Trouble is, everything transported over the internet is archived one way or another.
Everything? I don’t believe that. I am highly confident that I have transported plenty of things over the internet that were never archived and could not have been archived without my knowledge. Unless someone is a whole lot better with large primes than I believe possible.
Yes, of course, it’s not literally true. But working under that assumption is a useful heuristic for avoiding all sorts of trouble, unless you have very detailed and reliable technical knowledge of what exactly is going on under the hood.
I agree with you completely regarding privacy. If you feel that you must absolutely prevent some piece of information from leaking out into the world for all to see, you must treat every communication medium—and the Internet specifically—as insecure. The world is littered with dead political careers of people who did not heed this warning.
That said though (to paraphrase the old adage), are we rationalists or are we mice ? If you hold some beliefs that can get you burned at the stake (figuratively speaking… hopefully...), then isn’t it all the more important to determine if these beliefs are true ? And how are you going to do that all by yourself, with no one to critique your ideas and to expose your biases ?
This is just a quibble because I don’t disagree with your conclusion, but the traffic could conceivably be archived in its encrypted state for decryption later.
Yes, I theoretically have to consider how good people from the distant future who particularly want to know what I said now are at playing with large primes. Because there is always the possibility that a man in the middle is saving the encrypted data stream just in case it becomes possible to decipher in the future.
Everything? I don’t believe that. I am highly confident that I have transported plenty of things over the internet that were never archived and could not have been archived without my knowledge. Unless someone is a whole lot better with large primes than I believe possible.
Yes, of course, it’s not literally true. But working under that assumption is a useful heuristic for avoiding all sorts of trouble, unless you have very detailed and reliable technical knowledge of what exactly is going on under the hood.
I agree with you completely regarding privacy. If you feel that you must absolutely prevent some piece of information from leaking out into the world for all to see, you must treat every communication medium—and the Internet specifically—as insecure. The world is littered with dead political careers of people who did not heed this warning.
That said though (to paraphrase the old adage), are we rationalists or are we mice ? If you hold some beliefs that can get you burned at the stake (figuratively speaking… hopefully...), then isn’t it all the more important to determine if these beliefs are true ? And how are you going to do that all by yourself, with no one to critique your ideas and to expose your biases ?
This is just a quibble because I don’t disagree with your conclusion, but the traffic could conceivably be archived in its encrypted state for decryption later.
Yes, I theoretically have to consider how good people from the distant future who particularly want to know what I said now are at playing with large primes. Because there is always the possibility that a man in the middle is saving the encrypted data stream just in case it becomes possible to decipher in the future.