I'm not sure why a search engine would need to "represent an even distribution of wealth."
Any system like this with such a clear need for top ranking is going to invite abuse. You can find that sort of abuse in the local phone book if you'd like to take a look. Notice all the "(A|AA|AAA|AAA) company" listings. What happens with search engine spamming is similar.
Who is it you are suggesting should pay, the users in a Lexis-Nexis style model or the submitters in a Yellow Pages fashion?
Having worked at a Kinko's (not the NYC locations) I can say with a fair degree of authority that the people at the stores are the ones that maintain the equipment. There is Regional level support, but that's almost entirely for having them come to fix broken boxes. Granted the most any coworker is expected to do is simply reimage a machine and make some minor changes (add whatever printers are at the location). They aren't expected to actually know much of anything.
Additionally, I believe that while this story broke recently, Kinko's was aware of the problem having rolled out new "security" initiatives near the beginning of the year (around February - March), that included specific instructions to look for WAP's, keyloggers and other non-kinkos gear in the rental computer area.
While I agree that it's not all that intelligent to do anything of a sensitive nature on a public access machine, there are a _lot_ of people that do that sort of thing. More frightening is the number of Passports, Drivers Licenses, Social Security Cards along with the usual array of Mastercard, Visa and AMEX cards that get left on, near or around the copy machines.
I'm not sure that the system that they use for workstation security and the new "Express Pay" would work well with constant reboots (or some the fairly ancient equipment you can still find in branches).
I'm not sure there can be said to be a solution at all.
There are only preventative steps that can be taken in an effort to make it more difficult for this kind of thing to happen again.
The tired notion though that making non-government friendly would have stopped any of this is inane. I've heard it said so many times in so many other posts on/., but it's true.
No one engaged in something illegal is going to stop using good crypto in favor of legal crypto. Won't happen.
It just creates one more resource drain on what's admittedly an already strained system. Are we going to have to enforce sniffers searching out unlawful crypto packets? Start arresting the script kiddies trading tools?
Just because _we_ do it, doesn't mean that the tools will go away. Is the EU countries going to use our tools crippled crypto?
And we end up back where we started, with only law abiding citizens having their privacy violated to little effect. It would seem a very lose lose situation.
I agree that their ought to be a very frank public debate about this issue though, the statistics listed in the more recent article demonstrate how well the issue has been framed by the government and how little our more knowledgeable voices have.
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I'm not sure why a search engine would need to "represent an even distribution of wealth."
Any system like this with such a clear need for top ranking is going to invite abuse. You can find that sort of abuse in the local phone book if you'd like to take a look. Notice all the "(A|AA|AAA|AAA) company" listings. What happens with search engine spamming is similar.
Who is it you are suggesting should pay, the users in a Lexis-Nexis style model or the submitters in a Yellow Pages fashion?
Having worked at a Kinko's (not the NYC locations) I can say with a fair degree of authority that the people at the stores are the ones that maintain the equipment. There is Regional level support, but that's almost entirely for having them come to fix broken boxes. Granted the most any coworker is expected to do is simply reimage a machine and make some minor changes (add whatever printers are at the location). They aren't expected to actually know much of anything.
Additionally, I believe that while this story broke recently, Kinko's was aware of the problem having rolled out new "security" initiatives near the beginning of the year (around February - March), that included specific instructions to look for WAP's, keyloggers and other non-kinkos gear in the rental computer area.
While I agree that it's not all that intelligent to do anything of a sensitive nature on a public access machine, there are a _lot_ of people that do that sort of thing. More frightening is the number of Passports, Drivers Licenses, Social Security Cards along with the usual array of Mastercard, Visa and AMEX cards that get left on, near or around the copy machines.
I'm not sure that the system that they use for workstation security and the new "Express Pay" would work well with constant reboots (or some the fairly ancient equipment you can still find in branches).
Flame bait... at best.
I'm not sure there can be said to be a solution at all.
/., but it's true.
There are only preventative steps that can be taken in an effort to make it more difficult for this kind of thing to happen again.
The tired notion though that making non-government friendly would have stopped any of this is inane. I've heard it said so many times in so many other posts on
No one engaged in something illegal is going to stop using good crypto in favor of legal crypto. Won't happen.
It just creates one more resource drain on what's admittedly an already strained system. Are we going to have to enforce sniffers searching out unlawful crypto packets? Start arresting the script kiddies trading tools?
Just because _we_ do it, doesn't mean that the tools will go away. Is the EU countries going to use our tools crippled crypto?
And we end up back where we started, with only law abiding citizens having their privacy violated to little effect. It would seem a very lose lose situation.
I agree that their ought to be a very frank public debate about this issue though, the statistics listed in the more recent article demonstrate how well the issue has been framed by the government and how little our more knowledgeable voices have.