Except that only works if I didn't know you before.
Here's the thing: it's 2018. The NSA and the FBI read the contents of your phone and listen in about as easily as you select channels on your TV. Your local police probably do, too, though they may have to be more coy about it. Thanks to "parallel construction," they don't even have to admit to snooping, as long as they can dredge up a way, however flimsy, by which they can claim to have learned the same things. And don't assume your cell phone isn't listening even when you think it's off, because it's pretty much pre-hacked.
Don't want to be monitored? Then don't get noticed. You're surrounded by RF bugs -- whoops, cellular telephones -- all the time, and they and the 'net are producing a flood of information so vast that our pals at NSA had to build a huge building halfway across the continent from their HQ just to hold the stuff they think might be interesting. If you're one more gnat in the swarm, how will they pick you out? If you've decided to be a lightning bug, how could they not?*
So when I mention having a robot listener in a couple of rooms of my house and I get grumping about Stalinist Russia back, I laugh. You're too late, decades too late, and that gadget in your shirt pocket is only the tip of the iceberg. Privacy vanished quite awhile ago. Mao's "fish in water" never will -- spies and successful conspirators are nothing like James Bond. They're dull. Ordinary. Boring -- until the day they're not.
Don't want Jeff Bezos's or Google or Microsoft or Apple's machines listening? That's fine. Don't install the device or the software. But don't strut about telling me how I have bowed to the oppressor's will unless you're living off the grid in the woods or underground and communicating via hand-delivered messages -- and how sure can you be that your courier isn't a fink? The human element is always the weakest link: people are much better at betrayal than machines.
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* The flip side works, too: be so visible, loud and obvious a firefly that of course you will be watched and you disappearance will be noted by the gen. pop.; and be so ineffectual that of course you will be discounted. Under the cover of such noise, it's possible to do rather a lot, or so they tell me, but it's difficult to pull off and goes very wrong if you slip.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
8 comments:
I'm trying to remember who it was that recommended multiple, dozens, of bank accounts. (W.C. Fields is said to have done so using the absurd names he loved so much, although it's unclear whether he did so to have a stash of cash anywhere he went or for his own amusement.
Not sure that's a valid work around these days, for money or online anonymity. Even dozens of different online personae don't necessarily work, since it now seems that Tor and probably most of the other "high privacy" services are/were either deeply penetrated by intelligence agencies, or were fronts for one from the start. And unless you can contrive to never use the same internet cafe/library/public wifi twice you can be traceable that way.
So... Yeah, be highly visible and hope someone will miss you when you're gone...
They say the barking dog never bites, it all being ineffectual bluster. As is the constant loud complainer. He makes noise and gets attention, but never accomplishes more than being noise pollution. Easy to ignore. Not worthy of interest.
Beware the quiet dog, one that never rouses from his place by the fire, until he jumps to rip out your throat. He hides in plain sight, biding his time, saving his energy for maximum effectiveness.
A cautionary canine metaphor.
Raz
Amen, sister. Preach it.
An interesting topic is the "Gray Man" theory; the art of blending into a crowd.
The nefarious thing about expectations of privacy is that your expectation has to be reasonable, which takes into consideration the actual privacy one has. So, as privacy is eroded, one's expectation of privacy becomes more unreasonable.
Well said, no argument here.
I have always felt that nothing posted on the Interwebs is truly private. If nothing else, your ISP knows...
Also don't forget the six degrees of separation thing. Which means that because I read your blog, you are a Putin associate (the chain of links involve two Chabad rabbis who are brothers-in-law, one here and one in Russia).... Everyone ends being connected to everyone in the exchanges of life...
I think you nailed it.
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