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by purpled_haze 3802 days ago
Two things:

(1) The NSA is there to protect us, in theory.

(2) There will never, ever be guaranteed privacy or security as long as you continue to use other people's equipment and network. Using the internet expecting privacy is like continually saying, "I'm going to have sex with everyone and going to complain about the people that have STD's."

You could try: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network

Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

Those are a little safer.

8 comments

> Using the internet expecting privacy is like continually saying, "I'm going to have sex with everyone and going to complain about the people that have STD's."

I don't think this comparison is apt. Comparing internet usage to having sex with strangers might be the equivalent of comparing <insert western world leader> to Adolf Hitler in politics. It's not completely wrong, but it certainly makes the discussion considerably more negative, and distort its the details: i.e. casual usage of the internet !== casual sex.

A better analogy for expecting privacy on the internet: I'm going to go to different places outside. Some of them will be completely public, where it's clear anything I say or do can be heard by other people. Other places have walls and give the impression of privacy: although I cannot tell if there are tiny holes in the wall that people can watch me through.

I expect, correctly or incorrectly, different people will know where I am and what I'm doing at a given moment. I also expect that no one person will know all of my day except for me.

>Using the internet expecting privacy is like continually saying, "I'm going to have sex with everyone and going to complain about the people that have STD's"

It's more like, no matter how careful you are to choose who you have sex with, there's no avoiding the STD risk when everybody has already been fucked by the NSA

There may be safer theoretical options (or very limited deployed ones). But our society is increasingly reliant on the centralized networks.

"Yes I'm on the internet but I don't use email, Facebook or any other service that you use, I only accept hand-crafted UDP packets on port 12345 to my static IP..."

But to your point, I think this has created a void that P2P protocols can fill, and I certainly look forward to more solutions that actively follow the Internet's original decentralized vision instead of "client-server-over-decentralized-network" that we have today.

I have little or nothing to hide, but I'm sufficiently informed to realize that people with a lot more political involvement than I have need a lot more privacy than I bother to create for myself.

Projecting one's own apathy onto the whole populace is irresponsible and destructive to everyone's freedom, whether they are direct participants in politics, or not.

> (1) The NSA is there to protect us, in theory.

Do people actually believe this?

What else do you think they are around for?

They have bureaucracy and misguided projects and overreaching power but they do protect our national security. They aren't some evil corporation headed by a supervillain, they're full of people just like you and me.

They exist to maintain a status quo.
What exactly is that status quo? Things are constantly changing and the NSA has itself greatly evolved from where it originally started.
just like you and me, but have traded in their conscience for that steady paycheck.

unless you've never heard of LOVEINT.

...what? I'm sure there are plenty of other places for steady paychecks if that's what people are looking for. Also don't think 30k employees joined up so they could spy on their spouses.

The government isn't a bad thing, and neither is working for it. I really don't get this irrational fear and judgement.

again, what? Is this a defense of your original comment? I just said that people aren't doing it for the money because there are plenty of other places to work if it was just about a paycheck.
Of course, but not directly "us", they are there to protect our national interests.
Yes, many of us do.
> The NSA is there to protect us, in theory.

The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory.

>The NSA is there to protect us, in theory.

who is "us"?

The rich and powerful.
you should add a (3) The internet is military property, and everything you do on it should be considered public, even if temporarily encrypted.