Hello everyone, with the unfortunate passing of the FISA expansion, I was left with a few questions. I tried to research it, and to me, it seems like they are beefing up surveillance with routers and ISPs (correct me if I'm wrong.) Aside from having businesses stalk you when you use their WiFi (connected with ISPs.)
And if that's the case, should I just always use a VPN? And furthermore, shouldn't you have always used a VPN prior to this anyways?
That's why I'm confused because I already thought that other businesses were collecting data and our ISPs were already sending our data away, so I'm partially confused about what the real change here with FISA is.
Any clarification and advice is greatly appreciated, thank you.
And if that’s the case, should I just always use a VPN? And furthermore, shouldn’t you have always used a VPN prior to this anyways?
No idea about these USA specific things but always using a VPN would mean that you need to trust your VPN provider more than your ISP and your government. There is only one commercial VPN provider that I trust and one non commercial one. But then there is Tor, and the slower i2p. You also have to take into account that VPN blocking appears to be increasing. For all kind of shopping on-line and filling in forms for government related things (Things like let's say e.g. request money support for a wheel chair) I cannot use VPN because they're blocked or worse : time out. And I found out that lemmy.world likes to block Tor and VPN for posting and uploads. Reading is allowed though. So all in all you have no smooth sailing guaranteed.
The Wyden/Lummis amendment would have struck language that expands the definition of an electronic communication service provider to include, with some exceptions, any "service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications." The exceptions are for public accommodation facilities, dwellings, community facilities, and food service establishments.
So basically anybody with a computer network open to the public has to bend over in secret. This changes nothing if you assume all connections end up in their metadata database. It just makes it faster. Use your VPN/tor/i2p
Nothing different than before. Make sure you use a VPN at all times and everything you send after that is end to end encrypted.
I'd sat just keep doing what you would have done before to protect your privacy. Switch to privacy tools, especially encrypted communications services, and use both trustworthy VPNs and Tor for different use cases. Also, I heard (can't verify) that this effectively lets the government legally co-opt regular people to essentially function as spies under gag orders, so I'd just keep an eye out if you ever need to let some sort of professional into your home.
