Is there any Privacy Respecting/Ethical hardware out there?

'EU mulls expanding digital surveillance over every citizen – media'​

EU mulls expanding digital surveillance over every citizen – media

The EU Commission is reportedly planning a massive surveillance expansion, targeting anything from messengers to household apps

www.rt.com

​

'The paper, titled: “Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement” demands app developers create“backdoors”.....'
'The proposed changes also target the Internet of Things, calling for “greater standardization” of various home apps and devices, including “all forms of connectivity.”'
5 Jun, 2024 22:07
HomeWorld News

Isn't it cute for them to be so transparent about it?
I assume most govs and tech companies are collecting our personal data already. Isn't that why they have massive server farms where land and power are cheap?

sun walker said:

'The paper, titled: “Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement” demands app developers create“backdoors”.....'

Click to expand...

That's not at all what the paper says. It says:

" Civil Society representatives highlighted the issues that are caused by the lack of
an EU definition on serious crime, and stated that no oversight mechanism could
accommodate the intrusion on privacy of the introduction of backdoors."

The groups is not about expanding digital surveillance, it's about making sure data used by law enforcement is done so when needed (and defined when needed, such as 'serious crime' which is not defined), and to make sure that any and all access as such complies with fundamental rights.

My pet peeve are these bloody wifi dongles. It used to be so you could just give it a static Ip with a non existent Ip address's a gateway and it would not be able to get out to the Internet, but you could still connect to it via a Web browser and get the current data.

Newest type don't allow you to do it. You need internet connection, you need to give it your wifi password, enable location services (they aren't using Bluetooth, they're just harvesting your WiFi data) and you need to "sign up" for their free cloud. All this bullshit so you can see if the battery has run out.

An alternative? You have to be pretty skilful with computers to roll your own. How many people like this are there amongst the buyers of these devices? 1% 0.001%? Maybe less.

Maybe the next iteration of AIOs will come with these plugs built in, and you'll need to "sign up" before it even works. Maybe they release software that allows it to work offline but it will have horrible bugs so users will beg for replacement and then they'll lock everyone in.

Edit: also it annoys me there is no way to disable Bluetooth on these jk BMSes without removing the module permanently. There is rs-485, but why no jumper to disable Bluetooth? Why do I care about Bluetooth? Well war is one of the things I have to worry about around here and I'd rather not broadcast for miles and miles my bms location.

45North said:

Isn't it cute for them to be so transparent about it?
I assume most govs and tech companies are collecting our personal data already. Isn't that why they have massive server farms where land and power are cheap?

Click to expand...

Anybody else remember the Great Microsoft Web Browser (I think that's what the subject was) Federal Lawsuit of the 90's? It was pretty big news for awhile. Then, suddenly, IT WAS SETTLED and all went very quiet...

Anybody care to theorize as to why? Windows is such a convoluted and bloated pig that anything could be hidden in there...

v_green57 said:

Then, suddenly, IT WAS SETTLED and all went very quiet...

Click to expand...

Microsoft has been fined 561m euros ($731m; £484m) for failing to promote a range of web browsers, rather than just Internet Explorer, to users in the European Union (EU). It introduced a Browser Choice Screen pop-up in March 2010 as part of a settlement following an earlier EU competition investigation.



There is also this:

I think this is what I am remembering:



What surprised me at the time is why they didn't really, really, really fight on.

Ah, yeah, in the US. They went through the courts and things watered down as they went:

upnorthandpersonal said:

That's for Home Assistant; that project you link to uses ESPHome (ESP32) to talk to the Deye. I don't use it myself, but from what I've read it's good.

Click to expand...

I use Home assistant and have done for years everything in the house is smart but with my own esphome firmware i have written, from irrigation, lights, sockets, air conditioning, power monitoring, to now my solar.

Everything is connected to the main server and the only way to access it from outside the network is via vpn (just press a button on my phone and i can access the house from anywhere).

It was a real pain in the arse when i was learning but now i take a very laid back approach, it collects data from air quality, temp, humidity, power and so much more as well as allow me to control lighting and watering times and recently since the solar i control all the climate controls via how much power my solar produces allowing me to min/max PV load without having to cycle my batteries.

I would say its definitely the most secure and privacy orientated monitoring for solar especially if you want to use PV power without having to think about it constantly.