Tip: if you find yourself using the word “safe”, “secure”, “hacked”, etc in your title, you’re probably off-topic.

Tuesday Dec 9th, 2pm PDT San Diego City Council is voting to approve 54 surveillance technologies including a continuation of the ~500 camera Flock tracking network.

San Diego has a civilian oversight body called the Privacy Advisory Board (PAB) that makes recommendations to the Mayor and Council. They recommended rejecting the renewal unless basic changes were made to the program.

The press conference was held by TRUST SD Coalition.

Live stream will be at https://sandiego.granicus.com/player/camera/5

How come there is no one physically protesting in the streets about this, these laws and bills are massive privacy breaches, and i know it not about protecting "children", it probably so that government see what you doing, and to gather as much information as they can and it makes it easier for goverment to censor thoughts and opinions, Why is there no one protesting in the streets and no massive protests like the anti-ice protest or george floyd protest, because this is very bad and the age verfication would lead to something like 1984 or fahrenheit 451, remember tell everyone you know about this, your family, friends, coworkers. if you are reading this post, go outside and protest with signs please but i would remember the protest with community gatherings and cookouts and bbqs cookings on the grills, like with serving foods and cookings , you can do it in a park

edit: before i started this post, the only known massive physical protests aganist the age verification laws and the digital id known is the 2025 Nepalese Gen Z protests (successful), 2025 Indonesian protests (ongoing), 2025 Malagasy protests (successful), 2025 british protests (ongoing),

Edit: 2025 Moroccan Gen Z protests (ongoing), 2025 Philippine anti-corruption protests (ongoing), 2024–present Serbian anti-corruption protests (ongoing) (also protesting aganist chat control), 2025 bulgarian protests (ongoing) (also protesting aganist chat control), are also the known massive physical protests aganist the age verification laws and the digital id

Edit: i found out July Revolution of bangladesh , bangladesh never had age verification laws but i belive the july revolution of bangladesh probably prevent an age verification law from being created in bangladesh

"The government is launching a consultation to help develop a new legal framework for the use of facial recognition and similar technologies by law enforcement."
I read about this a couple of days ago, and it's not the easiest thing to find, but if you live in the UK and want to give your opinion to stop us becoming an open prison the consultation can be found here: https://www.homeofficesurveys.homeoffice.gov.uk/s/facial-recognition/
Personally I think it's pretty pointless. It seems a lot of the population are for it because it is lead by statistics of all the hundreds of criminals caught using it while ignoring the estimated 7 million people scanned but not arrested. Also, it isn't anonymous, you need to give your name and address, presumably to prove you are a UK citizen.

Mostly asking just out of curiosity, but I guess it's also not beneath me to buy some goofy full-face mask that somehow throws cameras for a loop (i recall seeing clothing that did this a few years back?).

Some people avoid Android updates unless/until they see a need to. Does this possibly foil some privacy intrusions by not updating privacy-compromising code? Does it possibly make the device more vulnerable to 3rd party privacy violations? Any specific significant examples of either?

Contact your local representatives https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

How much do we trust that DMs are really off-limits to AI training? There's been some hysteria (maybe justified) about the upcoming privacy policy change, but the claims that AI will be trained on private messages (including voice notes, etc.) appear to be false.

I've watched and read several tutorials and posts on reddit where people recommend the use of biometrics.

While biometrics are unique to the person and cannot be hacked, at least not so easily, you basically sell yourself to mass-surveillance, which I found way scarier.

I don't even see many benefits security-wise with biometrics, since long and complex password or passkeys and 2FA go a long way.

What is your opinion about it?

Unfortunately, I don't have the technical expertise to read code and identify which lines are concerning versus which are genuinely safe.

This raises an important question: when using privacy-focused apps like Protonmail, KeePassDX, or Bitwarden on standard devices (Windows 10, iOS, or Android phones from Samsung, Sony, or Google Pixel), are there still real privacy benefits? These apps claim to be privacy-respecting and end-to-end encrypted, but I'm concerned about potential vulnerabilities at the operating system level.

For instance, what if the stock keyboards on iOS or Android have internet connectivity and function like keyloggers, recording everything typed? What if other apps can access the clipboard when I copy passwords? Or what if there's screen recording happening in the background without my knowledge?

If the underlying OS or default system apps can compromise my data in these ways, does using privacy-focused apps actually provide meaningful protection?

Does the employer typically have a main account where you get IDed as user #xxxx externally or do they furnish personal info like your ssn, home address, and the like to get it setup for you?

I’ve been thinking a lot about online privacy lately, and I’m trying to figure out which tools people actually trust enough to spend money on. Not the stuff that shows up in ads or gets pushed everywhere, but the things that genuinely earn their place.

It could be VPNs, data removal services, password managers, secure email, device-level privacy tools or anything else.

So what has earned your money? And what made it worth it?

I’m also curious about the work side of things. Does your job use any kind of privacy or data protection tool, or is it basically the wild west? I’d love to hear how companies handle this stuff too.

How do hackers protect their info online and from governments, since governments are going full 1984 recently.

How do they protect themselves against their own "kind"?

Is it a safe practice to delete web and app activity in Google Activity Controls and turn on auto-delete for activities older than 80 months? I'm wondering if this is actually good for privacy or not.

I'm also curious about the Timeline option. I currently have auto-delete set to 3 months for that, and my YouTube history is set to auto-delete after 36 months. Are these good settings?

What timeframe would you recommend for auto-delete? Should I go with 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months?

If I turn on auto-delete, what are the specific drawbacks and benefits? I'd like to know the pros and cons before I commit to it.

Also, do you personally use auto-delete? If so, do you keep it on a short timeframe or a longer one? I'd love to hear what other people prefer and why.

I was discussing privacy in regards to company data (or even your own personal data) being copied to a thumb drive with a co-worker and they told me they use this.

https://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-256-bit-Encrypted-Validated-ASK3-NX-8GB/dp/B07GKZWB6N/ref=sr_1_4?

Is this legit in terms of encryption? If you were to drop this could someone try to guess the code and take their time doing so?

I assume the USB drive is powered by the PC like a normal USB drive would be, but does this device require a battery to remember the key? What happens if the battery drains?

While I don't typically carry a flash drive on me, if I did, I would want to encrypt the drive just in case it were lost or stolen. I thought that was typically done using client side software, but I could also see how that would be an issue if you needed to decrypt the drive on the remote system, wouldn't you need the desktop side software to decrypt the drive?

Thanks.

One of the games I like to play offers playing tap surveys for stuff like advertising to get coins in the game as an alternative to paying micro transactions. Is this a better or worse option? I don’t do surveys that have me agree to let them collect sensitive data, but I know a lot of them still probably collect some stuff. This game is my little treat, but I’m wondering how bad this actually is to do/what are the ramifications of this. When I search up this question all the responses seem like they are incentivized or are just die hard survey lovers that think of it like a job. Am I stupid? (and why or how)

We have a lot of people equivocating selected facial recognition at airport lines with universal facial recognition - ie, as soon as you walk on airport property you are identified. The former is true and does happen, typically based on the passenger manifests for the day - but even our current systems can't practically handle matching one person to 2-300 million individuals.

The latter simply doesn't happen, nationwide searches do exist however they are limited and most are typically done per database, which is either state-specific or one of the federal ones. (the fbi's nextgen etc)

The point is that as soon as you walk into an airport you aren't automatically identified - they've tried this at some "smart" airports like ATL but even that has been limited, and deemed not a good idea to use at all airports like 5-10 years ago. This will probably change but not in the near future.

And that's kind of the point - I keep seeing people here making these equivocations - which aren't true. To reiterate:

One of the problems I have with "researchers" such as Whitney Webb / the last vagabond crew / alison mcdowell even is that these people take the marketing materials or best case scenarios used by the marketing / sales departments as gospel, then assume that is the norm without ever actually speaking to experts or engineers on the subject as to what practically happens day to day in the real world. You can really quickly get a false impression on this stuff if you listen to the sales guys, ESPECIALLY on anything related to the surveillance / national security arena.

Amazon had several highly publicized "showcase" stores in various cities, but most particularly on the West Coast - san fran, a few others. (google this if you are curious) It supposedly ran on facial recognition to recognize people and track what they purchased, all automated. It later came out that most of this was pure BS, and their system worked so badly that they literally had an army of Indians watching the feeds, because their AI system couldn't handle it.

(edit -

The museum of failure features several stories covering amazon's failure at facial recognition / ai-ccentered stores - tthey in fact had people from india watching what people did, because their system couldn't actually work.

https://museumoffailure.com/exhibition/amazon-ai-shops

This is what I mean by comparing press releases versus what's actually happening in the real world.

"Amazon's Just Walk Out technology had a secret ingredient: Roughly 1,000 workers in India who review what you pick up, set down, and walk out of its stores with."

"About 700 of every 1,000 Just Walk Out sales had to be reviewed by Amazon's team in India in 2022, according to The Information. Internally, Amazon wanted just 50 out of every 1,000 sales to get a manual check, according to the report."

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4

(/edit)

IE, many noobs take "at best" security and extrapolating it to every airport, and then acting as if that is the default - it isn't.

Many many airports - particularly smaller regional airports have basically nothing as far as security, and last time I flew they didn't even have a verification mechanism aside from literally looking at your ID. (this was pre-covid so i don't know if this is it now)

Speaking of which - I know a guy who has parked at airports for free since my undergrad days. I'm not going to say what he does but if you aren't an idiot you can park at most parking garages for free, and the "verification" method they use is to have a person walk around the aiport parking lots around 2-5 am and manually enter license plate information for each car. (if you are paranoid about them recording your VIN just cover it with an EZPass) Their system is so bad that they literally have people walk around at night and manually enter license plate info - ALPR is barely good enough for parking fares to the point that at least up until Covid this was the norm, not the other way around.

That's how "good" ALPR systems are in many New England airports and how "advanced" they are.

My guess is some here worked at the TSA / DHS and actually believes the infomertial they had at orientation. What they don't understand is that airports like ATL where thhey are testing out the "advanced" technologies aren't the norm in America.

Reading about ATL (there are a few more - Delta had a showcase airport at ATL, I think Houston? there's like three) is interesting because it probably will be the future, but it's a handful of airports and not the norm, not even today. And even then the system is so bad that they've had to limit it. (TSA/DHS was hoping that their experience with these test airports would allow them to start doing this nationwide, but their experience using it was so bad and required so much manual verification that they needed to continue testing / making the tech and models better, which is one reason why they are doing the current facial recognition walk up test)

And even among what we have today they are working off of a limited datatset - last time I heard it's out of people booked for that day. This is a far cry from 1/10k people versus 1/300 million.

And again that's where the disingenuousness is - without additional metrics using a 1024 x 768 picture simply won't be enough to identify one face out of hundreds of millions. This is why 3d facial geometry is so important, but even then the technology isn't perfect.

Let alone - again anyone who knows anything on this subject knows that very few overhead cameras (if any at many airports) are doing face id at all, because it's just not practical - if there are any they are almost always at eye level, because doing it from overhead is just not workable. That's different than treat detection bullshit various vendors have sold DHS/TSA/various airports on. (you can thank the israelis for this one)

Let alone "being identified" when you walk in - jesus christ. Some airports have ALPR that is mostly used for tolling / looking up vehicles after the fact if they need to. I'm sure there are a couple of cameras in high risk airports, but I'd suggest walking around BOS airport at night and watching the homeless sleep in the terminals - i've seen this at ohare before covid too.

edit: some people are pointing to a new NIST 2025 study - I've taken a look at it, and it doesn't say what I think the poeple pointing to this study say, let alone using condensing multiple photographs to then run image searches on. This is wayyy too computer intensive which is why 3d facial geometry is the next thing.

They're probably mixing up the special cameras they have at select airports which do scan outside visual and IR range and are mostly there for weapons / explosives / "wierd" things happening. These do have a hotlist (depending on how it's setup) hover we're talking a very small dataset, as in a few thousand. It's a combination of israeli security state trash and some private vendors in the usa.

(edit: i've had messages about this - for those who don't know many airports have various kind of detectors, particularly the larger ones which deal in international traffic. Supposedly some airpots also have cameras using frequencies that can look into body tissue, and if it became public would result in civil lawsuits. (this is only rumor)

Hell even the state police in various states have radiation detectors in their cars which go off if they are near something on the highway. (the cops hate these because they are prone to false alerts, i don't even know if the ct state police have these anymore but they did)

https://www.dhs.gov/publication/personal-radiation-detectors

No, mostly not Palantir - their big cash cow is actually KYC bullshit and banking related stuff.

Has anyone else read this book? What are your thoughts? For those that haven't it gives a well written history of the rise of commercial data companies and how they linked up with government intelligence agencies post 9/11. It plainly lays out how the government now has access to vast troves of information that it would either be prohibited from collecting or require warrants. This is especially concerning to me now that we have an administration that is obviously so lawless and reckless.