Negative thoughts flooded my mind. The EU is constantly trying to push Chat Control. They’re blocking bootloaders on phones, introducing ID and face scanning everywhere, in the US they’re trying to push system-level verification, corporations are spitting in our faces and don’t even hide it. I know we have to fight. My personal rebellion was joining Fediverse and Lemmy and quitting Reddit. But seriously, boss—I’m tired. Are our attempts to preserve internet freedom futile? Can we win against corporations and politicians who we pay but don’t listen to us?
But seriously, boss—I’m tired
Unfortunately, that’s their game plan: be an unrelenting bureaucracy that grinds you down so you eventually just give in and finally accept it as it is now then passively accept what they come up with next.
Find what and where you can fight best, and throw your weight behind it. Don’t fall into dispair, that’s what they are counting on.
Some fight for better laws, some fight for better politicians, some hack, some donate, some build, some propagandize, some host and archive, some preach and philosophize.
The best often do several of these things. Find what you’re inclined towards and do it. We need every last drop of effort to defeat the corpos and their corrupt political allies.
You can’t stop the signal.
We will always be able to keep our own provacy. Linux phones are getting better, motorola is working with grapheneos. Even if all new phones suddenly become locked down we will still have our own phones. They cant stop us from building and using our own private services. The main issue I see is friends and damily not willing to use private messages.
Privacy is dependent on our peers to to have privacy. Privacy is not a choice.
Of course we can win against politicians who we pay but don’t listen to us. At some point, this is not democracy anymore, and if this is not democracy anymore, then the people is going to express itself through non-democratic measures. Just saying.
Until then, we have work to do: convince friends, family, politicians. Expose lobbyist, corporations. Support education, spread knowledge.
I think moving away to decentealised means of connecting is the way. We already have things like Reticulum. If we invent a powerful and robust decentralised way of physical connection (like LoRa or HaLow but better) then we won’t need any corps - neither ISPs nor those that create web services for the ISP based network
You are definitely right, but I will caution that people are going to have to get used to a lot slower connectivity speeds and higher latency than we’ve been used to.
Max reticulum link is 40mbps, tor to onion services is like 5mbps, wifi halo is like 1-16mbps and MeshCore and Meshtastic are like ~20kbps max.
Centralized internet has gotten us used to speeds of hundreds of megabits per second and latency of 10s of ms, and that’s just not possible when decentralizing systems, at least not right now.
at least not right now.
I think this is the key point. Decentralised alternatives begin as slower and less ergonomic, but over time, when more people use them, they should catch up on the proprietary solutions. The massive transition from Windows to Linux that has been happening lately is a good example of that IMO. It’s only us who can help these initiatives grow after all.
Had similar thoughts this morning. I think it’s clear that many countries are going to head down the Great Firewall route; which is now very effective. It’s so hard to bypass and risky that most people don’t attempt to. As more countries implement these measures, and the list of countries/datacenters where people can set up XRay proxies (for example) shrinks, it will be easier to detect and block. I imagine if ad-hoc meshes became popular, then they’d be shutdown too. The problem is more political than technological.
Yes, because “The EU” is not a hive mind. There’s politicians on both sides of this. We just need to make sure we back the right ones.
Read the Communist Manifesto. Thank me later
The zillion dollar question. The control freaks do their job and have lots of power, but on the other hand the diversity of responses is immense. Things change: it’s evolution. Be smart, adapt, and don’t forget that a better tomorrow for each and all is possible, day after day.
Nope. They have no power over decentralized services outside their jurisdiction.
We will always have the option of privacy, even if we loose every court battle in 99% of countries
In the US MS send data to AtData (former Towerdata), among others, which use keyloggers and mouse movement logs, because this is irrelevant if you use decentralized networks or even the Onion, they know always what you do and what you post. Because of this is important to desactivate Recall and block coresponding telemetries. Portmaster, PiHole or similar nowadays is mandatory in any OS and network system.
Not for Linux?
Well Linux don’t have recall, but anyway depending on the apps you use (don’t forget that GitHub is owned by MS and for sur certain APIs also in FOSS). Firewalls and traffic monitors like Portmaster also are for Linux. Also Linux isn’t immune against spy- and logger malware.
To be clear, Windows as most used OS is traditional also the main target of malware, but since nowadays are more and more servers working on Linux (even those from MS itself), the panorama is changing. MS has therefore invested a lot of work in shielding Windows with an efficient sandbox system, secure boot and one of the best AV on the market included in Windows, even protecting against Root Kits.
While Linux, being less affected, has rested a little too much on its laurels and does not have really effective protection or an AV that deserves the name until today. The risk that malware can affect the system (which is free and easy to substitute) is certainly smaller in Linux, but not so for files and documents, nor for the Boot sector.
Eh, Qubes.
Yes.
We have to keep fighting, and it isn’t easy but we have been building great things! Look at the growth of the fediverse with projects like mastodon, Lemmy, pixelfed, etc. More and more, people want alternatives to surveillance-capitalist social media platforms. They see the value in privacy as the stakes get higher for activists. Keep fighting, keep sharing.
Now, I also believe that ultimately we cannot solve political problems with technical solutions. We need to organize online and offline to effect real change. This organization must be multifaceted (“diversity of tactics”). A recent success of this type has been rolling back flock surveillance in municipalities around the US. Go to city council meetings with your neighbors. If the council won’t listen, then go out later with a comrade and smash those fucking things.
We dont got good stories. We aint winning the masses. So Id say no.
I’m already tempted to resort to wild violence, since we are being pushed out of the last bit of freedom we have. I’m about to get diagnosed and the business has a good chance of succeeding, at which point I can push peaceful measures. I hope I’m not forced to do what I have to, because if I die, my father is infamous for some things, and I’m fairly sure he will leave far more bodies than I ever could.
He has an actual squad of ex-special force buddies.
Overall, someone is getting fucked, one way or another. We can’t just let them push extralegal bullshit on us with no resistance.
I’m trying to actuate the peaceful plan rn, but I’m squeezed so badly already. No one can do you in as much as your own family, I got into so much debt bailing them, and looking for a second job.
They aren’t blocking bootloaders, they’re blocking the firmware. It is an issue, but it isn’t as problematic. The only ones blocking the bootloader unlocks are capitalists, who want to profit from your data and break your phone when they need more money.
One action can serve multiple purposes
