We can not give up on privacy

Security camera on a wall

First and foremost we need to understand what we give up when using social media and services such as Google’s Gmail.

Knowing for a fact that you’re being surveyed, what can you do? Is it even worth fighting? Certainly, there are technical changes you can apply to your computer and phone to be less exposed.

You might not be able to encrypt your phone calls from your provider but at least encrypt the messages you send and destroy them after a certain time. Do not keep a useless permanent record that can be used against you. Regarding messages or chat, you could use the Signal app for this particular solution.

I do not share messages that need to be encrypted

That might be true but that’s not what you should ask yourself, rather: why should you give up on the privacy in your communications? If it’s a private message to a contact, why should ISP’s or governments be able to read it? They could, and possibly will eventually use it against you.

We need to think twice or even three times before posting something online (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram…). Even if you are able to delete something from Twitter after posting it nothing stops it from spreading to other sites and services, storing your message in perpetuity. I can see how sometimes that’s exactly what you want, if you’re writing an article like this one. Yes, please, store it and keep it so people can read it.

You can not really trust a company with your data. Do you trust their policy? Their security? You can’t be certain.

The sad truth is that we can’t possibly escape being surveilled. We can only somewhat mitigate the extent of the metadata you’re giving companies and governments.

In the end, it is not a matter of: “I have nothing to hide”, it is about the violation of our privacy with the pretext of national security.

Ricard

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