It is clear now that the Progressive elites are attempting that famous “fundamental change” in America that Obama was talking about.\u00a0 This change means strict racial categorization and discrimination and other identarian policies, attacks and persecution of conservative Christians, economic persecution of dissent, strict censorship of expression, loss of the right to assemble, and of course, loss of the right of self-protection to bear arms, with politically-motivated selective enforcement. We shall have the freedom of the slave state.\u00a0 One of the most hateful policies that is coming is China-style surveillance.\u00a0 We already have that to a large degree, but it has generally unobtrusive.\u00a0 It will be weaponized, and will be open and intrusive.<\/p>\n
People who still believe in individual liberty need to become aware of surveillance much more\u00a0 than we are now.\u00a0 I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is in despair because he or she sees no way of avoiding it, and thus no way of living a life with a semblance of privacy.<\/p>\n
I understand this despair. I am worried about the future myself.\u00a0 But… that doesn’t mean we can do nothing. The biggest problem I see is the feeling that it is “all or nothing,” that if it is not possible to achieve complete privacy, then it is not worth the effort to achieve any privacy at all.\u00a0 That is wrong.\u00a0 Here’s my philosophy, for what it’s worth, taken from that conversation with a friend.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0 were talking about having a private server for things like web pages, such as this one, and the habit of signing every message with one’s name or similar identifier.\u00a0 In particular, I told my friend to stop signing emails with his or her name.<\/p>\n
Using a private server is “more” safe than using a hosting service, but nothing is absolutely safe.\u00a0 But “more” is better than “none.”\u00a0 The key to security is habit.\u00a0 If you get in the *habit* of using DuckDuckGo, you\u00a0 won’t “accidentally” use Google.\u00a0 If you get in the habit of using the Tor private window in the Brave browser, you won’t “forget” to use it.\u00a0 If you get in the habit of turning on a VPN *every time* you log in, you won’t forget etc. If you get in the habit of not signing email, you won’t forget and sign one you wish you didn’t.\u00a0 l’ve gotten him or her to the point of using an email address that isn’t easily identified, and if if he or she would stop signing his or her emails with a name, it would be better.<\/p>\n
The thing to remember is that computer security is only about 30% technology.\u00a0 It is 70% social engineering and habit. Read about how the FBI got Dread Pirate Roberts on the onion network (see:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2013\/11\/silk-road\/<\/a> )<\/p>\n The bottom line is that while there were some important\u00a0 technological failures, the FBI got this person mostly because of behavioral\/social engineering mistakes:\u00a0 using the handle “altoid” for both clearnet and darknet stuff, having stuff delivered to a home, etc.\u00a0 It’s that thoughtless stuff that gets 90% of people.<\/p>\n A friend of mine\u00a0 had marijuana sent from New York to his hotel room in another state by freaking FedEx, and was caught because of a dog sniffing the package at the FedEx hub in Memphis.\u00a0 If he had bought his drugs from local people he would have lasted longer.\u00a0 If he had grown his own marijuana, he would have lasted longer still.\u00a0 Eventually he would have been caught, I’m sure, since he was on a self-destructive path.\u00a0 But it would not have been *then*.\u00a0 It’s easy to say “I would never make that mistake,” but most of us would — eventually — because we are lazy and sloppy and develop habits of being lazy and sloppy.<\/p>\n These bad habits become our defaults.\u00a0\u00a0 Worse, people do things that harm security because it’s *easier* to develop the bad habit, and people don’t think it’s worth the effort.\u00a0 It’s hard to develop a good habit because the good habit requires overcoming the inclination to do what’s easier — and the easier thing becomes the dominant habit.\u00a0 Unless you use your will to develop the better habit.\u00a0 The classic example is using stairs instead of an elevator.\u00a0 It’s harder to use the stairs, and it takes conscious effort to choose to do it.\u00a0 At first.\u00a0 Then, when it becomes the habit to use the stairs, it feels odd to use the elevator.\u00a0 It’s magic.<\/p>\n Another great example is using cash all the time rather than a credit card — which is surveilled by everybody under the sun.\u00a0 Paying with cash or card is a habit.\u00a0 If your habit is to pay with a card, you’ll forget and use the card for a purchase when you wish you didn’t.\u00a0 If your habit is to pay with cash, then you have to think about using a card, and you’ll use cash when you “forget.”<\/p>\n This is true for all privacy issues.\u00a0 For instance, if you want to avoid a cell phone for communications, everybody has to get in the *habit* of listening to a two way radio.<\/p>\n The key is the habit of simply being mindful about security. Every day, I sit down and ask myself what I did today that I could have just as easily<\/em> <\/strong>done in a more private manner.\u00a0 For instance, why do I have my smart TV hooked to the internet when I don’t really need it?\u00a0 Why did I pay for that burger at McDonalds with a card when I could have just as easily paid cash?\u00a0 Why did I go to McDonalds and buy a crappy hamburger (and thus be caught on CCTV) when I could have just as easily made a sandwich and taken it to work?\u00a0 For Think about how incremental this is:<\/p>\n Bad habit:\u00a0 Stopping by McDonalds every morning on the way to work for a McMuffin and coffee and paying with credit card.<\/p>\n Step one:\u00a0 Stop by McDonalds, but pay with cash. Each one provides a small incremental increase in privacy.\u00a0 Which step to move to is a personal decision about the balance of privacy and convenience.\u00a0 But just because you can’t be perfect and 100% secure, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be mindful and make it a little more difficult to exploit you — and get better over time.<\/p>\n The analogy I use is locking your car.\u00a0 We all know that we should lock our car.\u00a0 Do we do it because it will stop everyone from breaking in?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 It will only stop the guy who is wandering through the parking lot jiggling door handles.\u00a0 If your car is locked, and the one next to you is unlocked, which one will he exploit?\u00a0 It’s that “You don’t have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than the guy next to you” philosophy.\u00a0 But you can always do a little more. You can add an alarm or one of those stick things on the steering wheel.\u00a0 They may not be all that great, but they will deter a few more people.\u00a0 But not all.\u00a0 And then you can go to fancy electronic keys.\u00a0 And then encrypted fobs.\u00a0 And then parking your car in a garage.\u00a0 And then parking your car in a garage with security guards.\u00a0 And on and on.\u00a0 With each step, you incrementally add a little more security.\u00a0 It will never be perfect.\u00a0 If some sooper dooper thief with unlimited resources and world class expertise decides to steal your car, it will be stolen.\u00a0 But with each step, it’s a little less likely.\u00a0 For that sooper dooper thief, the key is making it less likely you will be targeted, which is a different (though overlapping) issue.<\/p>\n The same thing is true of computer security.\u00a0 For those of you who use linux and ssh, how hard is it to change your ssh port away from 22?\u00a0 Not hard at all.\u00a0 But doing so means that those fifteen zillion bots and script kiddies in China and Iran won’t be banging on your door looking for that one vulnerability you forgot to close. Five minutes of effort, and you’ve decreased your exposure a little.<\/p>\n It’s not the government I’m really concerned about when it comes to this stuff.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, I am concerned about the direction the government is taking — but frankly, if the government wants to take you down, it will. Worse, the kinds of things one has to do to be completely free of government surveillance are exactly those things that will cause them to notice you for taking those steps.<\/p>\n Instead, I’m much more concerned about the cultural changes associated with the transition to a socialist totalitarian state.\u00a0 There are people who get their self-worth from hurting others, and these people flourish in a totalitarian state.\u00a0 I’m concerned about the woke mob that will search all your old posts in order to find a pretense to destroy you.\u00a0 I’m concerned about some wacky person who decides that you are his or her enemy.\u00a0 I’m concerned about the neighbor who decides to complain to the HOA.\u00a0 I’m concerned about the local business competitor who decides that they want to contrive some scheme to ruin your business. I’m concerned about the coworker who decides they want to use you as a pawn in some office power play. I’m concerned about some pissed of social justice warrior who targets me for some reason I don’t comprehend.\u00a0 I’ve seen people harmed in all these ways.\u00a0 To return to the government, while I don’t believe that it’s possible to stop the government if it wants to destroy you, it *is* possible to present oneself so that it’s less likely that the government will *target* you, while still maintaining some truthfulness to yourself. Part of that is doing small unobtrusive things that “naturally” decrease one’s footprint.<\/p>\n It’s amazing how much people can know about you.\u00a0 A few months ago I suffered a severe gastroenteritis that I thought was due to contaminated food I got at a local grocery.\u00a0 I sent them an email.\u00a0 I got a call from the manager of the store (part of a large regional chain).\u00a0 He had looked up every bit of food I had bought from them in the past year.\u00a0 His organization apparently had cooperative agreements with other vendors, and he also knew about other purchases I had made from other places.\u00a0 In this case it worked to my advantage, because he had a record of me buying the food, and even retrieved a video of me doing it.\u00a0 He then got in touch with the local health department and they got even *more* records on me, including contacts and other stuff.\u00a0 I had no clue about how much I was being monitored on a routine basis.\u00a0 It turned out to be a Norovirus and nothing to do with the food — multiple members of my extended family came down with it in the next week or so — but it was an education.<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/theconversation.com\/end-of-the-silk-road-how-did-dread-pirate-roberts-get-busted-18886<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.quora.com\/How-was-Silk-Road-taken-down?share=1<\/a><\/p>\n
\ninstance, we now\u00a0 tend to buy a bunch of ham and cheese croissants at a local donut shop that are just as good as McDonalds burgers and almost as cheap. That decreases CCTV surveillance from once a day to once a week for that task, at least.\u00a0 Of course that doesn’t stop street cameras, etc., but it’s one less exposure.\u00a0 It’s a small step among many.<\/p>\n
\nStep two:\u00a0 Stop at a local place that has less surveillance, and pay with cash
\nStep three:\u00a0 Buy a week’s worth of ham and cheese croissants from a local (not large chain) donut shop with cash, and eat one on the way to work each day.
\nStep four:\u00a0 Make your own damn sandwiches.<\/p>\n