A protection
racket, but who protects you from the racketeers enforcement
flunkies?
It's not that google and MS would defend the UW, it's more like those
companies have the resources to protect themselves. So for example if
there is a data leak, the UW could simply say it's google/MS fault. It's
about the UW outsourcing the responsibility (mostly because of the school
of medicine with its complicated legal policies). How that would play out
in real life, I don't know. I'm just stunned how academia used to be the
place of innovation and now they can't even run an e-mail server (or at
least the legal implications would make it complicated).
Gianluca
It's all a racket. War is a racket, and if you want peace instead, we can
offer you our premium racket that will (usually) protect you from war, except
of course when it cannot actually protect you from everything and everybody
else. If you want "privacy", that will really cost you, because only if you
are rich can you afford privacy; except of course that when you get rich
enough to afford it, you must also become too famous, or at least too well
known, to be private and anonymous.
RMS gets a bad rap these days, but he was right about one basic idea: that our
data ought never be collected in the first place. Once it is collected, with
or without our permission, whether it is legal or illegal, then *somebody*
out there will want it, and will have the means to get it.
The only real solution is to stop it before it ever gets collected, to dig out
the root of the problem.
Unless we intend to give up all modern technology which has the potential to
collect our data, we are left, therefore, with only one choice, which is to
encrypt, and to make our encryption essentially unbreakable, by making it too
costly or time-consuming for anybody to break.
I believe it was Michael who said it about a dozen emails earlier: We could
set up an easy, step-by-step, how-to guide on how to encrypt; something that
anybody could follow (including old farts like Gene and myself). If that is
too high a bar for entry to our club, then maybe TDE, we regret to say, is
not for everybody?
Even if we don't want to exclude anybody, especially newbies to Trinity, we
can at least start the ball rolling in the right direction. And that way,
according to all the signs, is the future, where everybody uses encryption.
Maybe the place to start is with an easy-peasy "how to encrypt" page somewhere
in our wiki or mailing list pages? Those who want to use encryption can start
using it; nobody is forced to do anything, but it's highly recommended. It
would be nice to have gnupgp keys for the Trinity group, so that they can be
used when it will help to avoid blocking or similar problems.
One step at a time, but we ought at least to start moving in the right
direction, toward total encryption. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Bill
