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How to be anonymous in the age of surveillance
- droithomme 7y ago> To keep reading, please turn off your ad blocker, create an account or support us by becoming a subscriber. So Seattle Times doesn't want me to read this article unless I share my identity with them so they can sell it to others.
- INTPenis 7y agoWithout JS I just got a blank page. Enabled the main domain temporarily and I could see the article but then I was prompted to login with Facebook or Google. :D
- mirimir 7y agoFor this and many troublesome sites, selecting reader view as soon as content loads evades the paywall. Or for Wired, which apparently doesn't offer reader view, hitting escape as soon as content loads.
- bogomipz 7y agoI'm curious if you or someone else could explain exactly how "reader view" gets around paywall and login walls. This feature for me has become invaluable.
- Koshkin 7y agoLooks like I am having no issues reading the article using links (under WSL/Bionic).
- lalos 7y agoSeattle Times hires journalists that are allowed to pursue whatever story even if it goes against their corporate decisions (in this case), is that a bad thing? Would you prefer that higher ups silence the journalist and say "no, you cannot publish this because we employ anti ad-blockers and trackers"?
- mirimir 7y agoAmong reputable newspapers, journalists and editors are ~independent from business management. Some years ago, NY Times published a series about online tracking. And said series accurately reported tracking by NY Times.
- agumonkey 7y agoFunny Era.
- lwneal 7y agoThe article mentions the use of "Juggalo" style face paint to avoid face detection. This type of countermeasure is effective against conventional HOG-SVM type face detectors such as [1], but would be inadvisable for daily use. To deal with more advanced convolutional detectors, consider wearing a hat or clothing with adversarial patches [2], simple patterns that can be printed onto stickers. These patches work by feeding the detector inputs that cause an overwhelming bias toward a particular class (eg. toaster), which drowns out the real signal (eg. human face). Even the first generation of adversarial patches are effective against most detectors deployed as of 2020. [1] http://dlib.net/face_landmark_detection.py.html http://dlib.net/face_landmark_detection.py.html [2] Brown et al. https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.09665 https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.09665
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoChange your gait, too. Walk with a cane.
- cgriswald 7y agoYou’d need to change your cane and you might just develop a new gait based on the cane. Maybe learn to walk like a Fremen.
- BickNowstrom 7y agoI really miss the times when these articles were a .txt file with legit tips on how to improve anonymity. Did not matter that it was written by a random high schooler, instead of a paid journalist. Now this article title will rank highly on search engines (authoritative website with paid-to-write expert content), and people looking for privacy will buy Juggalo face paint to not look conspicuous when shopping groceries.
- boyadjian 7y agoYou have to accept surveillance, as it increases security of everyone.
- bobbydroptables 7y agoNo. It decreases the security of dissidents and many people living outside normal or legally approved modes.
- BickNowstrom 7y agoWhich Western country uses their military surveillance to decrease the security of its dissidents? I can't find such as case, while I can find many cases of surveillance used to stop tragedy. Seems like military surveillance in the West is predominantly used correctly: to counter terrorism and illegal crime. Sharing military surveillance mitigation tricks is not unlike sharing 0-days against government systems, and can be seen as unethical and counterproductive: Military surveillance will try to improve their systems, and bad people will use it to avoid surveillance. It is too simplistic to deem any and all surveillance as inherently bad and invasive. No country can ensure the safety of its tax payers if it cripples their counterintelligence, foreign intelligence, border security, counterterrorism. People who deem national security as more important than individual security, or the security of anti-nation dissidents, or people living outside the legally approved modes, should be applauded. It is not very nice to decrease the security of me and my family to obtain an ideological goal.
- iamnothere 7y ago> military surveillance Who said anything about military surveillance? Why on earth would you jump to the conclusion that military surveillance is what we are discussion? Most government-run domestic surveillance likely comes from law enforcement and agencies with a domestic purview like Homeland Security. The NSA is the exception, of course. I would expect that even most privacy advocates wouldn't have a problem with surveillance that is a part of actual military operations. > It is not very nice to decrease the security of me and my family to obtain an ideological goal. That's your opinion. Ben Franklin and many others would disagree, and we have a Bill of Rights in place specifically to disallow this kind of tradeoff. If you want absolute security at any cost, Singapore is always an option.
- thinkloop 7y agoI would like for it to be illegal for apps to ask for address-book permission and similar. Your name, phone number, address, email and other details, perfectly packaged together, should not be free for any random contact to give out. The social contract was for only that contact to have the information. Privacy becomes impossible otherwise. We need resistance to systems/services/initiatives that enable and encourage people to leak each other's data to third parties.
- mirimir 7y agoThat's just one reason why I don't use smartphones.
- hans1729 7y agoThat doesn't stop others from saving your number/email (probably bundled under the same contact) next to your name - so long as you have a number. That, and the classic security/usability-tradeoff, render your implied suggestion somewhat obsolete, no? Sorry if I'm missing something.
- mirimir 7y agoTrue. But at least I'm not tracked so readily. Also, I don't care so much about my meatspace name and email. There's absolutely nothing interesting about me in meatspace. I'm not sure what I'd do if I actually needed a smartphone. Maybe I'd go with a PinePhone, with cellular and WiFi turned off, and external routers. Hopefully someone will come out with small routers. But on the other hand, maybe that would attract too much attention. So perhaps a basic smartphone would be better.
- dstryr 7y agoSmall routers exist. Take for example this battery powered GL-MiFi [1] LTE router. Comes embededded with OpenWRT so your LTE connection can utilize Wireguard, Shadowsocks, OpenVPN, etc. Would pair well with something like the PinePhone. [1] https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mifi/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mifi/
- jandrewrogers 7y agoIt should be pointed out that the various accessories mentioned in the article primarily serve to make a statement, they do not actually provide any kind of practical anonymity from competent surveillance infrastructure. Robust anonymity can't be created via technical means.
- mirimir 7y agoIndeed. Anonymity in meatspace is arguably a dead issue. Whenever I leave the house, I assume that I'm under surveillance. So I just act normal. Edit: In particular, I play "harmless old man".
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago> Anonymity in meatspace is arguably a dead issue. ...until surveillance capitalism hurts democracy enough that people start rioting.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- toss1 7y agoTrue, but at that point, it is probably too late until the surveillance biz/govt system collapses and a new one can be built
- anigbrowl 7y agountil the surveillance biz/govt system collapses Absent opposition there's no particular pressure on it that would result in collapse. Sure, the inherent contradictions would lead to malaise, economic recession, and depression, but those are fairly normal parts of the political cycle that are easily spun and can always be blamed on a politically impotent minority or stock antagonist.
- toss1 7y ago
- einpoklum 7y agoIronic that the Seattle Times website asked me to subscribe before I read the story on how to maintain anonymity. After you subscribe, you probably get a page saying: "Well, not this way."
- zzo38computer 7y agoDisabling CSS works for me, and makes the article readable.
- surround 7y agoI looks like those glasses just overexpose the video. You could probably turn down the exposure digitally and identify the person.
- ntp85 7y agoNo, they don't just do that. They block certain wavelengths of light so the wearers eyes cannot be filmed.
- Nasrudith 7y agoFacial recognition highlights one issue that anything which a human can recognize may eventually be done by a machine. We saw it before for fingerprints and learned from it that they are not unique as they assumed from matching terrorist fingerprints with a guy in Spaim who wasn't even in the country of the attack. Currently facial recognition technology is a terrifying Morton's fork where it is uncertain if accuracy or inaccuracy is worse. An inaccurate one accepted leads to false positives. An accurate one leads to reliable tracking. Transparency and equal accssibility of data is likely the most viable and just path in the future given that it is between an arms race and outright impossible. It would leave everyone on equal footing essentially and minimize exploitability. It wouldn't be easy to adjust to, especially with embedddd societal hypocritical expectations. Japan for one has a perfect example in Sariaman culture that it is expected to head out and get smashed with coworkers after work but shameful to be identified while drunken. It would be healthier in the long run for society to learn to rid itself of cognitive dissonance one way or another. Laws would also need adjusted to keep up with actual need of enforcement so they don't depend upon selective enforcement - which is good practice period. Public drunkenness for instance is meant more for being a drunk disruptive ass than just cuffing anyone with a BAC above a threshod. Anyway all of that doesn't change the fact that said transition would be painful.
- notduncansmith 7y ago> Transparency and equal accssibility of data is likely the most viable and just path in the future given that it is between an arms race and outright impossible. It would leave everyone on equal footing essentially and minimize exploitability. I have argued this in the past, but one must consider that not everyone has the same leverage over that data. While it’s true that open-source can help here, there will always be a gap between personal and corporate data analysis capabilities. It’s not a certainty that those with increased resources now wouldn’t get a first-mover advantage on extracting value from this data, not that sufficient counterbalances would emerge.
- RandomBacon 7y ago> We saw it before for fingerprints and learned from it that they are not unique as they assumed from matching terrorist fingerprints with a guy in Spaim who wasn't even in the country of the attack. A quick search shows that you are talking about Brandon Mayfield. From what I can gather, there wasn't a collision in fingerprints, but a falty analysis (arches in opposite directions, etc) on the FBI's part.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoWhy does it feel like we are discussing reality described in Cyberpunk? Based on everything I read thus far, short of removing yourself from society, a true anonymity is not available to an average person. And that kinda defeats the point. Maybe it would change if politicians' every move was crowd sourced.
- lazyjones 7y ago> Based on everything I read thus far, short of removing yourself from society, a true anonymity is not available to an average person. We have plenty of recent examples here in Europe where people came from another continent, discarded their previous identity and got a new one based on their own claims about their age, name, origins, religion etc. ... Perhaps it's not available to the "average person", just to people from particular regions, but it's a proven, very effective way to obtain multiple/new identities.
- _martamoreno_ 7y agoThere is also a tradeoff between anonymity and target of interest. All these suggestions only work when a lot of people apply them. Otherwise you end up just like with using privacy operating systems, like Qubes OS. Yeah, you will be safer, but everyone also immediately thinks that you have something to hide, which causes systems to double down on tracking you. You might even get some human "attention", if you actually have something to hide. A couple of users using Tor, are not anonymous. A couple of people wearing IR glasses, are not anonymous. Millions of people using AdBlocker, that's already doing something. Think of masses. If you try to be anonymous just by yourself, you are running into the trap of making your trails so uncommon, that people will still be able to track you. An example: Qubes OS causes so unique browser fingerprinting, that even under TOR, I will still be uniquely identified. That's why OS like Tails, spend so much effort avoiding different fingerprints for different users.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- liamcardenas 7y agoIs this[1] your source about the browser fingerprinting in Qubes? It’s the only thing I could find on the subject. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Qubes/comments/ai5obg/my_whonix_fingerprint_is_unique/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Qubes/comments/ai5obg/my_whonix_fin...
- 0x8BADF00D 7y agoNo one cared who I was til I put on the mask.
- oxfordmale 7y agoI wonder if people that buy this kind of masking techniques, still have a mobile phone in their pocket.
- gil 7y agoEven if they do: * They are aware of those, and therefore may use other countermeasures. * The masking still reduces the "surveilance surface". EDIT: formatting
- FerretFred 7y agoHahaha .. uBlock origin has flagged 21 blocks, Privacy Badger 12 potential trackers. "Staying annymous"..
- SQueeeeeL 7y agoShows how hollow most of this "privacy" culture is. Stallman wgets websites and prints the text to read them, that's real privacy conscious.