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Maybe we need the "Herd immunity" of a large number of people using encryption software. If a sufficient number of people are using encryption, then targeting

Maybe we need the "Herd immunity" of a large number of people using encryption software. If a sufficient number of people are using encryption, then targeting those users becomes less worthwhile.

antocv 13y ago
In a world were most people would use encryption, NSA and other agencies would just backdoor consumer hardware or libraries such as OpenSSL and pretend to cry over their sudden loss of power. Technology is not the solution to this problem, it is society and it can be solved by rule of law, accountability, revolution and such old forgotten concepts.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  OpenSSL? You mean the open source software with a million eyes on it? Technology is not the solution to this problem, it is A solution, among others.
  - antocv 13y ago
    Really, a million eyes on it? Okay, lets go with that, to compile OpenSSl you need a compiler and an entire toolchain, an operatingsystem, microcode and hardware. In any layer it is possible for an organization such as NSA to do its dirty deeds. They dont fabricate their own chips/hardware for fun. Well, maybe for fun too, but not only for fun.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      Sure we can't go around trusting trust. OTOH most of the compilers in general use see a number of eyeballs. Ditto for the operating systems. I could even see this becoming the case for hardware eventually. An evil system must model the system that relies on it in order to attack that relying system, while remaining functional in general. The longer you make the chain that inserts your nasty code into higher-layer objects, the more complicated, fragile, and discoverable the attack becomes.
- orthecreedence 13y ago
  Agreed, it has to be battled at both ends. I tend to assume that Microsoft Windows has backdoors, given their track record and their corporate culture of bending to the will of the government. This means that anything you run off of Windows is already compromised. Open-source operating systems are one way to remove this unknown. The largest ones have the eyeballs of thousands of people scrutinizing them at all times. I can't speak to hardware backdooring because I know nothing about it. Would this be able to affect end-to-end encryption like GPG? I'm assuming it would have to have extremely complicated analysis to understand the "bigger picture" of the instructions being run on the CPU...and logging every instruction is beyond the capabilities of built-in hardware for most computers, I would think. Are there any good articles on this? On the other end, the American public needs to wake the fuck up and realize that just because one of us isn't a terrorist doesn't mean this doesn't affect each of us, individually. The government works for us, and we wrote the constitution, not the government. It is ultimately our job to enforce the constitution. I'm starting to wonder if Americans even deserve free speech if all it's used for is to take pictures of your lunch and post it on instagram, or free press if it only covers a useless string of mundane sludge while dancing around the issues that are defining us as a people.
cavilling_elite 13y ago
Or better yet everyone capable start a p2p service with email as the protocol and millions of random encrypted and nonencrypted junk files to an entire web of ever increasing spam emails.

Maybe we need the "Herd immunity" of a large number of people using encryption software. If a sufficient number of people are using encryption, then targeting those users becomes less worthwhile.

antocv 13y ago

In a world were most people would use encryption, NSA and other agencies would just backdoor consumer hardware or libraries such as OpenSSL and pretend to cry over their sudden loss of power. Technology is not the solution to this problem, it is society and it can be solved by rule of law, accountability, revolution and such old forgotten concepts.

Karunamon 13y ago
OpenSSL? You mean the open source software with a million eyes on it? Technology is not the solution to this problem, it is A solution, among others.
- antocv 13y ago
  Really, a million eyes on it? Okay, lets go with that, to compile OpenSSl you need a compiler and an entire toolchain, an operatingsystem, microcode and hardware. In any layer it is possible for an organization such as NSA to do its dirty deeds. They dont fabricate their own chips/hardware for fun. Well, maybe for fun too, but not only for fun.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Sure we can't go around trusting trust. OTOH most of the compilers in general use see a number of eyeballs. Ditto for the operating systems. I could even see this becoming the case for hardware eventually. An evil system must model the system that relies on it in order to attack that relying system, while remaining functional in general. The longer you make the chain that inserts your nasty code into higher-layer objects, the more complicated, fragile, and discoverable the attack becomes.
orthecreedence 13y ago
Agreed, it has to be battled at both ends. I tend to assume that Microsoft Windows has backdoors, given their track record and their corporate culture of bending to the will of the government. This means that anything you run off of Windows is already compromised. Open-source operating systems are one way to remove this unknown. The largest ones have the eyeballs of thousands of people scrutinizing them at all times. I can't speak to hardware backdooring because I know nothing about it. Would this be able to affect end-to-end encryption like GPG? I'm assuming it would have to have extremely complicated analysis to understand the "bigger picture" of the instructions being run on the CPU...and logging every instruction is beyond the capabilities of built-in hardware for most computers, I would think. Are there any good articles on this? On the other end, the American public needs to wake the fuck up and realize that just because one of us isn't a terrorist doesn't mean this doesn't affect each of us, individually. The government works for us, and we wrote the constitution, not the government. It is ultimately our job to enforce the constitution. I'm starting to wonder if Americans even deserve free speech if all it's used for is to take pictures of your lunch and post it on instagram, or free press if it only covers a useless string of mundane sludge while dancing around the issues that are defining us as a people.

cavilling_elite 13y ago

Or better yet everyone capable start a p2p service with email as the protocol and millions of random encrypted and nonencrypted junk files to an entire web of ever increasing spam emails.