No.386
1. Many of us have different priorities than you. I, for example, am a recent migrant from 0chan (it's in the top right corner, we're affiliates now) which is an anarchist site that is vehemently anti-capitalist and anti-state, and we handle sensitive matters there and have reason to worry about NSA spooks.
2. It's a thing of principle. I don't want anyone to have any dirt on me that I don't choose to let them have. A lot of people feel this way whether they 'have something to hide' or not. I understand that you're apathetic about this, but I find it hard to sympathize – do you have any care at all about your own privacy? Are you worried your info can be turned against you if someone powerful feels like crushing you under his boot-heel?
No.387
Information has value especially to those invasive fucks at the megacorps creeping your browsing habits and raping your emails. No matter how mundane or innocuous the info may seem to you, there's always a buyer for it, or some asshole will find a way it can be used to make money.
Knowing this, I'd rather not hand over any info for free otherwise it's like passively helping the very system I oppose. If I knew how to effectively attack the system, I would, but for now I can only defend myself… In this case, preserving my anonymity and privacy is what makes the most sense to me without doing anything extreme.
No.388
Some of us are up to no good or might as well be. Some of us have first hand experience with how a little innocuous information can snowball and lead to serious consequences. And some of us have been at it long enough to know that you can't just turn it on at will, that not being anonymous today can make it difficult or impossible to be anonymous tomorrow.
No.394
If you're political or an activist, or… at any point in the future plan to get involved in activism, it's best not to have a trove of information about yourself out there. Governments have a history of trying to blackmail even the most noble activists.
Even if you never plan to be actively involved, it's in the interest of progress that activism be kept healthy. For this reason, it's good to promote a culture of privacy and actually stick with good practices. If nothing else you create more noise to sift through.
If you don't care about any of that, here's a more mundane reason. Just like the age of ransomware is here, the age of small-scale blackmail is coming. Everything is being breached, more will be compromised over time. People who make pennies per day will be very motivated to use the information that's out there to blackmail people for small sums.
So you get an email in 10 years. It threatens to disclose every raunchy website you've ever been to, every nasty email you've ever written, every questionable purchase you've ever made, every compromising photo you've ever taken. "Dear sir, we're sending this to your wife, daughter, boss, and parents, unles you pays 40 USD. Please forgive us but I must feed the village." Do you pay?
No.395
The whole "but I've got nothing to hide" debate has pretty much been settled but something I'd add to the answers in this thread is that good security isn't just about you but also is a matter of responsibility to the community. Information that you may be comfortable surrendering can potentially be used against others who most likely don't feel the same way.
No.398
I used to care about cybersecurity (not cyberpunk tho) a lot, but then I lost interest; let me share why.
I got into the whole crypto and security thing on lainchan in 2014. There were loads of posts about various technical details, and also a lot that explained how these all fit together - that is, how just a little slack or oversight here and there can ramp things up systematically and make you compromised in the end. The detail and systemic understanding of the whole fascinated me, making me respect them and read their stuff with an aura of authority.
Other than these technical details however, there were also many value judgments - basically any statement that includes 'good' or 'bad' and doesn't being with 'if'. I didn't mind or initially agreed with these and kept going; but after a point I realized that nobody could really answer the thing you're asking, OP. Their reasons were often just means to ends that they internalized until they thought it was an absolute value: intelligence or infosec practices taken out of context; hobbyism; political philosophy (freedom, human or constitutional rights related to freedom) or political conviction (anarchism, leftist stuff, or just a general hate of corporations and an intent to disrupt whatever they do, which in this case is data mining and surveillance). Making absolute value judgments (mostly for pragmatic reasons) without understanding where they are coming from made me wary.
Examples of these judgments:
>This or that is always good for you, use it and ignore the clueless majority!
>If there is no good FOSS alternative, don't do it at all. (gaming, smartphones, certain industry-related tasks, etc)
>If your friends don't do X, you should get rid of them instead of compromising anything. (PGP, respect your stuff, pidgin + otr, avoiding discussing you or using their smartphones because you're present, etc)
Another common argument is the future: you never know how the world will be from 5, 10, 20 years from now and what might be harmless-looking data collection today could be used against you later. Whether in the form of political blackmail to silence uncomfortable people or as psychological profiling to know how to deal with you, a hypothetical future government or corporation, or a cooperation of these could amass and abuse significant power. Add that organizations are often 'soulless', thus no single gear in the system feels responsible for the atrocities the system causes, and you're having a dystopia.
Though a world with good security and FOSS things everywhere seems promising and nice, technological progress seems indifferent towards freedom. In fact, since you can't make tens of thousands of experts work on the same project all day long without paying them, most larger-scale technological advancements only really happen with corporations or governments funding them. Invoking politics to achieve good infosec is not the same thing anymore.
I understand how working in crypto or infosec and dealing with the same soykaf every day makes these means to certain ends seem absolutely justified in every situation. In fact, a pre-existing occupation or interest in cybersecurity is something shared by every single one of its advocates (while having lots of free time and few or no friends is also common for hobbists, esp. from imageboards) making them biased regarding the motivation for adopting certain practices, and also the difficulty of doing so for most people. There indeed is a consensus between certain groups of experts; and indeed there are secure software solutions that take 5 minutes to set up, their use almost intuitive. But there are other experts who claim that things are okay and I don't have to worry that much.
Let's assume that I am a layman. How do I decide which expert is right, without putting years of work into becoming an expert myself? They both state facts, facts that contradict each other. They both cite sources, but not being an expert these sources are indecipherable to me. Journalists break it down for me, but they end up saying all sorts of things and are unreliable. Finally, the group of experts working with governments and corporations (who say things are okay) seem to be supervised by law. In contrast, the ones that say things are not okay often behave and speak like conspiracy theorists (my trusty little gmail and android phone has never wronged me so far; the worst thing facebook did to me was wasting some of my time - which I learned to handle). Some others seem to encrypt and hide everything about themselves, like the terrorists and ransomware I hear about on the news. As a layman, I see various people making claims of corporations and governments being the wolf - yet every time there is a soykafstorm, there are also shady people exploiting and hacking stuff, so aren't they the wolves here? The claims of an impending dystopia seem unverified so far, most things seem normal; the occasional mishap is followed by the parties involved taking quick and effective steps at mitigating any future problems!
Most technology replacements seem easy to set up, but they forget to mention (often stemming from the developers' bias) that they don't really replace everything, just the things the developer deemed important; plus barely anyone uses them. Meanwhile the things they are meant to replace are already there, do their actual job (with or without side effects), and everyone is using them already. There is no motivation other than some (for a layman, dubious) experts' claims to change things, other sources claiming there is no need to. The act is easy, but the changing of habits or verification of claims takes more effort than their advocates claim it does. Me, my peers and the world seems to be fine. If anything, it seems reasonable to not fix things that seem to work, and focus efforts on earning a living, having fun, making sure the kids have a nice childhood, stopping the slaughtering of cute animals, advocating renewable energy, whatever people do these days.
>What's with all the overly-cautious cyber-anonymity?
To sum it up with the things I've said so far in mind: I believe it's a precautious, pragmatic approach to an assumed future of dumb people and malicious corporate-states. They believe that without everyone using strong crypto and resisting or fighting an impending police state and corporate interest, people will be (or already are) turned into consumer-slave puppets controlled through the media with censorship and disinformation. To avoid or at least adapt to such a future, they make sure that there is as little information available about them as possible, so that they may remain out of sight, or successfully rise up against any form of oppression. Some of them take upon themselves to protect their beliefs and values (right to freedom and privacy - whether these are invented social constructs or not), and distrust, dismiss or even disrupt people and opinions indifferent or against these values and beliefs.
I am unsure on my stance on this matter, but I find the lack of understanding, and often quick or unrealistic judgments on non-cyb people ("dumb/lazy masses") intellectually dishonest. The very point of society is to share and specialize. The layman is doubtful of anyone crying wolf when things seem to be okay (be it a conspiracy theorist saying aliens, a catholic priest saying sins and hell, a medical researcher saying this or that gives you cancer, or cyberpunks claiming that the dystopia is here), and they are right to do so. As long as the cybersecurity community fails to show something that is equally convincing not for just themselves (hobbists and experts) but for everyone, they profess a possible lack of understanding of the big picture outside of their field, and thus warrant skepticism.
No.402
>>398I enjoyed reading your post, and my thoughts on the topic are similar.
However, the story of non-cyb people being slaves to corporate-owners and cyb-people being heroes is rather juvenile, and I don't believe it's the salient narrative. Knowledge is power, and we don't have to extrapolate to future-time to know this. The past is littered with examples of this idea in actuation, and so is the present. Data is being generated on every connected individual, and then some. To give this data away for free is to lose a commodity that you've created. Your soykaf posts and memes have financial value. The proof? applechan was sold for a financial sum. Facebook is a business with a revenue in the billions. I think this commodity is most often being stolen from its owners, because owners don't realize they've created something with financial value and if you don't know it's there you won't know if it's not there. But perhaps making a digital copy of digital data isn't really stealing… nonetheless, entities that gather data on users often do it in a secretive manner with no financial recompense to their users. Users that knowingly give away their data do so "as the price to pay for the service."
What can one do with data, with knowledge? There are a great many things you can do. I will leave it up to your imagination. The more you have the more you can do, supposedly. At least, that seems to be Big Data's mantra. What appears to be happening is, like capital, data is being amassed. Society's balance of power is being altered, and the average citizen's agency is being diminished. A wealthy citizen has more agency than a poor citizen, and a wealthy citizen with vast amounts of data has more agency than a wealthy citizen.
To speculate: the future belongs to computers. Computers need data. Those that can provide the data in quantity become the most powerful humans, but eventually man will have made God: something that knows what every human being on the planet has done, is doing, and is likely to do next. Muslim extremists have already felt proto-God's wrath. By freely giving away your data you're bringing God one step closer to reality that much faster. Hopefully He's benign.
No.409
>>408
But in all seriousness, I avoid botnets (Facebook, Whatsapp, Sykpe, Google) because I really don't want some corporate asshole to datamine my entire life, or the government or future employers to know about my bad goy political opinions.
Look at the UK, their country is becoming more of a totalitarian soykafhole by the day and I really wouldn't want those cunts in charge to know me inside out.
No.415
Well, lets say you are okay with capitalists having your data.
Are you fine when they lose control over it? When they can't keep it secure? When hackers defeat the security of the capitalists, and take your data, do you trust those hackers too? What if the hackers resell it to other capitalists?
What if a buyer is looking for information on you, and conveniently, there's been a leak of info from a capitalist corporation you trust: a person could find out so much about you.
No.416
>>398>>402Interesting posts.
No.420
>>402Growing inequality isn't a new thing. It has been growing ever since society is a thing, with it being overthrown or temporarily fixed every now and then. Whatever it was replaced with eventually was twisted back into a form that allowed inequality.
People want inequality, they compete and cheat to get it. I faintly remember a philosophy PhD mention that Socrates already had this figured out. Namely, he said that the only way to make a 'good' society is to educate people and make sure their conscience moderates them, that they aim to be pious (whatever that is).
The current narrative of a 'moderator' government trying to keep a "free to do whatever the fuck you're not caught with" population in check invites cheating, twisting, and attempts at getting ahead by design.
No.425
>>420It has been usual for men to think and to say, "Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the
oppressor." Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment, and to say,
"One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves." The truth is that oppressor and
slave are co-operators in ignorance
[As a man thinketh]
No.427
>>385There is really zero guarantee that these megacorps are keeping your data private at all. You have lots of apple fanboys thinking the iphone is secure yet they are using the biggest walled garden in the history of IT
Its been rumored a number of "revenge porn" pics were actually leaked by employees of companies like facebook who as it turns out have total access to user data
We have at the same time proved its super-easy to socially engineer the dumbass support staff of these companies meaning that someone who isn't even scriptkiddie-tier could fake his way into your stuff through a phone convo.
As an example I have an acquaintance who's trying to build a startup but he's been using google services for over a decade. Google itself has a long history of copying small startups and killing them by just sinking money into their own copycat app. In this case google would not only do that but they would also have access to tons of this guy's metadata and probably docs directly related to the startup he's building meaning they could kill him off before he even gets some traction which is great news for google since for example when they launched their youtube copycat googlevideo it went nowhere so they had to buy youtube to not lose the video market
With this guy I mentioned they would get the equivalent of free industrial espionage
So its not so much about your porn collection but about stuff you might do in the future which you rather keep to yourself, and now you can't
No.437
Many good arguments in here lains, and i can now understand why some people would want this.
I agree with the general idea of privacy, despite not having anything to hide, and to be honest it was a youtube video that convinced me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZpsxnmmbE (2:51 mins)But other than that, like
>>398 said, implementing complete anonymity is too much of a hassle for the layman. And i guess that includes me because:
a) Even though i agree with privacy and if it ever comes to it i'll show my support against surveillance laws, protesting against popular platforms by implementing x and y cybersecurity is definitely perceived as more of a hassle than a benefit, and it doesn't really do anything in name of 'freedom of society'.
b) Given the threat of possible black-mail if i ever become influential, I don't really care much. Not very interested in holding positions of influence, and even if i did eventually, i don't see embarrassing things as something that would hinder me, and if they do so be it, it's not going to be a catastrophe. This actually reminds me of a really good example, the infamous 'grab them by the pussy' quote by the
current POTUS. Actually just look at most politicians closely and the amount of incredibly bad things are there for everyone to see, but it doesn't matter if they got good PR.
No.439
>>437>>437You can have some BASIC privacy thats easy af to config and it will already deter most hackers and govs since you're not a target and therefore not worth the extra legwork to get around your stuff
I don't have foil curtains nor an airtight PC and yet I never been hacked in 20 years of being on the net
And you don't have to be influential, you can be a total normal person and still get your bank account emptied and your PC filled with cp basically destroying your life
No.443
>>437Ahh, he explains something I believe so simply: I treat my hard drives like an extension of my memory. If someone reads them, that's as bad as reading my mind.
No.471
>>470People have forgotten Snowden. People have the amazing ability to forget.
No.473
>>470Privacy is only important if you have a use for it, will have a use for it later on, or if you care about those people who get weltschmerz from a lack of privacy.
Privacy is useless to many people in ways that its advocated will not be able to comprehend until they learn to see past their own value judgments. It is not an absolute value that is always preferable. Human rights do not exist unless somebody enforces the illusion that they do. Things that do not exist have little value on their own.
I don't mind anyone advocating privacy, but if you do, please make sure you don't confuse your impressions and theories of the world with the actual thing.
No.502
>>385All explained in this rather excellent 7min video…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o66FUc61MvUNearer the end it explains why a surveillance state is an issue.
Basically while we live in a state that most of us agree with the laws its ok - but if a new direction takes hold then all your previous views can be used against you… think Pol Pot, Hitler, Starlin…. Trump?
First they came for the unions, and no one spoke out…
Then they came for the teachers, and no one spoke out…
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.
Surveillance state is not a good direction and nor is it needed. - Does it make you feel safe?
No.503
>>473There is no such thing as "rights" in any form…
There is only what a man can do and what a man can't do… everything else is by agreement of some collective of people.
The reason it works is generally because the collective is more powerful than any individual man.
No.505
>>503Thanks for rephrasing my statement, I guess?
No.1339
Anonymity doesn't exist.
