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Avoiding it is the easy part. The hard part will be maintaining the Open Internet in the face of what Snowden did. He started to force policymakers to realize

by mpyne 13y ago

Avoiding it is the easy part. The hard part will be maintaining the Open Internet in the face of what Snowden did. He started to force policymakers to realize that a cypherpunk-style completely open Internet is fundamentally incompatible with both network defense needs, normal law enforcement (not to mention the spy agencies that most countries want to run), and even cultural/jurisdictional questions on things like data privacy rights. Because the next question that comes after "why was NSA sidestepping the Constitution by peeking at the data abroad?" is "wait, why was my data over in Europe??", just as Germany is now considering making an EU-centric e-mail so that their citizens' data remains safe from being treated under American law.

Zigurd 13y ago
> a cypherpunk-style completely open Internet is fundamentally incompatible with both network defense needs There isn't a middle ground. Either the people have access to strong encryption, DHTs, cryptocurrency, etc., or we live in a panopticon, a soft cage, a managed illusion of freedom. The toothpaste is not going back in the tube. The real question is whether we need more than 10% of the military industrial complex we currently have, or whether this is a deadweight, dragging down our economy and destroying freedom.
sentenza 13y ago
The EU-only email thing is just a symptom of the broken worldview of some German politicians. They can't admit that they gambled away a lot of our freedom without even being aware of what their actions meant, so they engage in meaningless gestures to hopefully appease the lowly plebs. If they were honest and serious, they'd just get out there, tell everybody to encrypt everything, change as many laws as possible to force all entities under their control to maintain and transfer data only encrypted and pump money into better crypto. But as I said, if they were honest and serious...

by mpyne 13y ago

Zigurd 13y ago

> a cypherpunk-style completely open Internet is fundamentally incompatible with both network defense needs There isn't a middle ground. Either the people have access to strong encryption, DHTs, cryptocurrency, etc., or we live in a panopticon, a soft cage, a managed illusion of freedom. The toothpaste is not going back in the tube. The real question is whether we need more than 10% of the military industrial complex we currently have, or whether this is a deadweight, dragging down our economy and destroying freedom.

sentenza 13y ago

The EU-only email thing is just a symptom of the broken worldview of some German politicians. They can't admit that they gambled away a lot of our freedom without even being aware of what their actions meant, so they engage in meaningless gestures to hopefully appease the lowly plebs. If they were honest and serious, they'd just get out there, tell everybody to encrypt everything, change as many laws as possible to force all entities under their control to maintain and transfer data only encrypted and pump money into better crypto. But as I said, if they were honest and serious...