Slashdot Mirror
The Intimate Social Graph
jamie tips an article by Slashdot vet Keith Dawson about the uncertain state of privacy protection for one-to-one online communications through social sites and services. Quoting:
"The privacy of these communications is protected mainly under a law — ECPA, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — dating from 1986 and crafted for then-existing email (think Compuserve and Prodigy) and emerging cellular networks. This law is an increasingly poor fit for modern and emerging communication modalities. Email stored on servers is treated differently depending on whether or not the user has read a particular message; and messages older than 6 months in storage enjoy different protection than newer messages. In attempting to apply the ECPA to social networking media, courts have interpreted users' privacy rights in a variety of ways. ... One shortcoming of the ECPA is that it does not require email, search engine, cloud computing or social networking sites to report how many requests for private data they get from authorities. Whatever the number, it almost certainly dwarfs the number of real-time online intercepts (wiretap, pen register, and trap and trace orders), for which statistics must be kept."
GPG is ported to about everything in creation. If you care about email privacy, use it. It makes whatever the law says some company must do irrelevant, and guards against "accidental" leaks by those companies.
Nearly every ISP provides you with POP or other mail. Run your own mail client: most have built in support for GPG so it's transparent to you once you have made your keys.
Depending on some "benevolent entity" to protect you is unwise.
Does this mean he no longer works at Slashdot?
Is this article FUBAR? What's with the title? What do the terms "Intimate Social Graph" have to do with law enforcement snooping on stored electronic correspondence? Anyway, I think the safe thing to assume is, anything you send online in the clear is potentially open for anyone with interest and some technical experience to intercept and learn about you. There should be no expectation of privacy for that sort of information. If you proceed with that assumption in mind, you won't be disappointed if you find out you're being snooped on, and hopefully you will have taken some measure to guard yourself based on that realization.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
This guy sounds legit.
What a proper username!
Uncopyrightable: The longest word you can write without repeating a letter.
If operating systems (including the desktop environments) treated keys and certificates as interesting standardized objects complete with consistent/appropriate icons, it would help people feel familiar with and in control of privacy measures like PGP.
It would help further if the FOSS world and other techies had their druthers and started an initiative to identify/brand communications software as adhering to a certain standard that is both consumer-friendly and devoid of any backdoors. If the software carried a certain "trustworthy" badge then users would know it passed scrutiny and that there weren't any "legal snooping" deals being cut with governments, etc.
When I first saw TFA summary, I thought of ZPhone and how cool it would be if similar communication apps like it could be grouped together and explained to average people who are seeking more privacy. If the concept catches on, it could encourage the creation of more user-friendly security software or prompt the big guys like Skype to become more open so they can earn the badge.
Soulskill is the new kdawson
some 'flagged' text; almost almost all of US monkeys are considered to be a 'threat' (to constant deception) now. carry on. can't be much further now.
the corepirate nazi holycost (life, liberty etc...) is increasing by the minute. you call this 'weather'?
continue to add immeasurable amounts of MISinformation, rhetoric & fluff, & there you have IT? that's US? thou shalt not... oh forget it. fake weather (censored?), fake money, fake god(s), what's next? fake ?aliens? ahhaha. seeing as we (have been told that) came from monkeys, the only possible clue we would have to anything being out of order, we would get from the weather. that, & all the other monkeys tipping over/exploding around US.
the search continues; on any search engine
weather+manipulation
bush+cheney+wolfowitz+rumsfeld+wmd+oil+freemason+blair+obama+weather+authors
meanwhile (as it may take a while longer to finish wrecking this place); the corepirate nazi illuminati (remember, (we have been told) we came from monkeys, & 'they' believe they DIDN'T), continues to demand that we learn to live on less/nothing while they continue to consume/waste/destroy immeasurable amounts of stuff/life, & feast on nubile virgins while worshipping themselves (& evile in general (baal to be exact)). they're always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their (slippery/slimy) 'platform' now. see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
never a better time to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere/planet (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)
"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--
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