The article doesn’t seem to describe how you can stop the surveillance, so I will: To start with, acknowledge your phone surveills everything, and because these corprate entities like Samsung, but not limited to Samsung, are just data sucking zombies that are completely non-free/proprietary with absouletly no morals or philosophy other than maybe the Mr. Krabs philosophy, they can not be trusted. Remember, unless it’s fully transparent from the first to the last line of code with nothing hidden, you can’t trust it. Now, how do you actually get rid of it? Simply, the best option to completely get rid of surveillance is to get a Thinkpad X200T and replace the os with a fully libre one (personal best is parabola) and replace the BIOS with GNU Boot. This might be easy or really hard depending on your skills, finances, and geolocation. There are 7 categories from easiest to hardest: 1: you have the money, the skills, and live in a region where a company selling an ryf x200T ships to (ryf.fsf.org) 2: you have the money and live in a region where a company selling an ryf x200T ships to (ryf.fsf.org) 3: you have the skills and live in a region where a company selling an ryf x200T ships to (ryf.fsf.org) 4: you have the money and the skills 5: you have the skills 6: you live in a region where a company selling an ryf x200t ships to (ryf.fsf.org) 7: you don’t have the money, the skills, and you don’t live in a region where a company selling an ryf x200t ships to

If you fit in 1, it’s as easy as just going to the ryf.fsf.org website and clicking on laptops then clicking on the X200T and clicking on the link that takes you to a website where you can buy it from. If you don’t want to buy it you could buy the x200t from a local seller and then putting a libre os on it and GNU Boot. If you fit in 2, it’s alr you don’t really need the skills when you have the money. It’s as easy as just going to the website ryf.fsf.org and clicking on laptops then clicking on the X200T and clicking on the link that takes you to a website where you can buy it from If you fit in 3, you’re still in the clear. Just get a local X200T, put a libre os on it, get the supplies needed for flashing Gnu boot, and flash it. If you fit in 4, same as 3 5: Now this will be a bit tricky, but you can find a good deal if you look carefully 6: might look irrelevent, but that means that you live in some western country meaning that you can find even more better deals than 5, but you still have to learn how to download a libre os, GNU Boot, what gnu is… 7: Now, this is really hard, but possible, so just learn the basics and then search for really good deals, download the libre os on it, and GNU Boot BIOS.

If you’re wondering why I chose the X200T, it’s because it’s the most privacy and freedom you can get in a laptop, and it’s a 12 inch touch screen so it’d feel more like a phone than an actual laptop. If you have any questions you could ask me by replying to this comment or message me I’m open to helping just make sure to tell me what category you fit in, so I can tailor the response to what you have.

I’m totally against what companies are calling “AI”, but I mean many men still have a negative feel on therapy inherited from society, their family, their friends, and the people around them. Now add that with the fact that therapy sessions cost a kidney, I don’t blame them. Even mental health has to be monetized in capitalism, and the capitalists (more specifically liberals) are still wondering why suicide rate is so high, I wonder 🤔

Palantir

I completely agree with you. I can’t believe how people still worship Torvalds, while Stallman, an open capitalist, has done more radical socialist things than Linus by miles. I used to ask myself why people praise Torvalds yet reject radical contributors that started, spread, and work on free software that include BIOS and full on operating systems with a developer team consisting of a few contributors living off of donations and advocating against surveillance, non-free software, DRM, and other capitalist dystopian practices, but now I clearly know that people will do anything they can to avoid being even the slightest of radical. Wether it is with software, technology, economic systems, governments, and more, people don’t want to change as change is uncomfortable, so, as a result, you have people like Torvalds, movements like democratic “socialism”, and corporate whitewash like “open source”.

Yay another LLM! That’s definitely what the world needs and don’t let anyone make you think otherwise. This is so fun guys. Let’s fund the surveillance, stealing, misinformation, harmful biases, and destruction of the planet. I can’t believe some people think that humanity is more important than another “open source” crazy pro max ultra 8K AI 9999!

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bfc-revolt-guide

I personally don’t own a phone. My solution to messaging, recording, and navigation is my Thinkpad X200T running parabola GNU+Linux-libre as the os and GNU boot as the bios. It’s as anti-surveillance pro-piracy pro-freedom you can get. For protests, just turning off bluetooth and wifi on it pretty much gets you off the radar. The only problem is that it’s camera really sucks. Photos are doable, but videos might not. Also, for protests, physical privacy is important too, so I hope you are wearing bandana to protect you from being identified in addition to protection (helmet, knee pads, and maybe a gas mask depending on how big the protest is)

I can confirm this is not just in the land of burgers. Back in the war from October to December, I fleed to Germany and went to school there, and the stuff I saw where absolutely disgusting: kids were using ipads (ibads) given to them by the school, the computers ran windows on them, and every time even a single task came up, they would directly resort to artificial unintelligence. When the “ceasefire” started and I finally went back to Lebanon, most of the kids were using Artificial unintelligence to write their essays as well. I don’t blame these kids, they don’t know better, they don’t know how artificial unintelligence is trained from the stolen work of the people, they don’t know what non-free software is, and they don’t know how these devices/software are tracking their every move. It’s up to the school’s to teach them such and schools are doing a terrible job both in America and internationally.

Suckles DWM is amazing. No bloat at all. There is only 1 config file, and you edit it with pure C like a gigachad. Like all suckles software, it strictly obeys the Unix philosophy, and it has been the cause of the most lightweight set ups that are also cool hacker-looking

Nice, if you need any tips on switching to GNU+Linux don’t hesitate to DM me. Also, if you are on a newer mac the hardware doesn’t allow for you to switch to another os due to apple’s locked down nature

No there is spyware down to the hardware and bios level, but it does limit the data collection. Also if you’re going to switch to GNU+Linux and sill use the same non-free software it wouldn’t really make difference.

You make amazing points, and I completely agree with you. I will continue to use Jami since it’s good enough for me to talk with my friends. I mean now the only replacement which is not a replacement just another thing I use to chat is GNU Emacs. I hope the development speed and motivation increases and please do inform me if you found an alternative

If it’s not fully free, I don’t trust it. I don’t understand how someone in a privacy community doesn’t understand how much a few lines of code can track someone so easily no matter how much of the program is free software.

Yeah, this is just the reality of unpaid free software developers, they don’t have the recourses to work on every single bug as quick as a paid developer, but that doesn’t justify not reporting bugs and working with the developers to fix them. Like you said, Jami is grest ethically so why not make it great function? Also, don’t you have a computer and a phone? Test on those. I don’t own a phone, so I can’t test the phone, but I do gladly test on my laptop.

Great, but it relies on signal’s servers, so it’s centralised. Also, Moly merely removes proprietary parts from Signal, but that’s a workaround (same thing for linux-libre kernel, it’s free software, but just a workaround which is why I’m looking to help with HyprbolaBSD). I’m not coming here to say Molly isn’t an improvement, but being centralised and relying on a non-tully-free program’s servers is a huge red flag for me :)

That’s not the full picture. That’s exactly the problem I was highlighting. The issue isn’t whether some of the code is “FOSS”, it’s about whether all of it is. If even small parts remain proprietary (as you mentioned), then we can’t verify what those parts are doing. And those parts could theoretically significantly affect the data collection. Also, I didn’t make up a lot of stuff. The Signal Foundation themselves have confirmed that certain UI and build components are not fully libre. As the GNU project puts it, if part of your system is closed, then you’re trusting a black box, no matter how well-lit the rest of it is.

And we should report problems and fix them ourselves to make it better

Go to your local repair shop and see if they have / can get you a new one.

Jami.net

Ignore the comment saying signal is “end to end encrypted” “private” etc They are simply stuck in a delusional state where they try to convince themselves that signal is the best option so they can continue using it. Nothing is private if it isn’t fully libre because you never know what the proprietary code is doing. The signal protocol itself has its source code released, and the encryption and security code is publicly available, but the signal Foundation has stated that it uses both free code and proprietary code. Their reason is UI, but it’s hard to make sure whatever proprietary code is being used for because you simply can’t see it. As GNU puts it: “You’re walking in a pitch black cave”. Jami is fully libre and is a GNU project. You don’t even need any phone number!

No, I just buy a new lenovo 9 cell battery. I use my X200T for creativity stuff (reading/writing/drawing) and use my T500 for portable more intense work like programming that I would do on the ASUS KMCA-D8 when I’m on the go. I get about 5-12 hours on my X200T and 3-10 hours on my T500, but I do carry a docking station with me, so I can always just recharge easily, but I usually don’t use it since the 5-10 hours is more than enough for school bus rides and I don’t usually program in a place without a charging outlet nearby. Btw it’s important to note that my computer is very minimal since I use parabola open rc edition with dwm to boot emacs, libreoffice draw, and icecat, so if you have a bloated setup then ofcourse the battery life will differ.