A spy tool to eavesdrop on computers will use similar techniques to Trojan-type viruses.

This is one of those things I was going to watch out for in our New Secure Society.

Big question: how will they be able to keep computer users from developing defenses against them? And if Magic Lantern exploits an obvious hole in the defenses, what keeps crooks from using the same techniques for their own purposes? I don't know enough about computers to come up with an educated opinion on this. I do know that my machine has firewalls and other devices to prevent just such activity.

According to the article, "...at least one antivirus software company, McAfee Corp., contacted the FBI on Wednesday to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software and alert a criminal suspect."

Oh really?

Hmmmm....maybe the antivirus companies will deliberately refuse to come up with useful defenses. Or maybe just one or two might leave holes in their shields, who might then find themselves on the same kind of consumer shitlist that Smith and Wesson found themselves on when they signed a deal with the government to increase gun limits. We'll see.

Anyway, the second the Magic Lantern hits the net, about four hundred hackers are going to whomp up a specific shield against it and fire it anonymously all over the planet. Then what? Didn't we already go through this crap with encryption?

A radical concept, which I am neither agreeing or disagreeing with here:

Maybe the loss of a few buildings or a few thousand people every decade or so is worth it to keep a free society? Freedom is inherently more dangerous. A lion on the veldt lives a much shorter and more stressful life than one in a zoo. Of course, we have no way of asking a lion which one is happier, and project our own views on such things. Then there's this...

But I digress.

Jerry Pournelle on his website says this:

The Gunner's Prayer on a Man O' War was "For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful," said just before an enemy fired a broadside.



The United States took a hour's worth of highway casualties from the anthrax attacks, and about a month's worth of highway casualties from the attacks on the World Trade Center. We have incurred more costs from our new security measures than the value of all property destroyed by terrorist attacks, and of course the war will cost more than that. We also submit to bullying that does little to nothing to improve security: the other night one man got through a metal detector without being searched, and an airplane took off before he was found, so all the people of TWO airports were sent outside, both airports were shut down, and to what purpose? But that is the way things are in this world.



I still say the jury is out, but as I also said before, I'm watching.