The Qubes OS Privacy Question

General Discussion
81

Are you of low intelligence or high intelligence? It has to be either
high or low. Can’t be none because you can use a keyboard.

Do you see how ridiculous that is? Binary is not “precise” in these cases.

You’re right. What you said was that “anti-privacy people will not make
any replies that support the suggestion of making the forum .onion.
They will make arguments against it such as tor is not e2ee if you use
whonix because its not encrypted between whonix workstation and whonix
gateway”. But this is true, and in the context of the discussion was
a point worth making.
Or do you think it is not true? Or a truth that should not be said?

It’s significant that you cant identify any such post at all.
No one argued against that statement. But there was a discussion
about the possibility of having an onion front end, and a diversion in
to “privacy” - even there you claimed :

I questioned this, and asked for a source, but of course, you didnt
provide one. You repeatedly make claims about what devs have said, but
never provide source.

Anyway, my deep state overlords have told me to stop wasting time here,
and to return to my main task of undermining Qubes, and bringing about the
birth of the New World Order.
To hear is to obey.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

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82

That would be fun. Feel free.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

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83
(moderator edit) baseless accusations and deep state conspiracies

It’s actually even worse if this is what made unman decide to go after me. Because that means unman is on the deep state’s side, defending the deep state. How can someone be angry about a corrupt deep state losing their power? Just the very definition of a deep state is corrupt even without adding the word corrupt to it. There isn’t supposed to be a deep state. It is a big red flag if someone is defending the deep state.

It also raises the question: is qubes os politically aligned with the deep state? Either officially or unofficially? Or is it just unman while the rest of the qubes team are fine with him fighting for the deep state?

That quote about a dev saying privacy users are a loud minority. It was you who said that and I’m sure you know that. So we both know what you are doing. I actually did try to search for that post but either the search engine is bad or you have deleted it before you asked for a quote. But its probably you who deleted it because I don’t think you forgot you wrote that. Everyone else who hasn’t seen you say that are left having to decide who to trust. You have the advantage of being a long term figure of authority here, which is the standard move for deep state users. But as I’ve shown with proof, you are capable of untruthful claims and being intentionally imprecise. Anyone can see that any topic that is about privacy, you are always arguing against it or the users who want privacy. You just can’t avoid it, you see a topic about privacy and you just can’t let it go, you can’t move on, you have to jump in a start fighting against privacy and anyone who wants privacy.

Maybe that’s another reason why there aren’t so many privacy users on qubes os forum. First is of course that the forum is bad for privacy, but the second reason is because of you unman, because you are constantly in their face and constantly fighting and arguing against privacy and all the privacy users. I think qubes os would be better off without unman, it would significantly improve the root of trust without unman.

84

It’s about lazy and non-lazy people, I’d say. About responsible and not(-enough) responsible people. About people who would like someone else to do the things instead of them, so they can blame others, never one’s-self.

DispVM, created from specifically and carefully set templateVM to access only my ebanking is the pinnacle of privacy. And it’s possible (only?) in Qubes.

After this, asses yourself in the first paragraph of this post.

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85

You’ve not shown intentionality, and I’ve never seen anything from unman that could support that claim.

@qubist made a point about how you phrase things… Also, you’re conveniently omitting the other “standard move” of maintaining dummy accounts to make false flag attacks on yourself.

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86

A new message from “system” informs me that:

Now that I am completely baffled by this cognitive dissonance, one thing has become clear - deep state is trying to confuse me!

What is worse - deep state is trying to confuse us all about who is pro- or anti-, who is out or in, who is on topic and who is off, etc. They want total chaos and personal confrontation to destroy this community! It’s them, not us!

So, if I may suggest, let’s not allow that.

Now I will distrust myself and get a T-shirt (encrypted and signed by independent sources), so I know who is in the mirror next time I look.

Deep state, you are toast!

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87

I don’t see anything wrong with that post.

88

My prior belief for this possibility being true was a coin flip before I began using Qubes many years ago. My posterior belief, since engaging with the dev team and community forum over time, is essentially zero. I imagine I’m fairly representative of the pro-privacy tribe here in saying that what you’re claiming, without evidence, is so improbable that a reasonable person will just simply believe you are trolling the forum and not pay any mind to your posts. My concern is that you are undermining those of us who care about privacy. Does that make you aligned with the “deep state”, or even worse, “deep tech”?

Ratcheting up these unfounded attacks will not improve your privacy, nor will they undermine our confidence in unman. The currency of this realm is contributions. If you want influence, then contribute something of value to our privacy. I’d be quite happy if the forum had a .onion address, or if development was transitioned away from github, but either of these will require more effort than simply making a few somewhat vacuous forum posts.

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89

The Qubes OS core team has a solid track record when it comes to listening to constructive criticism/feedback, I don’t think there is any reason to think that is going to change.

The idea that people are “anti-privacy”, because they are not interested in supporting fantasies about deep state conspiracy theories based on random brain farts, is just straight up laughable.

You don’t have to have a forum account or GitHub account to use Qubes OS. If you choose to use either, it can be done through Tor.

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90

I know it’s a lot of posts to read but if you really want to get full understanding you will see that unman is the one who has kept on and on and on about who was it that said privacy users are a loud minority. I have been ignoring his posts about that because I know for a fact that it was he who said that and he must have deleted it. He is a manipulative liar. I know it’s hard for you to believe this because you are not me but I have seen it with my own eyes so I know this for a fact. But I still didn’t accuse him. I already know that the liar has won that battle because of his dirty tactics of cleaning up the evidence. I didn’t take a screenshot of him saying that because I didn’t expect him to use such dirty tactics. It’s only after that I realized what kind of person unman is. But I still didn’t accuse him. I tried to move on the discussion and also start new topics but he keeps following me everywhere and keep spamming about who said that even though he and I both know it was himself who said it. So now in the end I decided to just say it was him because he never stops spamming about it, even though we both know it was he who said it. What would you do in my shoes? Assume I am speaking the truth when you answer what you would have done in my shoes. Yes it would have been great if I quoted him saying that before he deleted it but I really didn’t think he would do something like that. I thought if I do get asked for a quote I can just search for it. But I also didn’t think it’s some big secret news because it’s a post in this public forum he made.

The problem is you are forgetting about root of trust. You have to trust the developers even if it’s open source. It’s not only about who contributes the most code. Would you be happy if NSA took over the qubes os project and wrote lots of “secure” contributions we can completely trust?

I think trust is more important than amount of contributions. I would use any other linux distro even bloated ubuntu if I trusted their dev team more than qubes os. Qubes os has more security features than other linux distros but if I had zero trust in qubes team then that wouldn’t matter, I would still use whatever else like debian maybe.

But overall I still trust qubes team more than all other os, its only unman i have no trust in. I see right through him. Imagine if you are in my shoes and you know for a fact because you saw it with your own eyes that he said those who wants privacy are a loud minority, and then the post is deleted and he is asking you who said that, link to it. Just imagine being in my shoes, what a horribly manipulative liar unman is. So if I am saying the truth then that would be very bad news because unman can definitely not be trusted. But I understand it’s not easy to trust me without proof because he must have deleted it.

And I have to remind you again for like the 20th time that I didn’t want to start accusing anyone or pointing fingers. This is also unman behind it pushing and pushing nonstop. I am 99% certain he is deep state.

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91

I don’t doubt that you believe all of this, but if you want to convince others here then you should first contribute to the project and build some credibility. Talk is cheap, while contributions require real investments of time and energy. There are plenty of ways to move Qubes towards better privacy, many of which do not require any coding. Why not join in and help for real? unman is a known quantity here and doesn’t suffer fools. I think it’s more likely you’ve mistaken chastisement of sloppy thinking as nefarious intention. Personally I’ve appreciated unman’s corrections to my own sloppiness over the years, but then I try to always assume the best of intentions until proven otherwise.

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92

Perhaps you should look closely at the many contributions unman has made, over the last several years, which I would bet, have been carefully vetted by knowledgeable linux users, well, developers. Unmans Thousands of hours of contributions to helping people like Journalists be secure.

Might there be some kind of security flaw in what he has written, accomplished. Might be, but show them to me. Prove those same flaws are also not in other Linux Distros.

Personally, I thank unman for his many efforts in improving Qubes, and improving the usable of Qubes. Also out developers, and many others whose contributions can be seen on github.

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93

100%, and contributions don’t ever build up the kind of trust you’re talking about. Even without being worried about infiltration and corruption, it needs to be a top priority.

However, from the evidence you’ve described, you’re jumping to conclusions. Deep state is not the only explanation for what you think you’ve seen - there are far more mundane ones that would fit just fine. Like: your loose arguments and unman’s intolerance for looseness (in others) are a fundamentally bad combination that would result in pretty much exactly what we’ve seen.

The post deletion thing isn’t your best point (I think the point about trust over contributions was) - there are plenty of users who access via email and have permanent private copies of all original comments.

I don’t think there’s any way to prevent this on a forum like this, but I might be wrong. I can see why you might want it, but iirc when it’s been discussed before it’s raised concerns about censoring the forum too much.

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94

This topic is for Candace O. definitely.

95

It’s not about asking “would I be happy?”, but “am I happy?” instead: I do have SELinux, which the NSA developed, enabled in most Fedora-based AppVMs, and it does indeed reasonably improve their security.
Therefore, I guess I could answer your question as: yes.

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96

The problem is: You forget the root of trust. And trust(worthiness) is earned.

97

I said:

  • I think that using the Tor network as a proxy to then access a site over HTTPS doesn’t provide any meaningful benefit over an onion service when you are not concerned with hiding the location of the server, provided the HTTPS is not masqueraded by the tor exit node.
    • HTTPS masquerading can happen when an onion service redirects to a clearnet website that uses HTTPS, and that is most certainly a privacy concern, which is why I do not want anyone using my onion address to log into the forum!

Here’s what I will add to that:

  • @unman is to be commended for his work towards the Qubes Project. It is second to none, and nobody outside ITL even comes close. Hands down.
  • I have had SourceHut up for a month now, and I have received ZERO contributions from “the community” (even though it crashed a few times
    • Nobody has created an account (which is identical to how you get a Mullvad VPN account, no data collection)
    • I have received quite a lot of spam about all sorts of types of porn and crypto, though…
  • The “Unofficial” Qubes OS Forum onion address has been up for the same amount of time, and has received a view hits, but some people were stupid enough to log in
    • I have contacted those members individually and recommended that they change their passwords…
  • “Talk is cheap. Show me the code”.

Security is the ability to determine what your computer does and what it doesn’t do, as opposed to a third party.

Privacy is the ability to reveal information to a third party on your own terms, should you even wish to reveal it at all.

They are both functions of control over your machine, which Qubes OS provides through compartmentalisation. One does not necessarily imply the other, but they are most certainly not mutually-exclusive.

The definitions of the two are also wildly different from person to person (I mean, look at OnlyFans models. I’m sure their definition of “privacy” would differ greatly to other peoples’…).

Because of this, when you try and force people into a “privacy mould” instead of allowing them to carve one out themselves, you create a force of habit, which can lead to resentment.

People are more likely to retain things they’ve built themselves over something they just “acquired”, and privacy is no different.

Not only this, Qubes OS can most definitely be used as a non-private operating system.

I have Qubes OS installations on my employees work machines that not only tell me everything that employees do, but also give me the ability to issue remote salt commands to them. Why? Because they’re MY machines, not theirs, which I think is fair.

Do I tell them everything their work machines are doing? Absolutely. I’m very transparent about that. I tell them that it spies on them. I tell them not to do anything non-work-related on them. I tell them that I can see their keystrokes.

I tell them because I want to be transparent with them, while also protecting MY company assets…

(A lot of them are deployed in hostile environments where theft and seizure are common, so I want to actually know what happens to them if they go missing)

Are their work machines “private”? HELL NO!
Are they secure? HELL YES!

This is a strong case against branding Qubes OS an explicitly "private* operating system.

Maybe a good slogan would be:
Qubes OS. WIth security through compartmentalisation, your operating system allows your computer to be what you want it to be.

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98

Privacy, anonymity, security, trust… my god y’all gettin’ deep in here :moyai:

I stopped caring about all of it when I realized that the US government most likely has access to either aliens, remote viewing, satellite tempest, time travel, or some other nonsense none of us could possibly defend against. There’s a reason the return of fascism was so bold and shameless. We are in the dystopia we were warned against by so many movies of the previous century. Best thing to do is pick a hill to die on, pick a flag to die for, and stock up on fireworks. Or if you’re lazy just give up, join the :sheep: herd, and wait it out:

Oh and go back to pen and paper for anything that doesn’t require data processing. Monitors are evil. Don’t trust monitors.

Can confirm :100:. Bro has pulled me out of more than one hole. I was noob as hell when I first came to Qubes :rofl:

99

Which users have saved all posts? I know unman has made a lot of contributions but trust is as we have agreed on more important. Please find this post if someone has saved all posts. I can’t remember the date it was posted but I am guessing 2025-2024. He was replying to someone and quoting them. I would try to search for keywords loud minority.

You are defending and trusting NSA? Haven’t you heard about Snowden? 5 eyes etc? NSA always trying to get their backdoors everywhere like intel ME AMT. I am adding you to the list of deep state users. NSA is the godfather of illegal mass surveillance. NSA is corrupt.

I didn’t know about that. How are people supposed to find out about it?

100

Is this your smoking gun?

Funny how you didn’t even search the forum, before calling him a liar who deleted the “evidence”.

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