Post #2077870

2026-05-06 11:42 UTC

It’s good to be conscious about these things, but it’s also important to have a correct analysis of the threat level. Do you have a good reason to believe authorities might be monitoring your phone specifically out of the hundreds of millions of people the could pick from? They don’t have the capacity to monitor every single phone or conversation. They will have their own threat analysis and only put you under that type of surveillance if you are or if you have the potential to become an active threat to them. If you just go about your life minding your business then you can be certain the feds aren’t reading your sms. It’s true that better safe than sorry, but at the same time you can’t let safety paralyse you and stop you from acting.

Replies (3)

@scutiger@lemmy.world 2026-05-06 11:59

If you just go about your life minding your business then you can be certain the feds aren’t reading your sms. Until you show up at (or even just walk by) a Palestine protest, and then you’re on the list and your text messages are fair game.

Open ##2078430
@Bilbo@hobbit.world 2026-05-06 22:23

Remember that woman who was arrested because her phone indicated she was at a house that was burgled at exactly that time? Police just do a dragnet. Turns out she just drove by the house as it was happening. In the above example, imagine someone did an anti Israel terror attack in the area. Everyone mentioning such things will be found via dragnet searches and who knows if you just happen to have been nearby when it happened while also making suspicios SMS messages. Dragnets are profoundly likely to catch innocent people. Protect yourself from them however you can. That should be in everyone’s threat model.

Open ##2111773
@WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-06 22:36

Do you have a good reason to believe authorities might be monitoring your phone specifically out of the hundreds of millions of people the could pick from? they don’t have to monitor any specific phone. that would be like, collecting the info but throwing away most of it. if they are doing something, they are monitoring at the provider level. They don’t have the capacity to monitor every single phone or conversation. it does not take much processing power to search in SMS messages as they are sent. phone calls would be different, but unless it’s volte, processing is easier than transmission, because of the very low bitrate. If you just go about your life minding your business “minding your business” means not protesting for leaving alone your foreign country. from a point of view, it’s not our business.

Open ##2112293