On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Benjamin Kreuter <brk7bx@virginia.edu> wrote:

That is probably not going to work. Suppose we lived in such a world and the government established a "lawful intercept requirement." Ten years later all the newest software and devices on the market would have back doors, and only a small group of hackers and activists would be using good crypto. Even that small group would have to use the backdoor'd products for day-to-day things like banking.

It's about entrenching good crypto and its benefits *before* govt's can react without needing to expend extra effort to rip out said entrenchment.

The government has a lot of experience with phasing out products, even when it requires coordinating individual households. Analog TV is gone despite the proliferation of analog receivers. Tetraethyl lead is only used for niche purposes like aviation, despite the fact that once upon a time people drive cars designed for leaded fuel. The government could treat cryptography the same way if it wished.

HD was better and opened spectrum, so people didn't rise against buying new TV's, especially for smaller cheaper LED vs CRT. Health was better and cars rusty, so people didn't rise against new cars, especially for cheaper and more fuel economy. Gov't wins when they offer something people want. The sooner you entrench something they want... crypto protection from 'the spies'... the sooner gov't will have a very hard time taking it away. Crypto is like candy to a world of newspawn Snowden babies... hard to pull once given. So start giving it away... https://www.prism-break.org/

Here in the USA people are convinced that dangerous criminals are lurking behind every corner

Take those cowards you know out to the gun range and show them how to fix their house and cars. Man them up out of irrational fear and into confidence. People are pumped full of FUD, hard to combat directly, so tricky end arounds are needed. Anonymously pamphlet your workplace with EFF.

The importance of privacy and related civil rights are hard to explain to people who never lived under the Stasi or the Securitate.

Apparently Zuckerberg, Saverin, Moskovitz, Sandberg and others of Jewish heritage behind Facebook have forgotten what collecting, processing and benefiting from data on users can turn into. As ones who should know, why are they collecting and not out there 'explaining'?

the NSA.

Again, hard to combat. Make it real for them... everything they do is collected, stored, watched... convos, pics, mail, a life of their expressed thoughts... without their consent, forever. Count the cameras on your ride home from work, the junkmail in your post, the ads in your browser.

You should write to your representatives, because that is part of the power you have.

It's also relatively easy to stop by local party offices and ask 'Hey, what are you guys doing about all this spying stuff?'. Presenting issues in person is hard to ignore, I've had good experiences with local official types.