network darkness

Networks and distributed systems must be among the most delightful ideas in the history of mankind. As a concept they are perfect: they are open, they are available, they are transparent and they are reliable. But every hero exists along with a villain and that's where the search able, crackable, copyable, forward(able), scan(able) words come along. With the right kind of knowledge, you can find a persons address (both electronic and physical), pseudo names, photos, biography, dreams... with enough luck even a diary and his friends opinion on that horrible t-shirt that made john doe look like a gay cat that just ran out of a storm in the hula hupy desert.

Anaïs Nin once said: “we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

So the question i pose to you is: how do you look at the Internet? Are you an optimistic supporter or a paranoid avoider?

If you have a blog, a myspace, a photolog, a hi5 profile you are exposed. And people want to be exposed, they want to be fashionable, pretty... known! But all this applause upon the self comes with a price. Where's your privacy? Never the menace “the hole world is going to know you slept with A or B” has been so true. All C as to do is write it online. You can ask: has D ever slept with A or B? How reliable is the information? You can be reading a page written by a florist hobbyist that truly believes TCP/IP is a form manure... only God knows what kind of rubble can be found. But people are working frenetically to try to stop YOU from giving THEM false data. This line of work is know as data mining, and you can see it running on most online forms you fill. Ohh mister your name (say for instance “A.”) is too small. Hey your e-mail address (ex. stop_nagging_me_with_this_bullshit_I_don't_want_your_newsletter) is in an incorrect format. Etc. This would be wonderful if it could ever replace good judgment and conscientious reading, but unfortunately most data verification is done using databases, and you cannot nor will ever can build a database for right ideas. Human beings will have to keep using their external references to decide whether something is true or not. ex. If there's a IEEE page saying a new technology will be implemented you expect it to be reliable, as opposed to reading the same info on john doe's blog that you cannot cross reference with anything in a Google search on the matter.

So.. out of the fog Jesus came walking over the water... ups wrong script.

Hum... hum... all this conversation because I stumbled upon this paragraph:

“Another key topic is government versus citizen. The FBI has installed a system at many
Internet service providers to snoop on all incoming and outgoing e-mail for nuggets of interest
to it (Blaze and Bellovin, 2000; Sobel, 2001; and Zacks, 2001). The system was originally
called Carnivore but bad publicity caused it to be renamed to the more innocent-sounding
DCS1000. But its goal is still to spy on millions of people in the hope of finding information
about illegal activities. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits
government searches without a search warrant. Whether these 54 words, written in the 18th
century, still carry any weight in the 21st century is a matter that may keep the courts busy
until the 22nd century.”

Andrew S. Tanenbaum - Computer Networks

The government needs a warrant? How about with the new anti-terrorism law? If this software exists then any pimple filled teenager with a nice brain and poor social skills can be reading my e-mail, and tracking my Internet activities. Point being: does this make me comfortable? Not really. Would I ever stop surfing or publishing stuff because of this? Not in a million years!

The important part is to keep everyone informed of the danger involved in Internet communications, how to keep their sensitive data secure (as secure as possible... if it's streaming... its crackable... leave the “lived happy ever after” for Disney movies). So we can all live joyfully in the matrix.

Muahaahahaha