Secure Messaging and Browsing

For a few years, I've suggested Signal as a relatively secure messaging app for activists concerned about privacy.

But Signal has long had a singular problem.  It uses phone numbers!  Right there, the metadata (which is what intelligence agencies are MOST interested in...in their work the connections tell the story) is accessible.

Makes you wonder about Snowden who has long promoted Signal and Tor.  (Is Snowden really controlled opposition after all?)

US controlled OTF has long funded Signal along with Tor and many other supposedly secure apps which casts a shadow over all of them.

(My longstanding opinion is that nearly everything that claims to provide security or protection actually does the opposite.  What these things really are is protection rackets.  Of these, the very worst is so-called virus protection.  The only organization that has the incentive to do it correctly is the OS provider.  Every other virus protector has the incentive to make more viruses and it is well known they "recruit" hackers by feeding them pizza, etc.)

However, a journalist I trust mostly* (Kit Klarenberg) has pointed to another journalist I don't trust as much for his recommendation of the Session messaging app.  It sounds like the best I've heard of before, combining the encryption of Signal with anonymizing strategies.  Following that are descriptions of the Brave browser and the Brave Search search engine which also sound like best-in-class.

(*Mostly is my highest standard of trust.  I would say nearly completely except for his antivaxx writing which creeps into nearly everything and everyone he points to.  Either this is because Kit and many other journalists simply don't understand science--starting with Bayes Theorem--or perhaps the lot of them and to the edge of the universe are some kind of controlled opposition limited hangout.  But then many people like Peter Hotez who are pretty good on vaccines mostly are wrong about quite a lot of other things, like ongoing US proxy wars.  And so it goes.  BTW, Hotez also becomes merely tribal when he insists that COVID is of natural origin.  The likelihood that COVID derived from a laboratory accident has no bearing on the usefulness of vaccines for it and/or other diseases.  But the general rule is that nearly everyone--except Zionists--contributes to discussion in one way or another by having some area of expertise.  Zionists contribute only by helping us understand the lunacy of Zionism.)

Regardless of what Snowden says about privacy (saying you don't need privacy is like saying you don't need free speech because you have nothing to say) I've never been a big believer in it myself.  Instead, I encourage people in Intelligence to read and otherwise follow me in the hopes they might learn something.  But I have to keep up appearances too, and if I were organizing a radical group (I've given up) I would use the best messaging app, etc.

I also believe that privacy is essentially impossible (especially in any kind of electronic communication) and people who claim to provide it are generally spooks themselves, and the mere fact that you are using such things is the biggest giveaway of all.

A good lock is a good idea however because even though every spook in the world might well have the key, they can't use it and take anything without giving away that fact.  If they're not taking anything, they might learn something.  (And of course it only works if everyone else is using locks too...otherwise the mere fact that you have a lock may suggest to others that there's something especially valuable.)

Correspondingly, some limited "privacy" is required simply to keep people from taking your money, or talking too much about you.  Even commercial browsers and search engines do that mostly (or better if you practice common sense 'safe internet' ideas, like not trusting any popup that proposes that you need its help).