Privacy Becoming Illegal?
Many governments want to be part of every private conversation
The prose below is very important to absorb. The attack on privacy is real and is happening now. Please read carefully and thoughtfully. Ask questions. Do additional research. Be prepared. Thanks for reading.
The Rant
If technology is engrained in our everyday life and if that technology cannot legally be private then I must ask the question, “is privacy not only dying but ultimately becoming illegal”?
Am I being a bit sensational? Fueling conspiracy? No, not one bit. I am scared, terrified actually, the United Kingdom just passed a law that could make private chat in the UK illegal – full stop. This is not a story from the movie “1984”, this is real life in 2023! Before I get a bunch of random notes saying that I bought too much tinfoil for my hat, let’s take a look at this recent legislation.
The UK government says its’ Online Safety Act will protect people, particularly children, on the internet by demanding EVERY message YOU send by ANY chat program is SCANNED for inappropriate content. They pitch this as protecting children but when does this extend to what the government labels as misinformation? They hint in the legislation that they are not only targeting illegal conversations but those they deem as ‘misinformation’.
When did conversations become illegal?
Like I said before, if a judge issues a warrant to monitor your physical and online activity then (maybe) fair game. NO ONE has any right to monitor the conversations I have in my house, my car, when taking a walk in the woods, or when I use an app to have a private conversation. The UK government did admit they don’t know how they are going to create a system that does this, but they now possess the legal authority to start investigating a method.
The European Union (EU) is also looking into the same type of law and from time to time, the United States tries to pass laws on basically outlawing encryption, so no message can ever be private. The government, under no guise, should be given a blanket method to scan its citizen’s communications’.
Is the goal to turn a free society into a compliant society? Compliant to what?
The EU is also thinking about meddling with the encryption in your web browser, so the security and privacy of ANY browser comes into question. On the flip side they are going after Facebook regarding targeted ads. So … the authorities make some noise about bruising big tech so with this distraction they can pass laws that allows governments to legally snoop on everything. What a mess!
It is already horrible that every time you turn on your mobile phone its’ location is recorded.
This type of sweeping legislation makes me very angry! Boiling!
Imagine, in the near future, having a conversation then you get notified that your conversation does not align with the current parasitic mind virus, and you have been reported. I think I would loose it. Seriously.
Many aspects of technology are wonderful but controlling and monitoring all my conversations on a device to which we are already addicted, is an ingenious way to control the population.
There may be a little hope yet as in the US the new Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 plans to overhaul how police and the feds access Americans’ data and communications. This does not stop how big tech collects your data, but its a start. Read more.
So what do you do about it?
My Phone is Fine?
“But I use Signal on my iPhone, so I am ok.”
“I use Facebook Messenger and it says its end to end encrypted, so I am ok.”
“I never say anything bad on chat, I don’t even have curtains on my windows, my password is 123456, and I never lock the door.”
The folks having the conversations as above, have a false sense of privacy and are addicted to the convenience of the modern digital lifestyle. If privacy is truly important to you, not only do you need privacy focused apps, but all the aspects of the system you use needs to be private.
“I like my Samsung, has a nice camera, has all my photos and backs them to the cloud, I install my travel apps, TikTok, and my banking apps --- its so convenient.”
“I have been using an iPhone since it came out, that is all I know how to use.”
Do you want everything you do, and everywhere you go logged and tracked by corporations that might not align with your values?
If you are actually serious about truly private conversations but want to keep using your tracking device, I would recommend getting a separate phone for serious communications. I did.
What did COVID Teach Us?
COVID taught us that the major phone providers can update their operating system (iOS & Android) to align with government mandated tracking features quickly and easily. Remember all the COVID tracing apps that came out? These were possible with an update from Apple and Google which they both released simultaneously. I will say looking at how they did the tracing was actually done in a privacy approved manner, but we cannot prove this to be 100% true as their operating system is not open source. What do I mean by open source?
Open Source = Transparency
What is “open source” and why is it important for privacy?
Open source means the computer code (the recipe) of how the software works on the phone is available for anyone to read and analyze. Popular open source software can have thousands of security and privacy professionals review the code to make sure there are no back doors and we can trust it.
Is Apple iOS open source? No.
Is Android open source? Yes and No.
The core of Android is open source but if you have an Android phone with Google services like Maps, Gmail, and Google Play Store — the phone has software that has secret recipes. The Privacy Society phones use a version of Android that has the Google monitoring and telemetry software removed.
Complex?
Is the thought of trying to get to a truly private mobile phone daunting?
This is premise of the Privacy Society —- to give people the option of having a privacy phone which, from the operating system all the way to secure chat apps, maintains your privacy.
Can you do it yourself?
Sure! You need to find a handset that supports either Graphene OS, Lineage OS or Calyx OS and flash your phone. Then if the OS does not have an app store, you will need to install F-Droid by downloading the APK to start adding your favorite open source apps and then pick a private browser and DNS provider. If that sounds a bit nerdly, that is why we offer our phones. We do all the nerdly stuff for you.
Monitoring Chat: What could go wrong?
Back to the initial issue - the UK government monitored chat. What could go wrong? Chatting about a movie script that has disturbing imagery? Intimate or sensitive conversations? Discussing your disappointment with the current regime? Negotiating an M&A with your accountants and lawyers? Discussing why you think a certain law is overreaching? In the near future, all these conversations could be subject to human or AI grading of your conversations for acceptability.
Think I am going overboard? Read “Database Nation” which was written in 2000 as a warning. Currently, most of the predictions in the book have been fulfilled, and the described overreach has already been accepted by society. What is the next 23 years of AI going to bring to “enhance” the surveillance of its citizens?
If you enjoy private, intimate, and sensitive conversations, its not just the app you are using that protects your precious conversations, but it begins with the operating system on your phone.
Your iPhone or Samsung is great for your public life. Your private life, not so much.
Why Privacy OS and Inner Circle Communication App?
We based our Inner Circle chat app on a great private chat app called Session. Session is actually based on the app Signal.
Signal begot Session, Session begot Inner Circle.
This is the power of open source. Signal is a great encrypted, secure, and private chat application that is not in the grasp of Big Tech. Session started because they loved Signal (and we still do!) but did not want the requirement of using your phone number. Session wanted its users to be able to connect to people without needing a user account, phone number or email address, only a secret code.
Inner Circle’s goal is to make an easier to use Session. We are tweaking it to work better for non-techies, optimize the user interface for the Privacy Titan Pro and Jellybean and we removed the ability to use Google Notification services. No Google = no tracking. We are committed to being compatible with Session so a user can use Inner Circle to communicate with people still on a Google infested Android phone or still addicted to their iPhone 😉.
By running Inner Circle on the De-Googled Privacy OS , it gives a great start to end-to-end privacy.
If you still want to use Session or Signal on our phones and not use Inner Circle that works too. We are a privacy focused phone for your favorite privacy focused application.
Privacy Society Phones, end to end privacy begins when you turn on the phone for the first time.
In Closing
Privacy is important for individual liberty. To be yourself and communicate with those that matter most, privacy must be a priority. Period. The world is not making privacy easy. The laws don’t understand the technology so you better to take matters into your own hands.
If Big Tech would just make using their operating systems and apps so they were not constantly monitoring you, getting you addicted to apps, and pushing the narrative of the day -- it would be great. But they never will. The data your digital lifestyle generates is worth too much to them.
This is why I started on this journey, to discover how to use technology to enhance my life, not to control it.
Thanks for reading!
“The UK government says its’ Online Safety Act will protect people, particularly children, on the internet by demanding EVERY message YOU send by ANY chat program is SCANNED for inappropriate content.”
Anything can be spun as being for our safety. This includes AI surveillance of our communication.
“The UK government did admit they don’t know how they are going to create a system that does this” They don’t need to. The government just develops their requirements/ algorithm and gets the platform providers to do their ‘dirty work’ for them.
Google has AI searching through people’s Gmail, cloud storage, photo albums, etc looking for evidence of a specific crime – child exploitation. While this ostensibly sounds noble and good, it is still Google looking through what people think is private. It also begs the question as to how this search will broaden. Will it include other illegal activities? While William is correct in postulating “misinformation”. However, it goes deeper. What if the microphone on your Android / Apple phone is recording what you say and analyzing this. (Amazon Alexa already does this.) What if you say something that is construed by the device’s platform AI as illegal and/or misinformation?
Here is a great example of this
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html
To summarize – baby has genital rash, parent sends a pic of this to pediatrician, pediatrician diagnoses and prescribes anti-biotic. It should end here. It doesn’t because Google AI flags this image as child pornography and shuts down the parent’s Google services thereby locking him out of his digital assets and digital identity.
When there is a government/private-enterprise joint-venture, there is latitude to obfuscate who exactly has authority and who has accountability. Governments can effectively bypass their need for a search warrant by having the private-enterprise platforms put into their end-user agreements that the platforms will provide user data to governments based on per-determined conditions (that you just know will be vague).
“The folks having the conversations as above, have a false sense of privacy and are addicted to the convenience of the modern digital lifestyle.” There is an inverse relationship between privacy and convenience. Everything one does to increase one’s privacy creates inconvenience. The most secure way to send a message to someone is to print it on paper, put in a sealed envelope, stamp it, put the recipients snail-mail address on the outside but not your return address.
“It is already horrible that every time you turn on your mobile phone its’ location is recorded.” Even if you turn off your location setting on your phone device, your cel phone service provider knows your location. I normally have my mobile phone turned off in a farday bag. My main “mobile device” is a small-screened laptop running Linux (which I bought used for cash. Thus, no connection to my real identity). This laptop access a VOIP phone service (which I took out in a fake name and paid for it with a prepaid VISA card, in a fake name). My cel phone service is a pay-as-you-go pre-paid service (which I took out in yet another fake name and paid cash.) I just use this service for the data to run my VOIP phone. At home, I run my VOIP from my VPN’d desktop. My cel phone has never been turned on anywhere near my house. This was incredibly inconvenient to set-up. The pay-back for me is that my movements are untraceable by technology.
Another well written, thought provoking article William, awesome job!
I couldn't agree with Joe more. We absolutely cannot trust Big Tech, Big Brother or Big Pharma, full stop! Privacy is our right and it is time to take matters into our own hands!
Great read!