This of course assumes that there are no unforeseen advancements or unforeseen (or intentional) weaknesses . I will let my daughter flood any potential tor data collections with Minecraft and My Little Pony just in case.
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Every single time I log into TOR, it reminds me to updateâŚ
If youâre not updating it, and keep seeing the reminder, you should understand why that reminder isnât effective.
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All right, you got me. Not every single time. Often.
Unless Iâm mistaken, they actually do have something to do with ellipses but it isnât direct. They get their name from elliptic integrals.(Which are involved in computing the arc length of an ellipse.)
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In other words, you know of ten ways to guard your privacy, you refuse to use any of them, and you want to know if privacy is worth it? Clearly, it depends on whoâs asking.
So ⌠curves is not correct?
Thatâs fine, but what kind of intel is still useful 30 years after the fact? Canât be a lot.
If you do decide to use TOR, plan on using it only for things that are really important to you ⌠at least for a while. Because itâs A LOT SLOWER than what you might be used to.
Loading BB, for example, what with all of the munge it ships per page, will take 20-30 seconds -on a fast connection-.
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I know of TOR; compramised. VPNs; blocked in many UK systems (and soon all free ones). Using crypto on communications; which requires the other end to be willing to do the same (and is less relevant given my understanding that GCHQ wonât go into the body of the email without a warrant). Encrypting my drives; if the UK ever look at my drives, legally, and request my password I either comply or face 6 months. Encrypting my cloud stored documents; not being able to directly use them from the cloud or share them with others unless I run them through a decrypt or the others will use crypto. Using zero knowledge search engines; not something I have a problem with, but when my activity con be monitored does this do anything? Using incognito mode; protects me from tracking cookies (though this is not definite) and nothing else. So I know of 3 usable techniques. 2 do nothing about surveillance and only shield me from corporations and 1 only works if my network of contacts are willing to use it. Hence asking, my knowledge on these tools is limited, what I do know is about how they are being labelled as useless. So what is there?
The flip side of the fact that they can threaten you with imprisonment for failing to produce a password to an encrypted data set: strong encryption is indistinguishable from truly random data, so they can imprison you for failing (ârefusingâ) to hand over the password (âpasswordâ) to your set of random data (âencrypted fileâ).
It has become illegal in the UK to have the output of /dev/random.
Intel might not be useful, but there might be some worthwhile dirt on an individual that is worth digging up if they become an obstacle to whatever goals they are pursuing. In other words - think about how successful your political career might be 20 years from now if there was a record of every site youâve ever looked at, every message youâve sent, every item youâve bought.
In an environment like that, the only people with a hope of election are those whose views do not offend the established power structure. And never have, ever. On top of that, even if you were extremely strategic in your expressed thoughts and ideas - opinions change and none of us can predict what will be in the interests of the powerful two or three decades from now.
We have that now, itâs called Facebook.
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There are plenty of things that are still classified (and have their classification enforced, rather than just sitting there until the classification expires) from 30-40 years ago. Presumably at least some of this has to do with political protection. Classification is certainly different from encryption, since itâs a purely legal mechanism for information-hiding and can be selectively ignored (such as when someone leaks a classified document through a third party and then refuses to litigate against the third party in question), but thereâs some overlap between that which a government would classify and that which some not necessarily governmental agency would keep only in cyphertext form.
Itâs true that few things are still meaningfully secret after thirty years. Itâs also true that it is difficult to determine what secrets will be meaningful in thirty years. For instance, in 1970, were the United States to have a highly effective aerial reconnaissance program specifically for determining the state of soviet missile technology, with elements that limit its effectiveness to eastern europe and northern asia, it might be sensible to consider that worth keeping secret for fifty or more years; in 1991, more or less spontaneously, the value of pretending such a program does not exist dropped dramatically.
However, when push comes to shove, there are some thirty year old secrets that nobody cares about, and there are some thirty year old secrets that old men will kill and die for. Thatâs probably an indication that for some secrets, thirty year protection against decryption isnât considered good enough (and that encryption shouldnât have been relied upon as the sole secret-keeping mechanism).
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Facebook is not mandatory and anything I put on there is by definition intended to be public. If the NSA wants to see pics of my kids on the swings or my family at Xmas dinner that annoys me but doesnât harm me.
If the NSA takes some forum post from 1997 that I made under a pseudonym and uses it to discredit me when I try to get my kid out of (FSM forbid) Gitmo or some other concentration camp then that would also harm me.
If only the rest of the world was as careful as you are, but I suspect that is rarely the case.
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I doubt the typical person posts everything theyâve Googled for. Out of context, there are a lot of searches that can look very bad. When I hear about someoneâs searches being used against them as evidence in a trial, thatâs scary.
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