Security vs. Privacy

[rothbard]

Bruce Schnier gave a talk at EPFL where he calls for more government regulation regarding privacy on the Internet.

 

http://youtu.be/jQsOXhOSgxs

 

A response from Stefan would be greatly appreciated.

[Marcus Clarke]

"This video has been removed because it is too long."

[rothbard]

"This video has been removed because it is too long."

 

Try again.

[FriendlyHacker]

Can't see the video because it says "private", but am pretty sure that this reply will be valid anyway:

 

If you take into account how people actually hack online profiles, you will see that security and privacy are one and the same. That is, people will use your private information to get into one of your email accounts, and from there they can hack every single one of your online accounts. Personal information = power, corporations and governments want lot's of it, so when you see government officials talking about privacy, beware of bullshit, because it usually means they want more power for themselves and less for everyone else.

[rothbard]

Bah, damn pivacy settings. It should be viewable now.

[FriendlyHacker]

"The best place to deal with this is law, this is the only actual solution we have."

Sounds like a bad joke to me.


It is possible to build privacy into systems, people like me are working on it, and even though is not profitable, people are starting to care enough about it that will become profitable.

There is a war going on between hackers who work on privacy and security against hackers who work on weapons and surveillance. The scary thing though, is that attacking is always easier, as he mentioned, if you add a new security layer on top of something, the new layer eventually becomes a new breaking point, so security people are losing. Quantum cryptography might be the only hope on the future, is either that or people become sane.

He mentions technology people should be regulating technology, the sane ones won't because government always works to increase power, private information is power so don't trust politicians who talk about reducing surveillance.
 

"Data wants to be free", private data shouldn't.

[dsayers]

I can't help but think that people are more concerned with privacy simply because there are those who seek it coercively. In a free society, I would submit to tech that tracked my car's whereabouts by a company that would accept a lump payment (plus fee) to pay each owner of the roads I use appropriately for me. In a statist society, I am morally outraged that phones have GPS modules that can be activated remotely for causes/reasons I am not party to. It's essentially the same thing. The difference is the voluntary nature, which requires the "intrusion" to be beneficial, welcome, and controlled by the person who owned the information.