101–110 of 237 posts
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Won't work. If you want a technological solution to the problem, use lavabit... I understand they offer a secure, encrypted (and reasonably convenient and usable) email service.
You are joking right? They closed the service because of the NSA
This is a tragedy. We need to reboot email. Encrypt everything, including metadata -- given current hardware, the client can easily bruteforce it from a list of known keys. Build some sort of easy key distribution tool (connecting via p2p, dns, whatever, just build a goddamn UI). Ask existing transports to relax their restrictions enough to let fully-encrypted mail through, and build some intelligent webmail interfac…
I think we need to go one step further than encryption. We need to encrypt all communications expensively . Make algorithms which can be tuned to be arbitrarily expensive, computation-wise. Tune them so that it takes as much time as we can bear to encrypt and decrypt an email. Seconds, ideally. The goal is to make it so that some large fraction of our computational resources are taken up encrypting and decrypting com…
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Great point, and this is a big reason why the "I have nothing to hide" argument comes from a position of childlike naivety. Even if you have nothing to hide, what about your members of parliament? CEOs? Mayors? President or Prime Minister? Judges? Police chiefs? Is there a single one that has never written an email or made a phone call that could destroy their career? What lengths would they go to in order to keep it…
Do you want the NSA or GCHQ knowing that your teenage daughter is pregnant before you do?
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...]
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The public by and large has forgotten it, hell the public hardly became outraged before they forgot it. This and Lavabit and basically preaching to the choir. The only difference between this and me saying I'm going to stop using email and drop off the internet would be that my statement won't generate several threads on HN. It would, however, have the same effect. Those that already know will ask why, and the rest o…
Considering that Snowden's first revelation was just this June, I think a lot has happened in a few short months. Public opinion takes time to build. This is not a one-time event to be forgotten. This is a crack in the very foundation of our er... society, or whatever. The bill to reign in the NSA almost passed remember? That's just after a few months from the initial revelation. I will bet that by this time next yea…
I'll take you up on that bet, assuming you believe it's going to get better. I believe the only way you'll win it is if you mean looking very different to include worse instead of the implied better you wrote.
The majority don't care. Of the minority that even pay attention to it, most of them support it to catch the evil terrorists.
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Historically speaking, the US Government is pretty damn good at winning wars of attrition. Don't think you're going to find any amount of money that Congress won't happily hand to the military-industrial complex. They'll spend whatever it takes.
Does this apply to Viet Nam, and Mission Accomplished?
Imagine how much computing power the US fighter jet program's budget could buy.
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This isn't new, this was why Hoover stayed in power for so long. He had files on everyone. Remember, information is power.
Ummm, no. I'm sure he didn't have files on my parents (well, perhaps aside from a pro-forma one on my father, who as an USNavy officer for 4 years in the '50s would I believe have gotten a Secret clearance as all officers do today), he had files on everyone "important". And e.g. the fruits of bugging Goldwater's campaign airplane, as ordered by LBJ. About the latter he said something to the effect of "If the Presiden…
It seems more likely that if a file was needed on you, they could generate one by simply typing some PII (say, a name and address) into a computer form, which then causes form letters to be sent mail merge style to credit agencies, retailers, telecoms, and major social networks requesting your information. Then, as the relevant data comes in, it gets added to an electronic folder to be accessed by whomever thinks they need access to it.
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I think we need to go one step further than encryption. We need to encrypt all communications expensively . Make algorithms which can be tuned to be arbitrarily expensive, computation-wise. Tune them so that it takes as much time as we can bear to encrypt and decrypt an email. Seconds, ideally. The goal is to make it so that some large fraction of our computational resources are taken up encrypting and decrypting com…
Historically speaking, the US Government is pretty damn good at winning wars of attrition. Don't think you're going to find any amount of money that Congress won't happily hand to the military-industrial complex. They'll spend whatever it takes.
I hope those who treated me with scorn for suggesting the politicians and business people are effectively blackmailed by the mere existence of NSA type spying can now see it for real. No direct threat, not conversation, no deals. Just the fear of the knowledge that one is being comprehensively watched, and what "they" might have. This fear is enough to alter behavior, to conform. Again, at what stage can we describe…
While the NSA stuff is really bad, what Groklaw is doing is absurd and should be called such.HN seems happy to point out that more people die from furniture than terrorism, but yet unwilling to correct people with similarly misguided opinions when it comes to this. 1)Groklaw doesnt' depend on anonymous tips. The site could simply put up a huge disclosure statement on a web form that THE NSA might get what you say. Or…
PGP only provides confidentiality, not anonymity. To get anonymity as well would require TOR.
This is not surprising since "pj" guards his privacy and anonymity. Two things the surveillance state doesn't want you to have.
"Her". Pamela is a woman.
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Won't work. If you want a technological solution to the problem, use lavabit... I understand they offer a secure, encrypted (and reasonably convenient and usable) email service.
You are joking right? They closed the service because of the NSA