Tracy R Reed wrote:
Bob La Quey wrote:
Even a brief survey of the history of spycraft will provide you with
many ways of sustaining secure communications in the face of
very real oppression.
Sure, at VERY great risk and effort. Whereas if they had never let their
freedoms erode to the point where they couldn't just send those things
in a sealed envelope in the first place it never would have come to that.
This is interesting, the two positions...
On the one hand Tracy and Paul very well put
that the system promises and even promotes
methods that the system itself should be subject
to restraints that on the whole "guarantee" (in
founding father vernacular, and "on the whole"
being the operative phrase) privacy of
communication, integrity of self and possessions
(updated to modern technological terms) all as
our ideals of freedom of thought and association.
On the other hand...
Bob (vastly simplified) says there is no
guarantee of any such thing and any systemic
promise of any such thing is just B.S. Secure
your own %$&* or don't bother caring. Be happy.
I think I agree with Bob. Here is why. If you
want security, privacy, and sole access to what
you hold dear you pretty well better setup
methods and practices that either hide, encrypt
and diversity in a way that you have sole access
to what you value to the extent necessary and
for the time period required. Why would I think
that?
Tracy pointed out that the things he has found
reliable "in his lifetime" are one set of things
and another set haven't been reliable. Bob has
been around almost twice as long and I being
much closer to Bob than Tracy can see that all
systems benefit your personal liberty and
integrity solely as a secondary effect. No law
is going to guarantee that your rights and
freedoms aren't going to get gamed. Most of the
time things go very well on the surface.
Eventually everyone individually experiences
they work not at all. And in recent times even
the most visible of our officials make no bones
about individual guarantees and rights being
explicitly secondary to other purposes[1]. You
may have a reasonable expectation otherwise but
if we can't see that profit and prosperity are
way out ahead of our individual interests then
we haven't lost or seen people loose everything
despite guarantees.
At this end of the spectrum we have seen that
the system both visibly and (revealed over time)
in secret has had spectacular failures in
protecting individual rights especially since
the mid-60's. The system recycles, things settle
down people get comfortable again, others still
have other uses for the system...
You should use systems, don't let systems use
you. Secure your own #$^&... Yesterday.
rbw
[1] I have no expectations otherwise and you
shouldn't either...
http://tinyurl.com/3exjz3
http://www.epic.org/
"Nobody really knows what routing and addressing
information is.... If you're putting in
addressing information and routing information,
you may not just get (From: lines of e-mail
messages), you might also get content," the
source said.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/09/46852
Gee, Really? You Think?
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