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Have you a reason for suggesting people don't do it? If I may turn that back on you, how exactly does one avoid surveillance? Your phone is the most obvious cu

Have you a reason for suggesting people don't do it? If I may turn that back on you, how exactly does one avoid surveillance? Your phone is the most obvious culprit, so you'd need to get rid of that. Facial recognition software is getting better at recognizing people even if they are wearing a mask, and the cameras capturing that are everywhere; just look at traffic signals and the camera's on top. In modern society, right now, it is pretty much unavoidable unless you got rid of most electronics and never set foot outside for many, many years.

sourcepluck 2y ago
I already had a whole paragraph, which I'll reprint for you here: > "Going outside for a day and leaving the phone fully off in the back of a drawer is good fun for the whole family, and can be done. Getting Tails onto a USB stick is easy for many and even fun for some, and you can make copies for your friends. Getting that old brick phone out of the other drawer, getting the old charger for it, and taking that out sometimes when you only need calls, can be good fun too." I could have continued with loads more small things "ordinary people" can do: - use F-droid totally, or as much as possible, instead of the "Play Store" - if you manage to stop using the Play Store entirely, sign out of Google entirely on your phone, nothing bad actually happens when you do - delete Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc etc - have boardgame night with friends, and have a "phone-box" ready, with rules, fully off, it goes in the back of a closet for 3hrs - buying a little standalone mp3 player for offline walkies with your dog (or lover) - use ebooks and such on airplane mode, getting books onto them by other means Etc etc. The point isn't that everyone wants to do these things, the point is they're easy, and mostly a good laugh, and every little helps in the fight back against the normalisation of constant surveillance. So why would we ever tell anyone, "oh, it's pointless, do nothing"?
xethos 2y ago
Zero-to-one-hundred real quick there. The important thing for the general population isn't so much to go full Unabomber, live in the woods, speak to nobody, but to make tracking just a little more difficult. Mabye set Location Services (when prompted by an app) to "Only while using" instead of "Always". Use Signal (or even iMessage) instead of SMS or Facebook Messenger. Use Apple Maps (or Open Street Maps) instead of Google Maps. Click "Deny All" instead of "Allow All" when prompted for Cookies, use Apple's Private Relay, the list goes on. The point isn't to make tracking impossible, but to make it cost more; in time, in resources, in terms of capital.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Where is the app that uses two or more comms channels with text messages (e.g. WhatsApp & Signal & iMessage) in order to send a message ? Something like a one-time pad technique, except that no single comms channel has the unencrypted message. Require that ALL channels be cracked/surveilled in order to XOR (or some other algo) them all together to crack a message.

sourcepluck 2y ago

I already had a whole paragraph, which I'll reprint for you here: > "Going outside for a day and leaving the phone fully off in the back of a drawer is good fun for the whole family, and can be done. Getting Tails onto a USB stick is easy for many and even fun for some, and you can make copies for your friends. Getting that old brick phone out of the other drawer, getting the old charger for it, and taking that out sometimes when you only need calls, can be good fun too." I could have continued with loads more small things "ordinary people" can do: - use F-droid totally, or as much as possible, instead of the "Play Store" - if you manage to stop using the Play Store entirely, sign out of Google entirely on your phone, nothing bad actually happens when you do - delete Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc etc - have boardgame night with friends, and have a "phone-box" ready, with rules, fully off, it goes in the back of a closet for 3hrs - buying a little standalone mp3 player for offline walkies with your dog (or lover) - use ebooks and such on airplane mode, getting books onto them by other means Etc etc. The point isn't that everyone wants to do these things, the point is they're easy, and mostly a good laugh, and every little helps in the fight back against the normalisation of constant surveillance. So why would we ever tell anyone, "oh, it's pointless, do nothing"?

xethos 2y ago

Zero-to-one-hundred real quick there. The important thing for the general population isn't so much to go full Unabomber, live in the woods, speak to nobody, but to make tracking just a little more difficult. Mabye set Location Services (when prompted by an app) to "Only while using" instead of "Always". Use Signal (or even iMessage) instead of SMS or Facebook Messenger. Use Apple Maps (or Open Street Maps) instead of Google Maps. Click "Deny All" instead of "Allow All" when prompted for Cookies, use Apple's Private Relay, the list goes on. The point isn't to make tracking impossible, but to make it cost more; in time, in resources, in terms of capital.

euroderf 2y ago
Where is the app that uses two or more comms channels with text messages (e.g. WhatsApp & Signal & iMessage) in order to send a message ? Something like a one-time pad technique, except that no single comms channel has the unencrypted message. Require that ALL channels be cracked/surveilled in order to XOR (or some other algo) them all together to crack a message.