News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Uncla... by 127361 on Friday January 26, 2024 @12:04AM (#39139130)
There's the chilling effect, people not wanting to protest or organize against government overreach for fear of being put on a watch list. This allows the state to enact more draconian laws with less push back from the general public.

It's like a vicious circle that feeds itself, the more surveillance the government permits, the less the public are able to complain or fight back against it. Thus leading to even worse surveillance.

Re:NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Uncla... by verisimi on Friday January 26, 2024 @03:43AM (#39140211)
You are talking about the panopticon, where, in the perfect jail, anyone can be looked at but they themselves have no awareness of that fact. This changes behaviour. The implementation of technology we have is the panopticon across the whole of society. This is not accidental, it is part of the governance control system.
Re:NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Uncla... by LabMechanic on Friday January 26, 2024 @05:42PM (#39149802)
What a coincidence, I was thinking of the same concept pictorially reading the comment you replied to, but I did not remember its name.

Panopticon it is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Generally, there is plenty of reasons to be worried:

  - Firmware-wise (e.g., Intel Management Engine, Coreboot, Libreboot, system on a chip)
  - Hardware-wise (i.e., Von Neumann architecture - Code + Data)
  - Operating System-wise
    (e.g., 0-click exploits, remote code execution to manipulate the CPU's instruction pointer,
     stack overflow, Pegasus)
  - Facility-wise (e.g., electromagnetic waves, cell towers, Faraday cloth)
  - You (making mistakes)
What you can ultimately do is: rely on randomness (e.g., rolling casino-grade dice), Diceware, one-time pad, no computers of any kind. Further, hope that time traveling backwards remains impossible. Otherwise officers will travel back in time and can see what you wrote (e.g., unencrypted message) back then.

If you need some electronics go with analogue electronic devices. Or, make your own computer systems from scratch with transistors etc.:

jdh, I built my own computer. by hand., https://youtu.be/vaGZapAGvwM?si=lGQuskkFxZ7FHe1h

Re:NSA Buys Americans' Internet Data Without Warrants, Uncla... by verisimi on Saturday January 27, 2024 @08:21AM (#39155318)
what a crazy, interesting project and video.