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Use GPG. Don't use smartphones, don't use any closed software (especially non-free OSes.) Vote.

by swiley 5y ago

klodolph 5y ago
GPG doesn’t solve the problem of metadata surveillance. One of the major problems with technological solutions to privacy problems is that metadata surveillance is extremely useful to begin with, and it’s hard to make communication anonymous.
- upofadown 5y ago
  True but people with private communications don't usually need to hide their metadata. Who cares if they know you are communicating with your friends and family if they don't know you are complaining about the thin skinned government. Anonymity is an issue, but it is far from the most important issue.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  For what it's worth, implementations like Delta Chat support encrypted subject lines[0]. Also, it would be relatively simple for mail providers to act as two halves of a Cypherpunk remailer[1]. By that I mean that when alice@sender writes an email to bob@recipient, the sender server only sees "remailer@recipient" as the recipient and the recipient server only sees "remailer@sender" as the sender. That approach just requires some onion-layering of the emails with encryption, and a reserved key-pair advertised per mail server. [0] https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-metadata https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-me... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk_anonymous_remailer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk_anonymous_remailer
imiric 5y ago
Unfortunately that's a non-starter for most people who value utility over privacy. Education is key, but there's little interest in that as well.
colinmhayes 5y ago
99% of people don't care enough to do any of these things.
f38zf5vdt 5y ago
With so many places in the world with flawed democracy by first past the post, it seems like voting is more or less irrelevant. The first thing that the digital revolution should have fixed was our variously flawed democratic systems. It might be the last thing.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Rather than fixing our democratic systems, the digital revolution may have just made them worse, by encouraging societies to entrust the counting of ballots to machines, and then unsurprisingly stop trusting those machines as soon as they give an answer that half the population don't like. Even in societies that still rely on analogue vote counting, it is unclear whether instant access to digital information has made societies more informed or misinformed on average.
alkonaut 5y ago
Between having to use GPG or just accept Orwellian dystopia, the choice is... not easy

Use GPG. Don't use smartphones, don't use any closed software (especially non-free OSes.) Vote.

by swiley 5y ago

Use GPG. Don't use smartphones, don't use any closed software (especially non-free OSes.) Vote.

GPG doesn’t solve the problem of metadata surveillance. One of the major problems with technological solutions to privacy problems is that metadata surveillance is extremely useful to begin with, and it’s hard to make communication anonymous.

upofadown 5y ago
True but people with private communications don't usually need to hide their metadata. Who cares if they know you are communicating with your friends and family if they don't know you are complaining about the thin skinned government. Anonymity is an issue, but it is far from the most important issue.
dane-pgp 5y ago
For what it's worth, implementations like Delta Chat support encrypted subject lines[0]. Also, it would be relatively simple for mail providers to act as two halves of a Cypherpunk remailer[1]. By that I mean that when alice@sender writes an email to bob@recipient, the sender server only sees "remailer@recipient" as the recipient and the recipient server only sees "remailer@sender" as the sender. That approach just requires some onion-layering of the emails with encryption, and a reserved key-pair advertised per mail server. [0] https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-metadata https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-me... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk_anonymous_remailer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk_anonymous_remailer

imiric 5y ago

Unfortunately that's a non-starter for most people who value utility over privacy. Education is key, but there's little interest in that as well.

colinmhayes 5y ago

99% of people don't care enough to do any of these things.

f38zf5vdt 5y ago

With so many places in the world with flawed democracy by first past the post, it seems like voting is more or less irrelevant. The first thing that the digital revolution should have fixed was our variously flawed democratic systems. It might be the last thing.

dane-pgp 5y ago
Rather than fixing our democratic systems, the digital revolution may have just made them worse, by encouraging societies to entrust the counting of ballots to machines, and then unsurprisingly stop trusting those machines as soon as they give an answer that half the population don't like. Even in societies that still rely on analogue vote counting, it is unclear whether instant access to digital information has made societies more informed or misinformed on average.

alkonaut 5y ago

Between having to use GPG or just accept Orwellian dystopia, the choice is... not easy