Threat Model: Parents

[Gadit Bielman]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 3:03 PM, Travis Biehn <tbiehn at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well,
>
> Depending on your particular bent options range from:
> Subversion, Evasion, Opposition, Resistance or Appeal to Authorities, such
> as teachers, law enforcement and so on.
>
> Arguments abound, and are largely the fodder of flame-bait and trollery.
> [Which is the source of my earlier comment, "accepting paternalism during
> youth is the slippery slope to paternalism from the state" - this is a
> popular opinion on this list, I'm sure, as are the gamut of opposing
> viewpoints.]
>
> This topic is ridiculous, there is no difference between hiding from 'your
> parents' and hiding from a nation-state attacker, in both scenarios you
> assume all of your equipment is untrustworthy, you have the advantage with
> 'your parents' because you know who they are, where they live, where they
> sleep and have physical access to all their devices.
>

There's a big difference. A nation-state attacker you assume is maximally
competent. Parents you don't. A nation-state attacker cannot personally
monitor all their citizens. Parents can personally monitor all their
children. As long as you aren't caught, a nation-state attacker cannot
arbitrarily restrict your movement. Parents can. Besides non-automated
methods such as looking up browser history, parents have a finite set of
commercially-available software, with a mostly common set of capabilities.
Nation-states have to be sort-of cautious -- if there was a mass-reveal of
total surveillance of everyone, there would at least be some blowback,
whereas there's not any social pressure on parents at all. In terms of what
they care about, parents will prioritize moral issues -- being gay, trans,
atheist, etc., among other stuff, depending on the family -- whereas
nation-states will prioritize direct plans of action against them.

There's probably a lot more differences, and I probably messed up on some
of them. Here's someone else's probably-pretty-inexperienced attempt at
threat modelling parents:
http://ilzolende.tumblr.com/post/110002779072/parents-as-a-threat-model .
But there's not "no difference".
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