Live data from Hacker News

Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance

theguardian.com

161–162 of 162 posts

Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance

#161
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a couple of levels to this. I try to avoid adtech-driven stuff because I prefer other kinds of products which come out of different business incentives. On a practical level, that's what drives my online privacy habits. On a more sinister level, even though a malicious state seems very distant (Nordics here), given how many such there are in the world, it is definitely not impossible. We must avoid…

The crux of the Tor project was all about herd anonymity. Your traffic blends in with millions of other Tor users. Unfortunately global passive surveillance, flooding the network with malicious nodes and targetted exploits of the browser and OS mean that very strong anonymity is still not possible, even with a relatively 'extreme' solution like Tor.

Forgive me for being late in replying to you (sometimes I sit on things for a while). Are you suggesting that we must find a way to democratically federate the problem of trusting particular mixnet servers? What solutions would you suggest? This seems a silly exercise, so feel free to ignore it: if you were to redesign the internet from the ground up, what would it look like, particularly with respect to this problem?

Re: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance

#162
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do.

Chances are any non-conformist beliefs you have (assuming they're legal,) have their own subreddits, Twitter tags, Facebook groups, Youtube videos, etc, so that's probably just you.

So, here's the thing: it's not the beliefs themselves, it's where the political lines are drawn.

Like: let's pick two hot-button political issues in the US. Say, abortion rights and gun control. You can definitely find online spaces that are pro-choice and spaces which are pro-life. You can find spaces which are pro 2nd amendment and pro gun-control. You're going to be much harder pressed to find spaces which are pro-2nd AND pro-choice, or pro-gun-control AND pro-life.

So yes— there are absolutely places where I could express my beliefs that cross political lines. But I couldn't do it as myself. Or at least, I'm not willing to.

Post reply on HN