161–170 of 241 posts
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Use a VPN for everything.
VPN solves absolutely nothing. You are just moving your root of trust around. Nym is a very promising mixnet that is built with a global passive adversary in mind. That may work.
Latency from the UK to (say) Germany or the Netherlands isn't too bad either.
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This is what I have done since the original snooper's charter came out. It is not perfect -- I am sure that GCHQ etc have got pretty good at correlation attacks -- but by encrypting _everything_ BT, Virgin Media etc. will just get a list containing exactly one IP and a month-long connection time. Secondly, I really recommend Andrews & Arnolds [1] as an ISP if you can only get ADSL. I don't use them at home because I…
Do you have any recommendations for VPN providers?
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I don't know, i think the mentality here is that the government is spying for you, not at you. Is it different in the us? And is that because all revelations revolve around the fact that citizens are being spied on?
Then why do people light british spy cameras on fire so often?
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The average person doesn't understand all our nerd worries.
Neither does this specific "nerd". I honestly have yet to be convinced; a lot of it seems very similar to fear mongering and illogical with the arguments being very nebulous. Maybe I have yet to sit down and flesh it out with a deep privacy advocate.
I'm very unlikely speak up enough to become a target, but the next Dr. King, the next Snowden, the opponents of the next Trump or next J. Edgar Hoover are going to have big problems if privacy continues on its present course.
Privacy isn't currently a big problem for the average citizen in our society, but it's very important fat-tail event insurance to have in the future. By the time you realize you need to worry about privacy, it's probably already too late. History has shown liberal democracies are at best metastable (all governments tending toward authoritarianism if not actively maintained) and whistleblowers are an important stabilizing force.
[0] https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/7-easiest-felonies-to-com...
[1] http://thinkaboutnow.com/2016/07/average-americans-commit-3-...
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As a person from the UK, no I've not forgotten. The difference here (and this is NOT excusing them) is that you've gone from a series of systems which didn't officially exist, accessible from the select few of intelligence agencies and no doubt secure as hell into private ones which are controlled by people like BT. Yep, BT. The same BT who are laying off 10k staff this year because they need to cut costs. This isn't…
Why does anybody other than policing and security agencies need access to this stuff? NHS? Fire and rescue? WHAT? They don't have a role in investigating crime. Okay the fire brigade do post-fire analysis of possible arson etc. but that's not something you need access to somebody's internet history for.
It's like asking why does the king of Saudi Arabia need to have the power to jail his subjects for no reason? Why does Putin need to have the right to jail or kill political opponents?
The UK doesn't give you right to remain silent (your silence will be used against you), you are compelled to bear witness against yourself (you must surrender passwords), and there are super-injunctions where you are gagged and not even allowed to discuss the legal issue with your lawyer.
This is the country that sent government thugs to force journalists to physically destroy their own laptops and hard drives.
With religious clergy overtly and explicitly being part of government power (in house of lords).
Hell, it's super recent that government power in house of lords stopped being inherited.
Imagine if the US senate was staffed solely by inherited power. Not just in the style of Bust Sr/GWB, but actually inherited. It's not the same, since the US senate is more powerful than the house of lords, but "it's complicated".
So your confusion here may come from the fact that you look at the UK as "like the US, but they talk weird", where it's a couple of step closer to "Like Saudi Arabia, but part of political power is elected".
Obviously Saudi Arabia is much further away along this spectrum, but I hope you see my point anyway. You seem to be saying "how can a free society do this?", where the answer is "because it's not that free, your assumption is flawed".
Has everyone forgotten about Tempora [1], XKEYSCORE [2], PRISM, [3] and the other Snowden revelations [4]? This kind of shit has been going on for at least a decade in various forms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...
As a person from the UK, no I've not forgotten. The difference here (and this is NOT excusing them) is that you've gone from a series of systems which didn't officially exist, accessible from the select few of intelligence agencies and no doubt secure as hell into private ones which are controlled by people like BT. Yep, BT. The same BT who are laying off 10k staff this year because they need to cut costs. This isn't…
She probably envisioned the Home office doing mass denial of visas based on a lookup of applicant names with IP addresses deemed to be related to terrorist activity.
What I don’t get is this: our governments - “ours” being the group of parliamentary democracies - routinely diss authoritarian ones such as China - and rightfully so - for their violations against human rights, among which that to habeas corpus, privacy, and reasonable suspicion. To the point that we agonized over and sabotaged contact tracing apps, which could have helped a lot in fighting COVID, over claims to priv…
The UK has never been especially supportive of human rights; it has a tradition of a sort of live-and-let-live native libertarianism, which is why we don't have ID cards (+), but it also has the tradition of imperialist repression techniques which means that the public are broadly supportive of the military shooting people in the street if they think they might be terrorists. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pol…
What I don’t get is this: our governments - “ours” being the group of parliamentary democracies - routinely diss authoritarian ones such as China - and rightfully so - for their violations against human rights, among which that to habeas corpus, privacy, and reasonable suspicion. To the point that we agonized over and sabotaged contact tracing apps, which could have helped a lot in fighting COVID, over claims to priv…
In my view privacy has more layers. It has layers of personal data (name, social security, medical records), user-produced data (your family photos), communication (chat) and metadata (ad tracking). Lately I have seen ad tracking put in the same group as personal data. I don't think they deserve the same level of protection. I think total privacy is fools' gold. We always ask for total transparency from our governmen…
Since time immemorial governments have used the seal of secrecy to hide their daily embarrasments, failures, and corruption.
UK government has ordered a report into whether Sauidi is promoting Jihadism in Uk, and then decraled it secret. Same for Russia report. Recently the government has been sued for handing out multi-billion contracts to pals without challenge, and obviously they immediately reached out for the secrets act.
We are sensitive about private data, because if you believe in a right to remain silent, well, now you can't stay silent.
Evem if you are innocent, spurrious charges can ruin you financially.