>> On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:54:21 +0000, Tristan Lohman <[log in to unmask]> said:


> I agree that this could be used to pry into kids business, but no
> more so than classical file systems (files are still there). I
> disagree that motivated kids can defeat surveillance if used that
> way (target market is kids that have never seen a computer).

Don't envision the kids in their first week of exposure.  Envision the
kids after they've been fiddling with the machines for a few years.

The systems are designed to provide a development environment for apps
for themselves.  That's kind of the whole point.

Think of it differently: How many kids get out of the house without
their parents knowledge, if they really care about the issue?

Yeah, many of them won't care enough to learn.  But there'll be the
hacker fraction in that population, too.


> This will no more encourage surveillance practices than traffic
> cameras (which monitor large portions of the population) encourage a
> police state.

....   !  

yes, it will be more encouraging to surveilance practices, because the
infrastructure is already abstracting the behavior somewhat.

Think of the difference between analyzing video streams for "furtive
behavior", and

grep president /var/log/laptop-journals/* | grep asshole | cut -f1 -d: > brownshirts-targets.txt


Yes, I'm glossing over some details.  But 

grep www.president-asshole.com /var/log/laptop-journals/*

is possibly even syntactically valid for someone's
environment. substitute any "known subversive" webspace for
president-asshole.

So, the technical possibility for surveilance abuse here is serious.


- Allen S. Rout