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Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

mullvad.net

61–70 of 137 posts

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#61
The internet, as it was before the one-way ratchet started to close, feels more and more like a lightning in a bottle that nobody in power wants repeating ever again. Everything in the past couple years has been going towards the centralization into a small number of services, walled wastelands that require you forfeit any kind of anonymity to even browse, tightly coupled to the countries they operate in, and especially for tech corpos, practically an extension of surveillance agencies through PRISMesque programs.

Soon enough (and already the case, if you're one of the unlucky ones) you won't even be able to browse it without explicitly allowing Google to track you on every single website you try to access through your Google-approved, constantly monitored handheld device, linked directly to your identity.

Commercial VPNs are not a solution, they're merely kicking the can down the road, and shrinking the number of people that will complain once they will, finally, come for them too, first by requiring strict accountability to providers and age verification, then outright banning any that do not comply.

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#62
The interesting question is whether non-Western countries will develop their own internet governance models that are neither US-dominated nor China-firewall style. The .ng ccTLD (Nigeria) is a real, functional namespace that offers an alternative to .com. The internet was supposed to be distributed. Maybe the future is genuinely distributed governance, not a single blocs approach.

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol as if they don’t have a birth certificate already

It's not shown on the internet. Age verification laws essentially broadcast it.

I think the basket_horse comment is referring to the US government.

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#64
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Parents demanding "age verification" laws I keep seeing this claim, but where is it coming from?

Just talk to an average person rather than a tech nerd.

I don't think asking the average person whether they would consent to constantly have their face scanned to access the Internet would yield the result you believe it would, no matter the excuse.

"parents" are not do-I-look-like-I-know-what-a-jay-peg-is boomers you and others who make this claim believe them to be. the people who are having children now grew up with iPhones. to them, the Internet is not that newfangled thang they heard about on CNN/Fox.

so, show me the data. not a poll with vague ass questions like "are you concerned about your children's safety on the Internet?". I want to see the percentage of people who answer yes to an unambiguous question like "do you consent to submit your ID and/or scan your face to access any random website ~~to fight terrorisds~~ ~~to protect our democracy~~ to protect your children?"

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#66
That’s why I said it before, only delusionals think we live in democracy, there’s no democracy, no freedom, no transparency, none of the values you hear daily are actually in use, it’s just a facade to trick people and maybe to make them relax their measures to maintain their own privacy compared to non democratic ones. In fact, it’s better to be straightforward and be oppressive where people might fed up and revolt at some point rather than those sneaky tactics, coupled by making people lives very expensive to live where “privacy” becomes an auxiliary commodity, plus giving the public some distraction like concerts and other carrots after all that whipping.

It’s very accurate to assume that ALL US based tech companies are part of mass surveillance, no matter what promises you hear, companies can be forced to cooperate without the public knowledge. Same with European ones, as the article stated, they are not that far, so don’t assume much even when you see the cliche “based in Switzerland!! Trust us give us your money”. The only safe way is to host your own, maintain your own, encrypt at rest and while transferring on your own, trust no one and nothing, and it’s a good start.

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird because... I'm not the customer on either Reddit or HN. I'm the product.

You can become a customer on reddit by purchasing subscription. I did. I like reddit. Doesn't matter. They want your passport.

This is like saying you are the customer when you buy branded goods when in essence you are just paying to advertise the product for them.

Very weird world we live in!

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#68

sure, I'll just right on your service, with the ability to see and sell everything I do...

VPNs shift trust from your ISP to the VPN provider. I trust Mullvad 100x more than my ISP, so it's a good decision to use Mullvad and it benefits my privacy. It's not like your ISP or Mullvad can see content of sites, either they can just see the DNS requests. What ISP sees without a VPN: news.YCombinator.com, apple.com, Wikipedia.com What ISP sees with a VPN: Mullvad server What VPN sees when you use it: news.YCombi…

Note that depending on how you're using your VPN you need to explicitly set it for DNS queries to be made over the VPN

Re: Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird because... I'm not the customer on either Reddit or HN. I'm the product.

You can become a customer on reddit by purchasing subscription. I did. I like reddit. Doesn't matter. They want your passport.

Reddit doesn’t even have my email. No way in hell will they get any real identification.
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