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Re: [LUG] Bloody politicians! Rant.

 

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 12:26:00PM +0000, NW wrote:
> I have been reading the replies with interest. Throughout history all
> governments have wanted to control their people. Now with the internet
> that is more difficult, and they don't like it. So they are trying to
> control that too
> 
> And any atrocity such as the recent one in France gives them a good
> excuse to shout anti-terrorism as the reason they have to do something.
> The problem is that they don't seem to have a clue about how it all
> works. On the other hand, the criminals do know.

I think the lack of a clue is the main problem. I do think most
politicians are genuine when they say they only want to be able to read
the traffic of suspected terrorists.

What they don't understand is that
a) this will hurt the IT industry as foreigners will not want to use
UK-based services and many Brits will also be looking for alternatives
abroad;
b) unless you start doing censorship of the kind they do in China, this
is simply not going to work as alternatives will be easy to find;
c) intelligence agencies have time and time again been found to abuse
the powers they have.

On top of that, I think that privacy is a fundamental right. But I don't
think that's going to be a winning argument; hence I think we should
focus on a) - c).

> By the way, re encrypted email, has anyone looked at protonmail? 

I haven't. I know they had received criticism last year when they had
made some basic mistakes, but with CERN and MIT behind it, I'm confident
they will have fixed that.

Keep in mind that it takes two to encrypt email, so just using
protonmail will only make your emails marginally more secure.

Martijn.

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