[Gllug] Editors

[William Palfreman]

Major rant coming...

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Tom Gilbert wrote:

> Fine. It's just that I can see the need to protect data from your mate
> down the pub borrowing your laptop, but I cannot see the need to "deny
> the higher levels on a StegFS" from the authorities unless you are doing
> something illegal.

I can.  That data is mine, and the government has no right to it.  We used
to have this funny principle of innocent till proven guilty, and they had
to prove you had done something actually harmful to someone else before
you got banged up.  Now groups of people (The home secretary, the chief
commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, his fifteen year old son, anyone
in the government who takes a dislike to me (and I sure as hell have taken
a dislike to them)) can, on demand, force me to reveal data that may or
may not be used against me - so people can be forced to incriminate
themselves (or go to jail), which is against every principle of justice
going.  Just because they haven't started locking programmers and
sysadmins up yet doesn't mean they won't, and if the powers the RIP act
gives them are anything to go by they're going to start using it - why
else bother passing it?  With a steganographic file system my private
stuff can be hidden in things like mp3s or jpegs, and they can't prove
anything.  Its not just paranoia, there are some very hostile people
running around these days, giving themselves important titles and doing
things like www.gateway.gov.uk.

I mean, they just locked up a guy for being weird, reading Soldier of
Fortune, liking Princess Diana, and having the misfortune to have coat
stored by the police in a room used to test fire a pistol two weeks
earlier.  There's plenty of stuff to be paranoid about in a country like
that.

-- 
W.


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