Security quotes of the week

Email will probably be the last to go, when the last user of it finally gives up and moves to gmail so they can continue to communicate with their contacts or maybe they give up entirely. RSS (an open content syndication protocol on top of HTTP, which I think is a nice way to illustrate that it is possible to use HTTP as a layer and play nice at the same time) is already an endangered species, XMPP support is slowly but surely being removed (just imagine a phone system where every number you call to may require a different telephone), NNTP has been ‘mostly dead’ for years (though it still has some use the real replacement of usenet for discussion purposes appears to be Reddit and mailinglists) and so on. The only protocols that are developed nowadays that are open are typically related to plumbing (moving bits of data around), not application level protocols which determine how a whole class of applications around a similar theme can talk to each other.

All manner of videos were (as required by law) blocked by Vimeo on the basis of those takedown orders, including totally and utterly unrelated materials that had committed the "crime" of ever using the word "pixels" in their titles -- and (ironically) even the trailer for Sandler's movie [Pixels] itself.

Thank goodness the producers of the various films named "She" over the years didn't try this stunt. Or how about a [movie] titled "The" for real chuckles?

The impact of such takedown abuse is indeed the Internet equivalent of saturation bombing -- with no consideration given to the innocent parties who will be affected, and in the case of the DMCA, then have to find the time and money to fight back against this abuse -- simply to get their videos back on the Net.

From the beginning of time until very recently, this was the only situation that could have occurred. Objects in the vicinity of an event were largely mute about the past. Few things, save for eyewitnesses, could ever reach back in time and produce evidence. Even 15 years ago, the victim's cell phone would have had no evidence on it that couldn't have been obtained elsewhere, and that's if the victim had been carrying a cell phone at all.

For most of human history, surveillance has been expensive. Over the last couple of decades, it has become incredibly cheap and almost ubiquitous. That a few bits and pieces are becoming expensive again isn't a cause for alarm.