[ExI] What surveillance solution is best - Orwellian, David Brin's, or ...?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 03:30:18PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> Surely bugging every house wouldn't be either more difficult or more
> expensive than, say, a space program. I think the reason no-one has
> tried it is evidence that there are some things which even dictators
> fear would be too unpopular.

Of course they would have to know in order it to be unpopular

http://news.com.com/FBI+taps+cell+phone+mic+as+eavesdropping+tool/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

Firmware update over air is becoming standard, large local nonvolatile
memories and utilities which record all audio to local flash are commercially
available.

Cell-side tracking is completely transparent. OCR of license plates is almost
completely transparent (I usually flip the bird when I drive under a toll
bridge). SIGINT is completely transparent.

It is in principle quite doable to detect an executable transmission (software
update, etc.), and alter it on the wire to embed a goverment trojan, which
is then subsequently executed.

Most people have no idea what one can do with the hardware they thought
they own just because they bought it. No idea...