Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Skype: Public or Private?

Since a lot of the discussion and examples of privacy matters have been surrounded with Facebook, I thought after reading the Hackbloc, to change it up and talk about Skype. After visiting the Hackbloc site, and found the interesting post of how the NSA - National Security Agency are trying to get firms to hack in to eavesdrop on Skype, I did a little bit of further research on it. In case you’re unaware of the post on Hackbloc:

An industry source disclosed that America's supersecret National Security Agency (NSA) is offering "billions" to any firm which can offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic. The spybiz exec, who preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed that Skype continues to be a major problem for government listening agencies, spooks and police...Rumour suggests that America's NSA may be able to break Skype encryption - assuming they have access to a given call or message - but nobody else... The NSA may be able to do that: but it seems that if so, this uses up too much of the agency's resources at present."They are saying to the industry, you get us into Skype and we will make you a very rich company," said the industry source.

http://hackbloc.org/node/1930

I think this is only another example of how the NSA and the government are taking further steps in trying to take over and control the internet, censorship. Pretty much all other forms of media are censored by the government and companies, placing ratings on TV programs and movies, and allowing only certain music and content on radios; up until recently the internet has been a form of media that has been left rarely untouched. Sites like the Hackbloc are trying to inform, educated and change the political control of the government over this content; and promotes freedom rights and free speech.

I find it funny that the government and companies use the media to create and develop these negative connotations against Hacking - as terrorists and people who are trying to disrupt social order. But if one were to believe these negative connotations, then they also must think this way against the government; since, with Skype, this is exactly the goal of the government. They are trying to find a firm capable of ‘hacking’ into Skype, so that they can spy, control and be informed of people’s personal conversations. I believe this to be an invasion of privacy, these are personal conversations that people are having with one another, and so should not be shared or ‘spied on’. It is just like the distinction between Facebook wall posts and personal inbox messages. If people want their information shared they would post it in open forums such as blogs and Facebook wall posts; and privates messages to emails, Facebook inboxes and Skype. If hacking is so criminal, terrorist like and bad – why is the government trying so hard to participate in it!


1 comment:

  1. I totally agree with your ideas. Private messages are there for a reason, they are not meant to be shared with everyone we know. If you want your ideas to be public knowledge, you post them as such.
    With this new information about hacking into communication webs, it really makes you think about what you are sending over the internet. Nothing is secure, everything we do (if it is not already) is being monitored. It really is frightening to think that people can read our private messages.
    It kind of makes me scared to send private messages over the Internet anymore.

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