> From: [email protected] [mailto:discuss- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of David Lang > > There's a huge difference between "It would be possible to track me" and > "the > government is routinly tracking me"
I agree, but for the sake of devil advocacy: Driving on the highway, you're in a public place, and all the travelers are routinely and indiscriminately observed to see if they're complying with the law. (Some are even discriminated against, or subject to profiling.) The same is true of publicly used internet cables - Sure I acknowledge some differences; the highways are government owned and made available for use of the public in exchange for taxes, while the internet cables are privately owned and made available for public use in exchange for subscription fees and other considerations... And sure enough, on the highways, you are permitted to obscure the contents of your vehicle by driving a windowless van or truck, or transporting something in the trunk of your car. You are not subject to content search without probable cause. (Same as encrypted traffic on the internet.) Aside from that, all your non-encrypted usage of the internet is a public communication, as if you painted it on the side of your car. I know the PRISM stuff doesn't all apply to this analogy: some of the services monitored in PRISM are communicated via encrypted protocol, and then decrypted and handed over to the govt voluntarily by the private company (facebook, etc). Those types of information should be regarded more like phone records and credit card and bank statements. Should only be provided with just cause and due process (not sure if that means warrant or something else.) I don't know what conditions brought the demise of groklaw, lavabit, etc. If the govt actually approached them and demanded them to provide decryption keys... Or if they just shutdown to make a publicity statement about *fear* that the govt might someday do that. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
