To whom it may concern: Digital privacy and why you “should” have something to hide!

One common reaction when talking to people about the NSA scandal is: “Oh, I don´t care. I´ve nothing to hide!”.

But did you know that it might be quite easy to get into the dragnet of the NSA?

“Cell phones, laptops, Facebook, Skype, chat-rooms: all allow the NSA to build what it calls ‘a pattern of life’, a detailed profile of a target and anyone associated with them.
And the number of people caught up in this dragnet can be huge.
You don’t need to be talking to a terror suspect to have your communications data analysed by the NSA. The agency is allowed to travel “three hops” from its targets — who could be people who talk to people who talk to people who talk to you. Facebook, where the typical user has 190 friends, shows how three degrees of separation gets you to a network bigger than the population of Colorado. How many people are three “hops” from you?” [The Guardian, “What the (Valonqua: Snowden´s) revelations mean for you“]

And the NSA or other surveillance organizations are not the only ones interested in “your” data. Companies, for example, are data hungry, too. 

If you need some ideas why you “should” have something to hide, please read the blog post Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance by the security researcher Moxie Marlinspike published on “Wired” on June 13th, 2013.

What can you do?
For concrete tips and tools, see the following websites:
Security in a Box
MyShadow

~Valonqua

Peter Wayner´s predictions for the future of programming

http://www.javaworld.com/article/2093747/java-ios-developer/12-predictions-for-the-future-of-programming.html?source=IFWNLE_ifw_java_2014-02-04#tk.rss_all

Codeyear: Programmieren / Webdesign lernen

Da unser Technik-Blog nicht nur rein theoretisch oder philosophisch Technik / Programmieren, etc. behandeln  soll, hier einmal  ein praktischer Hinweis: Wer Programmieren / Webdesign lernen will, kann sich bei Codeyear (URL: http://codeyear.com) eintragen und dann sowohl entsprechendes Wissen erwerben als auch kleine Programmieraufgaben lösen.

Das Kursangebot umfaßt bislang:

• Die Programmiersprache JavaScript (mit einigen Grundkenntnissen zu objektorientierter Programmierung), die die Dynamik von  Webseiten ermöglicht.
• Die (Hyper-)Textauszeichnungssprache (markup language)  HTML, die die Grundlage für viele heutige Webseiten darstellt.
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets ) als Standard-Stylesheet-Sprache für die Gestaltung von Webseiten [siehe: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets]

Wer sich also auch ein wenig praktisch mit Programmierung / Webdesign beschäftigen möchte, findet bei Codeyear einen guten Einstieg. Mein Fazit: Top.

Have fun!

~Peter