The mysterious case of Ms. Carrie Prejean

[kandrathe]

... it sure sounded to me that you were going well beyond defending existing rights (which I agree with) and proposing the adoption of a whole new bunch of 'rights'.

Not so much "new" but viewed with the WWW in mind. Never has it been so easy to discover almost everything you would ever want to about an individual just using a home computer attached to the internet. Couple that with the ability to publish whatever you like, without regard to social consequence or law, because it is impossible to figure out who you are, where you are, and what laws apply.

I'm a big fan of NCIS, even though most of the technical jargon is mostly crap it is based loosely on a glimmer of truth, which I suppose is equally true about the demeanor of this law enforcement team. It is funny for me to watch when they need to go hack into someone's data, because invariably they have to go through all these layers of protection including often some active intrusion detection device. And, it seems they frequently get noticed when there is drama to be gained by it. The reality is that most corporate and government information systems are rather porous, and intrusion when done by professionals would never be visible or traceable. Pretty much, just as you described with encryption/decryption, the only safe way to prevent hacking is to keep your machine off the net, and in an RF dampened environment. Even then, there is the old fashioned way of actual intrusion through subterfuge, or proxy.

So, the long and the short of it to me is that the only way to really protect our privacy is through the application of laws that insure we "have the right to be left alone".