6 ms·

In general it's a good thing that more and more people are aware of the necessity for good security practices for all online interactions - but the belief that

In general it's a good thing that more and more people are aware of the necessity for good security practices for all online interactions - but the belief that individual technological efforts can defeat large-scale corporate and nation-state monitoring is pretty silly. At best you'll just have an added layer of security against things like theft of credit card information by criminal gangs. If you actually want to do something like communicate with a journalist while hiding your own endpoint from exposure you have to go to fairly ridiculous lengths, such as acquiring a laptop used only for that purpose and which has no associated identifying information, use random open Wifi networks to log onto, and have a decent understanding of the concepts of public-key, asymmetric and symmetric cryptography. Note that there is simply no way for two known parties on the internet to hide the fact that they are communicating with one another from government-corporate managers of the Internet - although it's possible to keep the content hidded, to some extent, unless your passwords get compromised, which seems fairly easy to accomplish for such actors via keylogger malware installed through backdoor attacks using secret zero-day exploits and so on. The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws that provide criminal penalities and which allow class-action lawsuits against corporations and governments that engage in warrantless mass surveillance or the retention and aggregation of customer's personal data in searchable databases.

scarface74 4y ago
You mean you want the same government that is interested in putting back doors in phones and other surveillance techniques to pass laws that keep them from doing so?
- smolder 4y ago
  Yes, our government is not a single homogenous entity. We can theoretically (and sometimes actually) use our legislative representatives to change the behavior of other parts.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    A, the optimism of youth!
  - scarface74 4y ago
    You realize the legislators are the ones asking for backdoors because - “terrorism“ and “think about the children”. When has the government ever wanted less surveillance power or less control over the internet.
    - roribolden 4y ago
      Corporations are the governments private enforcement contractors. They’ll control the internet and we’ll work for them, and they’ll work for government. See! Government involved in your life! Nice job building a firewall between society and government control. At the end of the day it’s all people. The semantic bubbles do nothing to change its all just people looking to externalize effort to live simpler themselves.
    - TchoBeer 4y ago
      "the government" is not one person with a concrete ideology, it is an amalgamation of hundreds of people who all want different things and are theoretically beholden to their voter base.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        The government in the US is not beholden to “the people”. Because of the setup of the electoral college, 2 senator per state where RI has the same number of Senators as California and gerrymandering, it is very much about the will of the minority. That’s not to mention all of the things that get done by unelected officials and judges with lifetime tenure.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        "The government", like any other large corporation, is an entity in and of itself, and not a mere aggregation of the people who run it. It has institutional culture etc, and given what it is, said institutional culture tends to lean heavily towards a highly centralized, hierarchical approach to anything it perceives as a problem; and tends to perceive anything that threatens the applicability of this approach as a problem in its own right.
- jabradoodle 4y ago
  Much of the progress that has been achieved by governance was opposed by those with power. Your view point sounds like we should give up on any form of legislation the rich and powerful would not like.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    What progress in the modern era with respect to privacy has the government done?
    - jabradoodle 4y ago
      Every organisation I've worked in has had comprehensive processes for deleting personal data and only storing what is necessary due to e.g. https://www.gov.uk/data-protection https://www.gov.uk/data-protection Without such laws, every business would store as much data as they could indefinitely, because $$. All of this is besides the point that was made; your fatalistic view point suggests we should make no attempt at effective governance because there are powers that oppose us. There are countries which are more democratic than others, and the population of such countries tend to have a better quality of life and more rights.
psychphysic 4y ago
Most media now have secure drop and guides on usage. In the UK atleast such as this BBC page[0]. As do the Guardian, Bloomberg and many more Im sure. I appreciate that it is an involved process as you say but it doesn't seem excessive especially if you can use your smartphone now that tor browser is on android and iOS. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60972903.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60972903.amp
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  This might hinder small time criminals and companies at best from finding out who snitched on them. But in an authoritarian regime with state level resources or just a sufficient level of corruption or even just a media corp run by boomers that is vulnerable to phishing, you can't count on discretion for these things. Secure tunnels and end2end encryption are worthless if the endpoints are easy to compromise. The above comment is right that at the very least you should use bespoke hardware that was never associated with you or anyone you know in any shape or form (in addition to the things mentioned on that site). And even then you'd have to make sure that the info you leak can't be traced back to you, at which point it becomes a game of intelligence and counter intelligence. For example, if an organisation suspects their people are leaking info to the press, it could begin to place targeted (mis)information among employees to uncover them. This was done at Tesla last year to track and eventually bust leakers.
  - naravara 4y ago
    It's dangerous to assume phishing vulnerability is solely a Boomer thing. Tech literacy is unevenly distributed even among younger generations, and the upcoming generations that grew up on Chromebooks and tablet computing aren't that much more tech literate than old folks on the aspects of OpSec that matter. "Kids these days" don't even really understand how file systems work.
- Y-bar 4y ago
  Non-AMP link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60972903 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60972903
LinuxBender 4y ago
The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws AFAIK governments empower specific agencies and groups with qualified immunity. How would such laws be enforced if an agency has immunity?
- hirundo 4y ago
  In the U.S. qualified immunity is a creation of the judicial system, and those decisions could presumably be reversed by statute if the political will comes to exist.
- Matticus_Rex 4y ago
  No need to invoke qualified immunity; the data privacy laws that have been passed (e.g. the GDPR) make explicit carveouts for government surveillance. Yes, the carveouts are for the jurisdiction's own government only, but that's the one you should be most worried about mass surveillance from in most cases.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Arguably, government surveillance is one of the main points of regulations like GDPR. Data residency requirements make it a lot easier to do that.
- misterprime 4y ago
  >High ranking member of political party 1 does something illegal. >Huge stink and nationwide conversation ensues. >High ranking member of political party 2 does the same damn thing. >Crickets. You can even reverse the order of the events or parties. It happens a lot. Such laws, unfortunately, simply become political tools.
  - westmeal 4y ago
    This depends on your filter bubble.
- MSFT_Edging 4y ago
  The expression of power is in who gets to decide the exception to the rules. Real power is rarely beholden to rules. That's why whistleblowers who call out illegal programs are treated like the criminal, because the laws essentially don't matter when dealing with things at that high of level. Powerful people can lie, cheat, and steal and face zero repercussions. They hold institutional power so groups like the police will protect them regardless of laws being broken. It's not illegal for a corporation to either literally or metaphorically kill someone, because there is no body that will hold them accountable, but it is illegal to assassinate a CEO and systems will pull all stops to hold the assassin accountable. Its the real reason why Western style democracy ends up being a busybox for people who like rules. The people who can grant endless exceptions have addresses and beds where they rest their heads but people without power cannot decide on an exception to the rules, regardless how dangerous and damaging that person is.
reaperducer 4y ago
The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws Even your own example — a whistleblower talking to a journalist — illustrates that the fear is not of people who abide by laws, but people and organizations that don't care about the laws. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be laws. But like almost everything involving human beings, the solution is not an if-then binary choice. You have laws, but you also have mitigations.
bannedbybros 4y ago
[dead]
amelius 4y ago
> Note that there is simply no way for two known parties on the internet to hide the fact that they are communicating with one another from government-corporate managers of the Internet Not entirely true. I could post a message on a popular forum like HN, where the message contains a hidden message.
- NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  Steganography is a real thing. I've often wondered about those meme powerhouses, like on Facebook. I used to collect thousands of memes and just blast them to my mother indiscriminately. Then I wondered whether silly-looking memes could be carrying secret messages, or just nasty hidden stuff. I decided to stop helping traffick in that stuff. Has anyone read/seen Mother Night? That's a real good example of how secret communication can hide in plain sight.
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    > Has anyone read/seen Mother Night? That's a real good example of how secret communication can hide in plain sight. Are there any confirmed examples from non-fiction?
    - brvsft 4y ago
      Yes.
    - Jimmc414 4y ago
      In World War II, German spies used a technique called the "microdot" to embed secret messages within seemingly innocuous documents. The microdot technique involved shrinking the text of a message to the size of a small dot (about 1 millimeter in diameter) and then placing it within the text or image of a cover document, such as a letter or newspaper article. The recipient would need a microscope to read the tiny message. The Least Significant Bit method is used frequently for the legitimate use of watermarking image, video and audio IP. It is a simple technique that embeds the watermark data into the rightmost bit of a binary number (LSB) of some pixels of the cover image. It is also very common for malware to hide it's configuration data or payload within image files. (ZeusVM, Zberp, NetTraveler, Shamoon, Zero.T)
EGreg 4y ago
The problem you describe is far more pervasive than that: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362
kornhole 4y ago
This site and many guides like it are intended to help people avoid mass surveillance rather than targeted surveillance. Confounding the two threat models seems intended to confuse and exasperate people.
- nunuvit 4y ago
  Or at least intended to piggy back their own cause onto a superficially related effort.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  So, let's say the NSA is collecting data on every person on the web, and they're able to see who is using these 'mass surveillance avoidance tools' and who isn't. The former category then actually stands out and becomes targets of more intensive surveillance because they're using tools that allow them to hide surveillance to a limited extent. Using such tools would flag the 'strong-selector' metadata collection system for further (targeted) examination, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA) This is of course what an outfit like the STASI or Gestapo would do, isn't it? If you're actually trying to hide from surveillance, the best tactic is to hide in plain sight, maintaining a cover story consisting of bland normal online presence that doesn't draw extra attention. Of course living in an authoritarian panopticon and having to hide in this manner is an undesirable situation, and the solution is not technological, but rather political in nature. One basic issue is transparency, i.e. the public should be able to see what the intelligence agencies and corporations are up to with their surveillance programs. This is why Snowden's exposure of PRISM, XKEYSCORE, TRAFFICTHIEF, etc. was in the public interest, i.e. legitimate whistleblowing.
  - roribolden 4y ago
    Good thing I only have a Google account and a bank account and link nothing else to me online. Try as I might, no search engine seems to know I exist. Sure some genius might think their model has got me nailed but even when I had a Twitter a decade ago and asked for my data Twitter had my age, gender (details I had in my profile btw) and number of kids I have wrong. The problem with tech companies is they’re run by people and people are pudding brains who believe in magic. The problem with AI, as Chomsky said, is people will believe it. It’s true because they’ve been believing these other terribly inept systems they built, whether technological or social.
kornhole 4y ago
We should push for laws and resist new acts that curtail our rights of privacy and free expression, but that is not a solution. We are generally on our own in making our choices of technology to use. If you go on using proprietary services and networks hoping that someday laws will suddenly fix all the problems, you are seriously deluded or naïve.
- salawat 4y ago
  You mean... like some sort of a... a Constitution... One with lines like: "The Congress shall make no law..." "The People shall..." "...shall not be infringed." "All powers not mentioned here are reserved for the States, or ultimately, the People." We're beyond the point where good faith can be assumed, and we're down to brass tacks. Our judiciary has shown they are more than willing to creatively reinterpret precedent as they see fit. Our Executive is acting more and more like a dictator with an entire corpus of executive based lawmaking at his disposal (Administrative Law). The Legislature has abdicated responsibility for reigning in excesses in the interest of the little people rather than established incorporated interests and high value donors. And the People are left with a choice. Amongst all this dysfunction, what should they do?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gnarbarian 4y ago
The laws don't really stop it either. The 4th amendment in the United States hasn't prevented huge dragnet style data collection and partnerships with private entities to provide access to whatever data the government wants.
- hellojesus 4y ago
  Laws like the Bank Secrecy Act where passed specifically to state that 4A doesn't apply if the data is collected from a third party and not the individual directly. Nonsense but we're here.
  - salawat 4y ago
    BSA was an outgrowth of Third Party Doctrine was it not? They already had law enforcement integration and judicial precedent dismantling the 4th Amendment. ...Now that you have me thinking about it...sigh... Yeah. I think I see where you are coming from. Funny how you can take an Act name, and map the actual outcome to the exact opposite of what the name would imply in layman's terms.
    - gnarbarian 4y ago
      they wrap themselves in the flag while pissing on the constitution.
feedsmgmt 4y ago
Why isn't full transparency and an end to criminality a viable solution?
- DennisP 4y ago
  It might be, if it also applies to everyone in the government. Then all of us can keep them accountable.
rationalfaith 4y ago
[dead]
bawolff 4y ago
> but the belief that individual technological efforts can defeat large-scale corporate and nation-state monitoring is pretty silly. Nation states may have a lot of budget, but they still have a budget. Mass survelience needs to have low per user cost to succeed. It is entirely reasonable to assume small changes if widely adopted could make mass surveilence ecconomically unfeasible.
arendtio 4y ago
> The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws that... Even the GDPR with its huge impact and global implications does not apply to law enforcement agencies. So I wonder who would make such a law?

scarface74 4y ago

You mean you want the same government that is interested in putting back doors in phones and other surveillance techniques to pass laws that keep them from doing so?

smolder 4y ago
Yes, our government is not a single homogenous entity. We can theoretically (and sometimes actually) use our legislative representatives to change the behavior of other parts.
- coldtea 4y ago
  A, the optimism of youth!
- scarface74 4y ago
  You realize the legislators are the ones asking for backdoors because - “terrorism“ and “think about the children”. When has the government ever wanted less surveillance power or less control over the internet.
  - roribolden 4y ago
    Corporations are the governments private enforcement contractors. They’ll control the internet and we’ll work for them, and they’ll work for government. See! Government involved in your life! Nice job building a firewall between society and government control. At the end of the day it’s all people. The semantic bubbles do nothing to change its all just people looking to externalize effort to live simpler themselves.
  - TchoBeer 4y ago
    "the government" is not one person with a concrete ideology, it is an amalgamation of hundreds of people who all want different things and are theoretically beholden to their voter base.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The government in the US is not beholden to “the people”. Because of the setup of the electoral college, 2 senator per state where RI has the same number of Senators as California and gerrymandering, it is very much about the will of the minority. That’s not to mention all of the things that get done by unelected officials and judges with lifetime tenure.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      "The government", like any other large corporation, is an entity in and of itself, and not a mere aggregation of the people who run it. It has institutional culture etc, and given what it is, said institutional culture tends to lean heavily towards a highly centralized, hierarchical approach to anything it perceives as a problem; and tends to perceive anything that threatens the applicability of this approach as a problem in its own right.
jabradoodle 4y ago
Much of the progress that has been achieved by governance was opposed by those with power. Your view point sounds like we should give up on any form of legislation the rich and powerful would not like.
- scarface74 4y ago
  What progress in the modern era with respect to privacy has the government done?
  - jabradoodle 4y ago
    Every organisation I've worked in has had comprehensive processes for deleting personal data and only storing what is necessary due to e.g. https://www.gov.uk/data-protection https://www.gov.uk/data-protection Without such laws, every business would store as much data as they could indefinitely, because $$. All of this is besides the point that was made; your fatalistic view point suggests we should make no attempt at effective governance because there are powers that oppose us. There are countries which are more democratic than others, and the population of such countries tend to have a better quality of life and more rights.

psychphysic 4y ago

Most media now have secure drop and guides on usage. In the UK atleast such as this BBC page[0]. As do the Guardian, Bloomberg and many more Im sure. I appreciate that it is an involved process as you say but it doesn't seem excessive especially if you can use your smartphone now that tor browser is on android and iOS. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60972903.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60972903.amp

sigmoid10 4y ago
This might hinder small time criminals and companies at best from finding out who snitched on them. But in an authoritarian regime with state level resources or just a sufficient level of corruption or even just a media corp run by boomers that is vulnerable to phishing, you can't count on discretion for these things. Secure tunnels and end2end encryption are worthless if the endpoints are easy to compromise. The above comment is right that at the very least you should use bespoke hardware that was never associated with you or anyone you know in any shape or form (in addition to the things mentioned on that site). And even then you'd have to make sure that the info you leak can't be traced back to you, at which point it becomes a game of intelligence and counter intelligence. For example, if an organisation suspects their people are leaking info to the press, it could begin to place targeted (mis)information among employees to uncover them. This was done at Tesla last year to track and eventually bust leakers.
- naravara 4y ago
  It's dangerous to assume phishing vulnerability is solely a Boomer thing. Tech literacy is unevenly distributed even among younger generations, and the upcoming generations that grew up on Chromebooks and tablet computing aren't that much more tech literate than old folks on the aspects of OpSec that matter. "Kids these days" don't even really understand how file systems work.
Y-bar 4y ago
Non-AMP link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60972903 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60972903

LinuxBender 4y ago

The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws AFAIK governments empower specific agencies and groups with qualified immunity. How would such laws be enforced if an agency has immunity?

hirundo 4y ago
In the U.S. qualified immunity is a creation of the judicial system, and those decisions could presumably be reversed by statute if the political will comes to exist.
Matticus_Rex 4y ago
No need to invoke qualified immunity; the data privacy laws that have been passed (e.g. the GDPR) make explicit carveouts for government surveillance. Yes, the carveouts are for the jurisdiction's own government only, but that's the one you should be most worried about mass surveillance from in most cases.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Arguably, government surveillance is one of the main points of regulations like GDPR. Data residency requirements make it a lot easier to do that.
misterprime 4y ago
>High ranking member of political party 1 does something illegal. >Huge stink and nationwide conversation ensues. >High ranking member of political party 2 does the same damn thing. >Crickets. You can even reverse the order of the events or parties. It happens a lot. Such laws, unfortunately, simply become political tools.
- westmeal 4y ago
  This depends on your filter bubble.
MSFT_Edging 4y ago
The expression of power is in who gets to decide the exception to the rules. Real power is rarely beholden to rules. That's why whistleblowers who call out illegal programs are treated like the criminal, because the laws essentially don't matter when dealing with things at that high of level. Powerful people can lie, cheat, and steal and face zero repercussions. They hold institutional power so groups like the police will protect them regardless of laws being broken. It's not illegal for a corporation to either literally or metaphorically kill someone, because there is no body that will hold them accountable, but it is illegal to assassinate a CEO and systems will pull all stops to hold the assassin accountable. Its the real reason why Western style democracy ends up being a busybox for people who like rules. The people who can grant endless exceptions have addresses and beds where they rest their heads but people without power cannot decide on an exception to the rules, regardless how dangerous and damaging that person is.

reaperducer 4y ago

The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws Even your own example — a whistleblower talking to a journalist — illustrates that the fear is not of people who abide by laws, but people and organizations that don't care about the laws. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be laws. But like almost everything involving human beings, the solution is not an if-then binary choice. You have laws, but you also have mitigations.

bannedbybros 4y ago

[dead]

amelius 4y ago

> Note that there is simply no way for two known parties on the internet to hide the fact that they are communicating with one another from government-corporate managers of the Internet Not entirely true. I could post a message on a popular forum like HN, where the message contains a hidden message.

NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
Steganography is a real thing. I've often wondered about those meme powerhouses, like on Facebook. I used to collect thousands of memes and just blast them to my mother indiscriminately. Then I wondered whether silly-looking memes could be carrying secret messages, or just nasty hidden stuff. I decided to stop helping traffick in that stuff. Has anyone read/seen Mother Night? That's a real good example of how secret communication can hide in plain sight.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  > Has anyone read/seen Mother Night? That's a real good example of how secret communication can hide in plain sight. Are there any confirmed examples from non-fiction?
  - brvsft 4y ago
    Yes.
  - Jimmc414 4y ago
    In World War II, German spies used a technique called the "microdot" to embed secret messages within seemingly innocuous documents. The microdot technique involved shrinking the text of a message to the size of a small dot (about 1 millimeter in diameter) and then placing it within the text or image of a cover document, such as a letter or newspaper article. The recipient would need a microscope to read the tiny message. The Least Significant Bit method is used frequently for the legitimate use of watermarking image, video and audio IP. It is a simple technique that embeds the watermark data into the rightmost bit of a binary number (LSB) of some pixels of the cover image. It is also very common for malware to hide it's configuration data or payload within image files. (ZeusVM, Zberp, NetTraveler, Shamoon, Zero.T)

EGreg 4y ago

The problem you describe is far more pervasive than that: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362

kornhole 4y ago

This site and many guides like it are intended to help people avoid mass surveillance rather than targeted surveillance. Confounding the two threat models seems intended to confuse and exasperate people.

nunuvit 4y ago
Or at least intended to piggy back their own cause onto a superficially related effort.
photochemsyn 4y ago
So, let's say the NSA is collecting data on every person on the web, and they're able to see who is using these 'mass surveillance avoidance tools' and who isn't. The former category then actually stands out and becomes targets of more intensive surveillance because they're using tools that allow them to hide surveillance to a limited extent. Using such tools would flag the 'strong-selector' metadata collection system for further (targeted) examination, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA) This is of course what an outfit like the STASI or Gestapo would do, isn't it? If you're actually trying to hide from surveillance, the best tactic is to hide in plain sight, maintaining a cover story consisting of bland normal online presence that doesn't draw extra attention. Of course living in an authoritarian panopticon and having to hide in this manner is an undesirable situation, and the solution is not technological, but rather political in nature. One basic issue is transparency, i.e. the public should be able to see what the intelligence agencies and corporations are up to with their surveillance programs. This is why Snowden's exposure of PRISM, XKEYSCORE, TRAFFICTHIEF, etc. was in the public interest, i.e. legitimate whistleblowing.
- roribolden 4y ago
  Good thing I only have a Google account and a bank account and link nothing else to me online. Try as I might, no search engine seems to know I exist. Sure some genius might think their model has got me nailed but even when I had a Twitter a decade ago and asked for my data Twitter had my age, gender (details I had in my profile btw) and number of kids I have wrong. The problem with tech companies is they’re run by people and people are pudding brains who believe in magic. The problem with AI, as Chomsky said, is people will believe it. It’s true because they’ve been believing these other terribly inept systems they built, whether technological or social.

kornhole 4y ago

We should push for laws and resist new acts that curtail our rights of privacy and free expression, but that is not a solution. We are generally on our own in making our choices of technology to use. If you go on using proprietary services and networks hoping that someday laws will suddenly fix all the problems, you are seriously deluded or naïve.

salawat 4y ago
You mean... like some sort of a... a Constitution... One with lines like: "The Congress shall make no law..." "The People shall..." "...shall not be infringed." "All powers not mentioned here are reserved for the States, or ultimately, the People." We're beyond the point where good faith can be assumed, and we're down to brass tacks. Our judiciary has shown they are more than willing to creatively reinterpret precedent as they see fit. Our Executive is acting more and more like a dictator with an entire corpus of executive based lawmaking at his disposal (Administrative Law). The Legislature has abdicated responsibility for reigning in excesses in the interest of the little people rather than established incorporated interests and high value donors. And the People are left with a choice. Amongst all this dysfunction, what should they do?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

gnarbarian 4y ago

The laws don't really stop it either. The 4th amendment in the United States hasn't prevented huge dragnet style data collection and partnerships with private entities to provide access to whatever data the government wants.

hellojesus 4y ago
Laws like the Bank Secrecy Act where passed specifically to state that 4A doesn't apply if the data is collected from a third party and not the individual directly. Nonsense but we're here.
- salawat 4y ago
  BSA was an outgrowth of Third Party Doctrine was it not? They already had law enforcement integration and judicial precedent dismantling the 4th Amendment. ...Now that you have me thinking about it...sigh... Yeah. I think I see where you are coming from. Funny how you can take an Act name, and map the actual outcome to the exact opposite of what the name would imply in layman's terms.
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    they wrap themselves in the flag while pissing on the constitution.

feedsmgmt 4y ago

Why isn't full transparency and an end to criminality a viable solution?

DennisP 4y ago
It might be, if it also applies to everyone in the government. Then all of us can keep them accountable.

rationalfaith 4y ago

[dead]

bawolff 4y ago

> but the belief that individual technological efforts can defeat large-scale corporate and nation-state monitoring is pretty silly. Nation states may have a lot of budget, but they still have a budget. Mass survelience needs to have low per user cost to succeed. It is entirely reasonable to assume small changes if widely adopted could make mass surveilence ecconomically unfeasible.

arendtio 4y ago

> The only real solution is the passage of data privacy laws that... Even the GDPR with its huge impact and global implications does not apply to law enforcement agencies. So I wonder who would make such a law?