Cyanogenmod should have a big asterisk beside it noting that it's system is signed with PUBLICLY AVAILABLE KEYS. Also they have just the same proprietary blobs (most of them) that other android devices have (radio firmware, camera drivers, etc) that have just been pulled out of shipping factory android images. The description (without these) is playing people false IMO
Ugh, really? So is there no smartphone OS that you can be at-least-sort-of certain doesn't have a backdoor (leaving aside unintentional exploits)? My understanding was that even FFOS was built on top of an Android kernel...
Prism Break
111–120 of 205 posts
Re: Prism Break
#112It's interesting that none of the BitTorent software was mentioned, at least BitTorrent Sync as an alternative to proprietary cloud storage.
Re: Prism Break
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> None of the proprietary browsers will track you By default Chrome sends the text you type in the location bar to Google. I am not sure but they may also use visited urls to source the crawler.
They do not use visited URLs. While Firefox separates its location and search bars, this seems to me more of a design choice than a privacy one. I could be wrong! - but then again, the much bigger privacy risk is using Google in the first place, and if you switch to a different search engine then Google stops receiving autocomplete too.
Using Google is a privacy risk but at least you can control it with Firefox, when typing URLs that need privacy. Who the hell can verify what Google (and the NSA listening to their pipes) does with your visited URLs? If you use another search engine, Google can see that, and it's one more piece of information.
Re: Prism Break
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple, Microsoft and Google have all willingly turned over data to the feds More like gave direct access to their backends . [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StlFKE_UVI4
One person's paraphrase of a general system is not evidence.
Re: Prism Break
#115Several of these suggestions seem somewhat disingenuous - e.g. many of them to be about free software more than actual concerns about tracking, as reflected in the labels "Proprietary" and "Free alternatives". In particular: - None of the proprietary browsers will track you - well, beyond what's specified in the privacy policy. Two of the alternatives are Tor applications, but the other two are Firefox (which provide…
> None of the proprietary browsers will track you > Windows won't track you Pinky-promise?
Re: Prism Break
#116Let's pretend I'm the NSA. I don't care right now about what your saying, I just care about who you associate with and where you are hanging out. If those raise my suspicions then I will also track the where/who connections and create a map of activity. Those dots might start to line up and create further interest. If suspicions are founded as actual threats I will do anyone of the following and probably more. FISA r…
You must have been living in a cave...
Re: Prism Break
#117Surprised Arch Linux [1] isn't listed. It's probably one of the most secure distros by limiting the installed packages to a bare minimum. Combine that with App Armour (or SELinux designed by the NSA) with a firewall and basic network monitoring to protect against rootkits. Plus always-on VPN, dm-crypted harddrive, noscript etc. NSA also released SEAndroid [2] which hardens Android significantly. It's included preinst…
Re: Prism Break
#118If you're going to continue using Google Mail, it's a dumb idea to deliberately switch away from Chrome. The connection between Gmail and Chrome is among the more carefully guarded TLS connections on the Internet.
Re: Prism Break
#119It seems that would be the digital equivalent of a paper shredder - imperfect but not necessarily easy to pick up and read. Just as well, all these collection operations that seem to be in place would fill up with mountains of useless data.
Re: Prism Break
#120Let's pretend I'm the NSA. I don't care right now about what your saying, I just care about who you associate with and where you are hanging out. If those raise my suspicions then I will also track the where/who connections and create a map of activity. Those dots might start to line up and create further interest. If suspicions are founded as actual threats I will do anyone of the following and probably more. FISA r…
You completely missed the point. The NSA is tracking everyone. They're building a database of everyone's activities. Nobody knows who the "terrorists" are going to be 20 years from now. The moment you become a suspect, they can bring up everything they've recorded you saying or doing and use it against you. The NSA is above the law and the rules they follow are set by a secret court appointed by a single man who has…
At the next Boston bombing, or whatever, they analyse that metadata for the perpetrator. And the next one. And the next one. And build a profile of what a "terrorist's" communication patterns look like.
And then they single out everyone matching that profile and stick watches on them, or bring them in.
It's Minority Report without the psychics. Google Now for Homeland Security.