I think that building privacy into the architecture would be inherently dangerous, however, it is a perfect way for the people building the system to oppress the users, all the while convincing them that the system is secure.
We build the privacy into the system, not the government. The question is _who decides_? If we decide by creating, then more privacy will exist by fiat.
The only way to ensure your privacy is to seize it yourself.
Absolutely. This does not contradict our activity of building the privacy into the system. Any privacy system you can build on top of an insecure network such as the internet can also be built on top of a privacy-friendly network.
There are a lot of ways to get a signal around the world without using a satellite, ask any amateur radio enthusiast.
One of the really great techniques I've hear about recently is a data channel that runs at 90% T1 speed over the ~900 MHz spread spectrum band. The legal limit is 1W transmitter power and 4W antenna gain (transmitted energy focusing). From what I hear, though, the antenna gain requirements are being ignored by lots of folks. What this means in practice is that you can set up a directional antenna and easily get a twenty mile hop on one of these units.
Why is there not more work being done on encrypting all internode traffic streams? It doesn't seem too hard.
Cylink has had a T1 link encrypter out for years. It uses D-H for key exchange. It's also costs (not-known-to-be-accurate) about 10K$ per end. Eric