About CISPA [telecom]

In the past, I have responded to reports like this by recommending wider adoption of end-to-end encryption, but I'm not sure that's enough anymore. The data CISPA will allow the government to access includes so-called "Traffic" intelligence, i.e., the records of who emailed whom. They have /some/ of it already, but CISPA will allow investigators to access forwarding and other information that wasn't previously available without a warrant.

Traffic intelligence can, unfortunately, lead to "guilt by association" problems: if you call a pay phone that's used by a local drug dealer, that doesn't necessarily mean that you bought drugs - but I have seen, first hand, how easily panic can sweep a government and its minions, and how misjudgements can compound each other until ordinary men are caught in a web of inferences that becomes self-sustaining.

Bill