Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Unless your prep includes "fight against it politically, tooth and nail," you're only delaying the inevitable.
There is no such thing as a technological solution to what is fundamentally a political problem. Ultimately, the fascists pushing this shit have to be destroyed or they will destroy us.
I have no idea what anyone should be doing, but I'll tell you what I personally am doing:
I2P
I2P!
I2PPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!
We can build another internet here, if we want to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P
Imagine p2p torrents, but crazy encrypted, and you build an internet out of that. That's basically I2P.
Everyone is a dns/routing server for everyone else, and no one actually knows whose traffic is going where.
If you stay inside of I2P, its basically impossible to be de anonymized, unlike with TOR, where a government LE or Intel agency can just operate nodes and de anonymize people.
I wish someone would figure out how to combine Hyphanet (original Freenet) and I2P. Basically the network based storage rather than having to have each services server online all the time to work.
Written in … Java!
Whyyyyyyyyyyyy!
Jokes aside; very cool.
Java is actually good as a programming language and platform. It's actually great for this usecase because it's fast enough, has enough talent pool, and is high level enough to enable creating new complex stuff. Rust and cpp are too low level to enable simple creation of complex stuff. That's why we mostly se rust rewrites and less original ideas. The only problem might be the oracle licensing stuff for such project. I know you're joking tough.
There's a version written in C++: https://github.com/PurpleI2P/i2pd
Also a rather new rust implementation https://github.com/eepnet/emissary
This only works until governments start blocking it. Right?
I mean, no 100% guarantees here, but I don't know how they would block it...
I guess they could just block an entire massive port range or something, but I think that would break a good chunk of the internet.
I think the more realistic fear in this case would be your own at home router or pc itself having backdoors and rootkits you don't know about, that then 'phone home', or perhaps store some kind of local log you don't know exists, that they grab physically.
Yeah I think they'd have to basically say 'its illegal to use anything other than a US gov approved router and browser and OS, brought to you by megagcorp,' full on cyberpunk fascist overdrive.
Now would even that totally block it? Technically, no, effectively, probably?
Honestly, do you own research on this... I'm not an expert, I could be wrong, but my understanding of it so far is that... yeah, it would take 'unthinkable' measures to effectively block this.
Y'know what? I've been waiting to try it, but I shall wait no more. Thanks for the little push <3
I read through the wiki. How do I actually use it?
I won't lie, setting it up and configuring it and actually using it is basically confusing as fuck... I've been doing this kind of shit for decades, and this is fucking complicated to me.
So... yeah. If more people could use this, maybe we could actually get something approximating a user friendly set up/usage guide or setup script type thing.
I think MentalOutlaw has a video or two explaining it, but... those would be several years old by now, may be out of date.
This is great for now but still uses the same hardware and infrastructure as the "regular" internet and is therefore susceptible to government control. Granted, they'd have to cut way deeper than just age verification laws.
If you stay inside of I2P, its basically impossible to be de anonymized
Unless there is another zero day, like in 2014.
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2014/07/29/i2p-patched-against-de-anonymizing-0-day-tails-integration-still-to-follow/
Free yourself from digital "bigtech" dependence which might be affected. Make peace with inconvienience.
Right? Not very concrete though. Anything else?
Anything else?
class war helps.
It's inevitable that complete dominance is coming. It's clear. Eventually one will either have to use their bullshit or they won't be able to exist in "modern" society.
People need to realize the name of the game being played is conquest, it's not for the good of humanity, it's for ownership. "We" conquested animals, natives, etc... authentic genuine humans are next. Authentic humanity needs to stop denying that humanity itself, as a whole is part of the game. We aren't special. Humanity will be conquested and you will either be in or out. And the divide will be like the difference of upperclass Manhattan and skid row. ...Or worse... maybe a concentration camp.
And we are still funding that dream today like fools.
Linux and degoogle your phone.
Put tailsOS onto a thumbdrive as a backup encase of VPN blockage.
Is your Lemmy instance in a country likely to use age verification?
Get away from big social media. Read about how the kids in Australia are staying on social media after the ban.
Spooler: draw a mustash on your face with a marker lol
I laughed when I read about someone doing that.
You don't have to use big tech chat apps, or social media. Or even any site with "age verification" (real id).
Just stop using it. I have no idea why people think they have to use these things.
That's a naïve stance. OP is even talking about the process of it worsening. That means, what happens when sites that don't implement age verification aren't reachable anymore? Be that because they have simply been outlawed, because VPNs have become unfeasible or even because states will implement a firewall similiar to China? "Just don't go there bro" doesn't cut it.
You can’t.
Not in the way you are probably thinking.
If you were, for example, an American born on us soil, you would have a birth certificate, social security number, many published records of your participation in school and community activities. If you’re old enough to drink alcohol, you most certainly have a government id and if you drove a car earlier than that you already had a government id. If you vote then you and your address are in the voter rolls.
That stuff’s not going away and the argument used by the nra to force batf to keep paper files instead of allowing them to digitize everything has been eroded away to uselessness.
You gotta recognize that you exist and everyone knows it.
Rather than any of the advice itt suggesting you switch to Linux, learn complex self hosting, etc: just recognize that the phone, accounts and computer you have now is main. If you want an alt:
Buy an iPhone or pixel outright and unlocked. No at the moment you don’t have any other options, sucks to suck. If someone says this is wrong information I recommend you don’t listen to them. If you bought a pixel it’s time to install graphene. Do your research and make sure you understand. If you bought an iPhone it’s time to harden it. Make sure your iCloud account is not tied to an identifying email and that you enable adp.
Buy a separate computer: it doesn’t need to be powerful. You’d be amazed what win 10 iot ltsc 21h2, sequoia or just Debian can do on decade old hardware. Make sure not to accept any invitations to tie your login to an account in the cloud and go from there.
Make some new accounts: start with an email and don’t tie any of your old accounts to it. If a service wants to verify using text, just use some text receiving service to bypass it.
If you’re worried that your alt and main will become associated because they’re coming from the same place, use a vpn on both. I like mullvad but there are others.
Contact your representatives and do your best not to let that happen. :)
Supporting organisations and political parties that fight these proposals also helps.
Get familliar with tor hidden social media like pitch and be on nostr and lemmy.
Also get MeshCore
Take it on a spectrum. You can either do nothing and accept it, damage mitigate, reject, reject while accepting the friction it entails, or just completely drop off from many services entirely. I lean toward the latter end of it.
Get a tor browser lined up. You likely already have a VPN or won't get one anytime soon, but tor is free. Three letter agencies have bought poisoned nodes but probably not enough of them, so this will give you a temp way around surveillance and VPN bans. Might be better if you set your entry nodes outside of 14 eyes countries.
Use Linux, GrapheneOS, mesh networking, Free and Open Source Software in general.