[30367286]

My first “tech” job out of college was tech support for a VPN company. Brilliant little operation reselling bandwidth to folks visiting China and those who wanted to hide their traffic. One reason I really respected the CEO and CTO is that they told us specifically to never, ever promise that we made people “anonymous on the Internet.” Even when they went to no-logs — a big step for them — they still maintained that we always stick to this line: “You are never anonymous on the Internet. Our service is to help you create a more private connection, one that makes it more difficult for you to be tracked by corporations and hackers. It does not protect you against state-level actors.” When I discussed this with them, they had an even more candid take: “Look, if you have the US government after you, you’re already fucked. No level of encryption is going to help.”

This has always stuck with me.

[ramesh31]

>“Look, if you have the US government after you, you’re already fucked. No level of encryption is going to help.”

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/

[BillButter]

Relevant Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis

[DarylZero]

Yet somehow the US government can't even prevent me from downloading copyrighted torrents.

[xboxnolifes]

There's a difference between stopping an action at a societal level, and targeting an individual through any means necessary.

[tharne]

> There's a difference between stopping an action at a societal level, and targeting an individual through any means necessary.

Yup. It always amazes me how often people conflate, "The U.S. government can't be bothered to stop people from doing X" with, "The U.S. government can't stop people from doing X". If you want to test this out, try not paying federal taxes for a while.

[DarylZero]

There are people getting away with tax fraud all the time.