undefined | Better HN

0 pointsnine_k1y ago0 comments

This is very true. Usually the discussion goes about tracking by commercial entities in rich Westernized countries, which, by no coincidence, are the principal market of the ad industry. (Yes, China exists and is a huge market, but commercial tracking is a minor problem here, compared to other forms of surveillance.)

If you belong to such a category that the mere belonging to it is a death sentence, if revealed, the situation is vastly different. You have to act more like a secret agent or a spy. This means constant, pervasive, fastidious opsec. Any death-sentence-invoking activities should be strictly separated from the normal civil life. Only use the normal browser to visit commerce, official news, and government web sites. Everything that is not openly pious and loyal should belong to ephemeral VMs with a fresh browser install every time (preferably several different), VPNs that are indistinguishable from legitimate web traffic, like XRay, truecrypt-protected media with some plausible deniability data, etc. It all takes quite some technical chops, but is not sufficient. Many other small details, related to technology or not, have to be carefully, well, sanitized, and any small slip can out you.

Such undercover life, while possible, is very tiring, takes a lot of extra time and energy, and noticing this also may mark you as suspicious.

Another browser API that may slightly help track you is a minor problem on this background, unless it pierces any of your layers of protection.

0 comments

mindslight1y ago

Government and commercial surveillance are intrinsically linked and framing them as some dichotomy is essentially just a coping mechanism. It's quite plausible that someone in a category that is openly accepted in the western world ends up traveling to a country where that category has been criminalized, and then ends up in the sights of the authorities based off surveillance records/analysis bought from consumer surveillance companies in the western world.

nine_kOP1y ago

Fair enough. The difference is mostly how much the government limits commercial surveillance (eg in EU) or integrates / buys it as part of its own surveillance (not only China or Russia, but also many Western countries to a limited extent).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse