On 06/07/13 11:11 -0400, Rob McEwen wrote:
On 6/7/2013 9:50 AM, Dan White wrote:
OpenPGP and other end-to-end protocols protect against all nefarious
actors, including state entities. I'll admit my first reaction yesterday
after hearing this news was - so what? Network security by its nature
presumes that an insecure channel is going to be attacked and
compromised. The 4th Amendment is a layer-8 solution to a problem that
is better solved lower in the stack.
That is JUST like saying...
|| now that the police can freely bust your door down and raid your
house in a "fishing expedition", without a search warrant, without court
order, and without "probable cause"... the solution is for you to get a
stronger metal door and hide all your stuff better.||
Hiding stuff better is generally good security practice, particularly in
the absence of a search warrant. How effective those practices are is
really what's important.
From a data standpoint, those security procedures can be highly
effective, even against law enforcement. But it's not law enforcement that
I worry about the most (understandably, you may have a differing opinion);
It's the random anonymous cracker who isn't beholden to any international
laws or courts. I design my personal security procedures for him.
That's why I don't, say, send passwords in emails. I don't trust state
entities to protect the transmission of that data. I don't wish to place
that burden on them.
You're basically saying that it is OK for governments to defy their
constitutions and trample over EVERYONE's rights, and that is OK since a
TINY PERCENTAGE of experts will have exotic means to evade such
trampling. But to hell with everyone else. They'll just have to become
good little subjects to the State. If grandma can't do PGP, then she
deserves it, right?
I believe it's your responsibility to protect your own data, not the
government's, and certainly not Facebook's.
Yet... many people DIED to initiate/preserve/codify such human rights...
but I guess others just give them away freely. What a shame. Ironically,
many who think this is no big deal have themselves benefited immensely
from centuries of freedom and prosperity that resulted from "rule of
law" and the U.S. Constitution/Bill of Rights.
Freedom is very important to me, as well as the laws that are in place to
protect them.
--
Dan White
