11.16.1. Surveillance and monitoring will serve to increase the use of encryption, at first by people with something to hide, and then by others - a snowballing effect - and various government agencies will themselves use encryption to protect their files and their privacy 11.16.2. for those in sensitive positions, the availability of new bugging methods will accelerate the conversion to secure systems based on encrypted telecommunications and the avoidance of voice-based systems 11.16.3. Surveillance Trends + Technology is making citizen-unit surveillance more and more trivial + video cameras on every street corners are technologically easy to implement, for example - or cameras in stores, in airports, in other public places - traffic cameras - tracking of purchases with credit cards, driver's licenses, etc. - monitoring of computer emissions (TEMPEST issues, often a matter of paranoid speculation) + interception of the Net...wiretapping, interception of unencrypted communications, etc. - and compilation of dossier entries based on public postings + This all makes the efforts to head-off a person-tracking, credentials-based society all the more urgent. Monkeywrenching, sabotage, public education, and development of alternatives are all needed. - If the surveillance state grows as rapidly as it now appears to be doing, more desperate measures may be needed. Personally, I wouldn't shed any tears if Washington, D.C. and environs got zapped with a terrorist nuke; the innocents would be replaced quickly enough, and the death of so many political ghouls would surely be worth it. The destruction of Babylon. + We need to get the message about "blinded credentials" (which can show some field, like age, without showing all fields, including name and such) out there. More radically, we need to cause people to question why credentials are as important as many people seem to think. - I argue that credentials are rarely needed for mutually agreed-upon transactions
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