> I think it's important to think about these things in the context of 'threat 
> models'. In my non-business related activities, I often just don't care 
> >whether people are spying on me, and also whether they steal intellectual 
> property from me. Sometimes, such illicit activities may even work to >my 
> favour (in a round-about way). Matching security to such a threat model, can 
> mean that you only need very low security. On the other hand, >for my 
> business activities, especially in respect of legal requirements, security is 
> very important, both for my business, and my clients.

IMHO, there are not two, but three things: security, privacy and
comfort/convenience.

Security is a highly ambiguous term.It can take very different
meanings.Privacy and convenience, however, are much less ambiguous.

In usage, the words security and privacy are often assumed to be
synonymous. This is wrong by a wide margin. They are, in fact, quite
often in direct opposition to each other, depending on what kind of
security you are talking about. Privacy often becomes the victim of
security and it is very easy to justify that when it happens.

Technology affects all three, but perhaps it affects convenience the
most, as in surveillance capitalism.

For security and privacy, technologies has a very mixed bag of effects
to offer, which are not like each other at all.

It may be obvious, but the answers to the questions about these three
lie only partially in technology. Regardless of technology, the
critical parts of the answers lie outside the domain of technology. On
forums like this, we tend to ignore them, because there is little we
can do about them. Here, at least.

Ultimately, the answers are going to depend on such external factors

- Law
- Enforcement of law
- Censorship
- Cultural ideas
- Ethical standards
- Regulations
- Ideas about individuality and solidarity or about freedom and rights/duties
- Political inclinations of the powerful people as well as of the
general population, whether we are living in a state of exception
- Human expectations and aspirations etc.
- Acceptable compromises to the powerful and the majority (fortunately
or unfortunately)

One more thing. Businesses and governments will usually find the
solutions they want because they can afford them, whether they are
right or wrong. It is individuals who need solutions from places likes
this forum and from developers of open software/hardware. But then, as
things stand, the sustainability of solutions depends on use by
businesses and governments, who will then like to get their wishes
enforced on the technological implementation. Or even inhibit certain
kinds of innovations or repurpose them.

Regards,

अनिल एकलव्य
(Anil Eklavya)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/CAAPfsu_5Z8RviHf-4jFMCwV9cXeV%2BM7ipr%2B8CWU-xZysgX-uiA%40mail.gmail.com.

Reply via email to