Everyone is going to need to start running a TOR relay.
If the government wants information, then I'll give them more information than they can handle.
2852 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jan 2012
"People and business in the UK should use encryption to protect themselves. "
Good. I agree with that. I don't want someone pinching my credit card number or masquerading as me online.
" All the government is saying is information needed for national security and serious crime purposes should not be beyond the lawful, warranted reach of the state when the need arises."
I understand that. But what that means is that the government wants us to have weak encryption that can be broken, or some kind of other method of decrypting the content of a transmission. And they want this method in place without anything that can be described as a "backdoor".
The fact remains that if the encryption is weak, then it can be broken by anybody. If there's a second method of decrypting the content, then that method can be discovered by anybody. The end result is the same.
I had to look up that word too :
"Hummocky cross-stratification is a type of sedimentary structure found in sandstones. It is a form of cross-bedding usually formed by the action of large storms, such as hurricanes. It takes the form of a series of "smile"-like shapes, crosscutting each other."
I learnt something new!
I'd have thought that the only truly safe way to get someone's public key would be to meet them in person or go to a key party.
NO! Not that kind of key party! This kind of party!
Except that Baroness Shields says in the next breath "that companies that provide end-to-end encrypted applications [...] must be subject to decryption and that information handed over to law enforcement "in extremis"." blatantly contradicting herself.
The trouble is, any mechanism that enables the government to ask for decryption "in extremis" means that there's a mechanism there to be exploited by other people that might want to see my data.
The Internet is not something that you just dump a load of stuff on. It's not a mountain. You see, the internet is like a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled, then emptying them would create a lake.
The company I was working for at the time had a large number of old windows XP machines that I was maintaining and one user had an issue where her machine would keep switching itself off.
After looking at the machine and reproducing the problem but finding nothing wrong with the software, I decided to pop the case off.
Spiders started running out from everywhere and the machine was thick with webs inside. By some miracle of engineering the fan was still turning but only just. Anyway, after half an hour with a toothbrush and a vacuum cleaner I finally got the damn thing stable again and handed the working machine back to the user.
Naturally, she wanted to know what was wrong with it and how I'd fixed it. So I told her that the machine was stuffed with webs and spiders. "Oh... is that an internet thing" She asked.
"No." I replied. "You literally had a PC filled with spiders."