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On Thu, 12 Dec 2013, Paul Sutton wrote:
So how do we get all this across to non geeks, non techies, people who can just about open a word processor or send an e-mail. Anything beyond that forget it, Do we target the next generation and teach young people today about the importance of freedom. If so HOW. ?
I think a lot of the work is being done already, implicitly, through the Snowden leaks. Much as their content is very bad, they are a wake-up call for Internet freedom.
I don't think the focus on one company (Microsoft) is helpful though, regardless of whether they are really evil.
If you're worried about the NSA accessing your unencrypted data stored on a US server, the solution is not to simply move that data to a server in another country, whose intelligence service you trust. The solution is to store it in such a way that it doesn't matter where it is stored.
Likewise, if you are worried about Microsoft's products containing NSA backdoors, you shouldn't just switch towards using a competitor's products. You should use software of which you can verify exactly what it does - so open source software, where even if its creators are evil, the software can still be verfiied to be good.
This is where theory and practise differ, as in practise it is well possible to insert hard-to-detect backdoors into open soruce software. It may even be easier for a powerful adversary to do so. But in the long run, open source wins and that is why it is a very good idea.
Martijn. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq