Is it acceptable to use proprietary software (platforms) to promote software freedom?

[Christian Pietsch]

Dear Adonay,
dear list,

I never intended to participate in this thread because I am not
religious, but somebody was wrong on the Internet:

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 09:07:18AM -0300, Adonay Felipe Nogueira wrote:
> Please be careful with TAILS, they fail to comply with GNU FSDG. See
> [[https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Tails]]. :)

What that page has to say about Tails is short enough to be reproduced
in its entirety here: “Tails uses the vanilla version of Linux, which
contains nonfree firmware blobs.”

> Nowadays, one can replace Tails with something more free/libre: Like
> Parabola. Additionally, I don't know if this is possile, but GuixSD
> might also be worth a try.

This is dangerously false. Using Tails is now more important that ever
if you want to browse the Web anonymously. To access the Tor network
safely and securely, you need to remember three things:

1) Use Tor Browser. For some reasons, see here:
   https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en#warning
   https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBSocksPort

2) Use a safe and secure operating system. It makes little sense to
   use the Tor Browser on an OS you cannot control (e.g. Windows, Mac
   OS). Linux is a better choice, and the GNU/Linux distribution that
   is best tailored for Tor use is Tails. There are other options
   (e.g.  Whonix inside of Qubes, Discreete Linux, Subgraph OS), but
   they are for more specialized use cases or experts. I am not aware
   of anything in Parabola or Guix that makes them a better basis for
   using the Tor Browser than any other GNU/Linux distribution.

3) Use common sense, and, if necessary, Operations Security (OPSEC).

I could mention a number of attack vectors against Tor and Tor Browser
but I believe this would be beyond the scope of this mailing list.

Cheers,
Christian

PS: Adonay, please shorten your e-mail signature. It is good practice
    to restrict it to four lines of up to 70 characters:
    https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855

-- 
  Christian Pietsch | https://chaos.social/@chpietsch
  volunteering for Digitalcourage e.V., Bielefeld, Germany
  https://digitalcourage.de | https://bigbrotherawards.de
  How to avoid Google: https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives
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