Spying

A society with a network that allows easy spying of everyone (panopticon is a geometric shape that allows this for example) WILL INVITE SPYING. Would you give up facebook, google, twitter and Yahoo because a bunch of Jerks in your government are spying on everyone? No you wouldn't. But there is something one can do? Yes, maybe.


 * Routers - software/hardware should be from your country. I wouldn't like it if every router software in my country was from China or the USA, sorry... home bred, home responsibility.  And not just that but also accountability.


 * Topology - a hub/spoke network is perhaps not the best. A full disorganized mesh network may be better because it makes many gateways.


 * making laws to prevent spying DOES NOT HELP (yet it's all we've got as an option).. see tempora the british didn't even know it was going on...

Internet
The Internet is the worlds biggest spying machine. Everything is logged when it can be. So it's up to us to tame this beast. The Internet does not belong to anyone so nobody can be its master but we all make the Internet happen. What this means is that we should be able to stretch the Internet to our wills. Only unity among the people will do this, unity is strength otherwise seperated we'll succumb to the Internet. It's probably wise for people (even laymans) to take a more active role in how the Internet is built, only then can we truly know what we're facing up against.

Engineering
Currently there is no engineering solution to prevent spying completely. If someone creates an absolute spy-proof network please contact us.

Also the use of cryptography is not a silver bullet against spying. We don't know if a government body or other organization has developed a computer powerful enough to see through crypto. Cryptography is a very difficult formula that requires all sorts of factors to be "just right", we can't entrust that to our children and not so clued people, it would be like giving them fire to play with, they might get burned. So we must prevent spying, period.

Commandeering
The NSA and other government organizations world-wide have been attempting to commandeer (article) our Internet. The word to all ISP's and network organizations is to fight them. Fight them with lawyers and refusal to install equipment on your networks. We must win this fight.

Democracy
The Internet is a series of corporations and organizations that have banded together. This networking was done largely without democratic values. Because the Internet is largely un-democratic we must do something to bring democracy to the Internet. The Internet largely runs our lives, so why should there be a seperation between democracy which is there to protect our values and this body of digital networks. We must bridge gaps between engineering and democracy, as there is beauty in both, but an ugly un-democratic fascism that grows out of the Internet. We must protect democracy.

Anonymity Online
Let's get this straight. You are not anonymous even if you are on a dynamic IP. Telco's keep record of who was online at what time on what IP. Google uses cookies to track you and so does most other website. Since a cookie reveals who you are (shadow profile) every time you connect to Google they can go back in time to everything you ever searched for as soon as your identity is known to them. It makes no difference if you are on dynamic IP or a static IP the only difference is with a static IP everyone else knows that it's you... not just google.

PRISM
Is a programme run by the NSA in the USA. Ed Snowden worked for them as a contractor in Hawaii. NSA stands for National Security Agency.

Edward Snowden said that it has come to a point where they store massive amounts of data and archive it. I presume then when anyone acts strange (a trigger event) they will pull all available data on that person. Snowden says it's not the type of society that he wants to live in.

Tempora
The British PRISM. When british politicians were asked by Germanys Justice Minister Sabine Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger to what extend they spy on Germany's residents she was told to "ask the GCHQ", meaning that the ministers in the UK do not have a clue what is going on on their territory. It seems GCHQ has gotten out of control. GCHQ is the british NSA.

Echelon
May not exist anymore. It used to watch over all satellite communications. The states that ran Echelon are now called the "Five Eyes" countries because there is 5 of them (USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand). It may have more allied countries in its wake.

1984
1984 is a novel by George Orwell, written in the late 1940's. The author predicted that the world would be like he depicted it in 1984. Well it's 30 years later now, and I think we have almost arrived, humans privacy has been erradicated and we're much more alone than before. And government seems to have no solutions to this, in fact they build up more spying facilities as you read this.

Pbug's plan
pbug (me) thinks that we'll escape the wrath of spying if we all work together. It's very difficult to put these words down because it isn't so much a technical problem anymore than a societal problem. If we get rid of Telco's much of our problems are solved. So how would that work? No more DSL? Right no more DSL and no FTTH. What everyone has to do is control their spec of the Internet with multiple gateways. Pretend you have a 4 port router running OpenWRT and it does gigabit speed routing. You could then dedicate 1 link to your house and put wifi on it. The other links go to your neighbours, the guy on the right, the guy on the left and the guy behind or in front of you. Ethernet has a 100 meter range so this will reach no problem. If it doesn't reach there is laser links one can buy (look up RONJA but we need something faster). So then your neighbours have to do the same and before you know it the city is meshed. It then needs gateways to other cities and before you know it the country is meshed, and so on. There will be many thousands if not millions of routers that everyone controls themselves and we dedicate the path. Pretend you can decide the route your packets take with strict source routing (a technical term). The Internet would flow. And if we randomize the path the route takes spying eyes would have a hard time combinging all your data, they may only get traces/bits of it. To do all this requires a shift in policy with the governments, so it needs to be voted into power. It's not simple but in order to get less spying from the Internet we need MORE net, not less.