• 7 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 1 month ago
Cake day: July 20th, 2025
  • infjarchninja@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Request, US Border Crossings, Privacy Guides
    1·
    6 minutes ago

    Hi vimmiewimmie

    My friend travels to the USA fairly often. or used to.

    Before she goes, she has an old laptop that she rarely uses. I wipe the drive and re-install her favourite linux distro and do a basic set up. She has a laptop with a newly installed linux going through customs with no password. nothing to see here.

    She has a spare Oneplus 6, especially for the USA, with Lineage on it, with no social media or any signed in apps. It is factory reset before she goes again with no password. she also takes usb drive with a distro already on it.

    When she gets settled in the USA, she connects to wifi and installs the apps she needs. VPN, messenger etc, and emails me.

    Between us we set up Signal messenger / molly. She installs it on her phone, I use her phone number from home and I send her the code/details via encrypted email.

    once she is set up she only uses Signal to phone her friends, no open line calls or text messages, she only uses Signal’s camera to take any photos, so they are not stored on the phone.

    she has nothing to hide, she is not a criminal, its just that we value privacy and confidentiality.

    anything that she needs, she messages me and I send it to her via signal.

    When she leaves the USA, she resets her phone. I have taught her how to erase her drive with the USB using dd and re-install linux from there.

    She has decided that she will not go to the USA after the recent nightmares for foreign travellers.

  • infjarchninja@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•No phone passcode privacy expectation in police station, New Jersey appeals court rules
    11·
    2 days ago

    People in the USA do have more rights than people here on Airstip One.

    Though we are both under the big black boot of government friendly fascism.

    Since October 2007, we have had Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 or RIPA.

    We cannot refuse to give up a password or access to an encrypted device.

    Section 53 of RIPA makes it a criminal offence to not comply with a Section 49 notice, carrying a sentence of up to two years in prison, and up to five years in cases involving national security, terrorism or child indecency.

    We have no Fifth Amendment covering self-incrimination laws to protect us from over zealous police and state.

    Who in society is going to argue against laws that are sold to us to protect our children?

    I am an old retired psychotherapist. I remember the introduction of the CRB (criminal records bureau) check, here on Airstrip one in the early 2000’s. Now called a DBS check.

    The CRB scanned the Police National Computer for any criminal offences that you had committed, this also included juvenile, aged under 17 offences. Which empowered all employers to use the CRB checks to get rid of staff and refuse to employ certain people. Discrimination was rife.

    You were now judged, not on your competence to do your job, but whether you had a criminal record.

    I would not have minded so much if they solely searched for any offence that were linked to child abuse, terrorism or national security, but they provided your entire life criminal offences.

    My enhanced CRB check showed that I had gotten fined £3 for riding my bicycle on a pavement in the mid 60’s when I was 11 years old. My mum had to pay. My dad earned about £10 per week as a lorry driver.

    What a danger to society I was! An employer could refuse to employ me just because of that little bit of information.

    Sold to the UK population as a means to protect our children from sexual predators. Of course no one complained.

    Yet, forward just a few years and you needed a CRB check to work at:

    The airport, the local supermarket, as a gardener in a school, as a handyman sweeping the car park of the local doctors practice.

    you needed to have a CRB check if you came within 100M of a child or vulnerable adult.

    Even University students now have to have a CRB checks if they are on a psychology, counselling or psychotherapy course, because they may come into contact with children and or vulnerable adults.

    This is the slow creep of government policies expanding, with no oversight, sold to us under the guise that they are protecting children and vulnerable adults.

    fear is a great driver for change. scare someone enough and they will give up their granny.

    I think this is also linked to Airstrip One’s governments, continually attempting to remove all encryption from devices by using child protection as a reason

  • infjarchninja@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Good answers to Arguments against privacy
    8·
    4 days ago

    As a retired psychotherapist I can tell you, that every single person on this planet has something to hide.

    Obviously, psychotherapy offers a safe, private and confidential space to speak about those things. Society does not offer this safe space. So Humans hide things.

    Sometimes these hidden things are even hidden from the person.

    we have all broken our own, and societies, moral codes, the things we do not share with other people.

    Our own sexual preferences are the most hidden of all subjects. Even in this so called Enlightened age. Sexuality still reigns supreme as the most hidden of all subjects.

    I always say to people spouting the “I have nothing to hide” argument.

    If you have nothing to hide!

    Why do you continue to wear clothes when you go out.

    Clearly it has nothing to do with the fact that: a CCTV camera on the corner of your street, a camera in a passing car, a RING doorbell facing towards the street, school kids filming with their phones, will film you and intrude upon your private life.

    It is because you have something to hide.

    For instance: Examples of the things that people hide.

    As we see this quite regularly with our politicians and those generally in powerful positions:

    The Pro family values political evangelists who espouses that homosexuality is a sin, and then gets caught with a male prostitute.

    In psychoanalysis this this called “Splitting”. Its where the politician projects all his hidden, unacceptable parts of himself, in this case his homosexual preferences, and projects them onto other people in society. Those bad bad people who are homosexuals.

    Or the pro child protection evangelist politician, who gets caught with gigabytes of child abuse images on their laptop. Same thing.

    Its the same with the recent rise in the Right Wing anti-everything brigade;

    anti-immigrant, who most likely had a foreign girlfriend when they were young, and are now ashamed of it because their mates are anti-immigrant. Group think.

    anti-abortion, probably got a girl pregnant, wasnt man enough to support her, and left her no choice to get an abortion. Misogyny

    anti-homosexual, probably a repressed homosexual who fantasises about sex with same sex partners. Far too ashamed to come out.

    anti-this anti-that; Oh the shame!

    This always speaks more about the hidden belief systems that those people carry. It is not about the people onto whom they are trying to project there own personal stuff.

    To be human is to have a private life, and to keep it secret.

  • infjarchninja@lemmy.mlOPtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•AI browsers are coming for your clicks — and your privacy
    4·
    4 days ago

    Hey Truscape

    Thank you for the wonderful thoughtful reply.

    I particularly liked “the informed and the uninformed”. This is true

    Being a retired psychotherapist, I have known for all my professional life how easy it is to manipulate people. This is why, all practicing psychotherapists have to have, one hours supervision for every five hours of client work they do. This is to protect the clients from us, the therapist. There is no protection like that in the tech world.

    My heart sinks everytime I see some shill promotimg online therapy. without ever understanding the lasting damage that they will do to the human being.

    I do agree with all that you write

  • infjarchninja@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Look at the silent countries
    13·
    4 days ago

    On linux you can access your Signal messages in db.sqlite.

    once you delete a message from signal, either through disappearing messages or manually, all those messages are deleted from the db.sqlite.

    They are stored in an encrypted db.sqlite here:

    /home/user/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite

    you can also extract it from you phone:

    only the messages that you can see when you open the Signal app are visible there.

    to access the messages:

    install:

    signal-bakcup-tools-git

    https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools

    and

    DB browser for sqlite

    https://sqlitebrowser.org/

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    The most straight forward way is to create an output file to html.

    copy the db.sqlite to a new directory

    open a terminal and run

    signalbackup-tools --exportdesktophtml signal.html

    this will create folders of all your contacts and messages and media.

    easily acessible. open the signal.html files in your browser

    =+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    To open db.sqlite as a Sqlite database;

    first you need to get the key:

    copy the db.sqlite to a new directory

    then run in terminal:

    signalbackup-tools db.sqlite --showdesktopkey

    OpenSSL 3.3.2 3 Sep 2024)

    Signal Desktop key (hex):

    58bfa167bb66b2b13b2ca6eadc33f4bf7275c254006d17ae5e3de5356c60f0b7

    copy the key to a text editor

    ===========================

    you must now add 0x to the beginning of that line:

    0x58bfa167bb66b2b13b2ca6eadc33f4bf7275c254006d17ae5e3de5356c60f0b7

    then open db.sqlite with the sqlitebrowser

    right click db.sqlite, select open with DB Browser for sqlite

    select RAW from the dropdown menu

    input the passphrase from above. make sure you added the 0x to the beginning.

    The entire database opens.

    you can view all the information that signal collects. phone numbers, messages, images, media etc

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    this is the difference between Molly and signal.

    In Molly you can password protect db.sqlite, Signal removed this a while ago

  • infjarchninja@lemmy.mlOPtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•AI browsers are coming for your clicks — and your privacy
    32·
    5 days ago

    Reading stuff like this reminds me of why I have been a linux user for over 20 years.

    Its why I only use AOSP roms on my phones.

    Its why I have never used any USA surveillance companies. No one needs any of that shit!

    Its why I get in my car, and visit people I care for, and not send them a message or use facebook to see what they are having for dinner.

    I wouldnt even know how to turn a windows machine on. My last windows experience was with windows 95.

    Do you still press a button?

    I am a retired psychotherapist, 69 years old now, and have seen the devastating loss of our freedoms in my lifetime.

    we all need to get back to being human again. We are human beings not human doings.

    My display avatar is in fact a photo from a StoneHenge free festival in early 1980’s. A time when we actually used the word freedom and meant it.

    I do fear for you younger people and what lies ahead. What will be like in 20-30 years when I am long gone.