This Nerd Heard…

I seem to have a habit of discussing old news but this actually came up at lunch today with my friends.  I have a friend who repeatedly gets emails from a friend of his attacking President Bush.  So, naturally we started talking politics.

I’m a conservative person and I tend to lean towards the Republican platform.  I can’t say that I agree with everything they believe in, but it suits me better than the democratic party.

That being said, however, I completely disagree with what President Bush has allowed the NSA to do.  They may only be spying on people who are emailing and calling international people, but it does not matter. 

People have the right to privacy.  The fact of the matter is that this widespread invasion of privacy is going to push people towards encryption, which is only going to further hinder the government.

But people ought to be able to call and email their friends, family, and business relations without fear of eavesdropping. This could very easily be a stepping stone into monitoring all communcations, domestic and international.

My lovely ISP has embraced the government with open arms and has been freely providing all that they ask for without a court order.  That is wrong. AT&T should be protecting the privacy of their customers and not bowing to government pressure.

People argue that they have nothing to hide.  Well, if that is the case, may I please have your social security number, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, and all of your credit card numbers and expiration dates? Oh did you want to hide that from me? What if I worked for the government? Then you might not be able to hide that from me.

I know this is old news, but I just stumbled upon it.  I guess the RIAA filed a suit against a mother from Oklahoma requesting damages for file sharing.  The case has been dismissed.

I’m glad to see this.  An IP address alone is not enough to find someone liable in a civil suit.  I don’t even think having them on a computer should be enough.

If John Smith has his home network connected to the Internet, he could have a half a dozen or more computers available for someone to pwn.  Any script kiddie or hacker on the net could take control of his network and use his box to fileshare without putting themself in risk.  Likely they’d make John Smith’s computer(s) a server spewing out malware and warez.  Why should John Smith be liable just because someone stored some files on his computer?

Now if you can show that he didn’t get pwned and is using the files, maybe you have some merit.  But I don’t think the RIAA or anyone else ought to be able to snoop around on someone’s computer because they can’t adapt their business model to the digital world.