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Keeping your username from phone contacts is quite a different problem than keeping your name from the government.

Why is there such a pervasive crowd of people who chock this kind of thing up to a lost cause? From my prespective, if it can be done, we should, we must, do it. Is there something special about hiding something from a government thats qualitatively different than hiding it from any other criminal? That they can levy greater amounts of violence? Isnt that even greater justification to privacy?

I'm fully in agreement; we have policies around warrants, etc that have been long-running and should in general treat the government as a quasi-malicious actor.

However, just because the government forces something for them doesn't mean we should just give up entirely for everything - the fact that the government knows your SIM purchase doesn't mean that random users on HN should be able to find it.

That I can agree with, we arent there yet, make use of the tools you have.

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