On 4/14/23 07:59, noel wrote:
> In this country, it matters not, because your messages are private,
> unless a court issues a warant to a LEA to invade that privacy, in which
> case encryption doesn't set off must-read-flags, because in such cases,
> you are a target, a POI, and /all/ your comms is subject to forensic
> level scrutiny, pedos, drug dealers and no doubt terrorists use coded
> plain text messages all the time, although in a different job these days,
> I've worked with our Federal Police in my role to apply a few such
> monitorings, half of them are too stupid to know encryption exists, but
> even then, decyphering the unencrpyted mumbo jumbo often comes too late,
> then there are the journos, the politicians, the whistleblowers, the
> justice officers, and yes - the spooks, all use encryption with any
> sensitive matter.
>
> encryption does not mean you are an offender, it means you value your
> privacy.
Security isn't based on facts but on possibilities, suspicion, and
prejudice. I don't at all need to KNOW if my mail is being read only to
assume that it is. Beyond the fact that I have nothing worth encrypting
the reason I don't is that I presume that all comms are automatically
decoded if needed and stored regardless. The same applies when one is on
the other end of the checkerboard of course.
I have no idea if I was on some watchlist or shitlist for being a Linux
user or for any other reason but I did have one unpleasant and another
totally horrible incident with US border agents who, after looking me up
in the computer both times, next glared at me like I had just killed
their mother. One of them lost his cool and was yelling conflicting
orders at me like the creep in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg
and would have blown my head off if he had a gun (he didn't pull it if
he did, he was higher in this cubicle and I was in my car). He had asked
me where I was going and I told him I was going to a hotel a couple of
clicks away but didn't know the address or name which were written down
on a piece of paper in my T-shirt pocket (it was summer). As I was
trying to get the piece of paper out he started warning me to get my
hand out of my pocket (a plainly visible 3" T-shirt pocket for crissake
that I could barely get three fingers in) and was shrieking at the top
of his lungs and trembling like a *total basket case*.
This same (and last) time they next ripped my new Buick to pieces and
left me there to put it back together. I had never done an illegal thing
and had never been treated like this in my life but could not know what
they were reading about me on the monitor. Seeing that they ripped the
car I figure they must have thought I was running dope or something.
That all came to a sudden end around 30 years ago after which time the
average yearly 8-12 thousand dollars I had been spending stateside never
went back there again, and never will. I had become a Linux user a few
years before, no idea if it had a bearing though.