[discuss] Blogpost: So What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

Fri Jan 3 02:48:50 UTC 2014

Thanks for your comments Stephen and I note that your paper has generated a
significant discussion on the IETF list... I'll try to take a look at it in
a few hours and then get back to you with some comments.

Best,

M

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Farrell [mailto:stephen.farrell at cs.tcd.ie] 
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2014 3:57 AM
To: michael gurstein; discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] Blogpost: So What Do We Do Now? Living in a
Post-Snowden World

I disagree with this bit:

On 01/02/2014 04:24 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
> But the revelations have just kept on coming and the tech community 
> like everyone else recognizes the scope and depth and ultimately 
> overwhelming power of an agency with access to the full might and 
> resources of the richest, most powerful country on earth led by a 
> President who himself seems to be either in thrall of the surveillance 
> machine or indentured to it for reasons we may never know. They, now 
> equally stand blinded by the headlights of a headlong careening tank, 
> are recognizing with appalled self-incriminations what a horror they 
> have allowed and contributed to being born.
> 
> Quite clearly technical solutions won't work (or at least won't scale) 
> if the dominant power doesn't want it to work, and anyway who would 
> trust that anti-surveillance solutions were working after all we know 
> of how the corporate sector and the tech community has been (willingly 
> or or no) brought in as semi-aware co-conspirators.

While we can't solve the problem via solely technical means, there are
technical things that we can and should be doing that can increase the costs
and visibility of pervasive monitoring. And I don't think that the technical
community are blinded by headlights at all. That's not to say that there's
yet rough consensus on all the details, but I don't think the above matches
the current reality very well.

S.