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Dear Ruben Safir,

In the previous installment of our privacy series, we heard
from people who have to fight for their rights and who protect their
privacy by using free software. Maybe you live in a democratic country
where citizens enjoy legal certainty and therefore deem government
oppression far away. Maybe you trust your government to never fail
(and I sincerely hope you will never be disappointed). Why should you
care about privacy and use free software to protect it? The following
people can tell you from their own experiences.

Meet people who use free software to protect privacy

Ina Johnson is a domestic violence victim who lives in the United
States. Her husband tracks her online activity in real time,
selectively blocks her access to websites, attempts to steal her
account credentials, deletes data from her devices, and violates her
right to privacy in a multitude of ways. In a survey conducted by the
Tor Project, Johnson says, "I started using Tor to protect my
privacy […] If not for Tor, I would not have another option for online
privacy."

Tor is a browser and online anonymity network that improves
privacy on the Internet. It uses encryption and IP address
obfuscation to make web traffic untraceable and private. Tor, as well
as all the projects and software we present in this article, is free
software, which is the only type of software that can guarantee true
privacy. While free software doesn't guarantee privacy, only free
software allows us to guarantee true privacy.

Going back to the topic of why privacy in general is important, let's
do a thought experiment. Let's assume you trust your spouse, all the
people around you, and your government. Take a moment to think about
whether you also trust big tech giants like Google and Meta to the
same degree. Consider whether you trust them, for example, to
responsibly handle sensitive information of your children's health and
other data. George Sanchez would answer that question with a decided
no. His reasons are simple, he wants to protect his children in
today's technological environment. In the Tor survey, he says, "I am a
father of two teenagers. […] I try to be up to date with research,
information, and details if anything arises. I use Tor to do the
research to basically avoid telling Google (and others) that my
children have […] issues." Similarly, James Taylor explains, "I use
Tor as my everyday browser. Especially, when I research doctors and
other very personal stuff, it feels better, 'cause hopefully there
won't be data for sale, telling the world about my assumed medical
condition."

Micky Metts, LibrePlanet keynote speaker and worker/owner of
Agaric Technology Collective uses free software because it
grants her the right to study how the software that holds her data is
working and lets her control who has access to her information. She
states:

Personal information has been used to deny people healthcare and to
deny employment based on medical conditions or political
beliefs. […] Some corporations buy data in bulk to learn more about
their employees. A good example would be that your employer finds
out you may be pregnant because you bought a pregnancy test at a
pharmacy that sells their data […] and then terminates you
immediately.

Next, let's meet doctor Steven White. Sanchez, Taylor, Metts, and all
the rest of us can only hope that our doctor is as thoughtful with our
medical information as Dr. White, who goes out of his way to protect
his patients' privacy, and does so with free software. Dr. White has
politicians as patients whose legislation made them big enemies in the
telecom, social media, and search engine industries. When he does
research on diseases and treatment, he has to ensure that his search
histories can't be correlated to patient visits nor leak information
about their health, families, and personal lives.

Unfortunately, we see more and more people use proprietary software,
such as what runs on devices like the Apple Watch, to monitor their
health. In our fall FSF Bulletin article on privacy, you can
read how proprietary period tracking apps send the health data about
its users to surveillance capitalism tech giants like Meta.

Healthcare is one example of an area with especially sensitive
information. There are other areas with similar concerns, like
education or law. If you ever need a lawyer, you should check that
they will handle what you tell them as carefully as Alper
Atmaca, a lawyer in Turkey, or Neil Brown from
decoded.legal, a virtual English law firm. Both exclusively use
free software to communicate with their clients. When Atmaca offers a
videoconference on Jitsi Meet, he is often confronted with
resistance in the beginning. Many clients want to stick to a program
by the tech giants that they know. However, after some explanation,
his clients soon come to understand that the delicate topics they are
talking about with their attorney will only stay confidential if they
communicate via software that respects their privacy. "In the end,
most of them are amazed what a self-hosted Jitsi has to offer," says
Atmaca.

Jitsi Meet offers end-to-end encryption for conversations
between two people and encryption at the network level for
videoconferencing between more people, which is why the FSF provides a
fully free Jitsi Meet server to all associate members as a
member benefit. The service notably does not use any third party
servers for network initialization. Hosting own instances of services
is the fastest way to controlling software privacy. To help others, we
published the source code of the FSF's customizations of Jitsi
Meet.

Finally, let's hear from Neil Brown, who also thinks that
communicating securely is important. He, too, uses Jitsi for
videoconferences and, if a client requests it, encrypts his emails.
"Whether you are communicating with your lawyer or your lover, it's
important that what you say stays with you and the person you are
communicating with only and that no one else can alter it!" The same
is true for client-identifiable information. Brown therefore encrypts
files with Cryptomator before syncing them to a free,
decentralized file storage platform called Nextcloud. If someone
accesses the system remotely they will only see encrypted files. In
addition, Brown encrypts his disks in case his computer gets lost or
stolen. Brown is keen to point out that valuing freedom does not mean
compromising on quality. He says, "there's a wealth of amazing free
software, offering both quality and freedom -- you don't need to
settle for just one or the other."

Protecting our privacy is not a crime, it's a fundamental right

There are countless reasons why we should protect our privacy using
end-to-end encryption. Nevertheless, some still draw a foregone
conclusion that the mere use of encryption is in itself sufficient
evidence of criminal actions. Unfortunately, this is also the case in
the investigations of the so-called "8 December" case, in which
seven people were accused of being part of a terrorist conspiracy. The
defendants adamantly deny the charge of terrorism. Their trial is set
to be held in October 2023.

La Quadrature du Net revealed that the investigation cites the
use of encrypted communication and privacy tools such as VPN or Tor as
proof of so-called "clandestine behavior," which is considered to
reinforce the charge of terrorism. The following quote of the
conclusion by the Parquet National Antiterroriste (National
Antiterrorist Prosecution Office) on the 8 December case shows this
paradigmatically:

The protagonists of the case were all characterized by their cult of
secrecy and obsession with discretion, both in their exchanges and
in their Internet browsing habits. The encrypted application Signal
was used by all of the accused, some of whom communicated
exclusively [highlighted in the original text] through it.

It's a popular misconception that someone who encrypts their
communication or protects their browsing from prying eyes is hiding a
crime. Misconceptions like this make it even more important that
people who use encryption tell their story and let the world know how
free software encryption helps protect our privacy, and why that is
so important. Because we have everything to protect from snoops.
What we write, where we browse, and who we are belongs to us and only
to us. No one else should be allowed to see it without our
permission. Privacy is not a crime; it's our fundamental right.

Tell your own story

Let us and the world know why you use free software to protect your
privacy. Tell your story on social media starting your statement
with "I use #freesoftware to protect my #privacy because […]"

Read more on privacy and free software

Visit the website of the FSF's anti-surveillance campaign to
learn more about privacy and free software.

Discover why privacy and security depend on free software.

Check out the FSF's Email Self-Defense Guide which is available
in eight different languages.

Take action! Protect free software that respects our privacy
against legislative attempts to install a backdoor.

In freedom,

Miriam Bastian

Program Manager

Editorial note: Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the
people whose stories are told in this article.

Illustration Copyright © 2014, Johannes Landin. Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
International license.