NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Federal Government Seeks Computer Firewall to Block WikiLeaks 'Pollution'
So they want to block WikiLeaks materials, eh? By keyword, huh? Yeah, that's gonna work *real* good with encrypted zip files, just to pick one obvious example. And for SSL sites, you'd need to implement a "man in the middle" exploit just to scan the data stream in the first place -- or perhaps plant a program on all government workers' computers looking for the "nastiness" at "read time" on the screen. If this story is true, the requesting government agency official(s) are so inept that they shouldn't be allowed to order cheesburgers, much less information technology systems. Several reporters have asked me why the government is even trying to prevent their workers from accessing or reading Wikileaks materials that everyone in the public can see. I can speculate. The word "pollution" in this referenced article below is the probable key. Since many of these workers deal with still classified documents that have not been leaked, there are concerns about leaked documents and still secure documents getting confused with each other -- "contaminated" so to speak. But government officials still can't quite believe that the old ways of doing business, of controlling people and what they are thinking by controlling their access to information, have been significantly altered by the Internet -- and that the old rules just don't apply the same way anymore. --Lauren-- ----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 06:23:55 -0500 From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] Federal Government Seeks Computer Firewall to Block WikiLeaks 'Pollution' Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/feds-seek-computer-firewall-to-block-wikileaks-pollution/ ------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message ----- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance): http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz