The Police, But Also Everyone Else

For John, BLUF:  Are your opponents spying on you?  Probably not worth the cost, but if you were a politician, they might.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A friend of mine sent this link to a video with the EMail Subject of "A technologist's perspective on secure systems vs spying".  My friend describes the speaker in this video, Bruce Schneier, as follows:

Bruce Schneier is one of the great gurus on the intersection of technology, security, and privacy and most anything he has to say on the subject is worth reading or listening to.

The video is a little over five minutes.

It is good food for thought.  We like the idea of the police keeping us safe—and NSA—but the technology cuts both ways and the bad guys have the technology also.

If the FBI is listening in on some Mafia Don living quietly ten doors down from you (or some drug distributor in another part of town), then some Chinese marketing firm is listening in on you to try and figure out how to sell you something a year from now.  Or the competition for the company you work for is checking up on your phone conversations, your text messages and your EMails, in case you reveal something of interest to them.

In the talk Mr Schneier used the term "Use Case".  In systems analysis and software development a Use Case describes an actor and the activities associated with that actor.

Regards  —  Cliff