You may have heard that John McAfee (of both anti-virus fame and possibly-shooting-his-neighbor-in-Belize infamy) claims to have plans for an
inexpensive, portable device to foil NSA snooping. Says he just needs to get backers & such — that the device itself is already feasible.
It’s called “Decentral” or “Dcentral,” depending on which article you read.
When I expressed doubt that the half-mad McAfee could pull this off, an acquaintance we shall call “Boris Badenov” for his background, replied:
Well, I guarantee it will be a flawed individual who comes up with a “peaceful” solution to the Stasi… and shooting a neighbor on occasion may be necessary to maintain the balance of nature. Coming up with a solution from a flawed man who shoots the occasional neighbor will often times prevent “good” men from lining people up against the wall in haste.
My experience looking at US intelligence estimates from the cold war is that the Stasi and KGB used physical/human intel to much greater affect than we did with our so-called ELINT… and it didn’t matter. Our Stasi/NSA, even twenty years ago, relied primarily on electronic intrusion… and mostly we got it wrong… and it never seems to matter that it’s a huge waste.
If I was in a plot against the totalitarian thugs and their Stasi minions who our are current masters, I would not use the telephone or internet. It’s easy to spoof electronic surveillance, and even easier to “go dark”, which gives the snoopers nothing of value. The two methods were usually combined by the Soviets (The GRU were masters at this), giving us fake electronic traffic to monitor while running the real operation in the ELINT Dark. When they invaded Czecho in 68 they moved about 8 divisions from central Russia without us seeing or hearing a thing. Cut to 91, The less than astute Saddam does the same thing in Kuwait.
The trick for us is going to be able to go dark to their eyes and yet still communicate as we choose. It’s completely doable and I think McAfee is on to something. A bunch of fat, lazy, Cheetos eating Aspies are not liable to gather any usable or accurate information… but they can do a lot of damage for sure. OK, enough! …. I’m full of useless info… maybe I should have worked for the Staso?
One thing’s for sure. If McAfee doesn’t succeed at making and marketing this, somebody will produce something like it. In fact, what do you want to bet that, within five years, the NSA and its equally UnAmerican allies will be shut out of a LOT of online and telephone traffic by measures that, in retrospect, will seem to have been amazingly simple?
