{"id":393,"date":"2026-03-20T19:04:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/?p=393"},"modified":"2026-03-20T19:04:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:04:38","slug":"some-friday-evening-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/2026\/03\/20\/some-friday-evening-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Friday Evening Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am at my dead end part time job doing security work and finding myself doing some heavy thinking about government. I&#8217;m disturbed at the amounts of money and resources being thrown at surveillance of the internet. The most recent age verification angle is particularly disturbing. I am angry that a contingent of the Linux community is willfully bending to these laws instead of fighting them. I get why Red Hat and Fedora capitulate but I don&#8217;t agree with it. I hope other distros won&#8217;t kowtow to government surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am personally convinced that it is time to do an open subversion of government surveillance attempts. I know I risk being branded as a domestic terrorist as a result of my views but I don&#8217;t necessarily care. It&#8217;s all about bumping up against the legality line without crossing over into criminality. We have a right to be secure digitally too. It&#8217;s one reason why I want to create a secure network. I just don&#8217;t know how to appropriately police it so as to avoid crossing into criminality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve thought about creating a secure network in the past but it&#8217;s only been thoughts. I know that I would like to <em>legally<\/em> thwart government surveillance. What if a closed-loop virtual private network could be created where all communication stays within the confines of the network? Everything would have to be encrypted and no logs kept. What if I simply made it free? Could I bypass the laws designed to assist the government in its surveillance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I mean yes it could be abused as any tool or system can but I like to err on the side of freedom. The freedom to communicate without being spied on is fundamental. Government should live in fear of, and serve, its citizens; not the other way around. I keep going back to Benjamin Franklin&#8217;s very prescient statement, &#8220;Those that would sacrifice liberty for security gain none and deserve neither.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I want to live in a world where I can have a discussion with a friend over long distances without having to be concerned with having my conversations recorded or analyzed. I want to be free to post my opinions and thoughts without being placed on a watch list somewhere. Well, to be honest, I am probably on a watch list because I am not afraid of making my opinions known. Therefore certain parties might be concerned that I would somehow diminish their power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I already made the conscious choice to do everything on open source software and operating systems. I do not use anything proprietary or non-free. This alone means I run against the grain of society. Doesn&#8217;t the old adage, &#8220;The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.&#8221; apply very well to the US?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am at my dead end part time job doing security work and finding myself doing some heavy thinking about government. I&#8217;m disturbed at the amounts of money and resources being thrown at surveillance of the internet. The most recent age verification angle is particularly disturbing. I am angry that a contingent of the Linux [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goblackcat.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}