[ExI] The NSA's new data center

[Ben Zaiboc]

All this talk about privacy becoming a thing of the past seems rather silly to me.  Our whole society (and, some people think, even the evolution of our big brains) is dependent on deception and concealing information.  To say that we would 'adapt' to having utterly no privacy, no ability to hide or misdirect, due to technology, is like expecting cats to stop chasing birds if you feed them only carrots.

Forcibly try to take away people's privacy, and they will only value it more, and figure out ways to preserve it.  As surveillance technology becomes more powerful and sophisticated, so will anti-surveillance tech.  

It's just another arms race, like parasites and immune systems (both biological and digital), ads and ad-blockers, spam and anti-spam systems, etc.

The real value of a thread like this is to alert people to the size and nature of the conflict, not to prepare them for an inevitable defeat.

We need more practical advice, like Matthew's* obfuscation strategy, information on how to use things like TOR and personal encryption, and how to achieve deniability, and less rolling over and playing dead. Oh, wait, that's a deception strategy.  OK, less bending over and pulling down of pants.


Ben Zaiboc
(or someone else posting under his name)

*May not be the person's real name