by insomniasexx

Midway through this piece (at 4:20) is what I found most interesting. It gives an interesting perspective on a sort of solution for the NSA surveillance. While she readily admits NSA not doing it would be best, she points out that homomorphic encryption is a more realist solution. It is a middle ground which gives both privacy and surveillance.

At the very least, if you must do that, there's something called homomorphic encryption, which simply means that you encrypt the data and you can engage in data analysis on the encrypted values. It allows you to do surveillance on the encrypted values so no one's personal information is in plain text. Then, only if you get a hit and it meets the threshold you develop, on potentially terrorist activity, you get a court order, a warrant, and you decrypt that data.

Basically, they already fuck our privacy and can see all of our stuff and look in on loved ones, etc. At least this takes that aspect away and adds some checks and balances back into the mix. It gives them the ability to run surveillance on the encrypted data and detect potential terrorists without actually giving the ability to read every single thing.

Once detected they would apply for a warrant in order to decrypt the data.

Food for thought. Anyone have any opinions on this? Is it worth considering this sort of "meet in the middle" approach considering they have been and will continue doing surveillance regardless? Or is this "giving in" to too much?

thenewgreen I think this is super interesting especially in regards to your upcoming podcast.

Enjoy.