I get so tired of privacy "influencers" telling people that their setup has to be perfect and spy level...
Privacy isn’t about perfect setups, it’s about adaptability. This guide shows how to build an evolving privacy.
https://untraceabledigitaldissident.com/adaptation-privacy-resilience/
Discussion
I'm of the opposite mind, the biggest privacy influencers never give any attention to systemic privacy (avoiding proprietary software absolutely, for instance) instead opting for stuff like "how to be private on windows" and other silly fruitless efforts.
Privacy is a journey where we all strive for perfection, but we can't lose sight that we must all strive to have darknet vendor level privacy to truly starve the surveillance beast. If you're compromising on this goal in any area, you must slowly but surely come to face each challenge and persist towards being a digital ghost. Its only when we give up our ideals of perfect privacy and make concessions that we live under a total surveillance hell.
We must all strive for perfection, we'll never attain is but we'll land in a better world for all when we try.
I may be a privacy influencer of sorts myself, but I don't pull off the inflooencor behavior of giving a "perfect" setup. Instead, I subtly (somehow) teach adaptability based upon one's needs.
Not to mention that I only have one threat model: the Jesuit Order. Why them out of everyone else? That's where the control grid comes from.
💯 it's pretentious and unproductive. Your setup should be threat model specific. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
To a point, but let's not kid ourselves here. When the enemy is in complete collusion (big tech, state intelligence and law enforcement) we can't afford to draw arbitrary lines between which institutions we're defending against. We have to go as far as possible. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, but if imperfection means leaving leaks in your chain of data protection, it's not doing much good.
For instance, using Simplex or Signal on iOS doesnt do much good when Apple holds the keys to encryption remotely and you can't verify their code. In this case there's not much benefit compared to iMessage since you're still at the mercy of Apple (and any secret court subpoenas or state intelligence backdoors which certainly exist)
We must study what serious threat actors like hackers or darknet vendors use for communication and online activities and adopt accordingly. These actors require millions of state intelligence funding just to take them down. Imagine if the average American, conducting no crime, requires this level of investigation just to get simple metadata. The surveillance state would be dead overnight. This is the goal.
Using the Tor Browser on Linux on a coreboot computer is very easy these days and costs as much as any other computer.
Using only FOSS apps on a GrapheneOS pixel has a initial learning curve, but after is just as easy as stock pixel android or a Samsung.
Combine this with nostr:nprofile1qqsrkl7gyds37xh2af37uwlknvjm32ska3hgr5d0cwgzdqy0ux2r2ncpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9eenx7pwwdhkx6tpdshsh2l07j's advice of maintaining general cognisance of privacy in public and you end up with a public that is immune from even state level intelligence.
Why should we settle for less when modern Linux and open source android offers so much in usability and productivity compared to windows and iOS?
