16 Comments

Snowden's authenticity was questioned from the outset. Bill Binney raised concerns about the NSA years before Snowden did.

I was under the impression that Tor was designed to identify and target those interested in anonymous browsing - not to bust them for potential nefarious activity but because 'privacy' is the enemy of the surveillance state.

Most 'new'/alt media also serve the same function: to identify what and who you support. Some are controlled opposition; some are created opposition; and some are intelligence assets. They are divided into groups that constantly cross promote one another but rarely step out of their assigned squads.

They reveal themselves through association; sometimes through what info they suppress or never mention; often through which 'heroes' they continue to promote; and through obv promotion of their work by bog standard search engines.

Expand full comment

Thanks for linking to this from Kit's post. Great find!

What are your thoughts on Session Messenger?

I've done a preliminary investigation on them and come up empty. You can review it here:

https://actionabletruth.substack.com/i/126308952/session

I've also just checked and they don't appear on the list of OTF supported Projects.

Am deleting FileZilla and Briar as we speak though!

Thanks again for this post.

Expand full comment

I haven't seen the same red flags with Session that pop up in a lot of other messengers.

XMPP and Matrix/Element also have good privacy practices.

Expand full comment

Thanks for that.

With regards to the Matrix protocol, isn't it a concern that it was originally created and funded for the first 3 years of its existence by Amdocs, an Israeli defence contractor and major "deep state" participant?

https://web.archive.org/web/20141003202858/http://www.amdocs.com/Products/digital-lifestyle-services/Pages/unified-communications.aspx

https://web.archive.org/web/20190329152401/https://matrix.org/blog/who-is-matrix-org/

Even if they are no longer involved, has anyone audited the protocol to determine beyond any reasonable doubt that no backdoors have been left in it?

Expand full comment

That is a concern, nice find.

The way the messaging system works, though, there's a lot less opportunities to break privacy than something that asks for your phone number. You can even run your own server, for additional privacy.

Nevertheless, you never can know for sure what's in your software, open source or not. Would be nice if someone tested it while running a packet sniffer, to see if it's reporting "home."

Expand full comment

All credit to Wikipedia....I kid you not 🙂

I 100% agree that ANY instant messenger asking for an email or phone number (of which Signal is one) should be a non-starter at this point.

Session doesn't do it and has also subjected itself to an external audit and published the report on full for all to see (including the less favourable assessment).

I doubt using a packet sniffer will detect any nefarious activity. If it did, someone would have already picked it up by now. It's very basic.

The name of the game is METADATA which can be collected in ways a packet sniffer will not be able to detect .

Expand full comment

But once these security platforms/devices/mechanisms have been downloaded and used, do you not think the surveillance continues because you opened the door to the bad guys or “monster” - YOU invited them “in” albeit you didn’t know it at the time?

I don’t think any of us can take for granted that just because we delete something it’s truly gone. If I was a bad guy, I’d make sure that once I was “in” collecting your meta-data, I would continue to have access despite an ostensible deletion. Food for thought.

Expand full comment

You know what would make that all quite moot? You'll probably balk but this would do it, if we called for it in large numbers...making the internet totally open and free. All data can be seen by everyone. I can feel the eyebrows raising as I say this. But think of it - we'll all have access to everyone's data. That means we can see theirs too unlike today where they can see ours but we can't see theirs! You know what psychopaths shun? Openness. The only way psychopaths thrive is through secrecy. That's why psychopaths are always on the side of censorship. Yes everyone will see everyone's data, so everyone tends to behave a lot better then. And that's the objective.

Expand full comment

Let me raise a counter-argument....

If you wanted to demoralize your more-pesky citizens, to convince them that nothing in life is more certain than death, paying you taxes and you being all-powerful and all-knowing and god-like, would you:

A. Gnash your teeth that tech exists you can't hack, while doing nothing about it

B. Fund some of the projects, hoping that fact alone will scare people from using the tech

C. Fund some of the projects, gaining a backdoor into them, somehow silencing every single person involved who could understand what was happening, while letting them continue working on projects

C sounds obvious but B is a real possibility. Both demoralize resistance, making people give up and bow down before the ALL-POWERFUL, hail the ALL-POWERFUL entity.

This being the same all-powerful entity that has lost every recent war, has got itself into trillions of debt, has engaged in yet another losing conflict, is about to be overtaken by China of all places, and staffs key positions with the mentally unhinged?

Mmm. I'm going with B.

Expand full comment

You have a very American-centric view of this.

The goal is to destroy the USA, losing wars and going into debt are all part of the plan.

Cloward-Piven strategy.

Expand full comment

As you said it's illegal.

Expand full comment

If you know their name they’re in the game, msm and government buries anyone they don’t want the public to hear or know about.

Expand full comment

The US government became legally enabled to spread misinformation on September 18, 1947.

Expand full comment

Just as we now have to look at foods, meds etc as poisoned unless proven otherwise we should be aware the same applies to comms, but this has always been the case, though not as critical as it is today, and more so in the near future.

Expand full comment

The internet was quite promising in the 90s and even in to the 2000s. But the big boys got hold of it and sponsored their minions into monopoly. Witness how many search engines and their % of the market in the 90s compared to now with Google (a latecomer which got incredible free publicity & promotion from the MSM in its early stages) in absolute dominance.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Dec 20, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Not familiar with simplex but to me those words are basically "Unless you're a super-wizard at tech unlike any mortal, resistance against the borg is futile, give up already."

Ew.

Expand full comment