rtf1 · HackerTrans

13 years agodiscuss

And it's not even limited by the internet. NSA collects every piece of information they can get their hands on, whether it's data on the internet or any other network, or spectrum signals, or simple imagery. And they do that by every means possible. James Bamford wrote years ago a number of books on the subject. And even before him, David Kahn painted a pretty clear picture. Why is everybody so excited so suddenly? Is there somebody on this forum who believes for a split second that Mr Obama and/or the US House/Senate are prepared to lay off way over 300,000 intelligence community workers, contractors and what have you??? -RTF

rtf1

13 years agodiscuss

I have seen more bad things happening from politics than from encryption. Politics, in just about any nation, is the never ending cancer of "making deals". The never-ending tit for tat, the compromise. We need NO compromise. I'm in my 60's now, and have seen the internet been born. Actually I contributed to that birth while working at Arpa. Privacy, no matter how I look at it, is ABSOLUTE. Also for criminals, and yes, even for terrorists. Humans have the natural expectation of privacy. That's probably difficult to absorb for many reading this medium. Every human being has the ultimate right to be in charge of his or her own mind. Politics conflicts with privacy, all the time. Politics established the rule of law, and, did so by and at the convenience of those with the loudest noise and the toughest axes. Since none of us is capable, willing or able to put the politicians out of (our) business, we can only find resolve in taking care ourselves, and thus deploy encryption. And we do have good quality crypto. And it is even free. Can it be broken? Over time, yes. But complexity, volume and speed can make that a fairly long trajectory. Can it be broken by quantum-cryptanalysis? Probably yes, but even that is more than 30 years away to be in infant stage. The real problem is the endpoint security. Well, work on it, make it better, improve it. Don't just stand there and accept God knows who to run away with YOUR thoughts, ideas, inventions, preferences or problems. And by all means, please do NOT think that government, any government, is the only one looking at your data. There is an entire commercial world busy with your stuff without you knowing about it. ---RTF PS: and yes, this is anonymous. My students would probably scaffold that I'm a weakling :)

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