If we are all subject to the same monitoring and there are no exceptions, that would be fair. However, if some people are exempt from monitoring because of their connections, relations, etc. then that would be unfair.

And if some people are allowed to harass and stalk others based on some attribute (race, religion, nationality, etc.) because they are in a monitoring position (while others are not) then that would be unfair as well.

We need full transparency.

Bear Defense Plan: Hide, Non-lethal, Lethal.

I call this "The Pawn Shop Threat Model" ;)

And, IME it is likely to happen.

Other forms of encryption are based on assumptions and conditions being true (e.g. factoring is a hard problem, etc.) that may or may not be true. We don't know.

Yes, people have used tobacco products for a long time. However, they have not sucked on them like candy and swallowed the contents 16 hours a day. They spit, exhaled, etc. Chewing tobacco and snuff are not acceptable and they ruin your teeth/gums. Smoking is not acceptable and it ruins your lungs/breathing ability. This stuff is socially OK, because no one can tell you are using it (no spit or smoke).

Check out all the reports of GI issues on reddit (QuittingZyn). This stuff causes all sorts of GI issues from the top of the stomach to the bottom of the bowel.

Edit: Both boys and girls are dependent on these things now and they seem socially acceptable (no smoke, no spit, just swallow the chemical nicotine). Get ready for a huge wave of GI problems due to this.

VPNs are not 100% anonymous. They are not meant to be. Instead, they are meant to provide some level of privacy to law-abiding adults.

Most people would be embarrassed if their co-workers and neighbors knew the intimate personal details of their lives. Things they like, things they buy, things they do, etc. So, most people should use a VPN to protect their privacy.

By definition, 'most people' don't want or expect 100% anonymity online. They just want a bit of privacy in their personal life and their relationships. That's it.

VPNs don't protect (and are not intended to protect) criminals who want 100% anonymity from governments while committing online crimes. This is an important distinction. 'Most people' are not criminals and do not have this unrealistic expectation from Mullvad and other VPN providers.

    "It’s not clear what else there is to do with computers besides click on things..."

The quick fix was a simple, empty index.html file (or setting the -Indexes option in the apache config). The surgeon had no idea what this meant or why it was important. And the AI bots didn't either.

The odd part of this to me was that the AI had made good choices (strong password hashes, reasonable DB schema, etc.) and the app itself worked well. Honestly, it was impressive. But at the same time, they made some very basic deployment/security mistakes that were trivial. They just needed a bit of guidance from an experienced devops security guy to make it Internet worthy, but no one bothered to do that.

Edit: I do not recommend backing up web apps on the web server itself. That's another basic mistake. But they (or the AI) decided to do that and no one with experience was consulted.

It's good to see Apple's Lockdown mode having such success by simply disabling message attachments.

It's not rocket science. If the LLM has no access to do those things, then it can't be tricked into doing those things.