Five hours after Charlie Kirk was shot this week, an Atlanta man got a phone call from an Illinois police officer asking about a photo he shared with a couple of close friends on a private Discord chat. The Atlanta man, who asked not to be identified, says the post was merely a confirmation that he had purchased the same T-shirt that the accused killer wore (from an Illinois-based online shop).
Social media companies are generally forbidden by law from divulging users’ private communications to the government without a traditional legal process (e.g., court order). But there’s an exception: in perceived emergencies, social media platforms can proactively and “voluntarily” hand over private messages in response to what’s called an “emergency disclosure request” (EDR).
Discord, I am told, did not respond to any EDR here; but when I asked them directly if they’d provided law enforcement with information to traditional legal process, they declined to respond on-record.
The FBI, or the intelligence community, evidently is monitoring Discord private messaging, even from people who have broken no law.
Full blown Orwellian world. Run for local government and stop this shit.
The largest populated areas are left leaning. If they ae controlled by democratic socialist, we can restrict this shit. Just by pure numbers.
Snowden told us about these type of IC capabilities 12 years ago. We are cooked, y’all. Cooked.
I think you missed his conclusion.
We have tools that they can’t penetrate. Privacy is a right. We’re not cooked.
Now we are all doomed to android and iphone though. And all of the US carriers at least, are sucking the techbro surveillance cocks.
We have Grapheme and similar privacy focused open source options on Android
Lol, okay. As the vast majority of people have no clue and no interest in utilizing those tools. No interest in understanding threat vectors and cryptography. Cooked was a bit glibb, but the general “we”, I do not see your optimism.
“Privacy is a right”… sure, so is healthcare and shelter… I am sure those policies are going global really soon.
I can’t agree more. A few family members got really paranoid about their communications being monitored after Trump was elected again, so I offered to show them Signal or Element. Nah, no interest, “too hard”. They still text even with the fucking US government itself warning people it’s a very insecure medium.
I’m hoping that disinterest changes after a few people get locked up based on social media PMs, but don’t have all that much hope.
After the ICE raids started, I had a lot of people reach out to me I’ve given trainings and lots of people switched to more secure systems.
There is an increased appetite in many oppressed groups for this. Don’t try to force it. Be open and ready to train those who are eager.
You should create a website that explains how to do it.
There are many, but nothing works better than in-person trainings
We’re probably burnt at this point.