IFIP has issued a statement on the issue. Excerpt:
There is reason to believe that major practical pillars of trust in the Internet, e.g. the trustworthiness of relevant communication nodes and the security of cryptographic implementations in the web such as SSL, are being intentionally weakened in a systematic way at the behest of government organizations and other major actors in the field. This is endangering and undermining the fabric of the Internet and the Information Society, and contradicts the claim of those actors to be trusted with e.g. sensitive personal information. Moreover, any deliberately introduced weakening or backdoor is equally exploitable by (ostensibly) legitimate and illegitimate third parties alike.
I honestly don't find this too interesting. They didn't look only at the friends, but also at the gender and sexual orientation of the friends. First, this is not information that is readily publicly available. Either all a user's friends would have to have their profiles visible to everyone, or you would have to friends with all of this user's friends. Second, this is really just the same thing as being seen on the streets with gay friends. Or any other type of friends, for that matter. Have you never wondered "maybe it's not so good for my image if I'm seen with this anarchist/effeminate gay guy/punk/..."? So I think people already know that their friends list on facebook gives away possible information about oneself, be it true or not.
Slashdot Mirror
IFIP has issued a statement on the issue. Excerpt:
There is reason to believe that major practical pillars of trust in the Internet, e.g. the trustworthiness of relevant communication nodes and the security of cryptographic implementations in the web such as SSL, are being intentionally weakened in a systematic way at the behest of government organizations and other major actors in the field. This is endangering and undermining the fabric of the Internet and the Information Society, and contradicts the claim of those actors to be trusted with e.g. sensitive personal information. Moreover, any deliberately introduced weakening or backdoor is equally exploitable by (ostensibly) legitimate and illegitimate third parties alike.
I honestly don't find this too interesting. They didn't look only at the friends, but also at the gender and sexual orientation of the friends. First, this is not information that is readily publicly available. Either all a user's friends would have to have their profiles visible to everyone, or you would have to friends with all of this user's friends. Second, this is really just the same thing as being seen on the streets with gay friends. Or any other type of friends, for that matter. Have you never wondered "maybe it's not so good for my image if I'm seen with this anarchist/effeminate gay guy/punk/..."? So I think people already know that their friends list on facebook gives away possible information about oneself, be it true or not.
Maybe he's talking about his first ride in a cardboard box in the "exciting" traffic flows in India - go ahead and search for that in YouTube.
Rather impressive indeed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsPbLC8ppoU