Do you want privacy and anonymity?

I have noticed that you are passionate about the issue of privacy and anonymity. Well, recently in Italy the top godfather of the “cosa nostra” Matteo Messina was arrested and was on the run for 30 years, just 10 km from his childhood home, eating ice cream and pizza every day in a public bar. The FBI thought he lived in Brazil, in Argentina, but he did not. So how does the Southern Italian mafia stay anonymous, or El Mayo Zambada, who is the real capo of the Sinaloa cartel and not the stupid Chapo Guzman?
They don’t use cell phones or electronic devices. They send papers or letters written like 100 years ago. Just like that.

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There is something to be said about minimalism being a great way to reduce the amount of data that’s out there about you. In some ways with all of these technologies we’re trying to have our cake and eat it too. On the other end, we have to balance out how plugged in want to or need to be into the world versus our desire to be private, and thus we’ve come back around to threat modeling.

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It works for them because they have people that can be made reliable whether they want to or not.

I dont think we can realistically pass notes around with couriers and carrier pigeons like the olden days. Not everyone has a network of willing and trusted couriers. What you do have is a phone and/or a computer and hopefully, an internet connection.

We can also speculate that this is also an indictment of the shift in intelligence budget from good old HumInt to SigInt and OsInt. We can argue that the very same person would be caught in the 70s and 80s given the Cold War era style of intelligence and field agents.

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I mean sometimes it pays off, to live by saying “the biggest dark is right under the lamp” but it could be largely luck. Not everyone is willing to risk jail time, and hope they won’t be seen in plain sight.
And most people can’t really be part of society without a phone, or a computer. Soon it will be impossible for most, if not all people in developed countries.

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You can say something similar about Donald Trump. He’s famous for never texting or emailing. And hates it when people take written notes of his conversations. He’s in trouble now but no doubt it would be worse if his own personal communications were used against him.

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To be honest, this reads all too much like a Facebook post, complete with the scant details.

Over 100 members of the armed forces were involved in the arrest of Messina Denaro, who was detained in Palermo at a private clinic where he was receiving treatment for cancer (reportedly visiting the clinic under a fake name for chemotherapy)

…make that “wrong details”.

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Hello. I have decided to disconnect my wifi most of the day

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Wifi is the relatively more anonymous way to connect online. Arguably, a cellphone signal is a more privacy invasive way to connect because cellphone have a unique IMEI that towers literally triangulate to your exact position in order to provide network connectivity.

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Going to lock this thread as I doubt meaningful debate is going to come from it.

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