Re: Wherein I argue for the inclusion of libnettle in Emacs 24.5

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

 > > That order means that not only do you have to turn over the drive, you
 > > also have to give them the passphrases or PGP keys (as with GPLv3).
 > > So it's irrelevant to this thread, which is about mechanisms to make
 > > wiretapping less useful.
 > 
 > Oh, but we are not talking about what this section is _intended_ to
 > authorize (its own author is trying to gather support for shutting down
 > its widely overreaching abuse) but rather what it is being used as an
 > excuse for.
 > 
 > And since it is easiest to overstep authority if nobody notices or is
 > allowed to take notice, the main overreach in practice is clandestine
 > eavesdropping using generic tools that can be employed without requiring
 > billable hours by specialists for particular cases.

In case you hadn't noticed, we're in violent agreement on that last
point.

My point in this thread is that I think there is good reason to
believe that availability of the "facilities"[1] Ted proposes is
likely to make it *easier* for the FBI/NSA to snoop on some people who
are *trying* as hard as they know how to be secure, while not really
improving available security over the status quo for anybody.

That leaves us with the "if I can make security less of a PITA, more
people will try to be secure" argument, but I don't think it's strong
enough to override Stefan's objections.

 > Mind you, he's been standing on the shoulders of giants.  Carthage was
 > not razed in a day.

Yeah, I know, I know.  I give him credit for *being* black[2], but it
would seem that he's never had to live in fear of the cops the way my
black highschool classmates did. :-(


Footnotes: 
[1]  What's the difference between a "facility" and a "feature"?

[2]  Yeah, I know it's bigoted but I still have a soft spot in my
heart for members of "oppressed minorities" who make it to the top
in spite of the glass ceiling.