11.15.1. (ditto for CompuServe, GEnie, etc.) will exist 11.15.2. "What kinds of monitoring of the Net is possible?" - Archives of all Usenet traffic. This is already done by commercial CD-ROm suppliers, and others, so this would be trivial for various agencies. - Mail archives. More problematic, as mail is ostensibly not public. But mail passes through many sites, usually in unencrypted form. - Traffic analysis. Connections monitored. Telnet, ftp, e- mail, Mosaid, and other connections. - Filtered scans of traffic, with keyword-matched text stored in archives. 11.15.3. Records: note that private companies can do the same thing, except that various "right to privacy" laws may try to interfere with this - which causes its own constitutional privacy problems, of course 11.15.4. "How can you expect that something you sent on the UseNet to several thousand sites will not be potentially held against you? You gave up any pretense of privacy when you broadcast your opinions-and even detailed declarations of your activities-to an audience of millions. Did you really think that these public messages weren't being filed away? Any private citizen would find it almost straightforward to sort a measly several megabytes a day by keywords, names of posters, etc." [I'm not sure if I wrote this, or if someone else who I forgot to make a note of did] 11.15.5. this issue is already coming up: a gay programmer who was laid-off discussed his rage on one of the gay boards and said he was thinking of turning in his former employer for widespread copying of Autocad software...an Autodesk employee answered him with "You just did!" 11.15.6. corporations may use GREP and On Location-like tools to search public nets for any discussion of themselves or their products - by big mouth employees, by disgruntled customers, by known critics, etc. - even positive remarks that may be used in advertising (subject to various laws) 11.15.7. the 100% traceability of public postings to UseNet and other bulletin boards is very stifling to free expression and becomes one of the main justifications for the use of anonymous (or pseudononymous) boards and nets - there may be calls for laws against such compilation, as with the British data laws, but basically there is little that can be done when postings go to tens of thousands of machines and are archived in perpetuity by many of these nodes and by thousands of readers - readers who may incorporate the material into their own postings, etc. (hence the absurdity of the British law)
Next Page: 11.16 Effects of Surveillance on the Spread of Crypto
Previous Page: 11.14 Credentials
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind