I knew that the ’80s were back in a big way, but who knew that 1984 (in the Orwellian sense) would be among the “retro” trends. “Total Information Awareness,” people, Big Brother by any other name, is HERE, or will be soon. Chris Matthews, on Jay Leno last night, said (giggling): “When you go to the video store to rent a film, you better make sure that it’s a film you’d show your grandmother.” What’s shockingly un-American about this picture? I’m ashamed and horrified for my country — and for all those freakin’ couch potatoes who don’t vote, don’t raise their voices, are more interested in who The Bachelor’s gonna pick than who’s gutting their civil liberties. Time to shore up the ol’ crypto.
Here’s a quote from a John Gilmore piece on the subject (via bOINGbOING):
The US government’s moves to impose totalitarian control in the last year (secret trials, enemies lists, massive domestic surveillance) are what some of the more paranoid among us have been expecting for years. I was particularly amused by last week’s comments from the Administration that it’ll be too hard to retrain the moral FBI agents who are so careful of our civil rights — so we’ll need a new domestic-spying agency that will have no compunctions about violating our civil rights and wasting our money by spying on innocent people…
Now’s a great time to deploy good working encryption, everywhere you can. Next month or next year may be too late. And even honest ISPs, banks, airlines (hah), etc, may be forced by law or by secret pressure to act as government spies. Make your security work end-to-end.