Alain Ghiai: Actual Digital Privacy? Don't Be Fooled.

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
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It’s time to have another discussion about digital security; or should I say insecurity?

Have you ever had the experience of searching for something on Google, or even where you say something to someone nearby and the next thing you know there’s an ad for it on your phone? Have you ever gotten the sense that maybe you are the product being traded and sold?

I have to confess, I’m a little bit of a privacy nut and I also definitely don’t like being the product. Maybe you don’t like that either? If so, this is an important interview about digital privacy for you to listen to and digest.

Here’s the deal; if you aren’t paying for a technology service, you are the product. Everybody knows this is true for Facebook. They sell your data to anybody and everybody. But did you know this is equally true for a lot of other phone and web apps? In this interview, I discovered that the apps I was using because of their perceived greater security and privacy was misplaced faith.

If you want to learn the truth about how your email and messaging communications are really not secure or private, then tune into this episode.

The question is, is there anything you can do to realistically improve your security and digital privacy? The answer is yes. This interview with Alain Ghiai, the CEO of GlobeX Data, as he discusses the state of digital insecurity and their own Sekur suite of offerings gave me hope. Sekur email and messaging are the best on the market that I have seen.

Does it cost money? Yes, of course, it does. If you want digital privacy and security you have to pay people to offer that to you. If you aren’t paying anything for your services, then you are the product. Free gmail isn’t free, it costs you both your privacy and security. For some, that’s perfectly OK for many people. But for the rest of us, 2022 is the year we finally decide to pay a few bucks to reclaim our personal sovereignty and privacy.

All audience members get a special deal. On checkout, use discount code PEAK15 for a 15% limited-time discount.

Special Deal for Peak Insiders: Peak Insiders get 25% off which they can access by logging in and then navigating to PeakProsperity.com/shop for their exclusive savings.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/alain-ghiai-actual-digital-privacy-dont-be-fooled/

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SO IT IS REAL…it has happened several times to me and I was like holyshit…they must be listening…I have covered my cameras but I dont know what to do about the listening stuff anybody have ideas.

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I have friends (both"normies" and dissidents) who report that this happens over and over again.
I wrote to my Congressman (Chris Smith, 4th District, New Jersey, R) and said that he should propose legislation that would criminalize this type of eavesdropping.
He never wrote back.

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At some point arent we simply going to have to make a choice to limit our exposure to technology if we value privacy? Otherwise it seems like we are always playing a game of catch up. “They” own the internet and all the devices that attach to it.
Most of the time we dont even know what they are doing, and we find out years later that we were being spied on. OK so we make some changes to block it, then they do something else that we dont find out about for years [ if ever ]. We’re always behind because it’s their world we’re playing in.
The only way to get real privacy is probably to just pull the plug.

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Consider sending to all your state reps.

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I still do write to these people even though I don’t think it does any good.
But on some issues (such as Ukraine/Russian Security Guarantees) I am beginning to wonder if it is safe to identify myself as being outside of the mainstream.

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This is what I am trying to do.
No more “internet of things.” If it is connected to the net, I won’t buy it. Period. End of story.
As to the those other things that I have already, I will either get rid of them or put them in faraday cages when not in use.

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If you have an android phone (android 10 or later) this will help, at least a bit: https://source.android.com/devices/sensors/sensors-off

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It might not, but have you tried contacting all the reps, Democrats and Republicans, in your state, even if they are technically not your rep? The people in your area might not listen, but someone else might hear you and agree. Lobbyists go to anyone, why can’t we?

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Senior Programmer here. Great subject as always, less great content this time.
WARNING!
Sekur has “Reset Password” functionality on the login page. This means they hold your actual encryption keys on their server and are able to decrypt all data. (ProtonMail on the other hand claims to erase all previous data when resetting the password, so they theoretically only need to store the username -> recovery email association).
Contradiction:
4:14 - Criticizes Threema for going open source
8:11 - Criticizes Signal for going closed source
(Aside: regardless of open source status, it is near impossible with commonly used systems to know if the app in the app store corresponds to some public source code).
Lying by omission:
8:24 - Does not mention that Signal is supported by large public donations (https://techviral.net/signal-gets-50-million-donation-whatsapp-co-founder/). Goes on to claim that therefore they must be mining user data.
Lying:
9:08 - Creating strong encryption requires a powerful device. Untrue. The reason encryption works is that it is a bazillion times harder to guess someone else’s private key than it was to generate it. Using servers instead of user devices to encrypt communication just enables wiretapping the link in-between. The industry standard is end-to-end encryption between the parties communicating (Alice & Bob, without the server being able to decrypt). The Sekur website claims 100% E2E encryption, which contradicts his own statements.
Notable:
19:20 - Mentions French environmental activist who was outed by ProtonMail. ProtonMail is a Swizz company just like Sekur (details: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/07/protonmail_hands_user_ip_address_police/)
Good points:

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I am far from an expert on privacy, but I take it seriously enough that I can often tell how information is leaking to ad profilers. I have used only stupid phones, a de-Googled smartphone, and I just got a Linux Pinephone Pro.
I use Linux as my desktop environment because it is almost entirely free and open source. It has occurred to me that there may be persistent security risks in obscure corners of Linux (not connected to optional outside services) despite the many eyes reviewing the source code, but it’s difficult to imagine a system better suited to rewarding honesty and disincentivizing malfeasance. Closed source software would be more opaque and difficult to reverse-engineer, but you would be trusting a private company and the people behind it. It could go well if those people are honorable and can stand up to pressures where others have capitulated, or it could just be a confidence game.
Perhaps someone who knows more than I do can opine about privacy via public/private keys, such as SSH with ed25519 or rsa algorithms. It seems to me the keys can easily be made long enough (4096 bits) and many email clients can integrate this kind of encryption in the body of the email. But it is not entirely private since the subject, addresses, and headers including IP information are required to be in plain text when sent between independent domains.

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This one was quite disappointing. Mr. Ghiai’s comments on open source were extremely misleading. He may be an excellent bussineman but he’s no cryptographer. Every trusted cryptographic algorithm on the planet is “open source”. (See Bruce Schneier’s book “Applied Cryptography”) Also his statement about cell phones not having enough computational power for strong encryption is just totally wrong! I couldn’t finish this sales pitch. It’s BS.

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I also use only linux and a dumb phone that has bluetooth and WiFi turned off. I have no confidence in these steps preventing invasion as our lawmakers have specifically made that legal for the top level administrators and their contractors. Some protection from annoying information sharing is noticeably working. With the newer guidelines used by our DOJ along with the nation’s highest court deciding that equal protection under the law is no longer important (by allowing certain populations the be forced to do things that others are not) I have little idea how we are to proceed.

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Here, here fellow bullseye.

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https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-354-mark-hurst-asks-is-digital-tech-doing-evil/
fyi

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I am not convinced. Switzerland is not neutral, no longer. Look at the 2nd world war illegal activities. The money stored and hold there. If my data is in a server (privately owned) - it is not secure. The only option we have is email/chat services that are on the blockchain. https://coincentral.com/top-blockchain-messaging-apps-crypto-messengers/

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Really object to paying a membership fee for garbage like this. Any company (GlobeX Data) that sponsors programs on a news outlet as discredited as The Epoch Times should have been your first red flag. Next they will be sponsoring Rachel Maddow!

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Chris, for topics that outside your wheelhouse you could float the name (behind the paywall) of the person you plan on interviewing. If you get feedback it will only make your questions sharper and may filter out some people.

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I notice on the homepage of PeakProsperity an advertisement for Sekur with a “Peak” promotion code. This is obviously a conflict of interest. I did not recall that you started the interview explaining that you were selling access to your subscriber base to Sekur. I did not watch the whole video so maybe you clarified this later. Given Chris’ understanding of the role of finacial incentives in causing unconscious (and conscious) bias, it is a real shame to see this at PP.

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Attached is the screenshot with the “original content” and the ad to the right on the homepage.