Libre Solutions Network

Apr 08 2024 Gabriel

Data breaches are a serious problem. We do not live in an environment where it is safe for people’s PII (Personally Identifiable Information) to be widely available. When somebody’s data is leaked or stolen, there can be and have been serious repercussions for that person. It is desperately important that we not only carefully choose the platforms we use, but also that they’ve taken steps to protect their users from risks related to the platform itself.

Dec 10 2023 Gabriel

Surveillance of peoples communications is a severe overreach. Especially the act of monitoring people’s sensitive discussions with their most trusted contacts. Large institutions like corporations and governments are wrestling over control of and insight from people’s private chats. This is largely because there are limitations to only data-mining public communications. All the money and effort spent on propaganda and censorship can be for naught if people are still allowed to make their own minds in private.

Oct 19 2023 Gabriel

Recently a rumor that the tragic Hamas attack was enabled by a potential lack of backdoors accessible by western / 5 Eyes intelligence. Despite this, I wouldn’t recommend rushing to order a Huwawei phone for privacy reasons. If my threat model called for investigating hardware attacks, simply changing providers would be insufficient to keep them at bay. Understanding hardware exploits requires a bit of understanding about how systems run, so let’s take advantage of this teachable moment.

Jun 16 2023 Gabriel

We live in interesting times. In addition to the many boots-on-the-ground conflicts going on, cyberspace is a theatre of war with hardly any distinction between military and civilian targets. Nothing is off-limits and combatants can be anything from creative individuals to well-funded state level actors like governments and multi-national corporations. There’s no way to be perfectly out-of-the-way. Any significant cluster of data, storage, computing power, or bandwidth can become a strategic resource to be sought after.

May 08 2023 Gabriel

The Protocol Wars Battle lines are being drawn. The stakes could never be higher, the very future of how we all interact online is in our hands. It was so simple when everyone was silo’d onto a few corporate controlled platforms. Now, there are new platforms that aren’t merely controlled by a single entity, they are interoperable with each other, meaning that each system is composed of compatible units. Will one system entirely dominate the others?

Dec 19 2021 Gabriel

The best way to protect data is not to record it Almost everyone has at least a dozen accounts and it can be quite a disaster if your password gets published in yet another data breach. Passwords aren’t the only information worth stealing and the best way to protect important information is never to collect it. In general, it’s best to avoid making an account with a service if you don’t need to.