Stop using DICT dictionary apps (such as GNOME/MATE Dictionary)

Similar to when abortion was outlawed in the US and suddenly people cared a lot about all that Google Maps location history that Google was saving. It's much easier to convince people to mitigate a real problem than it is to prevent a hypothetical future problem. So convince them to mitigate this "real" problem that governments can see your dictionary queries, and hopefully that might prevent an actually real future problem.

What do think you know about "how totalitarian regimes operate"? Worked for some have you?

What we do know, from well sourced documents, is that real-time keyscore type filtering and flagging of every byte of unencrypted data occurs at ISPs, and that is common practice in our own non-totalitarian nations. What do you imagine goes on in less savoury dictatorships to whom we sell the same intercept equipment and DPI firewalls?

To describe that landscape as "cartoonish exaggeration" seems either naive or disingenuous.

Or it's used as a trigger to engage in further observation of your web activities

One man's infosec advisory on attack vectors is another man's scaremongering. Hand waving around a problem does nothing to address it.

Tell me you've never been in that situation without telling me you've never been in that situation. Check your privilege.

I was hauled in front of the police, and they went through my search history. I'm innocent and still thought I was going to get the chair.

Every little search is taken out of context and the worst intentions are assumed.

I honestly can't stand this kind of flippant attitude by people who've never experienced anything remotely like this. And now it's even worse for say American women looking for an abortion etc.

"How Google searches for 'pressure cookers' and 'backpacks' led the cops to a writer's door"

https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4580654/michele-catalano-g...

  https://ahdictionary.com
  https://www.collinsdictionary.com
  https://www.merriam-webster.com
  https://en.wiktionary.org

Note however one tripping hazard with dict.org: Unencrypted port 80 i.e. "http://dict.org" is functional, does not redirect to "https://dict.org", and Firefox responds to a bare "dict.org" in its search box by first trying "http://dict.org". FF presents the dict.org home page upon getting the port 80 success response.

The annoying thing about Wiktionary (for this purpose) is that it's explicitly not machine readable, so the entries can only really be handled as free-form HTML. Parsing the Wikicode, despite heavy use of standard templates, would be very hard to do robustly.

> The WordNet Project is retired, so the dictionary will grow more out of date over time.

    S: (n) hacker (someone who plays golf poorly)
    S: (n) hacker (a programmer for whom computing is its own reward; may enjoy the challenge of breaking into other computers but does no harm) "true hackers subscribe to a code of ethics and look down upon crackers"
    S: (n) hack, drudge, hacker (one who works hard at boring tasks) 

(It is better to add an uncommon word to the user dictionary than it is to have a large number of uncommon words in the system dictionary since it is better to alert the user to a potentially misused word than to leave a misspelled word in place. Of course, this doesn't help in every case - as is evident with the common auto-correct snafus.)

There obviously aren't any official statements from each state and whistle blowers are easily silenced if the media is controlled like it is in China for example.

Statements by other nations would have to be taken with a fuckton of salt as that could just be propaganda too.

I don't think it will be possible to be certain about this, ever.