Android-seventeen has arrived, sort of.

Section-seven-oh-two has expired, sort of.

And privacy is at a greater risk than

ever in Canada.

All of this and more is coming up

on This Week in Privacy,

episode fifty-eight, so stay tuned.

Welcome back to This Week in Privacy,

our weekly series where we discuss the

latest updates with what we're working on

within the PrivacyGuides community and

this week's top stories in data privacy

and cybersecurity.

I am Nate,

and this week with me is Jonah.

How are you doing this week, Jonah?

I'm doing great, Nate.

It's been a busy week,

but I'm glad to be on the show

again and doing this with you.

Yeah, it's good to be back.

Thank you guys for holding down the fort

last week.

Alrighty.

Well,

let's go ahead and jump into our stories

right away.

Our first story is pretty exciting here,

and it is the Android.

Seventeen is finally coming out.

So it's it.

Well,

we'll talk about the graphene stuff in a

minute.

But first,

let's talk about what's new in Android.

Seventeen.

So I think it officially came out.

Like Wednesday,

maybe Tuesday could have been yesterday.

I'm really bad with time ever since COVID.

I think a lot of people can relate

to that.

So a lot of the news that I

saw personally regarding Android,

really didn't talk about any of the

privacy stuff.

But thankfully, we have Fria,

our staff writer who was on top of

this and went through the announcement and

made a list here of

the updates that they found and they did

say this may not be everything because

again there's like the news usually the

news does focus at least somewhat on the

privacy and security stuff um but again it

was kind of scarce this time but freya

went through and found as much as they

could and uh there's some exciting stuff

so first up i don't know if this

is in any particular order um but first

up the uh the contact picker which is

um very similar to

I would argue, if my timeline is correct,

I think Graphene had this first,

and then iOS adopted it in iOS,

but it's basically,

I believe Graphene calls it the contact

scopes.

It allows you to tell an app that

it can only have permission for certain

certain contacts this is actually really

useful for i'll give you a real example

of this one um since we do have

uh we being privacy guides and also over

the new oil we do have an online

presence on platforms we don't necessarily

like like tick tock for example and every

time i check tick tock it bugs me

to give it access to my contacts and

so finally i i

Can go in and tell it,

or like on an iPhone,

I can tell it like, sure,

have access and then just not give it

access to anything.

And it'll shut up and leave me alone,

which is amazing.

Um,

but it allows for that awesome

compartmentalization.

Uh, there's a local network permission,

which was previously opt in for

developers,

but now it is required in order to

access devices on the local network.

Um,

loopback traffic is now blocked between

profiles.

According to Android authority,

there is an advanced protection mode,

similar to iOS lockdown mode.

And, um.

That's actually been out for a while,

I think,

but now it's getting some new features,

including blocking accessibility services

for apps that aren't accessibility apps,

which is great because I've read in the

past that that is a common vector for

malicious apps to abuse things is when

they...

When an app uses accessibility features,

it kind of gets extra additional

permissions that it wouldn't normally

have.

So that is really good.

Um,

you can disable device device device to

device unlocking.

So I'm assuming they mean kind of like,

um, like Android auto.

I've noticed my wife when she plugs in

her phone in the car,

even if she doesn't unlock it,

it just automatically starts playing music

and stuff, which is handy,

but it's probably not great for security,

uh, disables web GPU and Chrome, uh,

spam detection for chat notifications,

which I'm going to assume is AI powered.

and support for Android enterprise for

managed devices.

It says if apps are granted the SMS

permission,

they will not have access to one-time

codes,

which protects you from a malicious app

stealing your two FA login details.

Android also has encrypted client hello by

default, which is, um,

kind of a Jonah can correct me if

I'm wrong here.

I think it's kind of similar to encrypted

DNS.

It's not quite the same,

but basically when there's that initial

handshake,

it just kind of adds a little bit

of extra protection.

Passwords are fully hidden by default when

typing using a physical input device,

such as a keyboard, uh,

theft protection will be enabled by

default on Android,

which is pretty awesome.

They've reduced the number of allowed

failed pin attempts and increase the time

between attempts.

And you can now grant apps temporary

precise location access,

which gets revoked when they're closed,

and is now adding a hybrid post-quantum

cryptography for app signing to protect

against future threat of quantum

computers.

And let's see,

I think last but not least here,

there's a background audio framework to

ensure apps playing audio in the

background don't make changes to audio

that aren't intended by the user.

So yeah,

pretty hefty list of changes here.

And just to kind of address the graphene

stuff that we talked about in the headline

here.

So

um according to my rss feed this just

came out today actually um graphene is

notoriously fast at adapting android and

getting it ready for graphene they already

have an initial release ready of android

unfortunately they say there is an

upstream android bug and updating via side

loading uh

Updating to this release via ADB

sideloading to recovery from a previous

release is unavailable.

I did not know people did that.

I've always been an over-the-air kind of

guy,

which they say that over-the-air works.

But I guess that this is,

and they say they're going to address this

in a future release.

But from what I understand,

Jonah was saying he checked this morning

and did not see this in the alpha

channel on his test device.

So it looks like maybe they're kind of

holding off to work out some of the

final bugs.

But technically, it is here.

It does exist.

It's got boatloads of fixes,

as you can see here.

The main thing being an update to Android.

But yeah, so that is on its way.

I don't know that I have too much

more to add to that.

I'm very excited about this update.

There's just something exciting about new

major releases like this, in my opinion,

but it looks like it's bringing a lot

of really cool features.

Were there any in particular that stood

out to you or you wanted to discuss?

Yeah,

there's kind of a lot to be unpacked

here.

We can go over the Graphene OS stuff

first.

I think they said in their announcement

that over-the-air updates will work,

but they haven't released them yet.

And in my experience,

I have Graphene OS on one of these

phones I have on my desk.

Yeah.

And it's set to the alpha channel,

but if I check for updates on XVI,

it still says device is up to date.

So they haven't released that yet.

You can't sideload this over an existing

install either, as you mentioned.

So got to wait a bit longer for

Android XVII on Graphene OS.

They say it was supposed to be out...

like yesterday or two days ago i believe

they say that it's delayed because of an

upstream android ii book i don't think

that they've shared what it is or what

the problem is so

Don't know too much beyond that,

but I guess we'll be waiting a little

bit longer for Graphene OS.

But if you want a fresh install for

some reason,

I assume you can do that with the

images that they've posted there.

Other stuff that's cool,

you mentioned encrypted client hello.

For people who don't know what that is,

that's basically the connection when

you're making an HTTPS connection to a web

server.

That kind of handshake process where you

get the certificate in the first place

from that server includes the domain name

in plain text.

So men in the middle, like your ISP,

for example,

can see what domain you're connecting to

still, which is kind of a...

That's one way that they can see what

domains you're connecting to,

even if they can't monitor your DNS

traffic because you're using encrypted

DNS.

So it's a cool feature.

It requires...

support on the web server site as well

so not every site is gonna work with

this um unfortunately it mainly affects

sites that are behind super large cdns

like cloudflare for example cloudflare is

going to support this and basically any

cloudflare site that you connect to will

appear to come from a single cloudflare

domain if we wanted to set up encrypted

client hello

For privacy guides, for example,

we could make all privacy guides requests,

like the one on our website or connections

to our form all show up with the

same domain name,

but it would be limited to a domain

name that we own.

So it's a pretty small bucket,

and people would still be able to see

you're connecting to privacy guides.

Not to mention that your IP address is

still going to be

the IP address that you're connecting to

of the web server will still be visible.

It's good protection.

It's good that it's coming,

and it does patch that whole encrypted

DNS.

It doesn't fully patch,

but it's not a perfect solution.

If you want to hide all of this

traffic from your ISP,

it's still recommended to use a VPN,

basically.

That's my point.

Other stuff.

The biggest thing I'm excited about,

but this is just because I'm a

cryptography nerd.

I like the whole...

post-quantum cryptography that they're

adding.

I have felt recently,

especially in like the last year or so,

that post-quantum cryptography is becoming

much more important and we need to switch

over as much stuff as soon as possible,

because even though we're probably

years out from it being practical i think

that that period is shorter than a lot

of people think it's probably not going to

be like decades away it might be might

be under a decade at this point and

some recommendations say that we need to

switch entirely over by some recent

advancements that we talked about in the

quantum encryption space i think a couple

um weeks ago here on the show but

also we talked about it in some news

articles on our website

they seem to indicate that the quantum

computing field is progressing at a at a

pretty fast rate at this point so always

cool to see more things adopt that they

are going to use it for the android's

bootloader i believe they're already doing

it for the verified boot chain they say

that they're going to bring post quantum

cryptography to app signing so you can

sign your apps with that

Since we just released an app,

a privacy guides,

the verified apps app with our data set

that we're building.

I looked into that,

but there are no tools and nothing in

the Android seventeen public source code

that I could find that mention post

quantum cryptography at all.

So it's not something we can do yet,

but hopefully hopefully soon they open

that up to developers.

Beyond that,

I think you kind of covered all the

other stuff.

I don't know if I have too much

to say about any of the other protections,

except I think that they're pretty cool.

A lot of these were a long time

coming,

like the contact picker stuff that you

mentioned, Nate.

So I'm glad that Android,

stock Android is finally catching up in

some respects to Graphene OS and iOS.

That's always a good thing to see.

Um, yeah,

I think that's kind of it though,

unless anyone in the chat has anything

else they want to know about Android.

Yeah, it's definitely, um,

on the contact picker thing.

I love the, um, I love the competition.

This is one of those areas where like

competition is actually really good and

helps everyone because now like, um,

It's kind of sad.

It takes like a small team,

like graphene doing it to motivate these

big companies, but you know,

graphene will add something.

And then somebody at iPhone or Apple,

I guess it's like, oh, that's pretty cool.

We should add that now.

Google's like crap.

Now we have to add that.

And you know,

that's how we ended up with like the,

the, and I know they're not perfect,

but that's how we ended up like with

like the price

labels and the app stores and how we

ended up with

uh crap what was it um like the

privacy dashboards and like screen time

and and just all these neat little

features that uh are making you know just

making everyone more private because you

know it's it's um i know he didn't

come up with it but carrie parker on

always says on firewalls don't stop

dragons like privacy is a team sport you

know it's a rising tide lifts all ships

when everybody gets more private that's a

net win regardless like yeah obviously we

want people to switch to something like

graphene and be better but that still

doesn't mean that people don't deserve

a better level of privacy when they're on

iPhone or stock Android or whatever.

So really, really cool stuff.

Looking through some of the comments here,

Harry Potter says the only thing I care

about is dark mode feature.

I feel you.

I have my phone set to based on

whatever the system and I think I have

the system set to

I think I do have set times, actually,

that roughly correspond to when I'm

winding down for bed and when I wake

up.

But yeah,

it's really frustrating when it's

nighttime and I open something and it's

not dark mode.

Or even vice versa.

If it's daytime and I open something and

it's in dark mode, I'm like,

why is it doing this?

That's really weird.

Chubby Wubby here says,

y'all saw that pixels have gone up in

price after the UK announcement.

I didn't see that.

Did you?

I did not see that either.

I just found out about it from this

comment.

I'd have to look into that.

But that is funny.

And hopefully that's because people are

switching to graphene OS,

because I think more more people are

finding out about that sort of thing,

as these huge restrictions are implemented

in all these countries.

So that'd be positive, at least.

Yeah.

Harry Potter said that here,

at least people are getting to know about

graphene.

The more normal it becomes,

the better it is for everyone.

I agree.

Cause I remember, um,

I think this was before I joined privacy

guides,

but I remember we covered a story about

how in Spain,

just having a pixel phone is maybe not

enough to get you arrested,

but at least like the cops will stop

and talk to you because they know about

graphene and like only criminals use it

over there, which is completely insane.

It's like, dude, come on.

So yeah.

Um,

And yeah, I just,

I want to address real quick.

I know we, we keep saying sideloading,

it's a force of habit and we really

shouldn't.

Cause yeah, it is, it is,

it's one of those very subtle language

things.

Um,

shout out to for anyone who's read that,

but it's kind of like a,

like changing the language to make it

sound like it's something super techie or,

you know, not authorized, like, oh,

you're kind of like tinkering with your

device, but it's like, yeah,

you don't sideload something onto windows.

You just install it.

So.

Although I will say in our defense in

this case,

I believe the command is ADB sideload to

install a system image on top of your

current Android install.

So yeah, that is part of it.

Yeah.

Real quick,

Sid the Shuckle said Android desktop

update.

We didn't see anything.

There was nothing in here, unfortunately.

yeah yeah i don't use android desktop too

much i hear it's like limited in

resolution and frame rate so it'd be kind

of annoying to use on like a four

k monitor i don't know if that's true

though um because i have not used it

but that's just something i heard recently

that's that's interesting that would make

it a little a little annoying to use

i think

I have a Pixel-A,

so I don't think mine is compatible with

desktop mode.

Yeah, I don't know when that was added.

I want to say it was added for

the eights and higher.

So I think the six a is running

out of support next year,

which means we'll probably be buying new

phones next year.

And, um, we'll probably,

I'll probably tinker with it at that

point.

But I also,

since I do a lot of video editing,

it kind of has like limited, um,

use for me.

I'm sure even if I bought like the

pixel pro or whatever their highest model

is,

I don't know if that would be up

to the task.

So, um,

last thing i'll say before we move on

is uh anonymous said cover the shiny

hunters breach uh we do put out a

weekly data breach roundup um so i didn't

cover all of the services but i definitely

did talk about that i think this week

and possibly last week um when it first

started coming out the

Was it Salesforce they breached?

It was something Oracle that they breached

that has given them access to a whole

bunch of other services.

And the lovely thing about data breaches

like that is they stay in the news

for months because every few weeks there's

another company coming forward like, yeah,

we got hit by that too.

So yeah,

go ahead and subscribe to that or check

privacyguides.org slash news.

I'll be keeping you updated every time a

new company comes along.

But I think that's all we've got for

this story,

unless there was anything else you wanted

to add.

No, I think, yeah,

we can move on to our next one

here.

This one comes from...

Global news in Canada.

The headline is liberals dismiss tinfoil

hat privacy fears as lawful access bill

passes.

Liberals, the party,

are dismissing the privacy concerns

surrounding the government's lawful access

bill as tinfoil hat and paranoid

conspiracy theories,

even after amending the controversial

legislation to address some of those

issues.

The House of Commons passed Bill C-

twenty-two on Thursday before breaking for

the summer

a day after approving a motion to

fast-track the bill and end debate at the

Public Safety Committee,

which was then forced to approve it just

before midnight without debating dozens of

outstanding amendments.

The amended bill will now head to the

Senate.

The legislation would give law enforcement

the ability to get access to digital

information more quickly and easily for

investigations under a judicial order.

warrant yet provisions in the bill that

would allow the public safety minister to

secretly order electronic service

providers to retain user metadata and

create access capabilities for their

systems have sparked alarm from privacy

advocates academics tech companies and the

opposition parties uh so this whole story

i we we talked a bit about the

c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c

this is kind of a common response i

think we've seen from politicians lately

where when they get a lot of backlash

they will make changes and obviously they

think that the the backlash is warranted

enough to to make those changes to try

and get this through um which is

unfortunate hopefully it doesn't pass at

all but it shows that they recognize there

are some problems but at the same time

they really want you

They really want to get this impression

out that the people who are asking for

these changes are crazy and paranoid and

really just want to create this,

I don't know,

public messaging out there that they are

being forced to do these totally

ridiculous things that they don't agree

with when they're making these amendments

rather than

being kind of,

they have to make these amendments because

otherwise it wouldn't pass because it's

completely unacceptable,

the stuff that they're trying to pass.

yeah i think i don't know if i

have much to add i don't know if

you saw anything further on in this

article that you wanted to talk about nate

but i think it's it still remains very

important like we talked about last week

that if you're in canada you got to

speak out against bill c-二 make sure it

doesn't pass because it's a very um broad

overreaching policy that is going to have

really bad implications for everyone

in canada and we're seeing um around the

world right now especially in the uk but

also in other countries how these

anti-privacy laws and regulations really

negatively in fact affect real people so

yeah hopefully uh hopefully it doesn't

pass

Yeah,

I don't have too much to add myself.

I just wanted to share that because it

is really big.

In the past, Signal, DuckDuckGo,

and I think I said NordVPN and a

whole bunch of other companies basically

said they're going to stop serving the

Canadian market, which is awful, right?

Because you end up in a situation where

either A,

these people lose access to these tools,

or B, they have to like...

jump through hoops to circumvent or,

you know,

it herds people onto these weaker tools

like I still can't believe we were just

talking about that this week.

What is it, salt typhoon or volt typhoon?

Like to this day,

I still can't believe that that happened,

which for anyone who doesn't know,

that was an incident where we discovered

we being the U.S.,

we discovered that China was in our

infrastructure, like our telecom network,

our phone network.

They had been there for at least two

years, I think.

And we weren't even really sure when we

were going to be able to get them

out.

We weren't even sure that we were going

to be able to get them out.

As far as I know,

we said we've got them out,

but who knows?

And they got in through a law enforcement

back door.

And so, like,

we always say there's no such thing as

a back door that only the good guys

can use.

And we have literal proof of it.

It actually happened.

It's not a hypothetical.

It happened.

And these politicians still get up there

and they're like, well,

only the good guys will use this.

This one will be different somehow.

You know, step one, different backdoor.

Step two, question mark.

Step three, profit.

So it's just and it's it's so many

things, right?

Like, to be fair, I think I mean,

there's definitely politicians out there

who are just corrupt and dirty and they

don't give a crap and they just want

the power and the money.

I think there's also a lot of them

that are just technically inept and don't

know this stuff.

I mean, like.

I know I'm rambling a little bit here,

but I will never forget the U.S.

Congress made me feel bad for Mark

Zuckerberg, which is impressive to say,

because when when they grilled him after

Cambridge Analytica,

I remember you can find this online.

It's insane.

One of the politicians was asking him,

he's like,

so and he used the movie Black Panther

because I think that was in theaters at

the time.

And he was just, you know,

it's the big thing everybody was talking

about.

So he's like, Mark,

if I if I message my friends about

the Black Panther movie on WhatsApp,

can Facebook see that?

And Zuckerberg is like, no,

it's end-to-end encrypted,

which means that Facebook does not have

access to your messages.

And to me, that's how he said it.

It was very plain English.

Like, yes, he said end-to-end encrypted,

but he explained what that means.

And then the senator goes, right.

But if I message my friend and basically

ask the same question again,

and you can see the look on Zuckerberg's

face where he's like,

is it me did i did i not

explain that right and i'm like wow i

actually feel sorry for this guy because

they just they don't get it they don't

understand this technology and it's almost

like they're trying to go out of their

way not to understand it sometimes but

yeah this anyways it's um yeah that's just

like what uh what anonymous just said in

the chat too the one time you want

the big tech lobbyist to win it's like

yeah we're rooting for zuckerberg in that

case we're rooting for the big tech

lobbyist that kind of shows how

How much these government legislators just

do not understand any of these problems at

all.

Yeah,

I've definitely seen a few news articles

about lawsuits or something.

And it's like, oh,

Apple is going up against the DOJ.

And I'm just like, oh,

why are you making me side with Apple

on this one?

I hate you.

So yeah, it's really bad.

But I...

I hate to sound like the tinfoil hat

privacy person that they're painting us

as, but you're absolutely right.

It's a proven fact that when John F.

Kennedy was shot,

the CIA or whoever,

whoever investigated it straight up said

that they wanted to they coined the term

conspiracy theory back then.

That's where the term came from.

And their whole thing was they wanted to

discredit anyone who questioned the

findings like that.

That's true.

That's real.

That happened.

And so it's like this is the same

thing all over again.

It's this whole like tinfoil hat privacy

fears.

It's the same reason they do the whole

like this is to protect the children.

It's so that way they don't have to

listen to you because you're automatically

a monster like we have.

and you know it's it's i'm sure like

yes there's something to be said for

stopping crime there's something to be

said for catching the bad guys and

protecting the children but there are

again legitimate concerns like the one i

just raised about salt typhoon but it's

it's it's um thought terminating cliche

that's what it's called it's a thought

terminating cliche if you label somebody

tinfoil hat or a conspiracy theorist you

don't have to listen to them anymore it

doesn't matter what evidence they have

because they're crazy just ignore them

just don't even bother don't even waste

your time listening to them and it's so

disrespectful and insidious

and whoever called us that um please vote

that guy out of office y'all so yeah

that's that's really crappy um i don't

know and it's important to remember like

the context of this is it really has

widespread opposition from uh from tech

companies especially privacy tech

companies like signal and dot go as jordan

just mentioned it has opposition from uh

the the university of toronto's citizen

lab uh which researches all of this uh

privacy stuff it's i mean these companies

are saying they'll pull out of canada like

they've said about other countries who try

to pass similar laws analyses by different

civil liberties associations or

universities like in that case are saying

like no this is not a good idea

it's really like any any expert who has

voiced uh an opinion on on this bill

is saying like no this is a terrible

idea it's going to cause a lot of

of problems it's just there there's just

is some motivation to get these bills

passed anyways um also the other thing i

wanted to add i think for context if

you're not super familiar with canadian

politics and i'm also not super familiar

with canadian politics so canadians in the

chat can correct me but i believe the

liberal party is similar to the

democratic party in the united states if

that gives you any context which is just

that it's kind of a a big tent

party with a ton of different viewpoints

basically they don't have well at least

the democrats in the us don't have

a cohesive message, in my opinion,

on most topics.

I don't know if it's different in Canada,

but similarly in the US here,

I know that we've seen bipartisan support

for a lot of similar policies like we've

we've talked about COSA or repealing

Section two thirty, for example,

in a lot of those proposals are put

forward by members of both parties we have

here in the US.

I just wanted to point that out because

I think

The Liberal Party, I believe,

is the biggest party in Canada.

And also,

I think a lot of people assume that

this stuff is coming from the political

party that they personally don't like,

no matter what side they're on.

And I think it's just important to

remember that a lot of people in

government are trying to do this stuff

regardless of political party.

It's just...

anti-citizen laws that will affect

everyone on any side of the political

aisle.

So yeah,

I just wanted to share that as well.

I think that's kind of all I had

to add on this.

Yeah,

I think the only thing I want to

add is just to really drive home the

it says there the amended bill will now

head to the Senate.

So this hasn't fully passed yet.

So for any Canadians watching this or

please pass this around like this is your

chance to to speak up and try to

get this hopefully.

stopped or something,

this is definitely your chance to contact

your politicians, please.

So, yeah.

Yeah, I think on that note,

we will move into our next story,

which is this happened like the same day

that the podcast went live last week.

So unfortunately,

a little bit too late to cover it

last week, but we'll cover it now,

which is that Section seven or two has

expired, sort of.

So where to begin?

So for those joining us,

you've probably heard of the NSA,

the the National Security Agency.

For some reason,

my brain just said National Surveillance

Agency,

and that is definitely more accurate.

The NSA.

uh or the no such agencies they used

to call it uh the nsa has i

mean they have so much so many things

so specifically there's something called

the foreign intelligence surveillance act

which is as the name suggests where the

nsa derives i'm going to say a significant

chunk of its power i don't really i

mean i don't know the full scope of

what the nsa's authorities and and

regulations and stuff are but this is um

this is

FISA, as it's known,

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,

it specifically includes Section seven or

two,

which has been very controversial because

it's it's old now.

It's from like twenty thirteen.

But John Oliver has an amazing episode

where he talks all about it and he

goes and interviews Edward Snowden.

Huge fan.

I love showing it to people because it's

so funny.

But in it,

he explains that Section seven or two says

basically that the NSA can collect, quote,

any tangible thing pertaining to national

security,

which is basically like

Like, come on, you could...

I can interpret that in a million ways.

Even I could,

and I'm not even a lawyer.

It's just...

So it's basically become this, like,

blank check for the NSA to collect

anything they want under the name of

national security.

Shocker.

And, um...

Numerous studies have found that this is

wide open to abuse.

There have been many unsuccessful attempts

to reform this, to rein it in.

A lot of them basically just say what

it already says,

which is that they're supposed to get

approval.

But the the FISA system is basically a

rubber stamp.

So, yeah,

we did interview quick shout out to we

did interview Naomi Brockwell.

She worked with Lauren Boebert and Thomas

Massey, who are congresspeople.

to try and put forward a law that

would close this loophole that is still up

in the air.

It is an election year,

so nobody's actually doing any work right

now.

They're all busy trying to campaign.

But anyways, so long story short,

this this had to be extended by last

Friday, I think,

and the government failed to extend it.

I could make political jokes there,

but I'm not going to.

Suffice to say,

it did not go through and

As of right now,

section seven or two will not be renewed.

However, comma.

I want to encourage us to celebrate the

wins.

Again, another interview I did,

Cindy Cohen, former director of the EFF,

she actually just stepped down this week.

She she said that specifically,

we have to celebrate the wins.

That said, this is not a full win,

sadly.

And that's kind of why we're talking about

it, is to kind of,

because I've seen all the headlines going

around about like, yay, it's repealed,

it's expired, we won, blah, blah, blah.

Even from the EFF,

which kind of surprised me.

They didn't have any of what I'm about

to say in there.

It was just like, yay,

it went away and we won.

And it's like, but wait.

So the most glaring thing is that

basically the way that section seven oh

two works is

It's kind of like a rolling

reauthorization,

and I don't understand how this is the

case,

but it's basically already been

reauthorized until March,

so at bare minimum,

if this never gets renewed,

if this never comes back,

it will stay in place until March,

so it's not really dead yet.

That said, um,

Again, I don't want to be a downer,

but I do have to point out I'm

assuming it could come back between now

and then.

I'm assuming that once the elections blow

over, depending on who's in power,

somebody could easily be like, hey,

this is running out in a few months.

We should really reauthorize this,

and Congress will get together on both

sides of the aisle and go, yeah,

national security, danger, terrorism,

bad things.

Ooh, we need to revive this.

So again, not trying to be –

a downer, but that's entirely possible.

And then, you know,

this author points out that FISA is only

one set of authorization for the NSA to

spy on us.

So it's entirely possible,

and I would argue very likely,

that

Even if Section seven or two definitely

does not get renewed and completely dies,

there's still so many other ways that the

government can justify this program or

similar programs or anything like that.

So.

It's very, again,

I don't want to bring the party down

because we do have to celebrate the wins

and it's great that this didn't go through

and hopefully it will not go through

between now and March of twenty twenty

seven.

But I guess it's just a reminder that,

you know, the fight is not over.

There's still a lot ahead of us.

But yeah,

I think we wanted to cover this because

it is a big deal.

Section seven or two has been in the

headlines.

god as long as i've been into privacy

and just even even in mainstream headlines

like it's been a really really big deal

so this is great this is fantastic this

is a step forward but uh unfortunately it

is definitely not um the end of the

the story there so

uh i don't know did i did i

miss anything that stuck out to you or

anything no i think uh that's a pretty

good overview that that article that you

were that we were looking at uh does

does cover a lot of stuff that i

um had written about when i posted some

facts about this to our members chat on

signal um

I think you covered it pretty well.

It does extend until March, like you said,

that's because section seven Oh two

doesn't really say that, you know,

the government has all these powers.

It says that the foreign intelligence

surveillance court can authorize all of

these powers for a year at a time.

So since it's already been authorized,

you got to wait.

The other thing I wanted to say is

that

There are a lot of provisions of FISA,

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,

that are going to be unaffected because

only title seven of that law expired,

which contains section seven or two.

So there are other provisions,

other titles in that, like title one,

which basically give the U.S.,

pretty broad spying authorities still,

so all of that hasn't gone away.

The one good thing about Title I of

FISA is that it requires an individualized

court process to monitor someone,

which is at least aligned with the Fourth

Amendment,

the requirement to get a warrant,

whereas

title seven in section seven or two

obviously were not at all aligned with the

fourth amendment and in my opinion are

were totally illegal but the government

just kind of does this thing anyways um

they the i saw at the end of

the article they wrote about an executive

order uh that order has been in effect

much longer than than fisa has

There is precedent for the government

using that to basically do the exact same

things that Section of two or Section

seven or two allowed.

We know that the CIA was performing

foreign intelligence surveillance far

before FISA allowed it under this

executive order.

So it seems likely to me that even

if Section seven or two never comes back,

the government is just going to continue

operating the exact same way they always

have been under executive order uh one two

three three three so i think my overall

point with that is is just like you

said we have to celebrate the wins and

letting these laws expire is obviously a

good thing to get them off the books

but even if we let all of these

surveillance laws and other illegal things

that the government is doing if we let

them all expire even that is not enough

to

guarantee total protection for people.

We not only have to get rid of

these laws,

but we have to introduce new laws that

explicitly protect these rights and

prevent the government from infringing on

them.

So something like the law that Naomi

Brockwell was doing or was drafting,

which we've said before on the show is

pretty unlikely to get passed,

but at least she's calling attention to

this issue alongside Thomas Massey and

Lauren Bovert.

So

It's a good educational piece at the very

least,

but laws like that do need to be

passed because we need explicit

protections.

It's very clear that without any laws in

place or with surveillance laws in place,

the government is just going to do

pretty much unlimited spying,

which is not not great at all.

So yeah,

that's kind of most of the section seven

or two stuff that I said.

When I was looking at this last week,

and I think that that article kind of

covers the rest of it pretty well.

I wasn't sure how section seven or two

was going or the expiration of it was

going to affect private companies.

I saw that um,

Anonymous.

Twenty seven said,

isn't there something where the tech

companies can challenge in court the

searches now during this one year

expiration?

That is true.

Technically,

I think they always could have challenged

it,

but they had no real incentive to because

what Section seven or two did for tech

companies was basically say you have

immunity.

if you comply with the government's

request.

So like you can't be sued later for

the breach of privacy by your users,

if you give us all of their data,

which is good.

And that actually has expired.

So even though the government is

authorized to take all of this information

from big tech companies still,

the tech companies are no longer getting

protection from section seven or two,

which is kind of crazy.

So I think that

At least my hope is that some giant

tech companies will fight back on this

because they have less of an incentive to

comply.

And I think a lot of these orders

are, like I said earlier,

completely illegal under the bill of

rights in the U S so it's,

I would hope that it wouldn't stand up

to court scrutiny if it was actually ever

really challenged by any of these

companies.

which I think the government would want to

avoid.

So there's two things there.

I think to avoid being sued by somebody

by like a big tech company, for example,

the government might in the meantime be a

little less.

I mean,

they might use this power a little less

against these companies because they fear

it being challenged and then being taken

completely off the books.

I also hope that the lack of production

encourages Apple to or not Apple

specifically, but a company like Apple,

for example,

I think has precedent of challenging this

sort of thing like they did in twenty

fifteen with that FBI case.

Apple in that case was really opposed to

the government forcing their developers

and their teams to do anything.

And I think that this is a similar

situation where they just don't want to be

forced to do something by the government.

At the same time,

a challenge against the government.

It's already very hard for companies.

They are still allowed to be fined like

two hundred fifty thousand dollars a day

by the government if they don't comply

with these,

which is obviously a very substantial sum.

Maybe somebody like Apple with billions of

dollars to just.

burn on random things could absorb that

hit but a lot of like smaller companies

for example wouldn't be able to do that

at all so a lot of companies won't

be able to challenge this basically is

what i'm saying so there's a couple routes

that that could go down i wouldn't um

really rely on the expiration of this to

prevent any of this spying done until

March, in the meantime,

but it's possible that we'll see some

change there.

Fair enough.

We did have a couple of quick questions

I wanted to address.

One is from anonymous.

Twenty seven here.

FISA versus seven or two.

Seven or two is part of FISA.

Just to clarify that.

So they're not different things there.

one is part of the other and again

only that one part expired so Faiza is

still on the books in general it's just

this one crazy warrantless part basically

yeah for sure and then um

Anonymous also asked to clarify,

did you did you mean that the reason

this one is significant is because it

allows warrantless searches of Americans?

So technically, no, you are right.

You said because there's no protection for

foreigners.

And that's how that's how the NSA

justifies surveillance on Americans is

because.

So, for example, one of our team members,

Jordan, is Australian.

They're very open about that.

And every time we Jonah and I text

Jordan,

That signal crosses international borders,

and therefore the NSA is allowed to

intercept that signal.

They're supposed to discard the American

side of the conversation, quote unquote.

But generally,

I think we can all agree that they

probably do not or definitely do not.

So.

Yeah,

that's that's kind of their loophole.

Or Snowden pointed out in that John Oliver

episode,

I mentioned that sometimes he was like

Google as an example,

Google entirely invisibly to you will take

all your emails and move them to another

physical server.

Like,

let's say they need to do maintenance on

that particular server where your emails

are.

So they'll move your emails to another

server while they do maintenance.

And you never see this,

you never know this is happening.

But maybe that server is in Mexico or

Canada or something.

And again, once it crosses those borders,

the NSA has permission to do that.

I don't know if they're still allowed to

do or I don't know if it still

works that way.

Because to be fair,

that interview was like,

years ago at this point.

That may no longer be the case,

but that was how he explained it at

the time.

We got a couple of quick questions I

wanted to note here.

I'm having a hard time finding our page

on Android because some people asked about

Graphene OS and how Graphene's coming to

Motorola's now.

Would we argue that Pixels or Motorola's

are safer?

I'm trying to find the page where we

recommend Pixels,

but

um i know it's there but basically yeah

um at this time as far as i

know uh pixels are from a hardware

perspective much safer than or much more

secure than motorola so it's not even like

us versus china thing it's just that at

this time pixel hardware is much more

secure well i will i mean and that's

important you say at this time i don't

know what just happened to my cameras let

me figure this out um but uh i'll

just explain quick

I think we have no way of knowing

for sure what the Motorola thing is going

to end up looking like,

because I guess Graphene OS is involved in

the design of this somehow.

So hopefully they can bring Motorola's

hardware security up to speed.

But we will have no idea until that

phone actually comes out.

Yeah,

which is what I was going to say

is at this time, it's, you know,

Yeah, that's where I was going is once,

once graphing gets involved,

this new Motorola might be more secure.

And at that point we'll have to sit

back and like reevaluate.

I still can't find it.

I know there's a page where we explicitly

say that at this time,

pixels are the only Androids we recommend,

but I can't find it right now,

but I know it's on there.

It's on the website somewhere.

So yeah,

that advice may change in the future,

may not.

We don't really know at this time.

And yeah, I mean,

somebody asked about firmware backdoors.

I mean, look, personal opinion,

that's speculation.

We can't prove it.

We can't disprove it.

If we can prove there's a backdoor,

then yes,

obviously that would change the math.

But I mean, this whole like...

My threat model is not high enough.

If I have that kind of threat model

where I can't trust the hardware,

then I'm just not going to use it.

For day-to-day stuff,

like texting my wife to remind me to

get eggs or whatever, I don't know.

I can only care about so many things,

and I can't spend my time on speculation

personally.

I know some people have that threat model,

but I don't.

while Jonah's figuring out his camera.

No, we generally use Signal back here.

Anonymous Twenty Seven is asking if I text

Jordan with SimpleX.

We typically use Signal because it's very

feature rich.

We are all already on it.

I do have SimpleX, but yeah,

I definitely don't get a lot of messages

there.

Somebody asked about Zen Browser.

I know Jonah has used that in the

past.

He's a big fan.

I think he still uses it.

I haven't really used it.

I'm a bit of a Brave person,

to be honest, but I don't know.

I kind of bounce around between browsers,

but I primarily use Brave because I like

that it just has a lot of built-in

privacy stuff that I just don't have to

think about.

Yeah, as far as... I'm back.

We'll see if it happens again.

I don't know what's going on with my

camera where it just stops and goes to

showing...

pictures I've taken instead, but whatever.

Zen browser,

I've talked about that in a few episodes

now.

So I would encourage going back if you

want to hear full thoughts.

But the main thing is,

it seems to be a good browser.

It seems like, you know,

they're removing things that Mozilla is

doing that I don't agree with,

which is good.

And they're not

being privacy invasive by default,

which you can't say about big alternatives

to Zen browser like arc browser,

for example.

So from that perspective,

it seems pretty good.

It's still a Firefox fork.

And there's problems with Firefox in

general compared to chromium.

it doesn't do a lot of like,

super active protections to improve your

privacy.

So something like brave is going to be

better than that, for sure.

But there are some features.

I think it was the last episode where

I mentioned I do know brave is working

to implement some of the features that I

use in Zen browser the most.

So maybe they will convince me to switch

over.

But I think I use both brave origin

and Zen browser like,

fifty fifty at the moment.

And I like both of them.

So

But there's a Zen browser thread on the

forum that I would check out for more

information, as always,

because it's gotten mixed reviews from

some people,

and I would not just take my word

for it.

I would look into it further before you

decide to use it, for sure.

We had another quick, before we move on,

somebody said,

do we have any case or how we

guys did the change to Signal?

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

I think you're talking about how to get

other people using Signal.

I know we've said this a lot in

the past,

but my wife is the expert on getting

people onto Signal.

And usually her thing is that she focuses

on features.

Like if you're talking about

um, quote unquote normies,

like normal people who don't really

prioritize privacy and security.

They're not going to care if you talk

about all the privacy and security

features, but if you talk about how, um,

it's got like these larger attachment

sizes, it's cross-platform, uh,

you can do message reactions,

you can do gifts, you can do stickers.

Like I know when signal rolled out Giphy

support,

a lot of people were pissed about it.

And in stories too, same thing.

Like a lot of people were like,

this is dumb.

I don't want this.

I don't care.

You don't care,

but a lot of people do a lot

of people use them,

especially around the world.

So, um,

I would try to focus on what...

Everything is about solving a problem,

right?

I almost hate to say this because it

feels sleazy,

but you almost have to approach it from

a sales perspective.

And the whole point of sales is that

you're trying to solve someone's problem.

Somebody has a pain point and you're

promising to relieve that pain.

So that's how I've had good results

getting people on password managers

because I'm there when they're logging

into something and they're like,

oh my God,

what was my stupid password for this

website again?

And I'm like, hey,

want to know a program that'll help you

like never forget your password again and

you know i i get them to use

like bitwarden or something like that so

it's uh trying to find out what is

that that pain point that you're trying to

solve for someone because again most

people don't care about privacy and

security but if you can tell them like

oh you can send bigger attachment sizes or

again like it's cross-platform i know rcs

is becoming interoperable now so that's

probably not as good of an argument as

it used to be but

Yeah,

just kind of figure out what is important

to them and how to signal meet that

need is what I would recommend.

I'm going to let Jonah continue to try

to figure that out with the camera.

But I think we're at the point where

we're going to move on to site updates.

And in a little bit,

we're gonna talk about some stuff going on

in the UK real quick.

But first, here's what's been going on.

Again, as usual,

it's been a very busy week at Privacy

Guides.

We have a new video,

if you guys did not know.

Let me pull that up real quick.

We have a video about passwords.

So this video is aimed more at the

average user that we were just talking

about a minute ago,

who's maybe not necessarily super

concerned with privacy and security,

but it also kind of addresses,

there's been,

In the past few years,

I've seen a lot of people,

when you talk about passwords and password

security,

a lot of people focus on the idea

that,

that like complexity doesn't matter at all

anymore.

And it's all about length.

And so we kind of dive into that

we kind of made this, again,

we did make this video for everybody.

So this might be a good video to

share with like friends and family.

But it also focuses on the whole like,

well,

why do people say that length matters

more?

And where did that advice come from?

And how true is it?

And so you know,

we talk about a we talk about like

a

entropy and how to calculate that.

I mean, roughly,

it's really complicated stuff.

And we try to keep it simple.

But, you know,

we try to break it all down.

And of course, we talk about pass keys,

because those are coming out now.

And are those better than passwords per

se?

So yeah, I'm really proud of that video.

I think it's got about almost three

thousand views already.

So definitely check that out if you

haven't yet and share that with your

friends and family to maybe help them

understand passwords a little better.

I tried not to get too technical with

it, but it kind of explained like,

Why passwords suck and why we need better

solutions.

And I hope we did that.

And then just to let you all know,

we have a new video in the works

that is a response to the Plex price

hike.

So probably in a what is it?

What time is it?

It's the nineteenth.

So probably in about ten days here,

that's going to be a very popular topic.

And

We offer some people some,

it's really not hard to guess,

but I'm not going to say what our

advice was,

but there is some information there about

how to respond to that.

So there's that.

I don't know if Jonah's got his camera

working now.

Here we go.

We cannot hear you, sir.

You are muted.

I might be back.

Well, I'm trying a different camera,

so I don't know if it's going to

be,

I don't know if it's going to work

any better, but we'll see.

Well, so far you're back.

So do you want to take over the,

uh, the next portion of the site updates?

Yes.

Where are we?

Let's see.

um site updates i've been working mostly

on the verified apps data set we've been

getting a lot of submissions i had to

solve some issues with getting them all

working but i think those are all solved

so we can add more apps again and

push more updates to that other site

updates have been continuing in in general

free has been posting a lot of news

articles as usual that you can see at

privacyguides.org

news so that's a great place to check

out any privacy security whatever related

uh news stories that you uh that you

might not have seen that we don't cover

on the show because we only have a

limited number of time a limited amount of

time can't talk today to cover all of

these stories so that's a great place to

stay up to date on all of this

stuff as well in addition to our

form.

Other than those articles, though,

and the stuff that I've kind of been

working on this week,

I don't know of any other major site

updates that we have done so far.

But, you know,

things are always happening.

I'm excited about all the video stuff that

you're doing.

All of the stuff that we do at

Privacy Guides,

that's made possible by

Our supporters are members and one-time

donors.

You can sign up for a membership or

donate at privacyguides.org slash donate.

If you do,

it would really help us out.

You can also pick up some swag at

shop.privacyguides.org like what Nate was

just showing off.

Privacy Guides is a nonprofit that

researches and shares privacy-related

information.

We facilitate a community on our forum in

Matrix where people can ask questions and

get advice about staying private online

and preserving their digital rights.

So yeah,

please support us if you are able to.

It does really help.

I think now we can move on to

how burner phones are at risk in the

U.S.

Yeah,

do you want to take that one or

do you want me to?

Yeah,

I just had to pull it up again

here.

Okay.

Perfect.

This is from CNET.

The article goes,

the Federal Communications Commission is

poised to begin forcing the country's

telecom companies to collect names,

addresses,

and government identification numbers for

every cell phone customer.

If adopted, a likely outcome,

given the FCC's current Republican

majority who support it,

the rules would effectively outlaw burner

phones,

devices that aren't specifically tied to

identifying data,

allowing the privacy-minded to maintain

their information.

anonymity.

The proposal is called Know Your Customer

Requirements,

as a lot of people in the financial

and cryptocurrency space are likely

already very familiar with.

And the FCC is framing it as a

way to stop robocalls and scammers.

Anyone with a phone can tell you the

problem is very real.

U.S.

consumers receive an average of ten

unwanted calls every week,

a number that's grown at a compounded

sixteen percent rate every year since

twenty twenty three.

I personally can tell you that is

definitely true.

I wish I only received ten a week.

So, you know, that is a problem,

but this certainly is not going to solve

it.

It doesn't address the core

problems with the telecom system in

general.

But as the article rightfully notes,

it punishes those who use burner phones,

including journalists, travelers,

whistleblowers,

and domestic abuse survivors.

The senior legislative associate at the

Electronic Frontier Foundation said that

collecting all of this data is horrible

for everyone's privacy.

You have to ask,

do you trust the government to have that

information at this current moment in

time?

A government that has proven that they are

trying to centralize and weaponize your

information.

So yeah, this is a big problem.

We've been talking a bit more about cell

towers in privacy and cell companies and

privacy and all of that stuff.

I think at least in the United States

recently,

we talked about CAPE a few weeks ago,

and they have been very opposed to this

bill.

And they've been talking, you know,

trying to lobby against this a bit,

because they

don't collect any of this information at

signup.

I think this is going to be a

big problem for other companies who have a

similar model like Nate I know has talked

about mint mobile and how you can just

pick up those SIM cards in cash.

Now they're going to have to collect a

lot more information.

Generally with this data collection stuff.

Companies don't want to do it,

at least some of them,

especially if they can't monetize that

data in the same way that big tech

companies with advertising programs can

monetize it.

It's a risk.

It's a business liability for them to have

all of this data,

especially as data breaches become more

common.

And now the government is basically

mandating every single company involved in

your telecommunications to collect all of

this sensitive information about you.

So it's problematic for sure.

It's a similar problem to we've talked

about like voter IDs laws in the US.

And that is also the sort of thing

where this mandatory ID system doesn't

make a lot of sense,

but it will harm a ton of people.

A lot of people in the US do

not have like a driver's license or a

government issued ID in general because

it's not legal.

required, which if these laws passed,

could mean that a lot of people,

millions of people in the U.S.

would not be able to access phone service

at all.

I think this is mentioned in the article.

Let me scroll down and find it.

Yeah, it says as of twenty twenty four,

nearly twenty one million voting age U.S.

citizens don't have a current driver's

license with black and Hispanic Americans

disproportionately less likely to have

one.

So

think that's a very problematic thing it

goes against you know there's been a

long-standing thing historically the the

republican party would always kind of

fight for or fight against government ids

and government mandated ids they fought

against like the real id mandate uh that

required these stronger ids and government

issued ids for travel

Now, of course,

they seem to be going completely in the

other direction.

It seems like everyone in the government

at the moment is going in the other

direction.

But this sort of thing is not a

popular change by any means,

and it is going to affect a lot

of people.

So...

Yeah, ultimately, at the end of the day,

there are a lot of technical solutions to

this that cell companies should be

implementing that can stop the spam

problem.

This is pretty unlikely to stop any of

the spam issues.

In my opinion,

it's kind of kind of as simple as

that.

So yeah, Nate,

anything else you wanted to mention?

um yeah i just want to drive home

that that point i mean jordan said it

hasn't cut down on spams and scams in

countries that have implemented so we have

evidence it doesn't work um not like the

government ever cares about evidence any

government for the record but yeah that's

kind of my thought too because aren't most

of these scams like most of these scams

okay first of all um i'm gonna go

ahead and get on my little soapbox here

for a minute and be like a what

are they what's the joke like a bleeding

bleeding bleeding heart liberal or

whatever um a lot of these scammers and

spammers

not all obviously,

but a significant number are actually

human trafficking victims in places like

Southeast Asia.

So personal opinion,

I'm not really a fan of like messing

with these people because like

it's just like i hear the argument that

the more time you spend trolling them the

less time they're actually scamming

somebody who's going to fall for it and

i'm not necessarily giving them a free

pass but like these people are going to

be taken back to their rooms and beaten

if they don't meet their quotas which

again i'm not saying like you should help

them meet their quotas but my point is

like why make a terrible situation worse

um i i used to have a co-worker

at my last job that would like yell

at spam callers and it's like please don't

do that around me but anyways um

So like point being where I'm going with

that and what inspired this thought

originally is a lot of them aren't even

located in the US.

So like,

how is this going to stop them?

Like they don't need to get an ID

there.

A lot of them are spoofing phone calls.

And I know that because I,

it comes and goes in, in popularity,

but I have in the past gotten a

lot of phone calls at various,

my pseudo numbers.

And when I pick it up, you know,

and especially like I had a phone number

specifically for work.

So I had to pick it up because

you know,

there were always people that I didn't

have saved in my phone calling me a

lot of the time they would call and

like,

I'd pick it up and they'd be like,

yeah, I got a call from this number.

And I'm like,

It wasn't me because I haven't called

anyone all day or even some of my

lesser used numbers that I stopped

answering after a while.

You know, they'd like,

I got a call from this number.

I'm like,

I haven't called anybody in like three

months, dude.

I don't know.

Like it's somebody spoofing my phone

number.

So like,

how is this going to fix that?

How is this going to solve that?

Like, it's it's so dumb.

It's like and yes, it's annoying.

I get that.

But this isn't going to solve anything.

This is just the classic politicians

trying to look like they're doing

something.

And it doesn't matter if it actually

works.

It's just the illusion of motion.

So yeah, it's really frustrating.

I actually hardly get any spam calls,

and I'm really starting to wonder why that

is.

I don't know if that's because I pay

for a data removal service like Easy

Opt-Outs,

or I don't know if that's because I...

because I use a lot of fake phone

numbers.

I don't remember it off the top of

my head.

Is my password manager open?

It might be.

Oh, it is.

Oh, God, what is it?

There is,

and I'm sharing this one with you guys

because it's hilarious.

Two, four, eight, four, three, four, five,

five, zero, eight.

That phone number plays never gonna give

you up on an infinite loop.

So if I ever have to provide a

phone number and I know for certain they

are never,

ever going to have to call me,

I like using that one personally.

But yeah, so I don't know,

maybe that's just me,

but I like hardly get anything.

But I had family visiting last week and

one of them like two or three times,

they were only here for like five days

and two or three times,

one of them kept picking up their phone

and then immediately hanging up and

they're like, scam call.

And it's like,

I get a few around election time,

but that's about it.

So anyways, yeah, I don't know.

There is a solution clearly.

I don't know what it is,

but I found it and it wasn't requiring

everybody to get an ID.

So yeah, this is terribly flawed.

The last thing I wanna say is I'm

gonna put it back up on screen here

for a second.

Please check out this article.

Because it does say that rules are open

for public comment until June,

which is six days away as we're streaming

this.

And there is a link on where to

go.

There is all the information you will need

to leave a comment.

They even have examples of comments that

they recommend that you emulate.

So yeah.

Will the FCC just totally ignore us?

Probably.

They've done it in the past,

but I mean,

it's better than just doing nothing,

right?

So yeah.

I think you're muted again, Jonah.

Sorry about that.

That section about leaving a comment to

the FCC was exactly the last thing I

wanted to point out,

so I'm glad you mentioned that.

If you're in the U.S.,

definitely check out this article because

they have a link and everything to do

that.

Yeah.

Chicken Little says you have to give a

name and address.

I mean, devil's advocate here.

Do they verify it?

Maybe you could just leave a zip code

or leave a PO box maybe.

Yeah.

I mean,

as long as you're not threatening anybody,

I don't think they're going to.

And that's, you know,

that's something I always have to remind

people here is like,

please don't be a jerk.

Don't threaten people.

Because if your comment is just like,

you know, like you guys suck.

You're all pedophiles.

This is evil, blah, blah, blah.

Like they're not going to listen to your

comment.

But if you like the one,

the one they said here is like, um,

A scammer might try to steal my

information,

but that does not justify a process

through which the federal government would

definitely steal it.

Even that one, in my opinion,

is a little bit harsh.

Just something like what I said.

Like,

many of these spam calls are coming from

overseas,

so I fail to see how this would

actually do anything.

Like,

just something that's actually thought out

and logical, like you're not, you know,

like you've seen sunlight in the last six

days or something.

So, I don't know.

Just try not to be mean to people.

That's what I'm getting at.

You catch more flies with honey than

vinegar.

Okay.

Something I haven't seen for sure

mentioned yet,

but I believe is true is I think

this only applies to getting a phone

number.

I'm curious about two things.

I'm curious whether or how this is going

to impact VoIP providers like MySudo,

for example.

I'm also curious whether cell companies

who do want to have like a privacy

first service would be able to

maybe sell data-only lines, for example,

and then you could get a VoIP number

or something else to handle the phone

stuff if that ends up being an easier

solution to get a phone number

anonymously.

I don't know if that's true or if

that would work or not.

Personally,

I wouldn't mind a data-only SIM myself.

They're just harder to come by,

but I don't really need a lot of

the functions at a full...

phone line provides.

But of course, that's just me.

Obviously,

a lot of people really need a phone

number to call and text,

so that's not going to work for everyone

at all.

I think this is a big problem,

but I am interested in seeing whether or

not any of that stuff happens.

Yeah,

that is another thing towards the bottom

they pointed out is like, you know,

if you switch to something like Signal,

They say Telegram, which is not encrypted.

Screw Telegram.

They say turn off location tracking.

They say use two separate phones,

but I don't know what's that supposed to

solve.

But I will say that that is something

that we recommend on Privacy Guides is

like on the website is whenever you're not

using your phone,

like if you're at home and you're on

Wi-Fi,

put your phone in airplane mode because at

least that like kills the connection to

the towers.

And like there's definitely ways to

eliminate the amount of data that is tied

to your name.

Even if something like this were to go

through and be required,

like you could still...

And, again,

I understand there are very high-threat

model people here.

The article even points that out.

There's whistleblowers.

There's journalists.

There's people trying to escape abuse

situations.

I'm not trying to downplay that.

But for the average person,

even in a situation like this,

there are still ways to reduce the amount

of data going back to these companies for

sure.

Um, but yeah,

it's good to hear Cape is fighting back

against this.

I hope other companies will too.

And that was my thought too.

Cause I know my pseudo had to, um,

they did start verifying ID for UK phone

numbers, um,

a long while back when that became a

thing.

So yeah, that is a,

that is a good question for sure.

And unfortunately I don't have any

answers, but that is crazy.

Just that thing that you pointed out at

the end about telegram.

It's crazy that they say it offers end

to end encrypted.

Encryption on all messages.

Telegram has the best marketing ever, man,

because they have totally convinced people

that they're a good app.

That is crazy.

I need to write another blog post about

why Telegram sucks.

I'm going to backtrack a little bit

because we had a few questions since we

left the site updates.

So Limitless asked if we had any videos

or topics about hardware keys.

We haven't made any videos yet.

I don't even know if we have that

written down as an idea,

but I'd totally be down to at some

point.

We do have a page on the website

though that kind of talks about them a

little bit and which ones we recommend.

So definitely check that out for now.

Let's see.

Chicken Little said to check the comments

on the passwords video because there's

some critiques.

We'll check those out.

I try not to check the comments too

often because...

I mean, look, people read the comments.

I'm not going to lie to you guys.

And like,

when some people get really worked up

about small details,

I don't mind being corrected again.

It's what I said a minute ago.

It's one thing to leave a comment and

be like, Hey, you were like,

you were wrong about this thing.

It's okay.

Actually, I'm going to,

I'm going to mention this.

Um, so over on the new oil,

I just put out a video about tutor

drive.

And in the video,

I mistakenly said that quantum computers

are replacing classical computers.

And one person left a comment,

and they were still kind of like a

little bit obnoxious about it,

but they left a comment and they were

like, that's not true.

Quantum computers have very specific use

cases,

but they're not going to replace classical

computers.

And as much as it did make me

a little defensive,

I replied and I was like, all right,

thank you for the correction.

I apologize.

Somebody else made the same correction,

but they literally said like,

you've lost all credibility and have no

idea what you're talking about.

And it's just like...

cool screw you too like it's it can

be difficult to take criticism when it's

so harshly presented so like i definitely

do appreciate criticism and and

suggestions to do better it's just it gets

a little bit exhausting when it's so just

thrown out there so dramatically and so

like like i'm a terrible person because i

misspoke it's so but yeah we'll we'll

check those because i mean again i do

i do want to make get better at

videos so

yeah the the tricky thing about comments

on that video specifically i haven't read

all of them so like i don't i

don't know if there's some good critiques

like you said we'll have to check it

out but i did when that video came

out i looked at a lot of the

comments and a lot of them were also

like things that were addressed in the

video oh which happens which happens a lot

in the comments it's like okay if you

watch the whole thing um that is answered

but that's a commonly

That's not very common for a lot of

YouTube viewers to do, unfortunately.

So we get a lot of comments like

that.

A lot of comprehension issues.

Yeah, I see that too.

It's like, what about this thing?

And it's like, well,

we kind of addressed that in this part.

Yeah.

And of course,

that's always something we can improve as

well.

But sometimes it's like, obviously,

there's not much you can do to help

some people.

Yeah.

Another good question here from Chicken

Little, though.

On Graphene OS,

would you recommend the Aurora store or

the Play Store?

I mean,

I don't know about in terms of privacy.

I'm going to say Aurora is probably

better,

but we've seen in the past that the

Play Store is usually more reliable

because I remember there was...

google did something or other that like

basically broke the aurora store for a lot

of users for i think a good couple

of weeks and people were like weren't able

to log in and weren't able to get

updates and um i've noticed because i've

tested graphing a couple times i've

noticed um it's definitely a lot more

seamless in the the the play store because

like i've been in situations where um

Like I'll open an app and it's like,

hey,

we're offering off a premium or whatever.

And I'm like, oh, cool.

And if I click the button in Graphene,

it takes you right to the Play Store

and you can pay for a subscription.

And on Aurora Store, it's just like,

It's like an error.

It doesn't work.

And that's fine if it's one of those

privacy-respecting apps where it's like,

oh, okay,

I'll just log into the website and pay

there.

But some of them, it's like, no,

this offer is only on the Play Store,

which, again, at that point,

there's privacy concerns.

But I guess I'm just saying it's

definitely a much smoother experience,

I think, to use the Play Store.

But Aurora would probably be more private

in my guess.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, yeah,

it depends on what you really want.

Personally, I...

I have a work profile for all the

Google-related stuff,

like stuff that needs Google for reliable

push notifications or relies on Google

Play services for some other reason.

I installed Google Play services from the

Graphene OS app store in there because all

of those functions work without a Google

account except for the Play store,

which requires one.

So I use Aurora store in that case

to obtain the apps because you can do

it without a Google account,

which

personally i think is very important but

you know if you're going to use a

google account anyways for all the stuff

on your device the play store is probably

better but if you don't want to if

like some people don't have google

accounts obviously and you probably don't

want to make one so then if you

need google play services and you don't

want to make an account you can do

exactly like that just install google play

services and aurora store it's a good

solution

Yeah, on that note, continuing this,

Chicken Little says,

does Aurora actually improve privacy?

So it improves privacy from what I

understand.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

It improves privacy in the Play Store.

So like the Play Store is not recording

every app that I search or even the

apps that I download because there's no

Google account associated with it.

But yeah, the app itself, I mean,

it'll still be tracking the same stuff

that it would as if it came from

the Play Store.

So yeah,

it's more like protecting yourself

directly from Google.

Then sorry, go ahead.

I mean,

we have a whole section on our site

about reducing the number of accounts you

have and stuff like that.

And it's always going to be like, yeah,

like you said in your next comment here,

you can make a Google account with a

VPN or whatever,

but it's always the more...

privacy-minded solution to just not have

an account at all and that you don't

have to worry about that sort of thing

or potentially leaking it in the future.

As Jordan just said,

it's very challenging to make a burner

Google account.

The other thing you have to keep in

mind is if you make a Google account

with a VPN,

you then have to use that VPN all

the time and not slip up with it.

It's a lot more work compared to just

not having an account at all, obviously.

And I think that Aurora Store is very

helpful in that regard.

Yeah, Jordan said what I was thinking.

Google's getting real strict about

especially requiring a real phone number,

like a SIM phone number.

So it's tricky.

This one I don't know.

Is there a security difference between the

two?

They're equally secure, right?

There's some risk.

Aurora could just give you any APK that

they want for you to download and install.

So they could send you an impersonation

app if you installed the legitimate app

first.

then Android is going to prevent you from

installing an impersonator update because

it checks the signature and stuff.

So once you have that baseline,

you're perfectly good with using Aurora.

I believe,

I don't know if this is true or

not,

but I'm pretty sure I've seen this on

the Google Play Store.

I think you can get updates for your

apps on Google Play without signing in.

I think on the sign-in page,

there's a way to see updates.

But I could be wrong about that,

so correct me if I'm wrong.

But that could be a good method to,

like, if you install an app from Aurora,

for example,

you could try and get updates from Google

Play.

And then if those updates don't install,

then you might have to be worried.

On the other hand, like,

Aurora is a pretty trusted app at this

point.

It has a long track record.

There's been no notable issues.

So...

Jordan says, yeah,

there is a way to get updates from

Google Play without signing in.

That's a good setup to have, I think,

if you use Aurora for initial installs

too,

and then you have Google Play to get

more reliable updates.

That could be a good thing,

because as you mentioned, Nate,

there have been reliability issues with

Aurora sometimes,

so having another source for those updates

is good.

The other issue that I've heard about

Aurora is that some settings on the Google

accounts that they use can impact what

gets served.

So if that Google account is opted into

a beta program, for example, of an app,

then you might automatically get that

version in Aurora.

I don't know how widespread of an issue

that is.

I don't know what things could be changed

in the Play Store on a per-account

So there is that risk with using anonymous

accounts,

but there shouldn't be too many settings

that would cause a real big impact in

that regard.

So overall,

I'm personally not too worried about

Aurora,

but there is certainly a lot of stuff

to keep in mind because you are trusting

Aurora.

another party in addition to Google at the

end of the day.

I think that using alternative app stores

entirely whenever possible is the is the

safest solution for sure.

Yeah,

I don't know if it's related to the

accounts in Aurora or maybe like my device

and my VPN and stuff.

But I know sometimes in the past when

I'm using Aurora,

I have difficulty getting apps like my

pseudo because they're only available in

certain countries.

So like sometimes I have to kind of

close it out and research like several

times before it shows up.

So, yeah, that's a thing.

uh chicken little said it seems like it

still does send stuff to google so sends

a list of your apps ip address all

apps you download and search so yeah one

thing that might be better is google play

might have more fingerprinting so yeah

again it's not a huge deal um i

guess it's really personal preference

they're not going to have like a list

of apps on on your device though because

you're using a shared google account so

that that all gets merged together with

other people who share it they might have

a list of apps

per IP address that downloads them,

if Google is tracking that.

But you can always...

It's very easy to use a VPN and

just split up your downloads.

It's also very easy to... I mean,

people switch IPs all the time,

whether that's their cell provider

switching towers or for some other reason.

So yeah, I think...

I think all of these things, you know,

Google has visibility, obviously,

because you're downloading it from the

Google Play Store.

But I think it's pretty obvious that there

is a significantly different type and

amount of data that could be collected by

Google from Aurora store versus like

signing in with a Google account and

installing everything from Google Play

directly.

This is a risk.

maybe of like all of the apps on

your specific device if you do that thing

i just said where you get things from

aurora store but then you get updates from

google play because then you're using the

google play app and they could

all of that information based on like your

device id that the google play app can

read which is i mean versus the aurora

store which spent sends like a spoofed

device to google play basically so that

could be a reason to disable google play

if you install it and uh only use

aurora but at the same time like if

you're using google play services in

general google probably can collect all

that information by a other means so

Yeah,

there's all sorts of privacy problems,

obviously, with using any Google stuff,

which is why I just wouldn't use any

of these solutions.

If you're super concerned about Google

fingerprinting you get your sources,

I mean, get your apps via other means.

Christopher McConkey- yeah Jordan had a

comment about a private space we're

actually going to talk about that in a

little bit so i'm going to save that

one for now.

Christopher McConkey- One more question we

got before we move on to the next

story limitless said,

having a private DNS inside your home

network or on a bps is a start

for more privacy right I saw a lot

of recommendations on starting with this

step.

Christopher McConkey- So.

I mean, in my personal opinion,

I think self-hosting your own DNS is not

what I would call a starting point.

I think that's a little bit advanced,

but I think, yeah,

I would definitely say Privacy Guides does

have a list of recommended DNS providers

that you could just start using right away

and just like plug it into your router

or whatever.

I would definitely say that's a good place

to start.

And especially, you know,

a lot of them do come with like

ad blockers built in.

So that's a really good way to help

cut down it.

In my experience,

it doesn't completely reduce them,

but it'll cut down on like the number

of ads and like a smart TV,

for example.

So yeah,

that's definitely something I recommend.

I really want to find the time to

start digging into the pie hole.

I think I'm finally ready to pull the

trigger on that.

Um,

that would probably be the easiest DNS to

self-host I would imagine,

or maybe something like next DNS.

But, um, yeah, I mean, again,

I think self-hosting it as a little bit

more advanced would not recommend that as

a first step,

but if you're comfortable doing that,

I think that's a,

a great thing to do,

but changing your DNS for sure is a

good thing to do.

Yeah.

And then you said,

do you guys plan on adding an education

tab for apps and educations?

I don't know if we could do that

because there's so many and there's so

many different needs.

And you say tools that students could use

when they first look on privacy guides.

A lot of the time,

students don't have a choice.

You have to sign into your school portal

and use a certain app.

Yeah.

I mean, or also,

I don't know if there are a lot

of student-specific recommendations to

think about either.

Yeah.

A lot of the apps that we recommend

on Privacy Guides,

we list them specifically because they're

kind of widely applicable to most people.

I wouldn't be super opposed to doing

something like that.

I'm not super familiar with a ton of

privacy...

related tool specifically for students.

I saw you just mentioned Zotero,

which I believe manages citations if

you're writing a paper,

if I remember correctly.

Yeah,

I'm looking at the website right now.

Collect, organize, annotate, cite,

and share research.

So I guess there is some research-related

academic sort of software that we could

recommend.

Personally,

I'm not super familiar with all of them,

especially like...

I've heard of some of these,

like I've seen Zotero, for example,

but I...

don't know off the top of my head

like super privacy focused alternatives

besides like maybe using a standard

bookmark manager for something but that's

not going to help with like formatting

resources if anyone does have like

suggestions for academic tools that we

could look into definitely leave

suggestions on the forum because obviously

we look at all of those and it

allows more people to get eyes on them

and discuss them so we're not relying on

people on the team trying to know

everything about everything right we gotta

we gotta get uh all of our recommendations

from the community so definitely

definitely mention that um but yeah

otherwise like we have recommendations for

notebook software for example we have

recommendations for um stuff like rss

readers for keeping up with news and and

all sorts of stuff that students can can

use so

Yeah, I was going to say,

I haven't been a student in over ten

years, and I was a liberal arts major,

so I didn't really do a lot of

citations.

I just had to,

I was actually a music major,

so I had to know how to play

piano, and that was it.

But yeah, I mean,

it looks like interesting, but yeah,

that's what I was going to say,

is definitely,

I would say open a thing on the

forum,

and if this turns out to be a

huge area of concern,

then it's something we could definitely

look into,

but

I certainly wouldn't even know where to

start.

You said someone mentioned obsidian.

I've used obsidian.

I like obsidian.

I keep hearing conflicting reports on

whether or not it's open source.

Some people don't like it.

It's not open source.

I can tell you that for sure.

Gotcha.

Okay.

But I mean, yeah, there's, I mean,

there's so many,

that's actually something I've been

meaning to do.

Um, I started doing,

and then I got super distracted is I,

for my last job,

I started building a personal knowledge

base, um, because we had so many, like,

Where's this manual?

Where's the support number?

Who who's the contact for this?

Like we had so much of that going

on.

I started building a personal and I use

Notion for it because this was for work,

so it was not super sensitive.

But I started building like a personal

database of like my own personal wiki.

So like, uh,

the reason I bring that up is at

one point I wanted to do like a

review of all these different like notion

type,

like there's one called any type I think.

And then there's obsidian and there's like

notes nook.

And yeah, I really wanted to do that,

but I just, uh,

it fell by the wayside and there's so

many, there's guys,

there's so many videos to do in so

little time.

I think the tricky thing with obsidian is

like, I don't really know.

I guess I just don't use notebook stuff

enough and I haven't really seen on the

forum like a great explanation for why it

would be much better than notesnook I

think notesnook is a pretty widely liked

uh note-taking application as well um so I

mean if people like Obsidian a lot more

definitely just share that on the forum

thread for it and we'd have to consider

it any type is another one where

That's been talked about for a while.

I'm not exactly sure why we don't have

it on the site.

It's maybe just because not a lot of

people are super interested in getting it

listed.

That's how it works a lot of the

times.

If there's something that's not listed on

the site,

it's usually just because not enough

people are really pushing for it to

happen.

So you gotta...

you got to let us know what to

look into or where these discussions are

going.

Because the entire site is obviously,

it's more of a community collaborative

effort than like one person's opinion,

right?

So I can't really just put whatever we

want on the site.

Does Notesnook not have a free tier?

That I don't know.

Cause I'm looking at the website right now

and I'm trying to remember, I'm like,

why didn't I use notes?

No.

Cause I remember looking at it.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I think they have a,

they have a free tier.

I don't know what the limitations are.

Um,

I haven't used it in a while cause

I just don't use a lot of notes

app and notes apps in general, but they,

they do have a,

they have some sort of free tier.

Uh,

you'd have to look at their pricing site

to see how it compares.

I don't know.

I want something that integrates with

NextCloud.

I want NextCloud's Notes app to be just

a little bit better.

It's not terrible,

but it's definitely not on par with

something like Obsidian.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I might drop that idea in our little

database of video ideas.

Circle back to that.

I can't remember why I didn't go with

NotesNook.

Anyways, let me see here.

I think that was, yeah,

Obsidian is not transparent.

And they don't have modes on iOS.

Oh, you might be talking about notes.

Anyways.

Yeah.

Okay.

So with that,

we're going to move on to our next

story.

And this one's actually just going to be

really,

really quick because we have talked to

death about age verification and social

media bans and all this crap.

And we're so, so,

so tired of talking about it.

But unfortunately,

this is happening and it's moving forward.

So that's really why we're bringing this

up again.

This is going to be real quick.

But the UK has now,

from what I understand,

officially decided they're going to ban

social media for children under sixteen.

and also may impose overnight curfews,

which is interesting.

So this will take effect in spring of

twenty,

twenty seven and will imply to platforms

such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube,

Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, a.k.a.

X.

And Keir Starmer is so proud of this.

We're going further than any country in

the world by banning social media for

under sixteens.

And I'm pretty sure other countries have

done that, too.

But yeah, this is a man.

I don't I mean, again,

we've we've talked about this to death,

so I'm really not going to say that

much other than just like this is not

going to work.

It has not worked in other countries.

I don't know what makes the UK think

they're special,

that it's going to work for them.

I believe this article pointed out that

this is just going to.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's probably where was it?

Yeah, right here, the subheader.

Critics say bans push kids to riskier

alternatives and can be beaten with VPNs,

which we've already seen.

We've already seen kids using VPNs to get

around this stuff in the United Kingdom.

We've already seen them, you know,

what is it,

like using their parents' IDs or using

screenshots from video games?

I mean, this is...

I don't know.

I don't understand what is with

governments this week deciding that like,

oh, we know this thing doesn't work.

There's evidence this thing doesn't work.

There's real world examples that this

thing doesn't work.

Hey, let's do that thing.

So whatever.

But we're mostly sharing to alert the UK

people in the audience and maybe you can

contact your MPs and hopefully get them to

reverse course.

I don't know what's going on over there.

Y'all scare me.

That's coming from an American.

Y'all scare me.

So

Yeah, I don't.

Like I said,

I'd keep that one quick because I don't

really have much to add.

Do you have anything to say on that

one, Jonah?

No, I don't think so.

I mean,

we've been talking about all this stuff in

the UK for quite a while and it

just keeps coming.

I don't really understand.

Jordan has a good point about like China's

doing stuff like that or did stuff like

this in the past and everyone in other

countries kind of lost their minds about

it and they're like, oh,

China's so terrible.

And then all of this stuff is...

just gonna happen everywhere else uh you

know they just kind of yeah it's and

all governments seem to have this this

same motivation for some reason i don't

really understand what it is about like

and i don't know what triggered this

whether it's like terrorist attacks in the

in the nineties or early two thousands or

whether it's like the rise of technology

but i feel like

People just don't really want to stand up

for any of these things or stand against

the government anymore.

I feel like there used to be at

least some more of a movement in society

and modern culture where people distrusted

the government more,

and now it seems like the government just

kind of does whatever they want,

and there's not a lot of pushback anymore.

from people whatsoever.

And I don't know what has really driven

that change or why it's happening,

but it seems like a problem to me.

Well,

I think with these tech laws specifically,

it's like people

I mean,

we see it in our own comments.

People will come into the comments and

they'll just be like, no,

this is a good thing.

Like, kids don't belong on the Internet.

Like, Facebook is so bad for kids.

And it's like, you know,

you I think it was you pointed out.

It's like, yeah,

but Facebook's like bad for everyone.

It's hurting everyone.

And like, I don't understand.

It's I do understand.

It's the Internet is where nuance goes to

die.

But like, for some reason, people,

they seem to think this is a good

thing.

And they're ignoring all the like the ways

that this can go wrong and all the

knock on effects that this is going to

have.

And

That's the part that baffles me.

How does nobody see where this is

inevitably going to lead?

I feel like people used to be able

to see this.

I don't know how true that is.

There's the Boston Tea Party would fight

back against the government.

We did that just because tea sucks.

Oh yeah, obviously.

Hot take.

That's what we're going to get a million

comments on right there.

but like other other things that the

government just tries to to do for for

no reason there's more pushback against it

like uh you know during the the vietnam

war for example obviously there were whole

movements against the sort of thing

protests um

There were protests in the streets lately

about immigration stuff earlier in the

year.

But yeah,

not a lot of the ways that the

government just overreaches in every other

aspect of our lives.

I don't know.

I feel like the UK in particular,

and someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm not being facetious here.

Maybe I'm...

maybe i've gotten the wrong impression

from headlines but i feel like the uk

has made it a lot harder to to

protest over there so yeah the uk is

is a whole different piece i have no

idea what's going on in the uk to

be honest um

many more people from the UK to chime

in.

But from my perspective,

it makes no sense.

And I totally agree.

Chicken Little just at the UK makes the

US look like a privacy haven.

And I really do believe that that's true,

absolutely,

which is a very concerning thing because

the privacy in the US is absolutely

terrible.

And not only that, but the US

contributes to so many privacy violations

all around the world,

whether that's through big tech companies

or whether that's through like FISA with

foreign intelligence and all that stuff.

And yet the UK is making,

it's just so much worse right now.

I don't even understand what is going on,

like I said, at all.

There's a reason.

Nineteen eighty four was set in the UK,

right?

Now, I know I've said this before,

but yeah,

like my my wife and I have discussed

the idea of possibly moving to Europe

someday.

And we've thrown around like,

what about here?

What about here?

What about here?

And she's got friends in the UK.

So like that's one of the few places

that she's like,

would you ever consider moving to the UK?

And I'm like, absolutely not.

Like, this is not even a discussion.

No way.

They're the only country that like we do

something and they're like.

hold hold my guinness like now we can

we can do better than that or whatever

whatever beer they have over there so yeah

it's yikes um okay i'm not i i'm

also not super familiar with the uk but

one thing real quick limitless said uh one

thing i don't understand the royal family

is looking at all this mess that the

so-called prime minister just betraying

the laws and doing nothing about it from

what i understand the the royal family

doesn't actually have any real political

power like they have soft power in the

sense that like um they can um

like a celebrity basically here in the us

like they can voice their opinions and

people will probably listen to their

opinions even when they're not qualified

because they're not experienced in that

issue but um you know like they they

can influence public opinion but they

don't actually have any legal power to get

up there and be like no that's not

allowed so i think they actually do

although do they i think they do like

a veto power for sure in technically in

law i think um interesting i think there's

like an understanding

for sure that they don't use it and

it's like it like a lot of their

stuff is ceremonial like it remains in law

but i think a lot of people in

the government would would have a problem

if they actually if they actually did

something so i don't think it ever gets

used but technically it exists i can see

that yeah i think it's more of a

celebrity thing at this point

Yeah,

it's definitely it's it's I actually

remember I took a political science class

in college and it made a lot of

sense to me because it and this is

a little bit off topic,

but like it kind of allows people to

like separate the politics of the country

from the culture of the country,

which I think is.

honestly something America could really

use right now is like,

it gives people the ability to look at

like Keir Starmer, for example,

and be like, that guy sucks.

I hate this guy.

He's ruining the country.

Uh, I don't think that's a hot take,

but for the record,

I'm just using it as an example,

but then also to like, you know,

I know she's dead now,

but like God saved the queen.

Like I love the country.

I love the union Jack, whatever,

whatever the UK version is.

And so like, I,

it's actually kind of a really smart idea

to have like a, a,

a culture isn't the right word,

but like there's the political side and

then there's like this other side that's I

don't know,

the way it was explained to me,

it seemed really smart.

And it's like that is kind of cool

because it allows you to separate,

like I said,

like the politics of the country from the

national identity.

So, yeah,

I think there's kind of that understanding

of like the royal family is really good

for tourism.

It's really good for business.

It does benefit the country in a lot

of intangible ways,

but they kind of stay out of politics

in that sense.

So

And I'm just reading a little bit quick

about what powers the royal family.

does have in the UK.

It's kind of interesting.

They do have that veto power.

It's called royal.

They can withhold royal assent, I guess.

And indeed,

they have not exercised that since

seventeen oh eight.

And pretty much all experts say, like,

you know, if they did,

there would be there would be a pretty

big crisis.

The government might just decide to get

rid of the monarchy entirely,

which they obviously wouldn't want.

But I didn't know this.

They also have a different mechanism

called

uh queen's consent or king's consent and

they can vet bills before they're debated

at all um and apparently that happens

fairly often uh like queen elizabeth ii it

says reviewed over a thousand laws using

that power and has withheld consent in

some cases so i guess technically maybe

they could do something about it but now

that we've reached this point where it's

already like in law uh it's a little

late for them to do anything about it

unfortunately but

Yeah, it seems like a strange...

All of the monarchy stuff seems like a

very strange system to me,

so I don't fully understand it at all.

Yeah.

Listen,

some random lady in puddles handing out

weapons is no basis for a system of

government.

Sorry, I had to.

Before we move on, Dr. Warface said,

have you guys seen Ready Player One?

It feels almost like that.

Yeah, I read it.

I didn't watch it,

but there's definitely...

It's frustrating because good sci-fi

there's a, there's a, um,

a good quote from, uh, stuff.

They don't want you to know the,

one of the hosts there always says that

good sci-fi is only science fiction for a

sort or certain period of time.

So, I mean,

there's definitely any good ways to like,

you look at star Trek and there's a

lot of stuff there that they predicted,

like cell phones basically,

and touch screens and all that kind of

stuff.

And so, I mean, yeah,

unfortunately it'd be nice if more of the

good stuff came true and,

and less of the bad stuff.

Yeah, wouldn't it?

You know,

like the social isolation and all that

kind of stuff.

But yeah,

I think we'll move on to the forum

updates.

So in a minute,

we'll start taking viewer questions.

So the chat's been really chatty so far,

which I really appreciate.

And that's awesome.

But if you guys have been holding onto

any questions,

now's the time to go ahead and drop

them in the chat.

And we'll circle back to those in a

minute,

but for now we're going to check on

the community forum.

And there were a lot of good threads

this week, um,

had a hard time narrowing it down to

just a couple to discuss.

But the first one we're going to talk

about is that there has been a change

to Apple's hide my email.

Um, so this,

this headline I think is just a little

bit sensational.

It says that they're making it useless.

Um, but basically,

so hide my email for those who don't

know,

it's a premium feature if you pay for

iCloud.

and it it's kind of like simple login

or addy it allows you to create multiple

email addresses that forward to your inbox

but um the thing that they're changing is

it used to be that uh it used

to be that all icloud emails both regular

and hide my went to icloud.com but now

the hide my emails are going to go

to private.icloud.com

Um, which is going to make them really,

really easy to block, uh,

which I already kind of have this issue

a little bit with, um, with websites.

It's it's, uh,

like I use simple login and I use

a custom domain and sometimes it's

something that I'm not super attached to.

So I'm like, yeah,

I'll use the simple login, uh,

simple login.com or whatever.

And they're like, no, you can't use that.

But then I'll be like, okay,

so I'll switch to my custom domain and

it works just fine.

Which is weird because they're still the

same MX records, right?

Like they're still both going to simple

login,

but they're clearly block listing it based

on the actual address.

So, um, personally,

I can definitely see that happening for

sure that they're just going to start

block listing.

Because, you know, I mentioned MX records,

like in theory, that's one way.

And I've only seen one website so far

that did this,

but there's probably others.

Like in theory,

a website could block all simple login,

right?

Or all Addy.io because they know that

those are forwarding and they're not like

real email addresses.

They can't do that with the MX records

of iCloud,

but now they can with private.iCloud.

So yeah, I don't know.

This really sucked.

There's really no...

Apple hasn't said why they're doing this.

Some people speculated that like,

maybe they're running out of email

addresses.

Uh, I don't know how true that is,

but yeah, it's, uh, this really sucks.

I don't know.

Have you ever used the,

the hide my email thing from Apple?

You know, I haven't used, uh,

apples myself.

Some,

some apps that I've used in my iPhone

do the sign in with Apple thing.

I've used that on a couple of occasions

when.

Signing up via other means would be like

a super annoying process depending on the

app.

Some are just really annoying to sign up

for compared to sign up with Apple.

But otherwise,

I try to use my normal email aliases

and my password manager whenever I can and

not do Apple's and not do sign in

with Apple.

It's a bummer, though,

because I do see a lot of people

use their current solution as a way to

get around exactly those blocks you were

saying because you couldn't block at

iCloud.com.

So the fact that it was all on

the same domain really gave legitimacy to

all of those private aliases.

I remember when the hide my email feature

first came out for Apple,

we talked about it on one of the

earlier shows and on our forum that it

was a good change,

that they were kind of consolidating

everything on one domain name and that

know hopefully apple doing that would kind

of cause a shift in the industry where

sites would stop like rejecting these

don't email aliases like simple login or

whatever like entirely because you know

apple was officially endorsing it now on

the same domain so if you're not going

to be able to stop that service why

would you even bother

continuing to maintain those blocks in

general um obviously nothing like that is

going to happen because these at

private.iclub.com email addresses are

going to be super easy to block just

as easy as any of these other aliasing

services so

yeah it's a it's a shame that they're

doing that doesn't really affect me

personally, but I know a lot of people.

That i've seen on the forum,

this will impact a lot,

and it was a very commonly used feature

so it's a it's a shame that they're

that they're changing it for sure.

Part of me wonders,

now that you mention it,

do you think it was being abused?

Because I just checked here, and it says,

hide my email is available on every iCloud

Plus plan,

and the cheapest one starts at a dollar

a month.

Yeah.

So I wonder if maybe that was part

of the reasoning?

I mean,

it's certainly possible that that's what

they're trying to avoid.

I don't know exactly what their motivation

is.

In my experience, I will say...

even a dollar a month.

That is usually like enough to dissuade

most people who are going to use things

maliciously because usually people who are

going to abuse a service are also very

cheap and will never pay even a dollar

a month for the service.

So I don't know.

I mean, that's fair,

but I'm also thinking about like

professional scammers where it's like a

dollar a month.

Yeah,

I'm going to make that back in the

first hour as soon as somebody falls for

my scam.

Yeah, maybe.

I just don't know.

But

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I said,

they didn't state an official reason.

So it's, um, I mean,

the thing is though,

like if you're gonna spend money,

you could just get a custom domain in

most cases.

They're,

they're almost never blocked in the same

way that aliasing solutions are because,

uh,

most services don't want to block like

people's work emails basically.

And that could be any domain.

So, um,

using a custom domain is the easiest way

to get unlimited emails.

So.

I don't see what impact this would have

on super large operations.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah,

I think just to kind of round off

that thought,

I think our official recommendations for

Masked Email are still SimpleLogin, Addy.

There may be another one I'm forgetting,

but I don't think HideMy was ever one

of them.

I've had good luck with custom domains.

I like them because they're portable.

I know there's some concerns about like,

couldn't you be more trackable,

which I think maybe with the rise of

AI,

I could see that being a good argument.

But I think having the data sovereignty

and the portability is probably worth it.

And I think there's probably this is just

me speculating.

I think there's probably not a lot of

automated tracking going on in that sense.

So.

I just don't think it's scalable to make

it worthwhile.

So but yeah,

and then our other I'm going to turn

this other post over to you because there

was a discussion about shelter.

And I know we kind of talked about

that quite a bit in the privacy guides

chat.

And I believe you said you're working on

something as well.

So I'm going to let you take this

discussion.

Yeah,

a lot of stuff going on with work

profiles,

at least in my life at the moment.

We've talked a bit about Shelter for a

few weeks now because there are some calls

to remove it that we've seen on the

forum.

I personally think that work profiles

serve an important purpose on Android.

It's very convenient to have more than,

I mean, even more than two private spaces.

I mean,

because you have the new private space

feature in Android now,

so that creates one basically separate

profile you can access.

from your main profile,

work profiles give you a third.

But also,

there are a lot of Android devices out

there where you can't have a private space

at all.

And so being able to get that second

profile within your main profile is a huge

convenience over either creating multiple

user accounts or, again,

some Android phones don't even support

that super well.

So having that work profile function

or ability is still useful to a lot

of people, especially, I mean,

even like we've seen threads from Graphene

OS, for example,

on social media talking about like some of

the benefits of work profiles.

It seems like Graphene OS's opinion is

that they won't be as useful once they

build a feature that will allow you to

have

many more private spaces, basically.

I think that they've said they want to

enable a feature that lets you have

sixteen private spaces,

which would be great and probably negate

the need for a work profile for a

lot of people.

But that isn't the case in the meantime.

And there are use cases to having three

profiles accessible onto your phone at all

times that you can independently lock and

unlock, etc.

But it does annoy me that

shelter and island are just not the best

apps they they aren't like stellar in

terms of security they aren't stellar in

terms of cross-profile isolation and i've

been trying to use um my android phone

more and i have not really liked having

to use shelter because i just did not

trust it and i think it could have

a lot of problems because it opens

a lot of communication between the

profiles, which isn't necessary,

which I definitely found out the last two

weeks, and it's not super great.

Yeah, personally,

just driven by that frustration with

Shelter,

I have been working on my own alternative

to Shelter, which isn't, you know,

I'm not ready to put it out yet,

but I have been working on it a

lot.

I've posted some information to like my

GitHub, for example.

At the bottom of the Shelter alternative

post,

I actually linked to it because I did,

even though I haven't published any

releases of that app,

I published kind of a comparison between

the thing that I'm building,

and shelter mostly to demonstrate that a

lot of the things that shelter does are

not strictly necessary.

So I mean, the comparison,

if you look at that comparison.md file in

the repo, for example,

It's a long document because I've taken a

lot of notes so far,

and I've looked at a lot of different

things in Shelter's source code to try and

find out if I should even work on

this app as well.

And my conclusion was like, oh, yeah,

actually,

there are a lot of things that can

be done much better when it comes to

work profiles.

So hopefully...

somebody finds that helpful.

But at the very least,

I will be switching to that because I

will trust it a lot more than shelter.

Yeah,

that's kind of all I have to say

about work profiles.

I have also tried to use private spaces

a bit,

but I haven't used them too extensively.

Nate,

you said that you use private spaces a

bit more,

and maybe you can share some of your

experiences

of those compared to compared to shelter?

Yeah, um,

I just started using private spaces

recently,

I'm kind of doing the whole thing where

you,

you put all your proprietary apps in the

private space.

I've had issues with

um, voice to text,

like Duolingo would not recognize that I

was talking to it during the voice

exercises, uh,

which is really frustrating.

Cause I know it worked because I could

open the camera and I could like film

a video.

And when I played it back,

I heard myself talking in the camera.

So like in the private space.

So I know it worked.

Um, but I just,

I couldn't get voice to work for some

reason.

And, um,

But other than that, I mean, it's,

it's been pretty smooth.

They say not to use it if you

rely on, um, notifications,

but in my experience,

the notifications have been pretty timely.

Granted,

I don't have a lot of notifications turned

on and I also don't need them to

be super timely most of the time,

but I really haven't had any issues with

the private space yet.

Um, other than the, the Duolingo thing,

but I will say, uh,

I feel a little bit more not crazy

hearing you say that Shelter is maybe not

as secure as it should be,

because I used to use Shelter.

And it's one of those things where when

something goes wrong,

you can never figure out where it went

wrong,

because I used to have a Calix phone

with Shelter,

and I had a personal signal and a

privacy signal for different things.

And one time,

I want to say it was the privacy

signal, or maybe it was the personal one,

But I remember I opened it one time

and all of my contacts were there from

the other signal.

And not the conversation themselves for

the record,

but it freaked me out because I was

like, oh my God, can people see this?

Can people see, is there cross content?

And as far as I could tell,

nobody could.

Again, it didn't start any conversations,

but it's almost like when you move signal

to a new device and you see all

the conversations there,

but there's no content there,

or maybe that's just me,

because I'm a psycho who doesn't move

content.

But it was like that.

It was like all the conversations were

there and if I'd have sent a message,

it probably would have popped up.

But it just like that freaked me out

enough to where I was like,

I'm not messing with this anymore.

Like, that was not cool.

So ever since then,

I think I switched over to using like

Molly and Signal or something like that.

Just I started doing things differently.

But yeah, that was not a fun experience.

I gave me a heart attack.

So yeah, stuff like that.

If somebody can fix that.

And the reason I never reported it is

because I guess like who's who's at fault

there?

Was that a Calix issue?

Was that a was that a shelter issue?

Was that an Android issue?

Was that a signal issue?

Um, I don't know, but it was, uh,

it was not fun and there's definitely room

for improvement somewhere.

So, yeah.

Hard to say.

I'm hoping eventually Graphene OS has that

private space feature.

An advantage of private spaces is that you

can create them in secondary users on

Graphene OS, for example.

I guess I don't know how stock Android

works.

I haven't used it in a while.

But work profiles,

you can only make on your main profile.

So I've generally when I've used Android,

I have wanted to have a setup where

like I have Google Play services on the

main profile and then non Google stuff in

the private space rather than the other

way around.

But if you do that on your owner

profile,

the main profile on your phone has like

more privileges than all of the secondary

users.

So I always find that kind of problematic.

And I think that's why most people swap

it around and keep all their Google Play

stuff isolated.

But

With private spaces,

I can do that because I can just

have Google Play and the main profile of

the second user and then have a private

space separate from the owner's stuff.

I know that's how Cider Burritos does it.

He has a...

like kind of like we would recommend

setting up a computer, like, you know,

there's your admin account,

but then make a secondary user account and

do everything in there.

Um,

he's got a video where that's how he

uses graphene is he's got an admin account

that he basically never uses.

I think he only uses it to like

install things and push them to the user

account or something like that.

It's been a while since I've seen the

video,

but that's been a kind of common setup

that I've seen as well.

Cool.

Alrighty.

Um,

did you have anything else to add to

that one or.

I don't know if I have too much

else to say,

unless people have questions about any of

that stuff.

But I'm hoping that we can get away

from shelter and use something else.

But I guess we'll see if it all

works out or not.

for sure yeah that's definitely one of the

most powerful things that i like about

android is that ability to have multiple

profiles and yeah work apps and private

spaces and something you can't do on

iphone which is super awesome so yeah i

guess with that we'll move into uh q

a um

I don't think we have much right now.

Cause we've been, uh,

we've been taking questions as we go.

Yeah.

And so normally we start with questions on

the forum from paying members,

but it looks like there was a brief

discussion, um, where just people were,

cause you know, we posted this story.

Uh, we always post,

we try to post the stories as soon

or like the,

so we try to post a thread as

quickly as we can.

I just realized my alarm's going off.

Apologies.

Well,

we try to post these livestream threads

middle of the week based on the best

story that we've found so far.

We were hoping, I think,

that Graphene OS would end up being

available, at least in the alpha preview,

so I would have a chance to test

it out,

but I did not get a chance to

test it out because it's still not

available.

over the air, so that's a bit different.

I think the discussion in that forum

thread was basically wondering when the

stable builds will come out.

I don't know what Grafinois' track record

is when it comes to stable releases.

I don't think it takes that long,

but it might spend a good amount of

time in the alpha or beta stages before

we get to a full stable release.

I don't... Somebody else could...

remind me of their track record.

I just know that they are very quick

about getting something out right away.

But whether they consider it stable,

I am less.

I'm a bit more fuzzy on

Yeah, I'm not super positive myself.

Cause I,

I follow the releases on RSS just so

I can keep updated with the project.

And I know usually, um,

the way they work is like,

that's their announcement that like they

pushed it to alpha or beta or something.

And then after a couple of days,

if nobody has any issues,

they push it to the next stage.

And then after a couple of days it

goes out to public.

So I don't know the exact timeline,

but yeah, I usually see the, um,

I usually see the, the announcement.

I mean,

the announcement's already out and

Android,

just came out a couple of days ago,

so they're, they're very quick for sure.

We got a question here that I think

is a good thing to

cover really quick um what makes someone

think that using a private space to do

things privately when they have like a

personal email on a separate proprietary

profile that used for like google and

stuff um of course this isn't in anywhere

possible with iphones on android uh the

private spaces are completely separate

users basically they just show up in the

same profile so there's total isolation

between that the advantage of um

not doing it the way that I said

and putting Google stuff inside the

private space or the work profile instead

is that you can turn off a private

space or a work profile when you're not

using it.

So that's a good way.

That's a commonly used way to limit how

much Google can access at any given time.

So it really depends on your goals.

But

yeah having i mean it just depends on

what you're trying to do mobile phones are

not super private in general i can't uh

stress this enough because they uh just

are tracking machines there's so many ways

that they can be tracked and tied to

you uh no matter like what you do

on them so there's all sorts of problems

kind of inherent to the platform if you're

super concerned about

like being tracked by your account or by

other apps like google play services

there's really not much you can do about

that in the same profile but

The reason it's more private is because

since those profiles are completely

separated,

if you have Google Play installed in one

of them,

it literally cannot even see any of the

apps that are installed in the other

profile or connect to them in any way,

which is... I mean,

I think that's a huge privacy boost for

sure because it just lets you do things

more selectively.

With stock Android,

it's kind of an all-or-nothing approach to

like...

You have Google Play services installed,

and it has to see all of your

data, basically,

and there's nothing you can really do

about it.

Whereas these profiles give you some

separation if you can do that.

But it depends on how well you can

compartmentalize your stuff,

because if you need all of your apps

to be in the same profile for some

reason,

then obviously it's going to have less

benefits.

So it kind of comes down to how

you use your phone.

That's kind of all I have to say

about that.

Yeah, I don't have anything to add.

Those summed it up pretty well, I think.

I don't know if we have any more

questions this week.

Last call for questions, folks.

I like this...

this thread on the forum that I just

saw for your consideration privacy not

from the big short I like the big

short just as a movie a lot I

think it's a really good movie but I

thought that was very funny as well how

Ben record is like super privacy obsessed

he won't answer phone calls he has like

a million phones and he's worried about

the NSA logging all of them they just

sent a picture that I just thought it

was funny

I did not see that movie at all.

Oh, you're missing out.

That is a really good movie.

I don't know.

Oh, no, no, no.

I'm thinking of Dumb Money.

Oh, that movie was... I mean,

that was awesome.

That movie was just okay.

I haven't seen the big short either,

but I just remember seeing the previews

for it, and I'm like, yep,

this looks like one I can miss.

I have a very limited amount of free

time,

and I try to dedicate my stupid movies

to sci-fi, so...

Dumb money you could probably miss.

I mean, that was all GameStop stuff,

but yeah.

The big short was a good one.

And like, yeah, in that scene,

he was like,

somebody had to call him and he was

just like,

you're not supposed to use this number.

And he hung up right away.

They were saying like,

you should do that to all your family

members who try to message you on like

WhatsApp or something.

Just say,

you're not supposed to use this app.

That's that's honestly one of the reasons

I got it.

That's one of the reasons I got my

stepdad on signal because I have a my

pseudo number specifically dedicated for

signal and he would constantly

He actually had two different numbers

because I had one for signal and then

I had a separate one for like friends

and family that don't use signal for

whatever reason.

And when when my mom passed away,

he basically took over her phone for like

reasons.

And basically his phone broke.

Long story short.

And so he started using my mom's phone.

but he didn't know how to use signal.

And so he would like call me on

both of those numbers.

And so among many reasons,

that's one smaller reason I got him on

signal is because I got tired of getting

his phone call from like two different

number or like, you know,

he would call me on like either number

and it's just like, Oh my God,

just here,

you signal everybody's on signal,

do everything on sick,

which has worked out great now.

So now,

now he's in the family group chat with

the rest of us and you know,

it's a lot of fun, but yeah,

it was.

Yeah.

Without any more questions,

we can probably wrap things up,

I would say.

I think so.

Yeah.

It's been a good week.

Do you want to take the outro,

or should I?

Up to you.

I'll take it.

You did the intro, so...

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