This FBI software displays nothing new, fundamentally. The only major difference I see is the scale of the effort. As has been said, the chances are pretty good that this kind of activity of this size has been going on anyway.
Plain-text e-mail has always been non-private. When you send it, you are using other people's property to facilitate the transfer. What could be more public domain than that? Talking on a sidewalk or at a mall or other crowded place is not much different (except that no one would assume their conversation was not overheard).
It would be nice if you could trust everyone to respect your privacy via the honor system. But you can't. Practically speaking, encryption (or some other form of strict authentication) makes more sense in enforcing privacy.
I'm stating, I suppose, my belief that this responsibility ultimately falls on all parties who stands to lose by having a piece of info unintentionally shared. In this case, however, the cynical approach seems to be the most rational if privacy is the goal.
I don't think this realm of activity is extraneous at all. Having a... um... a non-orthodox case can be pretty useful (and a liability/hassle, also). For a couple of years I have had a mb mounted on a pine board. There is a small amount of metal (from old curtain rods) fashioned into a card cage; everything else is screwed or stapled in, including the power supply, drives, speakers, and even a power strip. While aesthetically laughable, it is pretty convenient for adding/removing core components because everything is so accessible. You can also integrate oddball items (e.g. external devices you don't feel like tearing apart and finding the right cables for) without a lot of fuss and clutter. It works fine... if you don't mind dusting every so often. One of the downsides is that it has to be placed somewhere out of the way.
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This FBI software displays nothing new, fundamentally. The only major difference I see is the scale of the effort. As has been said, the chances are pretty good that this kind of activity of this size has been going on anyway.
Plain-text e-mail has always been non-private. When you send it, you are using other people's property to facilitate the transfer. What could be more public domain than that? Talking on a sidewalk or at a mall or other crowded place is not much different (except that no one would assume their conversation was not overheard).
It would be nice if you could trust everyone to respect your privacy via the honor system. But you can't. Practically speaking, encryption (or some other form of strict authentication) makes more sense in enforcing privacy.
I'm stating, I suppose, my belief that this responsibility ultimately falls on all parties who stands to lose by having a piece of info unintentionally shared. In this case, however, the cynical approach seems to be the most rational if privacy is the goal.
I don't think this realm of activity is extraneous at all. Having a... um... a non-orthodox case can be pretty useful (and a liability/hassle, also). For a couple of years I have had a mb mounted on a pine board. There is a small amount of metal (from old curtain rods) fashioned into a card cage; everything else is screwed or stapled in, including the power supply, drives, speakers, and even a power strip. While aesthetically laughable, it is pretty convenient for adding/removing core components because everything is so accessible. You can also integrate oddball items (e.g. external devices you don't feel like tearing apart and finding the right cables for) without a lot of fuss and clutter. It works fine... if you don't mind dusting every so often. One of the downsides is that it has to be placed somewhere out of the way.