My name is Kim Crawley, and I teach enterprise cybersecurity at OPIT.
My upcoming book Digital Safety in a Dangerous World may be controversial because I will be calling some politicians fascists. But my book will be written from a perspective of acknowledging that the US tech industry and government are collaborating to surveil ordinary people (especially those who are marginalized or political activists) through the internet.
I intend to focus on software/platform alternatives (i.e. GrapheneOS instead of vanilla Android, LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office 365, Signal instead of SMS, etc.), general opsec with the internet and one’s personal endpoints (phones, PCs), what people can do if they can’t remove all Microsoft/Google/Meta, etc. from their lives.
There will also be advice for artists and writers who want to avoid having their work scrapped for Gen AI. For example, I have been trying an application called Nightshade that’s supposed to process digital images in a way that humans can see the art but not the Gen AI scrappers.
I have been talking with Evan Greer, a couple of people at EFF, a couple of digital privacy academics who would prefer to be anonymous, a couple of human rights lawyers, someone at Wired, and some of my colleagues. I really want to make sure the advice in my book is good. I teach enterprise cybersecurity and I understand cryptography implementations a bit, but there’s a lot of expertise that I lack.
Sounds like an interesting (very comprehensive) project, I’ll definitely keep my eye on this one.
I will also offer tips for reducing your Gen AI attack surface, as used by OpenAI, Google, and other corporations. For instance, artists can make their human made digital art a lot less vulnerable to being stolen by DALL E!
I’m really curious about this topic in your outline actually
My interest has been piqued, and I look forward to the book! I noticed that there seems to be a notable emphasis on breaking the misconception that privacy and security are all or nothing, an emphasis I think is really cool! I would like to mention a couple things that I think could help with your research, and I have a couple suggestions.
In regards to AI training protection, this Youtube video talks about preventing AI to train music.
Although I haven’t read his books, IntelTechnique’s Michael Bazzell reportedly used to work in the US government surrounding computer and intelligence stuff, and I’ve heard he gives cool privacy advice specific to US citizens. (Although, needless to say, US citizens may not be the only audience appreciative of privacy advice.)
As time passes by, some privacy tools become corrupt, unmaintained, or obselete. All the while, other new tools are made. Are there plans to update this book and adjust some of the tools and/or noted trends? You could also or instead maybe link to PrivacyGuides, which is updated often.
I also noticed that the Kickstarter page mentions that you’ll talk about both Tor and I2P proxies. Maybe the new Nym network could also be of interest?
Lastly, would you be willing to consider offering more private ways to support you, like through sending Monero?
I understand that Monero isn’t something everyone wants to set up, and I wasn’t mentioning it as a requirement for me to support this. I just wanted to point out that others might feel more comfortable supporting in other ways, especially in the privacy community.
