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The position of the US could be summarized as, make it easy for us to spy on everyone, make it hard for everyone else. Maximum data for us, minimal data for the

by AJ007 13y ago

The position of the US could be summarized as, make it easy for us to spy on everyone, make it hard for everyone else. Maximum data for us, minimal data for the rest. While other governments decry spying, naturally they have the incentive to be even more invasive. Since I was a small child, everyone joked about the NSA listening to US citizen's phone calls. What is unusual about today is now the technology exists to save the communications data forever and organize it in a manner that produces meaningful facts. Unfortunately we have ended up with a data cold war, where all governments are spying on everyone all of the time. It is logical for the US government to embrace encryption use by Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc, because they are able to access that data that foreign governments can not. I imagine Google's escalating implementations of user security relate directly to international spying activity. As such, we should expect more spying by everyone, in an escalating manner. In less democratic societies, expect the result of unlimited blackmail, espionage, and murder. The only alternative we have left for a free society are open source communication platforms that employ user-side encryption. (Sorry Silent Circle.)

ihsw 13y ago
> a data cold war, where all governments are spying on everyone One of the least discussed topics in this whole cyber-security fiasco is the issue of the exploit industry: hackers and hacker collectives buy, sell, and trade software exploits between each-other and state governments. This flies in the face of actual security in that software corporations and state governments purchase exploits in order to buy a hacker's silence (preventing the sale the same exploit to competitors) or clandestine operations. How do you think the NSA (et al) hacked into various computer systems across the world? They've got a stockpile of zero-day exploits. This stockpile of zero-day exploits is similar to the previous cold war's stockpile of nuclear warheads: it reinforces MAD (mutually-assured destruction). We lived through a little over half a century under the fear of nuclear warfare, do we want to endure the same threat in the 21st century?

by AJ007 13y ago

ihsw 13y ago

> a data cold war, where all governments are spying on everyone One of the least discussed topics in this whole cyber-security fiasco is the issue of the exploit industry: hackers and hacker collectives buy, sell, and trade software exploits between each-other and state governments. This flies in the face of actual security in that software corporations and state governments purchase exploits in order to buy a hacker's silence (preventing the sale the same exploit to competitors) or clandestine operations. How do you think the NSA (et al) hacked into various computer systems across the world? They've got a stockpile of zero-day exploits. This stockpile of zero-day exploits is similar to the previous cold war's stockpile of nuclear warheads: it reinforces MAD (mutually-assured destruction). We lived through a little over half a century under the fear of nuclear warfare, do we want to endure the same threat in the 21st century?