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CIA Chief: We'll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
- mtgx 14y agoThat no-privacy-from-the-government future that Richard Stallman has been warning us about is finally starting to become reality. Only open source software and an encrypt-everything mentality will probably protect us.
- dalke 14y agoUbuntu is mostly open source/free software. Ubuntu integrates Amazon search as part of its local search, and that code is open source. (I'll assume also that it uses encryption; if it doesn't, it could easily be changed with no affect on my logic.) Stallman says that Ubuntu 12.10 is spyware. Ergo, "open source and an encrypt-everything mentality" is not sufficient to protect us. People can use fully secure software and encrypted connections to talk with friends via Facebook ... which stores the data and can reveal it to unexpected third parties. In both case, people just don't care. What will "protect us" is to convince people that these are things to worry about, with repercussions to the CIA or others who should try. BTW, an encrypt-everything mentality can make things worse, depending on where the encryption occurs. If you see traffic between your web browser and a server somewhere, how can you verify that it's sending only the data that you expect it to carry? Perhaps a security hole has been exploited, and it's helping someone spy on you. If all of the data in encrypted in the browser process, then it's hard for you to verify the data traffic going over the network, because it's encrypted. It would be better if you could insert your own inspectors in the data stream. This can be done with a web browser via a proxy, where the proxy handles the encryption. Few people do that. Do you? How do you know HN isn't spying on you right now through your browser?