What if Google just wanted you to use their search engine no matter what protocols are used?

Agreed. Note for instance that during Obama's two terms, there were several epidemics in China that never got crazy like COVID. China clamped down on all of them like a vise. It almost seems too convenient that Obama dodged a few bullets and just one totally gores Trump before he could get to a second term. Not that I'm a Trump supporter, mind you. I just think that it's more than a coincidence that COVID came along with Trump's antagonism of China.

Sure, community broadband requires political will, but once its done, those customers never go back.

I have Utopia here in Utah and it's kind of an internet heaven.

https://www.muninetworks.org/

Slate has an interesting article on the slowing trend in population growth here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

I'm not so sure population is going to be such a problem in the future. But distribution of wealth may still be a problem.

Have you seen the SuperPAC to end all SuperPAC from Larry Lessig? Mayday.us.

I know this is a late comment, but I like your comment because it reminds us of the way power is delegated. The people delegate power to the states. The states delegate power to the corporations. What our culture seems to have forgotten is the the people are still on top.

Now if we can only remember what happened that brought us here.

What if the contraception coverage in controversy didn't induce abortions?

http://www.nationaljournal.com...

The court seems to have ignored that point.

Seems like a maintenance plan would help cover the cost of upkeep.

I think it's pretty fair to say that we assume that the judges understand the technology at hand. I'm not sure they do.

We are living in Lesterland.

http://lesterland.lessig.org/

I think you are pretty close, but I think that the real problem for the NSA is the possibility of real competition to provide internet access. Imagine how tough the job will be if the NSA had to get cooperation from hundreds of ISPs like they have in Japan. The duopoly here is very convenient for the NSA but a nightmare for the rest of us.

Had we declared the owners of the pipes to be common carriers and imposed open access rules upon them, we'd have something like what Japan has: fast internet access with hundreds of ISPs vying for my money. Instead, we have cable and telcos who operate on one principle: make sure that the CEO can have a few vacation homes sprawled across the world, send his kids to private schools until they are married and allow him and his extended family to live in gated communities. The members of the board of directors get similar benefits, but to a lesser extent.

Oh, one more thing. The corporations participating in the duopoly need to siphon enough money from the economy to capture the agencies that regulate them, except for the NSA, which in theory, can't be bought. Snowden proved that, but not in the way the NSA had in mind.

In sum, the duopoly will slow the net down, but it will also provide a few powerful leverage points for the government while concentrating revenue into a few companies willing to cooperate. Yeah, that sums it up.

This is an interesting point. No matter how much data they collect, someone has to look at it and make a judgement call about it.

Nice sig. Nice post, too. We each have to choose our battles carefully. In the meantime, enjoy life.

A farm of computers, eh? How big is it? Here's an article from Schneier that discusses the physical limitations of computation relative to brute force attacks for private keys:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_cr.html

To put it simply, brute force attacks are about trying every possible combination in a counter. Just to run a counter through 256 bits, You're going to need all the power of the sun for 32 years or more, or a supernova. Take your pick. That doesn't include power for any other useful computation. And then of course, there is time. How much time do you have?

The computer scientists of the world who believe in freedom will be happy to put the kibosh on on any code that permits side-attacks on encryption software. That is where the weakness is more likely to be, not the encryption algorithms.

Now I could be completely wrong about this, but based on the best available information I have, I don't think anyone is capable of brute force attacks against strong encryption except for poorly implemented crypto or really weak passwords.