Opt-out of PRISM is bullshit

An interesting page popped up a few days ago, with "helpful hints" how to escape that evil your-data-grabbing PRISM that NSA set up. You can find it here.
It does a nice job of providing alternatives to today's most used operating systems, applications and services. But it has one big problem.

It's bullshit.

Even worse, it's OSS evangelism done wrong.

Let's go and see those alternatives, point for point. You might open another window and look at the spreadsheet, for easier reference. I am going to be short, because there are plenty of experts, that can explain you in further detail, why proposed actions do next to nothing, besides advertising Open source programs, in some cases not even fully developed ones, or programs with serious flaws, not meant for everyday use.


OS: is there any indication, that core OS sends data to PRISM without user consent?

Web Browser: is there any indication, that Web browser sends data to PRISM without user consent?

Search engines: is there any indication, that "open" search engines would NOT send data if approached by NSA? Nevertheless, one can search anonymously on all of them. Add DDG is quite nice.

Payment: Bitcoin, while a good idea in theory, is scammer's farm.The ones, who started mining bitcoin first, were "rich" a few months ago, and then the worth of this digital currency suddenly plummeted. Way to inspire confidence.

Email clients:  is there any indication, that email client sends data to PRISM without user consent?

Email encryption: good luck with that. People wouldn't even SIGN the damn thing.

Cloud storage: this one is ridiculous. Do not use a service, run your own. Yeah, because we are all admins with public access servers. But it is OSS, so it must be good for you, right?

Social networks: ditto for this one. People go, where their FRIENDS are. Not even Google can flock them from Facebook, and then some PRISM threat will? Good luck being alone.

Instant messaging: same as before. Friends are on Facebook, why chat anywhere else? Besides, security savvy users loathe IM clients anyway, unless they are encrypted.

Video conferencing: ditto. Also, no video conferencing on OSS alternative. Also, Skype is encrypted.

Content publishing: it is called publishing for a reason. It means putting on PUBLIC display. So NSA can see it anyway.

Document collaboration: how about just uploading a document to a private server? Works for Scene...

Android: OK. This one takes the cake. Cyanogenmod??? Indie ROM effort, partially backed by Samsung, is inherently more secure than stock operating system??? Bad Google, putting rootkits on phones and shit. Oh wait... I was thinking of someone else.

iOS: and where is iOS ROM alternative? Oh wait, Apple does not allow it. Bummer.

There is NO opt-out of PRISM, until NSA puts a form on their site, where i can click DO NOT FUCKING TRACK ME YOU SNEAKY BASTARDS.

And they actually comply.

Well, good luck with that, too.

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Do not get me wrong. I am starch supporter of OSS movement. And I use plenty of open source software myself. But evangelism should be based on facts. On features. On advantages. Not on some phantom threat. Yes, FSF and open source developers will never be able to compete with marketing machinery used by big companies - yet we can see some stellar successes. When software is actually GOOD. not just good enough. But so good, it can blow away anything from  Microsoft, Google, Apple or anyone else, for that matter. Firefox. LibreOffice. Linux. Apache. VLC. Need I say more?

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Dragi bralci, občasno se bo zgodilo, da bom objavil kak prispevek v angleščini. Včasih imam pač povedati kaj celemu svetu, ne samo našemu kokošnjaku. Delite lahko vseeno, Celo vesel bom, če boste. Da ne bom le glas vpijočega v puščavi.