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Comment by d33 | Hacker News Reader

What's your threat model? Unless you name what you're afraid of and what you're trying to hide, you're just feeding paranoia and it's unhealthy. And I'm not trying to say you should do nothing - the steps you suggest would at the very least increase the cost for NSA to collect data, potentially making it scale less or even make you fly under the radar. Still, if you want those rather uncomfortable actions to become habits, you'll need to have some motivation and for that you probably need to name your worries first.

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I have a deep moral opposition to this kind of spying, and making it more difficult is an end in and of itself. I also don't consider them terribly uncomfortable, but that is my opinion and no one else's.

I also personally would prefer not to be spied on. I do not want my day-to-day activities monitored by anyone but myself. In the event that the government starts curtailing freedoms or particular kinds of behavior and thought, I do not want to be left susceptible. So I guess my threat model is "generalized spying". I assume I would be powerless to stop anything specifically targeted at me, so I would like to avoid becoming a target in the first place.

If and when I start buying oxidizing chemicals, drug precursors, or ammunition, then you are more than welcome to start tracking my purchases and usage of those products.

Well it’s time to ask yourself, are those morals and values worth sacrificing your comfort, your sanity, and maybe even your life? Which do you value more?

Luckily I'm not sacrificing any of those things.

>So I guess my threat model is "generalized spying"

In this case, you should be proactive not only against NSA, but GOOG, FB, your ISP etc.

You should look into Tails OS if you haven't already.

Good point, and in fact I am.

My Instagram account is long gone, my Facebook account will be gone before the end of the month (I use it once a week at most anyway), and I've long since stopped using any Google account for anything. I run multiple browser extensions that help me delete cookies, block Javascript, etc. The VPN should hopefully take care of my ISP. It try to avoid even sending emails to Gmail accounts.

I haven't tried Tails, but I will look into it when I get some time free.

> afraid of

The government knowing literally everything about my life (yes, I know they almost certainly do already)

> what I'm trying to hide

More like what I'm trying to protect: the naive assumption that the government does not deserve to have this depth and breadth of information on literally every citizen for no legitimate reason.

> Unless you name what you're afraid of and what you're trying to hide

I think of it a little differently. I am trying to be part of a collective movement toward as much privacy as possible so that those who do need to protect themselves can have access to the tools they need and won't stick out when they use them. A sort of herd immunity.

I guess a good start are habits that neutralize automated mass surveillance. Targeted surveillance would be a whole other ballgame and unfortunately I don't think our tools are at a place to make this feasible for me to practice.

>I am trying to be part of a collective movement toward as much privacy as possible so that those who do need to protect themselves can have access to the tools they need and won't stick out when they use them. A sort of herd immunity.

by creating a standard you are effectively creating an easy way and/or justification to automate against that standard. I think your logic is sound, but consider the big picture. The more people do things in a certain way, the higher the incentive to investigate that way.

They don't need much more incentive to arrogate power; I don't think there is much hope in changing that calculus.

>Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography.

Sure, the principle doesn't always blindly work. If everyone uses one technology, that can be a single point of failure (one backdoor and we're all doomed). But think about https for example. It's just plain good for security and anonymity and everyone should use it as much as possible.

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