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More Abuses of Technology - Government Surveillance - Computer Confiscation

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CWuestefeld:
Perhaps DC's online profile can be enhanced to store public RSA keys for members. Then we can use those to encrypt email and retain some privacy.

Carol Haynes:
Except that encrypted email will throw up all sorts of warning flags and you face a jail sentence in the UK for refusing to hand over any required decryption information upon request.

CWuestefeld:
Except that encrypted email will throw up all sorts of warning flags and you face a jail sentence in the UK for refusing to hand over any required decryption information upon request.
-Carol Haynes (May 21, 2008, 05:43 AM)
--- End quote ---
True, it's not going to protect you from prosecution if you're doing something wrong. But it (partially) protects the privacy of the innocent, since the process of demanding keys can't scale up to the entire population's entire set of keys.

I say partial, because this also only protects the content of the message. It doesn't protect the headers, so you're still vulnerable to traffic analysis. Simply knowing who you're communicating with may be just as embarrassing as what you're saying.

Carol Haynes:
It's a fairly easy step to go from logging emails to analysing their content - what about building profiles of online spending, for example.

Would I suddenly be suspicious if I bought lots of electronic components for example?

How about regularly visiting websites that sell Asian food stuffs (and especially Chapatti flour which was a key ingredient in the unsuccessful London bombings).

It is already difficult to buy Citric Acid and Tartaric Acid in the UK (both cooking ingredients for making cordials) because they were used in attempted bomb recipes.

How long before you can't buy hair dye before becoming suspicious (hydrogen peroxide has also been linked to bomb making).

What is the next step - collecting supermarket consumer profiles for the entire population? Maybe supermarket 'loyalty' cards will become the new tool of government.

What really bothers me is that the UK is supposed to have a government that subscribes to human rights treaties!

Currently Zimbabwe and Burma are beginning to look liberal!

Renegade:
+100 for Carol

Don't treat regular people like criminals. It can only lead to very dark places. And bad things happen in the dark. (As every good horror movie proves! :) )

More on the topic...
I recently discovered that a friend of mine, who is a professor of computer science, and I share something rather significant in common. We are both anarchists. Not in the Sex Pistols idiot sense. Rather in the deeper philosophical sense of living peacefully without the need for laws in a state of greater freedom generated through trust and a mutual individual social contract between people and not an oppressive state/sovereign.

It's nice to find like-minded people.

@Cpilot -- I wonder if some of your posts here are grounded in a practical fear. "The inconvenience is worth the safety?"

There are a few positions on the topic, and all have merits. I'm not so narrow minded as to outrightly dismiss things. However, Carol has brought up some new perpectives not previously voiced that are very hard to ignore.

Technology is radically changing the way we live. On my 10th birthday, none of this kind of discussion as we are having now would have been possible. On my 20th birthday, it was either impossible, or would have been immensely difficult/expensive.

I thoroughly believe that we, as some of the more informed people on these kinds of issues, need to keep our eyes open for abuse.

While I'm not from the USA, I have a good deal of respect for the country and for how it was founded. (We Canadians just managed to do it a bit more peacefully, but probably with thanks to the history of and how the US was founded.)

However, the founding of the USA and much of political history is soaked in blood. The dark places that current legislation is going will only lead to more bloodshed.

Machiavelli was right. Politics is an amoral theater.

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