Starting last week, I began to step away from the news cycle, simply because the violations against privacy taking place in the UK, as well as their rapid, cancerous spread across the West, are so distressing to me. You can only watch so many videos on YouTube attempting to assemble the pieces – every day seeming to add a new insanity – before you start to go a little crazy. Being able to step back from all the information coming out has allowed me to form a little bit of perspective.
One thing that seems clear to me is that the ‘elites’ are often clueless about technology. There’s a lot of talk that involves “censoring the internet” to “protect the children”, but usually this is referring specifically to HTTP (more specifically, HTTPS) network traffic. Before HTTP was a thing, FTP servers with anonymous guest access would be set up to allow anybody with an internet connection to download files provided by the FTP server. As far as I’m aware, the FTP protocol and its variants simply do not have nearly the functionality you would need to perform, say, age verification, and while you’d be right in saying that hardly anybody uses FTP, it does still exist, and the fact that “the internet” is nothing more than “websites” to these idiots in power, tells you a lot about what’s going on. “We don’t know how it works, but we want to be in control of it!”
(That the elites know so little about technology tells me they are likely more vulnerable than we imagine, their only real advantage being that they have access to our intelligence agencies and the money to hire teams of professionals to sweat the details for them. However, how might this expose them to the potential of blackmail, the stealing of secrets from them, etc., and how could that compromise the American people? Technical illiteracy in the higher ranks is, in my opinion, a national security threat)
I’m slowly reading up on politics, elite theory, propaganda, etc., and it’s going to take me a long time to develop even a half-decent theory of how all this works, the psychology and motivations of the powerful, etc. In the meantime, though, I think there are some rudimentary structures to privacy in general, which are worth visiting.
The last bastion of privacy is always the home. Surveillance by camera has been increasing dramatically, if not from government-installed AI cameras in frequently visited areas, then from your non-tech-savvy neighbor who bought a Ring camera just so they can see when their Amazon orders arrive. Ugh. But that is all, technically, outside. That people have otherwise become so complacent bringing microphones, cameras, and sensors into their homes is shocking, given how these technologies have been used to oppress whole categories of people in other countries. People simply assume “that would never happen here”, and sweep it all under the rug so they don’t have to think too hard about it. Nonetheless, I think it’s important to remember: you can’t wholly prevent surveillance outside of your house, but you can control what is inside of it, so think twice before inviting Big Tech in.
This is honestly why I feel so drawn toward reverse engineering: when companies say they respect our privacy, we need to hold them accountable. Just because you click an icon in your TV settings to disable sending data to advertisers, doesn’t mean the TV is actually complying: you either need a physical hardware switch, or you need to inspect the firmware to guarantee it does what it says it does. Do you trust the software? I sure as hell don’t. Selling data is huge business, and since the economy has no new ideas for growth (and AI doesn’t count because companies are bleeding billions on it), they will do everything they possibly can to boost profits for the financial reports. Respecting your privacy is simply not on their radar. It’s bad now, and it’s only going to get worse. The cat’s out of the bag: harvesting data, and selling it, will always be lucrative business. Moreover, I suspect we will see a lot of collusion in various (odd) industries, forcing you into limited options of “smart” devices. They will cram wifi connections into everything they can, because again, the incentives are too good to pass up. We are already seeing this in TVs, and even washing machines.
It’s also worth noting that requesting something from somebody is a basic annulment of privacy. That doesn’t mean doing it is ‘wrong’ or anything like that, it’s just something to consider. If you use an internet connection from your ISP, your ISP can always see when you are using it, and certain information about your usage. Things like a VPN can obscure (from your ISP) where you go after you connect to the VPN server, but that you connect to the VPN server can always be seen by your ISP. While we’re at it, the VPN provider always knows where you’re coming from and where you’re going to when you use it, so how much do you trust them? Same with cell phones. If your phone is using cell service in any way, shape, or form, data from the nearby towers can potentially geolocate you, and the service provider itself will clearly have records of your connecting, too. Again, I’m not saying these things are bad, it’s just an important fundamental to understand that using someone else’s service is always a tacit annulment of privacy pertaining to its usage. The only way to avoid this is to use something like normal (unencrypted) radio, which doesn’t send a “reply signal”, or, I believe, free digital TV that is streamed out as a public service (I think that’s still a thing?). It cannot otherwise be “fought”. It’s important to address this, so we can focus on what CAN be “fought”.
I very much support the right to turn off cell connection from your phone, as well as to turn off GPS. This is the only protection from being surveilled by these services, which would otherwise always be on, even if you don’t need to utilize them. And that’s the kicker: ideally, you would turn them off when you don’t need them. But once again, companies like Google don’t want to stop collecting your GPS data, so what exactly does it mean in the code when you “turn off Location”? As the saying goes “everything is open source if you can read Assembly”, so I’ve started taking my assembly studies more seriously. In previous posts I described how there is a very real possibility that companies will begin employing tactics common in malware to obscure code that would otherwise get them in trouble.
Which leads me to another fundamental: don’t get too complacent. What I mean is, all of these services for the past 20 years have been the Wild West, and while I hope that much of that remains the same, this idea that free social media, free email, free entertainment, etc., etc., would simply last forever and never invade our privacy, was maybe poor judgement on the part of humanity. Again, there are some rights that absolutely should be fought for, but if you have a Facebook account, it should no longer surprise you that they are going to monetize your usage in some way. In these cases, though, informed consent should be the way of things, and companies should be forced into honesty on these issues. Moreover, this is precisely why Right to Repair and similar rights – such as being able to install your own operating system – are so crucial. If Google wants to mandate that I use their system to install their services [insert a hundred caveats here], they are mostly within their rights to do that. What they shouldn’t be able to say, is that I can’t install my own operating system on a device I purchased from them. Does that distinction make sense? I shouldn’t have to log in to my Playstation account to use the device, but if Playstation says I need to do things their way to access their services, that’s technically fair (again, with some limits). We have to stand up for our right to use devices we purchase in the ways that we want, and it’s good to consider supporting projects that give us back control.
Granted, more and more, we are seeing account logins being forced for non-service tasks. Programs requiring network connections (even when they don’t need them), games requiring logins (even if they aren’t online or interactive), even some newer TVs that require an internet connection (to “phone home”) even if you are simply watching DVDs from a DVD player, etc. It’s nuts, and we have to fight back against this sort of thing. It’s even scarier if you consider the age verification being forced down everyone’s throats, as this has the potential to block people from the basic functionality of their devices. How’s that for conspiracy!
Moreover, for the love of God, stop inviting microphones into your house! It’s bad enough that we carry our phones everywhere, but needing a microphone in your TV just so you can avoid using a remote is lazy as hell. If you hate your privacy, do whatever you want, but I think that’s ridiculous. Also, if it were a microphone you could plug/unplug from the outside, fine, but I’m not aware of any that aren’t embedded inside, in which case you have no idea how your voice data is being used, just “trust me, bro” guarantees from Big Tech, and look at their track record.
As usual, I don’t quite know where I’m going with this. I just needed to throw some ideas out there to begin organizing things in my head.