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: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @01:13PM (10 children)
I'm not worried about the US government tracking my every move. They may have the best technology but they are inept and ineffective.
On the other hand, data aggregators, cell service providers, Facebook, et al, probably know more about people than they know themselves. And these companies can and do sell your information to all comers including the government upon request (and without a warrant).
That makes me feel better. How about you?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @02:37PM
That's why they outsource the smarts to google and Facebook.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @02:57PM (1 child)
-- Alfred E. Neuman
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday March 02 2019, @06:55PM
What, me worry?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday March 02 2019, @03:14PM (6 children)
There are smart people who work for those companies, to be sure, but there are many more smart people who don't work for those companies and who could significantly obstruct or reverse them altogether. After all, it's not like those parties have access to some kind of math & science superior to what the rest of us have; it's the same. They might at some point realize an incremental advance that gives them a short-term advantage, but it's also true that most of the time they are playing catch-up because bureaucracy and institutional inertia will always make them slower than bright, nimble adversaries.
Journalists and popular media like to build up tech into modern day wizardry, where a computer geek can rapidly type on a keyboard for twenty seconds and crack into systems that took years to build. Those of us who work in tech are more inured to that sort of flash and dazzle, but even we can get taken in to an extent; we're always looking over our shoulder wondering where our skills stand next to our peers'. So, you know, maybe it could be possible for that level of tech magic...
So, let's route around the damage of surveillance and censorship. We have the technology, but more importantly the idea has occurred to us that we can.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheFool on Saturday March 02 2019, @04:35PM (1 child)
No, but they have access to a whole lot more money. They can pay for development/hardware that the rest of us couldn't really afford on our own. It can also pay for people that specifically attack our side's goals.
Not saying we shouldn't try, but it isn't quite that simple. They make a living out of this, but we don't (and probably can't unless we can find some patrons somewhere to make up for our lack of big data to sell).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @06:51PM
we just have to develop funding systems that aren't reliant on bankster whores.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Spamalope on Saturday March 02 2019, @06:15PM (3 children)
I'm still a fan of throwing rocks into their vacuum. If they're that aggressive about capturing everything, give them lots of wrong but not obviously fake stuff. Corrupt their database in a way that could only be cleared up manually.
I wonder how hard it'd be to make a tracking cooking sharing browser plugin that randomly shares trackers from quant and such so the cookies (and flash cookies and suck) move to different systems and can't be relied on. Or a limited VPN that redirects traffic for the top 100 tracking offenders through a random peer so they can track, but the identified user is always incorrect.
But... is there a way to get significant adoption through something like 4chan where there won't be mainstream awareness? Announce through one or more mainstream news articles shortly before their SEC filings with follow up articles asking why they don't mention the impairment to the product from the degradation of their product. It'd be fun to hoist them on their own petard for stalking us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @08:06PM
Random thought, perhaps you start with the source for Privacy Badger, it already knows how to separate out trackers...
I might run a special version of PB that crossed the wires of companies that tried to track my browsing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @08:02AM
Something a bit like this exists. https://adnauseam.io/ [adnauseam.io]
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday March 03 2019, @10:02PM
Are you talking about the "my humble and honest neighbor is a pedophile" even though he isn't kind of wrong or "my cat was speeding on the M20 in a mustang" kind of wrong?
I can tell you that they probably don't give a shit with the former kind of wrong and don't be surprised when your neighbor gets SWAT-ed and they are justified by the data (wrongly or rightly)
That's why this kind of dystopian stuff is so scary.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Saturday March 02 2019, @01:18PM (13 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @01:31PM (1 child)
If that's what he would say then he should have put it in the forward of the book, or a footnote at the very least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @06:14PM
Back then people actually had faith in humanity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @01:54PM
George Orwell underestimated modern IoTechnology.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 02 2019, @03:02PM (9 children)
1984 is history, not fiction
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday March 02 2019, @03:12PM (8 children)
No, sorry, no. It's not history, it was definitely fiction. He guessed on details and got many of them dramatically wrong.
He showed not the slightest hint of any anticipation of how the telescreen would actually come to exist and to be ever-present, for instance. He envisioned modern UK CCTV, yes, but he envisioned something like a television in the home as the only complement, when instead we have people *willingly* carrying around miniature telescreens in their pockets, and happily paying for the privilege. He showed no inkling at all as to how immigration and trade would wind up being involved.
On many points, 1985 was closer to history than 1984. But 1984 is the subject, because of one thing it got right - the importance of indiscriminate mass surveillance.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 02 2019, @03:16PM (4 children)
Sorry, the only variation from "history" is the setting. Everything else was happening then (and before) and is happening now.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday March 02 2019, @04:58PM (2 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday March 03 2019, @12:56AM
Fine, tell me which one...
And besides, what does that have to do with the price of rice? 1984 is still not fiction, as we are living it, like many generations before us. Let's cut to the chase, ok?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @11:05AM
From wikipedia:
The AB book is a tribute, and if you read further on wikipedia, it is not set in the same world but in AB's imagining of 1985 from the point of view of 1978.
The GD book is wrong from the outset, in that it assumes big brother can die. 1984 made it quite clear that he would last as long as the party:
Winston "Does Big Brother exist?"
O'Brien "Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party."
Winston "Does he exist in the same way as I exist?"
O'Brien "You do not exist."
Winston "Will Big Brother ever die?"
O'Brien "Of course not. How could he die? Next question."
(Score: 4, Funny) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday March 02 2019, @05:56PM
Just wanted to say: Don't be dissuaded by trolls with small minds. Your comment makes perfect sense to those of us who understand your point. Sadly, some lack the inclination to try to value the insight in others' opinions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @10:43PM (2 children)
It's quite a bit easier to extrapolate 7 years than 36 years. Also the latter author was familiar with the former's work.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday March 02 2019, @10:59PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday March 03 2019, @04:27AM
It doesn't make what I said false. He was writing about the past and present, not the future. The things he described were already happening in Europe and Russia, the tech was on the cover of Popular Science magazine.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @01:47PM (1 child)
It doesn't matter if you trust the current government you live under with the info, what matters is if you trust all future governments you'll ever live under with the info.
The current government is little threat unless you disagree with it, but history shows that freedom is insufficient defense against tyranny.
If you ever want to visit Russia or Saudi Arabia on holiday, you'd best be keeping your faggotry secret.
If you're a member of a Jewish, Homosexual, or Transexual organization with your real info. then you're a damned fool with too much trust.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday March 03 2019, @01:42PM
Actually, no. The risk is the current government, and it's only because of their propaganda machine that we don't think of it that way. It might get worse in the future, but it's already bad now. Specifically:
1. We spent most of the last 20 years at war with Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries we were allied with earlier. Perpetual war is right out of 1984. Changing alliances for no reason and ignoring the fact that we're fighting former allies because it currently suits us to fight former allies is right out of 1984. e.g. "We were always at war with Eastasia"
2. The Taliban offered to turn over bin-Laden to the US if we provided evidence of his involvement in the September 11 attacks. We had that evidence, and Bush refused because it suited him and the military-industrial complex and all of the members of Congress it owned to fight anyway.
3. We went to war in Iraq under false pretenses and nobody has been prosecuted for it. Between Iraq and Afghanistan literally trillions of US dollars have been spent on military activity that could have been spent otherwise. On the order of 10,000 US military troop deaths, 50,000 serious US military injuries, 5,000 US veteran suicides, and more than half a million civilian casualties. "One person's death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths are a statistic."
4. We ally with Saudi Arabia for the sake of cheap oil, and right now there's a war in Yemen were US-backed Saudi actions have cut off food supplies. Over 85,000 children have died, and millions more are malnourished. "Ho hum, carry on citizen, it's no concern. US business as usual."
5. The US has 2.2 million people in prison. This feeds a prison-industrial complex because prisoners don't qualify for minimum wage. In many states ex-cons, even after serving their full prison sentence, never get their right to vote back.
6. We have much higher rates of child poverty and infant mortality than any nation with anywhere near the same GDP per capita - including the US itself several decades back.
No, we're not in full on 1984 where the government tortures and brainwashes people at random. But the status quo is very much horrific and unacceptable. We just don't think about it because we have our telescreens and shopping malls and such.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @02:32PM (11 children)
I've been trying to minimize the the amount random trace data spread throughout my computer but these systems are so sprawling it's pretty hard. I'm already using full disk encryption, restart the computer when I leave it for any significant period of time, blocking plugins in my browser, destroy cookies, use private browsing for many things but not all (this site, news browsing, recipes -- those end up recorded in my history). I also use a VPN which may or may not be valuable or secure -- I'll never really know that.
Recently I've been trying to pay attention to the data applications keep. For example, in the Linux Mint system I'm using, the PDF reader (xreader: https://github.com/linuxmint/xreader/ [github.com] ) seems to remember the page I was at when I closed a PDF. This behavior survives reboot and yet when I look in ~/.config/xreader, there's nothing I can find to explain this behavior (just a generic file on print settings). In ~/.cache/xreader, the folder is totally empty. I've wondered if xreader is making a change to the file itself but the file times don't change. Obviously some data regarding what I've read and the last page I was on is written to disk (and who knows what else), but this system is very opaque on where that data is stored. Maybe it's a something Mint is doing but that leaves me many thousands of places and files to look in.
(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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @06:59PM (1 child)
mint may not be the best distro if you're concerned with security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @08:03PM
Yeah. I think this is my cue to install the devuan file I downloaded ages ago. Maybe BSD but the last time I tried, there wasn't a way to mount luks encrypted drives which would mean a major transitioning project (to be fair, that was a couple years ago so maybe I should recheck).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @11:24PM
It's not just Mint. Okular does it, too (I'm on PCLinuxOS).
Thanks for posting your findings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @12:02AM
Look into Tails. Website tails.boum.org.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday March 02 2019, @04:33PM
From TFS:
Orwell was an optimist. [fyngyrz.com]
--
An apple a day keeps anyone away.
If you throw it hard enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @07:20PM (2 children)
"Then again, when it comes to poor privacy protection, the United States seems to be doing its best to take on China."
if you weren't brainwashed you wouldn't be so foolish to think it's up to the government to protect people's privacy in private business. people need to take their own freedom in their hands and quit whining for some master to protect them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 02 2019, @08:10PM (1 child)
That's just bull. The US gov't _uses_ the public/private dichotomy to its advantage as in the Third Party Doctrine and the unraveling of the 4th Amendment. It isn't like there is a realistic choice in the modern era to NOT use a bank or a phone. People shouldn't have to choose between being hobos and having a decent life and people should be aware of the government's cynical methods used to deprive them of civil rights -- human rights -- by using the excuse that you shared info with a private 3d party. Sharing some info with your bank doesn't mean you wish to share it with the world.
Secondly, nobody can be expert at everything. If everyone was a security expert, we'd all be dead from starvation or dysentery or anything else that is addressed by professions that are more complicated and time consuming than you seem to think, but which make the world work.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @12:26PM
Exactly. And the same goes for freedom of speech, as we saw in the Wikileaks MasterCard debacle. All the government has to do is pressure some company to suppress certain speech, and it's suddenly fine because it's technically a private company making the final decision.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @10:31PM (1 child)
Hint: If you're not a Chinaman, you're not doing it right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @10:11PM
Actually you really don't and if are you really can't [theguardian.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @12:20AM
"Leaving no trace" means that when you do come to the authorities attention you are automatically targeted for additional scrutiny. There's nothing more condemning than showing the lack of your willingness to rub mud in your bellybutton when everyone else does. Those negative traces are likely more damning to you than if you expressed an allowable level of healthy dissidence.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday March 03 2019, @10:08AM (1 child)
Bar none. He would not be a "PR Cuck" who was afraid to say something that would offend 2% of the population like a moderate Dave Rubin figure (who is a wonderful centrist/Classic Liberal to have around in general IMO), he would be somebody who - without ANY hard evidence supporting whatsoever - would be making inferences and using intuition to state the whys and whens of critical power-grabs that the military-industrial complex would be taking now and in the future, like these post-birth baby killings that Congress is fully behind. He would not be a """""journalist"""", he would not work for buzzfeed, he would be an Alex Jones-type figure.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday March 03 2019, @01:44PM
Ha! George Orwell was a communist. I don't think he'd get along with Alex Jones at all.
Most teachers don't mention that part of Orwell's biography when they make 1984 required reading in school. It's especially ironic since the book focuses so much on propaganda and deception.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @05:59PM
i guess the chinese government learned from the best sysops ^_^