CircleID

Actually, they do demand it openly: "Carpet bombing in cyberspace" http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/05/3375884

It gets worse, what if it was organized crime, instead of or in addition to spy agencies, engaging in such activities, which of course they are. Spy agencies are normally engaged in criminal activity too, so that's not what makes it worse.

What makes it worse is that ICANN has allowed itself on various levels including registrars and the DNS itself to be increasingly co-opted by organized crime. ICANN's insatiable hunger for money is largely to blame, and criminals have long known how to exploit such a weakness. Read this current article on ICANNWatch.org and follow the link in Fergie's subsequent comment, or my more accurate link to RBNBlog which follows. This is going to turn out badly. -g

Ah, the negative fallacy.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof

The last major FUD campaign from the EFF was of course the Dearaol astroturfing, and that, I see, is dead in the water since 2006.

I am gratified to note that the EFF hasn't lost its touch in the active propagation of FUD.

The PC I'm currently using has a non-zero likelihood of being "owned". That's not FUD, it is a realistic possibility that all users should consider, and take measures to prevent. Attacks may credibly come from spammers rings, marketing raiders, mafia, or governmental agencies: It doesn't really make a practical difference as far as countermeasures are concerned.

A user's ability to thoroughly analyze the system makes a difference. With the possible exception of a few skilled users, we need software tools that we can trust. If attacks might come from the system vendors, that would make a difference.

A fundamental question, when it comes to intrusion detection, is where exactly lies the boundary. I've always regarded the territory inside the home walls as mine. For the wire, one can host it up to an "external" router or appliance that does some filtering. In this respect, it is peculiar that DVD players and similar objects, e.g. Vista, are not designed to obey to their owner. As a further example, most firewall software on Windows is designed to grant permissions on a per executable basis, assuming that it is customary to have untrusted software installed inside the system. If we can get by with that, why don't we accept that we can be spied upon by either the government directly, or some agent that may stand with it? Living versus being battery-raised.

It's funny that nobody else has brought this up. This is a brilliant and informative article that should be in the mainstream news media. Great job. Remember who is Pres of the US.  GW BUSH. And his cohort, the evil Dick Cheney. Using young hackers, under threat of prosecution, the intelligence agencies of the US and Britain and other allies could put together a team of young hackers who could literally suck up billions of megabytes of data, to be filtered and reviewed. Think of political enemies using these resources to eliminate opponents. Think of the dirt they could dig up on political enemies and use against them to remove them from office.  Think of the "Information Oppression" movement that could be utilized. This is a whole new area of fear…

but, hey, Nashville Stars is on so I don't have time to think about it.