I personally am fully prepared to remain at the level of isolation I'm currently in for the next year.
I'll wait to live my 'normal life' again until I figure I'm safe. Right now, I've no illusions of safety outside my home. I'm certainly not chomping at the bit to leave and go to the mall or anything like that.
I'm not going to be accepting any 'benevolent suggestions' from the government. I won't get any tracking app if I can help it, and if it's bundled in an automatic update that will likely push me over the edge into using a custom ROM. I'd like to be able to get a Librem 5, but I don't have the budget for new hardware.
I never really believed in normal life anyhow.
Things are in a state of continuous change.
We had no choice but to discard the status quo of yesterday, and before long today's will slip between out fingers. Then as tomorrow comes to a close we'll have to leave what's now the future behind, so long as we survive to see it.
I'm not really holding on to normalcy. If anything my normal is a paradigm of ever changing circumstances.
I try to be familiar with the flux, that way we'll have some rapport built up when it comes to upend the rules.
I'm not going to be accepting any 'benevolent suggestions' from the government.
That's what I said, until I needed to get a driver's licence and had to give my fingerprint as if I'm some criminal. It's what I said until I needed my passport renewed to leave the country by airplane, and had to make a picture in one very precise way, as to not confuse the government's facial recognition software... Microsoft Windows is full of "back-doors" (that's why it's so easily hackable) so they can get in when they want. So will our phones be. I'm afraid it'll take more than just the will to refuse.
Fortunately no fingerprinting for licensing around here, but I'm fairly certain I've already forfeited mine for some reason or other. All it takes is a bit of determination to get bio-metrics like that anyway. Perhaps it's a little more difficult these days with people staying home more often. Still, one leaves them all over the place anywhere one goes. I'd like to start wearing gloves for sanitary reasons though, and it would have the double benefit of obscuring my fingerprints.
As for facial recognition, I'd bet simply wearing a mask would foil many systems. If that's not enough these systems can be fairly easily defeated with a bit of effort. Some might even call it fashionable.
Even state-of-the-art computer vision is quite brittle these days. It certainly could be troubling to be compelled to submit your face to a database, but there are measures one can take to make that data useless in the field (for example in the situation of monitoring by a public surveillance camera on the street).
Microsoft Windows is complete trash, and I recommend anyone throw it out today. When one buys a computer they pay upwards of $100 dollars on top of the cost of the PC for software that's under-performant and a joke in terms of security. I believe they even come with a software keylogger installed and running out of the box these days. Apple's OSX at least passes for a real operating system, but I utterly despise them and all their products I'll never purchase. Really it's the other side of the same consumer abusing coin.
Phones are even more of a security and privacy liability as it stands. Virtually all of them have compromised telecom hardware (thanks to intimidation and extortion of manufacturers by the NSA etc.) just waiting (or not waiting) to fork over one's presumed private conversations to 'big brother', as you put it here. Not only can microphones and cameras not be physically switched off, but the operating system situation is somehow even shadier than the mainstream PC OS dichotomy.
I agree that it will take more than the will to refuse. That goes a long way though, and I advise salting the will to refuse with the will to self educate.
As you say 'big brother' is working to learn everything about us to enable oppression.
Heisenberg guarantees that all information about a system cannot be gleaned however, so take small solace that none will ever simultaneously and precisely know the position and momentum of all your particles. Indeed anything practical will fall light-years short of that theoretical benchmark.
My response is to leverage what I can learn about their systems to undermine them, and in many cases their system is weak or the math we can use is strong.
Take heart, for we live in the age of strong cryptography. The genie has been out of the bottle for years, no matter how hard those who'd see it banished have tried.
All it takes to get your wishes is a tiny scrap of hardware and a hearty helping of autodidactism or education.
The interesting thing is people are expecting a microchip not realizing they have it in their phones already ( the in body chip will come further down the line and the You next gen will love it) most don’t leave home without. Now all that is left is to download the track app and the upcoming ID app that will make life so much more “convenient”.
Thanks for this addition my friend; the mobile phone is indeed as good as an in-body chip. It's an extension of the body as it's on almost everyone's body. Very "convenient" indeed...
I personally am fully prepared to remain at the level of isolation I'm currently in for the next year.
I'll wait to live my 'normal life' again until I figure I'm safe. Right now, I've no illusions of safety outside my home. I'm certainly not chomping at the bit to leave and go to the mall or anything like that.
I'm not going to be accepting any 'benevolent suggestions' from the government. I won't get any tracking app if I can help it, and if it's bundled in an automatic update that will likely push me over the edge into using a custom ROM. I'd like to be able to get a Librem 5, but I don't have the budget for new hardware.
I never really believed in normal life anyhow.
Things are in a state of continuous change.
We had no choice but to discard the status quo of yesterday, and before long today's will slip between out fingers. Then as tomorrow comes to a close we'll have to leave what's now the future behind, so long as we survive to see it.
I'm not really holding on to normalcy. If anything my normal is a paradigm of ever changing circumstances.
I try to be familiar with the flux, that way we'll have some rapport built up when it comes to upend the rules.
Wise words, as always :-)
That's what I said, until I needed to get a driver's licence and had to give my fingerprint as if I'm some criminal. It's what I said until I needed my passport renewed to leave the country by airplane, and had to make a picture in one very precise way, as to not confuse the government's facial recognition software... Microsoft Windows is full of "back-doors" (that's why it's so easily hackable) so they can get in when they want. So will our phones be. I'm afraid it'll take more than just the will to refuse.
Fortunately no fingerprinting for licensing around here, but I'm fairly certain I've already forfeited mine for some reason or other. All it takes is a bit of determination to get bio-metrics like that anyway. Perhaps it's a little more difficult these days with people staying home more often. Still, one leaves them all over the place anywhere one goes. I'd like to start wearing gloves for sanitary reasons though, and it would have the double benefit of obscuring my fingerprints.
As for facial recognition, I'd bet simply wearing a mask would foil many systems. If that's not enough these systems can be fairly easily defeated with a bit of effort. Some might even call it fashionable.
Even state-of-the-art computer vision is quite brittle these days. It certainly could be troubling to be compelled to submit your face to a database, but there are measures one can take to make that data useless in the field (for example in the situation of monitoring by a public surveillance camera on the street).
Microsoft Windows is complete trash, and I recommend anyone throw it out today. When one buys a computer they pay upwards of $100 dollars on top of the cost of the PC for software that's under-performant and a joke in terms of security. I believe they even come with a software keylogger installed and running out of the box these days. Apple's OSX at least passes for a real operating system, but I utterly despise them and all their products I'll never purchase. Really it's the other side of the same consumer abusing coin.
Phones are even more of a security and privacy liability as it stands. Virtually all of them have compromised telecom hardware (thanks to intimidation and extortion of manufacturers by the NSA etc.) just waiting (or not waiting) to fork over one's presumed private conversations to 'big brother', as you put it here. Not only can microphones and cameras not be physically switched off, but the operating system situation is somehow even shadier than the mainstream PC OS dichotomy.
I agree that it will take more than the will to refuse. That goes a long way though, and I advise salting the will to refuse with the will to self educate.
As you say 'big brother' is working to learn everything about us to enable oppression.
Heisenberg guarantees that all information about a system cannot be gleaned however, so take small solace that none will ever simultaneously and precisely know the position and momentum of all your particles. Indeed anything practical will fall light-years short of that theoretical benchmark.
My response is to leverage what I can learn about their systems to undermine them, and in many cases their system is weak or the math we can use is strong.
Take heart, for we live in the age of strong cryptography. The genie has been out of the bottle for years, no matter how hard those who'd see it banished have tried.
All it takes to get your wishes is a tiny scrap of hardware and a hearty helping of autodidactism or education.
Stay safe out there.
The interesting thing is people are expecting a microchip not realizing they have it in their phones already ( the in body chip will come further down the line and the You next gen will love it) most don’t leave home without. Now all that is left is to download the track app and the upcoming ID app that will make life so much more “convenient”.
Thanks for this addition my friend; the mobile phone is indeed as good as an in-body chip. It's an extension of the body as it's on almost everyone's body. Very "convenient" indeed...