For anyone how knows me, I like to tinker. I’ve yet to buy a thing that I have not made changes to. Something I’ve noticed lately is that as I tinker I start to discover…issues.
Lately I’ve also been reading. A lot. I’m finally getting to the interesting series from Cory Doctorow, specifically Little Brother. Combined with my love for good (and shitty) hacker fictions, I’ve started rewatching Mr. Robot. Great show, and between the two there’s been a common theme: what happens when we voluntarily give up our rights to privacy? Does anyone have the right to our privacy as a product? This isn’t just a paranoid delusion: it’s pretty well know that the tech oligarchs are harvesting every aspect of our information for ads 1, which are fueling their fortunes as they now chase AI. These AI’s are harvesting our privacy data in new, ingenious, and dangerous new ways 2. But what if you’re not interesting, and therefor your data privacy isn’t that important? Yeah…bullshit. It’s not just your search results or posting memes. DHS and ICE are harvesting biometric details for everyone they encounter, and not just immigrants 3. And if they were only harvesting immigrant information, the use and abuse is clear: tracking individuals to their online posting leads to a complete death to the First Amendment 4. So, rules for thee and all that…
I’m not going to talk about the politics of it in this post. Instead, I’m going to detail how I’m cleaning up my digital life and devices to protect me and my loved ones. Because, as it is said:
