Put network attached storage and a pop-up web server in every home and watch existing monolithic structures be eroded. With personal gigabit connections, terabytes of our own to serve from, end-to-end encryption, and peer-to-peer implemented at a fundamental level, our communications will cease to be reliant on anything except critical infrastructure — and even that, in time, will be obsoleted. It’ll take time to nail down the right protocols, plug gaps, and expand compatibility, but the important thing is to get it out there. Like Bittorrent, the cat won’t be put back in the bag. It’s taken ten years for torrents to become a household word, but at the rate services and agencies are accidental tipping their cards, it may not be as long a road to get people in touch with their inner cryptographer. Make it as easy to install as BonziBuddy and you’ll start something that won’t be easily stopped.
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For anyone not freaked out about the NSA just having metadata on every email you’ve sent and received in Gmail, make sure you take a look at this little project/experiment some MIT students put together. The graphic you see above is a diagram of who I email, how often I’ve emailed with them and how and if they are related to other people I’ve emailed with. I removed the name labels, but you can view the diagram with names as well. This is approximately 10 years of email. So yeah, just having metadata can tell someone a lot. MIT lets you delete the info. The US government does not.
BTW, something I figured out was that because I had Gmail (on the web) configured to only give access to my 1000 most recent emails via IMAP, I had to remove that limitation in order to give this project access to all of my email.
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Took this on a trip to Death Valley.
2006-09-21 at 08-01-50, Processed with Analog
Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against.
Chuck Palahniuk
(via stoweboyd)
CASH Music: The problem with the IRS and open source: logic, not discrimination
CASH Music: The problem with the IRS and open source: logic, not discrimination
The New York Times just ran a piece on the BOLO (be on the lookout) practices of the IRS. They’re at the heart of a story where some groups are saying they were unfairly targeted by the IRS. CASH Music and the role of open source software were both mentioned in the NYT piece, and as we’ve long suspected (known) the IRS has indeed been flagging all tax exempt applications from groups mentioning open source software.
Oh, America…
Hello, NSA
My favorite one so far is:
On a Southwest flight to San Diego, Iran into one of the Chemical Brothers.
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Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
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