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CFP2000 - Freedom and Privacy by Design
The organizers of the next Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, to be held April 4-7, 2000, in Toronto, Canada, are issuing a Call for Participation in a workshop entitled "Freedom and Privacy by Design" - how to use technology to bring about strong protections of civil liberties against governments and businesses that would censor or snoop. I plan to attend: give me some ideas!
Don't use telnet, use ssh. Got any sensitive e-mails? Time for PGP or GPG. (GPGPGP? Ahh!)
:)
Why, you say? I don't have any data anyone would care about? Well, you might be right, but don't use that business e-mail account for personal reasons if you care about your job. And remember that the company might be logging your web access too, checking it against company policy. Chilling, isn't it? It's practically standard procedure nowadays.
Also, if you encrypt your stuff, and you usually have nothing to hide, and others do the same, eventually it gets much harder for anyone to snoop on the internet. They'd generally want to attack people who send unencrypted streams of data... Sucks for them.
Also, some common sense: Don't leave any encryption keys lying around if you care about your identity. In the future, I'm sure this can only get worse, and not just for Sandra Bullock. And saying "encrypt everything" might sound cool, but alas there are a few places where it isn't a good idea for everything. Like slashdot, for example. I wish my user account / password was secure, that would be nice... (the lesson here: have a throw-away password for the WWW, since much of the submissions are in plaintext, or a reasonable facsimilie) But I could care less about the actual content of my posts, they definitely don't need to be encrypted as they are being posted to a public forum! Like so.
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pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
While it probably doesn't need mentioning, encryption is the best use of technology to prevent snooping. The problem with this is twofold, however: 1) governments and large corporations have access to resources far beyond what most folks can muster up, and 2) we really have no realistic idea of what government agencies are truly capable of doing; I mean, who really knows if the NSA hasn't found a way to make PGP its bitch? Yes, the chances are that the large businesses and governments of the world don't have the capability to defeat the encryption that we have access to, but do you want to risk your freedom on a maybe?
:)
With all of the ways that your privacy can be compromised, I really can't think of any other uses for technology that would assist in protecting privacy, especially since technological advances always improve the capability for someone to invade the privacy of someone else; when there are huge companies and governments who can churn out things like spy satellites, wiretaps and shotgun microphones, technology only seems to widen the gap rather than even the playing field. Of course, maybe I'm just paranoid.
Yet somehow I doubt it.
Deosyne
can be undone, as well.
Not that we shouldn't still make use of technological solutions where practical, but technology isn't really going to make a dent in the real threats to privacy, i.e. the end points of the chain.
Encrypting the transmission media (for example) won't do much good if the other end of the transmission has no scruples about the distribution of the information that they receive.
Unfortunately, privacy isn't about technology, but about respect. By and large, technological solutions aren't much more than stopgap measures, and will ultimately fail, unless we address the fact that to have privacy, others need to respect that privacy (and we need to respect the privacy of others, as well).
I tend to be loathe to suggest any kind of government intervention, but in some cases, only the force of law will address the worst of the issues.
By all means, we should use all technical means at our disposal to help protect our rights to privacy, such as encryption, some kind of provable authentication that doesn't require your life history to prove your identity, etc., but without a proper social framework that provides for privacy, and meaningful penalties for those that violate it, technology will be of only limited use.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
Ummm... I wasn't aware the government was developing software. And since when is it about what a small % of population (we) care about. A couple days ago at school I heard this: "I took a look at that Linux thing, and I don't understand it. They think it will beat windows and Im thinking yeah right."
Face it, people still have little to know clue what Open Source is, they just now know that its there.
Well It's about time people got a clue. Privacy isn't about shame and vice. It's about being recognized as an individual (which newsjerks falsely equate with uniqueness). It's about having personal control over your time, lifestyle, and your FRREEDOM of ASSOCIATION. Laws are made to deal with exceptions, not to tell the whole world what to do.
... tools... (siglim 120 chars)" Like cars... to the office no more no less.
Consider the case of Harrison Bergeron (Vonnegut rules): He has an implant that prevents him from concentrating whenever he has illegal thoughts.
Now say everything you do or say is monitored. Do you really think the game stops there? Remember we're talking about humans being the monitors. Paranoia doesn't die when a particular fear is resolved. Paranoia just shifts its focus.
Sure, monitoring all phone calls will satisfy the majority of people working 40hrs a week completely detached scared to death of the world around them.
It will satisfy them about a month, if the news stations could abstain from playing the fear card (NBC and Y2K ring a bell?). Most likely that'll be a week.
Next you'll find that people are still afraid because the problem hasn't been solved and they know it. They know subconsciously that all that has happened is that they treated symptoms of fear and security agencies have made a killing.
So what next? Speculative profiling. Gateway thoughts (similar to that farce the gateway drug).
Attitude adjustment counseling.
So what's wrong with checking up on people? IT'S RUDE. It doesn't merely show a lack of class, but also it shows a lack of respect. You are a permanent suspect from the day you're born. You have no dignity. But the worst part is this:
IT IS DISRUPTIVE. Expressing an idea, producing a work, making a product, and being able to have stress-free periods to do so requires that you are not interrupted. It requires that you are not spending 90% of your time second guessing yourself wondering whether your work violates some vaguely defined votemagnet law.
It gets so ridiculous that such harrassment can be used in place of actually infringing on people other rights because it is so disruptive it hindrance in the same way as actually infringing on their rights.
"Computers should be
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Seriously though I think there's going to be a need for anonymized access to web sites and other net resources - so we can give away our email address without getting spam, our credit card information without getting ripped off, our home address to get something shipped without getting paper spam, our IP address so we're not being tracked around the net, use our SSN without it being being passed around, use our DNA without it affecting our medical insurance rates etc etc
And it has to be done a way that's proactive from our point of view - ie we don't depend on other people that we have to business with, (like the medical insurers, or the retailers or ....) who don't put our best interest ahead of theirs, to be nice to us and respect our confidentiality - gotta start using protocols (net, commercial, social, ...) that don't give them any option
These are difficult technical and social problems.
I suspect that what it comes down to is that we're going to need some reputable 3rd parties (those datahavens) to proxy our transactions for us.
At some levels we already have these - the big companies that sell financial (credit) and medical information about us - today they don't have our interests at heart either - somehow we have to find a way to take back ownership of our data.
I know Europe has stricter privacy laws than the US - anyone want to enlighten us on how they work?
We have to make crypto easier to use, even if we sacrifice some security in doing so. Sure, for my most private communications I'd rather verify the public key myself or through a PGP-like Web of Trust, but for most mails it's still far better if I trust some DNSSEC-based database to bind an email address to a public key than if I don't use encryption at all.
Of course, by "sacrifice some security" I don't mean we should start using shorter keys - the cost of long keys is not very much so we might as well use them - I mean "allow some possible attacks that more secure approaches might deny", such as trying to substitute a fake public key for the intended recipient's keys. These attacks are still far more expensive and difficult than pure eavesdropping attacks, which are relatively easy to thwart.
Oh, and we shouldn't use SSH everywhere - SRP is the Right Thing for remote passwords, and again it's far more convenient for the users.
When security measures become inconvenient, people circumvent them in ways that utterly defeats any security gained - like by telling people their password over the telephone. We have to make security so convenient people don't even realise it's there, and do the best we can in the environment that has real users in it. Those who know what they're doing can of course do better, but on the other hand those who know what they're doing are vastly outnumbered by those who *think* they know what they're doing.
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Xenu loves you!
Code is hard. Programmers are expensive. The sacrifices for civil-liberties efforts are substantial and the rewards meager, especially compared to the riches of attending to the needs of corporations.
We all know "Crypto Good". Now what?
It's not my quote. It's Larry Niven's. (And if you don't know Niven, head on over to library/bookstore. Go ahead. I'll wait.) My point is this: Lest we lose sight of the Big Picture, there are, in fact, several GOOD reasons why the government wants to invade privacy. In the worst-case scenario, people could operate covertly virtually under everyone's noses. I don't believe that a great number of people would want to give terrorists the opportunity to blow everything they have up merely because they felt insecure that the government was looking over their shoulder. I certainly do not advocate that the government (or any agency) should have ultimate power and be able to know absolutely everything about me. However, people must also consider the reasons behind the government's actions. To completely lock observers out of the loop is as dangerous as giving the government carte blanche. Who is to say where that limit should be? Before everyone gets in a uproar about encryption and how everything needs to be encrypted, and how we should keep Big Brother from looking over our shoulder, they should think what the consequences of such an action may be. As a final note, Niven has noted that the constant is not the same for each individual, or even for individual governments. If technology can find a way to increase the constant, I'm all for it.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Also, if you encrypt your stuff, and you usually have nothing to hide, and others do the same, eventually it gets much harder for anyone to snoop on the internet. They'd generally want to attack people who send unencrypted streams of data... Sucks for them. :)
People who lurk around sniffing out plaintext messages and attacking them are usualy bored script kiddies. They are not something to worry about, unless you annoy your younger brother whos idea of a great retaliation is to post your logfile showing your access to www.spank-me-harder.com.
Against serious attacks, be they privacy or denial of service, the average user has no defence except anonymity. To hide in the masses is a cowardly concept but it works. If noone knows you're there they wont seek you out and attack you. And before you ask, yes I am quite familiar with the 'It's not the voices of the evil but the silence of the good' reasoning and I agree with it. But on the net, if you want to stay somewhat safe, don't stick out. Just take a look at how many attacks are made on the FBI's net resources and how many on John Doe's@Xoom. Anonymity works.
This brings us to the next point. Defending privacy on the net is not only a question of cryptography. The main problem is the usage of information that is gathered. If I wish to post in alt.binaries.terrorists that's my concern, but any ISP can, without threat of legal reprimand, enter my log and punish me by declining me their services. And that's a sanctioned privacy breech.
The same goes for push marketing (see the article further down). It's the companies that log access that choose how they will use their information. And use it they do. Just check AltaVista, the ads they show are tailored based on which country suffix you're connecting from. This is a mild form of push marketing, but it's concievable that someone would store information on what you search for and correlate it against which ads you're most liable to click-trough. And once such databases are in place they become a real threat to the integrity of the average joe.
But I do not believe that the situation is as bad as people are painting it up to be. If one thinks back to the 50s and the Communist paranoia, the 60s and the 'big brother' and later atomic war paranoia and the 70s with its drug wars, none of these problems were as bad as they were made out to be. The privacy issue on the internet will most likely go the same way, it's going to be present, and potentialy dangerous, but it will be forgotten for newer fears.
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
I keep reading a lot of vitriol being expended toward those companies that keep data on transactions that people perform with them. What I don't here is anyone defending the companies rights.
Don't get me wrong here. I get irritated at corporate intrusion, too. The other day I had to threaten an AT&T telemarketer with a lawsuit. I was getting at least two calls a day from people wanting to know who my long-distance carrier was (as if it were any of their business).
But think about it. If I buy a widget from Joe Schmoe, do I have a right to tell everyone that I bought a widget from Joe Schmoe? Can I tell people that the widget was good/bad/cheap/expensive... (e.g., can I give a review in a magazine)? Can I state publicly that Joe Schmoe was easy/hard to deal with? Free countries throughout the world claim the ability to do a product review as a basic right of free speech.
If I can talk about a transaction that I have with Joe Schmoe, Inc., why can't Joe Schmoe, Inc. talk about it? You can say that it isn't fair because Joe Schmoe, Inc. profits from the information, but don't product reviewer's profit from the information they provide? How do we justify taking the right of freedom of speech from Joe Schmoe, Inc.?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The problem with assuming the internet is an unassailable bastion of liberty, that it inherently "routes around censorship" and so forth, is that its human users reside in the physical world and are subject to physical coercion, such as losing their jobs, their homes, their freedoms, or (in extreme cases, in extreme locations) their lives.
Others have mentioned the importance of very strong, easy to use encryption. This is important. However, I think a far better approach would be to design the underlying protocols to allow for transparent use of strong encryption, strong authentication, and double-blind anonymouty.
This may sound at first absurd, the idea of having both strong authentication capabilities coupled with (ideally) unassailable anonymouty. However, the key is that one's cyberspace handle, while an authenticable on-line identity, should not be able to be matched up with a real-world, physical being without that person explicitly identifying themselves willingly and deliberately.
Project's like "freenet" are important, though I would suggest going further and redesigning the lower protocols (e.g. an ip protocol - perhaps a variant of ipv6) which would incorporate these characteristics at the lowest level. Obviously this is not a panacea -- traffic analysis could for example be used to trace messages to a particular, physical location despite whatever electronic anonymouty has been designed into the system. These and other problems would of course need to be addressed. Even if they couldn't all be solved, a great many of our existing difficulties and vulnerabilities would be alleviated.
I think that, as long as the technology makes an all-intrusive, omnipotent state possible, it is only a question of time (apparently not a very long time at that) before such becomes a reality. Echelon, the litigation of the RIAA and MPAA, the censorship imposed by the Scientologiest on their critics, and so forth, are only the tip of an emerging iceberg. Redisign the technology to make that sort of thing impossible, very, very difficult, or unacceptably expensive, and you go a long way toward preventing it from ever happening. After all, what good is a court order if the physical and logical infrastructure make it impossible to carry out?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Since it seems that goverments & corporations have the resources & inclination to collect any and all information they can about the general populace, regardless of whether the populace likes it or not, it seems like the only real alternative to defend our own rights is to fight fire with fire - collect, organize & share information on those who would attempt to be our "overlords", continually audit their behavior & organize "corrective" behavior where warranted.
The media somewhat fulfills this role, but the mainstream media seems to have been greatly corrupted by the influence of their sponsors (i.e., business) and the resultant coverage tends to be biased to avoid offending those sponsors. (It defies common sense that a media outlet will REGULARLY defy their sponsors - they might occasionally run something to show their independence, but in general they will not risk the revenue stream which allows them to exist.)
There are lots of little advocacy & watchdog groups which are attempting this function - but they aren't working together & the general populace is not taking an active part in supporting their activities, therefore their overall effect is somewhat insignificant.
I guess an effective system would provide a way a way to organize & tie together the efforts of these groups, including generating reports for & accepting input from the general populace. It would be decentralized & have some kind of builtin self-checking feedbacks to resist corruption of the information. Anonymous whistleblowing would be a necessity, along with validation through cross-reference & investigation, to try and dig out the dirty "secrets" that students of Machievelli (sp?) are so adamant about hiding.
*sigh* nice daydream, eh?