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.
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?
Just mail a copy of each one to yourself at another account and someone will decrypt them for you. I can't tell you who, I've already told you too much and I'm afraid awi3qu91 108OI)
[NO CARRIER]
Not because it will bite you in the ass, but because by encrypting everything you 1) give them more stuff to look at and if they are looking at you they aren't looking at me, and 2) it won't be obvious that you are trying to hide something when you DO encrypt that particularly incriminating file. They'll have to spend time decrypting your email to Mom as well as the picture of cousin Julie when she was 4.
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.
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.
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.