Re: [PLUG] Wanted: volunteers with bandwidth, storage, coding skills to

Charlie Li <ml+PLUG@vishwin.info> · Sun, 18 Dec 2016 16:53:36 -0500

On 18/12/16 16:29, Paul Walker wrote:
> Can we steer the conversation back to the topic at hand? I am curious
> about the possibility of large amounts of "controversial" data being
> sequestered or destroyed. Certainly the liquidation of entire classes of
> data (and of human technical talent) has been undertaken before in the
> name of political expediency. I'm thinking of Argentina, Iran, etc. I'm
> curious given the particular skill-set of our group what people's
> opinions are regarding the plausibility of such a thing happening --
> politically yes, but also technically. Are these large data sets
> vulnerable? Assuming there is a massive interest in skewing the
> conversation about climate change, does it not seem at least plausible
> that someone would undertake to modify, corrupt or delete the underlying
> data, whether they were state actors, unaligned and anonymous hackers,
> corporate interests or others? Doesn't it make sense to have the
> strongest data redundancy possible in place for irreplaceable data that
> has been gathered over decades by scientists, satellites, the noaa, etc.
> Is it paranoid to think that this body of knowledge is extremely
> valuable and potentially vulnerable? Are there technical solutions that
> our community could be a part of to help ensure that these collective
> resources are not endangered by sharp political swings or other
> unforseen circumstances?
> 
I think our group definitely has the coding bit down. Bandwidth and
storage…we'll see who wants to pony up for that.

All of the above is prefaced with "if we (humans) feel it is
worthwhile". Hell, this reminds me, when people found out about Louis
Rossmann (runs a storefront in Manhattan repairing MacBook motherboards
at component level) getting hit up by presumably Apple lawyers who
probably wanted at least some of his YouTube videos removed, some of
them decided to make and seed torrents of Rossmann's entire video
archive should they be removed from YouTube. This all happened within
the *day* Rossmann posted his announcement of legal contact.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure we'll see the same amount of fervor over
scientific data (and government-sponsored at that!) than some guy
showing people how to diagnose and repair boards at component level and
explaining how business should be really done.

-- 
Charlie Li
[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
                -- K&R

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