You mean, you submit your name, address, phone number, email over the Internet to, say, Amazon.com using DRM software of some type that will prevent certain uses of your personal info?
Forget it, there is no reason that Amazon.com or other ebusinesses would support such software -- there's no money in it for them. And there are just too many people that would buy their merchandise and hand over their info without a thought.
There is another facet to the encryption/firearms analogy.
Firearms are unlike encryption in one critical respect. Firearms are in fact deadly weapons. Encryption is nothing more than rearranging bits, an operation that never killed anybody.
Therefore, if you entrust to citizens the right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves, a position Attorney General John Ashcroft has stated he respects, you have no reason not to give them the right to use encryption to defend their personal information.
A coworker passed on the following: The FBI has confirmed that 2 planes were hijacked this morning from LaGuardia Airport in NYC; presumably, these were the 2 that crashed into the World Trade Center. Source is WTOP, a Washington DC radio station.
Apologies if this has already been submitted.
I can not in good faith oppose pro bono publico a system which almost guarantees safety for my children.
Ubiquitous automated facial recognition in public cannot guarantee children's safety, not even "almost".
At best, such a system can only identify pedophiles that it knows about. The sexual offender who has not been caught yet can still prey on our children, at least until they're caught and get their mugshots entered into the database.
In the meantime, as the price of protecting against some pedophiles, the rest of us endure the risk of being falsely identified as one of those lowlifes, and suffering the indignity of proving we're not one of them. This is the Fausting bargain facial regcognition asks us to make: some (not perfect proection) against some erosion of "innocent until proven guilty".
No, it's the other way around.
Several large cable companies (AT&T, Comcast, Cox) sell Internet access to customers in their service areas, using @Home's network and servers.
I'm a Concast@Home subscriber. Comcast does the installation and maintenance of the local cable system, provides first tier customer support and receives customer payments. @Home runs the network above the local level (or above a certain level, not sure) and provides the email and DNS. (@Home also "provides" the Excite portal services, which is the money pit that has caused @Home's current problems).
I pay bills to Comcast, who provides a customer service number for support (and which I usually have to bypass to get decent support from @Home). My email address is an '@home.com' address.
If you're really worried about the police (or the NSA etc), you need more than encryption to keep your secrets secure. But for most of us, we can get Pretty Good Privacy(TM) from PGP with our keyring on a floppy disk. Just remove the floppy when you're not using it.
There is still the issue of temporary copies of your private key floating around on your PC in memory or temp files, but I won't worry about that until I hear that someone has released an exploit that goes to that level of effort. Most haskers/crackers/script kiddies wouldn't be bothered, I suspect.
The real answer is consider the "threat" and act accordingly. If you're worried only about script kiddies, you don't need as robust security measures as you do with organizations with lots of resources, such as law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
One way to describe physics theories is in terms of "fudge factors" -- constants, or numbers that are just "there". In current theories, those are things such as the masses of various particles. IMO, physicists try to tie different constants together through mathematics to minimize or eliminate outright constants that are just "there", without being explained by the theory. That's an oversimplification, but I hope that helps.
It seems that (according to the Washington Post story) companies who make communications equipment were worried about the Feds requiring their equipment to comply.
This leads me to wonder: Since this has arisen because of IP telephony, is it possible that traditional phone companies, fearing a loss of business to entities who don't comply with wiretap laws, are pushing this proposal? Seems like an interesting conspiracy theory at least.
Anyway, the IETF will probably kill this bad idea.
I agree that the outocme in the Supreme Court is unclear. But don't assume being "conservative" has anything to do with this. Conservative Rush Limbaugh has come down as solidly pro-Microsoft, while conservative Robert Bork has supported the DOJ's antitrust action. Anyway, only 3 of the 9 justices -- Rehnqiust, Scalia and Thomas are reliably conservate.
When I saw the news last night, I agreed with you. As someone has already said, the judge *gets it*, Microsoft is a monopoly. (By the way, if you haven't read the decision yet, go read it, as it makes clear how much the judge understands Microsoft, which is a *lot*). But after a good nights sleep and a chance to read the morning print media stories, it hit home that Microsoft is not going to get penalized for as long as2 or 3 years. If the judge finds legally that Microsoft violated antitrust law, as now seems likely, he will ask the DOJ to recommend penalties, Microsoft gets to respond, etc.etc and we haven't even already touched on the inevitable appeals. Don't get me wrong, this is great news, but it just one battle, not the war. (But I did relish reading the decision in WordPerfect:-)
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Forget it, there is no reason that Amazon.com or other ebusinesses would support such software -- there's no money in it for them. And there are just too many people that would buy their merchandise and hand over their info without a thought.
Sounds like a good idea. Have you suggested this to @home?
Firearms are unlike encryption in one critical respect. Firearms are in fact deadly weapons. Encryption is nothing more than rearranging bits, an operation that never killed anybody.
Therefore, if you entrust to citizens the right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves, a position Attorney General John Ashcroft has stated he respects, you have no reason not to give them the right to use encryption to defend their personal information.
A coworker passed on the following: The FBI has confirmed that 2 planes were hijacked this morning from LaGuardia Airport in NYC; presumably, these were the 2 that crashed into the World Trade Center. Source is WTOP, a Washington DC radio station. Apologies if this has already been submitted.
Ubiquitous automated facial recognition in public cannot guarantee children's safety, not even "almost".
At best, such a system can only identify pedophiles that it knows about. The sexual offender who has not been caught yet can still prey on our children, at least until they're caught and get their mugshots entered into the database.
In the meantime, as the price of protecting against some pedophiles, the rest of us endure the risk of being falsely identified as one of those lowlifes, and suffering the indignity of proving we're not one of them. This is the Fausting bargain facial regcognition asks us to make: some (not perfect proection) against some erosion of "innocent until proven guilty".
I'm a Concast@Home subscriber. Comcast does the installation and maintenance of the local cable system, provides first tier customer support and receives customer payments. @Home runs the network above the local level (or above a certain level, not sure) and provides the email and DNS. (@Home also "provides" the Excite portal services, which is the money pit that has caused @Home's current problems).
I pay bills to Comcast, who provides a customer service number for support (and which I usually have to bypass to get decent support from @Home). My email address is an '@home.com' address.
If you're really worried about the police (or the NSA etc), you need more than encryption to keep your secrets secure. But for most of us, we can get Pretty Good Privacy(TM) from PGP with our keyring on a floppy disk. Just remove the floppy when you're not using it. There is still the issue of temporary copies of your private key floating around on your PC in memory or temp files, but I won't worry about that until I hear that someone has released an exploit that goes to that level of effort. Most haskers/crackers/script kiddies wouldn't be bothered, I suspect. The real answer is consider the "threat" and act accordingly. If you're worried only about script kiddies, you don't need as robust security measures as you do with organizations with lots of resources, such as law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
One way to describe physics theories is in terms of "fudge factors" -- constants, or numbers that are just "there". In current theories, those are things such as the masses of various particles. IMO, physicists try to tie different constants together through mathematics to minimize or eliminate outright constants that are just "there", without being explained by the theory. That's an oversimplification, but I hope that helps.
It seems that (according to the Washington Post story) companies who make communications equipment were worried about the Feds requiring their equipment to comply.
This leads me to wonder: Since this has arisen because of IP telephony, is it possible that traditional phone companies, fearing a loss of business to entities who don't comply with wiretap laws, are pushing this proposal? Seems like an interesting conspiracy theory at least.
Anyway, the IETF will probably kill this bad idea.
I agree that the outocme in the Supreme Court is unclear. But don't assume being "conservative" has anything to do with this. Conservative Rush Limbaugh has come down as solidly pro-Microsoft, while conservative Robert Bork has supported the DOJ's antitrust action. Anyway, only 3 of the 9 justices -- Rehnqiust, Scalia and Thomas are reliably conservate.
When I saw the news last night, I agreed with you. As someone has already said, the judge *gets it*, Microsoft is a monopoly. (By the way, if you haven't read the decision yet, go read it, as it makes clear how much the judge understands Microsoft, which is a *lot*). But after a good nights sleep and a chance to read the morning print media stories, it hit home that Microsoft is not going to get penalized for as long as2 or 3 years. If the judge finds legally that Microsoft violated antitrust law, as now seems likely, he will ask the DOJ to recommend penalties, Microsoft gets to respond, etc.etc and we haven't even already touched on the inevitable appeals. Don't get me wrong, this is great news, but it just one battle, not the war. (But I did relish reading the decision in WordPerfect:-)