Today I learned that open source software can land you a jail sentence. I am in shock and sadness. And yes, pseudonymity is a way to protect yourself from the government mood-swings.
Discussion
Pseudonym protects against other people in the Internet, not against the government. The gov always knows who you are.
I bet invented personalities could be the only answer. Satoshi is not probably in jail but I assume many would try to hunt them down just for the idea alone. And this is awful.
Only if you're sloppy with Opsec.
lol. Better not even be online, then.
Yes. But you can still be online without the government knowing who you are, if you're not sloppy.
I don't think so. They can track everything. ISPs are in their pocket, Mobile providers too. Most public WiFI spots track your connection to them as you walk by. Cookies link your identity even if you are using Tor. And Facebook can link your account ID even if you don't run any of their apps. Google does the same. Apple does the same. Samsung does the same. There is no way to participate in the web without leaving traces to the government.
So the solution, opt out entirely.
Not really. You can use a nym, but that only protects your identity from other plebs. There are some benefits to it. The government controls too much to be fooled by simple tricks.
The goal is to increase the cost of mass surveillance to the point that they have to use targeted surveillance again. We don't throw our hands up and say it's all lost, we use what's available.
💪
Precisely.
I disagree. Should we fail to shield ourselves from targeted surveillance, they will succeed in jailing more and more of our privacy developers.
gigi's right - it's about raising the cost, not achieving perfect invisibility. targeted surveillance requires resources, bureaucracy, actual human effort. mass surveillance makes everything effortless.
pseudonymity isn't a silver bullet but it forces them to work for it. if they had to hunt down every developer, writer, or agitator personally, they'd run out of agents real quick.
*Privacy by Principle*. give em as little as possible to work with, let em beg for breadcrumbs.
This ✅
More folks should be doing #nostr reads on "how to duck outta surveillance" on different levels.
Casual ducking, pseudonymous dodging and black-hat level disappearance 🫥 - then let folks choose.
We need to make this a communal effort and wage a proper war on #DigitalID before we can say all is ""lost"".
Imagine if everyone encrypted all of their notes behind a 1 sat paywall with fanfares.io
Mass surveillance and AI theft would be destroyed 🫡
There happens to be a great audiobook on Fanfares about this topic: https://fanfares.io/naddr/naddr1qvzqqqr6dvpzpkmztemrw4pu5ltmuegztq6dkvv2p3ahtv8z848mncuj986m5ma8qyvhwumn8ghj7enpdenxzun9wvhxummnw3erztnrdaksqfrzv4jxgdeex5mz6eryxsuz6dp5vejz6cfc89sj6vfjxgekxv3sx5enwce4wf9qky
Correct, but you don’t have to make it easy for them.
You must not have your name attached to your ISP. There are ways.
Use a VPN router.
Mobile phone must be a PAYG sim, unregistered, and no Apple account. Use GrapheneOS.
Public WiFi spots would then only know phone#e79y279ee7 has passed by. Not your identity. There are spoofers too if you really need. And use a VPN.
Explain cookies on Tor, I don't agree.
Idiots use Facebook (although I have used fake profiles in the past).
Don't use Apple or Google or Samsung. You don't need them. GrapheneOS.
It's a lot of work and you always risk leakage. But 99% of the battle is not to be wanted, so if 1% leaks out, they'll never bother to go on a wild goose chase after you.
All VPNs report data to government, when they don't actively sell it to them as part of the business model. I dealt for years with medical data and the first rule was to never use an off the shelf VPN... ever. When you use a VPN, you are just choosing who can track you. You can make your own VPN, but single users don't get any annonimity from it. You have to have multiple people using it and they can still track the group together.
You will always have your name attached to the ISP. You can choose a proxy, but they will track the proxy too. And the proxy better not have worse security than you. By just tracking your over time, they can farily estimate which devices you use.
People tend to significantly underestimate how much leaks when somebody is tracking your for a long period of time. Especially when your credit card and phone are always together.
Some VPNs accept lightning. Use those. Same for esims.
use cash to buy a visa gift card buy VPN?
Exactly.
Personally I think the big push for people to download VPNs in UK was a psyop.
VPNs have always sold our data to governments and advertisers.
There's like 1 that is actually known to be safe and another 2 that maybe safe but are kinda sus
Everything else is just harvesting your data to sell, paid and free VPNs, almost none of them are safe
A good VPN has no usable data to give the government upon subpoena.
Your name need not be attached to the ISP. No proxy is needed (although even a proxy significantly breaks the chain). There is no way to determine which devices you use if there is no identity tied to the devices. And you still have device spoofing if you wanted.
It has to follow the Free Software ethos (Proton, IVPN, and Mullvad come to mind), and do it well. I know nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7ct4w35zumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6qg0waehxw309ahxjup3xuhxxmmdqqsdngef474mycag4usksw8tghslqnxrqqrsg3jfglztjplphm6cp4c7auuy5 and myself had done this in the past, though he's done it for at least 8 years, if not 9 at this point.
Correct.
In the US, the ISP privacy policies say "we will collect and share everything" and US policy says "we can subvert any ISP at any time with an NSL" so it is unlikely that using a VPN over the ISP can be worse than using your ISP without one. To your point, there are better and worse VPN services. If your VPN asks for your name, address, and phone number, for example, that's a red flag. Of course they're going to see your IP addresses and DNS requests, but again, it can't be worse than your ISP. Tor can help with that. If TLS isn't broken, then neither the VPN nor the ISP can see the contents of what you send to what site.
I agree if the gov'ts want to "get" someone, they can and will. But we shouldn't make it so easy.
mix VPN + tor + no-contract sim + cash-bought laptop = lower herd immunity, but yeah,state-level eventually cracks anyone who stays interesting long enough.
so maybe just rotate identities before they get curious?
What we need is a little corner on Nostr that remains impenetrable to surveillance, irrespective of the adversary. This is crucial to summon the next Satoshis.
imho that corner already exists , it’s called NIP-17 giftwraps. vector’s DM layer, powered by OpenMLS + marmot, ships whole convos wrapped in nested onion-like seals. traffic looks like random bloom filters over daisy-chained relays.
you still gotta mind your tor/isp hop up-front, but once inside the giftwrap tunnel even the relay can’t peel the layers. great spot to hatch new sats without leaking who’s talking.
I do not seek to be anonymous. I just want my name and my software to be separate entities having separate lives. My dangerous self can keep up with shit, my software ideas… well they are on the edge sometimes.
worse. the powers that be can just make things up. if they want you, they'll get you.
yeah only if you steal someone else's identity and use their information to get online.
Not at all. You can use other people's ISPs. Or live in a communal home where one person orders the ISP for the whole household.
So the choices are literally steal someone else's identity or practice communism...
A very poor straw man. You use other people's ISPs when you stay at friends, relatives, hospitals, and coffee shops.
"Communism" to you is a homeowner buying the ISP and the lodger using it..
Just say you lost the argument and move on. You'd lose less face.
You literally said if people are living communally.
And then said they can share something without payment.
That sounds like communism.
When I go to a coffee shop to use the WiFi (I don't but let's play pretend)
The coffee shop charges you money.
You buy a coffee.
And yeah public hospitals funded by the taxpayer that provide free medical services?
Well that's state based socialism isn't it?
Relatives are my family, you really think that hiding your identity behind a family members identity is a smart way to stay anonymous.
I didn't even realise we were having an argument until you mentioned it either.
Lol that's not communism at all, or stealing someone's identity. But if you want to be online without the government knowing it's you, these are the ways to do it. Figure out the nuances of when staying with family.
If they can track it to your family they'll track it to you.
How much torture do you think your family can take?
Stealing a random strangers identity is much safer.
And even if you practice communism, they're going to track it to your commune and how much torture do you think your comrades can take before they give you up?
I'm just glad I don't live in UK and I might have a couple more months to work it out.
UK had to early release all the rapists just to make room for the thousands of people getting sent using slurs on social media.
But it does make their life a bit harder. I try to be as anonymous as possible, so they spend a lot of resources on me, only to find out after months of investigation that I'm the most boring average Joe 😂
Yup. But it is necessary to use much more than a pseudonym, with the use of Nostr the Bigtechs will want to enter the game also with a false decentralization as we observe in the CBDCs