I've setup family members and closest friends with a Raspberry Pi or in a couple cases cheap Intel Atom machines, that I can configure with Ansible.
I run a minimalist "Facebook clone" UI with photo gallery on each box. From their phones or laptop people drop files into a bucket, mostly just photos, and it's SyncThinged over to all nodes. When on local wifi, we can browse each others content.
It wasn't too difficult as we're a DIY group. Not at all interested in feeling like we're friends with the world or even just our former high school classmates.
I have no problem with notions that our government and laws should require our society fair and protective of everyone. That sort of thing. But giving it all up for private interests to enrich themselves, while life generally gets more expensive for the rest of us is bullshit.
Undermining this thing is do-able, in a simple to manage way these days thanks, once again, to open-source and commodity computing.
Signal was intercepted:
http://heavy.com/tech/2017/03/wikileaks-vault-7-cia-bypasses...
My favorite most depressing take on this by Peter Gutmann - "Crypto won't save you either"
Also, they would have to actively target your phone for surveillance. I'm much more concerned about the passive interception aspect, and I don't for a second believe that I'm preventing myself from being surveilled.
The fact that they should have to go out of their way to break the 4th amendment is important to me.
The "Signal" was not broken & the encryption worked, the part that didn't was when the encryption was removed and the user presented with plain text.
Good. It's probably better that a young curmudgeonly asshole like myself that has zero respect for unquestioned authority go through the years long process of bringing a clear case of 4th and 5th amendment violations through to the supreme court.
I personally would rather rot in jail in contempt if it meant that these questions of personal property, privacy and self-incrimination were discussed and settled legally. It's a question of civic duty at that point.
> ... Once the amount of risk is determined, consider cost, time, and effort of implementing OPSEC countermeasures to mitigate risk. Factors to consider include:
> (1) The benefit and the effect of the countermeasure on reducing risk to the mission.
> (2) The cost of the proposed countermeasure compared with the cost associated with the impact if the adversary exploited the vulnerability.
> (3) The possibility that the countermeasure could create an OPSEC indicator.
DoD OPSEC manual at pp 13-14
https://www.opsecprofessionals.org/official/081103_DOD_OPSEC...