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A Suicide Bomber’s Guide to Online Privacy

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Bruce Schneier has comments [1] on a talk [2][pdf], described as "jarring"  
and "riveting", given by the mammal biologist and SF author Peter Watts based  
on his post [3] about the "Transparent Society".

 From the talk:

>Back in 2003 I attended a talk by David Brin, ... People are primates, Brin  
>reminded us; our leaders are Alphas. Trying to ban government surveillance  
>would be like poking a silverback gorilla with a stick. �But just  
>maybe,� he allowed, �they�ll let us look /back/.�
>
>/Dude/, thought I, /do you have the first fucking clue how silverbacks  
>/react/ to eye contact?/
...

>Alpha primates regard /looking back/ as a challenge. Anyone who's been  
>beaten up for recording video of police beating people up knows this; anyone  
>whose cellphone has been smashed, or returned with the SIM card mysteriously  
>erased. Document animal abuse in any of the US states with so-called  
>'Ag-gag' laws on their books and you�re not only breaking the law,  
>you�re a �domestic terrorist�
...

>Natural selection favours the paranoid, those who run away. ...The link  
>between surveillance and fear is a lot deeper than the average post-privacy  
>advocate is willing to admit.
...

>A lot of critics say blanket surveillance treats us like criminals, but it's  
>deeper than that. It makes us feel like prey. We�re seeing stalking  
>behaviour in the biological sense
Instead of 'looking back', Mr Watts recommends cloud services offer a  
"scorched earth" guarantee:

�Here�s a wild thought: Don�t just offer data protection, especially  
since you can�t guarantee it,� he said. �Offer data destruction  
instead. I�m not talking about having the lions lie down with the lambs.  
It�s more Darwinian than that,� when the lions come, you burn down your  
chunk of the veldt before the lions get their hands on it. A scorched-earth  
society.�

He is aware this would be illegal (�the cats get to write the laws for the  
mice,� as he says) , but

�It appeals to those of us who feel powerless and screwed over and want to  
take back some measure of control of our lives, even if it costs us. I  
personally don�t use cloud-based services, but I�d sign up for a  
scorched-earth service purely for political support.�

Another write up of the talk is here [4]

�


[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/alan_watts_on_t.html
[2] http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/TheScorchedEarthSociety-transcript.pdf
[3] http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=4689
[4] https://www.privacyassociation.org/publications/if_you_cant_protect_the_data_burn_it_to_the_ground
-- 
regards
~tdk
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A Suicide Bomber’s Guide to Online Privacy "tdk" <forum.tdk@squte.com> - 2014-05-27 18:06 -0500

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