Edited by author 01-11-2006 12:03 AM
Our country is in the midst of an eavesdropping scandal, in which the Bush Administration has admitted conducting thousands of warrantless wiretaps and email interceptions without seeking court approval. This is just one of many technologies of control implemented following September 11th. Lawyers, pundits and other talking heads debate whether the wiretaps violate United States law (short answer: they do), and whether mass surveillance is necessary for national security. The debate suffers from a failure of imagination; about the ways technology interoperates, about what living in a surveillance state would be like, and about how terrorists will plan and execute an attack. The debate also suffers from a fundamental lack of information about how to design security systems . It is possible to design an interoperating technological and legal system that is both secure and free. Geeks and hackers have imagination to spare. They know how to ask dangerous questions and think about "what would happen if". Geeks and hackers understand technology. They know the principles of designing secure systems, principles remarkably like the ones constitutionally implemented by our founding fathers. In this talk, I'll argue that geeks and hackers are the best people to design and advocate a system in which national security and civil liberties coexist.

http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsf/archive/200601/