Encrypt. Now.
Encrypt. Now.
We have come to a point where end-to-end encrypting all your private data and private communications
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This article he just goes:
We should all use PGP, SSL or equivalent tools; VPNs, Tor and/or SSH tunnelling; IPFS, or other distributed file systems — and ditch proprietary OS's in favour of Linux or truly free Android distros. We should switch to Protonmail or similar webmail; to Matrix, Signal or similar messaging. Ad-blocking, URL cleansing and third-party cookie rejection should be the default for everyone. Those tools and techniques should cease to be arcane nice-to-haves for nerds: we must get more non-technical people onboard.
All this is a moral imperative to those of us who have the ability and the means to follow this strategy and to educate others about it.
He just relies entirely on the "moral obligation" people have to use this stuff, but then doesn't give any advice on how to convince people to actually use this stuff besides "using our abilities and the means to follow the strategy and educate others about it". Because I've certainly been trying that for ages and it hasn't worked. Of course a good amount of that stuff I don't even think I would use. I find Protonmail encryption to be annoying in compatibility since you actually have to pay to get the desktop program to decrypt your email, Signal, and a lot of Matrix clients lack a lot of the nice messaging features that extend beyond the app itself (Like Google Assistant/Siri support). Also not sure if OP has seen the current state of using an adBlocker on the web. I'm not sure if everyday people would want to actually deal with that. I certainly can't get my mother to use an adblocker, and whenever I try to instate pi hole onto our network, within moments, someone complains about the internet "not working correctly".
The argument is almost always "we need to start mandating these really private things onto everyone, don't give them any choice on it" and never "how can we make good enough things people will want to use with privacy by design?". I look at apps like Nextcloud and home assistant that have created better experiences than what the market currently offers. And I wish that I could see more of the same with that with apps that are private by design, and can integrate well with just about anything.
I suppose it’s a call to arms - the intended audience is those who are familiar with all those acronyms. It’s meant to ignite a fire in the belly to spur individual action against the proposed Chat Control legislation.
I know what you mean though. The reality of “resisting” is actually kinda messy. Using all the mentioned tooling is exhausting. Much like I don’t think that consumer recycling is going to save humanity, I don’t think that if everyone “made the little effort required to secure their data and their communications” it would end crazy proposals like Chat Control. TLS is so common now (in HTTPS) and WhatsApp (implementing e2ee) is incredibly popular. Yet here we are.
The article briefly mentions open-source software. To me this is where I see more private & secure by design stuff like you mention. I'm happy that things like Lemmy exist making countermeasures like 3rd party cookie blocking sand URL cleansing irrelevant.