Re: [Tails-dev] Question: Tails in undercover mode?

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Author: alienpup
Date:  
To: tails-dev
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] Question: Tails in undercover mode?
All,

I believe hiding Tails' UI would prove too resource intensive and ultimately futile. It just can't be done and maintained well enough to fool sharp-eyed observers. After all, the first thing a passer-by does is study your screen. It's human nature and very hard to resist.

Tails users could however benefit greatly from a simple slideshow screen saver that can be invoked instantly. Tails could ship with a few uninteresting "stock" images and provide users the option of adding more. Once invoked, Tails could not be distinguished from Windows. Screen locking would remain dependent upon setting an admin password.

regards,
alienpup


geb wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Hans:
> > Dear list,
> >
> > I am wondering, why tails no more get an undercover mode. IMO it is very
> > dangerous for users, if their window manager is not looking like the normal
> > window manager used everywhere, especially in countries, where any "strange"
> > desktop might cause attention on authorities.
> >
> > This problem could be easily solved. Most users are running either windows or
> > MacOS. For windows you can just use XFCE + kali-undercover, for Mac-design
> > there are several windowmanagers available (there is coming ElementaryOS in my
> > mind).
> >
> > As you do only need the window-manager design, there should be no risk change.
> >
> > I might remember, tails got this option some years ago, but somehow this is
> > gone. Dunno why....
>
> This camouflage option has been removed because the theme that proposed
> this feature was not working anymore, and because of lack of resources
> to work on it. You can read a bit more about that here :
>
> https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/10830
>
> https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/blueprints/-/wikis/update_camouflage_for_jessie/
>
> Unfortunately, the problem is not that easy to solve. As you can see on
> the previous links, reintroducing this feature using gnome themes would
> requires lot of work (at least at the moment these links were updated).
>
> Proposing other desktop-environments may looks simpler, but it would
> requires even more work, for UX, documentation, testing, ensuring
> everything works fine, keeping the image small enough etc, not only when
> integrating these desktop environments, but also for every releases.
>
> That said, maybe things have improved since last updates on the previous
> links. So if you are interested to give a deeper look of how it could be
> done in practice, that may be a small but important step :-). I did a
> quick testing of https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1216281/ (which is nice
> also because it has been maintained since a few years now). It seems the
> menus are only for Cinnamon, but maybe I did not tested it enough.
>
> --
> geb
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