I don’t trust my tech much at all, hence the faraday bag.

These motherfuckers should be sitting in jail cells right now.

God, I love math nerds on Lemmy.

Thank you for this and Happy Friday.

stock android phone and without the user actually activating mic or camera.

Assuming you’re disabling the mic or camera in some way, either by getting into the phone’s guts or storing it in a safe place, then it’s certainly less of a consideration. Same with keeping the wireless connection off when you’re not using it.

I keep mine in a faraday bag for instance. The unwanted private surveillance can be largely avoided within your own space.

If you’re not using the mic or camera then the only data being collected is the data you actively put into it.

I made a video this week about the case of a schoolteacher in Illinois who was arrested after making a joke about shooting a student in a Snapchat DM, for instance. The automated AI alert system that Snapchat uses alerted the FBI, who alerted the county sheriffs, who then arrested her.

What made the Guthrie case stand out is that it was concrete proof from a government source that people are being surveilled without a warrant, and if it happened there, there’s no reason to suspect it isn’t happening everywhere.

Earlier this year the FBI, desperate to to make Kash Patel look competent, released video in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping that shouldn’t have existed, but for Guthrie’s porch camera spying on her via Google, and then fortuitously capturing some footage of her kidnapper.

Any device with a camera, microphone and a wireless connection or bluetooth signal is almost certainly spying on you, and while most of that data is likely just used to train AI models, this case tells us it may also be harvested in government databases.

So yes, of course any data you actively give them is being harvested too. Be responsible with your tech.

If we lived in a more just world, Zuck, Musk, Altman and all the rest would be sitting before Congress getting a short break from their interminable stays in prison cells, explaining to the American people the ins and outs of the deliberately harmful products they created.

It’s nice to see that some of the states and a handful of countries, at least, are doing what the US Government never will and trying to hold these people accountable to some degree.

If you told me 30 years ago that I’d live to see the day when a CP generator or that a major company would hang its hat on distributing CP for a child rape ring are not only a reality, but one that anyone can access just for paying a subscription, I’m not sure I’d have believed it. But here we are.

Just another thought for my “This is why a good god doesn’t exist” file.

It reminds me of a really great line from the movie Coming To America: “Imagine a country so free one can throw glass in its streets.”

Donald has personal financial interests in prediction markets and his properties probably have private firefighting. What the fuck does he care?

And for the next two years he’s going to have nothing to lose. We’ll see if there’s any America left once he’s done.

Called it.

I remember when people were really excited about him winning, and they just kinda ignored he’s an international banker, and therefore a motherfucker.

I tried PeerTube and, unfortunately, found it terribly underwhelming. But thank you for the suggestion.