Sometimes, we forget just how little privacy we have against a determined attacker. So often we rely just on the fact that we believe our communications are of so little importance, that nobody will take the effort to try to snoop on us.
So once in a while we get concerned, when we hear about some sort of mass snooping, that means no extra effort has to be engaged to read our own individual, personal data. Then we want to assign blame, as though this mass snooping caused our lack of privacy.
We need to fix this muddled thinking and understand the limits of our privacy.
Sure, this story about cellphone man-in-the-middle attacks is going to scare people, but the fact is, your phone and text communications never were secure to begin with. How do you think wiretaps work?
The difference is that most of us don’t get targeted. We get away with putting data in texts, we get away with insecure passwords, we get away with putting real information in security questions. Sarah Palin got burned on that last point. A bunch of starlets got burned on bad passwords because iCloud didn’t get broken, their accounts did. Once you’re targeted, all those bad practices hurt you fast.
Conservative activists could get targeted at any time. Use good passwords. Use secure (https, SSL, TLS) connections to email and to websites. Put a good password on your home computer network. If it’s not encrypted, assume it will get read.
The whole Net Neutrality movement is a sham. They’re now resorting to faking problems, this after spamming the FCC with robofilings to push their incoherent agenda for a more powerful FCC.
Of course once the FCC gets more powerful, they start trying to do stuff like smash federalism in favor of socialized Internet.
I keep warning that 3D Printing will come under government attack. It’s an empowering technology, and sometimes empowerment is messy.
Hmm. Microsoft won’t honor a US subpoena in Dublin, to read emails on foreign servers. Interesting.
Comcast. AT&T. Uber. Time and again the socialists are villifying businesses in order to push a big government agenda. This is a common tactic they use to try to win over conservatives, by the way: They want you to think “Oh it’s plausible that some big company will abuse conservatives,” hoping you’ll forget that government is the ultimate monopoly, one that innovation can’t cure.
Why do we need the Local Choice act? Current Retransmission Consent regulations are causing ordinary customers to keep getting caught in wars between broadcasters, and cable and satellite companies. Right now 50 stations owned by Raycom, just got pulled from DirecTV in a bullying measure, trying to get DirecTV to accept higher prices, which customers will then blame on DirecTV, not local broadcasters.