Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking about stuff like this lately. Since the State and corporations alike wont give up on surveillance and ever growing control over people's lives, I might as well start to use/engineer things that sabotage/neutralize/destroy their surveillance apparatus. There could be also stuff in software we write: killswitches, backdoors, open-source software licenses that are hostile to surveillance use, etc. I welcome any criticism (still developing the ideia).

View on HN

I don’t see how this would be effective. You’ll be up against the best engineering talent, be it google or Facebook or whatever, with unlimited money. No doubt they already have tools to account for bad data? But more importantly, this would only work if lots of people cooperate, right?

Also, what if they pass a law banning such tools? It might sound hyperbole, but anything is possible in the current climate.

The problem is that most of this “junk” is easy to filter out. It’s better when the fake data is indistinguishable from the real data. That takes some effort, but it really is the only way to make the surveillance pointless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com