The Myth of Outrunning Government Surveillance

Enhancing privacy to avoid government spying is a losing battle – focus on these things instead

When people decide to prioritize their digital privacy and security, they have one of two concerns (generally):

1. Government surveillance

2. Protecting their personal information

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#2 covers a large range of concerns - data breaches, Big Tech data harvesting, and identity theft, to name just a few. These mostly revolve around getting a handle on your personal information so it can’t be exploited for commercial purposes or by Bad Actors.

Those that fall in the first category have a different concern. They often imagine a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with government agencies. They dream of outwitting shadowy surveillance systems with the latest tech. Maybe they are even looking to go off the digital grid entirely.

Here’s the hard truth for that group though: If you’re important enough for the government to care about you, there’s not much you can do to hide from their surveillance. Well, there is one thing you can do. Read to the end for this one weird trick to stop government surveillance in it’s tracks.

But high profile people that challenge the status quo will always be at risk of government surveillance. Take the recent case of the founder of Polymarket, whose home was raided by the FBI.

As background, Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform that allows people  to bet on the outcomes of real-world events using cryptocurrency. Think elections.

By leveraging blockchain technology, Polymarket operates outside the control of traditional financial systems, making it difficult for governments to regulate or shut down. This poses a challenge to the status quo by enabling free-market forecasting and incentivizing information sharing without the need for centralized oversight. Governments often view platforms like Polymarket as threats because they disrupt traditional regulatory frameworks, potentially enabling activities like unregulated gambling or even politically sensitive forecasting that could undermine institutional authority.

Given all that, it’s easy to see why the FBI was monitoring Polymarket leadership and eventually seized the founder’s phone and other devices in the raid. The FBI will be able to break into his devices with little issues. Even if the founder was using secure communications platforms like Signal, Tuta, or Proton, the FBI has transcripts of all his comms already. Seizing the physical devices is just belts and suspenders type investigative work.

AI scams are here and getting more sophisticated. One of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to remove your personal information from Google and the data broker sites. That starves the scammers of vital information, making you a much harder target. You can DIY, or pay a reasonable fee to DeleteMe to do it for you. Sign up today and get 20% off using our affiliate link here. We’ve used DeleteMe for almost five years and love it for the peace of mind. It’s also a huge time saver.

How do we know that?

Flashback to a few years ago. Glenn Greenwald broke the story of widespread NSA surveillance against U.S. citizens. Activity that if true, was a clear violation of U.S. law. Greenwald’s source for the story was former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald’s central role in reporting the story and his relationship with Snowden made him a high profile target of global intelligence agencies. Knowing this, Greenwald went to great lengths to protect his communications, using the latest encryption tech available to him.

And it didn’t work. Here he is in his own words:

That’s why our privacy and security advice does not focus on government surveillance countermeasures. There are some things you can do around the margins to protect yourself from overzealous local law enforcement. But trying to hide your activities from the NSA, CIA, FBI, MI6, etc. is a fool’s errand in our humble opinion.

Still, if that is your primary concern and you want to give it a try, there are plenty of accounts on X (f/k/a Twitter) that are happy to oblige. Fair warning though, most of those accounts are pretenders that have no real world privacy or security experience. Their recommendations are taken from Hollywood movies or are things that sound great in theory but don’t work in practice. We touched on it here:

Instead, our focus is on how to protect yourself from more common and practical threats, like: 

• Data breaches: The more information you have floating around in apps, email accounts, and social media profiles, the more vulnerable you are if a platform is hacked. 

• Doxing: By limiting what personal details are publicly accessible, you can avoid having malicious actors expose your private life online. 

• Scams and identity theft: A tighter control on your digital footprint makes you less of a target for phishing schemes and social engineering attacks. 

• Corporate tracking and profiling: Every search, purchase, and like adds to a data profile that companies use to manipulate your behavior or sell to others. Reducing this profile is a win for your privacy. 

Taking steps to address the above issues will put you in an elite group. You’ll become effectively breach proof and un-doxable. You will be a harder target for scams. This is 100% doable, with some investment of effort and money.

Compare that with trying to protect yourself from government surveillance. The Polymarket guy couldn’t do it. Glenn Greenwald couldn’t do it. As soon as you choose to be a public figure and/or disrupt the system, you have a target on your back. And no amount of privacy or security countermeasures will protect you from the scrutiny of the FBI, NSA, CIA, MI6, etc.

And that is the one weird trick to being invisible to government surveillance - be as boring and non-threatening to the status quo as possible.

It’s really that simple. If you’re just going about your business, keeping a low profile, not involved in politics, no law enforcement or intelligence agency will pay you any mind. But as soon as you pose a threat to the status quo or become a disruptor, you won’t be able to hide. When governments decide to target someone, their resources and reach will overwhelm even the most advanced security protocols as Glenn Greenwald’s situation shows.

Thank you for your continued support and trust in us. Especially all of our paid subscribers - we couldn’t do this without you. 🙏

Looking for help with a privacy issue or privacy concern? Chances are we’ve covered it already or will soon. Follow us on X and LinkedIn for updates on this topic and other internet privacy related topics. We’re also now on Rumble and YouTube. Subscribe today to be notified when videos are published.

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Disclaimer: None of the above is to be deemed legal advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by a privacy attorney with 15+ years of working for, with and against Big Tech and Big Data. And this post is for informational purposes only and is not intended for use in furtherance of any unlawful activity.

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