On Sat, Sep 15, 2001 at 09:55:55PM +0200, Herbert Valerio Riedel wrote:
> ...this maybe just coincidence and/or caused by other reasons (maybe some
> well read web referee?)... but it seems that after the US-event of
> 09/11/2001 the accesses went up for 2 prominent cryptographic linux
> packages; are we getting more paranoid?
I guess that depends how you define "paranoid". If paranoia is
unrealistic fear, then no, we're not more paranoid.
The spooks have been saying for a long time that they "need" to be able
to read everyone's e-mail and stored data to make sure we're not
"terrorists". (Terrorist: a person outside the [US] political power
structure who uses violence or threats to achieve political goals. Note
how meaningless this definition is, because the vast majority of
politically-motivated violence is committed by police authorities and
military organizations.)
This event is over 99% likely to strengthen their position. I wouldn't
be surprised to see encryption outlawed (except for gov't-approved and
-crackable systems) in the USA as a result of this. Already I've read
several news accounts which allege that the perpetrators used e-mail
encryption. The prevailing attitude is of blind trust of authorities;
that if you're not doing anything "wrong" you don't have anything to
worry about WRT gov't surveillance.
As you might guess I don't have any trust of authorities. So I don't
consider it paranoid to want to encrypt; it's just prudent. If you don't
protect your data now, soon it will be more difficult -- maybe even
impossible -- to do so.
Rob - /dev/rob0
Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
