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I respect your knowledge, Mark, having just read your thread on security tips. But Sword has been a generous FRiend and help to me through the years thus your statement about the Yuck you get from cultists who are on Sword's ping list didn't sit well with me.

I was a systems programmer in the wayback days when one had to work in Assembler language and master the fields of IBM's data dumps. I understand enough in principle to know that anything can be slipped into code, thus expect an invasion of privacy when using these complex machines. The devil is in the details and who reads source code to know what all the apps and programs do?

We're fighting a corrupt government which by definition abuses its power to control its citizen's lives. Backdoors are becoming old-fashioned.. As of this week's news, we find out that if our government wants an individual's compliance, it doesn't even need to mine data, it just makes up a story about you, surreptitiously slips it into your computer leaving no trace it was there, and voila--compliance is just a whisper of blackmail away.

You can try to maintain a semblance of dignity and privacy as we slip into totalitarian dictatorship. I appreciate your suggestions on preserving my privacy. It would be good to see a little more dignity upheld among our fine FReeper tech community.

The Westerner