Notices by :pdx_elk: (rose@503junk.house)

If a fascist state is trying to get copies of your messages, then maybe you and the person you sent messages with don't have fingerprint access on. OK. But then what happens when they tell the person you were messaging with that they will waterboard them if they don't unlock their phone?

Conversations about how far people will go and how much people will resist is a waste of time, imo. You should never put someone in a position where they could be tortured to get access to messages like that.

Don't boast. Don't get edgy. If you don't want something to come up in court through discovery, don't ever store it.

That's actual opsec. Everything else is mitigations to lower risk a bit and/or just security theater.

I keep seeing opsec posts about how to secure your phone to stop cops from checking it. These mitigations will never do a great job of protecting you from a state level threat (they may from stalkers, thieves, and domestic violence threats).

If you are worried about state level actors getting information from you, it should not touch your phone.

A lot of trans people in the US are scared tonight. I am too. If you feel like you gotta flee, then choose flight. If that doesn't work choose fight. Maybe both.

I transitioned when a lot of our current protections and ability to exist in public were not recognized. Legal public existence was a mine field.

We still had a community though. We still survived. Tomorrow we will still be here. Things will likely get less comfortable, and probably more dangerous.

We can only lose if we surrender and go back in the closet. Your existence is resistance. Take care of each other.

I found out that because I work in higher-ed I get a free (for me) subscription to the NYTimes. hell yeah, free wordle

The chance of your ballot being burned by an arsonist are near zero. if you want to vote, and a drop box is near you, then that's totally fine.

If you are worried about it counting go to the MyVote Oregon page and set it up to track your ballot. https://sos.oregon.gov/voting/Pages/myvote.aspx?lang=en

All of this talk of how it's "unsafe", we need more cops, blah blah blah will just scare people away.

You are almost certainly just fine, and if you are concerned, then you can just track it. No need to worry or panic about anything.

I made it another day. Lost the first track I made today on accident. So here is the second 5 minute thrown together loop.

looptober num. 2
#looptober

Don't know if I'll keep this up (probably not), but here is a loop I made in about 5-10 minutes.

looptober num. 1

#looptober

inevitably, I'll post something responding to something I very much disagree with, to the point I won't even mention the original source because the misinfo is spreading through a game of sensationalist influencer content telephone, and then I'll get people in the replies linking to the misleading article as a source that I'm wrong.

The 404 Media post about "Active Listening" is misleading. Are there ad agencies that exist that use active listening in some cases? Yes, these are part of their portfolio and there are specific apps that have use cases where you agree to turn your mic on all the time and they collect data from it. Do they have partnerships with big tech companies? Yes. They serve many types of ads and work with major companies.

That doesn't mean that any particular app is always on selling your audio data in the background where you are never made aware the mic is on. They are monitoring you though in a myriad of ways, and it's important we actually talk about where the risk lies instead of fairly easily disprovable fear stoking pieces. It's aggregate data collection from meta data, public data, and data you agree (often through coercion) to share.

no fucking way.

the DNC is now proudly talking about how Kamala took down backpage. Not only did they remove sex workers from the Dems platform throwing sex workers under the bus, now they are dancing all over their past actions that got sex workers killed:

https://www.newsweek.com/people-are-going-die-sex-workers-devastated-after-backpage-shutdown-876486

@technomancy PiHole for the tech savvy and NextDNS for others.

I'm open to other suggestions though.

There is also probably an opportunity to build up some community DNS services.

No, my stance has not changed since Chrome blocked ublock origin. Ad-blocking is one of the most important things you can do to stay safe online.

Now, I'm probably just going to recommend most people block ads at the DNS level. Firefox is also a solution, and I use it. However, it's not a holistic solution for your average internet user. Especially if someone uses a phone as their only or main point of net access. Most people aren't going to buy a phone and install a third party OS just to stop ads. Using a third party DNS setup is an easier solution for most now.

I finished Cory Doctorow's The Lost Cause. There were parts of it I enjoyed, but other parts I found incredibly frustrating.

The book invents a future that is near dystopia, but has in it a few magic caveats that just so happen to let a version of hope in peaceful liberalism be uplifted as the answer to everything.

For example, the book highlights the danger of calling the police, but then the danger always ends in skepticism. When faced with violence, the book still suggests calling the police and then the police use their own violence to deal with far-right actors instead of joining with them and killing the protagonists.

It's a solar punk novel, but it envisions a future with a DSA president, friendly police, and mutual aid and solidarity filling all of the gaps. It whitewashes the fact that if you do those things in a way that threatens those in power, then they will kill you for it.

speaking of women in the olympics, Simone Biles is freaking amazing

Anyway, that's one of the features I want and advocate for.

I'm not too much a fan of a lot of the other proposals out there right now that are based in creating a centralized authority.

We can have autonomy and be safe online. Police are not necessary.

Since people are talking about more moderation controls again I want to point out the method I am most excited about that I think would have the biggest impact:

Giving users control over how their replies are handled and dissiminated in ActivityPub.

This would require a change to the protocol such as FEP-5624 https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/5624/fep-5624.md

I would also like to see a cryptographic step that requires Instance C to validate a reply from Instance B based off of a cryptographic signing on Instance A. This would allow granting of access to replies and revocation of replies.

Of course, malicious actors can write code to post replies on their own instance without permission just as they can start their own blog and screenshot a post and write a response on there. However, if the protocol change is adopted, then it would significantly inhibit the spread of replies which do not have consent to respond.

I wrote to my congressional rep about KOSA. I don't expect it to have much effect, but as online safety and the liberation of all people are two things that pretty much define my life, I felt like writing a short essay explaining the issue is something I could do.

Now, I want to create stickers for tor that have a QR code to download the browser.

For all the dems pretended they were fighting against the banning of information when it came to books in schools, they mostly seem totally OK with banning information when it is in the primary medium kids use to access it.

tell your kids about Tor Browser

I think I posted the context to this in a private toot earlier. For others, the union convention I was at got taken over for a couple hours and turned into a Kamala Harris rally. There was union business in the hall afterward, and I couldn't come and go freely due to the secret service.

So, I just ended up being weird and awkward in the back.

A few people got arrested. It was all fucked, and I wish she hadn't have come. It was a big waste of the union's time imo.

So, I ended up stuck inside a Kamala Harris rally in Houston, TX.

the last 24 hours has been a fever dream.

I was literally stuck inside a Kamala Harris rally in Texas this morning.

It kind of seems like a half forgotten nightmare at this point. I'm back in Portland at home though.

this speech from Sean O'Brien at the RNC is so weird. He's not endorsing anyone ... but said labor is not beholden to any party (a hit at the Dems). He's talking about lifting workers up against the "elites" ... but praised Trump and JD Vance.

The audience seems kind of confused.