From Slashdot today

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Fri, 10/10/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > The financial situation which prevents individuals
> > from upgrading all their computers to encrypt all 
> > their traffic, also prevents ISPs from upgrading
> > their computers to track all their traffic.

> It's a decent point except for the fact that Moore's
> Law pretty much guarantees that the horsepower, if 
> not already here, will be here shortly.

Moore's Law only "guarantees" (if such a word can be used with an abstraction like Moore's Law) that the technology improves, not that the technology becomes widespread.  If people don't have the available cash for a new $400 device and the bank won't give them any credit, then the technology might as well not even exist yet.

> I don't think the issue currently is _computers_.  
> I think the issue is more of when smaller devices, 
> such as cellphones, PDAs, iPods, etc get powerful
> enough chips to be able to do that kind of encryption 
> on the fly.  But given the fact that my iPod Touch is 
> probably more powerful than my original 386 PC, I 
> can't imagine it taking that long to happen.  4 years 
> maybe?

I used computers as the example because the end user currently has a lot of control over what is run on his or her PC.  This is frequently not the case with a smaller device such as a PDA or cellphone.

I was at a friend's house on Thursday and we were discussing her new iPhone.  It has a lot of fun and interesting features, such as finger gestures for moving and zooming the screen, and even a QWERTY keyboard, but there are a few things missing from the normal computing experience: a cut-and-paste function, and my friend normally types in Dvorak and can't find an iPhone altenative keymapping.  Device limitations may well prevent some devices from incorporating encryption, whether or not the user wants it.

One project which might allow the end user to have as much control over their cellphone as they do over their home PC is the Open Moko project, http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page, developing an open source platform for use in cellphones.  Right now only one phone is fully supported (the Neo1973), but they are working on others, http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Supported_Hardware.  I'm fairly certain Open Moko is embedded Linux, as Open Moko applications can run on Linux PCs.

However, most people will be purchasing a portable device over which they have inadequate control to introduce encryption and other obfuscation methods to prevent outside agencies from spying on and/or controlling their online experience.

Going back to Moore's Law, four years is a long time, during which time all kinds of government mandates can be dropped on new device technology.  The horsepower may arrive with monkeys already on its collective back, negating the ability of the end user to implement privacy methods.