4 ms·

>Kind of highlights that in this age, it's not enough to say "I'm neutral." You need to be able to say "I can guarantee that I'm neutral." >The difference is t

by slg 6y ago

>Kind of highlights that in this age, it's not enough to say "I'm neutral." You need to be able to say "I can guarantee that I'm neutral." >The difference is that the latter promise doesn't break when a malicious actor has access. Consider two VPNs, one of which promises never to misuse client-side IP data, while the other refuses to store that data in the first place. Why do you trust either company? Can you verify the claim that no data is logged intentionally or potentially even accidentally? Even companies that have been taken to court and shown an inability to produce logs in the past could have made recent changes behind the scenes that change this. There is a huge degree of information asymmetry when it comes to VPN providers and as a result you shouldn't completely trust them if logging is a make or break issue for you.

im3w1l 6y ago
I think it's important to be realistic about VPN's. They can't keep you safe from Nation State Adversaries. They can keep you safe from spiteful nobodies or smaller orgs.
- Loughla 6y ago
  I don't know what it means, but I'm sure it's not good that my initial reaction to your statement was, "nothing can keep you safe from nation state adversaries."
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Nuclear weapons ready to deploy can keep you pretty safe.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      https://twitter.com/bobvulfov/status/815103069339926528?lang=en https://twitter.com/bobvulfov/status/815103069339926528?lang...
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    It can be done; look at e.g. Mexican cartels.
    - effie 6y ago
      What serious nation state adversaries do cartels have?
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        The US government attacks them all the time. I would argue that Mexico is also a nation-state.
    - shadowprofile77 6y ago
      Living in Mexico here, the cartels in this country do indeed fight back against nation state adversaries (specifically the U.S government and the federal and state government forces of Mexico and its 30+ states where they operate) but the example of them as a model for just about any other organization is grotesquely mistaken. Here's why: For one thing, they partly resist by paying immense amounts of money in bribes to government and police officials at all levels of the Mexican state apparatus, and in some cases even to lower-mid level officials of the U.S government close to the border. This is not a policy for staying under the radar or being effective at a reasonable cost (unless you're moving billions in drugs and kidnapping money) Secondly, they depend to a large extent on a known capacity for incredibly psychotic, grotesque levels of violence to intimidate officials inside Mexico's chronically weak state institutions so that their activities can be left alone as much as possible. This requires a willingness to engage in violent criminality that few organizations in the world can match and it also involves the use of thousands of low-level foot soldiers armed to the teeth and recruited from immense pools of poverty-stricken populations (again, not applicable to many organizations or groups that just want to stay off the radar of nation state adversaries while doing their business.) Thirdly, despite all the above, the cartels are indeed under constant attack either among each other or from state level actors in Mexico and with U.S government pressure. Consequently, their attrition rate is monstrously high, with thousands, yes thousands, of their members dying hideously bloody deaths each year in endless gun battles with authorities and rivals. This is only sustainable due to the recruiting factors of my second point above and it's certainly no model for successfully evading nation state actors. They don't evade them much, they just keep feeding more "disposable" lives to them while a small leadership more or less staves off its own eventual death by bullet or supermax prison. As a final point, despite all of the above measures being in place, even the highly protected, wealthy leadership of these cartels eventually almost universally suffers its own extremely high attrition from state level actors: Seeing as how virtually every single major cartel boss that was running things a decade ago is now either dead or in prison, the long term prospects for any one of them are awful, despite all their money and localized power.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Most VPN providers are Nation State Adversaries already.
rebuilder 6y ago
And furthermore, if a company was persuaded or compelled to log data for an intelligence agency, they would likely not admit to it for just any court.
- PradeetPatel 6y ago
  Not US citizen here. Is that even legal? I was under the impression that lying under oath would be considered a crime in most justice systems
  - 420official 6y ago
    A court can legally get an injunction that forces you to comply and keep your complicity secret. That's why "warrant canaries"[1] exist, a company will release a regular statement where they include a line like "We have never been forced to comply with the US federal government.". That way if it does happen they can simply remove the line from future releases to make it clear without violating an injuction. Unfortunately this doesn't get you any sort of specificity in terms of what happened with what data or why so it's a pretty crude method. Also a court could force you to keep that canary statement active which renders the whole thing moot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
    - jjones2 6y ago
      It's downright pathetic that we have to rely on things like warrant canaries in Western democracies. Obviously secret warrants, secret courts, black sites, etc have absolutely _no_ place in a civilized world. It creates a two-tiered justice system: us vs them.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    You also have to prove that the lie occurred. If there is no evidence that the data exists of anything more than a hope and a prayer, then you can't prove there was a lie.
  - pyuser583 6y ago

by slg 6y ago

im3w1l 6y ago

I think it's important to be realistic about VPN's. They can't keep you safe from Nation State Adversaries. They can keep you safe from spiteful nobodies or smaller orgs.

Loughla 6y ago
I don't know what it means, but I'm sure it's not good that my initial reaction to your statement was, "nothing can keep you safe from nation state adversaries."
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Nuclear weapons ready to deploy can keep you pretty safe.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/bobvulfov/status/815103069339926528?lang=en https://twitter.com/bobvulfov/status/815103069339926528?lang...
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  It can be done; look at e.g. Mexican cartels.
  - effie 6y ago
    What serious nation state adversaries do cartels have?
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      The US government attacks them all the time. I would argue that Mexico is also a nation-state.
  - shadowprofile77 6y ago
    Living in Mexico here, the cartels in this country do indeed fight back against nation state adversaries (specifically the U.S government and the federal and state government forces of Mexico and its 30+ states where they operate) but the example of them as a model for just about any other organization is grotesquely mistaken. Here's why: For one thing, they partly resist by paying immense amounts of money in bribes to government and police officials at all levels of the Mexican state apparatus, and in some cases even to lower-mid level officials of the U.S government close to the border. This is not a policy for staying under the radar or being effective at a reasonable cost (unless you're moving billions in drugs and kidnapping money) Secondly, they depend to a large extent on a known capacity for incredibly psychotic, grotesque levels of violence to intimidate officials inside Mexico's chronically weak state institutions so that their activities can be left alone as much as possible. This requires a willingness to engage in violent criminality that few organizations in the world can match and it also involves the use of thousands of low-level foot soldiers armed to the teeth and recruited from immense pools of poverty-stricken populations (again, not applicable to many organizations or groups that just want to stay off the radar of nation state adversaries while doing their business.) Thirdly, despite all the above, the cartels are indeed under constant attack either among each other or from state level actors in Mexico and with U.S government pressure. Consequently, their attrition rate is monstrously high, with thousands, yes thousands, of their members dying hideously bloody deaths each year in endless gun battles with authorities and rivals. This is only sustainable due to the recruiting factors of my second point above and it's certainly no model for successfully evading nation state actors. They don't evade them much, they just keep feeding more "disposable" lives to them while a small leadership more or less staves off its own eventual death by bullet or supermax prison. As a final point, despite all of the above measures being in place, even the highly protected, wealthy leadership of these cartels eventually almost universally suffers its own extremely high attrition from state level actors: Seeing as how virtually every single major cartel boss that was running things a decade ago is now either dead or in prison, the long term prospects for any one of them are awful, despite all their money and localized power.
sitkack 6y ago
Most VPN providers are Nation State Adversaries already.

rebuilder 6y ago

And furthermore, if a company was persuaded or compelled to log data for an intelligence agency, they would likely not admit to it for just any court.

PradeetPatel 6y ago
Not US citizen here. Is that even legal? I was under the impression that lying under oath would be considered a crime in most justice systems
- 420official 6y ago
  A court can legally get an injunction that forces you to comply and keep your complicity secret. That's why "warrant canaries"[1] exist, a company will release a regular statement where they include a line like "We have never been forced to comply with the US federal government.". That way if it does happen they can simply remove the line from future releases to make it clear without violating an injuction. Unfortunately this doesn't get you any sort of specificity in terms of what happened with what data or why so it's a pretty crude method. Also a court could force you to keep that canary statement active which renders the whole thing moot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
  - jjones2 6y ago
    It's downright pathetic that we have to rely on things like warrant canaries in Western democracies. Obviously secret warrants, secret courts, black sites, etc have absolutely _no_ place in a civilized world. It creates a two-tiered justice system: us vs them.
- dylan604 6y ago
  You also have to prove that the lie occurred. If there is no evidence that the data exists of anything more than a hope and a prayer, then you can't prove there was a lie.
- pyuser583 6y ago