Freedom to Tinker: Use a Firewall, Go to Jail

If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you're in violation, because the "To" and "From" lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption. (The encryption conceals the destinations of outgoing messages, and the sources of incoming messages.)

I've been saying for years that legislators don't understand technology, judges don't understand technology and the media doesn't understand technology. Between these three groups, we true technologists stay busy battling disinformation and losing sleep over what might come next.

Enter the latest piece of legislation. States are proposing laws which are in danger of turning us all into potential criminals on the Internet. The reason this is hitting home is that my own state, South Carolina, is on the verge of making this mistake.