ExtremeDullard

ExtremeDullard, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

If you’re in Linux, you can use eCryptfs to setup a private encrypted directory, move the ~/.thunderbird directory into it and just leave a symlink to it in your unencrypted home directory. Then you can store your emails in plain text in the encrypted private directory.

It’s not even complicated to set up: most Linux distributions are setup so that the private directory is automounted upon login: when you’re not logged in, your data at rest is encrypted. It only becomes readable when you’re logged in.

Both my Thunderbird and Firefox directories are stored in my private directory.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

My volumes are PLAIN dm-crypt encrypted (i.e. LUKS without the LUKS bells and whistles) and the key is stored on my Vivokey Flex implant.

I mount them using scripts that combine crypsetup and vivokey_pam, with the ubiquitous ACR122U RFID reader: the systemd service file calls my script, I present my implant to the reader and voila: the volume is mounted.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

Troll

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

So is it like communism 1.0?

Communism is the oppression of man by man. Capitalism is the reverse.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

From TFA:

lawsuit that claims the company has a misleading menu that promises privacy but fails to provide it.

Really? What a shocker…

Google gave users a placebo button that doesn’t work to make them feel in control. But rest assured Google has no intention of giving anybody control of their privacy if they’re not legally obliged to do so - or if they can get the law rewritten to their advantage.

Fake buttons are a very common psychological trick. You can read more about it here.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

This is arguably the first generation that grew up with zero privacy. Being watched is normal to them - and absolutely horrifying for this Gen-Xer.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

I never really understood the “I have nothing to hide” mindset.

This subject is best summed up by the Girl in Andrew Niccol’s vastly underrated movie Anon:

“It’s not that I have something to hide, I have nothing I want you to see”

This is the most intelligent, best articulated commentary on privacy I’ve ever seen and it fits in 17 words.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

Yeah but if you were a parent or if you are one. Would you do it?

I am and I did not. Kids need to grow up without feeling they are being watched all the time. Or rather more accurately: kids need to grow up without being watched so they can sense when they are and take measures. Kids who grow up without any personal space don’t even realize they’re not free, and that’s a perfect recipe to create adults that accept tyrannical governments without question.

My kids grew up doing stuff they didn’t tell me about, and I didn’t know where they were half of the time. And yes, at times, I worried. But it was important to let them be.

the crazy kidnappings nowadays

I’ve heard people of all ages say that all my life. This is a well-know cognitive bias (i.e. “things were better in the past”) and it’s simply not true. I’m fairly certain our society is much safer today than it was in the past.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

If you where in the position to need it you might find your decision to not utilize it to be endlessly horrible.

It was a choice. I chose to let them risk life and limb doing whatever stupid shit kids do behind their parents’ backs, risk being run over by a car or kidnapped as they walked to school. The risk was very small, and the benefits of letting them grow up with a normal, non-Orwellian childhood far outweighed them. Hell, my generation and those before me grew up like that and survived just fine.

But I agree: if something really bad had happened, I don’t know how I could have lived with myself. And this always weighed heavily on my mind whenever they were late to come home.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

Yes. Strange isn’t it?

Gen-Xers are also guilty of letting corporate surveillance happen, thereby letting their children grow under the watchful eye of big data.

I never said my generation was virtuous. In fact, I blame people my age for not affording the next generation what they themselves got to enjoy. Just like we blamed our boomer parents for enjoying the good life after the war and leaving us the crumbs. Little did we know the ones after us would have it even harder.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

When you says “resonate”, do you mean you don’t understand the sentence? Or do you mean you don’t see why you should care?

Re meaning, the sentence seems blindingly obvious to me. But maybe it isn’t… It means you don’t want privacy because you have something illegal to hide in your house, but because you don’t want to invite anybody in. I really don’t know how to explain it anymore clearly without repeating it verbatim.

If you don’t see why this is important or you think it doesn’t concern you, send me your address and I’ll come around tonite to take pictures of your furniture without your permission.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

You read me wrong my friend. It was nothing more than an honest-to-goodness reply to you. No hostility. Be careful with written discussions, because you don’t see the face of whoever is writing and you tend to slap the state of mind you yourself are in when you read it. Imagine I’m writing this with a smile and that’s pretty much how I wrote it.

You don’t find the quote profound and that’s fair enough. To each his own opinion. Me, I think it’s a perfect description of the core issue of privacy: having the choice not to expose what I don’t want to expose for no other reason that I don’t want to. I don’t want to shut everybody out, I want to freedom to do it if I so choose and not have to justify myself or suffer consequences.

Maybe I’m easily impressed :)

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

Brave does crypto… Need I say more?

ExtremeDullard, 11 months ago

I don’t know. I didn’t do the printing. The law firm did it. But I remember our lawyer mentioning that they fedexed over 20 cartons of printing paper. Assuming 500 sheets per ream and 5 reams per carton, that would be 50,000 sheets, or 100,000 pages since it was printed on both sides to be even more annoying.

ExtremeDullard, 11 months ago

I hope they did. Now that you mention it, it would have been an amusing twist :)

ExtremeDullard, 11 months ago

No idea. That company folded before it could even respond. It was a typical dot-com with a completely ridiculous business model. That’s why our lawyer decided to fight the suit: he figured they’d collapse soon anyway, so we might as well milk the lawsuit for the publicity.

ExtremeDullard, 11 months ago

This was in Utah. I’m no lawyer. Maybe it wasn’t legal. What’s what our lawyer said he did.

ExtremeDullard, 8 months ago

Well it’s point #1 of the Privacy Guide: keep your private stuff private.

They walk the talk, is all.