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The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

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Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a good example. If memory serves, the threat _was_ detected, however it was not acted on. There was lots of finger pointing about lack of coordination, but (as I recall) the core problem was that it was one threat amount many (100s? 1000s?), so the threat detection was generating too much noise. Ubiquitous surveillance could (does) easily end up creating the same situation: not enough signal amo…

It's not an example; it's the causal explanation. The article in question at the top of this thread is discussing the Patriot Act expansion; the family of laws passed in direct response to the attacks of 2001.

Ah. Understood.

The Patriot Act is the problem. We knew it at the time. Sounds like we all agree on that point.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has been over for a very long time. I know I'll get downvoted for saying this, but this is something that more people need to hear because the fact they can vote affords citizens the cognitive dissonance they need to believe the propaganda they were taught about the US federal government. I'd still choose America over China any day, but that doesn't mean I think the United States is a free country; it's a fre…

"America has been over" is a statement that needs qualifiers to have meaning. "America" means different things to different people.

"America" means different things to different people.

Well there's one qualifier right there. The American Mythos of "all men are created equal" has failed to line up with the American reality for quite a long damn time and for reasons that don't require much more effort to "qualify" than is needed to lift up an arm and point at a history book. It's been qualified, documented and analyzed thoroughly enough that the qualifiers should be abundant and "self-evident"-to continue the trope of quoting directly from the user's manual.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#93
post #77

It's clear that the government(s) haven't had people's interest for quite a while now. It's nice for us to vote and protest but we need to take things into our own hands as those forms have yielded little results. We need to build things and use software that are privacy first. Such as: DuckDuckGo Firefox Signal (actually secure messaging unlike whatsApp) Linux OS TOR Librem 5, is a great open sourced secure phone ex…

Many upvotes on this, please.

Political and moral aspects aside - the sooner we can start reasonably and effectively counteracting this stuff (if only on an individual basis, to start) - the better.

BTW the sister comment to this one also seems helpful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259653

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#94
post #9

Here is what I do myself to avoid surveillance culture, in case anyone find it useful. 1. I always use local apps rather than webservices if possible. I use only free software, built from source, to be sure there's no tracker in it (I would love to find a way to whitelist which apps can access the network, but I haven't found a way for that yet). There's almost always a way to perform a task locally. 2. I have a copy…

I would love to find a way to whitelist which apps can access the network, but I haven't found a way for that yet Ironically this is very easy on W10 and OSX. But you can do it on Linux with AppArmor.

I don't suppose you have any pointers on how to make that a reality in Ubuntu/Debian? I too would be very interested in being able to configure whitelist only network connections.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the laws discussed in this article, the FBI can gain access to the logs of one's ISP (or VPN provider) without a warrant. So they can trace a suspect's TCP traffic without any duty to notify anyone they're doing so.

So why would my ISP be logging every or even any TCP packet coming out of my modem? I watch Netflix at full 4K and that consumes about 3GB an hour. Multiplied by the 50,000 in my neighborhood and it seems pricey. Some things I would be expecting them to log are DNS requests, DHCP leases, and access to ISP sites.

initial TCP connection. obviously they wouldn't log every TCP packet in an established connection.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#96
post #44

So the US, with its Constitution protecting the people from its Government, is allowing this whilst also considering Edward Snowden a traitor? It seems something has shifted 180 degrees since WW2, and the US Government has quietly won the game where the goal was to shit on the entirety of the history upon which it was built whilst, at precisely the same time, pointing to the Constitution as the reason why "America is…

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

> Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either.

Maybe we don't bother mentioning these very obvious historical circumstances.

Instead, we can talk about what technological solutions exist already, or could exist in the near term, which would obviate these institutions of oppression.

I am very interested in tools like Whatsat[0] and Sphinx[1] which protect communications between participants...

but what about my browsing. Do i just need to migrate all my "real" searches to Tor (already pwnt) or Beaker (insufficient, frankly)?

How can we continue to define ourselves as free persons while we exist among these dark patterns?

0 - https://github.com/joostjager/whatsat 1 - https://sphinx.chat/

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#97
post #82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

Would it be going too far to suggest that the founding fathers never intended for a full democracy in the first place? It makes for an interesting argument when viewed in the context of the electoral college.

No, it's just historical fact that they feared mob rule and worked to try to keep the uneducated masses out.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has been over for a very long time. I know I'll get downvoted for saying this, but this is something that more people need to hear because the fact they can vote affords citizens the cognitive dissonance they need to believe the propaganda they were taught about the US federal government. I'd still choose America over China any day, but that doesn't mean I think the United States is a free country; it's a fre…

Creating the Federal reserve bank closed the loop. The politicians and corporations are able to control the whole system of money/power independently of what any outsider wants. Print the money, give it to your friends, buy/create the politicans, make the laws, enrich yourself, repeat the cycle but with more power and wealth this time around.

The vast majority of corporations are victims, too. Some of the giant ones are not, though.

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#99
post #82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not act like the United States was a shining example of freedom and democracy before WWII, either. Slavery, destroying indigenous people and taking their land, followed by oppressive laws targeting black and indigenous people... Liberal democracy is definitely a step forward from monarchy, but the freedoms it offers have always been built on the oppression of many. It's no surprise that the oppressive arm of im…

Would it be going too far to suggest that the founding fathers never intended for a full democracy in the first place? It makes for an interesting argument when viewed in the context of the electoral college.

Anecdotally, “it is a republic, not a democracy, by design” is something I hear from people who bring up in conversation that they voted Republican. (Note: I’m not American, so I imagine the sort of person who tells me that isn’t representative of Republican voters).

Re: The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning

#100
The only way to combat this is to continue researching methods of securing data before transit, through cryptography (until that too, is outlawed), and researching communication schemes that obfuscate the meta data/sender-receiver.

What about Tor? Tor’s known to be compromised by the NSA, (as well as much of the internet backbone) so it’ll be interesting if such research comes to fruition soon-ish.

Politically we can try electing officials and such, but it seems even the most promising candidates are too tempted by lobbying groups’ deep pockets.

Hopefully emerging decentralized tech will enable us to more easily hide our tracks, since even with end to end encryption, they can still get the meta data and track where you’ve been. (I understand being decentralized doesn’t necessarily mean the data in transit can’t be traced, but I think we need a decentralized system before we can realistically work on the aforementioned problem)

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