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-- DavidKellam | | | During the 90’s, several parties had dramatically different fantasies concerning the privacy of our online future, and the debate over encryption took its first form. Generally, privacy advocates argued for accessible encryption to offset the consequences of an inherently insecure structure, while others feared that an encrypted internet would provide too available a platform for organized criminals. Ultimately, it appeared, privacy advocates were successful, and a new standard was born on the U.S. network. | |
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< | However, the United States implemented export controls on new encryption software to keep it from the international community, and, essentially, to fill other networks with substandard encryption to which the U.S. would have access. While many of these policies were reversed towards the end of Clinton’s presidency and the (alleged) end of the pyrric Crypto Wars, international consumers are still subject to insecurity because protocols stemming from these regulations remain in the default settings of many online systems, and commonplace cybercriminals are now able to exploit these vulnerabilities. | >
> | However, the United States implemented export controls on new encryption software to keep it from the international community, and, essentially, to fill other networks with substandard encryption to which the U.S. would have access. While many of these policies were reversed towards the end of Clinton’s presidency and the (alleged) end of the Pyrrhic Crypto Wars, international consumers are still subject to insecurity because protocols stemming from these regulations remain in the default settings of many online systems, and commonplace cybercriminals are now able to exploit these vulnerabilities. | | | It isn’t just the vestige of 90’s security vulnerabilities that negatively impact our modern internet environment. Unbeknownst to many of my peers, the NSA continues to undermine encryption standards through these formerly implemented backdoors, intrusion into VPNs, NSA roving bugs, etcetera. Furthermore, federally accepted channels of data merchandising have constructed economies of our most private information, and, generally, none of our browsing, purchasing behavior, or information gathering goes unmonitored. | | | If academia is to be successful in this, millennials may demand new anonymous forums, and a new market could form. With the formation of this new market, Facebook and Google’s bilateral data-control structure, as well as the ISPs, will certainly respond with more pressure on legislators. However, they will do so with fewer resources and a less certain market future. Furthermore, if the movement grows to its necessary size, incumbents subservient to corporate interests could be replaced with those subservient to their now-privacy-conscious constituency, and policy may move towards my ultimate goal of online freedom and anonymity, rather than swiftly away from it.
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> | I'm not sure why the
focus here is so much on the failure of "academia," as though the
primary reason people who don't go to schools about technology or
privacy aren't learning something about technology or privacy were
that sociology (or even law) professors weren't doing their jobs
right. This could be true: I'm pretty sure they aren't doing their
jobs right in some respect or another, because I'm not. But nothing
said here makes it the teachers' fault.
As for the much-criticized "mainstream media," it too has many
faults. Mostly, I think, the recent past is littered with bad
compromises with platform companies who controlled advertising.
This can hardly be blamed altogether on companies that previously
used advertising revenue to fund their journalism. And what I
thought when I wrote "The Invisible Barbecue" I still think: the
problem of how to report what happened at the end of the 20th
century was not solved by institutions that a decade later were in
danger of not wanting to solve it anymore. The 2016 election and
its fallout changed all that, maybe completely.
So I think the best route to improvement here would be to
concentrate less on who is not doing the relevant teaching than on
how to overcome the "I'm not doing anything wrong so why should I
care?" argument at the street level, where your teaching is.
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