Posted on 08/20/2013 9:38:05 AM PDT by No One Special
GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH.
What happened to that powerful understanding?
Everyone should be free to have private lives and communication. Not just the elite.
We couldn’t keep it, Ben.
I’m envious of the kids who don’t KNOW about the wonderful human experiment in liberty the Founders started. I grew up believing it with all my heart and soul. So I am the one sad now.
Then it’s getting on time for a revolution. That or we just sit back and become good little slaves.
“You think that public key cryptography has been broken?”
Call me paranoid, but I suspect that PGP is a maskirovka that was created by the NSA in the first place. What better way to lull people into complacency about their communications than to provide them with an encryption protocol that was designed by the NSA?
It’s no different than the free Outlook email plugin called “Incredimail” that turned out to be spyware created by the Israeli Mossad.
Why hack people’s computers when you can just give them a Trojan Horse that they’ll willingly use?
Encryptions are suspect to me for the simple reason that I’m getting it for free or at an affordable price and then the NSA has billions of dollars in resources at their disposal to break them...or like I said, make them.
One-time cipher pads are the only way to go if anyone wants secure communications. They’re hard to use but they’re unbreakable all the same so long as you only use them once and then only for short messages.
PKE solves the problem of the one time pad, how do you distribute the keys securely? If Groklaw is concerned that the NSA is reading their email, then they can post a public key which anyone can use to encrypt a symmetric key of their choosing and encrypt the email with the symmetric key. They use their private key to decrypt the symmetric key and then use it to decrypt the email. There are lots of programs that implement this protocol, you can even compile it yourself if you want more security. The sender and receiver don't have to use the same programs.
Most people don't bother, but this would solve Pamela's problem if she really wants to.
Surveillance of law-abiding American citizens by Big Brother is unlawful. However, Big Brother has shown a penchant for not following the law as long as the dictator is in office.
On the other hand, if one does not email anything that is suspicious then one need not worry about email.
That doesn't do much to cloak the sender and receiver's ID or other metadata.
She dances right past her right decision, so she claims, not to be "a political person."
She may get past that, down the line, but who has time to listen to someone excusing irresponsibility.
If you will not become involved in politics, be assured politics will become involved with you.
That doesn't do much to cloak the sender and receiver's ID or other metadata.
Well if that concerns you, you could set up your own private mail server on your own domain or even at just an ip address. If someone wanted to send you an anonymous (encrypted) message they could use a public internet hotspot and connect to your email server directly. Your traffic can still be sniffed and/or archived, but if it is encrypted there is no way to tie it to anyone.
I'm dubious about this excuse as to why Groklaw is closing. It certainly is their right to close, but this sows unnecessary fear, uncertainty and doubt. There is some speculation on Slashdot that Groklaw received a National Security letter of their own, but that doesn't seem likely. They aren't offering secure communications like Lavabit or Hushmail, so there isn't a reason for tap on their comms. It seems contrived.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis I remember planes going overhead every few minutes. Our SAC guys were trying to keep as much in the air as possible so if we were hit by nukes they would already be in the air and ready to hit the USSR.
Scary times - but not so scary the government attacked the privacy of citizens. People back then had a sense of prospective... and an awareness fear was something to stand up to - not a crisis that shouldn't be wasted. Our leaders didn't act like hysterical women...
Hysteria would come years later when a few dozen Islamist ran planes (ours - they didn't have the money to buy planes) into buildings. We were attacked - not by a country or an army - not even by planes with nuclear bombs... just a few dozen lowlifes. And for this - for these lowlifes - we gave up our privacy? Our freedoms? It's nuts. Paranoid and stupid.
Read it again, twice, with empathy. Her feelings may not be yours but they are valid.
Actually one would want to use an IP address that belongs to someone else, preferably on a cleanly compromised system, if one's goal was to prevent identification from the To: path, in the same way the sender would want to use a public access point with no way to ID the user.
Obviously other IP and user cloaking schemes could be used as well, but all of that pretty much eliminates the idea of a blog or newsroom with a "tip line".
All excessive surveillance does is encourage the development of alternative communication paths which are harder to gather intelligence from, which ultimately reduces the ability to gather necessary intelligence.
Was then Secretary of the Treasury Timmy Geithner the original author of the IRS harassment policy towards the TEA Party?
Wow. Powerful...both the article and Ms Jones’ amazingly effective writing style.
She writes from the heart about things of the heart, always the most worthwhile sort of writing.
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