This night I am tempted to throw some red meat into the Lion's Den.

It is the reason why I only will use applications containing my ideas or plans which will never traverse the Internet. And further why I never use Facebook or any other Social network, save for a tightly controlled LinkedIn entry. Twitter, under a pseudonym, using a randon VPN.

I call this reason "The Hindenberg-Hitler Contingency" and it is supported by the risks to which we are all subjected to by the F i v e E y e s (remove spaces). Who are they? Even in this forum I will avoid writing their component membership.

Please Google the two words yourselves.

As that fellow who is now receiving Asylum in Moscow has made it abundantly clear. All is collected. And all is saved for all future analysis, including the creation of personality composites.

And the basis of the Contingency is simple. All that it takes for one apparently sane regime change to put your life at risk.

Such a change happened in Berlin, 1933.

Can CRIMPERs imagine what the Gestapo would do with today's technology?

I can.

Locally saved data only, please. And for backups, encryption and ... www.tresorit.com

Undue paranoia you say? In these matters and ... especially if we look at the quality of candidates for high office on the Planet these days - I think not.

-TF

Good for you.

Taking that perspective to its logical inclusion (and taking into account all the further technological innovations that may be around the corner), you would probably be better off maintaining a "normal" online presence to keep up appearances, lest you be singled out for suspiciously luddite behaviour. But of course you wouldn't put any valuable information online (although you could include some enlightening material for the edification of soulless snoopers). Valuable information would be restricted to carefully guarded thoughts and handwritten notebooks using a personal cipher. (Although perhaps, eventually, it will be necessary to think in cipher...)

(Not being flippant --- just wryly considering the possibilities. I agree that there is cause for concern.)

Thanks for the wisdom 22111

TempusFugit wrote:

This night I am tempted to throw some red meat into the Lion's Den.

Maintaining a facade is an interesting notion. But my objective is to freely avail myself of the Web. Traditional browsing leaves tasty breadcrumbs for certain ... birds (of prey).

Valuable information must always be encrypted.

But, if one's query-stream suggests thinking that runs afoul of the "Thought Police" at any given 3-letter agency ... it seems that research activities necessitate.... T ... O ... R.

-TF

Lucas wrote:

Taking that perspective to its logical inclusion (and taking into
account all the further technological innovations that may be around the
corner), you would probably be better off maintaining a "normal" online
presence to keep up appearances, lest you be singled out for
suspiciously luddite behaviour. But of course you wouldn't put any
valuable information online (although you could include some
enlightening material for the edification of soulless snoopers).
Valuable information would be restricted to carefully guarded thoughts
and handwritten notebooks using a personal cipher. (Although perhaps,
eventually, it will be necessary to think in cipher...)

(Not being flippant --- just wryly considering the possibilities. I
agree that there is cause for concern.)

There's also the option of making the three-letter agencies irrelevant to your computing experience other than protecting your systems against them. The movers and shakers of the Internet community have chosen this route, building tools to encrypt everything, in part on the theory that jamming NSA's pipes with more encrypted communications than they have processing power to decrypt is a Very Good Start.

One tool I've been using for some two years is HTTPS Everywhere, a browser extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. The extension causes the browser to convert all web page requests to requests for an
https connection if one exists. https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/ The extension causes a negligible delay in processing a page request but not substantial enough to affect my work habits.

A related initiative is Let's Encrypt, which aims to make upgrading web page servers to supply pages via https a one-click experience for webmasters, including procurement of a free ssl certificate. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/lets-encrypt-project-comes-fruition-2015-review and https://www.metachris.com/2015/12/comparison-of-10-acme-lets-encrypt-clients/

Of course it isn't just government agencies that are tracking online computer users. There's the private sector too. Ghostery is a a nice, easy to use tracker blocker, with extensions for all major browsers, including mobile. https://www.ghostery.com/try-us/download-browser-extension/ It's close to a one-click experience to block all known trackers, then unblock only the few you want to let through. In my case, that's only the Disqus online comment service. Every time it blocks a tracker, it pops up a listing of all trackers blocked for the given web page. You can dismiss the pop-up by clicking on its top edge or by waiting for it to fade away a few seconds later.

And of course, there is The Onion Router (TOR) browser, which lets you operate on the Internet in a completely encrypted and decentralized environment. It is great for, inter alia, bypassing geographical restrictions management.

There are many other tools. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great resource section for minimizing your surveillance risk. https://ssd.eff.org/en

Finally, there are huge advantages to being very public about your opposition to surveillance. After all, legislative, executive branch, and judicial branch reform reacts to public opposition. The more people who are public about their opposition, the quicker we'll achieve the reform. And retaliation for political statements is not only legally prohibited, but in many cases you can also collect damages when it occurs. There are a multitude of pending cases in the pipeline. Very significant reforms have already been achieved in the U.S. and the E.U. through litigation and it is only a matter of time before even more reforms happen. But perhaps most important, going public with your opposition can make you really like that face you see in your mirror.

Paul

Hmm.

I take an opposite view to most of those expressed above. Yes, I would be very deeply concerned about a regime change in my country that brought authoritarians to power, but I have other means such as my vote, a relatively free press and relatively easy access to my political representatives to protect myself and my family against such an eventuality. I would not depend on technical fixes.

What I have had is the experience of working in cities experiencing serious, continuing terrorist/guerrilla campaigns. I remember looking out of my window in a tall office-building on one occasion and seeing, in the medium-distance, puffs of smoke, one after another, where the bombs were going off, with fatal consequences. On another occasion, a bomb was placed in a cinema less than a hundred yards away; fortunately it failed to explode. On another, I was evacuated from a hotel shortly before it was seriously damaged by an explosion. (I should add that these were not "false-flag" campaigns.) Today, I don't live in a big city, but close members of my family do, and only this evening I read a headline stating that the authorities there are prepared to confront up to ten simultaneous attacks, post-Paris.

If I have to lose a proportion of my freedom and privacy in the effort to prevent such attacks, I would be very happy to do so.