As noted previously, the issue with our virtual activities is control of the machine and control of data. If you can handle the challenge, I still say you should examine using Open Source software and operating systems because they have proven so far to offer better and easier control. However, there are plenty of other considerations.
A real world example of why backups and off-site storage matter:
The University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights was recently burglarized after they filed a lawsuit against the CIA for refusing to release declassified documents to the public. Data and equipment were stolen from the office, and it is suspected that the CIA may have had something to do with the break-in. The specific documents in question that the group was filing the lawsuit over were also stolen from the office.
How convenient for the CIA. While the researchers did have backups of the data, they are still worried that a lot of their own first-hand sources were compromised. Such is the case for encryption of data even on your own system. While we know that government bureaucracies do lots of things backwards, I can assure you that high security information is handled very carefully with all sorts of protections and compartmentalizations to prevent easy compromise.
Which brings us to the second point that you should disperse copies of things among those you trust. If you can’t trust anyone, you really need to be far more paranoid about the data you handle. This is just an outline describing professional IT standards on data security, but it’s not too hard to grasp how it applies to your private stuff.
Granted, for us in our spiritual pursuits, the best security is having nothing to steal. The nature of our mission is publicizing everything; we have no secrets. And in the case of this virtual parish, our religious activities are almost entirely virtual and written with precious little need for privacy. Furthermore, we are inherently decentralized by avoiding the need for a registry of who’s who; I’m just a writer. My leadership is a matter of mere influence for the most part. Take me out and God will call someone else to fill the role. All you lose is my peculiar flavor and character in writing.
The only other issue of significance is shared sources. That is, I have some material I’ve collected that informs some of my writing. Most of it is not hidden, just not easily found on the Net without having a lot of clues about search terms and so forth. Some of it is frankly “pirated” material that is difficult to find and risky to pursue if you can’t pay for it (okay, it’s risky if you run Windows). Maybe you have no need for exploring this stuff, but a significant portion of what I write here is informed by these sources. If you think it matters, you can ask about some of my sources and I’ll be glad to share with you. I can’t give you the education I gained before the Internet was in my reach, but that’s part of what my writing is all about — distilling the things I’ve noticed and making it somewhat coherent. Nothing replaces one-on-one sharing in the flesh, but God can work in ways we cannot imagine.
In the final analysis, you need to make up your own mind whether any of this computer security stuff is pertinent to you. It’s not as if we are writing Scripture here, just commentaries that might help understand the Bible. The sacred truth is God’s own hand writing into your life. The rest of what we do is simply the means to communion in sharing that mark of God with each other.
Final note: The “CIA spokesman Dean Boyd” is paid to lie. That’s what the CIA does; it’s so fundamental to their mission and nature of the agency that you should be shocked when they actually tell the truth about much of anything. Further, the agency insiders often have no clue what each other are doing, so there’s a high probability he could honestly say what he said and it still be utterly false. These people avoid knowing the truth as part of their deceptive work. The CIA has absolutely no grounds for complaining when someone suggests they would commit such a criminal act as this. But we have no intention of “fighting for justice” against evil government. Our mission is to expose and develop a holy cynicism.
