Fwd: GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance and give us a way to fight back

[dan at geer.org]

 | On 2014-08-23 at 12:16, dan at geer.org wrote:
 | >> On 2014-08-22 at 21:13, Rejo Zenger wrote:
 | >> Open data and transparency should only be about what concerns everybody,
 | >> like government actions, trains schedule, etc. not private information.
 | >
 | > Is this not the core of the question?  In a world of social media
 | > and sensor-driven everything, does not the very concept of private
 | > information fade, per se?  I believe it does.
 | 
 | It will be when any kind of authority (thus hierarchy) or intolerance
 | (thus ignorance/inconsciousness) would have *perfectly disappeared*.
 | Whenever it's possible or not, we can still see that today it isn't so,
 | therefore privacy still has importance.


Given that

    Philosophical and legal analysis has often identified privacy
    as a precondition for the development of a coherent self.
       -- Phil Agre, "The Architecture of Identity," 1998

one must conclude that it is a mortal peril to give up privacy,
at least before, as you said, evil has disappeared from the face
of the Earth.

My point was and is simply that nearly everything is now observable
IN PUBLIC.  Technology makes this possible but it social media and
sensor networks through which that technology brings observability
of the heretofore unobservable to the attention of whomever wants
it.  That trend cannot be undone, ergo, I said in the speech,

    [W]e are becoming a society of informants.  In short, I have
    nowhere to hide from you.

This being the gnupg list, we are likely now in a rat hole, but if
we are not yet there, then let me ask a question:  Many's the member
of this list who posts under a pseudonym.  Is pseudonymous posting
a privacy-preserving tactic or something else?

--dan