[talk] July 7 NYC*BUG: Why Privacy/Security (usually) Needs Anonymity

[George Rosamond]

Why Privacy/Security (usually) Needs Anonymity, George Rosamond
2021-07-07 @ 18:45 EDT - Zoom
https://www.nycbug.org/index?action=view&id=10685

IMPORTANT: For Zoom meeting details, email to rsvp AT lists.nycbug.org, 
and details will be sent on the day of the meeting. Q&A will be via IRC 
on libera.chat, channel #nycbug

In an uncensored and unleashed version of an ISSA Privacy SIG 
presentation from June, George will be making a strong declaration 
relevant to the times: why privacy and security (usually) need anonymity.

As privacy finally becomes an acceptable and even popular service and 
product feature, its sibling anonymity is still carries nefarious 
connotations. Privacy advocates onced faced questions like "do you have 
something to hide?" Similar retorts are now posed to anonymity advocates.

But creating privacy solutions without anonymity means ignoring a core 
aspect of (corporate,nation-state) surveillance: metadata. Knowing who 
talked to whom, when did they talk and for how long, makes the actual 
content of the communications less relevant in an era of mass surveillance.

Cut down to the basics and unfettered, we'll look at the changing 
environment of privacy, relating it to anonymity then approach some of 
the basic ingredients necessary for adapting anonymity to technical 
solutions today.

And yes, the relevance of BSD Unix will be woven throughout, somehow, 
someway.

We encourage questions and even wildly incorrect opinions before the 
meeting on the talk@ mailing list and on IRC at libera.net #nycbug.

For Zoom meeting details, email to rsvp AT lists.nycbug.org, and details 
will be sent on the day of the meeting. Q&A will be via IRC on 
libera.chat, channel #nycbug

Speaker Biography

George Rosamond is a founder and long-time admin@ member of NYC*BUG. 
He's the co-founder and CTO of ClearOPS, a privacy and security 
technology startup.

A sysadmin by trade with citizenship in BSD Unix land, his area of 
interest and expertise lies with privacy enhancing technologies, most 
importantly with the Tor Project. He thrives on creating and designing 
unorthodox solutions to ordinary problems, but so do most other people 
in the *BSD community.