Practical Steps to Improve Privacy

The talk starts from the premise that privacy is not the default and cannot be bought as a single product. The speaker limits the scope to passive surveillance, meaning what an individual can control on their own devices, rather than targeted attacks. He defines "free" as software you can run, study, modify and share, and proposes a "freedom ladder" that moves from store-bought devices toward fully free hardware and software. He argues that claims of security through obscurity and vendor promises cannot be checked without free software.

The middle of the talk goes rung by rung. It covers free Android builds such as LineageOS, GrapheneOS and Replicant, F-Droid as an app source, and freer desktop operating systems, along with alternative BIOS firmware such as coreboot and libreboot. It also covers routers that run OpenWrt or LibreCMC, offline password managers such as KeePassXC used with unique passwords, and browser hardening with Firefox-based builds, uBlock Origin, NoScript, LibreJS and Pi-hole for network-level blocking. Messaging is ranked by client, backend and federation, and self-hosting is presented as a way to avoid trusting third parties.

The closing portion and audience questions cover the limits of this approach: trusting VPN providers is hard to verify, smart TVs and car infotainment systems are difficult to avoid, and many newer phones still need proprietary drivers. The main takeaway is to make changes one at a time, favour software you can verify, and bring friends and family along by starting from their interests.