SOPA, CISPA, PIPA, and TPP have shown us the way the enemy of liberty moves. They enjoy injecting bits of controlling legislation into a possible good thing. We as the people have encountered these threats and have fought them off very well. There will always be new bills, but in the information age that will be hard to hide. We thank figures like Aaron Swartz and the EFF in their hard work against SOPA and other invasions of liberty. Today I bring to you the thought of encrypting everything. Crypto has helped bring this thought to focus recently. We see nations trying to regulate crypto. We see nations “cyber weapons” being used and we want to protect ourselves. In most cases of hacking, the human element is found to be the weakest point. Humans are easy to hack, which makes everything around them easy to hack. So how can we help to defend ourselves and others around us?
“Aaron Swartz played a central role in the fight to stop the censorious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that snowballed into the largest online campaign in history. SOPA was a poorly worded bill would have allowed the Department of Justice to shut down entire Internet domains because content posted on a single website might be infringing copyright—and without a trial.” - https://www.eff.org/
“Perhaps worse, EFF has detailed how this provision would also decimate the open source software community. Anyone who writes or distributes Virtual Private Network, proxy, privacy or anonymization software would be negatively affected. This includes organizations that are funded by the State Department to create circumvention software to help democratic activists get around authoritarian regimes’ online censorship mechanisms.” - https://www.eff.org/
Helping those that may not know how vulnerable they are is important. We have many new threats that we have to think about on a daily basis. Crypto has brought this realization and we must never forget it because the invasions of privacy by any actor will never let up. Crypto has helped us better understand these security holes by bringing attention directly and indirectly to them. Now I see young people of all ages seeking information on the latest crypto threats or internet threats in general. It's great to see a new awakening happen before my eyes.
I highly respect the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They have won many battles in the fight for liberty. These are true patriots of freedom in my eyes. They were founded in 1990 to “a basic threat to speech”. The EFF has done so much for the internet and they offer great tools to defend ourselves. One tool that offers one of the most basic level of protection is https://. It creates a layer of decent encryption over what you're viewing on your browser. Many popular websites do not enable https:// by default which opens up many people to spying and other malicious code. There has been a huge push to help inform these website owners the importance of these basic measures of protection for their visitors and or customers. No matter how many you inform this still leaves out many sites that still don't enable https:// by default or at all. There is a great browser extension known as 'HTTPS Everywhere' that helps make https:// default on many sites where it would otherwise not be. Keep in mind that not all websites have a https:// certificate. Many blogs or websites that don't have sensitive data being shown don't have https://. I highly recommend checking out HTTPS Everywhere found on the EFF website.
“HTTPS Everywhere is produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site. The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by using clever technology to rewrite requests to these sites to HTTPS.” - https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
“Since its founding in 1990, EFF has consistently taken critical cases, challenged tough opponents, and achieved landmark victories. EFF has prevailed in lawsuits against the federal government, the FCC, the world's largest entertainment companies, and major electronics companies, among others. EFF has also beaten bills in Congress and pressured companies to respect your rights.” - https://www.eff.org/victories
There are many websites that don't have https:// certificates and this offers a unique problem. If we are trying to have basic protections for all then how can we help encrypt the entire internet? Well, the EFF has helped develop an amazing client for fetching and deploying certificates on your webservers. I highly recommend this tool as well for those that do not already know about this. There are other ways and places to get certificates but I have enjoyed everything that the EFF has presented.
“While there are many other clients that implement the ACME protocol to fetch certificates, Certbot is the most extensive client and can automatically configure your webserver to start serving over HTTPS immediately.” - https://certbot.eff.org/about/
In conclusion, I believe the adoption will outweigh the regulation and nations will be forced to accept crypto, otherwise they lose out on a possible trillion dollar market. We are still in the infant stages of crypto development as a whole. We must have patience for those around us that may not understand crypto and or the new ever-evolving threats. As a community we must be weary and informative. I cannot stress enough how communities like STEEM help bring these types of discussions to the forefront.
And to add to all the great the EFF has done and brought to the world, they also help with FOIA. If you are in need of doing so I again highly recommend the EFF as a source of information. Be well and safe out there.
-Citizen
https://www.eff.org/
https://www.eff.org/victories (EFF Victory List)
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere (HTTPS Everywhere)
https://certbot.eff.org/ (Encrypting Certificates)
https://www.eff.org/issues/transparency (FOIA) (Freedom of Information Act Information)
(Source)
