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There surely is, but the first step is to acknowledge that the world has come to a certain point where we've lost control of our data and intelligence agencies,
by thingexplainer 10y ago
There surely is, but the first step is to acknowledge that the world has come to a certain point where we've lost control of our data and intelligence agencies, and not to write off people who's privacy has been compromised as fools who should have known better.
Because we are all those fools. Do you use gmail? If you don't, do you email people who do? Do you use Facebook? Do people talk about you on Facebook, even if you don't have an account? Do you email people who give Facebook their contacts? Is that even something you can find out?
Trust is transitive. If someone close to you along your social graph is being observed, you are being observed indirectly. If many people around you are being observed, you are being observed rather closely.
- M_Grey 10y agoThere's a difference between protecting your data from a company that collects it when you use their service, and hiding from a state-level actor like the NSA. I don't use Gmail. I don't use Facebook. For just those reasons. I do use uBlock Origin, NoScript, uMatrix, and Random Agent Spoofer, and depending on the site a VPN. I don't throw up my hands and pretend that a platform like Facebook is somehow fundamental to life.
- thingexplainer 10y agoCollection by intelligence/LE agencies and by private companies are increasingly interrelated. These are not separate problems, but two sides of the same coin. I'm afraid you've missed my point, because I don't use those services either. No man is an island. And very few of them are OpSec masters, either. For instance, consider how unique that precise set of tools is, how easy it is to fingerprint browser extensions, and how you've effectively announced your identity in a public forum. (Edit: Though doing that without JavaScript would be a pretty neat trick. I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to do if you can convince tags to load sequentially, so you can send requests to your server interleaved with requests for add-on resources, and observe timing. I'm thinking many levels of nested iframes ought to do the trick. But I don't know that for a fact.) What I am trying to say is that this is hard, and we cannot solve anything by oversimplifying or victim blaming.
- M_Grey 10y agoIt's not a population of victims, by and large it's a population of people who don't see the point, and can't be bothered. The population of people whom the NSA keeps tabs on might be victims, the people who use Facebook are definitely not. Besides, victim facilitation and precipitation is an ugly, and sad reality of life. You can be aware of your role in becoming a victim, without blaming yourself for the actions of other people who took advantage of your situation. As to the rest, again, we're not talking about dropping off the grid or avoiding a government, just about not broadcasting everything all of the time for some paltry "free" service.
- thingexplainer 10y agoI feel like you're talking over me rather than trying to understand what I say. But stay safe and have a good life anyway, traveler.
- M_Grey 10y agoDisagreement can feel like that. Take care.