this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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After the Snowden revelations and whilst I still lived in Britain (I left after the Leave Referendum), I got into the habit of being behind a VPN 24/7 (and still do, even though I don't live there anymore).
It's basic digital hygiene in this day an age of self-proclaimed "democratic" governments snooping on citizens just like the state surveillance apparatus of Authoritarian regimes (and I'm keenly aware of that shit having been born in a nation which was then still a Fascist dictatorship and having grown up hearing the stories).
It also helps with avoidance of full-bought-and-paid-for-legislation like Copyright legislation (i.e. it helps with Piracy).
In Britain, which has the craziest civil society levels of surveillance in Europe by far, people should have been doing this for ages but I guess the suppression of talk about civil society surveillance in reaction to the Snowden Revelations has worked perfectly at keeping people unaware of just how dictatorship-like the UK is in that regard.
That said, it's hilarious that the current bunch of Fascist-adjacent politicians are de facto training people to frequent pirate sites and avoid government sanctioned tracking, thus becoming harder targets for the automated surveillance of the GCHQ.