I mean, you know how everyone carries a phone these days? If you use your voice, it could be potentially recorded.
So… we could just use sign language. Teach everyone sign language, use that whenever you wanna say something anti-government.
Its much easier to cover up cameras (or move out of sight) than to cover up microphones. And its unlikely people would want to leave their expensive phone in another room out of sight, so teaching everyone sign language seems like a straight-forward option.
Also, bonus: its very helpful for people with hearing problems if everyone knew sign language.
Howbout dunes bene gezeret aproach? As soon as surveillance tech is present use words to talk about whatever and use tiny hand signs that are easily covered up or made nearly invisible to talk the real shit. Might be minimally higher stakes to learn it in the firat place but then…
I triple dog dare you to take down the technocrats surveillance tower of babel by teaching more people sign language
Sign language isn’t just another way of expressing English that can be picked up like learning a different alphabet or a secret code. It’s a full, independent language with its own complete vocabulary, syntax, inflectional system, etc. that takes as long to learn as any other natural language.
It would be great if more people knew it for the sake of communicating with the deaf, but as a means of foiling surveillance, there are many other approaches that would be more effective for less time investment. (Hell, you might as well learn a really obscure spoken language that would be less likely to be recognized or deciphered than ASL.)
At least for BSL there’s a “hybrid language” called Sign-assisted English.
That’s basically using BSL vocabulary with English grammar. You take your regular English sentence and do a 1:1 translation just replacing English words with BSL signs.
While Sign-assisted English isn’t nearly as expressive as full sign language, it’s super easy for an English speaker to get to a level where you can actually hold a conversation in it. It took me maybe 20h of practice to get to that point, which is much, much faster than I managed to in any other language. Because it’s not a new language to learn, you are just substituting words.
At the same time, Sign-assisted English is quite easy to understand for most sign-language speakers, since they usually already understand the spoken language of the land, even if it’s just so they can read, since most sign languages don’t have a written form.
So it ends up being some form of pidgin hybrid language that’s easy to learn and easy to understand for everyone involved.
If everyone would be able to use Sign-assisted spoken languages it would probably already be really helpful for everyone.
Funnyly enough, the group I started learning sign-assisted language with started using it even if no deaf person was part of the conversation, because at times sign language is much more useful than spoken languages. You can speak silently, you can easily communicate in noisy areas and it can be used over a much higher distance.
I think it would be really cool if sign-assisted spoken languages became a basic skill of everyone.
People usually think that sign language was artificially created to help the deaf people. This is of course very wrong, but tells a lot about how society perceives abledness. In this case we could even talk about being deaf is a disability, but that’s a topic for a other day.
Actually, sign language historically developed similarly to how spoken language developed. This means that even within one country, many different dialects are spoken. This can be easily seen for rather simple words - the word “Friday” for example can be vastly different in one city compared to the other.
It also isn’t a single language. ASL is different than LSF, LSQ, or even LSFB, etc.
ASL and ASL are also both different. One is from Australia and the other from America.
and the third is autism spectrum lisorder!
Autistic Superresistant Ligma
Yeah my daughter is studying ASL in college right now and have learned a lot about sign language recently.
You can see much much further than you can hear.
You can presumably walk out of earshot. You have to go VERY FAR before you’re out of camera shot for even consumer cameras.
It’d be interesting if there was a multi-modal device-to-device communication protocol, so that you needed both line of sight and be within audio range to be able to pick up the conversation.
Although just record them typing at that point so never mind.
Laser microphones can record audio via line-of-sight at a close to unlimited range.
Phones have cameras as well as microphones. Also, all public places have cameras. 🤔
Phones are usually in your pocket. If you wanna leave it on a table, just put some random paper on top of it. How do you easily stop sounds from going to your phone? Probably not as easy as just covering up the camera.
This is under the assumption you are at home (or some safe place outside of public view), I mean why are you planning anti-government activities in public lol.
I think people should learn sign lanaguve causes it’s cool. But if it’s really for at-home, antigovernemnt planning, why not just put your phone in the other room, or the fridge? Sure, it’s a minor inconvenience to take it out your pocket, but that’s basically nothing compared to spending a few years being fluent enough in sign to hatch plans.
Makes a cooler movie plot tho. Character says pro-government things with verbal speech, simultaneously use sign language to plan a revolt. Government never suspects a thing. Very cinematic I think, lol
It might be easier to write down stuff you don’t want overheard. Carry a little whiteboard, or they have whiteboard-style paper you can erase.
Probably easier to speak elven or high valeryian
That’s the equvalent of using ROT13 for encryption. Doesn’t do anything. They could literally build an automatic program to convert it back to the intelligence agency’s language.
Sign language can literally avoid the data from being picked up microphones, doesn’t even need encryption if they never have any data to work from. (Just remember to either leave the phone in your pocket or place an object over it to cover the camera)
If the big companies have a necessity to spy on you to make money, they’ll throw buckets of money at development towards being able to capture key signs or movements in sign language to spy on you.
ChatGPT claims to be able to translate to and from Sindarin. (I can’t speak Sindarin, so I can’t verify its output.)
Start a business adding proper sliding contacts micro switches to popular devices. Then transition to selling them preinstalled. Simply cut the power wire to the camera module and microphone. I would love to pay a little more for a device with a physical switch and an option for no screen side camera.
I was thinking the other day, if I decide to replace my battery in my phone, I am going to design a TPU phone case that integrates the rear battery cover and not installing the rear glass bullshit too.
Still, that does not fix everyone else carrying stalkerware.
