Slashdot Mirror
Berners-Lee Says No To Internet Snooping
Jack Spine writes "The inventor of the World Wide Web has pointed out some of the dangers of deep packet inspection. Sir Tim said that ISPs 'snooping' on data was similar to the interception of mail. 'This is very important to me, as what is at stake is the integrity of the internet as a communications medium,' Berners-Lee said on Wednesday. TBL's comments come as the UK government is gearing up to intercept all web communications in the UK through the Intercept Modernisation Programme, and echo comments he made last year about Phorm."
The inventor of the world wide what?
My Babylon
I remember 10 years ago that every nerd had a PGP key and Schneier's Applied Cryptography was a standard text for our crowd. Now, the majority of even the hard-core geeks no longer have much interest in encryption. Somewhere along the way we forgot that every step forward on the net demands a way to guarantee privacy. Berners-Lee might regret the lack of privacy now, but he and other luminaries weren't vocal enough about the need for encryption and lots of it.
world wide pants!
Encrypt everything. Even if you have no reason to, encrypt everything, because someday it might bite you in the ass.
Which side are you on: CONTROL or KAOS? That is the question. The Government can only answer that question if it can intercept your communications. Are you going to let them? Can you stop them? Do you care?
All I can say is that you should Get Smart!
People like Sir Tim need to speak out on such issues, because their contributions to science and technology are touted by our leaders as 'proof' of Britain being a modern, forward thinking society - rather than the withered, reactionary, largely technophobic old empire we in fact are.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Is normal paper mail 'snooped' nowadays? Big box mail usually is, but envelopes? Sensible question, but if it is... in that sense snooping packets would make sense.
'snooping' on data is NOT similar to the interception of mail.
It is similar to the postman reading the information on the postcard. For people who do not like that the envelope was invented.
Encryption is your envelope.
That's it. https.
Server operators that care for it will have it. Stupids will be snooped on. We do need some substitute for natural selection, after all.
Nothing to see here, move on.
Encryption gives a sometimes false sense of security, and the technology is a hassle. It's better to reinforce societal expectations for privacy where it is due, and let social mechanisms (like laws and market reputation) do the job.
Consider e.g. that if you use https from your workplace and see the happy little lock icon in FF or IE, you probably feel safe.
But some workplaces insert a proxy in between you and gmail (or what have you), having stuffed the proxy's certificate on your (their) work machine through local policy. Unbeknownst to you, your employer then sees the communication which you thought was totally private. Now imagine if an ISP could do that and get away with it.
The point is that even if you do *care*, the technology is hard to keep track of, and there is an arms-race ladder of one-upmanship that makes this a never-ending game, which some nerds can win, and most of us will lose.
What will really keep you safe is to stand up for a reasonable expectation of privacy where it should exist, and create norms and laws that protect this. Saying "NO" to Phorm or other invasions by ISPs is part of that approach, and creates legal and commercial consequences that are more effective than asking every grandma to mess with PGP.
Dude, there are these things here at slashdot called "journals" where you can post any damned fool thing you want without wasting your sock puppet's karma on needless "offtopic" mods.
I usually write about hookers and other women (oddly, people actually read them!). You could post your Israel trolls.
Free Martian Whores!
When governments start snooping on everything they make it harder to snoop on criminals in the future. This makes lots more people want secure networks, which makes more people create tools to make it easy to send/receive encrypted data, which makes even the people who don't know about the issues aware of the issues and tools. Once the tools/protocols become normal, police won't be able to snoop on suspected criminals even with a court order because everything is encrypted.
That'll just make them pass more laws and restrict ISPs so that unsnoopable content isn't allowed. Which will make people start creating stenogrphy tools so things look snoopable, which will make other people aware of the issues and wonder why the gov't is so concerned and start using them.
Then people start using those tools and snooping becomes more expensive (trying to detect stenogaphy) and still useless. But it will get lots of otherwise innocent people in trouble for using encryption or stenography to do something unimportant like send email to their mother.
If police stick to treating everyone as innocent until they had a valid reason to think otherwise and then got a court order they will have a lot more ability to snoop in the future.
It's fucking sad to read this, and think you actually believe what you're writing.
So basically the consequence of what you're saying is "Ban encryption, because those bloddy terrorists/chinese spies/pedophiles/software pirates might use it to do something evil"? Yeah, good idea. Tomorrow on CNN: Door locks banned. They prevent police from entering criminals' homes, police say.
Lack of QoS is not a good thing. I want routers to respect the IP TOS field. It's there for a reason. Lack of non-standard QoS is the bad thing. With QoS I can use bittorrent and play games at the same time, without it there's no prioritization and the game lags. It's the deep-packet inspection that's intrusive crap.
Not a sentence!
>> Sir Tim said that ISPs 'snooping' on data was similar to the interception of mail
Actually, if you think about it, the Post Office also ask about the _type_ of content in your mail: document (letter) ? CD/books ? or fire arms ? ;-)
i admit Post office does not read the words in your letter.
Is this a reply for another parent? I'm not implying anything, I want to know if there are countries where envelope mail is opened for 'snooping'.
Did I say ban encryption? No, I don't think I did.
Investigate encrypted IP streams from US IP ranges to Chinese ones? You betcha.
..Internets browse you!
Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt. Strong encryption. Nothing more to say.
Everyone knows Al Gore invented the www. ~:-)
Sir Tim, posted his personal view to #swig on irc.freenode.net [1]
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/NoSnooping.html
[1] http://swig.xmlhack.com/2009/03/11/2009-03-11.html#1236787895.276276
What Al Gore thinks of this.
FreeBSD bounties
That's like asking Al's father what he thinks of the CHP or state troopers.
The internet then defiantly turned around and screamed, "YES!"
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
"No Carrier" to you is purely a Slashdot meme, right?
That was David Letterman!
The ability to intercept and scan all of a users incoming internet traffic --isn't that exactly like what the US has been doing for years and years with Carnivore, Omnivore (the windows version), Packeteer, etc. for years and years... excpet that Britain is about 10 years behind in their draconian tactics. Its good to see that others can be as draconian as the US.
So helping Chinese people get around the Great Firewall should get you investigated by a bunch of Gestapo wannabes? That's idiotic.
This already happens to every electronic transmission in Sweden - in full violation of EU laws because inter-border transmissions are the target. Denmark and Finland protested..Norway said less than it could have, but by-and-large, this was brushed aside and the EU just kept quiet about it. Now it is spreading. It's no coincidence
Even thinking that this is reasonable is amazingly foolish. If you are concerned that Internet snooping is a problem, then the solution isn't to demand that it not take place. The solution is to nullify it. You can only be assured that it won't happen if it cannot (technically) reasonably happen.
Yeah.
But... FP! ;-)
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I never could understand why everyone wanted to drink that frosty piss. There were times I'd have something funny or informative to say, and got modded down (initially, anyway) just because it was FP.
I hate getting first post.
Free Martian Whores!
If door locks actually prevented police from entering homes, you can bet they would be banned.
Good to see Slashdot has finally picked this up. I sent them the press release about the event last week and as one of the organisers of the event and founder of NoDPI.Org I am pleased to say the event went incredibly well and the press coverage has been amazing. Now would be a good time for people in the UK to write to their MP's directly to discuss the event and make it clear to them that you expect them to research the issue for the purpose of parliamentary debate or you will not be voting for them in the next election. Alexander Hanff NoDPI.Org
So does anybody believe they don't already do that here in the U.S.A?
World Wide Weiner Dog
You have no idea how the world works.
Yes, it's a reply to somebody else who has been modded -1, so you don't see his comment. Hence my comment appears to be a reply to yours although it isn't. Weird but true :-)