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Building Mockingjay: A Video Recorder for When It Matters Most

2 points| jonbaer | 19 days ago |tskulbru.dev

1 comment

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rekabis|18 days ago

An excellent idea.

But I don’t have any kind of a Google account, nor would I want one. Because yes, the video stream is uploaded encrypted, but Google has no qualms about handing over data to US authorities. Encryption can always be trivially broken later with nation-state scale tools.

I do have a paid Sync.com account, of about 50Gb, for cloud data under Canadian sovereignty. Yes, the current fascist regime in America can still yoink that data under five-eyes agreements, but it is more difficult than a yoink from a domestic provider.

I also have a paid account under filen.io, which places some of my data outside of five-eyes jurisdiction. And while that platform has had stability and reliability issues, at least the stored data can’t be bullied out of a German-only company with a German data centre.

And I have even been looking into various other services, such as Tresorit, pCloud, and Infomaniak, which are Swiss companies with Swiss data centres.

So yeah. I’m excited to see a product like this. It’s needed.

But while what you have built is likely an excellent start, I would strongly recommend you extend storage options to cloud storage vendors that cannot be compelled by America’s current fascist regime.

Basically, if a cloud storage company has incorporation anywhere on American soil, it is not safe for your product to use. It can be compelled to divulge a user’s data. And with the resources of a country the size of America, cracking file encryption isn’t a significant barrier.

I mean, yes - let users decide. Many will likely continue to use Google Drive. I would caution against removing it owing to its low barrier to entry. Maybe even a warning banner upon linking, to make the dangers of using it clearer, or have two groups of cloud storage options in a drop-down: safe non-five-eyes/non-American ones first (in green), with problematic, American-owned ones after (in yellow or red).

But please, give the more intelligent and security-aware users better storage options.