Do, or do not, there is no try.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Privacy
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I don't try, I do. Wanna try me?
Let's see what people will do at October 14
YOU CAN'T DENY THE WAVEEEEE
I'm been using linux mint for over a year now, and it is legit liberating.
Protests crack down on the internet has been going on for quite some time, don't just blame it on trump but on the whole government and its infrastructure.
And Facebook as an integrated part of the international surveillance state has been firmly established since Snowden leaked the PRISM program.
Like, there are a lot of reasons to switch to linux and plenty of them are compelling. But its an absolute fantasy to believe you're somehow immune to surveillance because you're using the same software as Amazon's EC2. Does anyone really believe the NSA hasn't cracked Linux Mint yet?
Or, for that matter, that using a linux desktop is going to insulate you from being spied on via a public facing 3rd party social media forum?
Like, there are a lot of reasons to switch to linux and plenty of them are compelling. But its an absolute fantasy to believe you’re somehow immune to surveillance because you’re using the same software as Amazon’s EC2. Does anyone really believe the NSA hasn’t cracked Linux Mint yet?
It's much harder for the government and bad actors to hide backdoors in open source software than making a deal with a private company
For the proprietary software, a lot of it is front-doors. Literally just pay-to-prey. Government agencies pay the big data companies to access their warehouses of scrapped data that come directly off their clients' machines through explicit information harvesting protocols.
That said, it is technically harder to have a covert backdoor in an open source system. But it isn't impossible, or even particularly impractical, so long as the vulnerability remains reasonably obscure. It would be naive to assume your standard array of linux oses are unassailable.
You mean with the USA Intel or AMD CPUs?
Think that it doesn't matter what you use as OS as the microchip inside the CPU chip can read anything it wants
I'll just make my own cpu with a breadboard and a few wires!
Sure. Although that's just a matter of unplugging your computer from the Internet. Also, at least in theory, Linux isn't actively leaking all your data into various Cloud services. Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive are just invitations for the NSA to paw through your file system.
I just can't imagine how Linux protects you from posting on Facebook.
It wont protect there.
Also, I remember articles back then mentioning 5G Towers could create a dystopia because every company could easily put a 5G chip into the product and secretly track you regardless of Wifi.
One should be have been assuming since Windows 7 and automated online updates that the Microsoft key used to sign OS updates is in the hands of at least the NSA (and hence probably the Israeli equivalent) and they can push whatever they want to your computer as an OS update, bypassing all protections.
In fact the same applies to Linux updates of certain distros - if they're maintained by a company based in the US they can be forced by FISA courts to provide the signing keys to the US Government.
More in general, just go read about FISA courts and their secret court orders - companies based in the US or hosting things in the US can be secretly forced to just "give the keys of the Realm" to parts of the US Government.
Since things like the Patriot act one should be treating companies based in the US as just as untrustworthy as companies based in China.
(By the way, some other supposed Democratic countries have similar or worse systems - for example the equivalent of FISA courts in the UK have things like secret court sessions were the side which is not the State is not authorized to have a legal representation, see most of the evidence or even know the decision of the court).
Have people already forgot most of what came out in the Snowden Revelations?!
Would stuff like Fedora be in danger, in this case? I couldn't find if Red Hat was US based
In theory yes since they're essentially sponsored by RedHat. (RedHat is owned by IBM)
Which is funny because the Snowden leaks actually showed the NSA likes using Fedora for their fancy spy tech lol.
I guess a good alternative would be OpenSUSE.
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I switched from Fedora to openSUSE recently and it has been painless. Would recommend to anyone who are looking to get away from US companies and US jurisdiction. Edit: note that it uses RPM package manager though, I don't know yet if that is problematic or not. If someone knows then please elaborate on that.
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