the unpleasant intersection of government, security and privacy
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010A couple of unrelated but similarly themed stories making the rounds:
- Seems that someone is trying to intimidate Julian Asange (of wikileaks fame) by fabricating and quickly withdrawing criminal charges: skunkpost.com.
- Seems like the Elections Commission of India is trying to muzzle a security researcher who pointed out that their electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering: indianevm.com and usenix.org
In both cases, the uncomfortable theme is that governments can use their coercive power to try to silence critics, and that especially includes critics who try to shed light on uncomfortable truths…