In the 80s, I got my first access to the internet after reading Steven Levy's book "Hackers". In the chapter on RMS, he mentioned that RMS didn't use passwords and didn't believe in security.
I found the dialup number to the MIT media lab, and tried logging in as 'RMS' and viola, no password, and I had my first shell account on an internet-connected Unix machine, although I was only a teenager, and didn't attend MIT.
RMS's act of charity benefited me greatly, I was relatively poor growing up in inner city Baltimore, and his account was a life line to a new world of the internet and away from the crackhouse infested streets.
I find it interesting that he has changed his standpoint from one of radical transparency to techno-privacy.
Remember, RMS is the guy who hacked LCS's computer lab password file, decrypted all the passwords, and emailed everyone suggesting they change their password to empty string. Now, I get that what he really wanted was to allow anyone to have access to LCS resources, and that would have been better served by just allowing anyone to create an account. But some early GNU accounts nevertheless did not have passwords, and I could read their email, shell histories, etc.
I think there is an interesting question is to the extremes of privacy and transparency in a democracy. If for example, it was not possible to discriminate against people, and if the government could not abuse any information gained on someone, then it might be the case that society would better off if there was very little privacy, because private distributed abuse amongst non-state actors would then be the biggest danger. If on the other hand, the state is far more abusive, then the fraud and violence perpetrated by small actors uncaught by surveillance is dwarfed by the damage done by the state having this information.
The question is, is it black and white, or is there some level of justifiable dragnet surveillance? Can democracy also tolerate Cryptoanarchy?
I found the dialup number to the MIT media lab, and tried logging in as 'RMS' and viola, no password, and I had my first shell account on an internet-connected Unix machine, although I was only a teenager, and didn't attend MIT.
RMS's act of charity benefited me greatly, I was relatively poor growing up in inner city Baltimore, and his account was a life line to a new world of the internet and away from the crackhouse infested streets.
I find it interesting that he has changed his standpoint from one of radical transparency to techno-privacy.
Remember, RMS is the guy who hacked LCS's computer lab password file, decrypted all the passwords, and emailed everyone suggesting they change their password to empty string. Now, I get that what he really wanted was to allow anyone to have access to LCS resources, and that would have been better served by just allowing anyone to create an account. But some early GNU accounts nevertheless did not have passwords, and I could read their email, shell histories, etc.
I think there is an interesting question is to the extremes of privacy and transparency in a democracy. If for example, it was not possible to discriminate against people, and if the government could not abuse any information gained on someone, then it might be the case that society would better off if there was very little privacy, because private distributed abuse amongst non-state actors would then be the biggest danger. If on the other hand, the state is far more abusive, then the fraud and violence perpetrated by small actors uncaught by surveillance is dwarfed by the damage done by the state having this information.
The question is, is it black and white, or is there some level of justifiable dragnet surveillance? Can democracy also tolerate Cryptoanarchy?