On 8/17/13 2:10 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
/Of course, for U.S. citizens, using an overseas account could
mean jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire!/
Especially those with security clearances working at national
scientific laboratories?
There should be no reason to go overseas and make appearances suspect,
because we all have the right to do this in our personal affairs. Using
adequate encryption and processes means that those `making mistakes' at
or on behalf of the NSA will be forced to go to the trouble to warrant
the relevant ISP to install intercept hardware. I expect it to be as
hard as the law says it should be. At the very least there is time and
effort involved in that. And if the mail servers are owned the user,
then they need to seize the owner's hardware with a proper warrant
and/or coerce the owner to hand over the encryption keys. This
situation is not at all like the `Police are issued guns but don't
misuse them' analogy because a gun that is fired at someone results in
an undeniable outcome. In contrast, this is all in the shadows and
deniable.
The analogy of "needle in a haystack" has already been used. It
seems as if using overtly encrypted e-mail services is like putting
your needle in a somewhat difficult to open envelope. It makes it
easier to find the needles (because they are now in easily
identifiable envelopes) but harder to read (open) them?
If everyone exercises their right to use strong encryption, all the way
to the storage medium, using open, auditable open source code, this
whole issue goes away. It's just that we're not there yet, so they are
trying these annoying PRISM technical tricks to interleave taps. If
people aren't emphatic about this, we'll slide toward the Clipper chip
nonsense and key escrow. Government employees using government systems
have to live with that, as do many people working at various sorts of
corporations, but random U.S. citizens do not -- at least not yet.
Marcus
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