Privacy


 


H'okay. So a very long time ago, aka "back in the day," I used a program called PGP for my e-mail. It was a free encryption/signature program. Somewhere along the line I stopped using it. I really don't remember the exact reason, but I'm sure it was because no one I knew used it. While digitally signing the e-mail is important, the encryption of it is what I was going for.

Fast forward about 8 years, 2 cities, and 2 jobs later. I've started using it again. This time it is the open source version GnuPG. Alas PGP has become a commercial product. No worries, GPG is just as good. This time, I've quietly started signing my e-mails. Only started this about 2-3 weeks ago. When you get an e-mail from me you will see something like this:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Here is where the text of me message would be.


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFEVPzHYKy68qMggc4RAh4lAJ9nJGor9zRHR5fsfFu0HOKj1PowGgCgn4sS
l1BR3MF1dDSEKMA89UhSSX8=
=9d1h
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



The trick to all of this is that you have to trust my key. The way to do that is to either know me personally and know for sure that I have sent you my public key, or to go somewhere that my public key is posted. Also the more people who sign my key, the more credibility it has. I just re-coded my 2 primary keys and I have begun to post them on public key sites along with my web site. To really take advantage of all this, you will need to get either PGP or GPG (GnuPG). If you need help installing GPG I can help you with it.

So why did I resume this? The state of privacy, or lack thereof. When I first started this, I had a mistrust of our government monitoring the internet. I was near the end of the early adopters of the internet. I can't claim to have been around since the first part of the 90's when everything was text. However, I have had my main e-mail address on Earthlink since 1996. And before that I had an e-mail address on a BBS in Houston called Ice Castle from 1994 or 1995. That address was still good up until a few years ago.

Really nothing has changed in the government monitoring the internet other than they are getting better at it. This has nothing to do with who has been in the White House. However, with 9/11, the government has played upon our fears even more and continues to strip our privacy. I don't know about you, but I really don't like someone looking over my shoulder every minute of the day.

Now, the age old argument is, if you aren't doing anything wrong, then what does it matter? OK, then why don't you have the government put cameras in every room of your abode, in your car, at your work, tap your phone, screen every piece of snail mail, e-mail, package, etc..... Get the point? Not very fun. Part of our country's philosophy is built on privacy among other things. And closely related to all of this is our freedom or liberty. What's that phrase from over 200 years ago..."Give me Liberty or give me death!" I don't think we are on the verge of another revolution by any means, but let's not forget that our country was founded to protect our liberties.

There is a quote that is attributed to Benjamin Franklin (though it is not verified) concerning giving up liberty for safety. I've copied the text from Wikipedia concerning the actual quote and it's variants:

* Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

o This statement was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759) which was attributed to Franklin in the edition of 1812, but in a letter of September 27, 1760 to David Hume, he states that he published this book and denies that he wrote it, other than a few remarks that were credited to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which he served. The phrase itself was first used in a letter from that Assembly dated November 11, 1755 to the Governor of Pennsylvania. An article on the origins of this statement here includes a scan that indicates the original typography of the 1759 document. Researchers now believe that a fellow diplomat by the name of Richard Jackson to be the primary author of the book. With the information thus far available the issue of authorship of the statement is not yet definitely resolved, but the evidence indicates it was very likely Franklin, who in the Poor Richard's Almanack of 1738 is known to have written a similar proverb: "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."

o Many variants derived from this phrase have arisen and have usually been incorrectly attributed to Franklin:

+ "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither"
"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security"
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither"
"If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both."
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
"He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither"

Interesting reading there. Sound like something an activist would say today concerning the Patriot Act. Yeah. The Patriot Act is not all bad, however many people are taking the extreme in digging into our private lives, and stripping away our freedoms all in the name of stopping terrorism. Things like DRM with the RIAA and MPAA trying to say that they are trying to protect us from terrorists by suing little Johnny because he used his Mom's computer to download some songs. In reality he UPLOADED the songs, but he probably didn't realize that he had his P2P software set up to share. That's how he got caught. So Uncle Marz's tip for the day is, "if you download, don't upload - be a leech." But I'm not telling you to download either. Do that at your own risk.

So back to the RIAA and terroists.... Let's read a quote from an argument concerning one of the updates to DRM:

Furthermore, the claimed beneficial impact of recognition of the exemption — that it would “provide an incentive for the creation of protection measures that respect the security of consumers’ computers while protecting the interests of the record labels” ([citation to our request]) — would be fundamentally undermined if copyright owners — and everyone else — were left in such serious doubt about which measures were or were not subject to circumvention under the exemption.

Hanging from the end of the above-quoted excerpt is a footnote:

This uncertainty would be even more severe under the formulations proposed in submissions 2 (in which the terms “privacy or security” are left completely undefined) or 8 [i.e., the CCIA request] (in which the boundaries of the proposed exemption would turn on whether access controls “threaten critical infrastructure and potentially endanger lives”).


This is copied from this site:

Freedom To Tinker

Which goes into more detail. Anyway, let's look at this footnote “threaten critical infrastructure and potentially endanger lives” for a minute. Is the RIAA trying to say that by trying to have a more sensible DRM we are opening ourselves up to terrorists? I'm by no means a legal expert, but both the RIAA and the MPAA are doing their damnedest to use any means necessary to squash little Johnny or Aunt Jane from making LEGAL copies of their CDs or DVDs.

Remember the old Betamax days? Yeah, that's the dead VCR format. Well, when the VCR was first coming out, the television industry was worried that we were all going to be copying Dallas or M*A*S*H and selling them. It was going to be the end of the world. Well, the fine folks in the Supreme Court said that it was ok if we wanted to "time shift" a tv show.

That is an extension of what is known as "Fair Use." And that is also the reason why it is perfectly legal to rip your CD and put it on your iPod or other portable music player. Even the RIAA has said it was OK. Though this year they want to back peddle on that (cf. Ripping Not Fair Use).

This also extends to making an archival copy of any piece of software that you own. However the law is a bit sketchy about if you can have more than one backup. And very likely it is illegal to keep that backup if you no longer own the original. And that would make sense. It would be like keeping the original and making a copy for a friend.

So again, where is the RIAA getting this idea that if I make a LEGAL copy of a CD that I OWN, I'm potentially going to endanger someone's life? Remember, I'm not talking about Napster here. If someone wants to download music, movies, software, that's their own risk. But, for now, it's almost impossible to get caught for downloading. It's when you upload (i.e. "share") that gets you in trouble. Why? Because you have distributed something illegal. And the RIAA and MPAA both realize this and they are trying new tactics.

I guess the entire purpose of this rant is that I see our freedoms being chipped away, and this kind of stuff are examples of it. Back to the whole GPG thing. I've attached both of my public keys:

Marz-EL pubkey.asc Marz-Mac pubkey.asc


W3rd

Posted: Sunday - April 30, 2006 at 01:10 PM          
Blog Information Profile for Marz8

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