41–50 of 430 posts
For me, personally, this is much more sad than Lavabit shutting down. Groklaw was an icon, it has huge significance. I do not know whether this - i.e. shutting down - is a good strategy in general. It raises some awareness, it might cause some change ... but what if change does not happens? What other means of protest will we have?
How feasible is Freenet for email? We can use PGP today, but the metadata is available to all. But what journalists who need to communicate more anonymously that that used pseudonymous PGP keys - one per story, rather one per person, and posted encrypted messages on Freenet?
It's just non-feasible. Freenet is a distributed file/web database, not realtime internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's nice to say. Get angry, be outraged. But what do we do , day-to-day, while things are still a mess? How do you organize a revolution under the noses of the people you're revolting against? The code still has a purpose, even if it's not the "right" solution, long-term.
Revolution is not what you think. It consists of the small actions of millions of people. The small actions are usually more revolutionary than the large. The NSA has just created a huge market for guaranteed secure communications infrastructures. The technology is there. It may need some extensions but it is there. Some ideas (again no time for a startup now and this is too important): 1. An email-like service based…
So the only way to do this is to make them not play their game.
Frankly whole cancerous security apparatus has been fueled by privatized sector just like the one with privatized jail system.
Sad to say this but there only way I can see this being resolved is political/etc. Start websites cover the stories. Find methods of figuring out whether they are listening to you or not. For example set up fake drug deals so you can draw them on fact of monitoring your communications. Sue them every instance you find them breaking down your doors. Yeah I know it is not pleasant.
Just like OP said there is no easy way out of this.
Also make working for contractors of NSA and being employee of NSA being a very unpatriotic and scummy thing to do - akin to digging around underwear drawer of your next door granny neighbor.
My 2c.
When folks like Lavabit and Groklaw preemptively shut down because they cannot take the security & privacy of their communications for granted, it makes me wonder the converse: how are other companies that deal in sensitive information (patents, lawsuits, competitive bids etc.) dealing with it? Have they resigned themselves to it? Are they devising new corporate communication policies that assume always-on surveillan…
My personal information for my apartment is stored on an FTP server and their offices use WEP encryption on their WiFI. They have a scan of my passport, every facet of information about me; if their storage was compromised it would be fairly devastating to their tens of thousands of clients.
Unfortunately I have no clout regarding the storage of this information, and no choice as to who I store it with.
This is how I've been feeling about it for the last few weeks.
Lets not try to code our way out of this. We succumb to terror pushing away meaningless bits of code on Github as a crypto projects in response. Some projects flourish sure but the same forces that profit off the court-less killings of others are collating your data, your pet projects. Harvesting your stolen info out of botnets. Giving you a salary for technician work keeping infrastructure ticking. Enough enabling t…
How feasible is Freenet for email? We can use PGP today, but the metadata is available to all. But what journalists who need to communicate more anonymously that that used pseudonymous PGP keys - one per story, rather one per person, and posted encrypted messages on Freenet?
I think something sufficiently secure is possible for email. I think it would require a whole new set of protocols and approaches, and for some things (like voice) it is not.
I agree it's upsetting and citizens should be demanding oversight. But to assume your plaintext transmissions over uncontrolled wires are somehow private seems absurd. It's like the silliness people got whipped into over Google's WiFi collection which was essentially passing "-s 0" instead of "-s 64" to tcpdump.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> While I understand his personal reasons pj = Pamela Jones But yeah, it's devastating -- especially when it comes just one day after a editor of the Guardian states that they can no longer report on certain topics from London. It seems like we need entirely new communication protocols.
> we need entirely new communication protocols Whole new enforcement of privacy laws, you mean?
While elsewhere in the comments, there is the sentiment that "you can't code yourself out of this", my hopes of voting myself out of it (or otherwise "fixing" a system, as if it was just accidentally "broken") are much lower.
(But note that "protocols" may also have non-technological components.)