Privacy of Communications 8
Most nerds accept that email is not private. We are willing to send unencrypted emails to our friends, family and coworkers because it is convenient. We forget that email is really like a postcard, not a letter, so anyone along the way can read all the contents.
A few people use encrypted email. There are 2 main forms of this – x.509 and gpg. I’ve been using gpg more and more for unimportant communications, because it is my right to have private conversations over the internet. What is said between me and the other party is nobody elses’ business. Really, we are just chatting, but that isn’t the point.
Recently, a brave businessman has probably risked jail by not saying that his company was not asked to provide access to encrypted email sent by customers. There have been 2 encrypted email services shutdown by their owners in the last week. We don’t know why, but suspect a gag order by the US government prevents these businesses from talking.
Last time I checked, the 1st amendment to our Constitution expressly provided for free speech. It says (this is a direct quote):
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Seems pretty clear to me that gag orders are unconstitutional.
It has been some very sad years since 2001. The terrorist have won. The US government is more of an enemy now than anyone else in the world, I’m sad to say.
While I wouldn’t trust any 3rd party service for my encrypted email needs, I know how difficult and non-convenient using gpg is. It is a hassle, but I encourage everyone to use it for all their emails. What we say in our email is nobody elses damn business. We shouldn’t need to fear what we say privately and shouldn’t have to worry that our more and more oppressive government is reading those conversations.
So, google “how-to gpg email” for your platform and email program and get setup with your own gpg keys. This is very important for people using those free, huge, email providers like gmail.
A few related articles:
Now the government has made me sound like a lunatic, but at least I feel better.
Are You Paranoid Enough Online? 4
Turns out that nobody is paranoid enough when it comes to their internet use.
Even the most paranoid people, who use TOR have discovered that TOR isn’t enough.
I’ve been paranoid for years and years, not because I have anything to hide, my life is relatively boring. Mostly it is because I believe in the US Constitution and the right to privacy that is included by the 4th Amendment therein. Without a judge signing a warrant based on probable cause, what I do is nobody’s business.
If you haven’t read the full Constitution since High School – take 5 minutes and read the main part again now. It is a simple outline for governments written in plain English. I dare say – genius.
It isn’t perfect. I’d change the election laws by forcing term limits, prohibit campaign contributions except from 1 human individual to another human individual, prohibit contributions unless the person contributing can legally vote in THAT elections, and I’d add clearer privacy rights across all forms of communications taken place in private. I’d add that government employees can be recorded in any way while they are working, except where safety is a concern.
So it turns out that I was paranoid about the wrong things, at least if you read my blog articles. I’ve been paranoid about the US Government for years, just didn’t think it was a good idea to post those thoughts to the internet. We will see if there is any impact to my international travel based on this.
What Petraeus Did Wrong- No Encryption 7
This week we’ve all read how General Petraeus was forced out of his position because the FBI was able to read his emails. I’ll leave the moral question about affairs for you to determine on your own, however, from a technology perspective, he did many things wrong.
I’ve added an update below, since new technical information has become known.
You Might Be a Terrorist If ...
Don’t you just love reading about governments making stupid assumptions about people? No? Me neither.
It seems many people may be terrorists by doing things that are
- perfectly legal
- required due to other stupid government laws
- necessary to ensure privacy
Here’s the news article to provide some background on the FBI and DoJ thoughts.
A Question to You 2
The Question
If wiretaps and intercepting snail-mail both require a court order in the USA, then why doesn’t listening in on internet communications also require a court order?
Enable Do Not Track in Firefox 4
Whether the Do Not Track settings have any legal support or not, it is worth enabling this for anyone who would like to tell websites not to track them. It may be a worthless effort, but thankfully, it doesn’t take much effort, so why not?
On my Linux system, running Firefox 4.0, the Tell web sites I do not want to be tracked setting, yes, that is the exact wording, is under the Advanced tab of the General tab in the Firefox Preferences.
Steps:
- Edit
- Preferences
- Advanced
- General
- then under the Browsing heading, check box to Tell web sites I do not want to be tracked
Simple.
On other operating systems, it should be easy to find.
New Enemy-Canonical? 2
Sometimes companies do slimy things. It is usually because they didn’t think through the decision and I suspect Canonical simply didn’t think thru this decision before doing it.
Think again, Canonical.
BTW, Canonical puts together and markets the Ubuntu distribution of the Linux operating system. I have 15+ Ubuntu systems running here – most are servers. Ubuntu is based on FLOSS superheros Debian and Gnome and thousands of other FLOSS project teams, like Banshee. I don’t want to downplay what Canonical has done for Linux and usability, but the Debian guys do a tremendous amount of completely free work that is the base of Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions.
Amazon Affiliate
Banshee is a popular audio player on Linux. Banshee has an Amazon MP3 Music affiliate key embedded in their program so MP3 purchases made by users through that interface give them a little finders’ fee. This is common practice in open source software. Firefox earned millions of dollars last year from Google doing this.
Think again, Canonical.
Big Money
Banshee earned less than $3100 last year from this affiliate program. Further, the Banshee developers give all that money to the Gnome foundation – another critical FLOSS software project that almost every Linux distribution makes use of. Canonical decided to change that affiliate code in the Banshee version released with Ubuntu so that Canonical keeps 75% of the money and passes on 25% to Banshee. Uh … sorry … Canonical. Didn’t your mother teach you that stealing is wrong?
Think again, Canonical.
Ask and Negotiate First
Canonical, if you had contacted the Banshee guys and worked out an agreement, I bet that some win-win solution could be found. Sure, your distribution of Banshee as the default music player will certainly increase the number of users and probably increase the amount of cash the affiliate program makes.
Canonical. You are acting like Facebook and Apple and Microsoft. Stop it.
With the new Debian Squeeze release and Mint-Linux, Ubuntu users have viable alternatives. I hope that Canonical/Ubuntu rethinks this stealing and comes up with a published revenue sharing model that works for all FLOSS projects they distribute. Hummmmm. That has me thinking …
Identi.ca - A Twitter-like Microblog
Big, centralized, services like Facebook and Twitter are great when all your friends are there … until there is an outage. If you update or tweet constantly, you can notice when those tools are down. There are alternatives that are not centralized.
Identi.ca, A Twitter Alternative
The guys over at status.net have a free micro-blogging site (i.e. twitter clone) that is both centralized, but also supports federation. Federated services work like email does. Lots and lots of servers communicating using a standard protocol. If any single server goes down, that doesn’t matter, the exchange of ideas keep flowing.
Federation Is Good for Freedom
Former MS President of Business Goes to Nokia and Kills MeeGo - Surprised?
Timeline
- 9/10 President of Microsoft’s Business division leaves to become Nokia’s CEO
- 9/14 Nokia World doesn’t mention MeeGo at all
- Nokia Leaves MeeGo Alliance
- 2/10 Nokia and Microsoft form a partnership to push Windows Mobile7 on Nokia phones
A few links
Linux Hate
We all know that Microsoft doesn’t like Linux. It is afraid and it should be. Microsoft owns the desktop, but not much else. The millions and millions of uncounted Linux servers and Android cell phones is cleaning Microsoft out of those markets. All that Cloud Computing stuff runs on Linux. For IT professionals, Linux is a joy to use and saves over $100/month in added costs required for a Microsoft solution.
To be fair, Maemo (which I have 3 yrs experience with) wasn’t ever going to be a mainstream mobile platform. It wasn’t sexy and was missing some critical software – the contact manager was a joke. I can’t really blame Nokia for wanted to back out from a business perspective. Most GUI designers, fewer engineeers would have helped.
If this wasn’t carefully planned, I’d be surprised. It was an easy and cheap way to effectively kill Linux at Nokia and turn a competitor into a pawn. Nice job Microsoft. As a stock holder, I’m encouraged. OTOH, I really need to sell those MSFT shares.
Seems the other news media caught on to this.
Was Stallman Part Hitler's IT Staff?
We all know that Richard Stallman thinks Cloud Computing = Careless Computing. I tend to agree.
Here’s a funny-to-IT-people video that explains much:
