US attorney general William Barr says Americans should accept security risks of encryption backdoors

Sometimes there is no choice to completely abandon something, so we may only minimize usage, look for alternatives, express dislike and exercise passive resistance.

 

Nothing in the computer world is mandatory, no OS, no software, no hardware.
Sure maybe less convenient to use alternatives, but you can't get everything.

 

@guest - I get your point.

But if I'm checking Windows VPN clients about something, I need to use Windows. Or if I need to use Excel, because open-source spreadsheets choke on files much over 30 MB, and only use one CPU core.

So I use a Windows installer that I've obtained as anonymously as possible, and only in a VM that hits the Internet via nested VPN chains. And if I'm putting sensitive data on that VM, I don't give it any Internet connectivity. I just clone an up-to-date VM. And then destroy that VM when I'm done, without ever letting it see the Internet again.

 

Sartre* would say that nothing is mandatory in our lives. One would die if he did not eat anything, but eating is still a choice. It's that kind of logic. I don't think it is strictly wrong, but I assume one doesn't want to start from significantly disadvantageous position when i.e. searching for a job. That's why most of privacy-aware people choose some trade offs. I don't get why some people bash other people, because they make some trade offs or employ passive resistance.

*If somebody doesn't know Sartre take a look at Existential Comics

 

@reasonablePrivacy I don't bash those who like to try to get more privacy, their life, their choice, and i respect it.
I just don't like being bothered by some haters with their newly discovered privacy activism.
I like several Google Services , i won't like see them disappear because some people don't want their 3 porn links being collected and associated to them or their location recorded. To those, I say "don't use Google stuff and stop whinning" .

 

Privacy fanatics on forums are useless and don't matters. Most are the last ones who will protest openly but the first to claim victory. They are just cowards keyboard warriors hiding behind a PC. They sit at a PC and make a complicated privacy configuration that does nothing except satisfy their egocentric needs believing gov agencies is tracking their insignificant person.
Sure, they do it based upon their own personal opinions and principles, which may have good intents but in the end, what they do is completely meaningless and not even all of them combined can stop intrusion and violation of corps and governments.

The "fight" they make is like a puppy taking on a tank division. It's a fight of deep-seated personal frustration and empty words, hiding behind a PC, completely without any action... unless the person happens to be a LULZSEC or Anonymous type... and we all know what happened to every last one of those people, which coincidentally they were using some of the best privacy and anonymizing methods: they get jailed.

Overall, the world is safer with heavy surveillance. I would burn the entire world and turn in every privacy fanatics to protect my wife, my daughter, my son. Heck, I'd do the same to protect our beloved dog.

That is guest for you.

 

BAAMMM!!!! roflao

 

Why we fight for crypto

https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/07/why-we-fight-for-crypto.html

 

An engineer explains why you're an idiot to want privacy

https://www.zdnet.com/article/an-engineer-explains-why-youre-an-idiot-to-want-privacy/

 

At a guess, I would assume that there are quite a few people in this forum that have taken a similar position. To the "watchers" we can be seen as normal civilians going about our daily lives without a clue about what they know about us. EXCEPT that they will know we are daily visitors to this forum and that will raise a few eyebrows.

And there lies the answer. It's not necessarily a matter of tight you've locked down your current life, it's how well you've planned to escape it - if required.

 

I'm not much into fighting, just hiding. Except that I do encourage people to protect their privacy, and share approaches.

No, you don't "know what happened to every last one of those people". You only know about the ones who got caught.

 

Yes the 3letters don't advertise their misses.

 

He doesn't get it does he. It starts with small things like graffiti on walls, racist articles in the newspapers and ends in concentration camps. It will be the same with mass surveillance. It starts in protecting the people from terrorists and pedophiles and collecting all data to save the children, then it's protecting people from criminals, then it's protecting society from undesirables, soon all your rights are gone and you have none left and in the end it will leave the world in a very bad place.

 

And sometimes they rather monitor the small fishes to catches the bigger ones.

All your rethoric has nothing to do with mass surveillance, which like guns or forks are just tools.
It is who and why you use them.
You should focus more on choosing decent leaders, thing that some self-claimed "cradle of democracy and savior of the free world" can't even do...

You maybe, but go in other forums, those are just Keyboards Warriors "fighting" from their comfortable sofa with popcorn and soda. I don't see many go on the streets and fight for their beliefs.

They let you know those who get caught, maybe some are deported secretly to some facilities and "roughly interrogated"
Or even hired, but at the end if the gov want someone, they will get him.

See Bin Ladden, millionaire, lot of resources to hide in a desert, supported by a whole nation, far from US, and he get shot like a vulgar gangster.
And you tell me that some dudes with 3 VPNs and Tor can escape them, come on...
People/criminals fate are sealed already, it is just about priority and resources put on them that matters.

Also, offer lot of money to some to give infos or even sell out their associates, they will give you what you want.

So if some delusional want to look good to their pals by becoming "Don Quixote of privacy" their life, their choice but don't tell me to be a naive fool too.

 

Nothing wrong with my life just a few peccadilloes. My modicum of protections that I use is to shade from inept companies & devious individuals & groups.

Nation states can easily bypass these. So they can see everything & move on from my benevolence.

 

@guest, I agree with your points. I'm also generally tired of reading the privacy complaints that aren't going to go anywhere. Physical safety in the real world against criminal acts will supersede vague concerns about privacy and anonymity.

However, I would make the case that there is a wide chasm between foregoing privacy in the name of national security & law enforcement versus foregoing it in the name of the vague "benefit" of targeted advertising and the crass commercialization of personal data. Citizens complaining about the former category have no chance of winning the day... but they may have a case to be made against the latter. But, dang, I don't know anymore. It seems we are losing the battle against the mass marketers; how in the world would one think we could win the privacy argument against nation states?!?

 

@Alec indeed, nothing much to do against state-sponsored/law enforcement data collection, however I get that some are irritated by commercial data gathering, in that case, just don't use their products at all, then no more complaints.
Giant techs don't force you to use them, if i want i can set a machine without any tech giants products/services on it.
I don't because some are very useful to me and I don't mind if they just collect datas for marketing purposes. I will dare to say I even get good promotions on some products I would never be aware if not pushed to me by targeted ads.

Whinning is useless.

 

"British spies must have 'backdoor' access to encrypted Facebook and WhatsApp messages to combat child abuse and terrorism, spy chiefs will demand at 'Five Eyes' security summit

UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand intelligence chiefs to meet today

They want backdoor access to messaging services such as WhatsApp

Spies believe they can stop terror attacks and child abuse by tapping chats

It would involved being silently added to suspicious group chats by providers..."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ess-encrypted-Facebook-WhatsApp-messages.html

 

Well, some people think democracy works...

 

No they don't. They want you to believe that. Every time there is a shooting they complain that they want to access someone's encrypted phone. That's not how time works. You can't go back. Looking at those messages (if any) after the fact stops nothing. The amount of resources it would take to monitor ALL chats, establish a genuine threat, and act would all take longer than it would for the threat to be carried out.

 

see my post here.

 

People seems to forgot one aspect how gov techs are developed. You have prototype, often made by military, usually fully functional and ready to be distributed to the civilians side. Classic law enforcement (not mentioning black cells/ops) unlike military, needs public civilian approval.
So the hardware is probably already in place, the algorithms to flag suspicious words/sentences/formulations ready, just need deployment.

 

There will be so many false positives and court cases that there will be need for enormous number of people to listen to that.
One the other side one just need to talk in slang, just like prison inmates to fool these algorithms.

 

Yeah, but he was kinda special. And it took them about a decade to find him. After pounding what little remained intact in Afghanistan, after the Russians had pounded it, into dust. Also, he was screwed from the start, in that adversaries knew who he was in meatspace. If he'd been some guy behind a keyboard somewhere, he might still be alive. And indeed, the people in the Saudi theocracy who supported him are still around, and still largely unknown, outside the Saudi government.

 

'Five Eyes' alliance calls for backdoor access to WhatsApp and other encrypted communications

https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3079820/encryption-back-doors