Mastodawn

Kind and cherished FOSS and computing freedom advocate @sleepyowl (Joyce Ng) has gone missing and there is reason to fear she may have been apprehended by authorities, possibly likely even for being framed. Nobody has been able to reach her and many of us are worried for her safety.

Joyce does work on verifiable open source hardware. She also has been an activist pushing against the rise of far-right Christian nationalism globally but especially in Singapore. Because of this and her identity, she has people who would like to see bad things happen to her.

Probably for this reason, she may have been misidentified by Five Eyes as being a threat actor. Joyce wrote about this concern in November, posting a threatening screenshot where she was tipped off. https://bitowl.online/about

Please spread this wide. Hopefully this is a false alarm but Joyce is a kind-hearted person who fights for human rights and computing freedom; many of us are worried for her safety.

BitOwl Online

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Jeff Codes 3d ago

@mu @cdarwin
It doesn’t matter where the hard/PII data is saved. The ID’s and documents can be safe, sure. The meta data, the IP, the OS, the date, the time, the patterns of use, instances logged in and when, and any other data shared, will end up in oligarchs or government hands to profile the people further than we already are. Maybe just for behavioral manipulative advertising, maybe for identification in political round ups.
With the current fascist regime going after people wearing black to protests and garnering convictions of domestic terrorism as antifa as a result, I don’t I want any of my data, meta or not, being gathered due to the high potential for abuse of a repressive regime. I don’t want to end up in jail as a terrorist because I log into a liberal Discord frequently and use Signal.
Argue about data safety all you want, but it misses the actual problem completely.

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Jeff Codes 4d ago

@mu @cdarwin
Even if the data is safeguarded, the larger purpose is achieved, mass surveillance. The data integrity is secondary to adding a whole new trove of PII that can, and will, be easily used for surveillance.

Jeff Codes Mar 11

Ian Campbell 🏴Mar 10

When I started in security, one of the prevailing attitudes was "The weakest link in the chain will always be the human."

I would like to thank every LLM provider and startup for changing this paradigm by introducing a much weaker link in the chain.

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Jeff Codes Mar 11

@QasimRashid
Primary them all.

Jeff Codes Mar 10

🌸 Ⓐnarkitty lumi-nhac

Mar 10

support free software projects that have a moral compass. they deserve all the support they can get

Jeff Codes Mar 10

Signal Mar 9

We are aware of recent reports regarding targeted phishing attacks that have resulted in account takeovers of some Signal users, including government officials and journalists. We take this very seriously.

To be clear: Signal’s encryption and infrastructure have not been compromised and remain robust. These attacks were executed via sophisticated phishing campaigns, designed to trick users into sharing information – SMS codes and/or Signal PIN – to gain access to users’ accounts.

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Jeff Codes Mar 9

@patric @skinnylatte
Variety is the spice of life!
We’re “arguing” slight variations on opinions and semantics at this point.
Mostly, as you noted before, we’re very much on the same page. Maybe just different paragraphs.
Cheers!

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Jeff Codes Mar 8

@patric @skinnylatte

TL;DR
Fact: Proton does not work with foreign governments.
Opinion: Proton assertion thereof is a ruse to deceive.

That write up is guilting of everything they espouse Proton of: being disengenuous about the facts.
Proton does not work with foreign governments. That’s just a truth. Anyone can then inject their opinion about their intentions, though they have nothing to back that up.
The FBI got the information because the US Government and Swiss Government have an agreement. Sure, I could argue Proton then works the FBI by proxy, but I’d be simply making assumptions and assertions based on opinion.
No company has an obligation explain all the minutia in the implications of their statements. In the minutia of exactly all possible outcomes for every country across the world in relation to their statements.
At the end of the day, they are a company trying to also make profits. They are still capitalist, and all the bullshit that comes with that. Still does not mean that they are intentionally being misleading.
People will see what they want to see. You could argue that’s true for me even, I don’t want to see a monster, perhaps.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Jeff Codes Mar 7

@patric @skinnylatte
This is a silly argument. We live in a world of legality that is often, much to my dismay, void of morality. There are rules and laws we are all subject to whether we believe they are right, moral, or just. If we choose not to follow them, then we choose to face potential consequences.
Many people DO mistake privacy and anonymity, and it is REALLY important in this digital age to truly understand them. If you don't you risk making mistakes that can have consequences you did not foresee.
The vast majority of people who use the internet and it's many service offerings do not have the resources or know how to self-host and make everything they want from their own home lab. Thus, they have to choose what services are out that that can meet their needs. Sometimes, again, much to my dismay, those choices leave us with a need to sacrifice something on our end.
Right now, in the landscape we are in of oligarchy and fascism, Proton is the best choice for the non-savvy tech person to choose over Google. It has a suite of offerings that can cover a lot of bases, while also increasing the privacy of your data tremendously.
Simply put, when the internet services we choose is largely controlled by a handful of toddlers in adult bodies, it is likely we will have make sacrifices.
Proton is not perfect. Show me a service that is that can cover as many bases as it does for the non-nerds out there.