5 ms·

>> We have so many privacy tools to counter state surveillance these days. Most of the cases you hear and read about, the gov never had to break any encryption

>> We have so many privacy tools to counter state surveillance these days. Most of the cases you hear and read about, the gov never had to break any encryption protocols to catch people doing bad things. Pedo's on TOR were busted without it. Terrorist rings have been broken up without breaking encryption protocols. There's been rumors the NSA has broken encryption on WhatsApp and Telegram but will never admit it publicly. If you think simply having good encryption will buffer state surveillance, it won't. If the gov wants to get you they will always have a huge advantage. They never sleep and have unlimited resources. Right now, tracking a smartphone, getting the data from your provider and the profile companies like Verizon, Google and others have on you is pretty easy. They don't need to break encryption when there are so many other vectors to get at you. Just having the GPS data Google has on you is enough to give them a roadmap on your life. Unless you're willing to be a hermit like Ted Kaczynski was for years, it will be easy for any state to surveil you. And the gov still got Ted, even after all things he did to cover his tracks and living completely off the grid.

tharmas 2y ago
Good post. But I believe it was his brother that recognized the hand writing. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have got him.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  Little know trivia about him - he was a suspect for years as the Zodiac Killer.
sandworm101 2y ago
But we are not all unibombers. Any security/privacy discussion starts with the level of threat. The average person doesn't want to hide their every detail, nor do they have to. The average person probably wants something like "I don't want my government to passively scan what I read online". That's an easy hurdle. Or, "my brother is addicted to cocaine and I want to talk to him about it without AT&T reporting our conversation the police." Again, this is easy. But if you say "I'm a defense contractor currently under investigation for treason and want to I pass money/information to my handler in North Korea undetected." THAT would be a challenge. It is probably still doable, but we should not abandon the basic needs of most people simply because we cannot promise total privacy to the most difficult cases too. (Fyi, I once talked to a defense attorney representing alleged terrorists. His clients lived overseas and the attorney was representing them in the US. That man was one of those hard privacy cases.)
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  If you know what you're doing it's easy. The hard part is getting from nascent to knowing what to do without inadvertently tripping wires in the process. The surveillance has a major component built around how people behave normally in normie society (specifically, communication and technology habits).
- rangestransform 2y ago
  That's why it's important that software and hardware companies ship security that's secure against nation state actors by default, so that those who actually need it can blend into the masses
rustcleaner 2y ago
>Most of the cases you hear and read about, the gov never had to break any encryption protocols to catch people doing bad things. If you had a god's view, but wanted to keep that classified, you'd construct a parallel path to obtaining the same outcome in court without tipping your hand to the god's view. Parallel Construction.

tharmas 2y ago

Good post. But I believe it was his brother that recognized the hand writing. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have got him.

burningChrome 2y ago
Little know trivia about him - he was a suspect for years as the Zodiac Killer.

sandworm101 2y ago

But we are not all unibombers. Any security/privacy discussion starts with the level of threat. The average person doesn't want to hide their every detail, nor do they have to. The average person probably wants something like "I don't want my government to passively scan what I read online". That's an easy hurdle. Or, "my brother is addicted to cocaine and I want to talk to him about it without AT&T reporting our conversation the police." Again, this is easy. But if you say "I'm a defense contractor currently under investigation for treason and want to I pass money/information to my handler in North Korea undetected." THAT would be a challenge. It is probably still doable, but we should not abandon the basic needs of most people simply because we cannot promise total privacy to the most difficult cases too. (Fyi, I once talked to a defense attorney representing alleged terrorists. His clients lived overseas and the attorney was representing them in the US. That man was one of those hard privacy cases.)

rustcleaner 2y ago
If you know what you're doing it's easy. The hard part is getting from nascent to knowing what to do without inadvertently tripping wires in the process. The surveillance has a major component built around how people behave normally in normie society (specifically, communication and technology habits).
rangestransform 2y ago
That's why it's important that software and hardware companies ship security that's secure against nation state actors by default, so that those who actually need it can blend into the masses

rustcleaner 2y ago

>Most of the cases you hear and read about, the gov never had to break any encryption protocols to catch people doing bad things. If you had a god's view, but wanted to keep that classified, you'd construct a parallel path to obtaining the same outcome in court without tipping your hand to the god's view. Parallel Construction.