This is good news for anyone who lives the the UK. I have been very worried that the encrypted services that I currently use such as Protonmail, Proton Drive, would suddenly remove their encryption and the first thing I would know about it is when my email hacked.
At least now, hopefully, we will be a bit more informed about the progress of this court case.
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Yes, good news. But they wonāt just roll over. We should expect continual assaults on the principle of free, encrypted communications for the public. Learn to self-host as much as possible and persuade friends and family to either do the same or offer them accounts on your own services. Your username on here suggests youāre certainly capable.
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Of course. You are quite right Vaughan. We wonāt be backtracking on any of the steps that we have taken so far - regardless of the eventual outcome. I read in someone elseās post here (I canāt remember who) that the taking the things that you use entirely offline is the safest approach. We now use an offline calendar which is slight less convenient but, still works quite well for us. If offline is not possible, then self hosting is also an excellent idea.
What worries me is that the next step the goverment is likely to take is making VPNās illegal to use in the uk and blocking them. I just hope that VPN services can keep one step ahead with their work to disguise VPN traffic.
What I fear more than anything, is if the government is successful at eradicating encryption from online services, that the UK will just become the number one target for scammers, and yet again, it will be the less technically aware members of the population that become the main victims of this strategy.
The Prime Minister has already said that he wants the UK to develop āworld classā AI systems and I am afraid that unfettered access to the personal data of the UK population that he seems to be aiming for, could be used to train this system and produce an incredibly powerful AI tool for the government themselves, and others to use.
The goverment claim that they need this data access to catch criminals, terrorists and to protect children but, for some reason, I am struggling to believe that their motives are benevolent.
Especially, as they are trying so hard to hide the Apple court case from the british public.
Thank you for posting this up.
āWhere is my Minority Reportā ā¦ a fictional scene, but a reality perhaps foretold ??
Thank goodness for Privacy Advocate groups fighting against this, why was our Government trying to brush this under the carpet ā¦ we are the public, we have a right to know !
But we the public, who at least have some knowledge by being here (de-Googlers) - are I fear such a small āminorityā, but the masses who value the bling, the box fresh, the āconvenienceā - are sleep walking into a different reality which one day we may all be coerced or forced into.
As you suggest, if the removal of Encryption from services such as Proton Mail and the like continues, self hosting will be the way to go.
What personal users need is a locked down system - that can act as a simple self host for web/email/message hosting.
I recently installed HAOS (Home Assistant) on a Raspberry Pi 5, with SSD - its proven rock solid, exposed to the open internet for 3/4 months without issue.
I have yet to look at the offerings, but something similar to HAOS for this would be ideal, energy efficient, compact and hopefully secure.
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Thanks. I will have a look at tbis as I use several raspberry pis.
HAOS being for just IOT, let us know if you find anything ā¦
Presume Murena Cloud is a hosted version of NextCloud ā¦ looks lke that can go on a Rpi ā¦ but how locked down it all is I am not sure.
HAOS contains the Linux Core plus the Home Assistant ontop, but all locked down.
VPNs will be tricky for them as businesses rely on them for remote worker access.
Self-hosting is more fun than staying offline and there are so many FLOSS tools available to make it possible for non-professionals.
I recommend you have a look at Yunohost to start.
Have a look at Yunohost.
There are other solutions but this is the easiest Iāve found so far. Iāve been using it for several years for email, xmpp messaging with end to end encryption & contacts/calendar sync. Many other apps are available.
I have it in a container on Proxmox but ran it quite happily on an old laptop for a few years and I believe Raspberry Pi images are available.
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@Vaughan thanks for the Yunohost recommendation, looks good, I see one of the available apps is Home Assistant, but only for a limited number of platforms - and not Rpi, which is fine, Rpi are cheap enough, so ordering another just for this will be fine.
One thought that needs to be addressed is if someone breaks in and steals your Rpi ā¦ they would have all your emails, and if hosting a cloud - all your content, how does one protect against that.
The same way as you protect against loss of any other possessions in your house. Home security applications exist and some can be integrated with Home Assistant. If you can capture intruders on camera and store images or video off site then maybe recovery is possible. But really, if someoneās got in there without your knowledge or permission then all bets are off. Youāre still running a lower risk than handing it all to Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, etc.
Speaking of Home Assistant, I donāt use the Yunohost app. I have it in a Proxmox virtual machine. I have Pi-Hole, FreePBX and a VPN gateway in other Proxmox containers so thereās a lot of possibilities with self-hosting. But for novices wanting to meet the requirement as you originally expressed it, Yunohost is probably enough.
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Never buy into the rationale organizations use to justify their bad behavior. Itās always a smokescreen for some hidden agenda. They try to dupe the public into believing something that removes liberties is in their best interest. It never is.
In any case saving personal data to corporate servers is a privacy risk, but itās always a case of trading convenience for privacy. Self hosting is a better solution, but itās a lot more work.
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Re Yunohost, I will defintely have a look at that. It sounds like the sort of system that we could use and maintain fairly easily. I am not unduly concerned about the loss of the hardware doing the hosting as I live in a quiet rural area. Also, for years, we handled all of our own data backups locally and had zero% loss of data by being careful to do multiple backups and checking the health of the devices that we used.
As I am completely new to self hosting, I will be able to give some ābeginnerā feedback afterwards. This may be useful for other members who want to try self hosting for the first time.
I set up pihole not so long ago so if it is not more complicated than that, I should be ok.
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Keep running your Pi-Hole. Itās available as a Yunohost app but itās not maintained.
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