I tend to think that it's not the govs tracking us that we should care about but the big tech. Yandex is one of them.

There are multiple levels of tracking... Governments being the top levels, then maybe global communication companies along with big tech titans... etc... AkA a complicated forest and/or tree of data?

That's complicated indeed. When I start thinking about who can track me (wi-fi, bluetooth and RFID scanners and surveillance cameras everywhere, my telecom provider, banks, public transportation, gmail etc., browser fingerprinting…) I just don't see any practical way to ultimately hide. Add the fundamental lack of trust to any device using ICs (evidence-based, field verifiable) and it becomes just insane.

In practice I just use a dumbphone and turn on my smartphone only to get a taxi (Yandex) or maybe see if my bus is coming (again Yandex). But my wife has her smartphone always on spying on us, not to mention all my colleagues. Also on my laptop I do use Yandex market, maps and read articles on Zen…

I can imagine that deep awareness of digital security issues may make one's life better in some situations but there's always a risk of becoming too much of an activist here. I think I'm quite geeky already.

> That's complicated indeed. When I start thinking about who can track me (wi-fi, bluetooth and RFID scanners and surveillance cameras everywhere, my telecom provider, banks, public transportation, gmail etc., browser fingerprinting…) I just don't see any practical way to ultimately hide. Add the fundamental lack of trust to any device using ICs (evidence-based, field verifiable) and it becomes just insane.

It is unfortunate that there appears to be only one way to reclaim our privacy,and that is through the passing of new laws and regulations. However, due to the way that laws are passed in the United States, I am not very optimistic. For instance, sometimes unrelated laws are attached to necessary budget bills in order for them to pass, or a three hundred-page bill of legal jargon is given a misleading title such as the "PATRIOT" Act (The unpatriotic bill). Furthermore, both political parties do not seem particularly supportive of privacy, if anything they appear to be opposed to it. We need to somehow make this an important political issue in 2024.

Unfortunately it's impossible to fully elaborate my position here in the format of HN comments but I don't think the way you're talking about is really possible. The system is broken so badly that it cannot be fixed from inside by adding more of its rules. It has to be changed entirely. Figuratively speaking it's sort of like Goedel's theorem.

Have you had an opportunity to discuss their views on privacy and the currently established political culture in the US with those in their 70s and 80s?

And then we have China, where the big companies are required to share the data with the government if they request it.

> And then we have China, where the big companies are required to share the data with the government if they request it.

That's one thing that is probably the same in most countries... at least we know it is also true for USA and Russia.

Then the governments requesting from the big tech your infos (and getting them). Same thing in the end.

This is true. But 'the government' (I'd rather say agencies and services) mostly doesn't care about us unless we do something 'special' and you basically can't hide from them. The big tech is always interested.

Remember this yandex.com is hq in Europe. yandex.ru is hq in russia. Search carefully.

This is not the first leak from Yandex. So they "share" data with everyone. I used their Yandex food service. My personal info was eventually leaked and fraudsters started calling me. Not a huge issue but not a great situation either.

Eh, it shares data with Russian government.

If I have to choose between the two, I'll go with the US one.

why?

Because the Russian government is much more dangerous to me than the US one.

Russia sent agents to blow up an ammunition depot ~15 kilometers from where I lived (google "Vrbetice 2014" if interested), killing 2 people. Russia regularly poisons and assassinates people. I mean, I'm no big fish to be interesting for Russia, but still the comparison comes out clear.

Russia is currently trying to invade and conquer even larger parts of Ukraine and a significant part of the world is helping Ukraine defend itself at the moment.

I prefer handing my data to privacy-breaching companies if the alternative would be handing data over to a state my government is currently holding a proxy war against.

US right now invaded Syria and stealing Syrian oil

And if I were Syrian I certainly wouldn't want to use American services with the Russian government supporting the current regime.

Lmao, bc Russians will murder me for being gay while the authorities look the other way, amongst all of the other atrocities that their state is perpetuating right now.