He is a ghost

- Right? It's kinda nuts how much this quixotic prepper-style power fantasy permeates some parts of the Internet. Hell, even that strip is conceding the basic point that there will be a cabal of evil people digging for all their super-important secret files at some point.
  
  Kinda makes you wonder what's on their drive that they're so concerned about being uncovered. I'm all for privacy as a right, but people don't usually go balls to the wall on their computer security just to protect cat memes or tax documents. People won't even assume just regular porn stuff. People will assume terrorist plots or sex crimes or stolen classified stuff. Idk, if my NSA agent cares enough to break basic security just to find out my porn search history, then I'm just thinking that that's wasted tax dollars. I'm not that interesting.
  Edit: I'm not saying don't do simple encryption, I'm saying that putting up ten barriers and having paid services and using multiple vpns has drawbacks of cost and performance, so what are the odds that somebody would go to all the trouble for data that nobody would care about. If you saw a giant vault in somebody's basement, you would assume there's something interesting in there.
- Rubberhose (file system) Deniable encryption
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
  The notion of "deniable encryption" was used by Julian Assange and Ralf Weinmann in the Rubberhose filesystem (...) In cryptography, rubber-hose cryptanalysis is a euphemism for the extraction of cryptographic secrets (e.g. the password to an encrypted file) from a person by coercion or torture—such as beating that person with a rubber hose, hence the name—in contrast to a mathematical or technical cryptanalytic attack. (...)
  
  Encrypted stenography
  
  That's all very clever and good, but Assange has been cooling his heels in Belmarsh Prison since 2019 awaiting extradition to the US and Ralf Weinmann only escaped the same fate by dropping off the face of the earth.
  Wikileaks has been a dead letter for over a decade and the western public is now so thoroughly poisoned against big intel leaks that its doubtful an effort to reinvent the site would have any benefit.
  So we're still back to a guy with a wrench being an effective means of dealing with entrepreneurial hackers.
- Cwster
- Happy cake day!

this is exactly the sort of thing you imagine in the shower to feel good about yourself
- I imagine other things in the shower when I want to feel good ;)
  
  Like compiling a kernel? Same!
- Imagining that they're hide&seek world champions because they've always won.... when playing with imaginary friends.

If you guys don't think the CIA can hack a Linux computer I've got a nice bridge you might want to purchase.
- I don't want to buy the bridge, but I'm willing to donate to make the bridge open source, does that count?
  
  Is this just taxes with extra steps?
- Someone told me there was a bridge sale going on, am I late?
- Whoa I love bridges. Which one? Where is it?
  
  It's br0
- Is it in balmore?
  
  Arizona actually
- what color is the bridge?
  
  Transparent?
  
  Butthole
- There are two things you could be confused on, which is it? That the CIA can hack Linux or the bridge for sale?

what does he do all day?
He administers his system.
- He's also a fursuit connoisseur.
- and configures vim obviously

Buy a thinkpad x230 and install heads. Write protect the flash chip. Put nail polish on the screws and take high resolution pictures to ensure signs of tampering. Do NOT use a HDD or SSD. They have DMA so a malicious firmware could do a lot of damage, use of USB is preferred since they do not have DMA. Completely remove the microphone, sound card, webcam and the WWAN card from the laptop. Remove the fan to prevent binary acoustic data transmission. Replace the default wifi card with a supported atheros card. Disable wifi when not in use, preferably by physically removing the card. Make your own independent Linux distro from scratch. Most Linux distros value convenience over security and will thus never have good security. Your only option is to make your own. Use musl instead of glibc, Libressl instead of openssl, sinit instead of systemd, oksh instead of bash, toybox instead of gnu coreutils to reduce attack surface. Enable as little kernel modules as possible. Use a hardened memory allocator. Apply strong SELinux and sandboxing policies. Restrict the root account heavily to make sure it never gets compromised. Disable JavaScript and CSS in your browser. Block all FAGMAN domains in your hosts file. Monitor all network requests. Do not use a phone. Never speak near anyone who owns a phone, they are always listening. Never use any non-corebooted technology made after 2006. Never leave your devices unattended. Tape triple layer aluminum foil all around your room as tempest shielding. Type really quietly as defense against audio keylogging. Use ecc ram to minimize rowhammer and rambleed. Encrypt everything multiple times with various different encryption implementations. Compile everything from source. Use hardened compilation flags. Always read through the source before installing something if possible. Only use the internet when absolutely necessary.
- What's a FAGMAN?
  
  Facebook Apple Google Microsoft Amazon Netflix
- ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
- The only thing comparable to Meth is Linux.
  
  Isn't that just some distro though?
- I member the first time I smoked meth 😜
  
  Math hits harder
- This is why I am on lemmy
- Remove the anti-glare protective layer from your display so there is like a 30 degree radius from which you can actually see what’s on the screen. Attach the USB flash drive to your wrist with a string, set up the system to automatically shut down when the stick is removed.

"Finally, we cracked it. What was he hiding in this thing?"
"Mostly ways to keep his data safe"
- There are two kinds of people obsessed with their internet security.
  Computer hobbyists with an inflated opinion of their own importance and a touch of autism
  IT Security Professionals
  You'll notice I left out pedophiles. That is because pedophiles are dumb and regularly get caught.
  
  That is kind of the problem. Everyone else is getting scammed, their data stolen and tried to be manipulated by targeted advertising, algorithms and addictive, yet unhealthy social media platforms.
  I wish it were more than the nerds who cared...
  
  Pedophiles are dumb enough to bring their phone in for an upgrade at T-Mobile with an SD card full of CP. That was a fun call with the cops.
  
  I mean, the scary part of that thought is acknowledging availability heuristics. The pedophiles dumb enough to regularly get caught are the pedophiles we know about.
  
  That is because pedophiles are dumb and regularly get caught.
  The ones with bad opsec that you habe heard about. This kind of underestimation is what fucks feds in the ass, this is how Mr swirl went so many years free.

Like the feds would care about raiding the house because it was actually his parents’ lmao
- "He lives with his family, so make sure you pack the dog gun."
- true

And his harddrive isencrypted, so raiding is kinda useless.
- I don't know why but I read raiding, I thought He's RAIDing his house. So, like, one hard drive on a computer in this house, another hardrive in another computer in another house, as a RAID 0, so there is no point in raiding the house.
  It's late okay. Give me a break.
  
  Lol

Blob free capable computers are so old though. After trying one I don't know how I survived that era without even using ssds. Before that how the hell did live with Pentium 2, 3, and 4?
- Some of us had to install Windows XP SP2 and 4 on these machines. I made money just sitting in a room watching progress bars.
- There was a lot less data to grind through.
- Still faster than the 286 with math co-processor that I started with at home.
- how the hell did live with Pentium 2, 3, and 4?
  Pentium 4s and later the Pentium D ran so hot I could use them to heat my dorm room. Miss that.
  
  Right? I was told a custom PC was good as a space heater. Stupid modern hardware
  
  I literally did this. My senior year in college I had a single dorm room and I’m guessing some overlocked Celeron CPUs in a dual-socket motherboard. I never once turned on the heat. I’d often come home and open my window when it was snowing outside.
- Can someone explain blob to me?
  
  I'll butcher the explanation so here's the Wikipedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob
  Usually its the uefi/bios where its hardest to avoid

doing it the right way

feds: proceed to kidnap and torture the VIP target described in OP post for answers

I don't think the NSA or CIA has ever had any interests in my specific online activity, purely because the manpower is never that well utilized in our world, but in the age of automation that could all change soon.

My goals in life