The Unwanted Gaze -- fighting small minded fools - fighting the enemies of freedom
petc...@my-deja.com
About a year ago I posted some privacy-advocating messages to a
discussion group dealing with firewalls & networks, a group comprised
mostly of network admins. The almost universal response was hostile.
However today I was reminded that there are other people who agree with
me about the importance of privacy. While I was driving around today I
heard on the Diane Rehm show ( http://www.wamu.org/dr/ ) a discussion
with Jeffrey Rosen. He has authored a new book called The Unwanted Gaze.
In his book he discusses how our privacy has been lost over time. He
argues against the privacy invasion of employers against employees, and
about how sexual harassment laws have gone too far, and are too vague.
Mr. Rosen does have a web site for his new book at:
http://www.unwantedgaze.com/
and the Amazon.com review can be found at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679445463/jonsbirdagenatur
Anyway I think what privacy advocates have to face nowadays are hosts of
young & dumb network admins who don't know the history of privacy
protection, or the value of such a thing. They get their jollies out of
monitoring your every keystroke and in personally holding Damocles sword
over your head. We must educate such people about the full picture, and
we must fight those who will not turn to our side.
Fortunately new technologies are arising to help us be as private as we
want to be. I hope that in the future there will be a time when such spy
vs. spy technologies are not needed. But so long as the small minded
fools are out there trying to pry into our private business, we will
need to take advantage of the good work of technologists who agree with
us and who are producing counter measures.
Here for your information are sites & products which can help:
1. http://www.zeroknowledge.com/ -- provides a reasonably secure
encrypted channel between your computer and their servers
2. pgpdisk - a program which creates a virtual hard drive on your
regular hard drive, a virtual drive which is encrypted. You can obtain
this program legitimately for free from: http://www.pgpi.org/download/
3. www.aixs.net and www.anonymizer.com provide free anonymous web
browsing. However this option will not shield you from firewall & proxy
& web surfing monitoring by your employer.
4. There are various web-based, pop, and forwarder email services
available. A list is at: http://www.emailaddresses.com/
5. A free email program which can be used to encrypt all mail that
leaves your computer is called Private Idaho. Info is at:
http://www.lynagh.demon.co.uk/pidaho/
If you are aware of other sources please let me know. I am very
interested in programs which can tell you if you are being monitored.
Such as programs which can detect if a keystroke monitor is present, or
some sort of screen capture program is present on a network-connected
computer.
Jonathan Higbee
petcrows [at] onebox [dot] com
p.s. There is a related book out called Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan
Rauch. John Stossel advocates the book (see
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/ABCNEWSSpecials/000323_stossel_freespeech_ch
at.html
). For info on the book go to:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226705765/jonsbirdagenatur
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.