

Protecting IM From Big Brother - pantsd
http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/Off-the-Record%20Messaging:%20Useful%20Security%20and%20Privacy%20for%20IM.html
Ian Goldberg, leading security researcher, professor at the University of Waterloo, and co-creator of the Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) protocol recently gave a talk on protecting your IM conversations. He discusses OTR and its importance in today's world of warrant-less wire tapping. OTR users benefit from being able to have truly private conversations over IM by using encryption to obtain authentication, deniability, and perfect forward secrecy, while working within their existing IM infrastructure. With the recent NSA wiretapping activities and increasing Big Brother presence, security and OTR are increasingly important.
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pantsd
Ian Goldberg, leading security researcher, professor at the University of
Waterloo, and co-creator of the Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) protocol
recently gave a talk on protecting your IM conversations. He discusses OTR and
its importance in today's world of warrant-less wire tapping. OTR users
benefit from being able to have truly private conversations over IM by using
encryption to obtain authentication, deniability, and perfect forward secrecy,
while working within their existing IM infrastructure. With the recent NSA
wiretapping activities and increasing Big Brother presence, security and OTR
are increasingly important.

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crazyirish
Isn't EVERYONE very upset that we need these types of applications these days?
Why does it seem reasonable that EVERYONE needs to hide their communications
from their own governments? Shouldn't we be more upset that things have gotten
so out of hand?

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boucher
I think encryption in communications should be the default. The best way to
discourage people from snooping is to make it incredibly difficult by default.
Then, in all likelihood, time will be spent spying on the most useful targets,
rather than the easiest en masse in the hopes of blind luck.

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supercrazy
I think you are right and that OTR, and other encryption programs like it,
could receive a substantial boost in usage if we could get popular
distributions like Ubuntu to include and enable them by default. I think the
classic quoted example is that of organ downer opt-in (in the us being 20%)
and in some other country where it is opt-out it is around 80%.

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sohail
Boo. I did this as an undergrad project FOUR YEARS AGO.

