“The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal,” Wyden wrote.
I heard from someone that used to work on the military side of things of data collection. He said a few years ago Amazon came in with their servers and set up their tech and then had to teach the gov side about data collection and all that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gov just started contracting out their spying.
At the risk of playing devils advocate, are they not allowed to subscribe to newspapers without a warrant? This is publicly purchasable information bought by a (checks notes) agency with the expressed mission if gathering as much data as possible.
If Rep Wyden wants to prevent this, the first - and most important - legislative action is to prevent its collection and sale, not some anti-TLA circle jerk about the NSA buying it on the open market.
This was my first thought. All of our data is already on a marketplace for companies to buy and sell. What is stopping any government agency, federal or smaller from simply participating in this?
We need to fix the root of the problem if this is to be stopped.
As a mobile app developer I promise that you want to have push notifications that are capable of doing meaningful work on your phone. Apps are often entirely dead but a push notification from a central server will still get you X/Y/Z functionality.
Companies abuse this to then track you, and harvest endless amounts of information but the alternative is your phone no longer notified you of anything and the majority of background functionality for your apps dies entirely.
What I wish would happen is that mobile OSes have another set of location/network permissions for push notifications.
Is this written by an alien? Do you not have family you call, or a job? This is the stuff that makes the privacy community look like a joke, this is not realistic. This is just roleplay.
You can just use VoIP to call people it’s not a big deal and you don’t need to go the extreme ways which are being mentioned in the video you can also just spoof a lot of your device information, use a different OS etc. Minimizing privacy risks is always good but you don’t need to take it that crazy serious if you’re just a normal individual like me and you. We are low-value for big companies the more power, known you are the more steps you should take to protect your privacy.
In the beginning of the video she explains this isn’t for everyone. Throughout the video she discusses tradeoffs. Seems pretty clear she understands the difficulty of this.
Do you not have family you call, or a job?
Once again, this was explained in the video. WiFi is everywhere these days and there are people who don’t leave home often. These are simply tradeoffs some folks might be willing to make. It really depends on an individual level and cons of this approach were made clear in the video.
This is the stuff that makes the privacy community look like a joke
Good thing you don’t speak for the entire community and this is just an opinion. This video details possibilities and can be fun to learn new things from. Seems oddly aggressive, to me, to say this over a simple video.
This is not realistic.
Speak for yourself. People lived without phones for many years. Doesn’t seem too far fetched to live with WiFi only connectivity. Once again, tradeoffs.
In the beginning of the video she explains this isn’t for everyone. Throughout the video she discusses tradeoffs. Seems pretty clear she understands the difficulty of this.
Yup, unless you have a problem with authority, or investigative journalists
If you can’t practice what you preach, then the advice is just roleplay imo. So if you aren’t legitimately considering doing this yourself, then this is exactly what I mean by unrealistic.
This would make life very difficult for the vast majority of people. Many 2FA schemes only have SMS available and a SIP/VoIP number sometimes are barred from using them.
It’s an interesting experiment though, so I applaud this person for trying out a way to maximize their personal privacy.
I’ve tried carrying multiple devices but it’s honestly hard to do.
I did this for a while unwillingly because I was in a rough spot and couldn’t pay my phone bill. Even with the ease of getting to wifi in modern times (I would often just go to a restaurant that doesn’t turn off their wifi), it just isn’t worth it and is a massive inconvenience. Not to mention yh3 call quality was often terrible over slow public wifi once I had the VPN going.I am grateful that doing this is fee, however. It was certainly better than nothing.
I got a 42% score, but I really feel that this is because it does not take into account the fact that people have different threat models. I don’t really care that Meta has a photo of my coffee that I shared to my friends. Pretty much my only criteria for me when sending stuff on unsecured chats is if the app got hacked, would I be ashamed if it got public.
Well, Bob, that’s the point. Your “threat model” is just… wrong. It’s like going to a factory stating you only care for phisical protection ignoring the chemical hazards.
That’s not o photo of your coffee, that’s where you live your socioeconomical group, your believes, your political inclinations, your social network, your daily routine…
The coffee shop WiFi question doesn’t allow for VPN only, requires to choose an additional option (none of the other are great beyond exclusively using home internet, which I selected this time).
I got fooled by the google alternative letter hostname 😆
I use “virtual” credit cards for these situations (or a gift card I received), but not an available option.
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