Snip > Assume the audience has a bias towards the rights of corporations and > the status quo. > > Otherwise, we are all wasting bandwidth. Bandwidth is easy to waste. > I believe we are using bandwidth. I am not so sure about wasting bandwidth. This community is the one giving input into RedHat, and Fedora OS's. Security, from all non-participating parties should be one of our major concerns, both from a personal freedom viewpoint and from a business standpoint. In business your network contains virtually all the information that provides income to the business. In a personal computer (not a public computer), Your security should be the same as in your home. I know that currently American law doesn't provide that. But when people were not secure in their homes they created a new government to make that so. Today we have a much more technical expansion of "home" than ever before, with cellphones, PDA's, computers, internet, and cable access, than was ever or could ever have been envisioned by our founding fathers in America. Some new and developing countries are struggling to deal with the responsibility of meeting not just the equivalent of our fundamental government, but in fact the expanded definition of privacy and home and personal safety. If we cannot determine what should be acceptable, and set the limits of what we consider our personal perimeter, who will? I have used software to create programs, to translate complex data sets from one representation to another and to transfer data. I have worked with encoding systems, with transmission systems, and many other forms of very powerful systems, some of the results of which you probably use everyday (I developed test and verification programs for integrated circuits for 20 years). Security in our personal correspondence, in our data and in our lives is slipping farther and farther from our grasp daily. From cameras on the street, to cameras and recording devices where we shop, to the tracking of creditcard usage and bank account conditions that seems to be available to anyone who is interested enough to find out. If someone knows enough about you, they have power over you in very sublime and sometimes nefarious ways. Such things as product placement monitoring, or directed advertising, and the data provided by those companies like doubleclick provide information about us that sometimes we are not personally aware even exists. I grew up in a small town. Everyone "knew" everything about everyone else. The operator used to listen in on the party lines as did some of the parties on the line. I remember when a friend teased me about a doctors appointment when I was about 6. It was very painful, but today, knowledge about your medical history, or your past problems could result in a missed appointment or advancement. An opportunity lost that you may not have ever realized was in the offering, and based on bad or old and no longer valid information. Add ID theft into the mix and your future hangs in the balance everyday. As to backdoors and other means of accessing your system, the network analysis algorithms in use can pinpoint you falsely, a targeted download can retrieve information from your system(s) and that can be used to bolster the case. And before you are ever served a warrant or notice, the case against you has been made. Moreover it may be impossible to put the information in context to show that it was a harmless bit of chicanery either by yourself or by someone you know pulling a prank with unintended consequences. It doesn't have to be an overt conspiracy to cause you problems. You can just be caught in a wide net set to trap some specific kind of individual that somehow spat you up as one of the possibilities, and circumstances left you with no where to turn. I do not know if this has happened yet, but I do know from my own work that what software reports is not always the full truth, and that spurious facts can change the context and meaning of data and communications. It behooves us all to be aware, to help control the proliferation of intrusive behavior, and to keep our eyes and ears open. Politicians are curious folks and bear considerable watching (with apologies to any semblance to a famous quote). Regards, Les H
