Yes, I am aware of such technology - they announced similar capabilities in our existing surveillance system. I know that it is most likely not as advanced as China’s, because that’s how it usually is here. However, it is not clear just how good it is in practice - at least in some cases, they’ve been overselling it (at least in regards to recognizing obstructed faces). So I am not sure just how dangerously accurate said gait recognition is, especially since they have much better facial recognition to depend on.

Yeah, but I don’t see the point of driving here at all.

Samourai was a Bitcoin wallet attempting to improve the currency’s privacy. Its devs were arrested this year.

Localmonero was a platform where people could post listings for buying or selling Monero without KYC. There was also an identical sister site Agoradesk for Bitcoin. They abruptly shut down this year, probably afraid of similar prosecution (it happened pretty soon after the Samourai case).

Chainalysis is a company that US government works with, attempting to track and deanonymize crypto transactions. Recently a presentation of theirs leaked, disclosing some of their methods (which were very interesting for the Monero community in particular).

Depends on how advanced the surveillance systems are. Yeah, I would consider driving to be impossible to do anonymously - but when it comes to walking or using public transport, depends. I am not sure just how well they can track a person with a covered face on those.

I used to use Vanced but switched to Newpipe, as it is noticeably lighter (also at least for me, downloads did not properly work while they were fine on Newpipe).

Not all people are rich enough to have iPhones. And if you really want privacy, you wouldn’t go for one anyway, instead choosing Graphene/Divest/Lineage. Not to mention iMessage is fully closed-source so you cannot even trust it to do what it does. I have issues wirh Signal, but at least I would take it over iMessage any day.

I highly doubt that “ending crypto crackdown” would mean guaranteeing safety for projects like Samourai or Localmonero. Or ending the relationship with Chainalysis.

To be fair, the idea of “alternative to banking” is still very much alive. BTC and LTC are very much used as currencies, even though BTC has fees too high for small transactions. Monero was developed specifically with utility rather than investment in mind - now reading about how exactly anonymity is enforced there (especially after the Chainalysis leaks), it’s pretty interesting. I kinda hope we invent something better than blockchain-based currencies that is equivalent in uncensorability, but right now it’s the closest we got.

I much prefer Newpipe, which has been amazing so far.

I wouldn’t trust them not to store the initial one as well tbh. Nothing technically stops that and it’s in their interests.

From the context of your previous comments, it seemed like you were talking not about not having a mobile phone in general, but rather a SIMless phone. Using it over Wi-Fi only is indeed doable - but you’d need an Airplane Mode on an OS you can trust, just having no SIM would not be enough.

Also no, I did not have such a job - I don’t understand how this question relates to the conversation.

Yeah, Brave has even worse track record than stock Firefox.

Yeah, but the operator would see an identifiable IMEI.

I also have not seen Zcash accepted as payment nowhere nearly as frequently as Monero.

An IMEI moving around.

You’re just shifting trust though - may be good in some cases, but not universal. Aldo does nothing about the cell tower connections tracking the location.

In a lot of places, cell carriers enforce KYC too though.

At least when it came to a laptop, I bought mine without a preinstalled OS - that is far more common than preinstalled Linux.

Well, I am pretty sure the FOSS apps I use don’t have external trackers at least.

Or, better, not use a car at all because automated license plate readers. Cars seem antithetical to anonymity in general. Better take a tram/bus/subway and buy tickets with cash. Or at least call a taxi if it’s really far from any transport stops.