3 ms·

Government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns) date back to at least Obama's presidency. I always assumed that someone would be able to access my Gmail

Government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns) date back to at least Obama's presidency. I always assumed that someone would be able to access my Gmail account if they really wanted to, but didn't really care - data mine my emails to deliver more targeted ads that I ignore as easily as the others, fine by me, I thought. However, I came across [0]; whether this story is true or not, it is plausible, and that has made me want to move off of Gmail. I still use my old Gmail account for ordinary interactions which I do not feel are sensitive and whose reading by a third party would not bother me. For sensitive material, I have moved to ProtonMail [1], a privacy-first email service based in Switzerland and therefore subject to Switzerland's privacy laws, which I use with a custom domain registered under the Cayman Islands TLD. I have moved my cloud file storage from USA owned companies to a VPS hosted in Germany and therefore subject to its data privacy laws. The last step that I haven't taken is to set up a VPN on that VPS, or alternatively purchase a VPN service from a country with good privacy laws. Overall, I am pretty happy with my shift; I do not feel that I have given anything up and feel reasonably confident that I have the privacy I want for things I want to be private. [0] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ [1] https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/

dllthomas 10y ago
> Government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns) date back to at least Obama's presidency. In a similar way to how 500 is at least 7, yeah. To elaborate, "government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns" date back before the founding of the US. Specific concerns around bulk electronic collection date back at least to the 70s, when concerns were raised over bulk collection of telegrams - a program ("SHAMROCK") dating back to the 40s. Concerns about email in particular were a thing in the Clinton administration (e.g., see "Carnivore"). I understand the impulse to say "but the other side does it!" And that's not wrong, per se. But it misses the point. And what's new about Trump is not that he's engaging in more surveillance - I have no reason to believe that he is. What's new is that he's so very deeply distrusted by such a wide swath of the population.

dllthomas 10y ago

> Government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns) date back to at least Obama's presidency. In a similar way to how 500 is at least 7, yeah. To elaborate, "government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns" date back before the founding of the US. Specific concerns around bulk electronic collection date back at least to the 70s, when concerns were raised over bulk collection of telegrams - a program ("SHAMROCK") dating back to the 40s. Concerns about email in particular were a thing in the Clinton administration (e.g., see "Carnivore"). I understand the impulse to say "but the other side does it!" And that's not wrong, per se. But it misses the point. And what's new about Trump is not that he's engaging in more surveillance - I have no reason to believe that he is. What's new is that he's so very deeply distrusted by such a wide swath of the population.