NaibofTabr

everything old is new again…

Yes, surely TOR will protect us from government surveillance… The project was originally developed on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community and continues to receive U.S. government funding, and has been criticized as “more resembl[ing] a spook project than a tool designed by a culture that values accountability or transparency”.[177] As of 2012, 80% of The Tor Project’s $2M annual budget came from the United States government, with the U.S. State Department, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and the National Science Foundation as major contributors,[178] aiming “to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states”.[179] Other public sources of funding include DARPA, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the Government of Sweden. […] Critics say that Tor is not as secure as it claims,[185] pointing to U.S. law enforcement’s investigations and shutdowns of Tor-using sites such as web-hosting company Freedom Hosting and online marketplace Silk Road. But also… In October 2013, after analyzing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, The Guardian reported that the NSA had repeatedly tried to crack Tor and had failed to break its core security, although it had had some success attacking the computers of individual Tor users.[27] The Guardian also published a 2012 NSA classified slide deck, entitled “Tor Stinks”, which said: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time”, but “with manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users”.[186] When Tor users are arrested, it is typically due to human error, not to the core technology being hacked or cracked. […] A late 2014 report by Der Spiegel using a new cache of Snowden leaks revealed, however, that as of 2012 the NSA deemed Tor on its own as a “major threat” to its mission, and when used in conjunction with other privacy tools such as OTR, Cspace, ZRTP, RedPhone, Tails, and TrueCrypt was ranked as “catastrophic,” leading to a “near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications, presence…” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network) YMMV, and your implementation and usage matter.

It’s a story, you know, fiction, printed on cheap paper made from cheap wood pulp… maybe we could call it pulp fiction?

Sort of. In 2017 China passed a law requiring Chinese user data to be held within the country: nytimes.com/…/apple-china-privacy-censorship.html Following that, Apple paid for a local data center which is managed by a Chinese company. Functionally this means that the PRC has access to all of the data stored there, because the government exerts direct control over Chinese companies, especially anything related to data collection and storage. Most likely, the PRC is able to access Apple users’ iCloud data if it resides in the China-based data center. In response to a 2017 Chinese law, Apple agreed to move its Chinese customers’ data to China and onto computers owned and run by a Chinese state-owned company. Chinese government workers physically control and operate the data center. Apple agreed to store the digital keys that unlock its Chinese customers’ information in those data centers. And Apple abandoned the encryption technology it uses in other data centers after China wouldn’t allow it. Independent security experts and Apple engineers said Apple’s concessions would make it nearly impossible for the company to stop Chinese authorities from gaining access to the emails, photos, contacts, calendars and location data of Apple’s Chinese customers. This is not really different from what’s been happening with other countries requiring their citizens’ data to be held within their borders, and the UK has similarly forced Apple to withdraw the Advanced Data Protection for iCloud users: theverge.com/…/apple-uk-icloud-encrypted-backups-… […] British security services would have access to the backups of any user worldwide, not just Brits, and Apple would not be permitted to alert users that their encryption was compromised.

…maybe? I’m not so much of an absolutist… I think there’s room in the world for companies that focus on design over production…

Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.

Hmm… counterpoint: Arm Holdings

It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you!

A lot of advertising is built around making consumers feel good for buying particular products, not convincing them to buy in the first place. Debate in this context would be useless because it’s more about confirmation bias.