Chapter 6
Plausible deniability
Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by others in an organizational hierarchy because of a lack or absence of evidence that can confirm their participation, even if they were personally involved in or at least willfully ignorant of the actions. If illegal or otherwise-disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such acts to insulate themselves and shift the blame onto the agents who carried out the acts, as they are confident that their doubters will be unable to prove otherwise. The lack of evidence to the contrary ostensibly makes the denial plausible (credible), but sometimes, it makes the denial only unactionable.
Learn more:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability
- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=plausible%20deniability
- https://politicaldictionary.com/words/plausible-deniability/
Safe Hex
The rules for safe computing.
Learn more:
Bad spelling in check-in messages
Obviously Masha still uses an old, centralized version control system like Subversion, and not more modern, decentralized Git.
Learn more:
ParanoidLinux
There is a project with this name (https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxparanoid/) but it doesn’t seem to be active. Most likely what Masha means by ParanoidLinux is Tails (https://boingboing.net/2019/12/16/paranoid-linux-for-real.html).