This is sideways, but...

[Allen <netsecurity@sound-by-design.com>]

Hi gang(s),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q

Well worth a quick look and it raises interesting points by 
implication: if the amount of data is increasing at the rate they 
allege: A) how will storage space keep up, B) how will finding 
what you need keep up, C) how will encryption keep up, D) how 
will encryption key management keep up? And these are just a few 
of the potential questions.

As to A), from what I see storage space is not increasing as fast 
as data speeds - 6 month cycle v. 18 month cycle - so we may wind 
up discarding history in real-time. Future historians will hate 
it much worse than the change from film to video for TV news. It 
also means that history will truly be written by the last one 
standing. I actually have a funny story from the early days of FM 
album rock where I lived the history and what is written about it 
is wrong, but there is no way to correct the misstatements now 
given how many wrong versions are out there. Look at the 
recycling of urban myths as an another example. I'm lucky because 
I'm skeptical so I don't often get caught but good friends who 
"should" know better get caught about once a week or so.

As to B), I don't know about you, but I'm finding it harder to 
find some kinds of data than I was 3 or 4 years ago. I have to go 
much further down the stack and the failure rate is higher. To 
give an obscure example, I was trying to remember the name of the 
Catholic heresy from about the 11th or 12th century in Spain that 
is depicted in Luis Bunuel's film, "Milky Way." After working on 
it for a couple of hours and shooting off e-mails to "experts" I 
just gave up on the net and tracked down an old VHS tape of the 
film to re-watch. Haven't gotten it yet, but it is on order.

Also finding the exact quote in the morass of e-mail and other 
files sometimes turns out to be a nightmare as the search tools 
aren't good enough for mere mortals such as I.

As to C) I suspect we can keep up here, but the length of 
protection will be far shorter than we think because of the need 
to control the data to ensure that no copies are laying around 
that can be brute forced.

And D) gives me nightmares. All I can see is the basket of keys 
my parents collected that they had no clue as to what they fit. 
My basket is smaller, but I still have one.

May your nightmares never survive sunrise,

Allen