp / comm device": 1 GB memory, CPU of certain performance, etc.

The fancy device is a cutting edge proprietary flagman device. Great power, but risk of tracking.

Every user can have both types of devices.

turnsout2• 3 years ago

Thanks to this article I learned about Nextcloud[0], which at first glance looks like a really nice self-hostable alternative to the Google Suite.

[0]https://nextcloud.com

tgv• 3 years ago

And Dropbox.

mkoubaa2• 3 years ago

Wouldn't it be more viable to just curate multiple personal identities? It's not illegal and as long as they don't need your SSN they won't care.

I've thought about doing this to have a pen name with a pseudo anonymous identity but I also have burner emails to avoid spam.

psd12• 3 years ago

My concern is leaking through browser sessions. If browser adware finds traces of two identities in a session, your secret is out. If browser fingerprinting works (it does), your secret is out.

loteck• 3 years ago

What, Slack just gets a pass?

shadowgovt• 3 years ago

This has big "Society getting you down? Just go live in a cave on a mountaintop" energy.

It certainly a choice an individual can make. But it will have about as much societal impact as domestic recycling has on global warming. Especially since we're talking about internet communications technologies here... The alternative to using Discord for most people these days is not corresponding with the people they need to correspond with.

wintogreen74• 3 years ago

"If you're on Windows click here". OS > Avoid: Windows.

I get it, but not very helpful. The premise of making it "uneconomical" for a nation-state to perform mass surveillance is a bit naive; at best we can make it more expensive for our own governments to perform, which is backwards in IMO. We should make it cheap, efficient and easy to get too much garbage data.

jevgeni• 3 years ago

Ok, so according to this, to one should EtherCalc web service for productivity. Why? What are the guarantees here that no surveilance is taking place.

hot_gril2• 3 years ago

"Avoid PayPal, use Bitcoin." Wish it were that simple.

Nextgrid3• 3 years ago

Avoid PayPal, use Bitcoin.

So instead of the government being able to spy on you, you want the government and anyone else capable of monitoring the blockchain to spy on you? That seems worse on all fronts.

hot_gril2• 3 years ago

It still seems a lot harder to track if you don't reuse addresses. The same entry did also recommend Monero. Meanwhile I purchased brandy with a credit card for the first time, in-person at a small liquor store, and immediately started seeing web ads for more brandy.

can16358p• 3 years ago

While I'd definitely want a huge win for privacy, the current (that we need to avoid) suite of tools is extremely convenient (especially the collab/social ones) and are affected by network effect.

We should be aiming for a solution that is private while also convenient as the centralized ones. Otherwise even if we (HN audience) switch, many others won't and only a niche set of users will be using the private technologies and services.

swapfile2• 3 years ago

Otherwise even if we (HN audience) switch

This is a problem. Even the HN audience seems to struggle greatly in choosing non-proprietary and privacy friendly solutions. While the amount of privacy advocates are certainly greater here than in many other places, the general sentiment I get from reading a lot of these threads is that "If you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide".

Why do you think that is? Certainly a community like this shouldn't be bothered by the slight obstacles you would be challenged with.

JohnFen5• 3 years ago

the general sentiment I get from reading a lot of these threads is that "If you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide".
Why do you think that is?

I think it's because a lot of people think that there's nothing that can be done to change the situation, and so they adopt that mental stance in order to be OK with it. Whether or not that stance is correct isn't important. It's an emotional "safe space".

maerF0x0• 3 years ago

Who is Peng Zhong, and why should I trust their curated list of 0days err Safe bets?

Also btw we should put 2021 in the title because it hasnt been updated since.

dadrian• 3 years ago

Almost nothing on this list is actually positive for security, and most of the applications provided are not actually substitutes. Good luck replacing Discord with Signal.

sundarurfriend2• 3 years ago

Agreed with the second part, but what do you mean by "Almost nothing on this list is actually positive for security"?

doodlesdev• 3 years ago

Yeah an actual substitute to Discord would be matrix.org, not Signal.

chillycurve• 3 years ago

For a better and more up-to-date list of alternatives, see https://www.privacyguides.org/en/

snowwrestler• 3 years ago

It has been clearly reported, but in case folks are not aware: PRISM is not a system for deep persistent access into tech platforms, it is the internal NSA designation (code name) for data sourced via FISA court orders. The FBI actually secures the court order and then requests the data.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

If a company stores data about you, it is possible it could be subject to a FISA request. Data which is end-to-end encrypted would still be provided if it satisfies the criteria in the FISA court order. But it would be up to the NSA to try to break the encryption. Metadata might or might not be encrypted.

sdfghswe• 3 years ago

That's.... not as bad as originally advertised, is it?

bdav2418• 3 years ago

It is important to mention that FISA requests have something like a 98% approval rate and have a history of being overly broad allowing for dragnet data collection. So PRISM does still allow for very wide sweeping data access from tech companies. But yes, end-to-end encryption is one of the few things that can help with this.

roody15• 3 years ago

Too late. Not to be a downer but this ship has sailed. No matter the cost governments and big business will unite in using mass surveillance to monitor and control the population. In a sense its a new feudal system enforced with complete surveillance.

WarOnPrivacy• 3 years ago

No matter the cost governments and big business will unite in using mass surveillance to monitor and control the population.

The cost has almost always been ~0 for gov officials performing unnecessary surveillance.

I trace this low cost back to news orgs. Most editors & journalists opt out of honoring their extra constitutional protections because they don't serve as an adversary to the powerful. Instead they favor publishing sportsball or celebs or parroting gov/corp/leo pr without any analysis, etc.

We don't know how officials will behave if they have to pay a persistent, meaningful cost for surveilling us. We've never tried it.

mandmandam• 3 years ago

We don't know how officials will behave if they have to pay a persistent, meaningful cost for surveilling us. We've never tried it.

To try that, step one would be making people aware of what's even happening. As you say, news orgs are failing us all.

Assange and Snowden took Step One toward that end... And were made an international example of. The institutions and news orgs who ought to have been their main support failed, and even turned on them in most cases.

nathanmcrae• 3 years ago

I think pen-and-paper one-time pads are an underestimated tool for private communication. Granted they are cumbersome and limited, but they provide almost perfect secrecy and bypass issues of compromised computers completely. And with some basic steganography (section h in the guide below has a good example), you can pretty easily hide when / who you're sending a message to. 'The Complete Guide to Secure Communications with the One Time Pad Cipher' is a really good resource: https://www.amrron.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/one_time_p...

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

Profiling people requires you to provide clean data.

Just do not provide clean data. Search for random shit occassionally so that the entire profiling gets poisoned with fake data points.

guywithahat• 3 years ago

I wonder how useful even this list actually is. Famously Tucker Carlson was being spied on by the NSA through his signal app, and while I don't trust them to be able to figure out exactly what the point of entry was, it does imply without regular whistleblowers from throughout the NSA/etc, we won't know exactly what their capabilities are and I'm not sure how meaningful a list like this can be.

milofeynman• 3 years ago

Famously? I've never heard of that. Is that even true?

Perceval• 3 years ago

Tucker made the claim that an internal USG whistleblower told him that his communications were being monitored by the NSA. Tucker stated that he sought the counsel of a Senator, and that the Senator told him that he should go public with the information. Tucker then discussed the claims on his television show. The NSA issued a statement saying that Tucker was not a surveillance target. Later, there was information that Tucker had been setting up an interview with Putin, and that those communications were intercepted, and Tucker's name was unmasked (when a U.S. citizen has communications picked up by the NSA, their name is redacted as part of the normal intelligence reporting, and it requires a high level official to request to see the actual name of the U.S. person). Subsequently, the NSA's internal watchdog began an investigation into whether Tucker was improperly targeted for surveillance. After investigating itself, the NSA cleared itself of any wrongdoing.

SassyGrapefruit• 3 years ago

He meant to say "Famously Tucker Carlson claimed that the NSA spied on him". Given that the man is a bastion of journalistic and personal credibility I can't see any reason not to believe him /s

Orangeair• 3 years ago

I wish it would expand on some of its recommendations. It says to avoid Authy, but doesn't give any reasons. Is this just a FOSS absolutist site? That doesn't really seem to mesh with the title for me, I was expecting to see some actual info about curbing data collection.

93po• 3 years ago

Same, I want to understand why I'm avoiding any of these.

ROTMetro• 3 years ago

I finally realize that all those weird face tattoos in futuristic scenarios were to throw off facial recognition. Who here is starting an AI defeating temporary face tattoo business?

denton-scratch• 3 years ago

Email addons: Enigmail is no longer an add-on for Thunderbird; it's built-in (and has been for years).

0xbadcafebee2• 3 years ago

I think OSS developers should adopt ethical licenses. Licenses that specify you can't use the software for a variety of use cases, such as violating human rights, or mass surveillance.

Oppressors will still buy or make software for those purposes, but we don't have to hand them the tools they use to oppress us.

Kwpolska• 3 years ago

That is against the spirit of open source. People and corporations will be wary of using such software, since someone someday may define their use as "unethical". And the "oppressors" don't care about following your license anyway.

0xbadcafebee2• 3 years ago

My goodness! We mustn't make it hard for corporations to use the software! And if criminals will get guns one way or another, we might as well hand them out like candy, right?

The purpose of an ethical source license is not to be a fool-proof fix for all unethical behavior. The purpose is to send a message that human rights violations are not okay, and to make it harder for unethical corporations/users to defend their actions.

If the reason someone doesn't want to use ethical software is "someone might find my actions unethical", either they're morons or they're unethical. Ethics aren't t-shirt slogans. Human rights don't constantly change with the wind. Either you are abusing people or you aren't. If you are abusing people, then you can, you know, stop doing that. Or go find different software.

Finally, licenses are contracts which are legally enforceable. If someone breaks the license, that carries the force of law. You can absolutely stop someone from using the software if they break its terms, even internationally.

deafpolygon2• 3 years ago

Right, because people who violate human rights are going to adhere to a software license term. I can see it now, while beating the crap out of someone the panic that they'll experience when they realize the software they are trying to use has an ethical license.

motohagiography• 3 years ago

The only meaningful use case for privacy tools is to use them to organize to create enough influence that you can reduce the need for privacy tools. If you aren't doing that, the tools are just tolerated by govts because they neutralize your resistance and explicitly enable mass surveillance, imo.

How many Signal users are there, and why aren't there enough of us to drive the political agenda? One big problem with most privacy tools is they don't name their threat actor (it's your own governments), and using the tools doesn't translate to a vote for anyone who will do something about the problem. On top of it all, installing these tools acts as a reliable political metric for popular intelligence community approval.

unstuck3958• 3 years ago

Saw wallabag in there. Unfortunately, it's a paid service unless you self-host. I just finished hosting my own wallabag instance today!

read.fahads.net

Feel free to register. Though you won't get an activation mail, I would be happy to activate your accounts manually. Though you shouldn't probably use it for anything too serious, since I'm not an expert sysadmin.

spokeonawheel• 3 years ago

so they can just raise taxes?

klntsky• 3 years ago

Sure thing, next time I'll use Thunderbird instead of Gmail, and pay with Monero instead of Paypal. I will also use Riseup instead of Google Docs.

pizzalife• 3 years ago

Recommending people to use Monero instead of Paypal? That is ridiculous for several reasons and makes me question their other recommendations.

jifoxym• 3 years ago

what are the reasons?

kristopolous2• 3 years ago

I've been a proponent of fuzzing - having systems that do noisy inauthentic engagement that is statistically indistinguishable.

Essentially it's to give an intolerable SNR to this scraping where they have to discard their metrics as useless

brentis• 3 years ago

Back in my old network engineering job at MCI, there was a secret Prism project. Rumors claimed it was to optically split the fiber without introducing delay for eavesdropping.

I'm sure naming is related and glad to see the initiative.

throwawaylinux• 3 years ago

Even mass surveillance of people who are Dangerous To Our Democracy™??

jbm• 3 years ago

Was feeling concerned when I read this:

Canonical’s Ubuntu is not recommended by PRISM Break because it contains Amazon ads and data leaks by default

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-am...

I clicked the link and it was from Ubuntu 12.04. This is something more than 10 years ago and has been unmaintained for years. It becomes hard to take this seriously when they make it seem like it is an ongoing issue (or do not link to a newer article if it is).

jostiniane2• 3 years ago

You are free to step in and help :)

jostiniane2• 3 years ago

We need more awareness, normies should understand we can exchange a slight inconvenience + less features some times for a middle finger to mass surveillance.

arendtio2• 3 years ago

I like to use Thunderbird not just for e-mails, but also for RSS. When using the global inbox, you can have emails and RSS in the same list without noticing the difference.

I don't have many RSS sources (11) and some have news just every other month. That way I don't have to open a separate program and when something comes up, I see it right when I read my emails.

Did you know that you can use RSS to get notified when someone writes a reply to your HN comment? I love it: https://hnrss.github.io/#reply-feeds

hatsune• 3 years ago

[Privacy guides](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/) is also a great site for this. Prism-break updates fairly slow unlike privacy guides. However, PG leans heavily into usability and commercial software, recommanding questionable software including 1password. Also, PG prefers updating system (so mostly non-ubuntu based) but including opensuse and arch, which has questionable risk from rapid upstream update. Overall, both sites are great info. Also they promote Brave way too much, stick to Firefox/Librewolf/Mull. That's a bad rec.

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