Thanks!

Ha! This blind squirrel (me) did manage to find a nut, it seems.

They’re not anonymous, contrary to common perception. They’re encrypted, but they know things like your IP address and which IP addresses you’re communicating with, even if they don’t know the content of your messages. Some of them explicitly state as much.

Depending on the local laws of the company or servers, they might be compelled to share whatever data they do have, which could be enough info to assist law enforcement in making an arrest, even if they can’t see the message itself.

If you want anonymous email use, you have to use a logless VPN at a minimum every time you access a third party encrypted email service. That way neither side of the email exchange can tie your IP address to you.

That’s a good way to take a bad situation and make it better. Good luck! Maybe I’ll join you one day.

It’s dumber than that. They’ve gotten on board with E2EE, because there’s Chinese threat actors in US telecom networks, and they still can’t get them out.

So they haven’t come to their senses so much as accepted that they’ve been pwned and are doing triage.

I’m not sure myself, but it sounds like something entirely new, as in not-Fedora, not-Arch, not-Debian, etc.

It’s really hard to tell from the About page, but whatever it is, it sounds very ambitious, and maybe the lead dev is overextended.

If you like i3, Sway is i3 with Wayland. Afaik, even uses the same configs.

Capitalists aren’t in the business of sharing.

What you’re doing is saying, “What if things get worse?” To which I say, “What if they get better?”

Saying “it is possible, so it is therefore likely” is an appeal to probability, a logical fallacy; we don’t know what the future holds, and so while you might win in terms of privacy with either outcome, there’s always a tradeoff between security and useability. Additionally, few enjoy living in a state of constant paranoia.

Some people can be reasonably certain that being targeted by the government(s) is a low threat. Others cannot. That’s why threat models should be assessed on an individual basis. Are you white, cis, and male? Probably a low priority target overall. Do you engage in piracy? High priority for ultracapitalists but low for religiously motivated actors, so what kind of government do you have?

In every case, you will be giving up something, like the ability to connect with as many people, the ability to use networks without obfuscation, the ability to go out in public without a disguise, etc. It’s everyone’s right to have privacy, but not everyone is required to exercise that right in the same way.

The best we can hope for is that everyone is able to make informed decisions, so they can decide if they want to accept certain risks and aren’t surprised should negative consequences befall them.

I don’t think your edited title is that clarifying, and in fact, muddies the water by glossing over some key details. Chiefly, Congress doesn’t fund the OTF, they fund the US Agency for Global Media, which in turn uses some of their money to fund the nonprofit OTF; the OTF then uses their money to “support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies,” per their 501©3 non-profit mission statement.

OTF has its own board, and they operate independently from the government, though their operations are tied in a roundabout way to how Congress decides to allocate funding.

That F-Droid got a piece of that pie is a good thing, especially in light of the current regime and how they’re basically giving the middle finger to Congress.

I think I’d rather just be a good community member and remind people to donate, and that it’s the cool and right thing to do as a FOSS user.

TBH, I think that’s giving too much credit to those in charge. They don’t want to be China’s or Russia’s puppet. They imagine themselves the puppeteers (whether that’s true or not).