May 10, 2022

I was photographing flowers

when I heard this bird calling.

Northern Flicker.
http://naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/ca/facts/birds/northern_flicker.html

Interesting. Seems to be a flying anteater. No complaints here!

Downsized image.
For your avian viewing pleasure.
Flowers weren't bad, but I am still going through the pictures, almost as fast as I take them.

May 10, 2022

Digital Security and Privacy Tips for Those Involved in Abortion Access

Cross-posted to Computer Help and Support, Activist Headquarters.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/digital-security-and-privacy-tips-those-involved-abortion-access
CC BY license, https://www.eff.org/copyright "You do NOT have to ask permission to post original EFF material on a mailing list or newsgroup"

Legislation deputizing people to find, sue, and collect damages from anyone who tries to help people seeking abortion care creates serious digital privacy and security risks for those involved in abortion access. Patients, their family members and friends, doctors, nurses, clinic staff, reproductive rights activists, abortion rights counselors and website operators, insurance providers, and even drivers who help take patients to clinics may face grave risks to their privacy and safety. Other legislation that does not depend on deputizing “bounty hunters,” but rather criminalizes abortion, presents even more significant risks.

Those targeted by anti-abortion laws can, if they choose, take steps to better protect their privacy and security. Though there is no one-size-fits-all digital security solution, some likely risks are clear. One set of concerns involves law enforcement and state actors, who may have expensive and sophisticated surveillance technology at their disposal, as well as warrants and subpoenas. Because of this, using non-technical approaches in combination with technical ones may be more effective at protecting yourself. Private actors in states with "bounty laws" may also try to enlist a court's subpoena power (to seek information associated with your ISP address, for example, or other data that might be collected by the services you use). But it may still be easier to protect yourself from this “private surveillance” using technical approaches. This guide will cover some of each.

Developing risk awareness and a routine of keeping your data private and secure takes practice. Whether the concern is over digital surveillance, like tracking what websites you’ve visited, or attempts to obtain personal communications using the courts, it’s good to begin by thinking at a high level about ways you can improve your overall security and keep your online activities private. Then, as you come to understand the potential scope of risks you may face, you can narrow in on the tools and techniques that are the best fit for your concerns. Here are some high-level tips to help you get started. We recommend pairing them with some specific guides we’ve highlighted here. To be clear, it is virtually impossible to devise a perfect security strategy—but good practices can help.

1: Compartmentalization

In essence, this is doing your best to keep more sensitive activities separate from your day-to-day ones. Compartmentalizing your digital footprint can include developing the habit of never reusing passwords, having separate browsers for different purposes, and backing up sensitive data onto external drives.

Recommendations:

Use different browsers for different use cases. More private browsers like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox are better for more sensitive activities. Keeping separate browsers can protect against accidental data spillover from one aspect of your life into another.
Use a secondary email address and/or phone number to register sensitive accounts or give to contacts with whom you don’t want to associate too closely. Google Voice is a free secondary phone number. Protonmail and Tutanota are free email services that offer many privacy protections that more common providers like Gmail do not, such as end-to-end encryption when emailing others also on Protonmail and Tutanota, and fewer embedded tracking mechanisms on the service itself.
Use a VPN when you need to dissociate your internet connection from what you’re doing online. Be wary of VPN products that sell themselves as cure-all solutions.
If you're going to/from a location that's more likely to have increased surveillance, or if you're particularly worried about who might know you're there, turning off your devices or their location services can help keep your location private.

2: Community Agreements

It’s likely that others in your community share your digital privacy concerns. Deciding for yourself what information is safer to share with your community, then coming together to decide what kind of information cannot be shared outside the group, is a great nontechnical way to address many information security problems. Think of it in three levels: what information should you share with nobody? What information is OK to share with a smaller, more trusted group? And what information is fine to share publicly?

Recommendations:

Come up with special phrases to mask sensitive communications.
Push a culture of consent when it comes to sharing data about one another, be it pictures, personal information, and so on. Asking for permission first is a good way to establish trust and communication with each other.
Agree to communicate with each other on more secure platforms like Signal, or offline.

3: Safe Browsing

There are many ways that data on your browser can undermine your privacy and security, or be weaponized against you. Limiting unwanted tracking and reducing the likelihood that data from different aspects of your life spills into one another is a great way to layer on more protection.

Recommendations:

Install privacy-preserving browser extensions on any browsers you use. Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, and DuckDuckGo are great options.
Use a privacy-focused search engine, like DuckDuckGo.
Carefully look at the privacy settings on each app and account you use. Turn off location services on phone apps that don’t need them. Raise the bar on privacy settings for most, if not all, your online accounts.
Disable the ad identifier on mobile devices. Ad IDs are specifically designed to facilitate third-party tracking, and disabling them makes it harder to profile you. Instructions for Android devices are here, and for iOS devices here.
Choose a browser that’s more private by design. DuckDuckGo on mobile and Firefox (with privacy settings turned up) on the desktop are both good options.

4: Security Checklists

Make a to-do list of tools, techniques, and practices to use when you are doing anything that requires a bit more care when it comes to digital privacy and security. This is not only good to have so that you don’t forget anything, but is extremely helpful when you find yourself in a more high-stress situation, where trying to remember these things is far from the top of your mind.

Recommendations:

Tools: VPNs for hiding your location and circumventing local internet censorship, encrypted messaging apps for avoiding surveillance, and anonymized credit cards for keeping financial transactions separate from your day-to-day persona.
Strategies: use special code words with trusted people to hide information in plain sight; check in with someone via encrypted chat when you are about to do something sensitive; turn off location services on your cell phone before going somewhere, and back up and remove sensitive data from your main device.

May 10, 2022

Digital Security and Privacy Tips for Those Involved in Abortion Access

Cross-posted to GD, Computer Help and Support.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/digital-security-and-privacy-tips-those-involved-abortion-access
CC BY license, https://www.eff.org/copyright "You do NOT have to ask permission to post original EFF material on a mailing list or newsgroup"

Legislation deputizing people to find, sue, and collect damages from anyone who tries to help people seeking abortion care creates serious digital privacy and security risks for those involved in abortion access. Patients, their family members and friends, doctors, nurses, clinic staff, reproductive rights activists, abortion rights counselors and website operators, insurance providers, and even drivers who help take patients to clinics may face grave risks to their privacy and safety. Other legislation that does not depend on deputizing “bounty hunters,” but rather criminalizes abortion, presents even more significant risks.

Those targeted by anti-abortion laws can, if they choose, take steps to better protect their privacy and security. Though there is no one-size-fits-all digital security solution, some likely risks are clear. One set of concerns involves law enforcement and state actors, who may have expensive and sophisticated surveillance technology at their disposal, as well as warrants and subpoenas. Because of this, using non-technical approaches in combination with technical ones may be more effective at protecting yourself. Private actors in states with "bounty laws" may also try to enlist a court's subpoena power (to seek information associated with your ISP address, for example, or other data that might be collected by the services you use). But it may still be easier to protect yourself from this “private surveillance” using technical approaches. This guide will cover some of each.

Developing risk awareness and a routine of keeping your data private and secure takes practice. Whether the concern is over digital surveillance, like tracking what websites you’ve visited, or attempts to obtain personal communications using the courts, it’s good to begin by thinking at a high level about ways you can improve your overall security and keep your online activities private. Then, as you come to understand the potential scope of risks you may face, you can narrow in on the tools and techniques that are the best fit for your concerns. Here are some high-level tips to help you get started. We recommend pairing them with some specific guides we’ve highlighted here. To be clear, it is virtually impossible to devise a perfect security strategy—but good practices can help.

1: Compartmentalization

In essence, this is doing your best to keep more sensitive activities separate from your day-to-day ones. Compartmentalizing your digital footprint can include developing the habit of never reusing passwords, having separate browsers for different purposes, and backing up sensitive data onto external drives.

Recommendations:

Use different browsers for different use cases. More private browsers like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox are better for more sensitive activities. Keeping separate browsers can protect against accidental data spillover from one aspect of your life into another.
Use a secondary email address and/or phone number to register sensitive accounts or give to contacts with whom you don’t want to associate too closely. Google Voice is a free secondary phone number. Protonmail and Tutanota are free email services that offer many privacy protections that more common providers like Gmail do not, such as end-to-end encryption when emailing others also on Protonmail and Tutanota, and fewer embedded tracking mechanisms on the service itself.
Use a VPN when you need to dissociate your internet connection from what you’re doing online. Be wary of VPN products that sell themselves as cure-all solutions.
If you're going to/from a location that's more likely to have increased surveillance, or if you're particularly worried about who might know you're there, turning off your devices or their location services can help keep your location private.

2: Community Agreements

It’s likely that others in your community share your digital privacy concerns. Deciding for yourself what information is safer to share with your community, then coming together to decide what kind of information cannot be shared outside the group, is a great nontechnical way to address many information security problems. Think of it in three levels: what information should you share with nobody? What information is OK to share with a smaller, more trusted group? And what information is fine to share publicly?

Recommendations:

Come up with special phrases to mask sensitive communications.
Push a culture of consent when it comes to sharing data about one another, be it pictures, personal information, and so on. Asking for permission first is a good way to establish trust and communication with each other.
Agree to communicate with each other on more secure platforms like Signal, or offline.

3: Safe Browsing

There are many ways that data on your browser can undermine your privacy and security, or be weaponized against you. Limiting unwanted tracking and reducing the likelihood that data from different aspects of your life spills into one another is a great way to layer on more protection.

Recommendations:

Install privacy-preserving browser extensions on any browsers you use. Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, and DuckDuckGo are great options.
Use a privacy-focused search engine, like DuckDuckGo.
Carefully look at the privacy settings on each app and account you use. Turn off location services on phone apps that don’t need them. Raise the bar on privacy settings for most, if not all, your online accounts.
Disable the ad identifier on mobile devices. Ad IDs are specifically designed to facilitate third-party tracking, and disabling them makes it harder to profile you. Instructions for Android devices are here, and for iOS devices here.
Choose a browser that’s more private by design. DuckDuckGo on mobile and Firefox (with privacy settings turned up) on the desktop are both good options.

4: Security Checklists

Make a to-do list of tools, techniques, and practices to use when you are doing anything that requires a bit more care when it comes to digital privacy and security. This is not only good to have so that you don’t forget anything, but is extremely helpful when you find yourself in a more high-stress situation, where trying to remember these things is far from the top of your mind.

Recommendations:

Tools: VPNs for hiding your location and circumventing local internet censorship, encrypted messaging apps for avoiding surveillance, and anonymized credit cards for keeping financial transactions separate from your day-to-day persona.
Strategies: use special code words with trusted people to hide information in plain sight; check in with someone via encrypted chat when you are about to do something sensitive; turn off location services on your cell phone before going somewhere, and back up and remove sensitive data from your main device.

May 10, 2022

Digital Security and Privacy Tips for Those Involved in Abortion Access

Cross-posted to GD, Activist Headquarters.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/digital-security-and-privacy-tips-those-involved-abortion-access
CC BY license, https://www.eff.org/copyright "You do NOT have to ask permission to post original EFF material on a mailing list or newsgroup"

Legislation deputizing people to find, sue, and collect damages from anyone who tries to help people seeking abortion care creates serious digital privacy and security risks for those involved in abortion access. Patients, their family members and friends, doctors, nurses, clinic staff, reproductive rights activists, abortion rights counselors and website operators, insurance providers, and even drivers who help take patients to clinics may face grave risks to their privacy and safety. Other legislation that does not depend on deputizing “bounty hunters,” but rather criminalizes abortion, presents even more significant risks.

Those targeted by anti-abortion laws can, if they choose, take steps to better protect their privacy and security. Though there is no one-size-fits-all digital security solution, some likely risks are clear. One set of concerns involves law enforcement and state actors, who may have expensive and sophisticated surveillance technology at their disposal, as well as warrants and subpoenas. Because of this, using non-technical approaches in combination with technical ones may be more effective at protecting yourself. Private actors in states with "bounty laws" may also try to enlist a court's subpoena power (to seek information associated with your ISP address, for example, or other data that might be collected by the services you use). But it may still be easier to protect yourself from this “private surveillance” using technical approaches. This guide will cover some of each.

Developing risk awareness and a routine of keeping your data private and secure takes practice. Whether the concern is over digital surveillance, like tracking what websites you’ve visited, or attempts to obtain personal communications using the courts, it’s good to begin by thinking at a high level about ways you can improve your overall security and keep your online activities private. Then, as you come to understand the potential scope of risks you may face, you can narrow in on the tools and techniques that are the best fit for your concerns. Here are some high-level tips to help you get started. We recommend pairing them with some specific guides we’ve highlighted here. To be clear, it is virtually impossible to devise a perfect security strategy—but good practices can help.

1: Compartmentalization

In essence, this is doing your best to keep more sensitive activities separate from your day-to-day ones. Compartmentalizing your digital footprint can include developing the habit of never reusing passwords, having separate browsers for different purposes, and backing up sensitive data onto external drives.

Recommendations:

Use different browsers for different use cases. More private browsers like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox are better for more sensitive activities. Keeping separate browsers can protect against accidental data spillover from one aspect of your life into another.
Use a secondary email address and/or phone number to register sensitive accounts or give to contacts with whom you don’t want to associate too closely. Google Voice is a free secondary phone number. Protonmail and Tutanota are free email services that offer many privacy protections that more common providers like Gmail do not, such as end-to-end encryption when emailing others also on Protonmail and Tutanota, and fewer embedded tracking mechanisms on the service itself.
Use a VPN when you need to dissociate your internet connection from what you’re doing online. Be wary of VPN products that sell themselves as cure-all solutions.
If you're going to/from a location that's more likely to have increased surveillance, or if you're particularly worried about who might know you're there, turning off your devices or their location services can help keep your location private.

2: Community Agreements

It’s likely that others in your community share your digital privacy concerns. Deciding for yourself what information is safer to share with your community, then coming together to decide what kind of information cannot be shared outside the group, is a great nontechnical way to address many information security problems. Think of it in three levels: what information should you share with nobody? What information is OK to share with a smaller, more trusted group? And what information is fine to share publicly?

Recommendations:

Come up with special phrases to mask sensitive communications.
Push a culture of consent when it comes to sharing data about one another, be it pictures, personal information, and so on. Asking for permission first is a good way to establish trust and communication with each other.
Agree to communicate with each other on more secure platforms like Signal, or offline.

3: Safe Browsing

There are many ways that data on your browser can undermine your privacy and security, or be weaponized against you. Limiting unwanted tracking and reducing the likelihood that data from different aspects of your life spills into one another is a great way to layer on more protection.

Recommendations:

Install privacy-preserving browser extensions on any browsers you use. Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, and DuckDuckGo are great options.
Use a privacy-focused search engine, like DuckDuckGo.
Carefully look at the privacy settings on each app and account you use. Turn off location services on phone apps that don’t need them. Raise the bar on privacy settings for most, if not all, your online accounts.
Disable the ad identifier on mobile devices. Ad IDs are specifically designed to facilitate third-party tracking, and disabling them makes it harder to profile you. Instructions for Android devices are here, and for iOS devices here.
Choose a browser that’s more private by design. DuckDuckGo on mobile and Firefox (with privacy settings turned up) on the desktop are both good options.

4: Security Checklists

Make a to-do list of tools, techniques, and practices to use when you are doing anything that requires a bit more care when it comes to digital privacy and security. This is not only good to have so that you don’t forget anything, but is extremely helpful when you find yourself in a more high-stress situation, where trying to remember these things is far from the top of your mind.

Recommendations:

Tools: VPNs for hiding your location and circumventing local internet censorship, encrypted messaging apps for avoiding surveillance, and anonymized credit cards for keeping financial transactions separate from your day-to-day persona.
Strategies: use special code words with trusted people to hide information in plain sight; check in with someone via encrypted chat when you are about to do something sensitive; turn off location services on your cell phone before going somewhere, and back up and remove sensitive data from your main device.

May 8, 2022

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity

This is cross-posted in Computer Help and Support. https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1095
You may know (or be) someone who needs online anonymity.
-----
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa

Welcome.

IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATION FOR UKRAINIANS. ВАЖЛИВА РЕКОМЕНДАЦІЯ ДЛЯ УКРАЇНЦІВ

This is a maintained guide with the aim of providing an introduction to various online tracking techniques, online ID verification techniques, and detailed guidance to creating and maintaining (truly) anonymous online identities. It is written with hope for activists, journalists, scientists, lawyers, whistle-blowers, and good people being oppressed, censored, harassed anywhere!

This guide is an open-source non-profit initiative, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (cc-by-nc-4.0 [Archive.org]) and is not sponsored/endorsed by any commercial/governmental entity. This means that you are free to use my guide for pretty much any purpose excluding commercially as long as you do attribute it.

If you'd like to make a donation to help this project, you can do so from here https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/donations.html where you'll also find the project goals. All the donations will be strictly used within the context of this project. All donations and spendings are logged on the donations page.

View the guide:

In your browser
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/guide.html
PDF
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/export/guide.pdf
OpenDocument (ODT)
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/export/guide.odt
Raw Markdown
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AnonyPla-ng/thgtoa/master/guide.md
Mirrors:

Main: https://anonymousplanet-ng.org
The guide and all the files are also readily available on Archive.org and Archive.today:

Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/https://anonymousplanet-ng.org/
Archive.today: https://archive.fo/anonymousplanet-ng.org/
Archive.today over Tor: http://archiveiya74codqgiixo33q62qlrqtkgmcitqx5u2oeqnmn5bpcbiyd.onion/anonymousplanet-ng.org/

May 8, 2022

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity

https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa

----
Welcome.

IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATION FOR UKRAINIANS. ВАЖЛИВА РЕКОМЕНДАЦІЯ ДЛЯ УКРАЇНЦІВ

This is a maintained guide with the aim of providing an introduction to various online tracking techniques, online ID verification techniques, and detailed guidance to creating and maintaining (truly) anonymous online identities. It is written with hope for activists, journalists, scientists, lawyers, whistle-blowers, and good people being oppressed, censored, harassed anywhere!

This guide is an open-source non-profit initiative, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (cc-by-nc-4.0 [Archive.org]) and is not sponsored/endorsed by any commercial/governmental entity. This means that you are free to use my guide for pretty much any purpose excluding commercially as long as you do attribute it.

If you'd like to make a donation to help this project, you can do so from here https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/donations.html where you'll also find the project goals. All the donations will be strictly used within the context of this project. All donations and spendings are logged on the donations page.

View the guide:

In your browser
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/guide.html
PDF
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/export/guide.pdf
OpenDocument (ODT)
https://github.com/NobodySpecial256/thgtoa/blob/master/export/guide.odt
Raw Markdown
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AnonyPla-ng/thgtoa/master/guide.md
Mirrors:

Main: https://anonymousplanet-ng.org
The guide and all the files are also readily available on Archive.org and Archive.today:

Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/https://anonymousplanet-ng.org/
Archive.today: https://archive.fo/anonymousplanet-ng.org/
Archive.today over Tor: http://archiveiya74codqgiixo33q62qlrqtkgmcitqx5u2oeqnmn5bpcbiyd.onion/anonymousplanet-ng.org/

May 2, 2022

Elon Musk Already Showed Us How He'll Run Twitter

From The Atlantic
Was not paywalled for me, but I have these Firefox extensions ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/04/elon-musk-spacex-tesla-twitter-leadership-style/629689/

For a hint at how Twitter will fare under its new owner, consider how he operates his other enterprises.

But one way to think about how Twitter might fare under Musk is to look at how the billionaire operates those other enterprises that occupy his mind. More than any Muskian pronouncement, that history can hint at what his ownership might mean—for Twitter as a company with thousands of employees, a platform with millions of users, and an unruly public forum on an unruly internet. I’ve described Elon’s world before as the Musk Cinematic Universe, and in his businesses, as in Marvel movies, certain themes appear again and again, impatience first among them. Here are four axioms for what to expect next.

Summary:
1. If Twitter has a factory floor, Musk might try to sleep on it.

Musk is a well-known workaholic. ... Musk has spent years becoming an expert in electric-car manufacturing and rocket engineering; his next learning binge could be about content moderation.

2. He’s interested in his ideas, not your complaints.

the most likely outcome, as Charlie Warzel writes in his newsletter at The Atlantic, is ... an environment with minimal moderation and more rampant harassment and hate.

3. Prepare for rogue proclamations.

Musk has a reputation for setting unrealistic deadlines.
... like "move fast, break things? .... ed

4. Musk could go full “maker of civilization” on Twitter.

"elevating what happens on the platform to a concern of civilizational importance and even a civilizational good."

Savior?

My thoughts: Taking over a social media site just when politicians on ALL sides, worldwide are raising pitchforks over moderation issues may prove that:

May 1, 2022

Claimed: Elon started buying Twitter after elonjet refused $5k offer to cease

Via Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220892

Links to tweet ( I hate twitter, sorry )

https://mobile.twitter.com/xyeezyszn/status/1514572774093869057

Elon Musk got so mad that a 16 year old kid was using publicly accessible data to share his private jet location that he offered the kid $5,000 to stop.
@elonjet
said no, and Elon immediately started purchasing huge chunks of Twitter stock.

Chart at the link.

April 30, 2022

Is there search on the mobile version? I don't see it, but it's there on the desktop version. nt

April 30, 2022

Could the "View All" link be always in the same place? I have seen it in two different places, and

it's not easy to scan for it. I often have to use the browser search text function to find it.

Cheers.