Hacker News Reader

Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but why would Russia care about me?

Because if you are going to carry out a propaganda campaign to destabilize or realign <non-Russian country>, then being able to identify them interests and vulnerabilities of each particular propaganda target is useful. Modern international propaganda includes what is exactly, or is equivalent to, targeted advertising, and everything useful to such advertising is useful to nation-state propagandists.

We've actually seen this in action throughout the West, including but not limited to the US, recently, so it's not merely a theoretical concern. We are no longer in a world where you need to be personally important to be a target of foreign nation-state information gathering and targeting, because the same factors that make that scale for private actors and your home government make it scale for foreign governments that may potentially be opposed to or wish to influence your home government.

Clarification: The point is to use nested VPN chains, alternating between jurisdictions that don't readily cooperate. And ideally, are virtually at war. Interleaved with ~neutral jurisdictions, to reduce oversight.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19609067

Why would the US care about you? And that's on top of the fact that the policy and regulatory regime in Russia has (over some years and quite openly) moved towards essentially full legal interception capability of everyone's internet comms. Roskomnadzor is out there actually doing the stuff the imaginary messageboard NSA does.

What mostly matters is that the US and Russia aren't exactly on speaking terms.

Does this one end with you saying 'The Aristocrats!' because I really don't follow at all.

The Aristocrats? Lost me there, and I refuse to search.

It's really very simple. The VM host that I'm using connects to a mainstream VPN service, which is quite popular for torrenting and such, using a server in the EU. Through that VPN tunnel, I connect with a different VPN service, which operates in someplace like Russia.

Then, through that tunnel, I connect with a third VPN service, which operates in some ~neutral country. And so on, until I'm satisfied, or the latency blows up. I'm happy with 0.5-1 second, for whatever that's worth.

After the third VPN or so, I typically connect with the Tor network. And if I'm really feeling paranoid, I add some hidden service VPS proxies, just for fun.[0] Or a homage to Kevin Mitnick,if you like.

0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/onion-ssh-hosts-for-logi...

Why do you go through this amount of work for preserving your privacy? Honest question out of curiosity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com