Alex Klaushofer

Writer & freedom fighter

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

By the end of Albania's communist regime, as many as one in three people in Tirana worked for the secret police.

Thirty years later, I could still see the effects of surveillance on the Albanian psyche.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@aprajitanefes I have seen this kind of thing many times from the seat of a plane.
After flying through one trail, I had a cough and sore throat that lasted five days.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@JeffreyPeel I did a piece with some Fun Facts about bans - and why they rarely work:
https://t.co/axggADQwIW

[IT Guy @T3chFalcon]

Commercial VPNs route your traffic through shared IP addresses. thousands of users on the same IP. those IPs are public, known, and listed. The government can block them the same way Netflix blocks them, one IP list. done.

A self-hosted VPN is different.

Your server. your IP. nobody else's traffic on it. there is no list to add it to. the government would have to identify and block your specific home address or VPS individually. that is not scalable. that is not what mass VPN bans do.

here's how to build one in under 10 minutes.

you need:
— a $5/month VPS (DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr — any will work)
— Docker installed
— 10 minutes

step 1: get a VPS. pick any provider. Ubuntu 22.04. the cheapest plan works.

step 2: install Docker on it.
curl -fsSL https://get[.]docker[.]com | sh

step 3: run WG-Easy. one command:
docker run -d \
--name wg-easy \
-e WG_HOST=YOUR_SERVER_IP \
-e PASSWORD=your_password \
-p 51820:51820/udp \
-p 51821:51821/tcp \
--cap-add=NET_ADMIN \
--cap-add=SYS_MODULE \
--sysctl="net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" \
--restart unless-stopped \
ghcr[.]io/wg-easy/wg-easy

step 4: open your browser. go to YOUR_SERVER_IP:51821. log in. click "new client." download the config. import it into the WireGuard app on your phone or laptop.

that's it. you now have a private VPN that:
— nobody else uses
— isn't on any blocklist
— costs $5 a month
— logs nothing unless you tell it to
— uses modern cryptography the NSA currently cannot break

WireGuard is built into the Linux kernel. 4,000 lines of code. fully audited. faster than OpenVPN. no configuration mistakes that accidentally weaken your encryption.

They cannot ban your server.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@AdamBrimson Right. Most organisations - apparently 93% - use VPNs.
Are they all going to be banned? Or are they all going to be exempt?

[Nym @nym]

VPN Bans loading🌀

🇬🇧 UK - called VPNs a "technical problem"
🇪🇺 EU - signaled VPNs are next
🇹🇷 Turkey -VPN licensing proposals
🇮🇳 India - ordered VPN compliance or lose protections
🇦🇺 Australia - age verification may lead to ban
🇩🇰 Denmark - anti-piracy law risks VPN use

Kind of hard to ban a decentralized VPN😉

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@jponeil28921657 for the last four days I've watched anthropogenic cloud formation

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@doc_gero Open Internet holidays may become a thing.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@Stan2415loveu From Zoom Earth now.
Look close at the UK compared to surrounding areas.
What do you observe?

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@JeffreyPeel I find the wilful ignorance of ministers, MPs (and civil servants) scary.
This knowledge is not hard to find.
They have been widely advised a social media ban will not work.
There is the specific example of Australia.
This level of not-listening sociopathic.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@andrew_lilico

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@DeputyGrocott that could only be achieved with a total internet blackout.

[NewsCord @newscord_org]

🚨 BREAKING: Everyone who joined our NHS–Palantir campaign has now had a reply from NHS England's Data Protection Officer.

In writing, they confirmed:
▸ Palantir staff can access identifiable patient data before it's pseudonymised
▸ There is no opt-out from the Federated Data Platform
▸ Your Article 21 right to object has been formally refused

They've confirmed it. They won't change it.

Next step: a formal ICO complaint, citing their own response.

We're building a one-click escalation tool for campaign participants. Watch this space.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@kevinhollinrake you clearly don't understand the issues.
This is going to end in chaos and collapse - and lots (more) embarrassment for the UK.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@OffGuardian0 there would still be workarounds.
One that occurs is taking a trip to a free country and installing a VPN on your device there.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@LBC I did a quick Brave search. This was the result:

[Rachel Moiselle @RachelMoiselle]

Very much worth listening to an expert and watching this in full.

Perhaps most notable is this:

‘I’ve told the government this over the last year. I know they have heard this from other influential academics and charities that the evidence base just isn’t there to support bans. But politically it’s popular because it seems like an easy solution, but it is not the nuanced one.’

So the government are acutely aware that the precedent in other countries illustrates that a wholesale ban doesn’t work and that the experts advise against it from a child safety and wellbeing standpoint. And yet they still went ahead with it.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@scam_demic actually the spraying mostly stopped mid-afternoon.
After a sunny pause, Nexrad was applied - hence the bumpy blanket.

[Alex Klaushofer @alexklaushofer]

@doc_gero unfortunately yes.
Little Britain is none too sharp these days.
But reality may savvy folk up quite quickly.

[GeroDoc @doc_gero]

👇Over the next decade, Canada, UK & much of Europe are on track to replace liberal citizenship w/ a highly dysfunctional but sweeping form of digital feudalism: an oikophobic, mean-spirited, paranoid, & centralized surveillance regime that fuses bureaucratic incompetence w/ digital anarcho‑tyranny, typified by pervasive monitoring, sporadic enforcement, and no clear avenue of accountability.

[Proton Drive @ProtonDrive]

Post a image that will scare the UK Government.

I'll start: