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So with the announcements of the US secret projects on monitoring internet conversations, phone records and other things with agreement over multiple forms of media. What methods if any do you prefer to use to avoid this form of stalking :)

http://www.vice.com/read/privacys-public-death

PGP. OTR. Bitcoin.

I see dead people! And black helicopters!Freenet for file sharing and uncensored discussion.
TorChat for encrypted IM - the best available in terms of privacy and secrecy.
Tor for browsing sensitive information and using it's Socks5 proxy and .onion land.
Good old SSL/TLS for secrecy of transmitted data contents.

Many other possibilities.

The problem is not new ways of spying. Most of that already was possible with court warrant and current technology. The problem is that now even more and more people are spied upon without them committing any crimes and without any warrant or other justification. The western world government are fucked up and beyond and must be discarded and replaced like used diaper.

A major is people's browsing habits. They don't care if someone sees what they put online because they think "why would they care about me?". People care more about efficiency and ease of use than their privacy/security. It's only going to get worse as the younger generations get older, we're having this notion of sharing forced upon us wherever we go. The governments are only going to have to do a quick search when they want to know everything about someone because all this information is in the public domain.

I'm so scared.

It's not the governments that will be your ruin. It's your curious neighbors, people you pissed off, corporations, marketers, social networks, criminals, crooks, malicious types, perverts, gossip spreaders, blackmailers, and identity thieves. Your privacy is gone, and it's not the government that's taking it.

What about when governments install CCTV cameras outside your house? I don't want them to know exactly when I arrive/leave my house, so they're invading my privacy. I'm not saying they're the worst, but they still belong on the list.

The NSA, and other organizations, are composed of two things: databases and people. The people don't know you, nor do they care about you. The databases are harddrives. The people don't actually look at the harddrives until something happens, or the harddrive coughs up something interesting.

If you're a normal person, then nothing you do is interesting. If the algorithms cough up something that it thought was interesting, then the people look at it. Then, again, if you're normal (i.e not some Boston bomber), then the person dismisses it.

In the end, what the NSA, or other organizations collect are bits which do nothing.

Furthermore, and this is very important, if they're collecting massive amounts of data on everyone, then it stands to reason that you're not special. Just go on about your life.

However, perverts, blackmailers, people you've wronged, tweeters, identity thieves, and neighbors have a different modus operandi. They have you in their sights, and then take action to collect data on you. Those are the ones you should be worried about.

I did not know that FBI and NSA all are thieves, criminals, crooks, perverts and blacmailers.

The average gangbanger and drug dealer are not trying to pass laws of backdoors and data retention. It is FBI CIA NSA and learned elders of zionism who are behind all this mass surveillance and nanny state.Did that prevented Boston bombings? Did that stopped Breivik. No. And realistically it would not. And that is not even the true purpose of such surveillance. Total control and elimination of all dissent is what this surveillance is all about. With such total control no revolution or deviaton from official party ideology will be possible. Every single rebellion could be identified and crushed in early stages. Even before the rebels would start thinking about disobeying their supreme leaders.

Even though such control gives security, it still seems kind of frightening to me.

The government largely is a bunch of lazy ass pension seekers. Go to the dmv if you want to see government in action. The governments of the world cant keep people feed.. they screwed up and let the people get the internet uncensored.. there are open drug markets online if they cant stop that how are they going to do shit about anything. It is just a matter of time. Governments of the world are not going to get stronger they are going to shrink to the point that no one cares what they do. Every bit of wealth held in digital currency or gold or silver is a nail in the coffin of the state.

Everything (not just meta data) is archived, so they can just go back and crack PGP at their leisure.

I wouldn't worry so much about this. Yes, the Government(s) is (are) watching. They probably try to get as much Data on every single person as legally(?) possible.

But, all this Data is collected by government agencies. Do you really think the same guys that mess up every single project they touch are even capable to put all this data to use?

There is not very much to worry about, not because they respect your freedom (which they don't) but because government paid lazy bureaucrats are to incompetent to use this data.

Also every government funded agency always grows and grows, gets more expensive and continuously inefficient. Now they start all this projects and in 10 - 15 years we will see headlines like this in the press:



Also watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVaodJQmnRc

I know for a fact that this data is being used by people who shouldn't have access to it (ie. buddies of guys who are authorized to access it). One sociopath even uses it to stalk porn stars.

Then why are they not crushing us now? Algorithms not evolved enough?


This is a view I like. Mainly because it offers an easy-to-implement principle of action towards governments: ignore them.


You've got balls of steel. I wouldn't bet the well-being of the world on a certain large group of people with force on their hands not encompassing enough competence to identify their opponents.


Maybe it's not incompetence or failure of method. What if the terrorist acts weren't supposed to be stopped? What if they were even manufactured?


The vast majority of people here can probably agree that "big brother is bullshit".

Curious neighbor: I saw you watching Porntube!

You maybe understood my statement wrong. I find this development as outrageous and worrying as the (I think) majority here.

I just don't think that all the surveillance data of 100th of Millions of people (Internet, Cams, Car traffic, etc.) is evaluable in any economical way.

Also the people that would need to evaluate all this data are just some low paid government employees which are to lazy or uneducated to get a "real" job. I just don't feel threatened by them.

The fact that of course remains is that governments are tiring to get all this data, which is very worring. I just don't see them succeed.

This surveillance efforts will probably be even less successful as the war on drugs and even more costly. Everyone that has something to hide will find ways to hide it, so they will end of will gigantic amounts of useless data.


Well, that's a totally different topic and changes nothing at the huge costs of surveillance efforts.


So you watched the first 30 sec. Bullshit is just the title of the series and it's actually a very government critical show of two libertarians that has won several awards.

The Title doesn't really represent the actual content.

Why we're here @ this site. :)

The best response to such statement eould be "I saw you jacking off to it"

Oh strange. For some reason I thought it had ended at that point. Will watch more...

On your point about incompetent government: you might well be correctly describing the current status quo. However, these people don't usually do any work themselves (it's too dangerous, they might make mistakes and be responsible for them), they just contract it out. Within the scientific community there's a lot of talk about "big data" and such and I think it's only a matter of time until corporations see the huge opportunity and start selling "solutions" to the government.

I like the stance people take in this video: http://theriseandriseofbitcoin.com/

"you're not going to end the fed, are you?", "no, transcend the fed".

or even better the avalon dude: "we're not going to fight them, we will just ignore them".

Yeah, ignoring doesn't usually solve the problem.

The thing is, I just laugh my head off at the thought of the government trying to track people on the internet, if I did ever got labelled a risk, imagine the poor sod who's going to have to go through all the porn I've downloaded :D and it's going to be like that for every internet person they try to track.

Maybe they enjoy watching all that stuff. You never know.  ;D

lol. If you think they're sifting through your stuff manually in any way you are being naive.

It's not about "tracking people on the internet", it's about identifying the 'dangerous individuals'.

Google "big data". example: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation

Just imagine such technology in the hands of the Nazis. example: cleansing of the "intelligentsia" in Poland by Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors

Not all governments. The French still don't know what internet is

Ronald J Deibert at TEDx Toronto - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAJ6BtZDhUk

Not my department [29c3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw

"So, who is watching the watchers ?"  8)

I think they know, they're just to stubborn to accept that the language of it's users is mostly english.

In France exists one of the first Internet Surveillance Laws in Europe - since 2010. Internet Providers control their customers traffic for copyright infringement and after 3 violations there is a whole bunch of penalties. I´m pretty sure the French know what Internet is... ;)

Can we please get rid of the U.S. government now. Come on.

I can understand that way of thinking, but if you think about it if they have sense of due process left they're going to be forced to go through it if they want to arrest anyone, you can't just go and make shit up otherwise you'll end up getting arrested or sued no matter who you are and of course if worse comes to worse people are going to be after your head. The only way they could get away with not checking through the stuff their systems look at manually is by being blatantly illegal and then no one would go along with it, they're digging their own graves.

Wrong.
It's the majors that look for "copyright infringement" in the bittorrent protocol (only bittorent. DDL? Streaming? What the hell are those?).
They record the IP addresses of the bad guys who upload copyrighted stuff and they send it to the Hadopi.
Then the Hadopi asks to the ISPs the person corresponding to the IP/time of dl (yes, according to the French, an IP can identify a person) and it sends an email to this person saying 'Hey, we can't prove that you downloaded but you're a bad guy for not making your internet access secure enough, you better change that'.
Yes, the French think that it is possible to make your access completely 100% secure. Not possible? That's not their business. I guess they want people to make their own WPA.


After 3 violations, the Hadopi can chose what it wants to do:

• Nothing (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xfU1YG1XEaEJ:owni.fr/2010/06/26/hadopi-%C2%ABpeut%C2%BB-ou-peut-%C2%ABne-pas%C2%BB/+&cd=3&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr&client=ubuntu) (here too (http://www.numerama.com/magazine/16089-le-decret-sur-la-negligence-caracterisee-est-d-une-etonnante-subtilite-selon-l-hadopi.html))
• Going to the court

The potential sentence in court is a fine + cut of the "criminal" internet access.
Pretty dumb as you can open another access in another ISP the day after.

Anyway, they were in total two trials since 2010. Yeah TWO!! Brrrrrrrr, scary.
Results:

• A Rihanna song: the guy was found guilty, got a 150€ fine whereas it was his ex-wife who uploaded files (http://www.pcinpact.com/news/74364-hadopi-condamne-pour-seul-titre-flashe-150-fois.htm)
• A French movie: the (old) guy was found guilty, got nothing, and it was his daughter who uploaded files (http://www.pcinpact.com/news/77604-hadopi-condamne-pour-seul-film-flashe-plus-100-fois.htm)

Let's sum up.
3 years, € 30M budget, 2 trials, a €150 fine.

Now it's being stopped as it's not working.


Yeah.
Absolutely.

Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation. :)