[dayglored]

I tend to believe you're right, with regard to our and other governments putting spyware hardware in computers at the manufacturing level. I remember when some of them were discovered on foreign-made motherboards some years ago; no reason to doubt Snowden's claim with regard to those made stateside.

In years past I built my own computers from scratch with hardware components I trusted, and open-source software. These days I can't build my own hardware. I still use as much open-source software as possible. Past that, I just have to accept the residual level of risk.

[cgbg]

Good post.

They key is to avoid overconfidence that any of us has privacy.

My baseline presumption is that if .gov has any issue with you then you have zero privacy.