Re: Spying, privacy, and Octave

[Juan Pablo Carbajal]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 5:40 PM, John Swensen <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Against my better judgement, I am not going off-list with this. If you
>> guys think this topic is inappropriate for the public list, we should
>> continue in relative privacy.
>>
>> On 25 June 2013 20:28, Ben Abbott <address@hidden>
>> > p.s. Jordi, I'm very unhappy about the NSA spying (particularly its
>> > secrecy, and the apparent insensitivity to the rule of law),
>>
>> I am pretty sure we can't rely on the bullies to obey the laws they
>> enforce themselves. The laws are always ultimately on the side of
>> those with power. Any defence will have to rely on what Julian Assange
>> calls a physical property of reality: just like we live in a universe
>> where Maxwell's laws exist, we also live in a universe in which
>> cryptography is possible. Physical laws can't be broken, and even
>> Snowden has confirmed that point-to-point cryptography is still
>> secure.
>>
>> > but don't think is relevant in our activities. Everything we do is
>> > available to anyone.
>>
>> Not everything, no. For example, Rik is a very private person, despite
>> working on Octave. He works hard to keep his privacy online, and he's
>> a good example of what we should strive for. We also have a number of
>> contributors who do so using pseudonyms. I still have no idea who is
>> "forkandwait", despite being a prolific contributor on the help list.
>> Possibly the NSA knows, but I hope they don't.
>>
>> In a similar vein, I think it should be possible for someone to attend
>> OctConf, and if they so wish, not broadcast to the world what they are
>> doing and where.
>>
>> > So while I object to PRISM in principle, the suggestion that we
>> > boycott all modern communication systems
>>
>> I didn't suggest we should boycott "all modern communication systems",
>> unless you think Jitsi and Ekiga are outdated communication systems.
>>
>> Skype's non-free nature makes it harmful to society in many ways, most
>> obviously by being wiretapped. There are alternatives. We should
>> consider them.
>>
>> > does not appear to be an effective means to protest (to me).
>>
>> I am not specifically advocating protest at this point. I'm advocating
>> taking our privacy into our own hands.
>>
>> - Jordi G. H.
>
>
>
> While I am against governmental monitoring as much as the next person, isn't
> the intention of broadcasting the conference for wide public dissemination
> of the content.  For those purposes, who cares whether they are wasting hard
> drive space recording every uncompressed pixel? I don't want my government,
> or any other, listening in without cause, but I also don't want to resort to
> what I call "paranoia DRM". For personal and private communications any of
> the open-source, secure alternatives are great, but for something like this
> conference, can we not just "use something that works"? The conference now
> almost over and those of us that would have liked to listen in missed out
> when a Skype or Google Hangout solution would have made it trivially easy to
> share with everyone.
>
> Just my $0.02.
>
> John Swensen
>
>
There are two issues:
1. Talks given by people remotely for the audience (which may or may
not be broadcasted)
2. Broadcast of the talks and tutorials given by people at the conference.

The broadcasting issue is a matter or recording or using nay service
that allows us to keep the confidentiality of the speaker (or he could
use a mask!). If recorded than can be shred by any media that fits the
need.