I was pointed to a project called the Digital Bible Society, which aims to distribute Christian writings and Bibles in various languages to places like China and the Muslim countries. And they have figured that where a printed copy of the Bible may not get through customs, an SD card full of Christian literature just might.
Got to give it to the missionary buggers, that is somewhat clever. Maybe we should come up with something similar, and start distributing SD cards full of Darwin’s “Origin” and the works of Hume, Dawkins, Hitchens or Bierce to the countries most afflicted by religion and superstition. Let’s float a million balloons carrying an SD chip with translations of “God is not great” and “The God Delusion” into Pakistan or Indonesia.
Awesome plan; except what the Christians are doing is basically just a smarter way to break local laws. Is that really what we want to be doing; and germane to that question, what’s the legal status of Hitchens/Dawkins books in Pakistan or Indonesia?
I have no compunction about using technology to subvert censorship laws, of any country. I’ve helped to do that in the past, and will in the future.
Of course you can use encryption. What is especially useful are setups that actually have a dual layer. If someone demands your password, you can give it and the contents will decrypt the bait layer (choice depends on where you are, but soft core porn can be a good choice as long as it’s not illegal where you are, it’s easy for an interrogator to assume that’s what your hiding).
But a second password unlocks the data hidden in the ‘uninitialized’ sections of the file structure. There is no mathematical way to know if there is a second key, and no way to prove a person is hiding anything past the first layer of encryption.
Of course you could use encryption; I’ll be the first to upload a copy of the GnuPG manual and binaries. The question is not “do we have the skills and technologies” (yes) or “should we subvert censorship” (yes). The question is, do we want to be using the same deceptions and dishonesties Christians do; at least, until we’re asked to do so, for help, by the local population.
Not “can we”, but “should we”.