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by antiterra 1845 days ago
Doesn’t self-hosting also have privacy downsides, being that all the hardware is tied to you? I’d imagine whatever minor resistance to wiretapping a multiuser site gave regarding privacy of non-investigated individuals would disappear.
3 comments
RussianCow 1845 days ago
It depends on your threat model. If you’re worried about big companies like Google harvesting your data, self-hosting is a great solution because you remove them from the equation entirely. On the other hand, if you’re worried about three-letter government agencies, you need to go through much more extreme measures. Most people aren’t as concerned with the latter, though.
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caymanjim 1844 days ago
This is why I self-host. I'm not trying to hide from the government, as I know they don't care about me. Sure, in principle I don't want them snooping me, but it's not a concern. I self-host because I don't want companies snooping all my data.
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bsder 1844 days ago
> Doesn’t self-hosting also have privacy downsides, being that all the hardware is tied to you?

Sure. But I'm not worried about someone who has an actual warrant for ME getting at stuff.

What I want to stop is some random law enforcement idiot from Dipshitsville, Texas, from sending an electronic request to Google for "every email with the word "abortion" and "protest" in it" who promptly turns over all my email.

If you want my email, you're gonna have to get up off your chair, file a warrant with somebody's name on it in front of a judge, crossfile in some different legal jurisdictions, and have someone come seize my machines.

That will stop most everybody short of NSA.

If your threat is the NSA, you're screwed anyway. If they can't get at your email legitimately, they'll just fabricate the evidence they need against you.

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dragonwriter 1844 days ago
> If your threat is the NSA, you’re screwed anyway. If they can’t get at your email legitimately, they’ll just fabricate the evidence they need against you.

The NSA doesn’t need evidence; you must have them confused with the FBI.

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BostonEnginerd 1845 days ago
The 1986 electronic privacy act consider emails older than 180 days old to be “abandoned” and do not require a warrant to access.

Self-hosting at least means that this should not apply, I think.

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artificial 1845 days ago
From what I can see there was a House resolution passed in 2017 which protects email. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/email-privacy-act-come...
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pseudalopex 1844 days ago
It never passed the Senate.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act

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