Re: FBI\'s System to Covertly Search E-Mail

[Aimee <vanwagea@bc.edu>]

[: hacktivism :]


Hey Zoe,

This is not meant to be too harsh (a bad way to start, but i 
hope you can take my aggrevation in some sort of positive 
way.)...you words re: encyption 
put me off a bit.  I don't know exactly who your audience is.  I 
think that you are actually replying to someone's question on this 
list.

> We have not been grumbeling about this for years
> for no reasone....
> Learning how to use Encryption is NOT really THAT
> hard to do. 
> Granted, it IS a little time consuming..BUT! It
> works, so?
> WHY NOT do it?

How about because a person such as moi would not know where to begin.

> 
> Encryption.
> Consider it...like driving a car? 
> If you want to drive, you must learn how. 
> There are no small amount of things one must
> learn ABOUT the car also, to be a GOOD driver.

I suppose that means I'm a dolt for using email/internet all these 
last 8 
years of my life without encryption.  I'd be one of the bad 
drivers that give you rabies (?).  

> 
> (I know..it gives me rabies too.)
> There ARE some really BAD drivers...just as there
> are some whom do not know one end of a
> motherboard from the other..AGH! 
> This is because they 'get behind the controlls'
> BEFORE they learn how to use them!
>  Accidents looking for a place to happen.
>  Often taking others with them.
> 

being referred to as an accident waiting to happen isn't the 
strongest motivation for me to take your advice.



> My advice?
> DONT DO THAT.
> 

Oh, thanks, that wasn't clear.



> DO
> Read the manual/s. read the Faq's.ALL of em.
>  Buy a book. Take a class (or2) if you have to.
(note ~if you have to~.  presumably a self-reliant-worth-her-salt 
hacker or even average jo(anne) could figure it out on her own 
without a class, but take one or two ~if you have to~)

> Download some pages off the Internet 
> (How To's are everywhere) that will SAFELY guide
> you through the process....Then..practice.
> 
> DON'T
> Dont just'jump behind the wheel' & expect to get
> somewhere. You might have an "accident".

well, i'd say that suggesting randomly taking how to guides off 
the internet and trying them out might qualify as jumping behind 
the wheel.  these ambigious suggestions aren't helpful. 

i do aplogize for my tone.  i'm considering erasing this whole 
message and not sending it because it is rude, but i'm not 
going to in the hopes that 1) i'm saying something someone else 
is thinking and 2)Zoe et. al. might find a little something useful 
somewhere in my (admitted) rant;  i just think the list should keep 
the techno-elitism in check or else "educating the masses" about 
encryption and echelon and carnivore will go nowhere.  Educating 
the masses is a mine field of a project in itself, rife with 
possiblity for 
alienating ones' audience by underestimating their intelligence 
and overestimating the truth and universality of ones own claims.  We 
should 
learn something from failures (or moments passed) of marxism and 
other modernist projects with their notions of 
wiping out false consciousness (or techno-ignorance in this case) 
with direction from an intellectual elite.

aimee

(p.s. this is not a personal attack against Zoe.  I don't have any 
particular beef with Zoe.  And I honestly wouldn't presume Zoe meant 
this post in the way that I read it.  But nevertheless this is the 
way I read it and I think Zoe and others might benefit from 
hearing how one of the less technically skilled list subscribers 
reads posts from one of the more, I presume, technically skilled 
subscribers.)


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