Comment **No Title** (Score 1) 315
Now don't get me wrong - I'm a total privacy advocate (ok, some would say nut), and I don't agree with these morons, but in a certain sense they are both correct and incorrect.
1) Correct: You don't have any expectation of privacy in the *ADDRESS* of the person you are corresponding with. You *DO* have an expectation of privacy with the contents of the envelope (let's not even go near postcards). In fact, the USPS has been known to photograph the outside of the envelopes for DECADES of people they want to learn more about, but don't have a warrant for just yet...
2) Incorrect: I do not concur that my surfing habits are 'public'. There's nothing public about the sites I choose to visit on the Net. This is my own damn business, and too many incorrect assumptions could be drawn from stalking me on the Net. If you have probable cause that I'm committing some crime (like I bought 5000 bags of fertilizer and 2000 gallons of diesel and 1000 pounds of aluminum powder and 500 pounds of pink dye plus a case of blasting caps) - then STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE.
Now, given that these two camels really want to get their noses underneath the tent so they can collapse the whole thing in the name of 'security', here's what we do:
1) Encrypt everything. Use anonymous chaining remailers. Base your email address upon a key which changes at least every day, if not every minute. Something along the lines of my dear departed anon.penet.fi
2) Use a different scheme to encrypt the contents of the message. Use digital signatures. At least 4096 bit encryption - more if you and your recipients can stand it.
3) Use encryption. Use a dual proxy scheme. Proxy 1 is behind your firewall. Whatever you key into your browser get's encrypted by the proxy and passed to an anonymous recipient proxy (one of many chosen at pseudo-random). Anonymous recipient proxy decrypts the info, hits the site, returns the data. There's some key management and exchange issues, differential traffic analysis issues to accomodate, and some other cryptographic goodies, but if enough people do this - it'll totally fuck up the tracking... Check out the AT&T research paper on "Crowds"...
I for one believe that what those terrorist bastards did was a heinous act beyond belief. However, it is not worthy of my blood-won freedoms. Rather the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Find every terrorist, expel them into space, and DON'T TREAD ON ME!
1) Correct: You don't have any expectation of privacy in the *ADDRESS* of the person you are corresponding with. You *DO* have an expectation of privacy with the contents of the envelope (let's not even go near postcards). In fact, the USPS has been known to photograph the outside of the envelopes for DECADES of people they want to learn more about, but don't have a warrant for just yet...
2) Incorrect: I do not concur that my surfing habits are 'public'. There's nothing public about the sites I choose to visit on the Net. This is my own damn business, and too many incorrect assumptions could be drawn from stalking me on the Net. If you have probable cause that I'm committing some crime (like I bought 5000 bags of fertilizer and 2000 gallons of diesel and 1000 pounds of aluminum powder and 500 pounds of pink dye plus a case of blasting caps) - then STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE.
Now, given that these two camels really want to get their noses underneath the tent so they can collapse the whole thing in the name of 'security', here's what we do:
1) Encrypt everything. Use anonymous chaining remailers. Base your email address upon a key which changes at least every day, if not every minute. Something along the lines of my dear departed anon.penet.fi
2) Use a different scheme to encrypt the contents of the message. Use digital signatures. At least 4096 bit encryption - more if you and your recipients can stand it.
3) Use encryption. Use a dual proxy scheme. Proxy 1 is behind your firewall. Whatever you key into your browser get's encrypted by the proxy and passed to an anonymous recipient proxy (one of many chosen at pseudo-random). Anonymous recipient proxy decrypts the info, hits the site, returns the data. There's some key management and exchange issues, differential traffic analysis issues to accomodate, and some other cryptographic goodies, but if enough people do this - it'll totally fuck up the tracking... Check out the AT&T research paper on "Crowds"...
I for one believe that what those terrorist bastards did was a heinous act beyond belief. However, it is not worthy of my blood-won freedoms. Rather the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Find every terrorist, expel them into space, and DON'T TREAD ON ME!
