[AusNOG] Consensus from the IETF 88 Technical Plenary - Internet hardening

[Paul Brooks]

On 08/11/2013 16:01, Dobbins, Roland wrote:
> On Nov 8, 2013, at 11:43 AM, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org> wrote:
>
>>   The status quo is clearly deficient on both counts.
> I don't think it's deficient on technology front, in this context.
>
> Governments can and will trump technology with laws, regulations, actions contrary to those very same laws and regulations, and with their near-infinite resources.
>
> The only defenses against governmental abuse of power are political ones.
If my data is encrypted end-to-end between my device and my other device, at least I 
can be confident they aren't seeing my data in the middle without my knowledge. Sure 
they come to me and use legal persuasion or beat me up for the encryption keys or the 
plain-text data - but then at least I'll know that its happening. Or they can attempt 
to trojan or subvert my devices, but they run the risk of that being detected, or made 
useless by using a new device.
Any way you look at it, it makes their effort level unscalable (O(N)) compared to 
tapping an intermediate cable and slurping up the passing packets.

-- 
Paul