[bigiain]

You don't even need that to be useful though.

In my tinpot banana republic (Australia) ISP metadata retention is required by law, and warrantless access to that is granted to organisations involved in fighting terrorism, child abuse, and other serious crimes - and those agencies include local councils, animal control, the taxi commission, and various horse racing oversight organisations... :sigh:

Even moving your meta data to a different legal jurisdiction makes it less likely to be abused. My local nosy dog catcher is unlikely to attempt to get hold of any useful internet meta data when my ISP hands over their records and say "Ahhh, yes - bigiain's metadata here shows about 2TB of bandwidth for May, all to the ip address of a VPN endpoint in <checks ip geolocation> Belize... I can look up the Belize police phone number for you, do you speak creole?"

[arno1]

Isn't the official language in Belize is English? Aren't South America's routers accessible by the agencies collaborating with the US Govt.?

[bigiain]

Maybe, and quite likely. I considered using Moldovia as my example jurisdiction instead, but Belize has some nice cachet and backstory to add appropriate colour and context to a rant.

Still gonna put off the local dog catcher who's trying to work out if I'm video chatting with his ex girlfriend...

(If _actual_ FVEY or equivalent national security agencies are curious about me, I'm pragmatic enough to know none of my tradecraft live action role playing is gonna make any difference at all. I could buy some magical amulets, fake my own death, and live in a submarine. I am still gonna be Mossad'ed upon... I'll avoid running shipping containers full of drugs/weapons/children across international borders, and try to keep my harshest criticism of the Saudi/Trump Royal families to myself...)

[jgaa]

Oh. It's quite enough to express your opinions.