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The Battle for Power on the Internet
11–20 of 34 posts
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#12Well, I doubt a certain Japanese-American political theorist would look too kindly upon his characterisation of medieval political development...
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#13"Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on." That's not a given. Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email, there are a number of very positive side-effects of doing so. For instance, when I email my wife, it's just a local copy operation - no network traffic is generated, and thus nothing can be intercept…
> Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email
Perhaps for you, but average Joe does not know, nor care how to do this. I've worked with "technical people" who couldn't figure out how to use PGP to encrypt emails, imagine trying to explain to random people what a VPN is.
As long as signing up with gmail stays easier than hosting your own email, nobody will ever bother - and this is the danger schneier is talking about.
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#14"Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on." That's not a given. Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email, there are a number of very positive side-effects of doing so. For instance, when I email my wife, it's just a local copy operation - no network traffic is generated, and thus nothing can be intercept…
Be it Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook in a managed solution, AWS/Rackspace in a hosted solution, or Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/Level3/Cogent/SBC in a private solution, you don't control your data at some point in transit. If you want to interact with more than just your wife, you must give up something.
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#15Off-topic observation: I like Bruce Schneier, really. But now I dread the sense of déjà vu that accompanies most of his posts on HN, because each one gets reposted multiple times. Mostly because Schneier himself reposts all his columns that appear elsewhere on his own blog after a few days or weeks, and those reposts get reposted to HN.
For instance, this piece originally appeared at The Atlantic on 24th Oct:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ba...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604967
Of course the original post never got a single comment, so I guess this repost added more value to the HN community :-/
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#16"Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on." That's not a given. Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email, there are a number of very positive side-effects of doing so. For instance, when I email my wife, it's just a local copy operation - no network traffic is generated, and thus nothing can be intercept…
The biggest reason for having Gmail is that it is backed up and accessible anywhere. But this is easily replicated in local caches:
You can make it accessible anywhere with a smart phone. You can back up by encrypting the data with a public key and sending to a drop box type service; with the private key stored offline. Most web apps could be easily replicated by storing the data in an append only structure with timestamps. The internet then just becomes a messaging system.
I think the VPN tunnel approach should be pushed by everyone. Lots of companies could secure most of their communication by creating a few tunnels to key clients. Email would be immediately secure without any PKI.
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#17"Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on." That's not a given. Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email, there are a number of very positive side-effects of doing so. For instance, when I email my wife, it's just a local copy operation - no network traffic is generated, and thus nothing can be intercept…
> That's not a given.
I think it's safe to say he was referring to the 99.99% of internet users for which his statement is true. Sure, he's generalizing a tiny bit, but it's basically true.
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#18"Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on." That's not a given. Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email, there are a number of very positive side-effects of doing so. For instance, when I email my wife, it's just a local copy operation - no network traffic is generated, and thus nothing can be intercept…
Maybe it's trivially easy to host your own e-mail, but isn't it pretty hard to convince other servers to accept e-mail originating from your host? I haven't been following things closely, but I remember reading about stuff like DKIM and SPF and I seem to recall that you need a static IP for some of the stuff involved. All in all, sounds like a non-trivial hassle and non-trivial cost.
On that note, is there a down-to-earth guide to setting up your own e-mail host?
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#19"Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on." That's not a given. Not only is it trivially easy to host your own email, there are a number of very positive side-effects of doing so. For instance, when I email my wife, it's just a local copy operation - no network traffic is generated, and thus nothing can be intercept…
Maybe it's trivially easy to host your own e-mail, but isn't it pretty hard to convince other servers to accept e-mail originating from your host? I haven't been following things closely, but I remember reading about stuff like DKIM and SPF and I seem to recall that you need a static IP for some of the stuff involved. All in all, sounds like a non-trivial hassle and non-trivial cost. On that note, is there a down-to-…
You need a static IP, yes, but any VPS will get you one, so that can hardly be an issue. In seven years of hosting my own email I never had issues with delivering mail to other providers.
Setting up an SMTP daemon and IMAP/POP3 server is rather easy, the most difficult decision being which SMTPd to choose (I like Postfix, but Exim is Debian’s default and hence supposedly good as well, others like Courier) and then reading the relevant manpages :)
If you search for, e.g., "Postfix tutorial", you'll find plenty of reasonably good guides.
Re: The Battle for Power on the Internet
#20It seems Schneier is saying less and less specific, fundamental issues and speaking more of abstract, high-level political and social concepts. He seems to have lost all power over his understanding of important breaking security issues and is left playing catch-up trying to understand what has already happened. My guess this is a result of the privatization/monitization/markets of zero-days, re-establishing control of technology by the classic economic systems, and taking it from engineers and experts.
That said, I don't think I'll bother reading anything else from Schneier's desk from this point forward. If he thinks that the "battle" is being fought on the edge of corporate networks, he's lost the trees for the forest. The real battle is happening for eyes and ears, on the streets, like it always has been. Less and less, some random person who happens to be the descendant of some king thinks the way the entire IT market needs to move so that "society" doesn't collapse, less and less is anyone listening to that person or believing he has any power. Real Time web of things or whatever you want to call it, nobody is buying it. If he thinks that people buying an iPod is signing allegiance to Apple's security forces, well he's wrong. If he thinks EULAs are going to be enforced in court, he's wrong. So considering those two flaws in the foundation of his world view, the rest of his rambling screed has been lost to the world of fiction.