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> But will I someday be prosecuted for the news articles I read or the songs I listen to or my amazon purchases or my google searches?

In case you've missed it, there have been a lot of articles on HN recently about US immigration going through people's phones and social media accounts looking for things they can use against them. e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13702981

Totalitarianism doesn't turn up all at once. It starts against those people, one person and marginalised group at a time.

Do you really think that writing our own encrypted messaging apps and using our own servers instead of Azure/AWS/Google is an important step in protecting ourselves from a totalitarian government? It seems to me to be too little too late

It does sound too little too late, but it does seem to be possible for a subset of people to outrun an oppressive state. It's helpful but not sufficent; we've all seen how the "Arab Spring" turned out.

My favourite example of using digital comms against totalitarianism is "Talking to Vula": http://www.anc.org.za/content/talking-vula

Decentralization and encryption make mass surveillance harder to implement and harder to hide, so yes. Technology alone isn't enough, but technological and political approaches support each other.

You know what else would make mass surveillance hard? If we encrypted all our hand written notes and invented spoken languages known only between friends and families-- but sometimes privacy is sacrificed for the sake of convenience.

Clearly there is huge variance in the value individuals place in privacy. And I guess that is where the author and I disagree.

Mass surveillance of handwritten notes and in-person conversations is impractical because they're decentralized.

Would this site be more convenient without forward secrecy? Would WhatsApp be more convenient without end-to-end encryption?

> It seems to me to be too little too late

Why can't we fix it? We can't do it tomorrow, but we can do it. We built the Internet; Facebook didn't exist 15 years ago.

The statement seems like the perfect propaganda, written by those who want surveillance and want to spread hopelessness among their opposition.

I meant too little too late if we fall in the hands of a totalitarian government.

I mostly just think cloud computing provides a lot of benefits to society and spurs innovation, and the idea that we should roll our own (costly) servers for the sake of privacy is not convincing.

> But will I someday be prosecuted for the news articles I read or the songs I listen to or my amazon purchases or my google searches?

The fear is not of being prosecuted. It is of not being prosecuted. Never having your day in court. Being put on watch lists and "no fly" lists without any recourse. No way to examine the evidence against you. The fear is not a orwellian world, the fear is a world driven by kafkaesque bureaucracy. You are right that privacy may not always protect us from violence, but it will protect us from indifferent and abusive bureaucracy.

See: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565)

If that is the political situation then I do not think it matters whether I use my own server, or encrypt all my messages.

If anything we would need less privacy and more transparency!

>If that is the political situation then I do not think it matters whether I use my own server, or encrypt all my messages.

Why is that? How can information be used against you by someone if it never falls into their hands?

>If anything we would need less privacy and more transparency!

Why not more of both?

The post described a situation in which a government could do anything with or without evidence, in which case it doesn't matter if they have evidence.

And I also think without us rolling our own isps, the government will always have a back door.

And truthfully I think Amazon has a better chance of fighting invasive government behavior than I do as an individual.

> If that is the political situation then I do not think it matters whether I use my own server, or encrypt all my messages

I don't know why it wouldn't matter. And it is the situation; you can be put on the No Fly List without your knowledge and with no recourse, and now popular legislation would not only deny travel on that basis but gun rights too.

> will I someday be prosecuted for the news articles I read or the songs I listen to or my amazon purchases or my google searches? I guess maybe, but that is a HUGE maybe.

Perhaps you aren't vulnerable, but there are many who are. What if you are Muslim or interested in Islam? LGBTQ in a small town? And do we know who will be in power and what the risks will be 20 years from now? We can't wait until someone starts to abuse power; it will be too late to stop them.

Also, I think the parent greatly underestimates the risks of abuses of power. Read the history of the civil rights movement, for example, when the U.S. government tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, or conducted COINTELPRO. People feel vulnerable to this day; when U.S. government mass surveillance became public recently, evidence showed that people began self-censoring their searches.

Finally, one reason many in the West feel safe is that institutions were built to protect against abuse of power. There is nothing genetically different about Western leaders that makes them less prone to abusing it. For example, a military coup in the U.S. might seem very unlikely; one reason for that is the structure of the defense institutions are designed to prevent it, partly based on what happened with the German military before WWII.

What are we doing to protect and provide freedom to the next generations, as our predecessors did for us?

> most of the data collection benefits us all in at least some small way

You may feel that way, but shouldn't people be able to disagree and have a choice?

People definitely should have a choice and I acknowledged that niche security products do exist--and if they were ever threatened I would be concerned.

I didn't mean to be so inflammatory, but I think the premise of the article -- that we should be rolling our own servers as opposed to using cloud computing systems -- is a ridiculous one. By the author's line of thinking we should probably start encrypting our handwritten thank you notes to our grand parents for no other reason than maintaining our privacy.

I never said that it should be illegal for someone to seek privacy, but I do believe that the article advocates a silly solution.

> I never said that it should be illegal for someone to seek privacy

I'm not talking about legality (though that is important); I mean that typical end users should have an option, a practical way to have privacy and function in the real world.

For example, someone looking for a job often needs Facebook and LinkedIn; they have no option.

> for no other reason than maintaining our privacy

I believe privacy is important, as a thing itself and not as a direct means to an end, to more people than you think.

Given the current political situation in the US, I'm surprised you're doubtful there will one day be an oppressive totalitarian government that uses this information against you. Do you really doubt that there are currently politicians in power who would not hesitate to leverage this data to their benefit? If so, it seems we're living in different realities.

Could you give a specific example of how typical data (ie internet browsing records) could be exploited by a politician? Will they arrest me? Tax me? Publicly shame me for reading the New York Times?

sure: https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-the-trump-campaign-buil...

That's a good article -- but I will say that (for now at least) facebook is a level-playing field and anyone and everyone can equally leverage its targeting abilities.

Sure its more refined than older ad technology, but picking the tv or radio shows during which one runs ads, or picking the magazines and newspapers in which one runs ads is not that different from targeting facebook ads. The first politicians 100 years ago to target ads on the radio probably gained the same advantages that Trump did in 2016 with facebook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

That was only ~60 years ago. I would absolutely argue that we aren't that far off, ATM.

EDIT: Also, look at places like China. They absolutely do use that type of data to do harm to people.

I'm aware that there are places like North Korea where this is a problem -- but what the article was advocating, private servers, encrypted messaging. Do you think if only the Chinese had thought of that, they'd be fine and free on the internet??

My main point is that an oppressive government is a huge problem, and it really doesn't matter whether you use aws or roll your own server, because either way you're screwed if you've let it get to that point.

Those are two problems, and they both need solutions. Centralizing everything makes it easier for the government to abuse it's position. Sure, they can still abuse if if everything is distributed, but it's a lot more work.

> My main point is that an oppressive government is a huge problem, and it really doesn't matter whether you use aws or roll your own server, because either way you're screwed if you've let it get to that point.

But we aren't at that point yet. So lets not give up trying to build things the right way just because we may be screwed in the future.

> Could you give a specific example of how typical data (ie internet browsing records) could be exploited

It could be used for anything, including the No Fly List. It could lead to your arrest. What couldn't it be used for?

> If the number one motivator for internet privacy is so that if there is someday an oppressive totalitarian government I will be safe, then I'm not convinced.

That's not the argument, kind of like the argument for not having unprotected sex with strangers is not that if you use protection and have sex with someone who has HIV, you will be immortal and live forever.

Furthermore, it's really not just about you. Say, you're gay or have a spine in country X or Y, there are so many possible cases. Those people matter, not those who are content that they themselves are not threatened at this very second, or intend to remain on the "good" side of power.

> But these are niche products for a reason: most people lead innocuous lives.

Most people are complicit. Most of us are not dangerous to any murderers or crooks, while lending support, so we are innocuous to them. And congratulations to all of us, too. Well, at least we have ads that are "more appropriate to us" I guess.