[00:00] When tech millionaires and billionaires
[00:02] donate to politicians, it means only one
[00:04] thing, concessions. You scratch my back,
[00:07] I scratch yours. You help me get into
[00:09] power, I'll do something for you. It's a
[00:11] system of two-way corruption that I want
[00:14] my money to have nothing to do with.
[00:16] This is why I use GrapheneOS instead of
[00:18] Android or iPhone. This is why I use
[00:20] NewPipe instead of YouTube. This is why
[00:22] I use VPNs and Tor, Signal, SimpleX, and
[00:25] Lemmy, Linux, LibreOffice, and two
[00:27] tunnel. It's not just to protect my
[00:29] privacy. It's also to boycott and hurt
[00:32] the economic political system that's
[00:34] propped up by this perverted corruption.
[00:36] So, here is Mullvad VPN, the one VPN
[00:39] that I've been consistently recommending
[00:41] since I started my channel as one of the
[00:44] better and few VPNs that can be trusted.
[00:47] Mullvad had better privacy features than
[00:48] most VPNs, but most importantly,
[00:51] Mullvad's leadership seemed to have been
[00:53] based on principles that actually align
[00:55] with privacy and freedom. That vision
[00:58] has just been completely shattered.
[01:00] Mullvad founder and co-owner Daniel
[01:02] Berntson donated 5 million Swedish
[01:05] Kronor, or about $500,000 to a local
[01:09] political party in Sweden. That on its
[01:11] own is a red flag to someone like me who
[01:14] believes private donations to
[01:15] politicians and their parties should be
[01:17] illegal. But that's not the biggest
[01:19] problem of this donation. The biggest
[01:21] problem is what kind of a party this
[01:24] Mullvad owner personally donated to.
[01:26] It's the the Örebro Party, a party with
[01:29] policies so broad and across the
[01:31] spectrum, they seem to appeal to
[01:33] everyone all at once. But one of them,
[01:36] the key one in fact, stands out as the
[01:39] most incompatible with privacy and
[01:41] personal freedom. Values that a Mullvad
[01:43] company claims to uphold. Örebro's
[01:46] political platform amounts to
[01:47] establishing a deeply authoritarian
[01:50] surveillance state in order to enforce
[01:51] their policies. If I just told you what
[01:54] this is, you might not immediately see
[01:56] why it's a problem. So, let me give you
[01:58] a deep political analysis of this
[02:00] situation. Örebro's platform is all over
[02:03] the spectrum. It blends a pool of
[02:05] welfare state policies with a mix of
[02:07] radically authoritarian
[02:08] ethno-nationalist policies. If they
[02:11] campaign on a 30-hour work week, lowered
[02:13] wages for politicians, expanded social
[02:15] housing, abolishing preschool fees, free
[02:18] public transport, an end to public
[02:20] funding of art, and introduction of free
[02:22] dental care. But, their biggest talking
[02:24] point their key policy issue they run
[02:26] on, it's so-called large-scale
[02:28] remigration. As part of this policy,
[02:31] Örebro wants to close the Swedish
[02:33] borders to immigration completely, and
[02:35] they want to be able to expand
[02:37] deportation regime to include people
[02:39] born in Sweden. According to their party
[02:42] leader Markus Allard, some people born
[02:44] in Sweden will also be forced to leave
[02:47] because they have no natural connection
[02:48] to Sweden. They are not Swedish. Setting
[02:52] aside the morality of these ideology,
[02:54] let's state sec what enforcement of this
[02:56] policy will have to entail. In order to
[02:59] find every person they want to target,
[03:01] Sweden would have to run a mass
[03:04] surveillance database on every single
[03:05] person residing in the country. Everyone
[03:08] from travelers transiting through the
[03:10] country, remote workers, tourists, legal
[03:13] residents, and citizens alike. The
[03:15] surveillance state would literally have
[03:16] to function like a fishing dragnet,
[03:18] catching everybody, and then sifting
[03:20] through for targets they want to go
[03:22] after. But, the end result is that
[03:24] everyone's private information will be
[03:26] collected, processed, and retained by
[03:28] the government agencies enforcing this.
[03:31] The level of surveillance will also have
[03:32] to be granular. You'll have the state
[03:34] turn every camera in the country,
[03:37] privately or publicly owned, into a
[03:39] biometric recognition machine scanning
[03:41] everyone's face, gait, and body profile,
[03:44] identifying them as they go, and
[03:46] tracking their movements at all times.
[03:48] You'll have border control agents and
[03:50] even regular law enforcement equipped
[03:52] with facial recognition cameras so that
[03:54] anytime they walk down the street, they
[03:56] can identify anyone passing by before
[03:59] needing to talk to them. This is not a
[04:00] sci-fi scenario and it's not
[04:02] hypothetical either. This is how
[04:04] immigration policies are enforced today.
[04:07] These technologies already exist and
[04:09] have been widely tested and adopted in
[04:11] surveillance regimes from the United
[04:13] States through Israel and Palestine to
[04:15] China. Whether you like it or not,
[04:18] border control is masterminded by other
[04:20] means. That's not to say that no border
[04:23] control should exist, but that this
[04:25] level of border enforcement and
[04:27] establishing of what Rebro calls for as
[04:29] an ethno-nationalist dream is impossible
[04:32] to achieve without a deeply
[04:33] authoritarian surveillance state.
[04:35] Mullvad is already getting a backlash
[04:37] from this, so they made an official
[04:39] statement about it and it's not good.
[04:41] Mullvad makes it a point that Daniel's
[04:43] donation was personal and did not come
[04:45] from company funds. Therefore, it has
[04:48] nothing to do with the Mullvad the
[04:50] company. That's a distinction without
[04:52] difference. Daniel is an equal co-owner
[04:55] of the company with Fredrik Strömberg.
[04:57] He owns a 50% share and his personal
[05:00] fortune, at least partially, comes from
[05:03] Mullvad's customers' pockets. I also
[05:05] find Mullvad's appeal to tolerance
[05:07] grossly pathetic. Tolerance doesn't work
[05:09] between mutually exclusive values. You
[05:11] can't be pro-privacy and tolerate a
[05:13] policy that is fundamentally
[05:15] incompatible with privacy. You can't be
[05:17] against corruption while participating
[05:19] in that corruption. It's also equally
[05:21] pathetic to cry free speech whenever
[05:23] somebody doesn't like what you have to
[05:25] say. Not liking your free speech is my
[05:28] free speech. You have the right to
[05:29] express yourself, but nobody has a duty
[05:32] to listen to you. Another revelation
[05:34] from this donation is that Mullvad
[05:36] doesn't seem to live up to its own
[05:37] standards and priorities. Mullvad is
[05:39] clearly making a lot of money, but it
[05:41] seems that the owners are more
[05:42] interested in withdrawing those profits
[05:45] rather than subsidizing privacy tech
[05:47] that needs to match modern surveillance
[05:49] threats. Because while Mullvad VPN is
[05:51] better than most VPNs, it's not perfect
[05:54] and it's still far behind current
[05:56] surveillance capabilities. Let me expand
[05:58] on that. Mullvad does have this data
[06:01] protocol. I talked about it before in my
[06:03] previous video. It's a protocol aimed at
[06:05] making traffic fingerprinting more
[06:07] difficult to do by AI analysis. This is
[06:10] good, but it's not enough. The biggest
[06:12] limitation of Mullvad VPN is that like
[06:14] all VPNs, it gives you a permanent exit
[06:17] node that can be used to track you
[06:19] across apps and websites. Yes, you are
[06:21] potentially sharing that exit node IP
[06:23] address with multiple other Mullvad
[06:25] users, but it's still a unique enough
[06:27] data point that is just as easy to trace
[06:29] as your own real IP address. VPNs need
[06:32] to catch up to this threat. A much
[06:34] stronger design is something that Safing
[06:36] privacy network does. It gives each app
[06:39] and website you go to its own
[06:41] destination. It means that each app and
[06:43] website sees a different IP address. So,
[06:46] it's impossible for them to use your IP
[06:48] address to track you across those apps
[06:50] and websites. Safing has been doing this
[06:52] for years. Mullvad had the money to
[06:54] implement this, but apparently
[06:56] withdrawing profits that I could make
[06:58] political donations was more important
[07:00] to them. Another critical failure for
[07:02] Mullvad is that they never cut
[07:04] themselves off of their culpability in
[07:05] the surveillance state. That's because
[07:07] Mullvad persists on being a centralized
[07:10] VPN. All the servers are either owned by
[07:13] Mullvad or rented by them. In either
[07:15] case, it is possible to force Mullvad
[07:17] servers to start logging user activity
[07:19] under gag order or by hacking into them.
[07:22] You just have to trust Mullvad at all
[07:24] times that their servers are safe and
[07:26] that they keep up their pinky promise. A
[07:28] much better and much more needed
[07:30] approach would be to completely
[07:31] decentralize your VPN servers so that no
[07:34] single company has control over them.
[07:36] Instead of a predictable path of
[07:38] centralized VPN servers, you have
[07:40] unpredictable paths of decentralized VPN
[07:43] nodes. That way, even if you force the
[07:45] VPN company to log data, they physically
[07:48] wouldn't be able to do it. On top of
[07:50] that, VPNs should implement a mixnet
[07:52] protocol to randomize your traffic with
[07:54] other users. Both of these technologies
[07:56] already exist and are open source. It's
[07:58] in fact implemented by Nym and its
[08:00] protection is so strong, it can rival
[08:02] even Tor. Mullvad could have also
[08:04] invested into this implementation, but
[08:06] they haven't. See the point that I'm
[08:08] making here? VPN profit margins are
[08:10] huge. A friend of the industry told me
[08:12] that running a VPN costs about 50 cents
[08:15] per user a month. Mullvad is charging
[08:18] $5. Mullvad has done more than most with
[08:21] that money, but not the most they could
[08:23] have. Their owners shouldn't be more
[08:25] concerned with donating fortunes to
[08:27] political parties before they actually
[08:29] catch up to modern surveillance threats.
[08:32] The question is, why did Daniel decide
[08:34] to make this political donation? What
[08:36] was motivating him so much that this
[08:38] needed to be done? Well, there seem to
[08:40] be multiple motives. One of them is that
[08:43] in his view, ÅFrode is a party that
[08:45] fights against corruption and
[08:47] dysfunction. That's funny because in my
[08:49] calculations, all private donations to
[08:52] parties and campaigns are a form of
[08:54] legalized bribery. They're just a way
[08:56] for rich people to buy exclusive access
[08:58] into the system and get concessions
[09:00] regular voters can get. In many ways,
[09:02] political donations are bets because
[09:04] candidate you donate to might not win
[09:06] the race, which is why political donors
[09:08] tend to give to all of them. But in a
[09:10] parliamentary system like in Sweden,
[09:12] donations to parties happen because they
[09:14] secure influence over the political
[09:16] process. You're effectively buying seats
[09:19] in the parliament. It's a brute force
[09:21] attack on democracy. You give a small
[09:23] nationally irrelevant party enough money
[09:25] and suddenly they make media headlines
[09:27] on regular basis. $500,000 covers more
[09:30] than 90% of funding in the entire
[09:32] history of the party, at least according
[09:34] to one source that I happen to pull up.
[09:36] The donation is going to propel Orebro
[09:38] into the status of a rising star in
[09:41] Swedish politics. Another great
[09:43] motivation seems to be Orebro's
[09:44] ethno-nationalist agenda. According to a
[09:47] Swedish news outlet reporting on this,
[09:49] Daniel felt Orebro's remigration policy
[09:52] was unnecessary. That's really funny to
[09:54] focus on that because there are plenty
[09:55] of Orebro's policies that aren't so
[09:58] toxic. Free public transport, more
[10:00] social housing, a 30-hour work week.
[10:03] That's socialism right there. But the
[10:05] remigration, closing the borders to
[10:07] nationalist focus, that's like
[10:10] nationalist socialism, like national
[10:13] socialism.
[10:15] Can you not see?
[10:17] Not see?
[10:19] Mullvad did a chap la fitta here. Yes, I
[10:23] know the donation was not coming from
[10:25] the company funds, but personal funds,
[10:27] but the personal funds came from
[10:29] Mullvad's subscribers. Let's not be
[10:32] naive here. Mullvad is not publicly
[10:34] traded. Mullvad is its owners. And if
[10:37] their owners are happy with this, happy
[10:40] with the fact that their funds are used
[10:42] to bankroll anti-privacy and
[10:44] anti-freedom policies, then we need to
[10:46] vote with our wallets. I'm going to
[10:48] recommend my solutions. I'm not
[10:50] affiliated with any one of these. None
[10:52] of my recommendations are sponsored, so
[10:54] go ahead and support me on
[10:55] patreon.com/thehatedone.
[10:58] I have a 52-minute episode about this on
[11:00] my podcast, so you want to hear it. I
[11:02] said Mullvad is one of the better VPNs
[11:04] out there, but it's in fact not the
[11:06] best. One VPN that's definitely better
[11:08] is Nim VPN. It's a decentralized
[11:11] alternative to traditional VPNs and is
[11:14] designed to be more anonymous than Tor
[11:16] itself. They implement a very robust
[11:19] mixnet protocol to defend your traffic
[11:21] against AI analysis, and the company
[11:23] doesn't have access to their
[11:24] decentralized nodes. Another VPN that is
[11:27] doing what every serious VPN should be
[11:29] doing is Safing Privacy Network. Safing
[11:32] was actually acquired by IVPN, so
[11:34] hopefully we'll see develop beyond its
[11:35] current stage, but SBN is extremely
[11:38] robust. I've seen lots of suggestions to
[11:41] switch to IVPN, and IVPN is good. I use
[11:44] them and had an interview with their
[11:46] COO. They're very honest about what
[11:48] their VPN can and cannot do, but they
[11:51] are still technologically behind
[11:52] Mullvad. I asked Victor when they plan
[11:55] to implement robust defense against
[11:56] traffic analysis, and I was told it's on
[11:58] their road map later this year. And
[12:01] last, Tor is always an option. It's
[12:03] free, very robust, and anonymous. It's
[12:06] much better than any VPN out there, but
[12:08] it will slow down your internet speeds.
[12:10] I use Tor on daily basis, mostly for
[12:12] light browsing and texting, and I use a
[12:14] VPN for high bandwidth activities like
[12:16] streaming video. You can do the same
[12:18] split by the way if you use Nim. To
[12:20] Mullvad owners, in case you're
[12:22] listening, donating to a party like
[12:24] Rebro is delusional. You haven't
[12:26] invented anything new. You're not
[12:28] political geniuses. You just succumbed
[12:30] to the culture war brain rot that's
[12:32] poisoning the discourse. You have fallen
[12:34] for propaganda that is meant to divide
[12:36] us so that it's easier to rule us by the
[12:39] charlatans that want to run us.
[12:43] I'm not saying this to disparage
[12:44] [clears throat] you. I want to help you.
[12:46] Maybe you didn't realize that closing
[12:48] down the borders and strict deportation
[12:51] regime is incompatible with your privacy
[12:54] values.
[12:55] If you somehow think that
[12:56] ethno-nationalism is the answer to your
[12:58] problems, it isn't. You have lost my
[13:01] trust and of many others, too. You still
[13:04] have time to repair this.