The usefulness of the mail system for anonymous/pseudonymous communication is really underrated. It's pretty easy to mail a reasonably tamper-evident, encrypted letter anonymously in a way that doesn't raise any red flags and is unlikely to result in the ciphertext being noticed and stored forever. This is more than can be said for PGP-encrypted email.
IANAL, but IMHO, the only reason that snail mail is more secure/private is due to the laws that protect snail mail (extensive), versus the laws that protect your email inbox (nonexistent).
Keep in mind that the USPS can (and does) scan the front and back of envelopes[0]. Keeping this information indefinitely is tantamount to storing email "metadata" (information which is intrusive enough that it's what caused Groklaw to shut down).
Also, it's easier than one might think for a determined adversary to discern the contents of the letter - either by opening it carefully so that it appears unopened, or by (e.g.) shining a light to
There are defenses against this too, but I wouldn't assume the physical post is inherently more secure than email.
Yes, pmail is strictly more secure than email (noting that nothing is 100%, blah blah). A letter contains less metadata than email - only the recipient address needs to be valid, where "validity" means "corresponds to a deliverable address" with no requirement that it correspond to a particular identity. Merely observing the contents, without triggering your tamper-evidences, requires at least semi-skilled labor. This labor needs access to the physical letter, which means the USPS at some point is directly involved in cooperating & keeping their mouths shut. Notably, applying all this takes the adversary more time per interception than it takes you to write another letter. The contents can still be encrypted regardless.
Do not make the perfect the enemy of the better. This is the kind of thinking that gives us big scary warnings for self-signed SSL certificates, and lets plain HTTP connections proceed unmolested.
I never built mail sorting equipment, but I did work with that camera quite a bit. It has very good sensitivity. For a lark one day, I decided to see if I could read mail through the envelope. So, I fed some junk mail in front of it and found that for non-privacy type envelopes, it was almost as easy to read what's inside (top page) as what was on the outside of the envelope. Multiple pages stacked and folded made it impossible to read everything, but you could have read the outer page portion of a tri-folded letter on each side. Keep in mind that I implemented this for fun on a slow afternoon (and it required no special wizardry). Given time and resources, maybe a second camera or different lighting, a lot more might be achieved. Even a naive approach of scanning a letter multiple times under different lighting conditions might be enough to read a large fraction of letter mail. It would take less than a minute. It would not require opening or touching the letter more than an ordinary mail sorter.
Now I am not alleging that I think that all mail is stored/read, but I am saying that the tech needed to do that to some degree exists and is at least partially in place.
"Presidents may use their predecessors as emissaries to deliver private messages to other nations or as official representatives of the United States to state funerals and other important foreign events. Richard Nixon made multiple foreign trips to countries including China and Russia and was lauded as an elder statesman. Jimmy Carter has become a global human rights campaigner, international arbiter, and election monitor, as well as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize." [1]
He has been involved in peace negotiations, election monitoring, and disease eradication [1]. A lot of this probably requires communication with foreign leaders.
What a well made, awful little article. "But hey, for all you critics, there's always the Carter method." This is intended to be funny, but it's also intended to be belittling. Framing not wanting to be spied on as being a "critic" is reasonably toxic.
"The NSA can keep phone records made from another country for up to a month." As far as details to share, like. This has to be intentionally weak. Other details they could share: the NSA scoops up your emails and your phone records.
I don't know what the mechanisms are (e.g. I'm not positing lizard men are doing this), but way in which so much reporting aims to delegitimize any opposition to total surveillance is fascinating. What causes this?
Q: "the N.S.A. has argued that this kind of intelligence gathering is critical to try to protect the American homeland?
JIMMY CARTER: That has been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies. As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored."
Interesting Jimmy Carter international diplomacy fact: During the lead-up to the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, Carter wrote to many foreign leaders and members of the UN Security Council opposing U.S. action and urging those who received his letters to oppose White House policy in favor of his diplomatic strategy.
He later did the same thing to Clinton, though not nearly so bad.
Why is this bad? Isn't diplomacy an inherently good thing?
BTW, that article is almost hopelessly hyperbolic. I really want to understand why diplomacy and Carter's advocacy are potentially wrong, but the author choose to level a personal attack rather than making reasoned arguments which may or may not have lead me to understand his position.
It is hyperbolic, but I was honestly surprised when Googling that anyone had written an article about it at all (I had learned of the meddling from Scowcroft/Bush's book).
To answer your question though, diplomacy is certainly good and should be the first choice. But it's not "inherently good"; just ask Czechoslovakia how they felt about Chamberlin's diplomacy with Hitler.
More to the point, nations have to live with the results of their diplomatic efforts, so it's important that those efforts are attuned to work together.
If you were a CEO trying to shift company strategy to focus on a certain goal, you'd find it at least annoying if a former CEO went out and directly worked against that strategy because they "had a better way to do it". Even worse, being pulled in both directions could end up leading to a worse outcome for that company than if one or the other solution had been chosen.
OTOH, Carter was not a party to formal diplomatic channels and did not represent himself as such. I doubt that he generated confusion WRT whatever official diplomacy may have been taking place. In fact, his point was that there was none to speak of; only a march to war.
So, another way to look at it is that he is retired from public service and is simply a private citizen who also happens to have a pretty big megaphone due to his former gig (and humanitarian work thereafter). He has a responsibility to speak out when he believes his country is running off the rails, as do all American citizens. His voice just happens to carry a bit further than most. So, in fact, one could argue that his is a greater responsibility to speak out.
> So, another way to look at it is that he is retired from public service and is simply a private citizen
He was President of the United States. He will have a State Funeral held upon his death (a date which will be too soon no matter when it happens). He is the farthest thing from "simply a private citizen", at least in the context of the foreign policy of the nation he led for four years.
But either way, go check out the "Carter Doctrine", which he promulgated during his term in office if you think he was opposed to all force.
Michael Jackson also had a pretty massive funeral, but WRT to U.S. Foreign policy he was a private citizen. Yes, the country will "officially" honor President Carter upon his passing; and yes, we still call him President Carter, but there are no foreign leaders who believe that he is driving U.S. Foreign policy. As such, his statements were simply the opinions of a well-known private citizen who objected to the country's march to war (along with many others).
>if you think he was opposed to all force.
Well, I never said he was opposed to all force.
EDIT: BTW, did you edit your comment to which I first responded on this thread? Seems that there was initially language in it suggesting that Carter's statements might have created confusion about official U.S. foreign policy. That's actually what I was addressing. Guess I should have quoted.
Is probably the only method you could use to get people at the NSA to read correspondence from Jimmy Carter anyway. Hell, it may even do them some good, they might quit the day job and go take up disease eradication, or something.
I am sorry for Mr. Carter, but the NSA is also reading everyone else's email. He is not special in this regard (although I am sure his correspondance is significantly more interesting than mine).
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 52.0 ms ] threadKeep in mind that the USPS can (and does) scan the front and back of envelopes[0]. Keeping this information indefinitely is tantamount to storing email "metadata" (information which is intrusive enough that it's what caused Groklaw to shut down).
Also, it's easier than one might think for a determined adversary to discern the contents of the letter - either by opening it carefully so that it appears unopened, or by (e.g.) shining a light to
There are defenses against this too, but I wouldn't assume the physical post is inherently more secure than email.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/us/where-mail-with-illegib... - I can't find the original link that asserted that they store this information indefinitely, but IIRC the USPS didn't make much of an effort to hide it.
Do not make the perfect the enemy of the better. This is the kind of thinking that gives us big scary warnings for self-signed SSL certificates, and lets plain HTTP connections proceed unmolested.
I never built mail sorting equipment, but I did work with that camera quite a bit. It has very good sensitivity. For a lark one day, I decided to see if I could read mail through the envelope. So, I fed some junk mail in front of it and found that for non-privacy type envelopes, it was almost as easy to read what's inside (top page) as what was on the outside of the envelope. Multiple pages stacked and folded made it impossible to read everything, but you could have read the outer page portion of a tri-folded letter on each side. Keep in mind that I implemented this for fun on a slow afternoon (and it required no special wizardry). Given time and resources, maybe a second camera or different lighting, a lot more might be achieved. Even a naive approach of scanning a letter multiple times under different lighting conditions might be enough to read a large fraction of letter mail. It would take less than a minute. It would not require opening or touching the letter more than an ordinary mail sorter.
Now I am not alleging that I think that all mail is stored/read, but I am saying that the tech needed to do that to some degree exists and is at least partially in place.
"Presidents may use their predecessors as emissaries to deliver private messages to other nations or as official representatives of the United States to state funerals and other important foreign events. Richard Nixon made multiple foreign trips to countries including China and Russia and was lauded as an elder statesman. Jimmy Carter has become a global human rights campaigner, international arbiter, and election monitor, as well as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize." [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States#...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center
"The NSA can keep phone records made from another country for up to a month." As far as details to share, like. This has to be intentionally weak. Other details they could share: the NSA scoops up your emails and your phone records.
I don't know what the mechanisms are (e.g. I'm not positing lizard men are doing this), but way in which so much reporting aims to delegitimize any opposition to total surveillance is fascinating. What causes this?
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-...
Q: "the N.S.A. has argued that this kind of intelligence gathering is critical to try to protect the American homeland?
JIMMY CARTER: That has been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies. As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored."
He later did the same thing to Clinton, though not nearly so bad.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2...
BTW, that article is almost hopelessly hyperbolic. I really want to understand why diplomacy and Carter's advocacy are potentially wrong, but the author choose to level a personal attack rather than making reasoned arguments which may or may not have lead me to understand his position.
To answer your question though, diplomacy is certainly good and should be the first choice. But it's not "inherently good"; just ask Czechoslovakia how they felt about Chamberlin's diplomacy with Hitler.
More to the point, nations have to live with the results of their diplomatic efforts, so it's important that those efforts are attuned to work together.
If you were a CEO trying to shift company strategy to focus on a certain goal, you'd find it at least annoying if a former CEO went out and directly worked against that strategy because they "had a better way to do it". Even worse, being pulled in both directions could end up leading to a worse outcome for that company than if one or the other solution had been chosen.
So, another way to look at it is that he is retired from public service and is simply a private citizen who also happens to have a pretty big megaphone due to his former gig (and humanitarian work thereafter). He has a responsibility to speak out when he believes his country is running off the rails, as do all American citizens. His voice just happens to carry a bit further than most. So, in fact, one could argue that his is a greater responsibility to speak out.
He was President of the United States. He will have a State Funeral held upon his death (a date which will be too soon no matter when it happens). He is the farthest thing from "simply a private citizen", at least in the context of the foreign policy of the nation he led for four years.
But either way, go check out the "Carter Doctrine", which he promulgated during his term in office if you think he was opposed to all force.
>if you think he was opposed to all force.
Well, I never said he was opposed to all force.
EDIT: BTW, did you edit your comment to which I first responded on this thread? Seems that there was initially language in it suggesting that Carter's statements might have created confusion about official U.S. foreign policy. That's actually what I was addressing. Guess I should have quoted.
I still haven't figured out if it is meant as an insult, or if Jimmy Carter is some kind of super secret spy.