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This is not a software engineering problem but social and political one. Thus, any attempt to solve it only by means of some smart engineering would be bound to

This is not a software engineering problem but social and political one. Thus, any attempt to solve it only by means of some smart engineering would be bound to be rendered uneffective for most or all of the masses.

mtgx 13y ago
I agree it's a political problem, and can only really be solved through policy in the long term, but at the same time the big companies could do a lot more to bring end-to-end encryption to the masses, especially when it comes to chat apps.
- ippisl 13y ago
  I think a viral marketing effort by the people will be good enough to create a mass of people using something like textSecure:easy to use secure(OTR) IM, backwards compatible with the android messaging app. Still that doesn't solve the the backdoor issue. This one is much harder to solve.
negamax 13y ago
It is a technological problem as well. Let's suppose government allocated $200 billion to create this infra. But there are free tools which can render it useless. They are less likely to go ahead with such a plan then. Whole premise of making inroads in service providers servers is that information stored there is human readable. Store it encrypted. Come up with stronger algorithms and security schemes and this problem is affectively solved. If we can reach to a stage where only option remain to read a person's information is to arrest them or break into their devices, we have affectively pulled a project like PRISM down.
- varunkho 13y ago
  > Whole premise of making inroads in service providers servers is that information stored there is human readable. Store it encrypted. Nobody is inroading, government has access to the data by law or by policy. Service providers, that operate under the jurisdiction of a state, cannot perform actions that do not adhere to the laws and policies of that state. It's as simple as that. > Come up with stronger algorithms and security schemes and this problem is affectively solved. Algorithms and schemes are already there, but there's no legal and/or policy framework to force their use. In fact, the current framework is designed to force the opposite.
  - negamax 13y ago
    You are speaking these words as a matter of fact but you couldn't be more wrong. Government have access to this data by law when it's by a court order. Why is the first defence statement made that it's not done on US citizens? Because government will be pulled in court for this. And make no mistake, US companies can be pulled in court over this in foreign countries. So don't make flying statements like 'it was lawful' without understanding how court and executive branches balance each other. I agree with your point about existence of such algorithms. But we can certainly improvise. What you have written here is like saying that Facebook is just a message board. Of course, technologies exists. It's about how to utilize them and make them easily accessible. And again, there's no framework to force any communication channel. There's no law that data stored on servers cannot be encrypted. If it is lawful then there's no reason for Snowden to run and hide. In fact you are insinuating that what he has done is unlawful.

mtgx 13y ago

I agree it's a political problem, and can only really be solved through policy in the long term, but at the same time the big companies could do a lot more to bring end-to-end encryption to the masses, especially when it comes to chat apps.

ippisl 13y ago
I think a viral marketing effort by the people will be good enough to create a mass of people using something like textSecure:easy to use secure(OTR) IM, backwards compatible with the android messaging app. Still that doesn't solve the the backdoor issue. This one is much harder to solve.

negamax 13y ago

It is a technological problem as well. Let's suppose government allocated $200 billion to create this infra. But there are free tools which can render it useless. They are less likely to go ahead with such a plan then. Whole premise of making inroads in service providers servers is that information stored there is human readable. Store it encrypted. Come up with stronger algorithms and security schemes and this problem is affectively solved. If we can reach to a stage where only option remain to read a person's information is to arrest them or break into their devices, we have affectively pulled a project like PRISM down.

varunkho 13y ago
> Whole premise of making inroads in service providers servers is that information stored there is human readable. Store it encrypted. Nobody is inroading, government has access to the data by law or by policy. Service providers, that operate under the jurisdiction of a state, cannot perform actions that do not adhere to the laws and policies of that state. It's as simple as that. > Come up with stronger algorithms and security schemes and this problem is affectively solved. Algorithms and schemes are already there, but there's no legal and/or policy framework to force their use. In fact, the current framework is designed to force the opposite.
- negamax 13y ago
  You are speaking these words as a matter of fact but you couldn't be more wrong. Government have access to this data by law when it's by a court order. Why is the first defence statement made that it's not done on US citizens? Because government will be pulled in court for this. And make no mistake, US companies can be pulled in court over this in foreign countries. So don't make flying statements like 'it was lawful' without understanding how court and executive branches balance each other. I agree with your point about existence of such algorithms. But we can certainly improvise. What you have written here is like saying that Facebook is just a message board. Of course, technologies exists. It's about how to utilize them and make them easily accessible. And again, there's no framework to force any communication channel. There's no law that data stored on servers cannot be encrypted. If it is lawful then there's no reason for Snowden to run and hide. In fact you are insinuating that what he has done is unlawful.