10 ms·

And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all. I am actually over preaching the need for privacy, I just try to practice opsec daily and identify my fa

by arpa 6y ago

And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all. I am actually over preaching the need for privacy, I just try to practice opsec daily and identify my failures and weak spots. I tried to be a privacy purist: a smartphone without internet on a prepaid card running opensource software (likely with a backdoored baseband chip, but). Internet through rotating VPNs only on incognito browsers with anti-fingerprinting plugins, no sms'es, personal email on a self-hosted server with at-rest encryption... All while gaining absolutely nothing out of it, but inconveniences like filling out captchas and needing to go extra steps to open up wikipedia. That behaviour itself was a failure in opsec - I am sure that it put me on a watchlist somewhere. I'm a "normie" now, trying to emulate the "noise" that is around me. I believe that's much more a viable approach than being a hardcore privacy-ist(?)

_red 6y ago
Being a zebra in the middle of the pack is probably the most practical solution. However as things move forward with the great reset its going to become increasingly more difficult for that to maintain its effectiveness. Its obvious now that "vaccine passports" and "contact tracing" are going to become defacto required. Therefore, the level of data they will be collecting will be so granular that 'blending in' won't really matter. A simple SQL query 5 years in the future will establish your every movement and health history for any given point. >50% of average people are going to go along with this (or outright support it) and anyone who speaks against it will be called "anti-science" and selfish. It's literally mind-boggling we are at this stage, but we must open our eyes and accept it.
- mjparrott 6y ago
  One of us will wake up in a gooey casket attached to some sort of harvesting machine in the future. We will have to fight an army of men in black suits as we try to save the human race from the robots.
- andai 6y ago
  As far as I can tell, China's just ahead of the curve with this stuff, because rather than serving as a warning, they're being emulated.
  - draugadrotten 6y ago
    I think for the most part, China is just openly speaking about what everybody else is doing too.
some_random 6y ago
The majority of people do not care because the police can legally blow your door of its hinges, kick the shit out of you, drag you into a van, and stuff you in a cell all before you get to the due process part of the justice system. They have accepted that this is fine. Telling them that they can be spied on by the government and that the only way to stay safe is to accept a quality of life drop and also learn up on half a dozen relatively complicated technological concepts is not going to work.
- treeman79 6y ago
  If your on a government officials bad list, then all you said applies. Deserved or otherwise. Being placed on list is still a fight. Give politicians free reign to everyone’s browser history/social media account, well Suddenly a lot of people are on a bad list.
  - cheschire 6y ago
    Well, not everyone. The politicians themselves will have everything encrypted because they'll call it CUI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Unclassified_Information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Unclassified_Inform...
    - CapricornNoble 6y ago
      Where I work "CUI" is just the header we slap on all of our PowerPoints on NIPR[1], and basically means "don't email this to your civilian email account, or otherwise share it with people outside of work"...but it's still feasible, from a technical standpoint. It's just wrong from an administrative policy perspective. CUI doesn't automatically entail/require encryption. Most people don't even bother to encrypt their emails in Outlook even when chock-full of CUI documents, or worse, high-impact PII/PHI. If politicians want encrypted comms they'll probably have a //SECRET Blackberry or iPhone. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIPRNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIPRNet
      - inetsee 6y ago
xoa 6y ago
>And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all. I really, really dislike this meme. Try to put yourself into the shoes of a non-tech person, remembering that "non-tech" is in no way a synonym for "stupid" or "lazy". They may be a doctor, lawyer or professor, a construction worker, service industry person or driver. Maybe they make a reasonable amount of money, or maybe they're on minimum wage working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Now please QUANTIFY what "care" means. I'll give it a shot: 1 hour a week. I think that a non-tech person is going to need to average putting in at least that much time, consistently over a year or two, to make major advances on defending their privacy in a Digital Wild West environment. We on HN tend to have not merely significant digital system knowledge, but also significant meta knowledge. We don't just know answers, we know questions and where to look for answers and how to try to find them, the kinds of keywords to use, the kinds of other people to ask and where to find them. This is of course true in any area, but it's easy to take for granted how much of a difference that makes. Someone starting from scratch is going to spend a lot of time even learning that things like firewalls or personal VPNs or the like exist at all, let alone what ones to use and how. They probably won't already have their own technical infrastructure either, like owning a a personal domain with email, and understand the various factors involved with that. Which in turn makes it harder to use unique addresses per site (hence services like Apple Sign In stepping in, which itself has concerns). It's deep, deep waters. But at $15/hr, even just an hour a week is $780 a year. That's real money. Maybe they'd be better off just spending more of that directly. But on what? I think the answer for some is "Apple devices" which they've heard are somewhat more updated and private, which could be some fraction of the premium for those that care. Or maybe it'd be better to put some into political donations and activism. But how exactly to do that effectively is itself an area of expertise that will take time. Etc etc. A sense of helplessness in the face of seemingly overwhelming force isn't the same as "not caring at all", nor ignorance that improvement is even possible. Contrary to your assertion, we've repeatedly seen the public being quite uncomfortable with mass surveillance. Large percentages polled don't like the idea of personalized advertising. Laws trying to enhance it have passed repeatedly, despite overwhelming concentrated interest opposition. The laws sometimes get watered down or are misaimed, but that's not surprising for technical things pushed by the public. But the desire is certainly there for a majority, even if many have given up, or are merely quietly getting more angry about it. So please be careful about blithely ascribing motivations to swaths of hundreds of millions to billions of people from our perch of expertise. Life is more complicated than that, and furthermore it's self-defeating. We, people who care a lot about this and have some idea of what to do about it, need large numbers of regular people who care but don't know what to do. Writing them off instead is stupid. Of course, that means we also need to care about satisfying their needs on the reverse too.
bjarneh 6y ago
Sadly I think you are right; but it's scary that we've come to the point where seeking privacy in itself is suspicious behavior.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
p410n3 6y ago
For a while now I was struggling to put into words why my l changed from being a "privacy activist" to being a "normie". But you just hit the nail on the head. Security, both technical and operational are still very much important to me. But before recently, I would've preferred Firefox over Chrome for example, since it's more private. These days it's the other way around.
novok 6y ago
There is also the other side, most people do not realize what is happening, and full out consequences of various things. Once you actually tell them the reality of things, they really don't like it. Like why can the FBI force my therapist to give them their notes under the Patriot act? Most don't know it, most will not like it either. Another part of this is the power is unexercised and/or covert. Because if it was overt, it would create huge public backlash. They know this and it's why they use things like parallel construction.
cardiffspaceman 6y ago
I feel like LEO's going out and saying this over and over is just them trying to move the window, with a little help from Silicon Valley executives[0]. The more they say, it the more the Jedi mind trick will work. [0] https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/home/blog/13018078/privacy-is-an-illusion-ellison-you-have-zero-privacy-get-over-it-mcnealy https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/home/blog/13018078/privacy...

by arpa 6y ago

_red 6y ago

Being a zebra in the middle of the pack is probably the most practical solution. However as things move forward with the great reset its going to become increasingly more difficult for that to maintain its effectiveness. Its obvious now that "vaccine passports" and "contact tracing" are going to become defacto required. Therefore, the level of data they will be collecting will be so granular that 'blending in' won't really matter. A simple SQL query 5 years in the future will establish your every movement and health history for any given point. >50% of average people are going to go along with this (or outright support it) and anyone who speaks against it will be called "anti-science" and selfish. It's literally mind-boggling we are at this stage, but we must open our eyes and accept it.

mjparrott 6y ago
One of us will wake up in a gooey casket attached to some sort of harvesting machine in the future. We will have to fight an army of men in black suits as we try to save the human race from the robots.
andai 6y ago
As far as I can tell, China's just ahead of the curve with this stuff, because rather than serving as a warning, they're being emulated.
- draugadrotten 6y ago
  I think for the most part, China is just openly speaking about what everybody else is doing too.

some_random 6y ago

The majority of people do not care because the police can legally blow your door of its hinges, kick the shit out of you, drag you into a van, and stuff you in a cell all before you get to the due process part of the justice system. They have accepted that this is fine. Telling them that they can be spied on by the government and that the only way to stay safe is to accept a quality of life drop and also learn up on half a dozen relatively complicated technological concepts is not going to work.

treeman79 6y ago
If your on a government officials bad list, then all you said applies. Deserved or otherwise. Being placed on list is still a fight. Give politicians free reign to everyone’s browser history/social media account, well Suddenly a lot of people are on a bad list.
- cheschire 6y ago
  Well, not everyone. The politicians themselves will have everything encrypted because they'll call it CUI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Unclassified_Information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Unclassified_Inform...
  - CapricornNoble 6y ago
    Where I work "CUI" is just the header we slap on all of our PowerPoints on NIPR[1], and basically means "don't email this to your civilian email account, or otherwise share it with people outside of work"...but it's still feasible, from a technical standpoint. It's just wrong from an administrative policy perspective. CUI doesn't automatically entail/require encryption. Most people don't even bother to encrypt their emails in Outlook even when chock-full of CUI documents, or worse, high-impact PII/PHI. If politicians want encrypted comms they'll probably have a //SECRET Blackberry or iPhone. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIPRNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIPRNet
    - inetsee 6y ago

xoa 6y ago

>And yet, the majority of the people do not care at all. I really, really dislike this meme. Try to put yourself into the shoes of a non-tech person, remembering that "non-tech" is in no way a synonym for "stupid" or "lazy". They may be a doctor, lawyer or professor, a construction worker, service industry person or driver. Maybe they make a reasonable amount of money, or maybe they're on minimum wage working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Now please QUANTIFY what "care" means. I'll give it a shot: 1 hour a week. I think that a non-tech person is going to need to average putting in at least that much time, consistently over a year or two, to make major advances on defending their privacy in a Digital Wild West environment. We on HN tend to have not merely significant digital system knowledge, but also significant meta knowledge. We don't just know answers, we know questions and where to look for answers and how to try to find them, the kinds of keywords to use, the kinds of other people to ask and where to find them. This is of course true in any area, but it's easy to take for granted how much of a difference that makes. Someone starting from scratch is going to spend a lot of time even learning that things like firewalls or personal VPNs or the like exist at all, let alone what ones to use and how. They probably won't already have their own technical infrastructure either, like owning a a personal domain with email, and understand the various factors involved with that. Which in turn makes it harder to use unique addresses per site (hence services like Apple Sign In stepping in, which itself has concerns). It's deep, deep waters. But at $15/hr, even just an hour a week is $780 a year. That's real money. Maybe they'd be better off just spending more of that directly. But on what? I think the answer for some is "Apple devices" which they've heard are somewhat more updated and private, which could be some fraction of the premium for those that care. Or maybe it'd be better to put some into political donations and activism. But how exactly to do that effectively is itself an area of expertise that will take time. Etc etc. A sense of helplessness in the face of seemingly overwhelming force isn't the same as "not caring at all", nor ignorance that improvement is even possible. Contrary to your assertion, we've repeatedly seen the public being quite uncomfortable with mass surveillance. Large percentages polled don't like the idea of personalized advertising. Laws trying to enhance it have passed repeatedly, despite overwhelming concentrated interest opposition. The laws sometimes get watered down or are misaimed, but that's not surprising for technical things pushed by the public. But the desire is certainly there for a majority, even if many have given up, or are merely quietly getting more angry about it. So please be careful about blithely ascribing motivations to swaths of hundreds of millions to billions of people from our perch of expertise. Life is more complicated than that, and furthermore it's self-defeating. We, people who care a lot about this and have some idea of what to do about it, need large numbers of regular people who care but don't know what to do. Writing them off instead is stupid. Of course, that means we also need to care about satisfying their needs on the reverse too.

bjarneh 6y ago

Sadly I think you are right; but it's scary that we've come to the point where seeking privacy in itself is suspicious behavior.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

p410n3 6y ago

For a while now I was struggling to put into words why my l changed from being a "privacy activist" to being a "normie". But you just hit the nail on the head. Security, both technical and operational are still very much important to me. But before recently, I would've preferred Firefox over Chrome for example, since it's more private. These days it's the other way around.

novok 6y ago

There is also the other side, most people do not realize what is happening, and full out consequences of various things. Once you actually tell them the reality of things, they really don't like it. Like why can the FBI force my therapist to give them their notes under the Patriot act? Most don't know it, most will not like it either. Another part of this is the power is unexercised and/or covert. Because if it was overt, it would create huge public backlash. They know this and it's why they use things like parallel construction.

cardiffspaceman 6y ago

I feel like LEO's going out and saying this over and over is just them trying to move the window, with a little help from Silicon Valley executives[0]. The more they say, it the more the Jedi mind trick will work. [0] https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/home/blog/13018078/privacy-is-an-illusion-ellison-you-have-zero-privacy-get-over-it-mcnealy https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/home/blog/13018078/privacy...