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[–] 38 points 8 months ago (8 children)
  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Yes, surely TOR will protect us from government surveillance...

    The project was originally developed on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community and continues to receive U.S. government funding, and has been criticized as "more resembl[ing] a spook project than a tool designed by a culture that values accountability or transparency".[177] As of 2012, 80% of The Tor Project's $2M annual budget came from the United States government, with the U.S. State Department, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and the National Science Foundation as major contributors,[178] aiming "to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states".[179] Other public sources of funding include DARPA, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the Government of Sweden.

    [...]

    Critics say that Tor is not as secure as it claims,[185] pointing to U.S. law enforcement's investigations and shutdowns of Tor-using sites such as web-hosting company Freedom Hosting and online marketplace Silk Road.

    But also...

    In October 2013, after analyzing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, The Guardian reported that the NSA had repeatedly tried to crack Tor and had failed to break its core security, although it had had some success attacking the computers of individual Tor users.[27] The Guardian also published a 2012 NSA classified slide deck, entitled "Tor Stinks", which said: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time", but "with manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users".[186] When Tor users are arrested, it is typically due to human error, not to the core technology being hacked or cracked.

    [...]

    A late 2014 report by Der Spiegel using a new cache of Snowden leaks revealed, however, that as of 2012 the NSA deemed Tor on its own as a "major threat" to its mission, and when used in conjunction with other privacy tools such as OTR, Cspace, ZRTP, RedPhone, Tails, and TrueCrypt was ranked as "catastrophic," leading to a "near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications, presence..."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)

    YMMV, and your implementation and usage matter.

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  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Yes, surely TOR will protect us from government surveillance…

    I don't get the sarcasm. Everything that you've posted suggests that it will.

    Simply pointing out public funding doesn't make it less secure. It's implying (or allowing others to imply) some hidden conspiracy that breaks TOR in some way that we don't know about. If this is a source of vulnerability, it has not been demonstrated.

    Based on what we do know:

    “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time”, but “with manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users”.

    when used in conjunction with other privacy tools such as OTR, Cspace, ZRTP, RedPhone, Tails, and TrueCrypt was ranked as “catastrophic,” leading to a “near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications, presence…”

    TOR is open source and the protocol is well understood. The software has been audited multiple times by multiple different sources.

    The TOR network itself is secure.

    The people who get 'caught using TOR' are caught based on other failures of their personal security. Like forgetting to enable TOR once and logging into an IRC channel, connecting to a malicious site with a javascript enabled browser, running TOR on an exploitable phone or running a business who's payments travel through financial networks viewable by the adversary.

    There's more to cybersecurity than simply installing the TOR browser bundle. If you are not familiar with this field, do not risk your freedom or safety trying to do things on TOR which would cause you to come to the attention of intelligence services or other bad people.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    Tor is not as secure as people think, all you have to do is to be able to analyse traffic on both entry and exit nodes, (or just your ISP and the server). Some companies can do this as they provide services to ISPs and have access to realtime traffic analysis from all over the world.

    If a private company can do that, so can any government that can coerce or bribe those companies.

    There was an article I read some years ago about a guy who was getting ddosed on his tor hidden service and he contacted someone who manages those companies and they found his hidden service's IP in seconds.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users

    No, but the implication is that they may be able to do a lot of it, and we can never know.

    What came just a few pages later in the presentation you referenced is "Goal: expand number of nodes we have access to".

    That has been their goal for practically decades at this point.

    Is it really some conspiracy-nut level stretch to think they might be operating thousands of nodes today and have much deeper penetration than we think?

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  • [–] 30 points 8 months ago

    Abolish their right to fiscal privacy.. We want to see all the books.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Sounds like Congress wants to be abolished.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago

    Congress appear to think they are immune to companies collecting, buying and selling their data online. They pretty much all have private accounts. That information will be publicly available to anyone who wants it if they do this.

    They'd have to be suicidal to go along with it. It's a case of hubris, inability to think critically about the situation past the money, and potential power and the assumption that they'll somehow be insulated from the fallout.

    But ruin the wrong person's marriage or lose the wrong person their family? That target will be so big they'll have no place to hide. There's not enough secret service to protect them. We already saw that with the January 6th stuff.

    This isn't just really stupid. It's exceptionally dangerous.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago
    [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    You need to have better OPSEC and you need to get over your hesitation to make and submit Fake IDs to services asking "let's get you ID verified". Online Anonymity was never really a right, you have to work for it, and you have to be paranoid to keep it. This means you need to break laws to keep it. How badly do you want it? If you draw the answer at petty laws then apparently not badly enough.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Lol. Lmao even.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Hate this all.

    I mean, I hate this all, and I'm also telling you to hate this all.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Abolish pedofiles instead. The way they are wiping their asses with the 4th amendment should be grounds for invoking the second amendment

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  • 55 comments in c/privacy@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 118 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Can everyone chill for just a fucking second, the deluge of insane news this week is unreal

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  • [–] 97 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    That's the point. Do enough crazy shit at once and most of it will be overlooked.

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  • [–] 53 points 8 months ago (21 children)

    Honestly, I look at this and I see a future where everyone runs their own Federated services. I can verify my child's age as well as mine and I'm the best one to decide what they can and can't see. So I only need to worry about me and my family.

    Or a local community can run it for themselves.

    A forced move away from social media, because they can't afford the risk, to one where we all run our own stuff and can follow who we want.

    This is only 1 possible outcome of course, and it's wildly idealist, but it's a future I'm going to push for no matter what. So I'm very biased, so don't take my opinion into account. :D

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  • [+] 28 points 8 months ago (16 children)
  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    you got any tutorials or suggested hardware to join a mesh network? id be interested... it's only a matter of time before the public internet is just unusable.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Not internet level replacement. But Meshcore running on ESP32 is pretty neat. I recently set up my RasPi 4b with a LoRa Hat and set it up using pymc_repeater to set it up a repeater at my apt. https://meshcore.co.uk/

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    To join you need to either have an established mesh network already (assuming you don't want to start a ISP)

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    right i found meshtastic.org through lemmy ... and its a cool concept ... purchase some hardware and join the network... download app... and you can do text communication... i was just wondering if there were more robust mesh networks with more capabilities than a text message. id rather just get prepared for when the rug is pulled out from underneath us and we have to get an anal cavity search just to check the weather.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    There are a few metros around the world that have higher speed community networks (NYC Mesh, Freifunk, etc). If you get a HAM license, you could try participating in stuff like AREDN which uses modified WiFi access points. Depending on where you are, you'd likely have to start a group or club to start building out infrastructure.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    What exactly are you looking for?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Not OP, but I personally would like to see a mesh-based low-bandwidth HTTP alternative, like Gemini. A tool set for sharing things more persistent than text messaging (or ideally building other digital services with) while being compatible with the underlying lower performance hardware and wireless medium.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago*

    Http doesn't have that much overhead (especially when you want to send things in the MB range)

    What kinds of applications are you talking about? Are you thinking TCP/IP connectivity or something slower?

    You can build a network mesh out of wireless point to point and 802.11s mesh networks. It is all TCP/IP networking so you can run any application you want over it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_(protocol)

    https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Wiki

    Edit:

    I forgot about HaLow. It is lower bandwidth but it has a much longer range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Reticulum seems cool since it can work over all kinds of different networking technologies, even regular ol' WiFi and whatnot. Higher bandwidth channels can talk to lower bandwidth channels, and vice versa.

    It has its own problems with scale and actual users out in the wild, as well as I believe some issues getting proper code contributions and consistent maintenance.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    the government can’t control them

    • They can use signal jammers to take them out pretty easily.
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  • [+] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    No. They identify your location, confiscate all your stuff, give you a stiff fine and then send you to jail.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I like to join your community and you can help me setup one for me and my family. Fuck social media and corporate.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I have a Matrix #the-ozoned:matrix.org . While I don't know a lot, I have quite a few number of folks that do. Or we can all learn and figure things out! I'm often here or on @ozoned@btfree.social as well as my Peertube, TubeFree.org, powered by my nonprofit BTfree.org.

    Just say what you need and we can find someone that can make it happen. :-)

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Honestly, I look at this and I see a future where everyone runs their own Federated services

    I very much doubt it. People in general just don't care, or even worse. They think that it is a good thing as it keeps baddies out (it won't) and it will protect them (it won't).

    It seems line very dark times are ahead. Self hosting is good, but it also gives the other side a bright shining beacon to go after. If they know everything about 99% of the population already, they can spend a lot more resources to really get to know the last percent that actively tries to avoid it.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Next step: allow only official services to be used. Introduce draconian legislation to persecute circumvention.

    Fines with no legal recourse, debanking or complete banking bans, like EU has imposed on four people so far.

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    [–] 29 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    "Let the government put a video camera in your bedroom to verify you aren't molesting kids. If you fight against this, that means you are molesting kids"

    -use this argument anytime someone thinks this is about protecting kids.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I tried something similar with my brother-in-law. He is not against chat control in Europe (we live in Denmark), so I asked him to give me his phone, unlock it and let me play around with it without him in the same room. He refused, but still has "nothing to hide". He has not changed his mind...

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  • [–] 25 points 8 months ago (4 children)
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    [–] 18 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    paywalled. also, this is a good way to kill the internet. when everyone starts getting doxxed, all that will be left are the bots.

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  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    It's irritating that normies eat up any legislation sold as "protecting kids." It's like it shuts off a part of the brain.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    The founding fathers didn't think everyone should vote, and frankly i think they're right. They had the wrong criteria, sure, but the average person is so gullible, uninformed, and just plain stupid that i genuinely think they (and everyone else) would be better off without a say.

    But how to be more selective without it being abused by horrible people? I've got no real idea.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    How soon before the Iron Firecurtain drops and the Fourth Reich blocks the entire internet and locks you into a state intranet like China and NK do?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    The land of dystopia just keeps on dystopying

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    marsha blackburn is a gential wart.

    not one of the cute fuzzy ones either. nope, she’s one of the inflamed itchy ones that oozes puss and smells like a rotting potato.

    i hope she falls in a hole and never finds her way out.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Still speedrunning civil war, I see. I can't think of anyone that wants this...

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Oh Hummelgaard will feel not too lonely anymore.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    So now is when you go out and get a few throwaway email accounts on as many odd sites as you can. My fb page is a nom-de-plume and has been for over a decade..

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    [+] -15 points 8 months ago

    There is no right to be anonymous on the internet. The information highway is a highway, it's public.

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  • 4 comments in c/technology@lemmy.zip view that post
    [–] 11 points 8 months ago

    How about we remove the dangers to children who are in congress or other parts of the government, before we use it as a scapegoat to take away privacy rights?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I don't think whatever congress this is can decide that.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago

    Today, a package of a dozen “child online safety” bills is moving forward in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. The laws, framed as a way to crack down on harmful content and make the internet safer, would force social media companies to enact invasive identity verification measures in order to keep children from accessing online spaces.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    Will..the internet had a good run. Seeing what is happening in Brasil.

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  • 3 comments in c/bad_internet_bills@lemmy.sdf.org view that post
    [–] 13 points 8 months ago

    They aren't "considering" it, they've already decided to do it. They're just figuring out how to package it.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    what's the alternative once they figure this out, a mesh network of wireless devices?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    If they "figure it out" it will mean that there is no alternative, and no technology on its own will prevent that. I think until that happens, you just build spaces they do not control, and avoid contributing to what they do control, and act to make encroaching control expensive and difficult. Don't comply with unjust laws.

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  • 2 comments in c/usa@midwest.social view that post
    [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Come And Take It, bitch

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Good luck enforcing that.

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