New Post: Snitching on Phones That Snitch on You

Try ungoogled-chrome or brave.

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Thanks. I will try ungoogled-chrome. But Brave … doesn’t it belong to another company that will again snitch? Does anyone know if the electron client of Jitsi is google dependent?

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Pretty sure electron has chromium code.

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My goal is to package up a separate package full of reasonable default rules that would exist alongside the opensnitch package, when we get it packaged for PureOS. It would work similar to how firejail does it. There is a base firejail package and an add-on package that adds firejail profiles for common applications.

I wouldn’t want to roll my rules into the main opensnitch package because an individual might have a different opinion on how strict or relaxed the rules should be.

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Hey Kyle, thanks for the writing!
I think a lot of us already with the phone would appreciate to be able to reproduce your steps and run it in the current possible state, do you think you could share the steps you followed to run opensnitch? just tried with the 1.2 arm64 deb packages but didn’t work out.

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The official releases are back on the evilsocket repository:

I pulled down the 1.3.6 arm64 packages, installed any dependencies they needed, and then installed the debs manually. Note that when you install the opensnitch_ui package, it will build some python libraries by hand (which is for cross-distro compatibility but HEAVILY frowned upon by Debian maintainers). Because when you turn off the screen, the Librem 5 clocks its RAM down drastically, and because building these python libraries is incredibly resource intensive, I highly recommend leaving your screen on throughout the whole process. I’ve noticed loads up into the 15-20 range when building these libraries. If for some reason things seem to freeze, you can forcefully halt the phone and try again after a reboot and it should complete.

Our goal is to have a version of the UI package that doesn’t have this pip install as part of the post-install script.

[Edited to add] This pip install is a one-time thing. After you get through it, those libraries are on the system so any future upgrades of the python UI package will be fast.

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That article is not specifying Firefox is snitching on us, rather, it focus on OpenSnitch, which acts like a firewall for the desktop user. It measures outgoing connections to servers.

There is no “correct” way, as one’s needs depend on how much privacy one wants, and your threat model.

For example, I use the Tor Browser, and my threat model on the Purism Forums is mass surveillance, so everything I do must be compartmentalized into a persona that follows that.

You can use Jitsi without needing to use the web application every time if you start your own instance. See the URL below:

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Speaking of Librem phone… it also helps if your phone doesn’t yet have the driver to be able to use the webcam :slight_smile: :laughing:

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“track”, tracking, trackers… all very polite terms that whitewash what it is. Tracking follows us from one place to another. Stalking, stalk, stalkers follow us from one place to another with INTENT. If the INTENT is considered ‘stalking’ by the person, then a charge is laid - - - but only to individuals. Corporations and governments have made certain they are immune to such charges.

SMIRC, is used to Stalk the device, Monitor the devices locations, data exchanges, network and with whom including financial transactions (receipts), and to Inject more stalkers, then Record everything for storage and analysis in order to Control, the person with the device.

If one cannot convince government and/or corporations to do the right thing, then embarrass them into acting responsibly. Call it what it is :warning: SMIRC :warning:!

When we are too afraid to speak the truth, then they have won,

~S~

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Yes, they should stop SMIRC’ing at us!

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Reminds me of “Smert shpionam”, but it seems to be the counter program. :laughing:

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@prolog
A good movie for it’s time.
IMHO - unfortunately, this is real life with real thieves in a world full of myopic megalomaniacs taking what they want and pimping out our rights to privacy.
If it keeps up, too many country governments will start, as already implied by the 'Mericans, to reign in the top 3 miscreants; Google, Facebook and Twitter.
If people don’t want a voice, refuse to be heard, and want to be lead by the nose, they’ll let government continue to control what one can and cannot say.

There are alternatives of course, but many of the Facebook and Google wannabes are already censoring anything that possibly might could be seen as a phobia or might possibly perhaps offend even one person.

Hope I haven’t t offended you or anyone reading this as it was never my intention and to be ahead of how the celebrities handle it, I’ll apologize in advance, not later (for the headline) for anything I may have said that might deliberately be taken out of context to be used against me in the Courts of Social Media.

Смерть шпионским сталкерам и ухмыляющимся. :wink:

~s~

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A very interesting article, gives you a chance to think about the drain of my data(

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And apparently the snitching can put one’s life in peril

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… also in a domestic violence situation. Numerically that may be more significant than being the target of drone strike, which is more of a niche problem, one hopes.

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I wonder if it would be possible to use the Librem 5 and other free’d devices to create a whole eco-systen that protects everyone’s rights. You might have to actually create a new internet of sorts to make it work.

At first perhaps, only L5 and Linux PC owners might be capable participating. Every time a legal agreement is at issue, something like the GPL would be a standard part of any agreement made there, to create legally binding enforcement of some basic electronic rights as a part of the new agreement, whatever the new agreement is about. New users using newly freed devices on a newly free’d internet can create a whole eco-system that neither Google nor Apple could enter legally without obeying strict rules that dis-empower them there (they would be just like the rest of us). All of their rights to spy and advertise would not exist. No one there would have agreed to either Google or Apple’s terms and conditions. Any violation by the tech giants there would be a criminal/prosecutable violation.

In such an eco-system, social media could eventually flourish. Even the banks might eventually capitulate rather than being ostracised or replaced by crypto-currencies. It would be like re-creating everything that Google and Apple created, except tha Eula’s and contracts between people and businesses would be subject to laws that criminalize spying and otherwise not respecting the rights of others. Such a system might even criminalize any ads that people don’t explicitly opt-in to. If the technology works and the users all agree on this, it should work.

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If you expect that to happen, you’re going to need more than the GPL.

That’s the problem. Governments don’t care. They are part of the problem.

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This is more or less our long-term goal and why Purism launched Librem One to begin with. If you build an entire hardware/software/services ecosystem on free software and open standards, and pro-privacy stances like Librem One has, then you make it hard for companies that rely either on spying or lock-in to live. On our platforms you have to interoperate, you have to share your code, and as a result if your code phones home or otherwise spies on people, people are free to fork it and remove those bits and keep the rest.

Google’s approach to protect their profitable business (search) is similar to Microsoft’s: scorched earth. If a competitor gets their profits primarily from a product, release your version for free. In Google’s case instead of releasing IE for free to choke Netscape, they released GDocs and Android for free to choke Office and Microsoft’s attempts at mobile OSes, for instance.

Apple’s approach has been more or less the same through its life: become the gatekeeper in control of the hardware and software so you can simply remove anyone who is directly competing with you on your platform. Make your products work really well with each other, at the expense of working with anyone else. Everything “just works” unless it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Like with copyleft in general, we are flipping the anti-competitive things Big Tech does on its head, and using our openness as a strength, an advantage, not a weakness. It’s an area other Big Tech can’t compete because they aren’t willing to be open and interoperable.

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There is a new german book “Jeder Mensch”, in English “Any human” or “every human” from Ferdinand von Schirach (german lawyer and author). In this book he proposes six new rights in addition to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Artikel 1 - Umwelt
Jeder Mensch hat das Recht, in einer gesunden und geschützten Umwelt zu leben.
Artikel 2 - Digitale Selbstbestimmung
Jeder Mensch hat das Recht auf digitale Selbstbestimmung. Die Ausforschung oder Manipulation von Menschen ist verboten.
Artikel 3 - Künstliche Intelligenz
Jeder Mensch hat das Recht, dass ihn belastende Algorithmen transparent, überprüfbar und fair sind. Wesentliche Entscheidungen muss ein Mensch treffen.
Artikel 4 - Wahrheit
Jeder Mensch hat das Recht, dass Äußerungen von Amtsträgern der Wahrheit entsprechen.
Artikel 5 - Globalisierung
Jeder Mensch hat das Recht, dass ihm nur solche Waren und Dienstleistungen angeboten werden, die unter Wahrung der universellen Menschenrechte hergestellt und erbracht werden.
Artikel 6 - Grundrechtsklage
Jeder Mensch kann wegen systematischer Verletzungen dieser Charta Grundrechtsklage vor den Europäischen Gerichten erheben.

Let me try a translation:

Article 1 - Environment
Every human has the right to live in a healthy and protected environment.
Article 2 - Digital Self-determination
Every human has the right to digital self-determination. The exploration and manipulation of humans is illegal.
Article 3 - Artificial intelligence
Every human has the right that algorithms that incriminate him/her must be transparent, verifiable and fair. Essential decisions must be made by a human.
Article 4 - Truth
Every human has the right that expressions of officials correspond to the truth.
Article 5 - Globalization
Every human has the right that only goods and services being offered to him/her which were produced and provided under the preservation of universal human rights.
Article 6 - Fundamental rights prosecution
Every human can, by virtue of systematic violations of this charta, raise fundamental rights prosecution at European courts.

Article 2 would probably make the business model of Google, Facebook & Co. illegal.

P.S.: please tell me if you would translate something differently.

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These six new rights look worthy of passing in to legislation.

It appears that there are two paths to enforcing digital rights; civil and legislative/criminal code. The civil path can happen any time two or more individuals (Hopefully many more individuals), make a binding agreement. The legislative/criminal code method may be more enforceable, but is much more difficult to achieve politically.

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