Edit: Changed “the government” to “governments”
I mean, people say use end to end encryption, VPN, Tor, Open Source Operating System, but I think one thing missed is the hardware is not really open source, and theres no practical open source alternative for hardware. There’s Intel ME, AMD PSP, so there’s probably one in phones. How can people be so confident these encryption is gonna stop intelligence agencies?
We don’t. The point is to reduce attack surface relative to target value. People use a VPN for piracy, for example, not because it’s totally secure, but because rights holders generally aren’t going to bother going after a single person when they’d have to go thru a VPN provider as well. OTOH someone doing it on clearnet is being logged by their ISP and the data is right there. OTOOH, the three letter agencies are absolutely going to bother if they have a tip that you’re doing something really dangerous to the status quo.
TL;DR: It’s like IRL security. If somebody really wants your shit, they’ll find a way to get it. The point is to make it generally not worth it.
Today I learned you have 3 hands