Your nation already looks destroyed. Despite rampant criminality and indiscipline in the administration, the DoJ is deliberately remaining toothless on the matter, the judiciary is issuing no orders to rectify its oversight being ignored, and the legislators are largely following sponsor^Wparty lines instead of constituent wishes when drafting and voting on legislation. A revolution at this point could only create a nation.
Baa, the U.S. remains a great nation. Please respect the folks who have concerns and voice them. Many (most) nations would not tolerate this self examination. We use it for self correction. Much of of our problem is the news media looking for flashy headlines. If I were in charge I would have the cable news run reruns of My Mother the Car, until there was something worthwhile to report. (Now I wish we would get on with the self correction, right after we pass a debt extension and get a dang budget for the government to operate.)
Which again, isn't really a shock - they were always allowed to look for spies, but after Al Qaeda showed everyone how infiltration can really be done, you'd pretty much expect them to be looking at everyone to figure out if they are an 'agent a foreign power'.
Except that the FBI was responsible for looking for spies (at least domestically), so this did open a new (additional) floodgate of money. (Not that the FBI has been left in the cold, but now they look for terrorists, instead of things like bank fraud.)
Can we have Congress telecommute, and then cut off their internet?
They are already not communicating, I don't think we want to make it worse. I think a better solution is to put them in a room, no phones, no internet, no TV cameras and tell them they get out after a solution is agreed on.
It's not limited to just SSL. Any company that holds a copy of your encryption/decryption keys (a public certificate is OK, the matching private key that goes with it is the problem) can be ordered to turn them over. The only safe system is where the keys that secure the system never leave your possession.
For e-mail that means using S/MIME or OpenPGP with a self-signed certificate and a private key you generate yourself. For encrypted documents, the same. The e-mail and documents need to be encrypted on your end before they leave your computer. Be aware that if you're encrypting messages to someone else the security will be controlled by their handling of their keys. You're encrypting using their public key, there's no security implications from disclosure there. However, if the recipient's using a service where the provider has a copy of their private key (used to decrypt messages to them) then messages can potentially be eavesdropped on by outsiders who've compromised the provider and gotten the key. Be aware of this aspect and make sure you know how recipients are handling their own security.
Yes, the above means any and all web-based or hosted services are automatically vulnerable no matter how they're designed. The only secure systems are ones where you, or software running on your computer and that you control, does the encryption and decryption and the private keys are never disclosed to any other party.
I was afraid of this. Sigh. Looks like we need a entirely new model if we can't trust the public root servers. For most things on eCommerce it will not make a big difference. Who cares if I order a pressure cooker from Amazon, but for other things that I prefer the government not know about I am back to cash.
Deleting all those NSA backdoors is a helluva job.
No, No, you don't get it. These are installing the new backdoors.
I highly recommend the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington. (Well only if you are into technology) There is a fair bit of history on display there. More than just weapons. http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org/
I forgot, here is write up on the Howell torpedo. http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org/media/6c06204b6731dd48ffff8332ffffe906.pdf
Snow?
My first computer required that you toggle in the boot loader binary code from front panel switches!
That has to be the modern equivalent of hand crank started horseless carriages.
Takes me back to loading those Interdata model 3s with the front buttons so we could load the paper tape. Then we could watch the registers with lights on the front as our code executed. Ah glad those days are over.
The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood
