The Null Device

1999/11/8

Cambridge academic debunks "crypto menace" myth. (NewScientist)

Think what England was like when the government didn't really exist: anyone with any wealth or property had to design their house to withstand infantry-strength assault. That's not efficient. National governments and policemen will survive the electronic revolution because of the efficiencies they create.
If I were to hold a three-hour encrypted conversation with someone in the MedellĂ­n drug cartel, it would be a dead giveaway. In routine monitoring, GCHQ (Britain's signals intelligence service) would pick up the fact that there was encrypted traffic and would instantly mark down my phone as being suspect. Quite possibly the police would then send in the burglars to put microphones in all over my house. In circumstances like this, encryption does not increase your security. It immediately and rapidly decreases it. You are mad to use encryption if you are a villain.

crime cryptography law law enforcement security society surveillance 0

shift.com interview with David Bowie, an artist who Gets It (tm):

I know all the sites that have my bootlegs and all my MP3s. Actually, I don't give a flying fuck. I like the internet and I like the community. I think, to understand your presence on the net, you have to be a part of it and work within it. I thought it just looked so reactionary, for instance, of someone like Prince to clamp down on everything in terms of the lawsuits. You can't stop the sea from coming forward.
Frankly, this new school of technology is just a faster-rising version of what I've always done. I mean, cutting up and taking and sampling--even ideas--and rematching and making hybrids of what is already out there is what I have always done. Wouldn't it be interesting to take a folk song and put it against an R&B drum? That's the kind of approach we had to albums like Heroes [1977]. There is nothing pure in that music; its ideas come from everywhere. That is the basis of post-modernism--;not attaching a back-text to history, but retrieving things from history in their most pure and pristine state.

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