On 12/29/2013 12:37 PM, Larry wrote:
woodchucker wrote in
:

On 12/29/2013 11:35 AM, Mike Marlow wrote:
woodchucker wrote:
These clowns have revisionist views of what they do.
The General feels that modifying the encryption, and
getting the encryption values are fully legal because
they go after foreign entitities, but the reality is it
went after our own people.

These are traitors to the American people, and they cloak
it in protection. Defeating our own encryption does not
protect us. It creates holes that open us up. If one
foreign entity gets hold of that flaw, all of our systems
are at risk. Phone systems which use the RSA key,
financial systems which use the RSA key... lets assume
power systems also use it. I have not worked for the
power systems but have to assume they use the RSA vpn
key...

Unfortunately, the country is full of stupid people these
days who are not just stupid, but lazy as well. They
don't want to take the time and/or the energy to
understand (even at a superficial level), the risks of
things like this. History is lost on them. That
backdoors have typically been exploited. That codes have
been cracked. But - tell them that what the government
wants to do is for their protection, and they roll over
and sign on to the program. It's easier that way. They
can feel good about it. Snowden means nothing to them.
They don't realize that he was one government employee who
became disgruntled and exposed secrets of the highest
order. Fortunately - he is a good guy of sorts. Imagine
if he had malicious intents.

Imagine what might happen if all of our systems were
hacked, including the bios of all systems. I believe this
happened in Saudi Arabia or UAE, can't remember, all of
there systems had to be thrown out, as they could not trust
the bios.

Imagine the chaos here if every system were at risk.



In the interest of protecting us


There is speculation that is exactly what happened with the
Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

What the government has done has eroded the trust that is
necessary for for both businesses and individuals to feel
secure. This is already being seen in contracts that now
require data to be stored off-shore and will cost American
companies billions of dollars. Telco's are feeling the heat as
well as developers of closed source software. Closing all of
the backdoors and coming clean is the only way to restore that
trust, neither of which is likely to happen.

The biggest problem as you have said is the uninformed,
apathetic citizen. They accept this spying by both
corporations and government as part of everyday life. Many
grew up in an age where they had never had any privacy because
of the Internet.

I asked a co-worker about their iPhone (Android is just as
bad) the other day. If I were to follow her around all day
long, make note of her travels, log all of her calls, log her
purchases, intercept her email and texts, would it be OK? I
suspect I would be arrested for stalking but it's fine if
Google or Apple or your phone provider does this.

Society needs to revolt against this wholesale collection of
data and the perpetrators in government should be arrested,
jailed and convicted. The longer it goes on the harder it will
be to fix the problem if we're not already past the point of
no return.

Good reading on this subject can be found at:
http://www.schneier.com

Larry



It's worse sending data offshore.
India is awful, they have no regard for laws theirs or ours.
I watch many Indian's I work with think nothing of assigning a password
that would be considered a joke.. Also they have a habit of sharing
their own accounts, which totally astounded me.

China, don't trust it.

I trust these countries, the Swiss, Germany and (Austria), and France (I
know but they are a little more concerned than we are).



--
Jeff