OneMeaningManyNames

Full time smug prick

  • 8 Posts
  • 90 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2024

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  • This is a cool way to protect a belief, narrowing the scope so that the refuting data do not apply anymore. Perhaps I can write a fucking essay about it, but do you have data to support this narrowing move? There is like a ton of data that the West has been invasively spying of possible threats to the status quo (from Cointelpro to undercover UK cops like recently), not just people “acting on it”. Furthermore, actions can fall under protected free speech as well, like putting up a poster, demonstrating, and protesting. So your proposal is inherently undemocratic if you roll back freedom to only protect oral expression, quite similar to a “Don’t ask don’t tell” attitude towards gay people. What you just said is simply counter-factual. Blanket surveillance is a staple of Western societies in the 21st century, and it blows my mind that there are still people oblivious to what is more or less spelled out clearly in the Patriot Act and all laws modeled after it across the globe.


  • There is a conceptual distinction: Encryption in transit vs. encryption at rest. You may send the packets encrypted to the server, but if they are not encrypted on the server’s file system, anyone can read them.

    The real question is, why do you think governments make such a big fuss about citizens having access to military grade encryption?

    There have been audits of e2ee implementations, and the algorithms used also have some objective properties. I don’t think that I have ever heard in cryptography discussions that backdoors are so widespread that the discussion is moot. I have only heard, time and time again, the opposite.

    Even Apple, in this very occasion, opted to ditch the service rather than backdoor it, and in fact takes the UK to court over this. I think that the opinion that this is all for show is a tad wild, and not very well supported in this occasion.

    Like every cryptology book starts with the adage “There is cryptography that prevents your little sister from reading your mail, and cryptography that prevents the government from reading your mail, and we will talk about the latter.”

    https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2025/02/23/three-questions-about-apple-encryption-and-the-u-k/

    On the other hand, not all implementations are created equal. Telegram was recently under fire, and there is a lot of variance in e2ee implementations in XMPP clients, IIRC.





  • I don’t think we understand very well the threat model here. Are we talking about having a Mozilla account or the web engine itself. If you have an account they will probably start doing mining shit with it. What about activists researching certain topics then? The content browsed can be visible to Mozilla if they use their account for syncing bookmarks. That should be a dealbreaker right there. No different than Meta user-profiling the fuck out of your engagement behaviors. Now if this is NOT the case and you haven’t a Mozilla account, I assume that the version of the web engine available back at the time of the fork is exactly the same. So far so good.

    The problem is that browsers are hard, and there is a ton of web protocols to be implemented, various fixes for security, support extensions and other QOL features. WORD ON THE STREET is that tasks like these cannot be undertaken as solo/hobby projects, that funding and an organization structure is essential. The teams behind LibreWolf, Waterfox, etc have a track record of already lagging behind Firefox’s version updates. Same goes with user-profile and configuration sets like Arkenfox (if I am not wrong). You may tweak the conf all you want, but if privacy and anonymity is compromised at the web engine level, these forks will be left with little to do about it. Then the only option will be to keep using an old version of the web engine (sacrificing security and quality of life extensions), or ditching the gecko web engine altogether.

    That is why people are looking for genuine alternatives to the web engine.







  • This is some Gestapo/Stasi shit.

    Like, all queer persons must go beyond Signal/Tor level.

    This extends to the physical world: Plan ahead for escape routes and survival networks.

    I will come back with this angle but, REMEMBER those mfers who always said “the NSA does not target you, so asking about anything more than Signal is paranoid/futile if ever the NSA targets you”?

    REMEMBER that we said that some people have advanced threat models by default? Eg feminist activists, activists in third countries, queer people?

    WHO is paranoid now, that being queer, pro-Palestine, and/or climate activists can have you on the watchlist?

    This development only proves my previous points that the hordes of sock-puppets spamming the Privacy forum are fucking spooks. Pooping the conversation about advanced privacy and anonymity should qualify for permabans, IMHO.