Quote:
Originally Posted by Steeroid  Ram, you have NO idea what Big Brother is capable of. Nobody is secure anymore. Assuming that a piece of freeware is going to protect our privacy is like living in Trishanku's Heaven. |
Steer, I know what I'm talking about.
On Big Brother
Cryptologists know that Big Brother is not as big on encryption/decryption as he wished he was. And Big Brother knows it too. It's just too embarrassing for him to admit it. And the planet's top electronic intelligence gathering agencies and law enforcement agencies are not American.
Despite zillions of dollars poured into snoop-tech, episodes of Big Brother getting caught unawares, when security mattered the most, only increase.
Cryptography and civil rights are deeply embroiled in controversial legal issues. Open access to high quality cryptography is a vexatious issue for most advanced governments.
China, Mongolia, Singapore and Taiwan are painfully aware of how the most easily available algorithms are so unbreakable. So they have laws that ban the use of cryptography.
USA bans the export of cryptographic software and hardware products. The same laws apply as apply to bombs, missiles, warheads, and mines.
The problem is recognized as spiralling out of control of governments, due to the ubiquitous availability of fast PCs that capable of running sophisticated software and virtually unlimited Internet nodes.
In 1996, 40 countries (Western Europe, UK and Ireland, Southern Europe, the Eastern Bloc, USA and Canada and Argentina, Australia, NZealand, Japan and Korea) signed the Wassenaar Arrangement(@Waasenaar 8 km NE of Den Haag). This is a treaty for control of arms and cryptography.
Although laws are in force, actual enforcement is impossible
On Freeware
And free is "free as in free beer". That open-source is given away on source-forge for free just belies the hundreds of man-years of research that continually goes into perfecting it.