Is privacy even a thing?
I have been very much interested by encryption. An article I read in the 90’s was talking about PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) which was an open source* encryption software. What I discovered in this exploration is that every single American commercial encryption software had to have a back door, which means a point of entry, a master key that could decrypt any messages that would be left open to the American government, if you were to buy a commercial software for encryption, all this would obviously not be advertised. It would mean that the software is vulnerable to hackers and above all that if you encrypt something with a commercial software the American government agencies can have a look at what you exchange with others.
Fast forward 2016 If you watch “Snowden” by Oliver Stone you will understand that nowadays the CCTV (the cameras you see in the street) is in your pocket, the all hearing hear, the all seeing eye, the little spy that follows you, traces you everywhere, all your moves, all the people you associate with, where you sleep, who you sleep with, what you do at all time is kept (probably forever) on the servers of private entities like GoOgle, MicrosOft, App1e and by extension the government that allows them to operate.
Snowden’s argument about the importance of privacy goes like this (if I remember well) “If you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide, you should as well relinquish your right to talk because you have nothing to say.”
Stone’s movie was commented by Snowden as “very accurate”, which means that all that is displayed in the movie about Snowden’s story and above all the powers held by the American government to spy on anybody is enormous, (the events are taking place in 2013). They can take control of any electronical device. You can see them at will taking control of a computer, and looking through the computer’s camera, your computer is open, your girlfriend, you, your daughter, your son is getting undressed in the same room and you will never know if someone at the other end of the world is looking or not.
Bernard Foucault “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” talks about the Panopticon
Jeremy Bentham’s prison model is built this way.
A panopticon is a design for a prison that allows for constant surveillance of prisoners. It features two circular towers, one inside the other, with the outer tower containing cells that face the inner tower from which guards can observe all cells without the prisoners knowing if they are being watched at any given moment.
We now live in a Panopticon.
I remember a time when phone batteries could be removed and above all when this changed.
You could remove at the time the energy that made your phone work. Nowadays the battery is integrated in the phone. My supposition is this one: even if your phone is spent, you see a black screen but how do you know (for sure) it is not still accessible.
Let us say that I don’t trust any of the main companies listed above, I don’t run windows on my computer and decide to erase everything and install an open source linux operating system, not ubuntu but even the most reputably private one. How on earth would I know that the hardware does not have a backdoor? That the components that are used to build the computer are legit.
Let us say that I build the computer myself, using a Raspberry pie, a screen, I put no audio, no camera and just type this little article. How do I know if my keyboard does not have memory installed inside it, text is not really heavy and nowadays, a simple USB stick can hold lifetimes of books to read, never mind to write. So could a computer keyboard contain enough memory to store every single thing I ever typed ? Yes.
When I sign a privacy agreement stipulating the use my data on a computer will be held private (will not be shared without my consent) I say nothing, but to me this is simply a joke because it is inexact. I simply do not think that privacy exists anymore.
Who we are
Our website address is: https://nexuspolycraft.com.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Who we share your data with
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where your data is sent
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.