Thank you, I think I will

found on The Chive

I don't know about you but I'm perfectly happy to keep my secrets.

That's no moon

from here and here

There are few things as absurd as a spy balloon. Imagine a spy you can see coming miles away. How much are you going to leave out in the open for them to see? Since people are going to see it coming, maybe you should consider making it look like something else, like a novelty balloon. You know, like a disguise.

Is that all your privacy is worth?

found on Acid Cow

Remember when people at least needed to be given a physical candy bar to give up their privacy (passwords). Privacy has really depreciated since then.

They each could use a taste of their own medicine

from here and here

Both Russia and China have a reputation for hacking others. It's nice to see one or both of them on the receiving end for a change. 

Imagine being that desperate for antivirus

from here

Do they have difficulty getting security software in China? It actually seems quite amazing that an advanced persistent threat group would have to resort to such means to get the software. Couldn't they just get it from a torrent site or something?

It's gonna be YUGE

from here and here

It's hard not to come away from the "Clean Networks" idea and not think they're talking about some kind of firewall (though probably more like the Great Firewall of China than anything you can get at Best Buy), and with the demand for a transaction fee to allow China to comply with the other demands it's easy to make the association with Trump's past election promise of a border wall that Mexico would pay for.

You can't censor what you can't see

from here

So Zoom doing the Chinese government's bidding is apparently a thing, and it makes me wonder if the flaws in their previous attempts at encryption were mistakes or perhaps something else. It also makes me wonder if their motivation for only giving their future end to end encryption to paying customers might be something other than the fight against child porn  ("Think of the children" is just a little too convenient).

Text me if you can

from here

China's surveillance machinations are getting weird, but I feel like they haven't quite thought this one all the way through. I mean, unless they're providing everyone with a state mandated phone, there's going to be a few people this system doesn't get - and it's going to create an incentive for people to ditch their cell phones if the fines aren't worth it.