[HN Gopher] Edward Snowden on privacy and threats to democracy (...
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       Edward Snowden on privacy and threats to democracy (2019) [video]
        
       Author : hidden-spyder
       Score  : 81 points
       Date   : 2021-07-23 17:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | ignoramous wrote:
       | Tech discussion begins at 14:00.
       | 
       | At 21:00 [0] Snowden calls for [developers to build] smartphone
       | tools to let users take control of their devices (wouldn't be for
       | the first time). While a no-root, user-space firewall can only do
       | so much (Daniel Micay will attest to that [1] :), that's what we
       | are building with RethinkDNS (https://github.com/celzero/rethink-
       | app) for Android phones, picking up where WhisperSystems left off
       | [2]. This other complementary Android app (doesn't require root,
       | but does require "developer mode" turned on) I use, gives a lot
       | more control over installed apps and its components (no so much
       | over the device's network itself):
       | https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager
       | 
       | While Google continues to make significant improvements [3],
       | security-focused Android distributions like CalyxOS and Graphene
       | remain the best avenues to tackle privacy concerns today, but
       | most of the 2B+ Android users don't really want to _root_ devices
       | let alone flash ROMs. Most Chinese OEMs (Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus,
       | Realme, Xiaomi) do bundle in (pretty decent though limited)
       | firewalls but they do not let one visualize or block individual
       | network requests.
       | 
       | It'd be quite sometime before the Android/Fuchsia-iOS duopoly is
       | displaced from its perch, but technology-wise, my longer-term
       | hopes are pinned on Linux-based phones (PINE64, Librem) for now.
       | 
       | Of course, laws and regulations upholding digital privacy are the
       | real end-game, and it remains to be seen how much headway is made
       | on that front in the coming decade.
       | 
       | [0] https://youtu.be/e9yK1QndJSM?t=1261
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/389
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20110506050715/http://www.whispe...
       | 
       | [3] https://security.googleblog.com/search/label/android
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-23 23:01 UTC)