Comments on: Anonymity Loves Company

By: m65

m65 — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:54:13 +0000

good read thanks for the share. i really like the way the article is written and also the design of the website

By: Stuart Armstrong

Stuart Armstrong — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:12:24 +0000

Very good point.

But there is an agent problem. It might be in the interest of every government if they spied less on their citizens, in the aggregate. But for individual governments, individual agencies, and individual agents/investigators to want more spying capacity for themselves.

By: Blar

Blar — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:43:31 +0000

The trick is to let them classify it as a munition, and then break out the Second Amendment.

By: sam

sam — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:42:48 +0000

” I am sure when this percentage gets above 10 or so there will be calls for banning encryption, which will just add fuel to the fire.”

There was a move some years ago to ban PGP in this country. See the wiki page–and discover that the government decided than any encryption program that used keys longer than 40 bits was deemed a munition! And also see how Zimmerman brilliantly tried (successfully it seems) to outfox the government by using that nasty old ploy the First Amendment.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:44:14 +0000

Very true, but a political non-starter. I know many people who have started encrypting email with PGP just because of this reason. I am sure when this percentage gets above 10 or so there will be calls for banning encryption, which will just add fuel to the fire.

By: RickRussellTX

RickRussellTX — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:59:43 +0000

Although I concur wholeheartedly, I think that Tor/Freenet approaches fly so far beneath the radar of regular law enforcement that I can’t really imagine them shaping policy.

It would be interesting to know whether actual internet-tapping has been used effectively in law enforcement. The only cases that make it into the public sphere seem to be boring “we found this stuff in his browser history” or “we undeleted some files on his hard drive” cases that are light years from sophisticated. We know it’s been happening (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70621), but it’s not at all clear to me that it’s actually producing results.