Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 91 06:05:52 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Apr06.060552.29814@looking.on.ca>
References: <10777@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1991Apr1.180311.5557@eff.org> <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> <1991Apr5.213419.1489@eff.org>

One of the most interesting aspects of this debate is that computer technology
is likely to drive us to extremes of privacy, leaving the middle ground
hard to find.   The world has worked for some time in this middle ground,
where the information about people has been available, but simply hard
to get and collect for logistic reasons.

If you pay enough, you can find out just about anything about anybody, or
so it seems.  We are saved by the fact that few can or will pay enough.

But the future world will provide two opposing forces:

	a) Secure cryptography will provide almost absolute security
	for many things such as phone conversations and illegal
	business records that can currently be gotten at by wiretap or
	search warrant.   Some things that police routinely get today will
	be unavailable without forcing people to reveal their secret codes.

	The mafia will be able to make itself largely untraceable.

	b) At the same time, ordinary everyday things that you don't go
	out of your way to protect will be readily and easily available.

It will be interesting to see how the two ends of the spectrum react.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473