100%

Mainstream media pushes incessant "darknet" propaganda to paint networks presenting "challenge to monitor users" in bad light (even if intent is innocent).

I see security perks of i2p as another nice aspect that can help gain the right public recognition.

This is where things like I2P are key. You can't really hide that you are running I2P either, but you can hide what you are doing on the internet. Unlike Signal, Telegram and such. Since your router routes other people's traffic as well.

Cloud storage tends to kill this :(

"new transparency and oversight constraints, together with the growth of encrypted technology, have tilted the balance towards privacy."

Sounds a bit idealistic.

We all should have the basic dignity that is the right to privacy in our homes and personally owned devices (at a minimum).

Human autonomy / privacy isn't a threat to anyone... unless that person / power has a thing for totalitarianism. 🙄

This is unacceptable!

It gets worse!

http://ramble.i2p/f/privacy/4869/french-senate-just-approved-a-controversial-provision-to-a

This is total bullshit. The desire for privacy is not a crime.

You don't say.

It's the best we've got though. Linus is a total gangster for basically telling us 'yes there is a backdoor, please find it' with his "nooooo" nod.

Would you propose proprietary is better somehow?

I never stopped using self-hosted mail. Been using it for about 20 years now and it works fine for me.

bAd OnLinE bEhAvIoR. you know, the stuff that's existed since what like 2002. Useless research and money spending. Soon they might be monitoring voice chats if they don't already do that

Look into I2P.

Less centralization, (no hard-coded directory servers; because on I2P everyone is a directory server) more relays, (everyone is a relay by default) faster than Tor.

Downside: Less exit nodes. I2P is meant for communicating mostly within I2P, not outside. But this can be a good thing, because most of the attacks that the feds use to deanonymize tor users are based upon the user using exit nodes to talk to the regular internet.

Yeah, I don't think Tor is the answer to this issue.

Agreed, however, from the same article you have it mentioned that a board member of Tor is also the CEO of the company that sells this data to the US Military / Government.

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, which the whistleblower alleges referred their complaint to the Navy, told Motherboard it had received Wyden’s letter and was reviewing it. The Office of the Naval Inspector General declined to comment and directed Motherboard back to its Department of Defense counterpart.

Beyond his day job as CEO of Team Cymru, Rabbi Rob Thomas also sits on the board of the Tor Project, a privacy focused non-profit that maintains the Tor software. That software is what underpins the Tor anonymity network, a collection of thousands of volunteer-run servers that allow anyone to anonymously browse the internet.

“Just like Tor users, the developers, researchers, and founders who've made Tor possible are a diverse group of people. But all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief: internet users should have private access to an uncensored web,” the Tor Project’s website reads.

When asked by Motherboard in April about Thomas’ position on the Tor Project board while also being the CEO of a company that sells a capability for attributing activity on the internet, Isabela Bagueros, executive director for the Tor Project, said in an email that “Rabbi Rob's potential conflicts of interest have been vetted according to the standard conflicts disclosure process required of all board members. Based on the board's understanding of Rabbi Rob's work with Team Cymru, the board has not identified any conflicts of interest.”

More reasons to develop alternetworks that make this kind of thing more difficult.

That would probably qualify.

Like "Angry Goy 2"?

I think if they examine the relationship between game developers and "extremism" developed in certain games, they will discover that some gaming companies are more likely to produce games that correlate to this kind of activity.

Since Facebook is a terrible company, you'd think people by now would stop using the damn thing. No. We keep getting articles on how more terrible it is than we thought!

Sounds like they are increasingly afraid of their own people, eh?

Some journalists who read the article or twitter thread might decide to go without. But I think the reason many journalists are willing to risk bringing their phone amount to more than just the reasons Snowden mentioned (camera, microphone, and word processor). There’s the risk of government hacking but there are also various safety benefits to having a phone while traveling in a dangerous area in a foreign country. (Having a map of the area in a compact form, being able to message someone to request help if something has gone wrong, being able to look up local businesses, call a taxi service etc.) If Snowden just told journalists “don’t carry a smartphone” I think that message would largely be ignored for this reason. That might have been the reason they went with that iPhone too… probably figured it’s best to make mass adoption easier than give advice that won’t be listened too.

You’re right that the introspection engine turned out to be “too much” for most journalists. If I ran a newspaper and wanted journalists to use the introspection engine and/or remove internal microphones to replace with external mics, I’d assign it as a task to someone from IT to set that up on the phones of all the journalists who want it. But yeah, I was watching a video by the guy who Snowden collaborated with on this project (Andrew "bunnie" Huang ). He said he found out out that journalists need something that’s super straightforward to use. Afterwards he started working on another project called Betrusted which will be more straightforward for journalists. Betrusted looks interesting but it’s not finished yet. I was actually looking into it recently and didn’t realize the same guy was behind it. I’m going to post a video which where he talks about some other reasons for why he’s working on Betrusted. (Open Source is Insufficient to Solve Trust Problems in Hardware).

He said Edward Snowden came to him with this problem of journalists getting killed and asked him for a solution and the introspection engine is what he came up with. I think “bunnie” fell victim to this bias when assuming this is something journalists would be happy to use if they’re just shown how. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

I've read the article. A few thoughts.

If trusting airplane mode is like trusting a drunk to judge if they are sober to drive, then a more secure smartphone would be like a driver trained to drive well enough when drunk. If your threat model assumes you might be hit by artillery fire from state military, then the tools you should use must be military grade. Yet right after that the article picks iphone for their introspection, not because any security issues, but because apparently it's the most common tool meeting preferences and tastes of people dodging artillery fire daily. I have to wonder, who really killed those thousands of journalists, did armed hitmen contributed more or less to the bloodbath than apple's office slaves? The whole premise of inspecting iphone to reduce political murders is wrong. Journos themselves should know better than cryptographers about how much you can trust corporate cocksuckers with your safety. "Asking reporters deep in war zones to carry a separate camera, audio recorder, and word processor to avoid surveillance" would be the obvious practical solution, modern devices can be as compact as smartphone and simply better at their intended purpose, yet the article ditches this solution as a matter of fact. Why? Why are they going along with the murderers by trying to convince their victims to carry the death mark? Making it introspectable does not change the nature of death mark.

What follows is the largest part of article with a ton of technical data on killphone, all on the wrong premise. Didn't you say reporters shouldn't be cryptographers? Now you're feeding them like radiologists, hardware engineers, soldering technicians, forensics experts, and more all to make them more (un)comfortable with their death mark? It DOES fairly shows that the device in question is a tracking monstrosity, but only to those verily technically educated.

After hearing whole performance it sounds like this: in act one solo sings "artillery dodgers - keep using iphone", in act two orchestra plays "hackers and corporate cocksuckers, you've got work to do". In the finale it throws a couple jokes "android is worse, buy iphone" and "tor is safe". And only after the bullshit is over you may hear a single cry from the audience if you're lucky. "Don't use smartphone, you don't have to"

Fair enough, could have used a nitter link. https://nitter.net/Snowden/status/1175419013402374145#m

Guess he could be limited hangout but even controlled op needs to give accurate info to have credibility. This article he links for example can be judged on its merits without necessarily having to trust him. https://www.tjoe.org/pub/direct-radio-introspection/release/2

Only thing that stands out as possibly intentional misdirection is some of the software recommendations.

How would I use twitter if I have to?

How would I listen to state puppets if I have to?

Good thing I don't have to.