Jimmy Wales Threatens To Obstruct UK Government Snooping

judgecorp writes "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has threatened to encrypt communications between Wikipedia and UK users in order to frustrate the proposed Communications Bill, known as the Snooper's Charter, which would give the UK government the right to routinely track citizens' web and phone use. Wales was addressing the committee which is scrutinising the Bill before it is considered by Parliament."

Comments

Why not just do it?

[MisterP]

I understand that wikipedia is a non-profit and has limited resources, but why not just do it? This doesn't seem like a radical stance at all. This should be on their roadmap. Given wikipedia history of taking sides on issues like this, they should be pioneers in doing this sort of thing.

Plain text HTTP is on its way to becoming a legacy protocol.

Re:Why not just do it?

[xded]

Given the traffic volume experienced by Wikipedia every day, switching the entire UK (or worldwide) traffic to HTTPS would represent a significant hit on the servers CPU load if they're not using cryptographically capable hardware (and maybe even if they do, however IANANE and I'm not sure how this could work with load balancing).

Re:Why not just do it?

[Cajun Hell]

I totally agree with the idea that he should just go ahead and do it, but

Most decent load balancers support hardware-SSL these days.

That's gotta at least increase the wattage. Nothing is ever really free though in 2012 you'd think crypto would be dirt cheap. If your 20 year old computer can do it...