[p2p-research] Drone hacking

[Andy Robinson]

Anyone wanting to know what he's on about without the exaggerations and
technical-speak:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html?_r=3&em=&pagewanted=all

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc20080323_387127.htm

Rough appearance from these more sober accounts: it has some dangerous
implications for privacy, and its advocates are pretty blase about
overriding privacy concerns for supposed general goods, but it does not
allow intelligent manipulation at an individual level.  It allows discerning
of trends, certain amounts of individualised tracking, and that's about it.
It does have network/p2p versions as well as centralised versions.  It is
also highly dependent on the cooperation or unawareness of people in their
uses of the particular technologies on which it depends.  (It is not much
use in low-tech settings or in conflictual settings against determined
adversaries).

There are thus a range of different scenarios.  One being that, due to
consumer concerns or judicial pressure, technologies be modified to avoid
their use in this way.  A second, that their capabilities for individual
tracking are technologically limited or prohibited, but they keep being used
for measuring mass trends.  Still another being that the population be
divided between those who make routine use of these technologies and those
who either do not use them or strategically limit their use.  Fourth, that
they move in networked directions, with the data being fed through
horizontal applications as well as vertical ones, in effect levelling the
playing-field.  Fifth, ad hoc counter-measures are developed to recreate
privacy when needed, similar to the measures which already exist to get
around online monitoring and attempts to identify filesharers.  Or sixth, an
Orwellian scenario, which would have to be imposed by force (such as
implanting everyone with a VeriChip at birth and locking up anyone caught
deactivating or scrambling it).

Really not all it's cracked up to be I would say from this.
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