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Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

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Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#41
post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

Concrete steps that I have made to gain control over my data:

- hosting my DNS server ( bind ) along with my domain

- Made my own RSS reader and blog with openid authentication (server/client)

- Installed ftp server ( vsftpd )

- Installed my own mailserver (nice tutorial here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer)

Planning to: - install my own xmpp server

I want to create an integrated, user centered platform, that will provide ( mail, blogging, storage, ftp, feed reader, an openid identity & social networking ) and make it really easy for somebody to install it on a raspberry pi + some external storage and have its own personal micro data center.

Someone could also consider Citadel (http://www.citadel.org/)

If you ask me, I'd say that the personal data center is the future ( the free future )

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#43
post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

Concrete steps that I have made to gain control over my data: - hosting my DNS server ( bind ) along with my domain - Made my own RSS reader and blog with openid authentication (server/client) - Installed ftp server ( vsftpd ) - Installed my own mailserver (nice tutorial here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer ) Planning to: - install my own xmpp server I want to create an integrated, user centered platfor…

For XMPP, I recommend checking out Prosody (http://prosody.im). You can get a working system up with Off-the-record instant messaging and internal file transfers in an afternoon, if you're familiar with UNIX system administration.

If you use a client like Jitsi, you can do ZRTP encrypted calls through the server as well. Use your own SSL certificates for SSL.

Ejabberd is also good, however the debug information was pretty inadequate. Also helps to be familiar with erlang.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#44
post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

Concrete steps that I have made to gain control over my data: - hosting my DNS server ( bind ) along with my domain - Made my own RSS reader and blog with openid authentication (server/client) - Installed ftp server ( vsftpd ) - Installed my own mailserver (nice tutorial here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer ) Planning to: - install my own xmpp server I want to create an integrated, user centered platfor…

Well, I wonder why cant we create too many false positives for them to make the whole data meaningless ?

Instead of hiding all our private communication we can generate fake communication across the whole internet which might raise flags in NSA's system. (I would have given more concrete examples but I am scared that tomorrow some NSA freak might knock on my door.)

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#45
post #31
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting sentiment, and I can't help but think this is why the government seems to fear the youth the most/ships them off to wars in other countries.

Was there a time when wars were only fought by old men?

The ones that lasted a long time.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#46
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concrete steps that I have made to gain control over my data: - hosting my DNS server ( bind ) along with my domain - Made my own RSS reader and blog with openid authentication (server/client) - Installed ftp server ( vsftpd ) - Installed my own mailserver (nice tutorial here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer ) Planning to: - install my own xmpp server I want to create an integrated, user centered platfor…

Well, I wonder why cant we create too many false positives for them to make the whole data meaningless ? Instead of hiding all our private communication we can generate fake communication across the whole internet which might raise flags in NSA's system. (I would have given more concrete examples but I am scared that tomorrow some NSA freak might knock on my door.)

What you're proposing is like this:

I want to say a sentence to someone, but in order for an unintended listener not to understand what I'm saying I will say 10 sentences. Five of which will be "I will kill you and everyone you know" and "I will bomb America".

Isn't that just a meaningless waste of energy?

-- The government spies on you because you make it easy for it to do it. Instead, keep your personal data personal, use encryption and there's not much more that it can do, without becoming physical... ( it has no problem doing that either, but at least its intentions will be more obvious that way, and hopefully will wake up all the ignorants that think that some old guys peeking into everyone's lives is justified).

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#47
post #7

Instead of a "campaign", how about some technical countermeasures? They're the only thing that actually has a chance of working. You simply can't rely on the political process as it exists when the response of the security establishment is to a) wait for an arbitrary crisis to dust off a naked power-grab, b) secretly "reinterpret" the law beyond recognition, and c) flatly ignore the law as they did with their "Terror…

What technical countermeasures do you suggest? Check out what this guy has to say about resistance: http://youtu.be/3ftfEXxFC4Q?t=28m53s

There's this project in northeastern Spain https://guifi.net/, which basically advocates for a distributed network set up by the citizens. As long as your infrastructure is run by a superior power, you can only hope encryption/tor/ssl, etc.. will work properly.

Of course if you are sending information to hosts outside the network that information is prone to be subject to surveillance of some kind.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#48
post #27
post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

The root cause? It's always money. Lawrence Lessig makes this clear, in a TED talk no less ( http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t... )

The root cause is power, of which money is a conveniently quantifiable manifestation. Power-seeking has occurred continually over time since human populations became dense enough to extrude persistent hierarchies.

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#49
post #8

Just the fact that we have to start websites like these, and march Capitol Hill to make the government realize its mistake is depressing, infuriating, and is gently, gradually tapping at a hot, steaming teapot of rage within every rational individual's psyche. What is the root cause? How did this get so incredibly bad? Is it the fault of the public? Is it the public's fault we are in an Orwellian state of Soviet-era…

The reason freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition and host of other freedoms are important is that, from time to time, you need to use them.

Democracy isn't a guarantee that everything will be perfect, quite the opposite, but that we have a reasonable chance of rightening a wrong without erecting guillotines on the national mall.

The challenge IMO isn't petitioning Congress, it's petitioning the public to make sure this issue remains on the radar for the upcoming election (Part of that, though, could well be a noisy march on Washington).

Re: Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us

#50

I still wonder why humans outside the US are of less value then the peaple inside it... Or aren't we humans ? Also where is StopWatching.eu ? Cause the site is made for us :p

Stop complaining, start building. You're welcome.
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