surveillance capitalism - good or whack

[luke viia]

Just curious, how many people here are taking measures to protect themselves from surveillance? 

(for example, simple stuff like avoiding using accounts at retail and online stores or debit/credit cards generally, blocking trackers online, quitting social media, avoiding streaming services, using adequate VPNs, burner email accounts, disabling GPS tracking, etc)

In other words, is convenience getting in the way of your privacy? 

[Blir]

I've got tape over the webcam on my laptop if that counts.

[drillkicker]

My laptop doesn't have a webcam

[drillkicker]

Also I do all I can to avoid any web site owned by Google, Amazon, etc.  I only stream YouTube through proxies (Newpipe on mobile, youtube-dl or streamlink on my laptop).  I try to avoid web sites that have advertisements and often have JavaScript and cookies disabled.  Also, I run gentoo on a librebooted machine with a non-ME CPU and use Graphene OS on my phone.  The only proprietary software that I use at all is my bank app that I'm forced to use.  I have my email account on a private server and communicate through Signal instead of text messages or regular phone calls (except for when I'm talking to people who don't have Signal).  Also I have full disk encryption on my computer with a key file that is encrypted with a passphrase on my Yubikey (which also contains my GPG keys and my SSH PIV).

[dingformung]

I only remove the tape from the camera when I masturbate

[Candiru]

I masturbated into the camera so much that it is permanently covered. My Zoom meetings are so quiet now. 

[Zephyr_Nova]

29 minutes ago, luke viia said:

Just curious, how many people here are taking measures to protect themselves from surveillance? 

(for example, simple stuff like avoiding using accounts at retail and online stores or debit/credit cards generally, blocking trackers online, quitting social media, avoiding streaming services, using adequate VPNs, burner email accounts, disabling GPS tracking, etc)

In other words, is convenience getting in the way of your privacy? 

lol I take no precautions whatsoever... beyond clicking "don't agree" to sites that give me the option with regards to ad targeting.  Although... kind of irrelevant I guess since I automatically ignore ads.  Yep.  Government's gonna do some nefarious shit to me at some point.  "Oh, so you like pizza?  Well welcome to the pizza chamber facility.  We hope you enjoy eating it to death while your friends watch on Zoom."  

[Braintree]

I called my wifi network The Internet just to throw them off my trail.

[brian trageskin]

i use homing pigeons and a trained monkey for communication

pigeon sends message to monkey, monkey then types on the computer and sends search results and info back to me by using a second pigeon, then waits for further instructions. monkey currently typing this from an internet cafe in mumbai

[cruising for burgers]

I don't use a digital hd or clouds, i record everything on vhs... 

Btw, matrix is joyrex spelled backwards so... 

[drillkicker]

I don't care about being targeted by the government.  I do what I do because I don't want to be involved in a system that I think is unjust, and I am exercising my right to abstain from an unjust system.  I'm OK with putting a lot of work into it because this is what I do, and I enjoy doing it.  You don't have to go as far as I do in order to be free.  I take optional steps just for the fun of it and for the sake of learning.

[IDEM]

9 hours ago, Blir said:

You idiots. Joyrex has been selling all of your personal data to facebook and google for years. How else do you think he makes all that money to host this data mining operation posing as a neckbeard message board?

I want my three dollars back.

[Zephyr_Nova]

I want his 3 dollars back. (Saving for retirement)

[chenGOD]

9 hours ago, dingformung said:

WATMM is a CIA operation. How else would Joyrex have been able to run it for over 20 years? Because people are interested in IDM? I don't think so

Shit, @Joyrex we're done here. Time to call Snowden and see if we can't get as sweet a deal as he he's got.

[chenGOD]

1 hour ago, drillkicker said:

Also I do all I can to avoid any web site owned by Google, Amazon, etc.  I only stream YouTube through proxies (Newpipe on mobile, youtube-dl or streamlink on my laptop).  I try to avoid web sites that have advertisements and often have JavaScript and cookies disabled.  Also, I run gentoo on a librebooted machine with a non-ME CPU and use Graphene OS on my phone.  The only proprietary software that I use at all is my bank app that I'm forced to use.  I have my email account on a private server and communicate through Signal instead of text messages or regular phone calls (except for when I'm talking to people who don't have Signal).  Also I have full disk encryption on my computer with a key file that is encrypted with a passphrase on my Yubikey (which also contains my GPG keys and my SSH PIV).

I want you to know that, except for the encryption on your laptop, if you are a person of significant interest to law enforcement, the rest of those measures don't do anything to prevent you being tracked. Intelligence agencies have cracked Signal/What'sApp etc., back-tracking through proxies is relatively straightforward, and the software you run has little to do with it.

[chenGOD]

4 hours ago, Braintree said:

"Data rights" doesn't exist

The GDPR enacted in the EU is actually a good piece of regulation.

[Braintree]

Even though American companies may follow suit with that legislation (to continue to do business in Europe), we don't have any data rights here. They're non-existent. All of the "modern" privacy rights were passed into legislation before the digital age.

This is pretty interesting:

https://fcw.com/articles/2020/01/28/comment-data-privacy-bill-of-rights-shark.aspx

Not much you hadn't heard before, though.

[dingformung]

Also, big companies might do it illegally even if there are laws.

[chenGOD]

8 minutes ago, Braintree said:

Even though American companies may follow suit with that legislation (to continue to do business in Europe), we don't have any data rights here. They're non-existent. All of the "modern" privacy rights were passed into legislation before the digital age.

This is pretty interesting:

https://fcw.com/articles/2020/01/28/comment-data-privacy-bill-of-rights-shark.aspx

Not much you hadn't heard before, though.

Yeah I know the US (Canada too) is far behind the EU in that aspect. I was using those as an aspirational objective (for rational thinking people who realize that some information might be necessary to surrender in the use of e-platforms to make our lives easier) for data rights. 

[drillkicker]

32 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

I want you to know that, except for the encryption on your laptop, if you are a person of significant interest to law enforcement, the rest of those measures don't do anything to prevent you being tracked. Intelligence agencies have cracked Signal/What'sApp etc., back-tracking through proxies is relatively straightforward, and the software you run has little to do with it.

As I said before, what I do isn't primarily about running from the government, it's about doing my best to avoid contributing to the world of data mining and digital restrictions.  I don't care that much about being surveiled as long as the people surveiling me aren't profiting from it.  As it is now, I think anyone tracking me would probably be going out of their way to do so, and that's good enough for me.  As long as I've done my part to retain control over my data and my personal property, the rest is beyond my control and so it isn't worth stressing over.  Primarily, I want to have complete control over what my computer is doing and I've achieved that goal.

Edited May 21, 2020 by drillkicker

[zlemflolia]

3 hours ago, dingformung said:

Also, big companies might do it illegally even if there are laws.

not only will they do it illegally, even if they acted in good faith they'd do it accidentally by getting hacked, accidentally leaving databases accessible to the web, not erasing free space on hard drive sectors which previously contained your data, etc.  basically the solution is "no internet" and "only go in public with a baklava on wearing undersized high heels to avoid gait detection and wearing fake contact lenses to avoid HD camera based iris scanners" also you have to never drive on the same road twice

[zlemflolia]

28 minutes ago, Stickfigger said:

Guys, if you don't have anything to hide, what's the problem? 

You guys only care about this coz ya'll druggies

sounds great until nazis take over and mine internet logs for anyone who seems associated with anti-fascism, socialism, communism, etc. then they kill them

[BobDobalina]

Take it off the rack, if it's wack, put it back

I like the whopper, fuck the big mac

[ambermonk]

Just now, Zeffolia said:

sounds great until nazis take over and mine internet logs for anyone who seems associated with anti-fascism, socialism, communism, etc. then they kill them

Wolfenstein: Panoptikon

Edited May 22, 2020 by timbre monke

[hijexx]

Roughly 30% of Americans have "smart" speakers in their homes. Commercial wiretaps. A lot of surveillance cameras hooked up to cloud services too. The market has spoken. Nobody seems to care and they actually pay to be mined.

I used to try to reduce my footprint but at this point you're probably better off just blending in with the noise. You stand out more if you try not to stand out. I'm still not going to be buying a smart speaker or using voice commands but unless you want to just completely avoid society you're going to be cataloged in a system somewhere nowadays, it's just unavoidable.