PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project

Fri Jun 7 15:42:07 UTC 2013

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