[IP] more on Google search and seizure, etc. vs. technologists
Begin forwarded message:
From: Phil Karn <karn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: December 3, 2005 11:31:26 PM EST
To: "William S. Duncanson" <caesar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: lauren@xxxxxxxxxx, dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Google search and seizure, etc. vs. technologists
William S. Duncanson wrote:
I have to agree with Lauren here. The "average user's" lack of
understanding has been the reason why far more important and useful
technologies have never been widely adopted. Look at PGP or any other
digital e-mail signature technology. The average user doesn't
understand
why they're useful, isn't willing to pay for them or go through the
trouble
to use a free implementation, and the whole idea just withered on
the vine.
Even businesses, for whom e-mail has become a mission critical
aspect find
the expense and trouble of implementing a simple, company-wide
public key
encryption/signing system to be too much of an effort or financial
burden
without a useful ROI. And what could be more important to a large
corporation than secure, guaranteed communications? The same is
true of
anonymizing proxies; anonymizing proxies have been in existence for
years,
and they're only used by a trivial number of people. Wide scale
adoption of
such a technology appears to be as likely as wide adoption of
digitally
signed e-mail...
PGP and digital signature technology is not a valid comparison.
Digital signatures require one party to do something so another can
benefit. I can't force anyone to sign the emails they send me. (I
know -- I've tried with E*Trade and other financial institutions.)
A Google query spoofer, on the other hand, need only be implemented
by the person who benefits from it. That makes all the difference.
A network of anonymizing proxies already exists, so again only the
person who is to benefit from their use need do something (set up and
use an anonymizer client.) That's considerably easier than a public
key infrastructure.
I may not be able to protect everyone -- some won't want or care to
be protected -- but I can still write the software and make the
offer. More importantly, I can protect myself without anyone else's
help. That's important because it means that anyone else can also do
the same if they're sufficiently concerned about their privacy.
I'm not really *opposed* to laws restricting what Google can do with
private data. I just don't think they'll do any good. They might even
be counterproductive by giving people a false sense of security,
particularly against government abuses.
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