<h3>They both want your information, and they’re both willing to do anything, no matter how corrupt, to get it.</h3>
 
https://aegir.tech/steemit/hacklock.jpg
 
 
It's both of them against **YOU.**
 
Luckily, they don't work together, so at least we don't need to deal with them teaming up against us very much.
 
Instead, we get rogue hackers who want to get your information so that they can steal your identity and make a bunch of money off you. This is certainly troublesome, but they're easy to thwart. They rely on you being ignorant of scams or phishing attempts, or target only one person at a time, if they're going for breaking into an account or something.
 
https://aegir.tech/steemit/roguehacker.jpg
 
Miniscule numbers of people with limited resources, who have a small focus. Hardly a threat to anyone with even a bit of cyber-security skill. A lot of people try to be secure because they fear this sort of hacker, but the main targets of rogue hackers are popular servers or people known to be wealthy. Most people will never be directly targeted by a hacker who’s working alone.
 
And in contrast, we've got the government to deal with. The government, including organizations like the NSA in the USA or the BND in Germany, want your information for the sake of "security". They want to read your messages, know your plans, see what you're doing with your money, and make sure that you don't step out of line.
 
https://aegir.tech/steemit/NSA-PRISM.png
 
Programs like PRISM are designed to monitor people's internet transmissions, rendering us complacent.
How can you complain about government in any real way if you know they're watching you?
You can't even organize a protest without a government knowing everything about it.
 
<h4>This is a severe invasion of privacy, which is truly unacceptable in a sane society.</h4>
 
But that's not the only horrifying problem. What of our only defense, encryption?
Powerful encryption algorithms can stop a rogue hacker easily. They don't have the resources to break through it. A rogue hacker can't spend millions on powerful decryption oriented super-computers, nor can they get organizations to willingly implement backdoors in algorithms.
 
 
But the government can. They can use legal force to extract records from server owners, they can convince larger corporations to include a backdoor, in the name of "what if a terrorist uses this service", and can generally do whatever they want to get information. They have the power to convince anyone to do anything.
A server owner can either choose to nuke the server and stop the whole thing, but still risk jail or fines, or they can comply, and give up the data, making all attempts at having kept ourselves secure pointless. What good is encryption if there's a backdoor that the biggest threat to us can use? What good is using a trusted service like a VPN or email server if the owner will cave to government demands? No good at all.
 
https://aegir.tech/steemit/nsadatapng.png
 
They can track IPs with this power, see who does what, even if they're trying to be anonymous or private, and go to lengths a rogue hacker can never reach. Even VPNs, which could provide security, aren't very effective when it comes to avoiding government tracking. If you pay for them, there's a money trail, be it bank or bitcoin, and even if you use something like TOR to become anonymous, you never really know if it's 100% secure.
 
This sort of power discrepancy is chilling and nightmarish. It means you can't really know if you're secure. All your emails are tracked, so using your email to sign up for a website, such as Poloniex, means that your email account is now linked with cryptocurrency exchange stuff, which is then linked with your Steemit account, which means that this "censorship resistant" platform is meaningless.
 
Who would dare radically speak out against a government, or mention certain unmentionable topics, if they know that they're being tracked, and can be "disappeared"?
 
<h5> No one. </h5>
 
And that's the beginning of self-censorship, a form of censorship that no one notices. Unlike a Streisand-Effect occurring, where people suddenly realize something that was there is missing, self-censorship means nothing was ever there. It means you're too scared to even mention a controversial subject.
 
So in conclusion, when it comes to hackers and creeps on the internet, a random rogue hacker might be a real pain in the butt, but the real threat comes from an oppressive government that wants to record all that you do for the sake of security.
 
<br/>
*This article is written by @heretickitten. She's a coauthor and 100% of the SBD goes to her. This article is part of Steemit Crypto Challenge. We will post more about the world of encryption and ciphers, so that you are prepared for the puzzles. Don't miss the Steemit Crypto Challenge.*

*[Follow @heretickitten and remember to upvote.]*