Ignorance Is Strength?
So do I need to point out that the NSA cell phone snooping story broke on the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell’s 1984?
By all accounts, privacy is dead, the question is do people care? Personally, I do; but I cannot deny that if you go online then you must accept that you are leaving a trail, but that does not mean that we have to exchange our love of the interwebs and mobile computing in exchange for our privacy.
I observed this comment by a friend of mine and I feel it needs to be spread more widely: “The surveillance state did not invade the Internet; the surveillance state is the Internet”.
Sadly, I am coming to believe that the above statement is true; it also gives me apprehension as to where the notion of privacy and the internet may be going.
It’s a concern because the internet need not be a surveillance state: back in the mainframe days we had standards for communications security from the U.S. military that demonstrated that we could have a secure computer system and network of computer systems.
Alas, the technology, the “orange book” was well ahead of it’s time, hard to execute with the machines of the day and was greatly watered down.
Right now, no-one’s working on a successor that suits modern needs and technologies, but point solutions exist for particular things. I use PGP for secure mail, and “Silent Circle” is available for cell phones.
I once did a plan for secure BYOD devices for a customer, but like the Orange Book, I would have needed a slightly newer technology (:-))
–dave