T for technology, T for terror

Came across this post on TechCrunch about GnuPG, a software that helps you to encrypt mails, to avoid a hacker looking into your private mails. The post is a little bit geekish, but contains nice step-by-step instructions to use both GnuPG and FireGPG, a Firefox extension which provides a nicer interface than the command line one given by GPG. I haven't tried it (well, I don't have any incriminating mails to hide, for one. For another, I'm not running for a public post, to have some enthusiastic hacker look into my mailbox ;) ), but it looks pretty useful tool to have. But call it the effect of the current security situation, call it paranoia, the thought occured to me that this could easily be (mis-)used by terrorists or anyone with nefarious motives to communicate securely, without having the intelligence agencies eavesdropping. Already the bad guys seem to be one step ahead of the good guys, and in these times of cyber-crime, cyber-fraud and cyber-terrorism, this is a real serious prospect. The Internet has shrunk the world, and while it certainly helps me to chat with my friend in the US, it also helps the bad guys to co-ordinate their plans for that bombing in Cairo, sitting in Alaska (OK, no reference to Palin here ;) )! As terrorists and criminals become increasingly hi-tech and get more educated, highly qualified people into their fold, it's becoming a case of playing catch-up with them. Now I'm not saying that the bad guys are not already using encryption and this site will have some one saying 'Eureka!'. But the point I'm trying to make is that there's such a wealth of information available online that can easily be mis-used. Like Naseeruddin Shah's character says in Wednesday, "Internet pe 'bomb' ke liye search karo toh 352 sites milengi!" Yes, sad but true. We talk about technology enabling our lives. But it is also being used in the pursuit of much more dastardly acts, acts that are claiming more and more lives - across the world...