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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."
Nice to see someone has a pair of balls. Not very common on an adult named 'Jimmy'.
Video: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=11355 [Windows silverlight warning!]
To highlight what we are up against - the chairman wasn't aware that 'kids' these days are able to chat to each other in games using their Xbox - 'Good Lord' was his reaction.
The committee really do not have a clue, and have no real chance of getting it if the goverment machine gets their way - the witnesses here showed this.
The 25% arguement is laughable [That being it is claimed that 25% of internet data is not available to collect thorugh current legislation]
I'm not sure how this could work with load balancing
Their load balancers probably already handle the SSL and unwrap it for the web servers.
Most decent load balancers support hardware-SSL these days.
Shouldn't Jimmy Wales be more concerned with how he's going to keep scamming users for more money with his stupid "pledge drives"? Seems like Wales is trying to be another boneheaded Assange-like figure and make up wild accusations just to try and get a media spotlight.
You know most of the time I disagree with down-modding people. I prefer to call them out instead, tell them why they're wrong and why their reason is faulty. I think that's more useful for the rest of the readers even if the asshat in question is too stubborn to admit obvious fault. Obvious fault like "it's a voluntary donation, why shouldn't people be free to make a gift when they want to", etc.
But you, sir, are making me reconsider that point of view. There's no reasoning with people like you. You don't like Wikipedia, its administration, or anything about it, that's fine, don't use it. No one is going to force you to access the site. But that's not good enough, no not for you. You can't stand that other people derive value from it and want to see it prosper, and some of those people are willing to back that up by putting their money where their mouth is. You call this a "scam".
Naturally everyone who disagrees with you is "stupid". If I like a beer you don't like then clearly I have substandard taste. If I like a song you don't like then obviously I know nothing about music. If I use an OS you don't use then of course I am a brainwashed fanboy. Yeah, I know how you think. There's lots of people like you. I wish there were other habitable planets our technology could reach, so then the rest of us can leave all of you to your own devices instead of having to partake of the taint you promote on this planet.
He lives in Britain (in London), so perhaps he chooses to get more involved in politics here than anywhere else.
A personal appeal by Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales
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Also, his last name is Wales, so it's not surprising he enjoys sticking it to the English.
A SSL/HTTPS (transparent) proxy can only do a man-in-the-middle attack if you install the proxy-server's private CA (certificate authority) certificate in your browser. At your work place, IT may have installed one of those CA certificates for their own proxy in the browser on every computer they manage.
Basically for every website you try to access, the proxy becomes the end-point for the website, and then the proxy make its own fake-certificate for the website signed with its CA certificate. The browser checks the fake-certificate with the fake-CA-certificate and thinks everything is fine.
Governments can also transparent proxy specific websites which they have a fake-certificate for which was signed by a hacked real CA. Like what happened with a dutch CA diginotar.nl, which was used to create certificates for google.com and Facebook.com by hackers from Iran, if I remember correctly.