I hope not. Linux Torvalds is not a sell out to his loyal users.

It's fairly certain to be an Urban Myth, I think.

But, even so, I think that this reinforces the need to get this sort of thing out in the open ... yes "in the name of National Security."

The trouble with the present system is that it is basically advancing the very-flawed premise that "I, as a Security(!) Agency of your Government, must ... in order to provide for both your and your nation's security(!!) ... see to it that you are kept insecure, and that you are all-the-time made to believe that this is not the case."

This is an impossible Mission Statement for this Agency.

If the Agency believes that its nation-saving Mission is to see to it that every citizen (and non-citizen) within these borders "has no privacy and no secrets," then it is naïve to fail to realize that 'bad guys' can, and therefore 'bad guys' will drive right through these same security-lapses that they have so assidiously created.

Paradoxically (or not, really ...), the best way to assure the National Security of hundreds of millions of individuals, is to protect those individuals, one by one by one.

Increasing, not Decreasing, their individual Privacy ... and using the full power and expertise of the Agency to do so ... is the best way of accomplishing your Mission in this age. We never could have done "DES" without you. We need you, in so many ways now, once again. Don't work against us, and in so doing, work against yourself(!).

Exactly. But they know darn well that it has nothing to do with "security". It is about control- and it's the hallmark of every totalitarian state- from Hitler's Germany; to Soviet Russia; ad infinitum.... enemies have to be invneted, so that the sheeple will tolerate the squelching of their rights; just like crime has to be invented so that people will not only tolerate, but demand a cop on every corner; roadblocks; and metal-detectors.

Just as Hitler painted the Jews as "terrorists".

Like Ayn Rand said: “There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

moment ... I always felt that she got far more publicity than her words ever deserved ... the core problem in my view is that computers are now everywhere. You literally cannot secure them all. And if, instead, you seek to make them less secure, e.g. so that (you can sell Uncle Sugar a big phat contract to) "vacuum-up all the data in the world," then you simply don't know what the implications of that will be.

Military contractors know very well what sort of $$Groupthink$$ plays well with Generals and Politicians. But the present environment is nothing like the past. There are no "armies," no "military commands." There's just a vast data infrastructure, largely in the control of the civilian population, largely unsecured, all of it accessible from anywhere-else. And so you say that you want to make that weaker, in the name of "protecting" it and the people that it belongs to?!

Fretting over the ability of someone to send a message that you can't easily or immediately read is also World War-era "military groupthink." You're staring at the haystack, worrying that there's a needle in there somewhere, and forgetting that your true mission is to protect the haystack!

That reminds me of an equation I came up with.

Problem, Reaction, Solution--
In which the Problem was invented by individuals with authority & great power.
The Reaction is where the general public (sheeple) and all citizens in general get upset and react.
Solution; the ones with the authority and power that invented the Problem to begin with come up with a Solution.

Funny thing is, the data won't do the spies any good. Completely innocent people get caught in the web and treated like terrorists...and meanwhile, real criminals will communicate in a secure way, and not on Facebook; or by doing an Amazon search for explosives ....and the load of useless info is so great, that even if the real threats did communicate openly...chances of that 0.000000001% actually being detected amongst the billions of communications, is pretty much nil.

But you'd be surprised how many idiots actually believe that it is being truly done in the name of "safety". Just like when a plane flies over, spraying chemtrails....and you make a remark about it, and the person says "They have to do it, to keep us safe".......

Yep...that's it. Hegelian dialectics.

Say, is your signature a Homer Simpson quote?

And since the guerillas continue to attack despite the "security measures," it justifies even more draconian security measures, data mining, data stealing, CCTV cameras, etc.

Well, as I have said otherwise before, what really scares me about all of this is not "what the guv'mint(s) is doing," but rather, "what private companies are doing."

And in this case I don't mean (just) well-known players like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Hell, freight companies and coffee shops are doing it. Big and small, they're doing it. Even my electric company's web-site wants to know my physical location.

And, well, I confess that I wrote another blog-post, and this time I used graphics and font-sizes and even font-colors. (Hey, it was kinda fun ...) All to try to make a point. And so, without further ado, here's my latest eloquence: The Coming "Perfect Storm" of Big-Data Liability.

I wish that it would "go viral" ... not that I would stand to make any money, mind you, if it did ... but just because I want to get the word out. I think that all of us in the IT business should be trying to do that right now. Because, I quite-frankly see a "tremendous come-to-Jesus or is it come-to-Satan-Himself moment" coming toward us like the proverbial bread-truck. I fear, terribly, that we have besotted ourselves on the kool-aid that says, "if we can, technically, do this, then it's okay."

But no one will heed your warning cry, because you are a conspiracy lunatic. Until the prophecy is fulfilled. But then no one will say, "Oh my. He was right!", because all their thoughts will be on trying to pull themselves out of the mire (they were warned about and chose to ignore). Such is the nature of the foolish ape (that behaves like a sheep) called human.

I guess this article is response to this panic https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Pr...ven-if/127461/
Why do you hate humans so much if you are one of them yourself?

What makes you thiunk he hates humans? He's just making a realistic observation. The collective majority whom he is observing, those are the ones who hate humans.

(Shrug ...) Let's just nip that little chain-of-thought in the bud, shall we? We know, from Men In Black movies, that there are space-aliens living among us. (They either (a) work at the post-offices in various countries (and like it there), or (b) they enjoy working with Microsoft Windows.)

It is unfortunately true that people like to keep their heads in the sand until someone comes along and kicks them in the butt. A major point that I tried to make in my blog-post is that we should not treat this naïvité and ignorance as "benign acceptance" on their part, because it is anything but. We can be absolutely certain that, someday, someone's going to do something perfectly-awful due to this complacency, and it will have gigantic repercussions throughout our industry.

Never, in the entire history of people on this planet, has so much intensely-personal information been in the hands of so many, and protected virtually-nil. ("We live," if you recall, "in interesting times.") This stands to completely wipe-out a great many careers, and the companies they work for. All that you really need to do, to foresee this, is to ask: "what if?" And what your common-sense serves up to you in reply ... !! ... is not good. Obvious, yes. Good, no.

Let the record show that I received a "request to sign my life away" for a background search and there it was: "... internet searches ..."

http://www.incapsula.com/blog/know-y...p-10-bots.html
http://user-agent-string.info/top-ua


Edit\add: the second links data changes fast, I see now, a little while ago "Yandex Bot" was at the top...

[Off Topic...maybe]

I saw this on the news about Chinese hackers infiltrating US companies stealing information and such.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...onage/9273019/

Well Duh? Isn't our country doing the same thing i.e the NSA. We all know all the illegal stuff the NSA did collecting information from everyone including American citizens without our consent. Recent, a new book from Glenn Greenwald's, No Place to Hide reveals new leaks from the NSA, like implanting bugs in cisco routers.

Our great country the USA shouldn't cry fowl because every country with the power and sources are stealing and collecting information from everyone and anywhere.