Ricnvolved1956

It remains to be seen if Trumpublicans make your prediction a reality. But do you think it would've been any different under Clinton? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151220/08101633141/hillary-clinton-wants-manhattan-project-encryption-not-back-door-that-makes-no-sense.shtml https://theintercept.com/2016/10/14/hillary-clintons-encryption-proposal-was-impossible-said-top-adviser/ During Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the State Department aggressively funded the development of encryption and anonymous web browsing tools.

Well well well! Some highly interesting and informative responses. My thanks especially to Khariz for lessening my paranoia... some. As a result I've reloaded the config generator files for the U.K. and Ukrainian servers. I personally don't take offense with Khariz having a good chuckle at the fuss and bother of this topic thread. Getting that kind of knowledge is why I've begun hanging around this forum more than before. I'm one of the AirVPN users/customers technologically challenged and glad there are folks here who can help to educate others like myself. I dare to venture that the overwhelming majority of Air's customers are not genuinely malicious actors on the world stage actively trying to evade the surveillance goons. Speaking for myself, I seek out the most private and secure ways to use the internet out of equal parts principle and defiance. The revelations from Edward Snowden... Julian Assange... Thomas Drake... John Kiriakou... William Binney... Kirk Wiebe... Ray McGovern... and many, many others who are anonymous..... I take what they have to say in deadly earnest. Those men are true heroes to me. ALL of them have made enormous personal sacrifices to alert the world of the very real danger of government intrusion and overreach. Their effort on our behalf is surely a thankless task, which will be more thankless if too many ignore their warnings. In the words of Joni Mitchell: "Don't it always seem to go... you don't know what you got till it's gone..." Far too many who go online either are blissfully unaware of the dangers these men are trying to warn us about, or they've chosen to shrug in complacency, convinced the fight is already lost. So, Khariz-- No, I'm not one of the true bad actors you referenced. In the overall scheme of things, I really don't have that much to hide beyond keeping my personal information private. But that's really not the point for using AirVPN, is it? I'm just a teeny tiny fish in this huge internet ocean, exercising my teeny tiny act of defiance. My hope is that others are concerned enough to join my little act of defiance to make it clear we're not about to roll over just because some entrenched, power mad bureaucrats tell us that we must because, "It's to keep you safe." It has very little to do with keeping anyone safe and everything to do with accumulating every scrap of power they can get away with. It's purely political and no one will ever convince me otherwise. I read "1984" in high school and the impression it made was powerful and has stayed with me 45 years later. That kind of future may yet be the fate of this planet and if it does happen while I'm still around.... I'll go kicking and screaming before the goons toss my ashes down the memory hole.

O Canada.... I'm seeing a very sickening fad developing. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/canada-software-encryption-backdoors-feedback,33131.html

We can't let ourselves be overly discouraged. For damn sure we can't afford to become complacent. It's up to each internet user to fight this sort of thing with the best technological methods available. My faith is that the state surveillance will never completely win the privacy war as long as there are people fully committed in defiance to resist and fight with everything we've got. If the FBI starts trying to hack computers outside of the U.S. (And we all know they will), then they have no moral ground to start crying and bitching when the Russian FSB and the Chinese intelligence agency do the same. And for all I know they may be doing it anyway. The bureaucrat assclowns in D.C hardly need a reason to cry and whine.

Collective stupidity in shameless display. This is what passes as governing in current day Amerika, and it's already become the daily norm. You really don't need a minimum of intelligence to be in congress; if anything, having reasonable intelligence would probably work against you. You just have to be cunning and clever enough to hoodwink just enough of the naive and gullible to get elected. As I was reading this article, I could almost smell the fear from these clowns. They're clueless and terrified of being called out about it. "We're on this, people! Don't you worry! We'll get this straightened out in no time! We're IMPORTANT! You NEED us! Harrumph! Harrumph!" https://www.rt.com/usa/368776-house-bill-russian-influence/

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/snoopers-charter-mean-rest-world/

Zhang-- Thank you for your informative reply. I wasn't trying to link vpn and email services having concerns from using Coinbase. Just that those 3 types of businesses, when based in the U.S. and U.K., are at clear risk of privacy invasion and overreach. No sympathy from me for anyone bent on illegal tax evasion. My suspicion is that this legal action against Coinbase is at least as much about just plain spying as it is about catching tax evaders.

Not sure how relevant this article is to the thread, but here goes. I'm beginning to suspect surveillance t*rds in Amerika and England are in a..... "friendly".... competition as to who can erode privacy protections the fastest and most. http://www.infowars.com/how-much-does-the-fbi-really-know-about-you/

For anyone considering starting a vpn or email or cryptocurrency business-- Stay the f*ck out of the U.S.! Stay the f*ck out of the U.K.! How many times does something like this have to happen before people finally figure it out?! http://gizmodo.com/bitcoin-exchange-ordered-to-give-irs-years-of-data-on-m-1789544707/amp

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/11/new-us-law-making-it-easier-to-search-computers-takes-effect-thursday/ A pointed reminder to the political left apologists-- This happened under Obama's watch. Do you really think Clinton would've done anything to change this had SHE won the election?

This fake news bullsh*t isn't going away. https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368728-washington-post-fake-news-russia/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368700-dear-president-putin-russian-passport/

Those of us who come to this forum to stay current on topics discussed here are aware of the passage of the draconian surveillance law now in effect in England. I tend to think this will, at some point, affect all who use Air regardless of which country you live in. I'm in the U.S. but before the law even kicked in, I made the decision to no longer direct any of my web activity through any of Air's U.K. servers. However, many Air customers probably don't have that luxury and necessarily have to go through the U.K. servers to bypass geolocation restrictions, etc. Very likely there are quite a number of AirVPN customers concerned as to what happens next and would welcome an official announcement from Air staff about this scary new reality. I'm sure the Air staff are fully aware of the new internet landscape and perhaps the service's legal attorneys are closely evaluating the language of the new law so as to figure out what changes, if any, need to be made here at Air. With that in mind, I now welcome someone from Air's staff to post an official statement. In the event it's still too soon to provide a detailed evaluation of where things go from here, at least post an acknowledgment of the new law and an approximate timetable of when they think there will be something substantial to report. This new law really is cause for concern and most surely will be a technological challenge for all legitimate vpn services no matter their base of operations. We here at AirVPN welcome the staff's leadership and guidance going forward.

FromtheWalls-- I agree with all you say in your post. But for the purpose of full disclosure in regards to my own self interest, I am sincerely and eternally grateful for one huge benefit of Obama being president. Namely, The Affordable Care Act. I will keep this as brief as possible, but the unfortunate fact is that I have a medical condition called Peutz Jeghers Syndrome and the only way I could get insurance in the past was through workplace coverage. However, I've been out of the workplace for 8 years and The Affordable Care Act has been literally a financial lifesaver. Without it, there is no way any health insurance company would issue me a policy, or certainly not one I could afford. The Affordable Care Act has been the object of nearly incessant abuse and criticism from the politically conservative right, a lot of it from ignorance but mostly because republican conservatives made it a political football and dog whistle. Since it became law there has been a torrent of demagoguery and screaming to completely do away with it. Why not just reform and improve it instead? At the time The ACA became law there were statistics that approximately 43 million to 45 million people in the U.S. were either severely underinsured or had no coverage at all. If The Affordable Care Act is abolished, what are people like me to do? I'll conclude this with a demagogic gem from Rush Limbaugh during the time The ACA was prominent in the news. He was being his usual gasbag self and bellowed that Amerikans already had health coverage-- If you get sick and you don't have health insurance coverage, just go to the emergency room. I swear to you he said that. If I could have blown his head off with an AK-47 at that moment, I would've done it and worried about the consequences afterward. He could go to his local hospital emergency room and get treated. (I've also wondered if his health insurance policy covered his oxycontin detox program and his viagra when he went to The Dominican Republic for his sex tourist vacations. Anyway.... Rush?.... Save your money and ditch your healthcare coverage! If you get cancer.... just go to the emergency room! Lead by example, you f*cking moron!)

Kepler-- Thank you for your apology. I extend mine in return. Though I have the feeling we're not always going to agree on political subjects, it's a good thing we can agree to disagree courteously.

Thank you, itguy2017. I don't use Untangle Firewall, never heard of 'em until I read your post. But it's always a good thing to get the news out as a caution to others who use them or are thinking about it. Vigilance against the surveillance state must be 24/7/365. Those vampires never sleep.

https://www.rt.com/uk/368592-investigatory-powers-surveillance-snoopers/ https://www.rt.com/uk/368595-press-freedom-snoopers-charter/ England now gives sewers and septic tanks a bad name. F*ck if I wouldn't be trying to get out as fast as I could if I lived there.

Please overlook that Alex Jones is in this video. Just pay attention to what William Binney says. http://www.infowars.com/surveillance-state-on-steroids-beginning-december-first/

I urge the reader to pay especially close attention to the last paragraph of the article. It just further strengthens my conviction that nothing will change; they obviously prefer permanent self exile in the political wilderness. http://observer.com/2016/11/obama-admin-wants-clinton-surrogate-as-new-dnc-chair/amp/

Perhaps because there were relatively few users of the internet knowledgable and sophisticated enough about torrenting? Perhaps because most who went online gave little if any thought about the government spying on us until Snowden's revelations? Those who were sharp enough to know that internet surveillance was going on, who were concerned enough and had the technological wherewithal, had to wait until around 2010 for a couple of reasons. (This is purely speculation on my part.) First, perhaps they had to wait for the software and hardware to be developed before the idea of VPN could be implemented. The other possible reason is they had to wait until 2010 for the potential market for VPN services to be large enough to make it viable to start one up. I'm sure the start up costs of establishing a VPN service are considerable and it makes sense to wait until you think there are enough potential customers to sign up so your business doesn't fail in the first year (or sooner) There are others here in the forum with far greater knowledge and deeper insight about this subject, so let's hear it!

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/367537-uk-russia-spying-laws/

A few more arrows to the fake news vampires. https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368383-washington-post-bizarre-conspiracy/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368180-fake-news-washington-post/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368261-eu-mep-resolution-rt/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368129-eu-fake-news-rt/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368057-french-people-sacrifice-putin/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/367625-fake-news-post-truth-iraqi-wmds/ https://www.rt.com/op-edge/367402-state-dep/

I concede your point. What he said was that those who voted 3rd party "made a big mistake".

Exactly, LZ1. So imagine my surprise when I read yesterday that Chomsky is bashing those who voted 3rd party instead of Clinton. My attitude is the same as Chris Hedges-- There is no real difference between the two.

It's a hugely prominent buzz phrase on "the intertubes" these days. No doubt about it, there's plenty out there. If you thought there was a proliferation of it during the recent political season in the U.S, then we're seeing the beginning of a virtual tidal wave. In fact, it would be more accurate to call fake news just shameless propaganda. Amerikan newspapers are now the equivalent of ultra low grade toilet paper. Television "news" entities puke out government/corporate friendly disinformation 24/7/365 on a level to make Soviet-era television propagandists envious. They are like vampires. They never sleep. They won't stop. https://www.rt.com/usa/368214-greenwald-washington-post-russia/

Serenacat-- The U.S is a diseased state and it's going to get worse. A LOT worse. And I'm not referring to Trump, though that's bad enough. I'm referring to the NSA/CIA/FBI/State Dept./corporate "intelligence" black hole. Take a look at Rodrigo Duterte of The Phillippines recently telling Amerika to go f*ck itself. He won't be the only national leader to do that. Other countries are getting tired of Amerikan hegemony and bossiness. Make no mistake about it, folks-- There is a resurgence of McCarthyism at work here in the U.S and it's being practiced by both sides of the political spectrum. The liberal left is in a full blown self delusional hysteria over the election result. "Alt right" and "fake news" have become extremely shrill buzz phrases. Russia, Vladimir Putin, RT/Sputnik are oh-so-convenient whipping boys. They delude themselves by thinking their collective hysteria projects strength and resolve when all it really does is prove their weakness and insecurity. Those of us on the left who chose to buck the prevailing party/ideological orthodoxy and not vote for Clinton are being demonized with incredible bared-fangs ferocity. But it's okay, I can take it. I used to think it was only the insane, lunatic, conservative right wing that lived in a political echo chamber. Trump's election is proving that the liberal left has it's own political echo chamber. Many liberal commentators I used to genuinely admire and hold in high regard I have now lost all faith and trust in. It's depressing, it's discouraging. There is a quote by George Orwell in the signature of another poster here in the forum (I apologize for not remembering who it is) I had not heard before. The quote has been on my mind quite a bit since becoming aware of the liberal left hysteria and I humbly provide it here-- The further a society drifts from truth, the more it hates those who speak it. (Sorry if this is too far off the topic of this thread, but serenacat's post prompted me to extend her thoughts on (what I hope is) a relative tangent.)