Is infiltration & Paranoia in Techlore community?

Privacy and Security Discussions
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Didn’t know what others might think on this topic since this community began and consequently picks up newcomers.

As new posters post and personalities reveal themselves via such disclosures… i ask : Is infiltration & Paranoia in Techlore community? If so how?

I would be led to think it’d be hard to dupe or commandeer you, Henry? Or gain ur complicity (under rule 41 of patriot act and section 702 FISA).to give up what info u can about ur members and community… or be extorted by feds, etc…

I would be interested in how you handle this question about your own integrity and fidelity to your cause?

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The forum is public and does not require an account to view posts. It is not intended for sharing personal information privately. It’s mostly for sharing thoughts, finding help, providing assistance, and staying updated on news, among other things

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I agree with what @PrivacyFounder said. Though, to add:

If you did want an account, to participate, this forum does not block aliasing services. They do the opposite, encouraging it, with a SimpleLogin button. They also support a Passkey login, which is another great, privacy respecting option.

As for swaying Henry, and other Techlore members (eg: Jonah), that’s something only they can comment on. However, I (and I would imagine, they) would encourage you to get your information from multiple sources. Don’t rely on Techlore. Take advantage of work from other privacy advocates. Whether it be smaller influencers like NBTV, or bigger non-profits/groups such as the EFF. Of course, I’d also hope that other members of this very community will raise a red flag, if we vehemently disagree with something. Keep an eye out for things like that.

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Gonna be honest with you folks, I’m not sure what this means in the first place.

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Respectfully sometimes you all scare me just a little bit

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Techlore is (in my eyes) a pretty mainstream, moderate, and beginner focused privacy community, its also quite small in the realm of things. Most people here are just trying to minimize corporate tracking/data harvest, make unethical government mass surveillance a little bit harder, and regain a bit of control over their digital lives. Not exactly a juicy target for law enforcement. I find it extremely unlikely that any government agency would find it worthwhile to specifically target this community or coerse Henry as an individual.

That said, I would never seek to invalidate your concerns just because I think they are unlikely or don’t entirely understand what you are asking. Things that are unlikely are unlikely but not impossible. So I will try to address them without further commentary on whether or not it is a likely scenario.

Both Discourse (this forum) and Youtube are public platforms. So anything you say here is already public (with the exception of direct messages which are not public, but also not encrypted afaik). The same is true of youtube, any comments you’ve made are public, and any videos you’ve watched, links you’ve clicked, etc are known to youtube (google) already.

So the question you’ve got to ask youself is IF an adversary were to compromise, this forum, the youtube channel, or someone with administrative access to either, what is the risk to you? What data could possibly be exposed? And are there other easier or more likely ways this (meta)data could be compromised.

A non-exhaustive list of some of the things that are not public on the forum which could potentially be compromised (and even if not compromised you should be aware that forum administrators and to some degree moderators can usually see some or all of these things).

  1. Probably every IP address you’ve ever used to logon to this forum (or at least the most recent one), and possibly links to any other usernames that have logged in from the same IP.
  2. Definitely Account details like the e-mail address you used to signup, as well as other information about your user profile/account.
  3. Probably metadata (things like when you accessed the site last, etc)
  4. Definitely the Region/country of your IP address)
  5. Definitely some information about your browser.
  6. Probably a history of content you have deleted or edited.
  7. Possibly the ability to see information about deleted accounts

Lots of this can be mitigated by your own opsec (if you are concerned about your IP or your email being exposed, its up to you to not share your true IP or true email). Personally, I treat this site and every other forum I use as a public space (including the bits that are technically not public), so the impact of a compromise (whether that was hackers, gov’t, or whoever) wouldn’t impact me that much.

Generally speaking there are two questions that are good to ask yourself to help keep your concerns rational/reasonable.

  1. What is the likelihood/probability of a particular threat you are concerned about actually happening?
  2. If it did occur, how severely would it impact you?

These questions might help you find more balance and stay grounded, and help you focus on the the threats that are most likely and/or most serious to you.

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I think they’re asking how we can ensure we aren’t compromised by an entity who wants to gain user data and/or influence the advice we share—which is a valid question.

It’s worth mentioning the moderation, rules, and target audience of everything we do is designed to live alongside standard information to keep what we do away from these situations in the first place. This is why we disassociate privacy from illegal activities, do our best to moderate things well, and offer many resources for beginners who just want to avoid basic data collection and other more accessible privacy concerns. I have no idea what there would be to gain from our community, and that’s by design because of the nature of what we cover and how we cover it. (sharing public & freely accessible information for the most common demographics)

Now from a logistics perspective, we do have safety mechanisms:

  • We keep everything open source to our best ability, and offer clear protocols so you all can hold us accountable

  • We’ll tell you when we fuck up, and actively encourage you all to fact check information we share:
    Addressing Almost All Techlore Mistakes—And Why You Shouldn't Solely Trust Techlore.

  • Techlore has existed for almost 10 years, and I like to think trust is something we’ve done a good job of building. There’s always a layer of trust you’ll need to have to have with any service/guide/project you choose, and we’re no different.

What we don’t have protocols for:

  • We don’t currently have strict systems in place to deal with a situation with an entity 'commandeer’ing us in some way. It’s such an unlikely scenario that it’s just not something that’s hit my radar yet. I’ll chat with @Jonah privately to see if there’s anything worth thinking about & preparing for.

Ultimately I don’t think there’s much more we are able to say to calm your fears @Evolvingprivacytrend — there will always be a layer of trust people will need to have for us. I can’t really convince you otherwise, nor should I have to. We do our thing as best we can, do our best to allow you all to verify what we do—and it’s your decision if you think we’re trustworthy. If we start sharing bad advice you disagree with, then please act accordingly.

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Pshhh…Typical intelligence agency obfuscation.

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Assuming what you mean is “are there people who are paranoid in the Techlore community?” then the answer is probably yes. Paranoid people tend to be drawn to privacy-enhancing behaviours for pretty obvious reasons. From my limited experience with the Techlore commonity, it does a pretty good job of pushing back on the worst excesses, but it’s just kind of a fact of the privacy “community” that it’s going to have a certain degree of weirdness.

I’m not Henry and I obviously cannot speak for him, but there’s a general principle that “you can’t leak what you don’t know”. So if you don’t trust Henry or his team not to be hit with various subpoenas and warrants etc, you can mitigate your exposure really easily by not linking any identifying information on this forum. Use an alias or throwaway e-mail, use Tor to access it, and don’t put any personal information on here which you wouldn’t mind being at least potentially public.

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I’ve infiltrated you :grin: via a net search, looking for information about RethinkDNS. Found it and was surprised by the politeness and detailed answers. Decided to throw away my infiltration coat and just be a regular dude. :sunglasses: Now, Techlore emails are one of the few that I don’t forward to the bin or click unsubscribe.

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I mean in this case, it’s a forum. It’s for free and open discussion. While this might be owned by Henry, I do believe the community will call him out (or anyone else) for something that’s factually incorrect.

Then again, everyone here knows that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on the internet. If your threat model depends on it, consider talking to actual lawyers and cybersecurity professionals who can give you personalised advice.

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rdns dev here

Rethink bringing in leads to Techlore… someone should sponsor us :wink:

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Definitely Allen , thanks… and I have followed all that Opsec for sure.

And I’m really grateful for Henry’s advocacy because it takes a lot of guts and his earlier response on this thread too.

The Awareness that I draw to the Patriot Act rule 41 and section 702 FISA ( thats renewed for another few years in the usa) … which allows room for a completely legalized extra judicial killing under the guise of any citizen being “perceived as treasonous” and therefore a “threat actor” against the state for any sort of perceptions and or activities such as advocating social justice, and or civically virtuous activity… and especially any activity that is considered blowing the whistle on corruption.

Reading about stories here on techlore, while having awareness of propaganda’s effect, considering what Mental Outlaw & the hated one have to say…etc… imho…and most of all my personal experience about how deadly the FBI can become when they find somebody that’s “on to what they’re doing to divide and destroy.” … in almost what seems to be a thoroughly communistic totalitarian infiltrated agenda…

In my xp of fbi agents at my door twice… for my manner of bringing thier corrupt behavior to accountability where I live… the FBI doesn’t do a show trial and they don’t do false charges… they do a turnkey cover up just like Treblinka in 1943 in Poland… they have a completely professional killing/murder program that “neutralizes domestic terrorism”… they know exactly what they’re doing and they know exactly how to do it and how to set up the conditions just like propaganda did the 1936 - 39 in Germany, in order to make sure that all media channels are carefully coordinated around anybody’s death.

In fact I would credit the FBI with being a metaphorical “wanna be” Nazi regime… … very similar to how perhaps they sit back behind closed doors- like Reihnard Heidrich’s Wansee conference- and talk about if they can kill 5 - 10,000 people/day … and then try to cover it up by growing a forest over where the murders took place… so as to rob the murdered/dead from even their right to a burial and Remembrance…

… sarcastically, I offer do you really think the FBI doesn’t think like that? Or any part of the police States apparatus DHS etc?

i understand the FBI’s tactics to specifically recruit and reverse engineer and turn out functionaries with extortion-based recruitments etc… when the military & policec apparatus is there to protect and preserve a country versus turning on itself… that might be kind of nice to think that we’re being protected by such advanced intelligence… but my experience we’re not being protected by it or being wholesale slaughtered under the phony guise of “orwellian freedom” chuckle chuckle at that oxymoron.

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Bear in mind that I am in no way a clinical psychologist, but I have spent a lot of time in various online spaces where certain kinds of paranoia and delusion are common. Also I don’t know you from Adam, so I could be (probably am) entirely off-base here.

But the way you write to me sounds like you might be struggling with some very serious mental illness issues, including paranoia and maybe even incipient psychosis. I’d strongly recommend you talk to a professional therapist/counselor/psychologist/psychiatrist as soon as possible. If absolutely nothing else, getting your thoughts in order will help you be more effective in whatever endeavors you choose to do, and it might save you a lot of problems later.

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Props Alan, respect ur point for sure. I am pro-mental health & I do get the mental health help I need.

To give ya a better context my house was swept and i was interviewed by the FBI at my door in 2019, and prior in 2017. I was doing absolutely nothing illegal. So I’ve seen first hand mutiny and corruption. Search up fusion centers, targeted justice , and u’ll get a picture