I think it came as quite a shock to realize that all his online communication could be intercepted. I didn't give him the full run-down on Echelon or Carnivore - let alone the murky world of stealth rootkits, Magic Lantern-type keyloggers, and whatever. A one-minute Ethereal demo was enough.

The context was one of those "political suicide for them if knowledge of their participation were known..." situations: instant messaging with friends who you might not want to be known to talk to very much. Y'know, like, girls?

Which beings me to another Groove blogpost, I suppose. Here's a communications system which I believe is as secure as we can make it. Everything is encrypted for storage and transportation. Peer communication decreases the role of centralized systems (the relays are just cloud-plus-queue). The tech marketing says: despite the FIPS and NIAP and MARC4 and AES and DH key-exchange and all the rest: "users hardly notice it". Complacency-immune. It's really true.

This security makes for some strange bedfellows. There are places I don't have the right to snoop, and there are places in the network where I will promise not to snoop even if I can. Everyone needs private spaces - kids, adults, business colleagues, political organizers; us. Some people and groups probably use that privacy for things you don't approve of. But that's OK - unless, say, they're agencies who should be accountable to us but refuse to be so.