Privacy Thread

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I can say that taking the battery out of my old phone would not have been an anomaly, because the battery would fly off every time I dropped it, which was frequently.

It is a good reminder to leave cell phones at home, though. I always feel so free when I leave my phone at home!

Also, a really important point was brought up in that article, which is contact points. Organizing is problematic; it's better to throw out ideas indirectly so you have NO contact points with other key people.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Well that's what the article says about this, taking the battery out of your phone is an anomaly, and it's probably too late to do anything about that, so instead leave it at home and send a false signal (noise).

The way my phone/service is, when there's some kind of problem like the web not working right, you take the battery out for a minute. Then if it's still buggy you call *228 and it downloads a bunch of stuff and restarts.

We ALL take our batteries out a couple of times a week. 

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Somebody sent me this yesterday, it's weird as FUCK. It starts off talking about the same issues as this thread, but then it turns into a big pro life evangelical troll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDWUw9I6bfY

[Freeky]

Somebody sent me this yesterday, it's weird as FUCK. It starts off talking about the same issues as this thread, but then it turns into a big pro life evangelical troll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDWUw9I6bfY

Oh fuck, KNOWLEDGE IS BAD, MMKAY? 

[Freeky]

Oh, oh, "Everything is pointing towards the US not being the world's only superpower which is exactly what the bible said!"   WOW.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I like how they're all OHNOES! CDC COLLABORATING WIF GOOGLE IS BADDDDDD!

But also, government surveillance that links you to your ID is actually horrible. This is a weird "common threads" area where liberals and wingers have really similar concerns, and are kept from being a constructive force by the two-man con.

The explosion of the abortion and birth control issues are actually an effort to keep us apart, because when a majority with similar concerns connect on an issue we have a possibility to make actual change, which would be a threat to the corporatocracy.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's really important to consciously recognize divisive issues. They are emotional triggers that separate people who have generally similar values, and they are typically employed to split populations which are otherwise potentially powerful.

[Triple Zero]

FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites - now
CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites-now/

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I always assumed they were already doing that. 

[Triple Zero]

http://www.weknowwhatyouredoing.com/

[Triple Zero]

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

This actually tripped up a friend of mine a couple of years ago. She left a comment on a photo of someone holding a toy gun saying "You look like <insert-name-of-well-known-terrorist>" followed by a smiley. Within hours, she got a message and a phone call from someone claiming to be working for FB's security who asked her some basic questions on why she left that comment. The whole experience scared her from using FB for a long time.
I thought the whole thing was adhoc and confusing. Anyone who saw the comment could easily see that it was a joke. Also, if it wasn't a joke, why is FB calling her and not someone from law enforcement?

Would love it if someone from FB here on HN could comment.

I'm not a criminal, I am a a pretty mundane guy actually, but of course we live in a society that every single one of us breaks some small law every day.
Which is why I stopped using Facebook.

I also stopped using Twitter to tweet. I still use it to follow news sources, I just don't actively tweet. I did that after the NYPD won a court case to see all the private messages you send on Twitter.

I also don't comment much at all on blogs, and social sites like this one or Reddit anymore. (I use to be a top 10 contributor over at Reddit. At least that is what some metric said a few years ago when someone listed the top ten most popular usernames. That account is deleted now)

I am slowly pulling out. I have a deep distrust of the current surveillance state in the United States. I remember reading a story about a guy who posted a quote from fight club on his Facebook status and a few hours later in the middle of the night the NYPD was busting in his door and he spent 3 years in legal limbo over it. (Might have been NJ police anyways, red flags)

You start piecing together these things, and you start to realize that your thoughts and ruminations about life, the universe, and the mundane, can be used against you at any moment and can completely strip you of your liberty and freedom, and any happiness you may have had.

I am gonna be completely honest, I am scared to express myself any longer on the Internet in any fashion. I don't trust it any longer. I don't trust the police, I don't trust the FBI, I don't trust the federal government, and I also don't trust, nor have faith, in the justice system in the United States.

How much of this shit do you need to see before you decide to quit facebook entirely??

I remember a while back I got an acct for whatever reason, then after the 3rd or 4th privacy scandal within a few months I was again like FUCK THAT SHIT and deleted all the things.

One reason why that pisses me off in fact is because I joined a meditation group a while back (just some random people that explore all sorts of different schools and style of meditation, really fun) and their main channel of communication is a FB group. There is one other girl in the group that also does not have FB out of principle, and another that used to not have it but got an acct mostly for this particular group. I'm kind of tempted to go that way myself as well, and then just not add my friends, not use my name, not use my face and whatnot. Exactly like Fravia+ taught me: When filling out Internet signup forms, LIE YOU BALLS OFF. Except that I can imagine it would seem weird, right? Because everybody else on FB is there with their pants down exposing all their private identity parts, and then suddenly walks in a guy whose face is upside-down and he has a crazy robotic smile, you know him from IRL so why is he wearing a disguise?
AND THAT IS WHAT YOU DID. Didn't some crazy Goddess once tell us not to take shit so fucking seriously? Well now you have it, Facebook is fucking serious business and everybody takes it seriously and if you even dare to go in wearing pants, they all look at you weirdly.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Surveillance is retarded. They're watching everything everyone does or says. They're drowning in inverse signal to noise ratio. Thing is, they know this. I'm sure of it. The purpose of the surveillance state is not to watch everything everyone says and does - that would be completely retarded. The purpose of the surveillance state is to arrest the odd innocent victim and get the story in the papers - make us paranoid, keep us frozen in fear. Seems to be working quite nicely 

[Xooxe]

I have it down as part of the Rise of the Algorithms.
        (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDaFwnOiKVE  <--- One of my favourite TED talks.)

The system flags something based on a heuristic (of which we're inventing more all the time.) The receiver finds bypassing their better judgement ever easier. Before you know it Stephen Fry is paying for your legal fees over something absurd.

[LMNO]

I use FB, but I don't post anything of interest.  I use it for what I believed it's original intent was: to augment my social network.  I get pictures and memes, coordinate IRL social activities with friends, and laugh at people who have different ideologies than mine.

I don't post any location information, nor anything that is currently subversive or illegal.  In short, apart from some Team Vodka moments, my FB is fairly boring.  On purpose.

[Verbal Mike]

(Note: only read the last two pages, my apologies.)

I use FB for a lot of Israeli political networking (not that I'm very active in a meaningful way, on account of me being on a different continent) but have also been scaling down the kind of information I post there. Right now anything the government does to any well-networked activist there quickly goes viral and ends up in the papers, as far as I can tell, so maybe it's a different situation than Occupy in the US, possibly because Israel is so tiny.

Anyway, that interview with the Tor guy, which I read just now, is pretty terrifying. Ungh.

On the other hand, I kind of like the post-privacy approach. If I understand it correctly, the idea is that since keeping anything private is a losing battle, we just have to start adjusting to nothing really being private anymore. The real struggle then becomes to make sure that information can't be used against anyone in the first place. A good example is that instead of making sure a gay person in the Ukraine can keep their orientation private, efforts should go towards making sure people just deal with the fact that some people are gay and that the government doesn't oppress gays.

Obviously, it's a very different situation when someone is actively involved in working against the establishment... Not sure what the post-privacy people have to say about that. But I did hear about this one guy whom the FBI (or smthn) asked to keep them posted about where he is (on account of him having an Arabic name), so he set up a public website that automatically tracks where he is and lets the whole world know. Not sure if that would make any sense for an Occupy activist, but it might – it would be much more costly to arrest/abduct them.