Lou has a good list of apps that won’t be subject to the changing privacy whims of the US government because they’re outside the US. I’m not sure that’s true given that we see many companies saying that they “comply with all local laws” but at this point I’m much happier to support anything that’s not in the US.

We could add to his list with.

Obsidian

A notetaking tool based on Markdown files, so if you don’t use sync you send them nothing. They’re owned by Dynalist, who founded the Obsidian app as well as Dynalist which is headquartered outside Toronto Canada.

I’m not sure where the Obsidian sync servers are running, they may be in the US but you do have to provide a key to decrypt your data and it’s protected by strong encryption and has been through audits of it’s security by 3rd party vendors which is about as strong as you can get.

Nvim OrgMode

I’ve written about this and it’s just files on your computer that are accessed via a terminal program. If you want sync you have to set it up yourself.

I’m leaning more and more to apps like this. Local storage and I set up my own sync system if I want to use it from my phone. Mostly I just write things down in my pocket notebook though when I’m out and about.

As a family we’re questioning our use of US tech. Without the kids we’d cancel Netflix as my wife and I don’t watch TV very often and we already have 400 movies on our server that we’ve selected over the years.