Although they can work to coopt and compromise in various ways, there are legal limits to control of crypto and security in the US. That's what all the fights in the 90's were about. We've seen that ATT and Microsoft seem to easily turn over, or enable to be turned over, access to everyone's data. And now there are some avenues to combat this in court and public opinion. Others aren't so cooperative. Individuals and new companies can only be convinced on a case by case basis. The Internet is democratic in the sense that new attempts at perfect security and independence can always be synthesized and tried. Not perfect, but close enough. We did not go with the needs-approval-first paradigm which is the diametric opposite of freedom and democracy. Various levels of illegal activity would seem to act as canaries on communications systems: If they continue unmolested, then the venue may be secure. On the other hand, allowing illegal but uninteresting dealings, occasionally spinning up parallel construction when someone just can't wait, would provide cover for plausible security. That then acts as a honeypot of sorts for target traffic. There are some obvious ways to combat this. I wonder if they will be outlawed successfully. I was somewhat surprised to learn of the widespread illegality of wearing masks in public, notwithstanding cold weather and Halloween apparently. The legal grounding there seems an overreach; lucky it wasn't successfully applied to online personas. Governments are, variously imperfectly, proxies for their citizens. What communications system would be secure, reliable, and free, while enabling the right portion of the population to break security when appropriate? If there are terrorists, especially after the fact but ideally before, how could their activity be exposed reliably while also reliably preventing any other traffic from being exposed? One answer is to make exposure the equivalent of a noop. In the past 10 years, we've caused this to be true in many ways. Oversharing on Facebook is no big deal. Being silly or stupid is not rare or fatal to your long-term persona because we know that many people do those things. At a more serious level, we want commercial or government agents to be like doctors and priests, holding and generally forgetting our almost completely mundane secrets when the have to run across them. That requires both strict training and ethics, but also management, oversight, and some outlets to sense and respond to overstep. Failure of the government to police itself well enough or in murky ways tends to lead to leaks eventually. Elements of governments have previously had some terrible ideas that they pursued using both public and invasion of privacy level of information. Some of this still happens, although the gap between reasonable ideals and actual persecutions is continually getting smaller, at least in the US. There is a long way to go in certain areas on drugs, sex, violence, fraud, etc., but we've come a long long way. In some ways, I suspect that the need to focus on anti-terrorism has caused relaxation and some abandonment of pursuing some gray areas. Some people really don't trust that government will consistently converge to a reasonable ideal in these areas, although it seems to be steadily going that way in the US. Other countries seem generally behind on that path, or for various reasons off on some other random and less effective path. What do you propose as an alternative that meets many of modern societies important goals? Anti-terrorism is a good example problem. Fair and lucid election campaigns are another. Open commerce that has modern controls on the market that we know are needed for a healthy system is another. Another thing to consider is whether some crowd-controlled but somehow tyranny of the masses avoiding system might also be an avenue for possibly dynamic jury nullification-like judgment. sdw On 9/14/16 12:46 PM, Sean Lynch wrote:

One step closer to everyone ceasing to pretend the Internet is in any way free or democratic. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted. Even where ISPs are nominally private, you can't be a licensed user of the airwaves or have fiber along government right-of-ways and expect not to have the government impose its own interests on you. I wonder how long it'll be before they outlaw any kind of overlay network they can't snoop on? I guess that's what the attempts to outlaw useful crypto are all about. I bet we'll eventually see warrants to decrypt legal, escrowed crypto envelopes entirely on suspicion that the user is using a layer of unescrowed crypto inside. Which will accomplish exactly what the content cartels want by forcing those who care about privacy into low-bandwidth covert channels while doing nothing to make it more difficult for genuine criminals to communicate privately. Maybe it'll be harder to share kiddie porn. But at a huge cost to the future of humanity, as we all know where this road is leading.

Maybe there's some hope for wireless services where the hardware is licensed rather than the user. Or extremely line-of-sight stuff like FSO.

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:38 AM, grarpamp mailto:grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1420226/gchq-planning-uk-wide-dns-fi... https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1420226/gchq-planning-uk-wide-dns-fi... UK surveillance agency GCHQ is exploring the use of a national 'firewall' in its fight against cybercrime, according to the organisation's head of cybersecurity. Alongside BT, Talk Talk and Virgin Media, GCHQ will work to filter out websites and email campaigns which are known to contain malicious content. The intelligence organisation believes that the best to way to set up such a blockade would be to build a national domain name system (DNS). In a speech delivered at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington DC, director general for cyber security at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin, said: 'We're exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering: what better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad addresses?'

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1512257/10-years-in-prison-for-onlin... https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1512257/10-years-in-prison-for-onlin... The UK Government's Digital Economy Bill has moved a step closer to becoming law after its second reading in Parliament. With unanimous support, the current two-year maximum custodial sentence for online piracy is almost certain to increase to a decade, TorrentFreak reports. From the article: Due to UK copyright law allowing for custodial sentences of 'just' two years for online offenses, anti-piracy groups such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft have chosen to pursue their own private prosecutions. These have largely taken place under legislation designed for those who have committed fraud, rather than the more appropriate offense of copyright infringement. Physical pirates (CDs, DVDs) can be jailed for up to 10 years under current legislation. During the past few years, there have been lobbying efforts for this punishment to apply both on and offline. That resulted in a UK Government announcement last year indicating that it would move to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement to ten years. They also urge Google to do something about growing incidents of piracy.

sdw

The UK Gov has spent two generations indoctrinating people right from birth that privacy is only for bad people, big corporations will look after them, gov dependency is a good thing, debt is a good thing, politics is of no interest and too complicated for them etc etc Only subversive types would think otherwise and so any of you opposing their plans are quite simply extremists and terrorists. Unless the peoples minds can be 'reprogrammed' then those of us subversive types who have somehow avoided being brainwashed will become criminals according to the state. So, Brits on the list, expect a bumpy ride. On 15 September 2016 00:07:44 GMT+01:00, grarpamp wrote:

The 90's was simple existance, not the depth of mass application. If people think the 90's was the last fight, or a big fight, or some kind of defining success, it's suggested they're terribly mistaken. The application is causing govt's and useless legacy power structures worldwide to lose some control in certain areas, and they're approaching panic mode. When an animal is panicked, it gets ugly, fast. You don't want that. Yet you can't turn back. So you need to push the envelope harder, faster... so as to make panic mode but a forgone blink in time, rebuffed by the legion of myriad pressure against them... and push them straight into a feeble state of shock, then kill them before they can regain composure and enact vengeance.

Keep yer sails full, keels wet, and cannon hot.

-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On Wed, 14 Sep 2016 23:45:31 -0700 "Stephen D. Williams" wrote:

On 9/14/16 11:11 PM, oshwm wrote:

...

Unless the peoples minds can be 'reprogrammed' then those of us subversive types who have somehow avoided being brainwashed will become criminals according to the state.

The vast majority of grownups can't be reprogrammed, educated or reasoned with.

American TV and movies don't help? ;-)

Just look at the kind of stuff people like Stephen write.

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 12:51:28AM -0700, Stephen D. Williams wrote:

On 9/15/16 12:01 AM, juan wrote:

...

On Wed, 14 Sep 2016 23:45:31 -0700 "Stephen D. Williams" wrote:

...

On 9/14/16 11:11 PM, oshwm wrote:

...

Unless the peoples minds can be 'reprogrammed' then those of us subversive types who have somehow avoided being brainwashed will become criminals according to the state. The vast majority of grownups can't be reprogrammed, educated or reasoned with.

Mostly true it seems. Not strictly true I don't think, but in terms of a stubborn habit, effectively true.

...

...

American TV and movies don't help? ;-)

Just look at the kind of stuff people like Stephen write.

Only if you can handle the truth, or at least a close approximation. ;-) Not many can.

Stephen, consistent pro-state propaganda repeatedly espoused by an email address surprisingly identical to yours, suggests otherwise. Winks from you suggest empathy, humour and or shared _____ which simply does not exist.

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 07:11:19AM +0100, oshwm wrote:

The UK Gov has spent two generations indoctrinating people right from birth that privacy is only for bad people, big corporations will look after them, gov dependency is a good thing, debt is a good thing, politics is of no interest and too complicated for them etc etc

But people keep sharing. We'll know they've succeeded when common folk dob each other in for "sharing".

Only subversive types would think otherwise and so any of you opposing their plans are quite simply extremists and terrorists.

:/

Unless the peoples minds can be 'reprogrammed' then those of us subversive types who have somehow avoided being brainwashed will become criminals according to the state.

s/will/already have become/

So, Brits on the list, expect a bumpy ride.

Not just the UK - Australia, USA, surely other countries too? The good thing is that the pressure for digital privacy and anonymity tools may increase... Now where's that Tor plugin for my bittorrent client again?