Why we spent a decade+ building strong crypto & security

[John Gilmore]

The US government's moves to impose totalitarian control in the last
year (secret trials, enemies lists, massive domestic surveillance) are
what some of the more paranoid among us have been expecting for years.
I was particularly amused by last week's comments from the
Administration that it'll be too hard to retrain the moral FBI agents
who are so careful of our civil rights -- so we'll need a new
domestic-spying agency that will have no compunctions about violating
our civil rights and wasting our money by spying on innocent people.

While there's plenty of fodder for argument among the details, the
overall thrust of the effort seems pretty clear.

Now's a great time to deploy good working encryption, everywhere you
can.  Next month or next year may be too late.  And even honest ISPs,
banks, airlines (hah), etc, may be forced by law or by secret pressure
to act as government spies.  Make your security work end-to-end.

Got STARTTLS?
Got IPSEC?
Got SSH?

Use it or lose it.

	John Gilmore


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'