I want a computer that I own

Maybe this is something that is a bit facile of me to say, but I like to try to compartmentalise, such that I have a little tablet for media stuff which I use to cast to TV via Chromecast. The other stuff not having Netflix access (both phone and laptop) doesn't bother me so much, and keeps a distinction between open and closed at home. The nice perk is that Chromecast is now doable from laptops under GNOME and will likely become available on phone OSes like PureOS etc too in time.

Not great for normies, but that's my tip anyway. Media consumption is a wedge issue and if you're prepared to spend money for privacy, there are a few ways it can be done.

Postal mail and telephone were ... relatively secure, inasmuch as that bulk surveillance was expensive.

Wiredtapping and postal interception, as well as metadata (pen-trace and postal covers) are possible, but scale poorly when individual lines must be listened to by individual agents, or individual letters carefully opened and resealed.

Digital permits surveillance at mass scale. It seems ultimately a fundamental property of the medium, less a bug than simply a feature.

There is also a fairly robust tradition of privacy in postal mail (in most countries), and after some false starts, eventually applied to telephony, at least in theory. The situation for email is far less evolved.

These days, if you do want secure communications, postal probably offers some real benefits. I'm somewhat surprised that postal remailing services (send an outer message to a central point who deposits the enclosed prepaid inner envelope(s) to final destination(s)) isn't a thing, or at least not one that has any appreciable awareness.

The capabilities of voice-to-text and handwriting / optical character recognition make the viability of intercepting virtually any spoken conversation, or any _observed_ written communication, quite high. The costs are much greater than with straight machine-readable character text (ASCII/UTF-8/Unicode), but pretty tractable.

My view is increasingly that privacy is an emergent phenomenon responding to ever-increasing surveillance and observation capabilities. The modern discussion began in the 1890s (Warren & Brandeis: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~shmat/courses/cs5436/warren-bran...), as technologically-mediated intrusions were increasing greatly in capability. Though what the end-game is I do not know.

Lost me at “that the NSA won’t intercept...” Sorry, it’s a spy agency, you can’t beat it because it’s sole purpose is to defeat whatever barriers you put up. Furthermore, “no metadata” that is the data required to be public in order to be routed through a publicly accessible network. And, it may be possible to anonymize that data, but... In light of the recent attempted overthrow of the government, I’m now firmly against giving away government monitoring of the internet. In fact, it’s time we give it some teeth.

We’ve been the victim of foreign propaganda to the point where the people have been driven mad by lies and the destruction of the American culture. We need defense in cyberspace the same way that we need defense against any invading forces. Few, sane, people argue against having a Navy or an Army; it’s just by the nature of the internet as a new technology that we’ve neglected it this long. And, before you give me the “those who would give up freedom for security...“ line: we already don’t have freedom, we already don’t have security. I often wish that people could recognize that the government of the people and by the people is for the people. And quit treating out greatest tool against tyranny as a whipping boy for whatever personal crap they are going through.

> I want a computer that I own

No, you don't. Or, at least, you didn't want it enough for too long enough!

Each time you sent your friend a document which was not formatted in an open standard, you didn't want a computer that you owned.

Each time you accepted DRM in order to access some nice content, you didn't want a computer that you owned.

Each time you run a program or, God forbids, an OS which you didn't have the source code of, you didn't want a computer that you owned.

Each time you accepted to be target by advertisers as a way to enjoy a "free" service, you didn't want a computer that you owned.

Industry gave you what you wanted. Industry gives you what you still want.

So they've independently discovered the tenets of the Free Software movement. They make valid points, but that's all they've done. I'm surprised there's no mention of this in the comments here.

> I must rely on encryption algorithms that are designed with subtle flaws that can take years, if not decades, to come to light.

Cryptography is an extremely technical field, so yes, you do. That's not really relevant to the matter of truly owning your computer. If you want to personally validate modern theoretical physics, that would also take years of study.

> Even open source encryption algorithms that some claim are above reproach are repeatedly being shown to have major flaws, and the fixes to those flaws have their own major flaws.

Again, a separate issue. That's not a matter of having a computer you truly own, that's a matter of software quality.

> Will this ever end? Will I ever have a computer that I own?

They pose this question as if it's a rhetorical one. The Free Software movement already exists. You can support it with code contributions, documentation, testing effort, money, or advocacy/activism. See [0]. If you don't like the FSF specifically, you can support other initiatives.

[0] https://www.fsf.org/about/ways-to-donate/