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Limiting Your Digital Footprints in a Surveillance State:
To protect himself and his sources from prying eyes in China, Paul Mozur, a technology reporter in Shanghai, leaves just an "innocent trace" of digital exhaust.
[...] In China, evading the watchful eyes of the government sometimes feels like an exercise in futility. The place is wired with about 200 million surveillance cameras, Beijing controls the telecom companies, and every internet company has to hand over data when the police want it. They also know where journalists live because we register our address with police. In Shanghai, the police regularly come to my apartment; once they demanded to come inside.
That said, China is big, and the government less than competent. Sometimes the police who come to my door have no idea I'm a journalist. Usually the higher-ups who deal with my visa don't know about the house visits. The lack of coordination means one of the best things to do is to try to slip through the cracks. Basically, protect yourself but also leave an innocent trace.
I use an iPhone because Apple tends to be more secure than Android. That's especially true in China, where the blocks against Google mean there are a huge number of third-party Android stores peddling all kinds of sketchy apps.
It's also important to realize that because Beijing controls the telecoms, your domestic phone number can be a liability. For secure apps like Signal, I toggle the registration lock so that if they try to mirror my phone, my account still has a layer of protection.
The author goes on to describe how he avoids the Great Firewall, deals with the police demanding to check his cell phone, guardedly uses WeChat, and addresses facial recognition sunglasses. Further, he notes that there is so much government surveillance going on:
Amusingly, even the government doesn't trust the government. In reporting on data sharing between different ministries, I've found that it's not uncommon for one part of the government to distrust another to the point it won't share data. At other times, a government branch might not even trust itself to handle data.
[...] Then again, when it comes to poor privacy protection, the United States seems to be doing its best to take on China.
That last statement is, in my opinion, quite telling. I know my online hygiene is not perfect, but I do try to limit the amount of personal information I post online. Though nearly 5 years old, now, Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere is just as applicable -- if not more so -- today. I wonder what George Orwell would have to say about surveillance in today's society?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @02:53PM (6 children)
You should try strace to find what programs are reading.
But open source has become full of unrequested state logging, and questionable processes in the middle. Like the current recommended version of gpg needing an external pass phrase reader, charitably a misguided attempt to "make things easy" for computer illiterates.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @04:03PM (5 children)
Thank you -- not solved yet but there are some hints. After I open a file xreader also also checks files in ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata -- these are binary files however. It also hits ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel (and some related files) -- there is no 'recent documents' option in the file menu. Anyway, all the xbel files contain only this:
I would think the stuff in gvfs-metadata would be related to filesystem stuff rather file position data on individual files, but whatever -- I ran strings on ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home because of course it's a binary file, and sure enough, a PDF I was looking at earlier this morning is mentioned (although it is still opaque as to how the page number is stored). Tons of crap is in there including urls going way back, but too few to be everything I've ever looked at. I think I'll move that file and see what happens when it is missing.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @04:13PM (3 children)
I renamed ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home & home.log to fuckYou and fuckYou.log, rebooted, and opened up a PDF I had closed at page 20something. Opened at page 1. No ill effects that could tell (yet) from removing that file. I guess I'll be writing a shutdown script that deletes that crap.
Anyway, thanks to the poster above who put me on the right track.
I guess I'll start poking at the other numerous files stored there to see what they have in them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
I looked at a few of the other files in ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/ and they were stuffed with breadcrumbs. It turns out I can delete the folder, reboot, and nothing seems worse for wear (though folder regenerates itself). I guess I'll just write a script that srms the folder's contents then calls shutdown. What's annoying about that solution is that the script itself is a sort of breadcrumb, at least a cue to my awareness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @07:06AM
Noted side effect: the file browser forgets whether to display the files in a folder as icons or a list that can be sorted by name, date, whatever. Which is good if one connects other encrypted detachable drives (the forgetting, that is).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 02 2019, @11:32PM
Post it at your site, submit to SN and HN.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @10:08PM
Maybe try to lsof the process when its running to see the list of open files, save that list and go through them - some might not be real files of course... it could also be phoning home to store the state, but that's easily checked, block your internet and see if was able to remember your last page.