samer wroteThat doesn't mean you can't take measures to defend yourself.
Can we spend a little more time thinking about this?
I watched
this interesting talk by James Mickens this morning where he did touch on the topic of Security. (If you're interested, it starts at minute 16:18, but I recommend watching the whole thing anyway). He has a very simple way of describing his security model:
Mossad or not Mossad, or to use a slightly less taboo word here, "NSA or not NSA", a pretty tongue-in-cheek way of saying "What can you really do if you're being
targeted by government spying agencies?" To quote him:
These guys have all kinds of things you don't even have. They have drones, they have satellites intercepting communications and looking at them. You don't have a satellite. They have guys dropping out of helicopters, you don't even have a frisbee golf team. They have night vision goggles, they have guns that shoot around corners. That's a real thing! So I don't think that having a PGP signature in your email is going to protect you from that stuff.
I understand the cyberhacker cryptoanarchist fantasy of protecting yourself from your government by applying strong crypto, but you're standing against people who control your communication at every single stage. They control the ISPs connecting you to the Internet, the networking equipment relaying your messages, the authors of the application you're using for your messages, your own encryption software, ... They're not playing fair. As usual, I think
xkcd says it best.
Again, the keyword here is
targeted. Sure you can protect yourself from online blind fishing, but if powerful people want to intercept your communications, they generally will.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm not saying it's a bad thing either, but can we just drop the utopia of living in a world where we control our communication? That's similar to the infamous 2nd amendment controversy in the US where people think that they have the right to hold a gun to protect themselves from the tyranny of government or some bullshit. Government has squads of infantrymen armed to the teeth with bombs, missiles, drones, airplanes, tanks and bazookas and you think that your 2 shot shotgun will protect you from their tyranny??
Security is not a math problem, despite what "Security Researchers" will have you believe. Security is enforced by a 2m/130kgs henchman with an IQ below 70 and a 5$ wrench pounding on you until he gets the info he needs. and in the world we are living in, there's very little your math equations can do about it.
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