back to article Crypto Daddy Phil Zimmerman says surveillance society is DOOMED

A killer combination of rapidly advancing technology and a desire for greater privacy among the public should condemn current surveillance state to an historical anachronism, according to PGP creator Phil Zimmermann. In an extended talk at Defcon 22 in Las Vegas, Zimmermann said it might seem as though the intelligence …

  1. graeme leggett Silver badge

    basic premise faulty?

    Strikes me - using Facebook as an example - that on the whole, the people of the developed nations aren't that bothered about privacy.

    might be quite some time before a critical mass is achieved.

    1. Elmer Phud

      Re: basic premise faulty?

      " the people of the developed nations aren't that bothered about privacy."

      You could say that not everyone uses a single means of communication.

      I have a Facebook account but, like many others, would not put anything of a higher security clearance than a cat photo on there (might even edit the EXIF as well).

      It's what info is placed where, how and by which account that matters - I know I leave a breadcrumb trail behind me where a bit (more than a little bit) of comparison could link three accounts that all have totally different usernames but that's not all the acccounts I have and not the only browser/mail client used.

      1. Suricou Raven

        Re: basic premise faulty?

        You are not a representative user. Few people even know what EXIF, and most wouldn't care if they did.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: basic premise faulty?

        Timestamps of posts could also be used for tracking, no? So much meta data means it's very difficult to stop all tracking/inspection of anything not encrypted. I don't see surveillance being stopped. Unless everything goes to constant encryption?

        Anon, to allow for a simple task for the above. ;)

    2. Mikel

      Re: basic premise faulty?

      Having been a student of the art for some decades, I am willing to take Phil Zimmerman's word for this. The man was inventing personal encryption in an era when encryption science was considered WMD. Not figuratively - literally. There were export controls on PGP which led to its development being moved out of the US.

      1. Down not across

        Re: basic premise faulty?

        The man was inventing personal encryption in an era when encryption science was considered WMD. Not figuratively - literally. There were export controls on PGP which led to its development being moved out of the US.

        Not quite WMD, but munitions none the less. PGP 5 was exported legally as a printed book (since export controls only applied to electronic format), which was then scanned and proofread as community effort. Having being part of he proofreading effort I can say that the OCR at the time was not great.

    3. LucreLout
      Pint

      Re: basic premise faulty?

      PZ - "a desire for greater privacy among the public should condemn current surveillance state to an historical anachronism"

      @graeme - "Strikes me - using Facebook as an example - that on the whole, the people of the developed nations aren't that bothered about privacy."

      Zimmerman is something of a genius. I contributed a small part of my last student loan to his defence fund back in the 90s, so I place a decent amount of stock in his opinion.

      However, Phil, like me, is getting old. The idea of allowing google to track me to advise me that my train is late just seems creepy and not worth the effort. The train is always late. I don't want to be famous - If I come and go from this life and leave nothing behind other than my child, then that's just great. But Phil & I aren't the new internet generation of always connected youth.

      It's possibly a generational thing, but I don't know anyone under the age of about 30 that cares for privacy. They actively want and pursue just the opposite. Most would like nothing better than for everyone to know their business, recognise their name or face, and to have known they once existed.

      I think most three letter agencies know this, and I think many are happy to play a long game. The "Snowden revelations" didn't muster so much as a protest march from the young. If there was going to be a defining moment in the battle for privacy, that would have been it. In my view, the war is lost because the next generation prioritise any kind of fame over any kind of privacy.

  2. Warm Braw

    There is money to be made in providing privacy

    Unfortunately, there is even more money to be made, at least in the short term, by claiming to provide privacy and deriving a further income from undermining it on behalf of third parties.

    I'd probably trust Phil Zimmerman with my privacy more than I'd trust most other people, but he gets to be relatively trustworthy by being a small player, free of corporate financial pressure, with a sufficiently public record of integrity in response to harassment by his government.

    For the rest of us to have greater privacy, we're going to need to rely on the big players whose public record is now that of conniving, venal quislings. The problem is, even if they turn in unison from the dark side, no-one is going to believe they won't be suborned again.

    1. elDog

      Re: There is money to be made in providing privacy

      Yes, perfect points.

      Money and turns of other screws will make anyone, even PKZ, turn into another conduit that has transparency to the screw-turners.

      I'd love to see an infographic of the perfect way to ensure end-to-end security even with man-in-the-middle, compromised certificate authorities, DSN polluting, cable tapping, etc.

      I'll leave out of this equation things like keyboard/mouse/RFID/bluetooth/WiFi sniffing. Or router hacking. Or high-res video of perps on their laptops.

      I don't believe that there is a perfectly non-subterfugeable way to transmit a message from A to B. The best we can do is to make it difficult; but of course raises the "interest" level in our agencies and other parties that regularly snoop on us.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: There is money to be made in providing privacy

        <quote>"I don't believe that there is a perfectly non-subterfugeable way to transmit a message from A to B. The best we can do is to make it difficult; but of course raises the "interest" level in our agencies and other parties that regularly snoop on us."</quote>

        Once everyone uses encryption, then the interest rating on individual connections becomes useless, but then you have the other problem, getting the lemmings to listen and understand why encryption is needed instead of shrugging you off or laughing or even worse, repeating the dangerous myth about having nothing to hide somehow making them immune from the law!

    2. LucreLout

      Re: There is money to be made in providing privacy

      @Warm "For the rest of us to have greater privacy, we're going to need to rely on the big players whose public record is now that of conniving, venal quislings. The problem is, even if they turn in unison from the dark side, no-one is going to believe they won't be suborned again."

      If you hold a weapon against someones child, they will do whatever you ask. Profitability is what companies care most about, and they'll do whatever the government want to protect it from harm.

      Wholesale levels of privacy are history at this point. The best we can do is manage it individually, on a small scale: more a boutique than a discount warehouse.

  3. Anomalous Cowshed

    Defeat of slavery

    I've always wondered why an anti-slavery movement began in Britain at the end of the 18th century and became so popular in this country, which had built many of its greatest cities and fortunes on the money made from trafficking black people across the ocean - and which continued to build its prosperity on the back of the exploitation of the poor around the world, including of course in Britain itself. All of a sudden, a movement arose against slavery, with heroic proponents of an end to this barbaric trade. Could this have anything to do with US independence, I kept wondering? The dates certainly appeared to line up, roughly: 1776 (US Independence); 1787 start of a mass-movement which culminated 46 years later in the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. Could it be that the fact that the slave trade was a key element of the prosperity of the new US state, which was repeatedly aligned against Britain, might have had anything to do with this sudden moral fervour on the part of the British establishment? Cut off the supply of slaves...that's almost like cutting off the supply of oil today, no? It's a cynical way of looking at something which, eventually, did a lot of good for a lot of people.

    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      Re: Defeat of slavery

      Maybe, but it ignores a few issues. We were quite late to the slavery game, and there was always an undercurrent against it in England. The abolition movement began before the US war of independence and had its first major victory in 1772, when a court rules that no man who stood on English soil could be a slave. At that point the Americans were still arguing about whether they should establish a local parliament and send representatives to British parliament.

      Also worth noting that the United States banned the atlantic slave trade entirely from 1775 to 1783 and the first abolitionist movement in the US sprang up one year before they declared independence.

      Abolition was entirely coincidental to the american revolution, and in fact became one of the forces that brought the USA and Britain toward more friendly relations in the aftermath of America's independence.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Defeat of slavery

      I don't think abolition was a major factor, but it is true that during the various wars from 1776-1814, the Royal Navy advertised that slaves captured in American ships would be freed, and that being non-white was no disbarment to a career in the RN. Whether or not humanitarian grounds were involved, it was a tactic designed primarily to sabotage the US Navy.

      It didn't do any harm that, contrary to myth, service in the US Navy was generally worse than in the RN. This is arguable, but there have been suggestions that cruel punishment in the RN was usually associated with aristocratic officers who were metaphorically out of their depth. Well run ships with competent officers would tend to run collaboratively, which was why when a good captain moved to another ship his crew would do their best to go with him. It is easy to imagine that the crews as well as any slaves on some US ships might lack enthusiasm when faced with a British ship of good repute.

    3. Earth Resident

      Re: Defeat of slavery

      I hadn't thought of it that way. I like the cut of your jib, well spotted.

      Of course the abolition of slavery by Britain in 1823 barely fazed the United States. By that time there were so many slaves in the US that they were able to maintain a population without further importation and the Dutch filled in where ever there was money to be made.

      In addition, the British textile industry flourished though the import of cheap, American cotton -- all produced and only able to be produced because of the Cotton Gin (invented by an American Negro slave) and the slave labor of hundreds of thousands of others.

      1. phil dude
        Boffin

        Re: Defeat of slavery

        Some of that is down to geographical restrictions i.e. the need for labour to pick cotton,and other crops.

        For a look at the modern effects of this history, look at recent maps (2000's) of heart disease by county for the USA. The CDC has one here for 2008-2010.

        The South stands out on those maps but a look closer and you will notice variations that a corresponding map of the terrain will show are mountainous and therefore not prime plantation land.

        To be honest I cannot say this is a rigorous look at the association between historical populations of slave labour and modern socio-economic conditions. However, the mortality data is strongly suggestive that there are some correlations.

        P.

      2. James O'Shea

        typo

        "Of course the abolition of slavery by Britain in 1823 "

        as one who has spent a lot of time in the Caribbean, I'm pretty sure that that's 1833. Officially there was supposed to be a five year 'apprenticeship' scheme, so 'full free' wasn't to be until 1838. Unofficially the slave-owners got told to stuff it pretty much immediately. This resulted in multiple waves of immigration, from the Azores and Madeira, from Lebanon and Syria, from China, and finally from India, in an effort to 'break the strike'. The Dutch pulled the same kind of thing, only they used mostly Indonesia.

      3. Dan Paul

        Re: Defeat of slavery

        The British shipping trades, ship building industry and shipping insurance continued their part in the slave trade throughout the Civil War. You folks don't really grasp what that war was about do you? The more mechanized North (already processing cotton) had already freed many slaves and harbored many more Confederate slaves before the war started. Abolitionism wasn't a British invention. The repeal of slavery just occurred there first.

        The north was already growing in the production of fabrics made of our cotton so we were competitors with Britain.

        If the cotton never made it to England, how long do you think the Confederacy would have lasted?

        If the British ships had not been actively breaking the Union Blockade of the Confederacy to get that cotton, the war would have been over several years sooner. As mentioned, the Dutch were heavily involved in the slave/cotton trade as well.

        The British actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war in an effort to gain exclusive access to the cotton fiber. Thankfully, that did not work.

    4. James O'Shea

      Re: Defeat of slavery

      Ah... abolition movements in Britain were _not_ aimed at the US. For one thing, it is simply a fact that vastly more slaves went to the Spanish and Portuguese parts of the Western Hemisphere during the late 18th and early 19th centuries than went to US, and that's true if you count by raw numbers or if you count by percentages. In particular Brazil had a voracious appetite for new slaves, and one which continued well into the 19th century. Slavery in Brazil was not abolished until (well) after the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s, won by Brazil and friends on (mostly) the backs of Brazilian slave soldiers who'd been promised manumission if they fought for the (as it was then) Empire of Brazil. (And, yes, there is a connection between the two events.) There's a _reason_ why one of the first things the Mexicans did on tossing out the Spanish in the 1820s was to abolish slavery... and why the French tried to bring it back when they held Mexico during the 1860s. (Yes, the French. No, they didn't _call_ it slavery, but that's what it was and you can bet that the Mexicans saw it. After el colosso del Norte finished their little civil war, the Mexicans tossed out the French who really didn't feel like provoking el colosso into finding out how tasty frogs' legs are.)

      in the second place, American slavery tended to be of the cotton or tobacco type, which didn't compete directly with sugar, the lifeblood of British colonies. (Yes, there was a lot of American sugar. Not nearly as much as there was American cotton and tobacco, though.) British industry depended on American cotton to such an extent that the Confederacy thought (erroneously) that Britain could be enticed into the Civil War on _their_ side. (What happened was that Indian and especially Egyptian cotton replaced American cotton... Oops.) There was no economic reason to shoot at American slavery. (Brazilian slavery, now, that was heavily sugar-based, so shooting at Brazil would have made sense. If the British abolitionists tried, though, it just didn't work. Not until after internal Brazilian conditions made slavery... undesirable. Lots of veterans of a very, very, VERY bloody war who'd kept their rifles even though it was illegal to do so and who REALLY didn't like slave-owners will do that.)

    5. Hud Dunlap
      FAIL

      Anonmalous Cowshed

      Downvote for Highjacking the thread. If you truly think it is coincidental you need to read more about Thomas Jefferson.

      1. John Gamble

        Re: Anonmalous Cowshed

        James O'Shea just wrote a fairly comprehensive response above: yes, it was mostly coincidental.

        Jefferson was an influential figure of course, and his phobia of freed slaves remains a blot on his character, but no, he didn't have the influence necessary to re-work trans-Atlantic economics, even as president of what was then a small country more concerned with the interior of its own continent..

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Anonmalous Cowshed

        Downvote for being grumpy when other people are just having an informative discussion.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Defeat of slavery

      British trade relied heavily on the slave trade from West Africa and their use in the Caribbean plantations. The anti-slavery movement was probably more due to the Enlightenment - and the new breakaway Christian groups who were not part of the established Churches eg the Methodists and Quakers.

      People who were not members of the Anglican Church were not allowed to hold public office, be MPs, or go to Oxford University. Their energies went into commerce - and that is why so many company names were originated by Quakers and Methodists. They were leaders in campaigning for human rights at work and in prisons. Their 19th century factories etc were often models of worker benefits eg Bournville model village; Port Sunlight.

      The established Churches in England and Wales opposed the abolition movement - as they did on most human rights issues. William Wilberforce was an MP - and was persuaded to front the campaign in Parliament. However - he generally opposed other campaigns for human rights in England and Wales.

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: Defeat of slavery

        To add a few quick points that are almost always neglected regarding slavery, most important of which was that slavery was not a racial based process of the "evil white men" enslaving all the "poor black men".

        • There were more "white" slaves than "black" slaves.
        • The European slaving nations - England, Spain, The Netherlands etc, did not go into Africa and enslave the locals. They bought the locals from other locals who were more than willing to sell different castes, ethinicities, religious adherents, the unwanted, the poor or pretty much anybody else who couldn't argue strongly enough.
        • The abolition of the (largely) trans-atlantic slave trade did not stop the slave trade, unfortunately it only stopped what had become one of its largest markets at that time.
        • Most slaves were not mistreated, many regions had very strong slave protection laws which ensured an adequate level of care for slaves. While this was partly financially motivated, it's important not to forget that the many of the slave owners in "the new world" were strongly religious and while this might not mean seeing slaves as equals, it did promote compassionate care. However I have read that "black" slaves were considered harder working or more valuable than "white" slaves, and were therefore treated better.
        • Many slaves were volunteers, opting for slavery over starvation and death. While not a great choice, it was choosing life over almost certain death.

        Not to condone slavery at all, but so much seems to be commonly omitted. Not least, that there are more slaves in the world now than there ever have been at any other time in history.

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Defeat of slavery

        The anti-slavery movement was probably more due to the Enlightenment - and the new breakaway Christian groups who were not part of the established Churches eg the Methodists and Quakers.

        And strongly supported by middle-class capitalists, who realized that wage-slavery in the factories was far more efficient than the plantation slavery being practiced by the land-owning aristocracy. Abolition was just a nail in the coffin for their class opponents.

        (Eric Williams is probably the most famous proponent of this analysis, in Capitalism and Slavery, though CLR James claims - in his interview in Lamming's Kas-kas - that he proposed the thesis to Williams. Since they're both dead now, no one can say for sure; but certainly that group bandied many ideas about, and the influences are complex. It doesn't help that there was some friction between the two, after Williams put James under house arrest. That sort of thing can sour a friendship.)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Italy

    Here in Italy they have a government run encrypted email service called PEC, it is advertised as a registered letter service for email and the government have tried to force people to use it for all legal document communication. The system is controlled by the government and all mail must be communicated via government controls servers. As a hosting service provider myself I was asked many times if I sold PEC service and when I looked into what it was and how to sell it I was shocked. To become a provider of PEC services from you had to have a business with at least 1 million euros of Capitol making becoming a provider only possible for a few large companies and basically giving them a monopoly in the market as well as the huge fact that all of this likely highly sensitive email was directly accessible by government sent shivers down my spine.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Italy

      Well, that's the country that sics dogs on people at airports to see whether they are illegally exporting gold.

      More to the point, is anyone using that kind of service?

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Italy

      I fail to see why the fact that legal communications controlled by government servers and accessible to the government at any time should send a shiver down anyone's spine. The fact that you own a piece of land, a house or a car are government record anyway - this is just putting the government in modern times.

      Of course, there is the caveat that it is Italy we're talking about, but in the absolute, technically speaking, all legal documents of a country are accessible by the government of that country, be they digital or not. Accessing its own records is thus not an issue when it comes to documents.

      On the other hand, citizens using government-controlled email for their own private communications is another matter entirely. In France (where I live), I have an email account with LaPoste.net, which is the government-controlled postal service of the country. I use it for all official and government-related web sites, and sometimes I use it when a company (like the power company) asks for an email contact address. But my private email and the one all my friends contact me on is a different one, and I do not use the government-controlled address for anything private.

      It used to be that I viewed the LaPoste email as a nice thing to have, a normal gesture from a government that is transiting to the digital age and doing its best to get rid of paper. Since Snowden, obviously, I have come to understand that the law forcing LaPoste to grant an email to every citizen upon demand is one that was pushed through to ensure that the government would have ready access to as many private lives as possible first and foremost, then do an effort to get rid of paper mail second.

      Oh well, just like Germany's highways, something may have been built for not a very nice reason, but it does not mean that it cannot later be used the right way. So I'm hoping that LaPoste will transition into something more respectful of my privacy - but in what way I do not know. Meanwhile, I keep my private correspondence on other mailboxes.

  5. Cipher
    Big Brother

    John Q. needs to realize that...

    ...the massive data slurping has nothing to do with stopping terorism. Even with advance knowledge, two amateurs in Boston slipped right past them. Terrorists are quite aware by now of the tools being used, many have undoubtedly gone low tech to communicate. Human assets in the field are what is required to stop them, not PRISM.

    Data collection serves two purposes, an ad driven revenue source for the likes of Google, and political control/repression capability for the likes of the 5 Eyes.

    Strong encryption, easily implemented, everywhere is a large part of the solution. Open source, audited tools for everyone, for all email, would be a good start...

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

        Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

        It's a well-attested fact that if you hand the state a power, it will use it. Governments don't legislate new means to intrude in the personal lives of their citizens unless they intend to make those intrusions. It doesn't matter how much oversight might be placed on those intrusions: the fact is, once they exist, they will inevitably be abused.

        RIPA in the UK is a good example. It was legislated to give the police, the security services and government the means to secure evidence against suspected terrorists without going through the usual process of getting warrants and such. In the years since it was passed it has been used to spy on what people put in their bins, find out whether they live in the right catchment area for a school and to gather evidence against people who let their dogs crap on the pavement.

        As for the last point, let me ask you something: do you have covers on your windows? Curtains, blinds, some sort of concealment? Do you wear clothes? If you answer yes, then why? After all, you have nothing to hide...

      2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

        I'm here for reasoned debate. If you disagree, let's hear why

        You are assuming the bureaucracy is there to look out for you.

        You are wrong. They are there to look out for themselves and their paymasters who seize your funds to pay them. And they never retreat.

      3. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

        re: AC

        "You have a good point about t-rists (I'm even too scared to type the word in this day and age - that's how far I'm used to the idea of govt surveillance)"

        Here you go.

        TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS

        1. Earth Resident

          Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

          Actually it's the "b" word that is the item of which no one should speak.

          1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
            Black Helicopters

            Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

            I know Cameron's a bit paranoid on the matter, but is it really such a terrible thing to say Boris?

        2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

          " TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS"

          Am I the only one who, on reading the above, visualised Steve Balmer bouncing around a stage chanting in a frenzied way?

          1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

            Well right up to the moment I read your post, you might well have been.

            But now I can't get that image out of my head anymore !

      4. elDog

        Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

        I'm not too terrorist-ified to respond. Bomb, Iran, Al Quaida, ISIS, Snowden, Occupy, 1%, Somalia, Ukraine, narco, jihad, etc. The little ears that are listening to all of our conversations filter absolutely everything that is on theregister.co.uk, bbc.uk, cnn.com, mylocalterrorist.org.

        I also don't have much to hide other than having worked in the deep bowels of the 5-sided building with a lot of clearances - most of the work was so mundane and useless as to be stupifying. Yet I was paid a very pretty penny by the US taxpayers for this.

        However I don't like every corporation, individual, country, agency, entity being able to scoop up my privates and do wonderful matchings of my GPS location with my girlfriend's address and that diamond locket I just purchased.

        Don't forget, they know your bowel movements, too. Stay regular, comrade.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

        Since Magna Carta it has been recognised that State power needs checks and balances. This results in inefficiencies - but hopefully prevents major abuses of power.

        Avoiding Godwin's Law. There are many historical examples of data collected for apparently beneficial administrative purposes - that was then misused by a later government to persecute large sections of its own people. Laws passed by a democratic government in times of civil crisis have later been used to create a legal dictatorship.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

      Data collection serves two purposes, an ad driven revenue source for the likes of Google, and political control/repression capability for the likes of the 5 Eyes.

      Conflating the two doesn't make much sense and leads to bad thinking.

    3. Earth Resident

      Re: John Q. needs to realize that...

      Don't you think, and this is just my opinion, that rather than employing a bunch of people in HUMINT operations (the East German Stasi employed one person in 6 for spying) it might make more sense to look closely at your foreign policy?

      If the US and UK weren't so bent on crushing governments and movements with which they don't agree or that they cannot control, that in doing they are seeding the crops of new terrorists that come up every year? As they say, you can't drink Canada dry, and when you're up to your ass in alligators, sometimes you forget that your original aim was to drain the swamp.

  6. thomas k.

    Ashcroft ... left encryption alone

    Probably because the NSA assured him they had broken it.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Ashcroft ... left encryption alone

      Probably because he didn't know what that is.

  7. Pete 2 Silver badge

    He talks a good talk

    But, sadly, he's wrong

    > surveillance state to an historical anachronism

    Actually, for most of recorded history people have lived in small communities where everyone knew everyone elses' business. They all knew who you'd visited, they all knew what you spent your time doing (as most people spent all the daylight hours outside, since there was no artificial light) and who was doing what to whom.

    It's only since people had their own houses (not shared with their entire extended family) and had curtains to draw that we think we've got "privacy". It's also only since that time that we have things that we consider "private". In the days before doors, nobody cared who they heard shagging: so long as it wasn't their partner or livestock.

    The big difference is that nowadays nobody seems to have the ability to keep what they know, hear, think or imagine to themselves. Every single little, irrelevant detail simply has to be tweeted, blogged, updated or recorded in order to bore the bollocks off future historians.

    And that IS where the surveillance society kicks in. Since we now live in a time when public enemy #1 is the public, all these little tidbits can easily be collected together, filtered to remove any and all context and used to build a case for pretty much anything against pretty much anyone. That's the modern fear: not being accused of witchcraft or heresy - but being accused of the modern-day equivalents: terrorism, sexual deviancy, race/religious/gender hate - or even simply knowing the wrong things.

    it's not the surveillance that's the problem. It's the way it's used to turn us all back into serfs. That's the problem.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: He talks a good talk

      I am wondering how the US government got to him.

      3 paragraphs of BS:

      In the present day, Zimmermann’s said his current business, the encrypted mobile phone firm Silent Circle, is having the same effect. The US government had never asked him to put a backdoor in Silent Circle phones, mainly because Congress, the police, army and some members of the judiciary were already using them and didn't want to be vulnerable themselves.

      Historically, governments have always reserved the right for themselves to use other technologies. There is really no obligation whatsoever for government to let Zimmerman get away with "arming" the world against NSA intercept because they have the legal means (called "national security") to have their own setup developed and deployed.

      "I remember getting a call from the office and hearing that the FBI had marched in the front door," he told the crowd. "I thought the hammer was coming down, but it turned out that they wanted to discuss volume pricing so they could equip their agents."

      Sure, they let the guy they have been chasing for years now kit out their agents. Sorry, I don't buy that attitude, but let's say this is credible - that still doesn't confirm the stuff shipped to non.US outfits isn't backdoored. I can see the FBI wanting to piss off the CIA by shutting down their ability to intercept, but this doesn't add up.

      Once people get used to the practice of privacy they will rebel if politicians try to take it away from them, Zimmermann opined. He pointed out that if the government decided that everyone using SSL for internet banking had to be routed through a surveillance proxy people wouldn't stand for it.

      Oh really? That's why the US has the worst privacy protection on the planet of the so-called "democratic" nations? If people really want to have their privacy, there is a simple thing to be done: re-establish due process. Default to "no" when it comes to mass data grabbing.

      Sorry Zimmermann, I have been watching Silent Circle for a while now and it just doesn't add up. Oh, by the way, for KPN to really adopt SC software it will need to get clearance from the Dutch secret service, also because its license (like every telco) MANDATES the provision of legal intercept...

      1. Cipher

        Re: He talks a good talk

        Of course this doesn't mention the intercepted and modified kit going thru public carriers in the USA.

        http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-nsa-intercepts-computer-deliveries/

    2. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: He talks a good talk

      The issue here is the asymmetry of information.

      In the old days, everyone knew what everyone else in the village was up to so no one really could make much use of that without the same applying to them.

      Today we have secretive organisations that appear to be beyond the control/supervision of our elected official, who know more or less everything about us, but we know nothing of them.

      For example, if they (or in all likelihood an employee with some grudge) chose to poison our character by slipping carefully filtered information to a job committee how would you know why you were rejected? Scale that up to situations where you have a paranoid and ill-liked government (which is the trend, sadly) and you can see the temptation for feature creep to be applied.

    3. h4rm0ny

      Re: He talks a good talk

      >>"It's only since people had their own houses (not shared with their entire extended family) and had curtains to draw that we think we've got "privacy".

      It's only since people had access to vaccinations that we think we've got "safety from measles".

      It's only since people had access to plumbing that we've gotten used to "indoor toilets".

      It's only since people had Internet that we think we have "easy ways to learn what's going on in the world and to share information and learning on a massive scale".

      Let's not give up the benefits of our hard-won progress just because we haven't always had it, eh? The past is not a golden age that we should casually return to for no good reason.

      1. Pete 2 Silver badge

        Re: He talks a good talk

        > Let's not give up the benefits of our hard-won progress

        Agreed. The big difference in that hygiene, education and health (or their lack) were pre-existing conditions that were "fixed" by the progress you correctly identify. It would seem that privacy (and the concomitant shame and embarrassment from it's failure) was a social norm that arose after adoption of walls, doors and curtains. Rather than the desire for privacy being the driving force for those changes.

        Consequently, while we all are used to privacy as we were brought up to expect and respect it, it may be that it's not a basic desire for social animals (unlike good health). Although those same animals don't have abusive, exploitative, over-seers policing their every action and increasingly suppressing behaviour that falls outside a narrowing definition of "normal" - and it's that which is the problem.

        1. kwhitefoot

          Re: He talks a good talk

          > Although those same animals don't have abusive, exploitative, over-seers policing their every action and increasingly suppressing behaviour that falls outside a narrowing definition of "normal"

          Of course they do. Social animals are generally ruled by the top dog, the naked mole rat matriarch, the bee queen, etc. Of course they don't do it consciously and generally the ultimate puppetmasters are the genes (which are carried by ruller and ruled) but behaviour is nonetheless policed and abnormal behavour is certainly suppressed. Let's not let ourselves be misled by invalid analogies.

        2. Looper

          Re: He talks a good talk

          > Agreed. The big difference in that hygiene, education and health

          Don't forget the roads...

          Yeah, and the aqueducts....

          Yeah, okay I'll give you the roads, and the aqueducts...

          And of course, the wine....

          Yeah... Yeah...

          Yeah, you can't forget the wine Reg...

          Okay, they have given us health, education, roads, aqueducts and wine, but besides all that... WHAT 'ave the Romans EVER done fer us...?

    4. oiseau

      Re: He talks a good talk

      > ... nobody cared who they heard shagging: so long as it wasn't their partner

      > or livestock.

      LoL !

      Made my day.

      As for the rest of your post, agree 100% .

    5. John Sturdy
      Black Helicopters

      Frankpledge may have limited privacy

      The frankpledge system (mutual legal responsibility in a group of households) may have encouraged people to keep informal surveillance of each other (although at least that would have been P2P).

  8. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    It's good to be reminded that there *are* cases where the people won.

    But remember this is the USA.

    THE PATRIOT Act trumps everything.

  9. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Unhappy

    I raise you a sedition act

    Things are going increasingly haywire in inside-the-Beltway and Neocon/Foreign politics, not to mention in economics where the point where the can kicking becomes ineffective seems past. Meanwhile "public forces" seem to be incresingly militarized, psychologically as well as gear-wise.

    The prez is not on the side of liberty, not by a long shot (instead he is on the side of "the freedoms"). And so isn't the whole bipartisan clique. The next prez will hopefully not be Madame "We came, We saw, He died" Hillary (because LOL unelectable democrats) but the odds that there will be anything better on display are slim indeed.

    The surveillance apparatus won't give up unless pitchforks come out and kebabs are removed from government buildings.

    So no, I foresee a worsening.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. elDog

      Re: I raise you a sedition act

      While I think most of your rant is just a rant, I have to applaud the "The surveillance apparatus won't give up unless pitchforks come out and kebabs are removed from government buildings". What a wonderful juxtaposition of words!

      Unfortunately, removing all the kebabs will get rid of all the useless republican legislators, even the most pro-active do-nothing teabaggers. It'll also get rid of all military forces since their domiciles are in gummint buildings.

      Let your airports run without the FAA, your cell-phone without GPS, your roads without any enforced rules.

      Of course this isn't the first rant that spouts meaningless drivel so I shouldn't try to address all of its failings. You can probably research them yourself. Yes, if your wet-dreams come to fruition, there is a worsening.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Queen Elisabeth 1st.

    During the reign of QE1, there really were foreign plots against the State. Aristocrats were being paid by Spain to try and bring about a revolution; the Queen could rely on Drake because he was a commoner (and had had an aristocrat executed) and so was totally dependent on her for protection.

    The result was spies everywhere, which persisted until after the Dutch takeover in 1688. Under King William and his successors, the Church of England was repurposed as a kind of benevolent KGB intended to maintain social harmony, which it did very well until the 19th century and resurgent Catholicism. It was in the 19th century that it was decided that gentlemen only spied on foreigners.

    Once again we have a lack of social cohesion and large groups of foreigners in the country whose interests probably don't align with the majority (perhaps I should add in "and Old Etonians"). The State answer as under QE1 is mass surveillance. It didn't end for a long time than, and I doubt it will now.

    1. Chris G

      Re: Queen Elisabeth 1st.

      And you and me and everyone else who feels we are over surveilled is regarded as a conspiracy theorist and accordingly belittled and satirised by our government representatives. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media seems to play along with our governments in preference to defending it's readers/viewers.

      I find the majority of people when engaged in conversation on theses subjects tend to be surprised that I have any issues and don't really know what I am talking about, so I am not expecting a groundswell of anti-government opinion against surveillance any time soon, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

  11. ShadowedOne

    Engagement

    " He also said the abolition of slavery and absolute monarchy, and the achievement for civil rights, also once looked unlikely but were achieved."

    The things that an engaged population can do are quite amazing. Unfortunately, at this point in time, not only is the population very much disengaged, the government and the media are actively promoting division (ie. partisan politics).

    While we have achieved great things in the past, unless people are willing to shake off their complacency, such things will be beyond us in the future.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Spot on !

      I do take his words as a bit of a dreamer. Believing that people will not stand for government encroaching further on their privacy looks a bit optimistic when people have gladly accepted it from businesses that had no right to do it in the first place (yes, Google and Facebook, I'm looking at you both).

      And the issue I have with that is that once you have gotten used to being spied on under the excuse of serving better ads, what use it is to complain about being spied on for the overwhelming excuse of National Security ? I mean, I know that the general population has no problem with hypocrisy when applied to their own lives (like white people who don't like colored people but readily employ them because they can pay them cheaply), but I think that even the personal hypocrisy meter would be a bit blown by complaining now on Facebook or Twitter.

      The saddest fact is simply that too many people don't care, or are even aware of, what they give up in order to continue farmvilling or twitterating or wall-posting what they had for breakfast.

      And that's why it works.

      As for editing EXIF data, please. Do you file your carburator intake to improve its efficiency too ? If you have that level of expertise and believe that everyone else does it too, you clearly don't go outside enough.

      1. J. R. Hartley

        Re: Spot on !

        "coloured people"?

        "carburettor"??

        The 1970's called etc etc

  12. William Donelson

    Wage slavery increases every day, though. Increases in Real incomes for 99% of the US population stopped during the Reagan era, while the top 1% have accrued all of the benefits of automation and increased productivity. You can see from this chart:

    http://gyazo.com/e91db7668b1567168ad314e278b31b72

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      But this is not really a problem, is it?

      > Increases in Real incomes for 99% of the US population stopped during the Reagan era

      What is the Federal Reserve.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nah

    I really don't see the surveillance state being rolled back by anything resembling a popular backlash - not as things are going at the moment.

    Internet-based surveillance is generally unobtrusive and I believe that most people either care little for their privacy or just assume that communications are monitored and act accordingly. By 'act accordingly' I mean that people naturally fill the snoops' logs with inane chatter.

    What might kill the surveillance state would be the realisation by government bean counters that expenditure on surveillance just isn't reaping worthwhile rewards - as the ostensible targets will more likely be using more traditional means of communication.

    1. Cameron Colley

      Re: Nah

      Ah, but you make the mistake of thinking that the surveillance is there in order to protect people or to stop terrorism or other crimes. That is very obviously not the case -- it is there to up the IT spending of the government to please the buddies of those who make the purchasing decisions.

      The governments of the West (and most others too) don't wan to prevent terrorism at all, apart from the few attacks aimed at them personally, but like terrorism as it can be used to keep people controlled and quiet.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nah

        I don't think I have made a mistake - I made no assumptions as to why the surveillance is there. There is some merit to your cynical view, and that is what my last bit was about : whatever the true reason for the surveillance, the justification is certainly based on terrorist threats and the like, and there may come a point where someone in government is brave enough to point out that all the expenditure isn't really cost-effective.

        Having said that, I guess it will never happen - for the simple reason that our own spooks are not going to accept a reduction in their capabilities as long as the rest of the world's spooks are freely monitoring us. And I can't argue with that, I suppose.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nah

          Besides, the state REALLY DOES fear the one that gets away, as that will be the one that utterly destroys them if not all of civilization. IOW, they're under constant fear of existential threat. And with an existential threat, nothing's taboo.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dynasties

    Absolute monarchies have been replaced by political dynasties - sometimes even composed of blood relatives. The UK State has passed so many new laws that individuals are regarded as criminals who must be prevented from challenging the Establishment. That sounds like a form of slavery.

  15. John Lilburne

    It aint the State we need to be worried about.

    Its the search engines, email providers, social networks that are mining our private data and selling it on to 3rd parties.

    For that we need the State to step up to the plate and protect its citizens.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: It aint the State we need to be worried about.

      For that we need the State to step up to the plate and protect its citizens

      That's some big honking stone under which you have been living for the last twenty years, mate.

      Have a military MRE, because that's all you gonna get from state. That and rampant inflation.

    2. Vociferous

      Re: It aint the State we need to be worried about.

      That is the dumbest poppycock I've ever heard. Google sends ads at you, not armed police.

  16. ex_ussr1

    Not so doomed.

    In your eagerness to demonstrate eagerness in the west to respect privacy, you conveniently forgot the growth of the largest authoritarian state controlled internet networks in the world, and the not so subtle use of neo fascist propaganda to justify it all.

    (Russia & China), never mind "innocent little places" like the Middle east, Turkey et al to name but a few...

    The same show, coming soon to a town near you.

  17. tom dial Silver badge

    As much as I respect Phil Zimmerman, I think he is largely mistaken. For quite a few years I have urged nearly everyone I know who is even marginally computer literate to use PGP or OpenPGP to secure email, with exactly one success, who already was set for, and using, one of these product.

    Although this sample is not at all random and the results of analysis unsuitable for making long term projectios, it nonetheless suggests that people are not very interested. Whatever the reason, it appears likely that a great many people are comfortable with the same degree of privacy they would get by sending a post card through the mail. I do not really expect that encryption of voice mail to have enough uptake to limit the signals intelligence agencies. Those who have reasons to use encryption, or a desire for the privacy that encryption can provide probably are using it already, and I rather doubt that preaching to the faithful at Black Hat will change that much.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      For quite a few years I have urged nearly everyone I know who is even marginally computer literate to use PGP or OpenPGP to secure email, with exactly one success, who already was set for, and using, one of these product.

      IT security is one of my fields; I've have GPG installed on all of my computers for years; I have a thorough understanding of cryptography and a passing familiarity with the specifics of the PGP, PEM, and S/MIME protocols. I don't bother encrypting or signing any of my email.

      Why not? Few or none of the recipients are prepared to do anything with either, and the presence of signatures would only confuse them. And there's very little benefit to me in sending encrypted or signed email, even if my recipients did handle it correctly. My email just isn't that valuable (except internal work email, which never leaves the corporate network, so an attacker who gained access would almost certainly have stolen creds to read it anyway).

      I think promoting secure email is a quixotic quest. Yes, if we could get most people using signed email, it'd at least cut back somewhat on phishing and the like. But the threshold for that to be useful is very high. Beyond that, it's mostly useful only if two parties agree beforehand that their threat model justifies it, and they configure it as a special arrangement. For everyone else, it's "oh, there's one of those weird paragraphs of garbage at the end of this message".

      In my experience, the chief use of PGP/GPG is to sign software distributions, which has some utility, though many organizations don't practice any sort of consistency or provide decent key verification (hello, openssl.org).

  18. Vociferous

    Notice the difference.

    It was possible to conspire against the monarch without the monarch knowing about it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Notice the difference.

      "It was possible to conspire against the monarch without the monarch knowing about it."

      Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell gave the existing Royal Mail a monopoly on the mail service. Therefore all letters had to pass through a central office where they could be opened, read, and copied - before being carefully resealed. The express purpose was to spy on possible dissidents. Transcripts of some letters still exist in archives.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Notice the difference.

        I wonder if even back then the Royal Mail had to deal with the possibility of a tamper-evident envelope where there was no way to open it without revealing it had been opened.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    If you've done nothing wrong ..

    If you've done nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide, Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police

    Insert obligatory Orwell quote: "By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen."

  20. T. F. M. Reader

    A flaw in his argument

    It is natural that Zimmerman focuses on encryption as the main means to ensure privacy. However, encrypting one's communications is a means against eavesdropping, but not against surveillance. Surveillance is about gathering metadata - who is talking to whom - and not (so much) learning the contents of the conversations.

    Since calls need to be connected, emails need to be delivered, packets need to be routed, IP addresses need to be assigned to physical locations, and even mobile phones need to talk to towers, metadata can be gathered, stored, and analysed, if deemed necessary. This is surveillance, and encryption will not help against it.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      I had not really realized that. Thank you for the clarification. I will keep that in mind for future arguments.

    2. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: A flaw in his argument

      "addresses need to be assigned to physical locations, and even mobile phones need to talk to towers, metadata can be gathered, stored, and analysed, if deemed necessary. This is surveillance, and encryption will not help against it." --- TFM Reader.

      Encryption can help against it, for instance, I can post the following AES256 encrypted text here:

      ZQN+xEcBITAhITAhLR0+Us1QcS6pEiExNjAhEkJoHOJpLa8k9eT27QS+i2cjpcVXcMkt5ZgXV5qEIrbBcjmlD1jrGS3lSA58Zs9ut4Z64X/dBLN5LfwuN51uqGhS0di/oyEwIWk=

      Quite a few people are going to see that, but only the people who know the password are going to be able to read it. So the mechanics of using encryption to obscure metadata can be relatively simple: you can broadcast encrypted messages to a wide group of people including your receiver, but in a form that only they will understand (numbers stations seem to have been doing this for decades).

      Of course, the legality of it is something else. In the UK, as I understand it, having this message in your browser cache, and being unable to produce the key when asked, could result in you receiving an effectively infinite prison sentence, served out in 2 year chunks. In the short term, I can spare you this ("password") but in the longer term that legislation needs to be removed. That gets us back to the real problem - how to get people engaged.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: A flaw in his argument

        So the mechanics of using encryption to obscure metadata can be relatively simple: you can broadcast encrypted messages to a wide group of people including your receiver, but in a form that only they will understand (numbers stations seem to have been doing this for decades).

        More generally, there are any number of protocols to impede traffic analysis, from broadcast1 to steganography to using covert channels to chaffing-and-winnowing and so on.

        All of these involve costs. As with anything in security, it's a question of trading off one part of the threat space for another. For example, protocols that involve message expansion (broadcasting, chaffing, &c) typically have a greater resource cost and make less efficient use of bandwidth, and potentially create the possibility of amplification DoS.

        Most generally, you can say that if one secure-communications technique has problem X, there is probably an additional technique that can be layered on top of it to exchange X for problem Y. Repeat until you have a problem you can live with, or boredom sets in.

        1With or without encryption. Encryption in your example is orthogonal to the goal of evading metadata surveillance.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A flaw in his argument

        "Quite a few people are going to see that, but only the people who know the password are going to be able to read it."

        That alone, though, is still a set smaller than the set of all possible listeners, meaning it can be intersected with other sets gathered elsewhere, which allow you to gradually winnow down your list of suspects. Investigators can be patient; cold cases can be kept for decades. All they need is one new clew to narrow it down to that one suspect...

        Furthermore, the act of posting that message can be traced as well...

  21. kmac499

    Public vs Anonymity vs Privacy vs Secrecy

    Public vs Anonymity vs Privacy vs Secrecy

    Four different levels of visibility for your Identity, Actions, Transactions and Opinions. Each one quite neatly covers widely agreed areas.

    The real fun of course, comes when deciding what goes into each pot and even more fun happens with the assymetry of someone else deciding for you, without asking or even entering any form of reciprocal discussions on the information they hold.

    My personal opionion is that there is not enough emphasis placed on anonymity. The ability to go out about your normal day without being tracked monitored or identified.

    I see anonymity as a passive almost default state of being, until you introduce yourself to others.

    Privacy is a chosen active state and it should be the default state of information particularly personal identifiers that you may regard it as sensitive.

    PGP et al are really good at maintaining privacy and enabling secrecy. But the current Public networks carrying those messages do not easily confer Anonymity..

  22. Glen Turner 666

    Generation-long problem, but what are the side effects?

    Phil argues it's going to be one of those generation-long problems, similar to access to strong crypto. That doesn't mean that it there aren't knock-on issues beyond that generation. In that way Phil is too sanguine.

    Take crypto. When I wrote a Pine patch to provide PGP-encrypted mail there was a notice issued preventing the export of that beyond Australia. So we had a generation of mail clients without strong crypto (Pine was the "market leader" in Internet e-mail clients at that time, so competitors would have sought feature parity). Importantly, without strong crypto there can not be sophisticated crypto key management.

    That lack of sophisticated key management -- that is, who you communicate with and how well you know who they are -- pretty directly allowed the rise of spam. Now there have been attempts since at "email reputation management" to mark particular uses are spammers or compromised, but the lack of widespread key management for e-mail means that those attempts have never got much further than the network layer -- marking particular IP addresses as suspect.

    The cost of the side-effects has been immense. We can't even mark a Nigerian scammer as untrused. It's not at all clear that the two decades of additional ability to tap email has resulted in less threat to the people's welfare.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Generation-long problem, but what are the side effects?

      It's the tradeoff between anonymity and attestation. And it's a black-and-white either-or prospect because the moment you can trace something, you can identify and attest it, so it's all or nothing. If the world is anonymous, you have anarchy because criminals can roam free since no one can identify them. But if your world has attestation, you essentially have a police state because everyone will demand a clampdown on crime.

      And no, you can't go in between because everyone fears for their lives; it's bloody instinct. They don't want to be the next victim, so either you have the power to assure your public or you don't. Meaning any attempt to go in between ultimate gravitates towards one or the other extreme.

  23. Mike 16

    From false premise, anything follows

    I note a great deal of discussion about slavery. IIRC, someone above pointed out that there are probably more (at least de facto) slaves today than ever before. Nobody seems to have mentioned absolute monarchs. Are we ignoring the kingdoms of the Middle East? Or de facto monarchs like Putin, Kim, maybe Al Sisi?

    These may not be so obvious to "first world" folks, but the globe is shrinking in more ways than one. Previously, there was some chance that, e.g. Spain or France would help out those rebelling against Britain or the Netherlands, and vice versa. Once pretty much every regime outside "our" tight little circle has even less interest in our welfare than our own overlords, and nothing to gain by helping us that couldn't be gained by helping our overlords squash us, it's Game Over.

    There is no Frontier out there.

  24. JaitcH
    FAIL

    "... it turned out that they wanted to discuss volume pricing so they could equip their agents."

    I guess this is yet further confirmation that the FBI, et al, have NO CONFIDENCE whatsoever in the extremely expensive Motorola designed, US coast-to-US coast clear-channel P25 system.

    But Mattel proved that long ago.

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