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Comment by banku_brougham

2 days ago

I would figure state actors don’t need to go through the trouble of a browser extension. But, yeah.

I'm not a spy so I don't know, but surely in most scenarios it's a lot easier to just ask someone for some data than it is hack/steal it. 25 years of social media has shown that people really don't care about what they do with their data.

Why wouldn't they? It isn't that you need to, just that obviously you would. You engage with the extension owners by sending an email from a director of a data company instead of as a captain of some military operation. The hit rate is going to be much higher with one of the strategies.

Huh? Of course they would: It's way less work than defeating TLS/SSL encryption or hacking into a bunch of different servers.

Bonus points if the government agency can leave most of the work to an ostensibly separate private company, while maintaining a "mutual understanding" of government favors for access.