| > that doesn't lead to a wack-a-mole game Stored-program general purpose computers are a fundamentally a threat to any entrenched power that relies on being able to control any potential risk with physical, legal, economic, or social force. The only real way to control software that is no longer scarce is to find a way to hobble the "universal computing machine" so it is no longer universal. Cory Doctorow's warning[1] about the War On General Purpose Computing received a lot of attention, but I suspect his far more important followup[2] about the looming Civil War over General Purpose Computing was had a much smaller audience. Dan Geer suggested[3] that this "Cold Civil War" has been ongoing for a long time already. With this new push by FVEY nations against crypto, it looks like the war is starting to heat up. > where comms do go dark That's just not true. Metadata is everywhere and will likely only get even more informative into the future. As Susan Landau explained[4] in her testimony to Congress, the only people "going dark" are the people trying to "preserve 20th century investigative techniques [while] our enemies are using 21st century technologies against us." Complaining about "going dark" is just misdirection away from a total failure to update investigative techniques to not just keep up with changing technology, but to take advantage of the new opportunities created by our growing sea of {,meta}data. [1] http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html [2] http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html [3] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GgnbN9oNw&t=3h35m50s |