[samstave]

I have never had a facebook account. Never have - never will.

I distrust everything they do. And while we like to think that other sites are not as bad, I was recently censored on Quora for asking about why a post was censored on Reddit.

They threw some "against policy" bullshit at me, and Marc Bodnick attempted to appear sympathetic and that his hands were tied and he didnt like the policy either - but it was a BS response.

They removed my question asking why the top LIBOR story on reddit was removed - I asked if Yishan Wong was directly responsible for such censorship etc...

After berating Marc for the BS excuse they stopped replying to me.

EVERY single thing you type online is viewed by the NSAs terrorbots.

Anyone that thinks anything is private online is fooling themselves.

[law]

Let's take it a step further: every item that you purchase with a credit card is recorded. It wouldn't surprise me if some retail stores use CCTV systems capable of facial recognition to identify cash purchases, too...

It's time to create an underground data haven in Kinakuta--the Crypt.

[gregpilling]

At Home Depot they recently put cameras on the self checkout line, with a little display to show you that you are being recorded.

[Jach]

> EVERY single thing you type online is viewed by the NSAs terrorbots.

Evidence? Did you program these NSA bots or something?

> Anyone that thinks anything is private online is fooling themselves.

No, they just don't know any better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy If you want your messages to be heard by limited parties, make it so. "My friends are too stupid to know how to use any form of encryption" is not an excuse, and might cause you to pause and consider whether you want to share anything important with such friends in the first place.

[Terretta]

Get a personal cert and you can use it natively in Apple Mail, not just for signing but also for encryption. We should be helping friends, family, and colleagues do this.

[falcolas]

I would say this is close enough to warrant the hyperbolie.

https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel

Encryption is great, as long as the people you don't want to hear it can't decrypt it. Given the NSA's recent moves to build up computing power, and the way Moore's law works, your encrypted communications today are fodder for review tomorrow.

[Jach]

Oh, certainly the NSA is monitoring a lot and trying to monitor more, but my pedantic side had to call out the "EVERY single thing". :) Thanks for the link though, I had forgotten the details of that case and only vaguely remember hearing about the Obama administration's move to dismiss it. (Which is funny, because presently a common criticism is that Obama keeps blaming his predecessor for everything wrong. He doesn't seem very keen on prosecution...)

It's easy to future-proof your encryption, even in the face of exponential increases in computing power. The biggest danger to encryption systems that rely on integer factoring (i.e. RSA) right now is feasible quantum computing, but there are schemes that don't rely on factoring so there's hope on that front. For the trivial stuff I bother encrypting, I'm more worried about, in increasing order, being given the choice of decrypting something or getting shot or sent to prison for life (fortunately we have some precedent in the US and elsewhere against this), being tortured for a while without knowing why before being asked to decrypt something, and being tortured without having any information but being unable to convince the torturer of that.

[samstave]

I know the bidders who were seeking designing their new Utah Datacenter. I think I am perfectly well acquainted with what the NSA does.

[Jach]

Thanks to HN Notify (http://hnnotify.com/) I know what your post said before you edited. :P Knowing that, I'm sure you're aware of all kinds of crazy NSA crap others aren't, so thanks for flashing your credentials; as I said in another comment, I was pretty much just being pedantic about the "EVERYTHING".

[bicknergseng]

I'd be curious to see that email exchange. Would you redact names/private info and post it somewhere?

[samstave]

It wasnt an email exchange, it was a quora comment thread, here:

http://www.quora.com/Reddit/Why-has-this-link-on-Biggest-fin...

[mitra]

Not my encrypted messages.