Cryptography, RIP, Steganography etc (was Re: [Gllug] Editors)

[Andy Smith]

On Sun, Jul 29, 2001 at 06:22:33PM +0100, Tom Gilbert wrote:
> * Andy Smith (andy at lug.org.uk) wrote:
> > This being the old "anyone who wants to hide information from their
> > government is clearly a criminal" argument then?
> 
> Perhaps I have a narrow viewpoint, but to be honest, I can't think of a
> damn thing I would want to hide from my government that wasn't illegal
> :)

This supposes that everything that your government currently deems
illegal you agree with them on, and that you also will agree with
them on anything else they may decide is illegal in future.

It means also that you hold your government above manipulating
circumstances in order to reveal your secrets.  You must trust that
the procedures in place for requiring access to your files are
incorruptible by other agencies.

e.g. You are a political activist who happens to become a suspect in
some crime.  Your government now demands access to all of your files
in case any of them are relavant.  You choices are now

a) reveal all your information and trust your government to keep
   your secret political documents only visible to the officers
   dealing with the crime in question and not other opponents within
   government (or government agencies acting on bribes from any
   other organisation), or

b) refuse and basically incriminate yourself on the unrelated crime
   and serve jail time.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to keep secrets from your own
government or its law enforcement officers, and I imagine each
person's judgement of what is paranoia and what is a safe precaution
will be and should be different.


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug