Mastodawn

So with the revelation that the owner of a big Fedi server is a target of a lawsuit, and that if things go badly the server may find itself seized—

I realize that that users on that instance follow users on my instance, so there are going to be semiprivate posts of mine that may fall into the hands of people—law enforcement, data brokers—who are not beholden to any Fedi Admin Code of Honour.

(I already do not post about my crimes on Fedi, if I were the kind to do crimes.)

Server seizure is just not a part of the ActivityPub threat model. What if it was? How would it change the protocol to protect data at rest, or perhaps not even keep it at rest on a server but defer to the originating server?

End-to-end encryption [user-to-user, not server-to-server] could be part of the answer, but it need not be the whole answer.

I welcome considered thoughts, so any response I see within an hour of my posting this will be ignored.

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Drew Mayo Mar 22

@futzle Frankly i have no expectation of my admins taking any action against server seizure, and wish them all the chill vibes in the world so it never happens. I consider Federation itself to be the defence against seizure in that if I need to protect an instance it should be my instance, my thermite and my problem.

That said, as much as I’d hate the hassle it would cause them, I’d almost like to see what would happen after they seize @tyrant’s server.

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Deborah Pickett

@drew It’s not @tyrant that I’m worried about. It’s the perfectly legitimate follower who runs a GTS instance in their basement in Catistan, and then they get raided by the Catistan Special Police on Suspicion of Liking Dogs, and then all your schnauzer posts are captured and you can never visit Catistan again.