> Hacktivists or state actors attacking the SCADA systems and increasing the pressure to levels that it's not built to handle?
Such an overpressure would have been detected (and in the worst case, mitigated by flaring or outright venting) at the German entry points of NordStream 1 and 2. No anomalies were recorded, which completely debunks that theory.
I personally believe this was a state actor who did it. If it was a SCADA system attack to overpressure the pipe, a state actor is the most likely culprit as SCADA knowledge isn't that common among laypeople. Personally, I think powerful explosives were used, at which point it'd definitely be a state actor because who else would have access to high power explosives, and then place them hundreds of feet below sea level next to a pipeline?
Increasing the pressure levels could not have produced such extensive damage. It was explosives. If Russia wanted to stop the flow, they could simply turn off the valves on their side rather than blow up their own infrastructure they spent billions to build.
Does that government have any power? Or we can always substitute for correctness "Russian gov" with "Putin" and "Russian interests" with "Putin ambitions"
Come on. The only way to destroy 50 meters of pipeline is with explosives/weapons. Even if someone increased the pressure to a breaking point, it would cause a much smaller failure at a seam and the pressure would then stabilize.
This is Putin playing power games. He wants so strike fear in the German public and cause public support for aiding Ukraine to falter.
By failing to correctly attribute the actor behind this act of terror and spreading conspiracy theories you are only playing to the hand of that war-mongering dictator.
The "privacy" provided by so-called private browsing mode is just a smokescreen considering how much device fingerprinting is going on. And widespread surveillance of the Internet backbone not just by intelligence agencies but now private organisations like Team Cymru.
It would be better if we spent the resources on a next generation anonymity network to replace Tor, or some kind of alternative data transport like radio or satellite, which can still be used by small niche communities of free speech activists, for example... A one way data broadcasting system, sending compressed text only, provides near complete anonymity for those receiving it. However as it necessitates buying receiver hardware, it doesn't get very much traction.
> The "privacy" provided by so-called private browsing mode is just a smokescreen
And to add insult to injury, browsing artifacts are sometimes remembered in Windows' pagefile and other parts of the OS. Even on Linux, if your distro cares to add stuff to swap, it will dump browsing sessions in plaintext to your hard-drive, incognito/private mode or not. This is why people need to use TailsOS[0] if they're really concerned about not leaving any traces.
Actually I have to add caveats to that. It looks like you could tell the OS not to swap your RAM using mlock/mlockall, but with significant caveats around overcommit that are a little over my head but which I suspect would be painful for a modern web browser to try and operate with.
Firefox includes anti-fingerprint measures, and uBlock origin + advanced mode + all scripts blocked by default helps a lot. Also first-party isolation.
Brave has a TOR mode and Brave actually runs and contributes to TOR. I honestly think it's the only browser that's doing interesting, novel things to improve web browser tech anymore.
Having a local copy of an entire ebook archive is one way we can find information without having to use the Internet. Thus we can avoid being subjected to mass surveillance, which is excellent. I wonder if the archive is full text searchable?
Finally an alternative to this Orwellian nightmare we call the Internet. Can't wait to have a copy at home, and there will probably be times where I'll be pulling the plug on the router with relief. And it's one more step towards reducing my Internet usage, thus keeping the government and corporations out of my life.
I don't think that VPNs are any good at protecting privacy nowadays... Maybe Tor or I2P just might work.
Team Cymru are collecting flow records from backbone routers worldwide, with the permission of the ISPs. They claim to be able to trace through VPNs by simply looking at the timing of flows.
https://www.team-cymru.com/pure-signal-recon-threat-hunting-...
Perhaps we should try experimenting with satellite or radio data broadcasting? Just send highly compressed text to make it low bandwidth? Then anyone can receive the stream without intelligence agencies from finding out. Ever. Assuming it's a receiver that cannot physically be connected to a network. Bye bye NSA and GCHQ surveillance... For good this time.
Thank you for that! in my younger days I imagined a system like this would come sonner rather than later.
I also dont believe that there is really an incetive for corporations to keep the web "free" (as in freedom) and while - A LOT - of people are hyping the crypto scene or TOR as solutions, I have come to think, that we soon simply have identiy tokens (on cards or phones or usb sticks) and that identity will be provided not requested.
Its what the movie studios wanted since the 90s, its actually what your government wants too!
I finish with the thought that blocking the api for adblockers on chrome is only the beginning. And yeah, firefox also sends home a lot of data. We as programmers need to find solutions to this. It would be organized open source, but without proper funding, noone is going to be organized
My biggest concern regarding GitHub Copilot is that it is cloud based and opens up our previously private coding activities to continuous surveillance by third-parties.
It's only a matter of time before intelligence agencies will get their hands on the data. And if use of Copilot becomes an industry wide practice then those who wish to preserve their privacy will become uncompetitive.
I really hope we have some decent offline alternatives eventually.
The russian government itself doing that to make it appear someone else did it?