Is privacy coming back?

[Andrew Pitonyak]

It is common for people to fail a polygraph interview for a security clearance and then later pass with no difficulty. I can assure you that if you drop me into a chair and start questioning me, I will mostly likely exhibit every guilty sign that there is unless I medicate to avoid the signs. I am also naturally fidigty (as if that were a word) so I have had security people follow me around since they were certain that I was up to no good. Of course after I figured out what they were doing, I opted to have a little fun with them and ran them all over the place. I almost felt bad for them.... "where is he going now....".

[John Coloccia]

Reading body language is like interpreting dreams. There's no one thing that means anything at all. Squirming in a chair is completely meaningless on it's own. Maybe my leg hurts. Maybe I have to pee. Maybe I'm just fidgety. Maybe, I can sit perfectly still and just lie to your face. When I hear someone say stuff like this I think, "Man, this is someone I want to play poker with". Seriously, I don't know what any of this has to do with privacy. I will say, though, that a little knowledge is a bad thing.

The whole social engineering thing is like tall tales about old exploits no one can confirm or deny anymore. I don't even believe in social engineering anymore because there's absolutely nothing to it. That's just a fancy term for "lying". It works not because of some skilled manipulator, but because people generally trust other people. If I call up a secretary, know a little bit about the company (maybe I did some dumpster diving and figured out she works for Mr. Smith), and toss out some reasonable sounding lingo, there's very little reason for her to suspect me of wrong doing when I tell her that Mr. Smith told me to contact her to get some information. The "social engineer" that depends on reading body language is a fool.

[Chuck Wintle]

Looks like the head of the FBI doesn't like the encryption angle from Google and Apple either, so he's either a good actor and still has access to it all, or it's a serious step in taking back the privacy....

This just popped up on Mashable today.

http://mashable.com/2014/10/16/fbi-d...g-dark-speech/

Scott,
I doubt very much that NSA, FBI or whoever will be shut out of tracking emails and cell calls. Very likely they already have the codes to decrypt them not withstanding the contents of this article.