Slashdot Mirror

With todays decision in which your case was thrown out, are you planning an appeal?

With the decision of the judge to throw out your case today, are you planning an appeal?

Copyright © 2001 Michael D. Crawford. Permission is granted to reproduce this document provided it is copied verbatim, in its entirety and that this copyright statement is preserved.

I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them.

I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution.

In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice.

I loved America for what it stood for.

I was told that things like political persecution, detainment without trial, and beating of prisoners were things that happened in other countries, that they would never happen in America. I was told that we fought the American Revolution and wrote the Constitution specifically to ensure such things would never again happen in America.

But today I see the ugly face of repression rising in America. And it is brought to you by the United States Government.

I am not proud to be an American today. I understand well why people in many other countries hate America. I love America, but I despise what it is rapidly becoming.

Something must be done about this.

There are many things that move me to write this, but what moved to me write this right now is that a member of a registered political party was singled out for harassment, first by American Airlines and then by the United States National Guard because of the opinions she holds.

Nancy Oden, one of the U.S. Green Party's top officials, was traveling to a Green Party national meeting from her hometown airport in Bangor, Maine. She had published a statement that calls for Universal Health Care, limitations on free trade, and a stop to the bombing of Afghanistan.

When she got to the American Airlines ticket counter she was told that there was a record in AA's computer indicating that she should be searched anytime she tried to fly.

During the search, she tried to help the security agent with a stuck zipper. The agent grabbed her arm and she pulled it away. The National Guard instructed the airline not to let her fly. The airline told all the other airlines not to let her fly. She was unable to attend the Green Party meeting.

So an official of a registered political party in the supposedly democratic United States was prevented from participating in the political process because her name had been recorded in a computer as someone who should be treated with suspicion.

I fear what America has become.

Also upsetting to me is the recent decision of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to allow eavesdropping on attorney-client conversations as well as opening of their mail. Read the ACLU press release opposing this.

From the Washington Post article U.S. Will Monitor Calls to Lawyers:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft approved the eavesdropping rule on an emergency basis last week, without the usual waiting period for public comment. It went into effect immediately, permitting the government to monitor conversations and intercept mail between people in custody and their attorneys for up to a year at a time.

The right to a vigorous legal defense is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. It is one of the bulwarks that comes between official repression and those who are repressed, underprivileged, despised, outcast, or working for legitimate political change. You can read about the guarantee of legal representation in our Constitution:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

I don't have a URL to link you to ( mail me one), but I read that among the hundreds of "suspects" and "material witnesses" rounded up in the days after September 11, many were held without charge and some were beaten by their jailers. Also some were held without being given access to attorneys or their families. I thought that could not happen here...

The recently signed USA PATRIOT act is an assault on our civil liberties the likes of which have not been seen in decades.

Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Analysis of USA PATRIOT Act, which largely discusses the law's impact on online activities - did you know that the government can now spy on the key words you search for at search engines like Google and AltaVista? Because computer cracking is now considered terrorism, searching for exploitz can result in your lengthy imprisonment.

The truth is the first victim of war.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks, President Bush said something to the effect that the reason the U.S. was attacked was because the terrorists hated our freedom, and that we must fight the terrorists in order to preserve it.

But Osama bin Laden does not care either way about our freedom. He has made it very clear why he hates the U.S., and none of this has been acknowledged by any official statements that I have heard. What bin Laden objects to are the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of the holy city of Mecca, U.S. support for Israel's repression of the Palestinians, and the continued U.S. bombing of Iraq. More than anything, he feels that the presence of U.S. troops in the Islamic Holy Land is a sacrilege.

Whatever your position is on bin Laden's objections to the U.S., you must agree that it is wrong for our President to lie to us. Get informed, and work to understand the complexities behind the enmity between the Islamic and Western world. It's not as simple as our government would have us believe.

You might be interested to know what the Pentagon is doing to improve the United States' image in the Islamic world. Well, I'll tell you. It has taken out a $400,000 contract with Madison Avenue public relations firm The Rendon Group in an effort to help it "orient to the challenge of communication to a wide range of groups around the world". In addition, former advertising executive Charlotte Beers has been apointed to the post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a position she qualifies for because of her previous work promoting such products as Head & Shoulders shampoo.

Read about it in Propaganda Wars.

Well, its comforting to know that we'll be winning friends in Central Asia by showing professionally produced TV commercials depicting friendly Americans in between the news reports of mutilated and starving Afghani children.

If you, like myself, feel that something is wrong with America these days, or with whatever country you find yourself in, speak out about it.

In this troubled times, speaking openly to inform others of injustice or to protest may result in a backlash against you from government officials or others. Please read this speech on the importance of speaking your mind. Have courage - it is only by having the courage to speak and to work against injustice that we can prevent it from getting a lot worse.

Among the ways you can speak out

• Participate in online communities
• Send email to people you know
• Write web pages like this one and post the URL around
• Write letters to the editors of your local newspapers
• Staple leaflets to bulletin boards in your community
• Pass out leaflets in public places
• Call in to talk radio shows

Secondly, participate in what we have left of the democratic process. Our government has at least the appearance of having been elected, and the easiest way to make a change is to vote out the ones who have brought this upon us.

• Volunteer for political candidates you believe in
• Get a bunch of voter registration cards and stand in a public place to register voters
• Donate money to political candidates and parties who respect civil liberties
• Vote
• Write letters to your elected representatives. While you can send email, Congress gets so much spam that they pretty much ignore email these days. Instead, you can find your Congressperson's postal address at www.congress.org - write them a paper letter.

Use encryption to protect your privacy. Please read my page Why You Should Use Encryption as well as my letter Protect Your Rights with Encryption.

You can get encryption software for free - you can use either Pretty Good Privacy or The GNU Privacy Guard. Both offer excellent, military strength protection of your data, and the source code to each is freely available so that programmers are able to inspect it for security defects and back doors.

Teach the people you correspond with to use encryption.

Teach people who work for political change to use encryption. If you don't think political candidates and their staff need to use encryption, you're too young to remember Nixon's Plumbers getting caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel to wiretap the Democratic National Committe.

Join organizations that work to protect civil liberties. Among these are:

• The American Civil Liberties Union - Join Here
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation - Join Here - the EFF works to protect our civil liberties in the online world, including working to ensure that the work of computer programmers is protected as free speech under the First Amendment, thereby ensuring you access to software that guards your security and privacy.
• The Center for Democracy and Technology - Get Involved - working "to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age"
• The Electronic Privacy Information Center - Donate Here - "established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.

One might think, and one certainly hopes, that the ultimate safeguard against these threats to our civil liberties lies with the Supreme Court of the United States. But I am not so certain myself. The Supreme Court has ruled against the dictates of law and the Constitution during other troubled periods in our nation's history.

And we should remember that the current President received a minority of the popular vote and was only declared to have a majority of the Electoral Vote after an obviously politically motivated ruling by the Supreme Court, a decision that has few pretenses of being based on the rule of law. Even had all the ballots been counted, enough Black Florida citizens were prevented from going to the polls that the election would clearly have gone for Gore had they been allowed to exercise their right to vote.

As said in the dissenting opinion by Justices Stevens, Ginsberg and Breyer in Bush v. Gore (note - this is an Adobe Acrobat document):

What must underlie petitioners' (nb. - George W. Bush') entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

We must work together to restore the rule of law in our country - or we shall surely suffer for it. If you do not agree that Fascism can arise in the United States, take heed of the fact that Adolf Hitler was elected as the leader of his country too.

November 12, 2001

Copyright © 2001 Michael D. Crawford. Permission is granted to reproduce this document provided it is copied verbatim, in its entirety and that this copyright statement is preserved.

I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them.

I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution.

In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice.

I loved America for what it stood for.

I was told that things like political persecution, detainment without trial, and beating of prisoners were things that happened in other countries, that they would never happen in America. I was told that we fought the American Revolution and wrote the Constitution specifically to ensure such things would never again happen in America.

But today I see the ugly face of repression rising in America. And it is brought to you by the United States Government.

I am not proud to be an American today. I understand well why people in many other countries hate America. I love America, but I despise what it is rapidly becoming.

Something must be done about this.

There are many things that move me to write this, but what moved to me write this right now is that a member of a registered political party was singled out for harassment, first by American Airlines and then by the United States National Guard because of the opinions she holds.

Nancy Oden, one of the U.S. Green Party's top officials, was traveling to a Green Party national meeting from her hometown airport in Bangor, Maine. She had published a statement that calls for Universal Health Care, limitations on free trade, and a stop to the bombing of Afghanistan.

When she got to the American Airlines ticket counter she was told that there was a record in AA's computer indicating that she should be searched anytime she tried to fly.

During the search, she tried to help the security agent with a stuck zipper. The agent grabbed her arm and she pulled it away. The National Guard instructed the airline not to let her fly. The airline told all the other airlines not to let her fly. She was unable to attend the Green Party meeting.

So an official of a registered political party in the supposedly democratic United States was prevented from participating in the political process because her name had been recorded in a computer as someone who should be treated with suspicion.

I fear what America has become.

Also upsetting to me is the recent decision of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to allow eavesdropping on attorney-client conversations as well as opening of their mail. Read the ACLU press release opposing this.

From the Washington Post article U.S. Will Monitor Calls to Lawyers:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft approved the eavesdropping rule on an emergency basis last week, without the usual waiting period for public comment. It went into effect immediately, permitting the government to monitor conversations and intercept mail between people in custody and their attorneys for up to a year at a time.

The right to a vigorous legal defense is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. It is one of the bulwarks that comes between official repression and those who are repressed, underprivileged, despised, outcast, or working for legitimate political change. You can read about the guarantee of legal representation in our Constitution:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

I don't have a URL to link you to ( mail me one), but I read that among the hundreds of "suspects" and "material witnesses" rounded up in the days after September 11, many were held without charge and some were beaten by their jailers. Also some were held without being given access to attorneys or their families. I thought that could not happen here...

The recently signed USA PATRIOT act is an assault on our civil liberties the likes of which have not been seen in decades.

Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Analysis of USA PATRIOT Act, which largely discusses the law's impact on online activities - did you know that the government can now spy on the key words you search for at search engines like Google and AltaVista? Because computer cracking is now considered terrorism, searching for exploitz can result in your lengthy imprisonment.

The truth is the first victim of war.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks, President Bush said something to the effect that the reason the U.S. was attacked was because the terrorists hated our freedom, and that we must fight the terrorists in order to preserve it.

But Osama bin Laden does not care either way about our freedom. He has made it very clear why he hates the U.S., and none of this has been acknowledged by any official statements that I have heard. What bin Laden objects to are the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of the holy city of Mecca, U.S. support for Israel's repression of the Palestinians, and the continued U.S. bombing of Iraq. More than anything, he feels that the presence of U.S. troops in the Islamic Holy Land is a sacrilege.

Whatever your position is on bin Laden's objections to the U.S., you must agree that it is wrong for our President to lie to us. Get informed, and work to understand the complexities behind the enmity between the Islamic and Western world. It's not as simple as our government would have us believe.

You might be interested to know what the Pentagon is doing to improve the United States' image in the Islamic world. Well, I'll tell you. It has taken out a $400,000 contract with Madison Avenue public relations firm The Rendon Group in an effort to help it "orient to the challenge of communication to a wide range of groups around the world". In addition, former advertising executive Charlotte Beers has been apointed to the post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, a position she qualifies for because of her previous work promoting such products as Head & Shoulders shampoo.

Read about it in Propaganda Wars.

Well, its comforting to know that we'll be winning friends in Central Asia by showing professionally produced TV commercials depicting friendly Americans in between the news reports of mutilated and starving Afghani children.

If you, like myself, feel that something is wrong with America these days, or with whatever country you find yourself in, speak out about it.

In this troubled times, speaking openly to inform others of injustice or to protest may result in a backlash against you from government officials or others. Please read this speech on the importance of speaking your mind. Have courage - it is only by having the courage to speak and to work against injustice that we can prevent it from getting a lot worse.

Among the ways you can speak out

• Participate in online communities
• Send email to people you know
• Write web pages like this one and post the URL around
• Write letters to the editors of your local newspapers
• Staple leaflets to bulletin boards in your community
• Pass out leaflets in public places
• Call in to talk radio shows

Secondly, participate in what we have left of the democratic process. Our government has at least the appearance of having been elected, and the easiest way to make a change is to vote out the ones who have brought this upon us.

• Volunteer for political candidates you believe in
• Get a bunch of voter registration cards and stand in a public place to register voters
• Donate money to political candidates and parties who respect civil liberties
• Vote
• Write letters to your elected representatives. While you can send email, Congress gets so much spam that they pretty much ignore email these days. Instead, you can find your Congressperson's postal address at www.congress.org - write them a paper letter.

Use encryption to protect your privacy. Please read my page Why You Should Use Encryption as well as my letter Protect Your Rights with Encryption.

You can get encryption software for free - you can use either Pretty Good Privacy or The GNU Privacy Guard. Both offer excellent, military strength protection of your data, and the source code to each is freely available so that programmers are able to inspect it for security defects and back doors.

Teach the people you correspond with to use encryption.

Teach people who work for political change to use encryption. If you don't think political candidates and their staff need to use encryption, you're too young to remember Nixon's Plumbers getting caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel to wiretap the Democratic National Committe.

Join organizations that work to protect civil liberties. Among these are:

• The American Civil Liberties Union - Join Here
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation - Join Here - the EFF works to protect our civil liberties in the online world, including working to ensure that the work of computer programmers is protected as free speech under the First Amendment, thereby ensuring you access to software that guards your security and privacy.
• The Center for Democracy and Technology - Get Involved - working "to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age"
• The Electronic Privacy Information Center - Donate Here - "established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.

One might think, and one certainly hopes, that the ultimate safeguard against these threats to our civil liberties lies with the Supreme Court of the United States. But I am not so certain myself. The Supreme Court has ruled against the dictates of law and the Constitution during other troubled periods in our nation's history.

And we should remember that the current President received a minority of the popular vote and was only declared to have a majority of the Electoral Vote after an obviously politically motivated ruling by the Supreme Court, a decision that has few pretenses of being based on the rule of law. Even had all the ballots been counted, enough Black Florida citizens were prevented from going to the polls that the election would clearly have gone for Gore had they been allowed to exercise their right to vote.

As said in the dissenting opinion by Justices Stevens, Ginsberg and Breyer in Bush v. Gore (note - this is an Adobe Acrobat document):

What must underlie petitioners' (nb. - George W. Bush') entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

We must work together to restore the rule of law in our country - or we shall surely suffer for it. If you do not agree that Fascism can arise in the United States, take heed of the fact that Adolf Hitler was elected as the leader of his country too.

November 12, 2001

By contrast this is a secret database, used only by the police for surviellance purposes.

And that's precisely what's so creepy about this. Of course, all police are incorruptible, and no policeman would EVER abuse law enforcement databases.

For what it's worth, the spammers's personal EMail address is available.

Hypothetically, one could let Jim know just how much we despise he and his ilk. One also wonders if the @home mail server could possibly handle a Slashdotting.

Of course, we're all far too couth to do such a thing to him.

Declan McCullagh's Politech has a post with a reply from the spammer. In it, he says "Therefore,
consequential and more severe actions will now be initiated and followed through to conclusion. An acceptable conclusion is no longer a removal of the Web page."

Want some cheese with that whine?

The RIAA's approach to Gnutella thus far has been actively discovering copyright offenders and sending DMCA complaints to their ISP

I was a bit worried about this so I did some research. The only case of someone actually losing access was covered in an article on Salon. News.com reported about pressure on ISPs, but mentioned only one subscriber being cut off.

I checked the dslreports message boards expecting to find howls of protests by those cut off from their monopoly broadband providers. Silence....

I think the RIAA and MPAA are doing a great job at scaring people away from file sharing without actually paying many bounty hunters because the idea of a secret copyright police force is so juicy.

Similarly, there seems to be hysteria about people being denied boarding on aircraft for being dissidents. The Bangor, Maine Green Party member turns out to have been pretty uncooperative. Yes, the guard was an overbearing oaf, but she admits to provoking him in an interview . The Green's press release doesn't mention any of this.

The guy detained in Germany for having "unconventional" views and the guy denied flying for having a copy of Hayduke Lives look like the result of hysterical untrained guards, not a plot to deny everyone's civil rights. More hysteria won't help.

The guy who was harassed for taking pictures of National Guardsmen at a security checkpoint probably should have asked first (it's supposedly not illegal, but photography at customs is so he should have thought a bit), but he was another victim of a freakazoid with a chip on his shoulder.

I don't think we should have to turn into loyal plastic robots, but I'm not going to wear my Circumvention Device t-shirt through airport security. No need to get the wheels of teeny minds spinning.

There's certainly an epidemic of ineptitude (that's not new since Sept. 11), but I don't believe there's an epidemic of harrassment. Likewise of ISPs and their customers.

This is from Declan McCullagh's
Politech mailing list:

"Nine states (NY, Michigan, Ohio, NC, Kentucky, Louisana, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin) have settled with Microsoft and agreed to a modified version -- details to come -- of the DOJ's agreement inked last week."

Foo. I'm not surprised, considering Jim Doyle... I've been less and less impressed with him following 11 September. I definitely do not support his gubernatorial race now!

They're still supporting the SSSCA

Policy can often be even more powerful than law. See
Ashcroft policy . Ashcroft tells agencies to resist claims for use of 1st amendment. He will provide all the legal power to slow down, resist, obstruct claims.

And that rules out most Free software, right from the start.

Well, it would if your definition of a digital device includes software. Luckily, mine doesn't.

Unfortunately for you, the SSSCA text, does define it that way, in section 109(3).

He hopes for public debate? We already know there won't be.

woof.

This is slightly on topic; it's something that made me laugh and I'm reminded of it anytime I hear of this subject. The short description; a response on Declan's politechbot to "Citizens Against Government Waste", an MS-funded 'grassroots organization' (pfft), from Roblimo. He made an observation that's been made before; that the Government would save a lot of money if they weren't paying for Windows licenses. I'd just never imagined it could be made at such a perfect moment, to such a perfect audience as a farcical group of Washington watchdogs who claim that their struggle for an end to the MS antitrust case is only part of their desire to combat Government waste. And of course the icing on the cake is that CAGW never replied. Anyway, here's CAGW's original press release and here's Roblimo's response.

This is slightly on topic; it's something that made me laugh and I'm reminded of it anytime I hear of this subject. The short description; a response on Declan's politechbot to "Citizens Against Government Waste", an MS-funded 'grassroots organization' (pfft), from Roblimo. He made an observation that's been made before; that the Government would save a lot of money if they weren't paying for Windows licenses. I'd just never imagined it could be made at such a perfect moment, to such a perfect audience as a farcical group of Washington watchdogs who claim that their struggle for an end to the MS antitrust case is only part of their desire to combat Government waste. And of course the icing on the cake is that CAGW never replied. Anyway, here's CAGW's original press release and here's Roblimo's response.

This is slightly on topic; it's something that made me laugh and I'm reminded of it anytime I hear of this subject. The short description; a response on Declan's politechbot to "Citizens Against Government Waste", an MS-funded 'grassroots organization' (pfft), from Roblimo. He made an observation that's been made before; that the Government would save a lot of money if they weren't paying for Windows licenses. I'd just never imagined it could be made at such a perfect moment, to such a perfect audience as a farcical group of Washington watchdogs who claim that their struggle for an end to the MS antitrust case is only part of their desire to combat Government waste. And of course the icing on the cake is that CAGW never replied. Anyway, here's CAGW's original press release and here's Roblimo's response.

One reason it is still an issue is because smart people like Bruce Schneier say that it won't work.

As for abusing these systems, the police can and will do it. Cops all over Michigan have been busted for using their databases to stalk women. And don't think this is limited to Michigan, there are good cops and bad cops in every state.

Video surveillance a "threat" to privacy

Please read the above, especially if you are for video surveillance.

Could someone be sent to jail for doing nothing more than browsing a web-page?

Highly unlikely. The district attorney pointed out a defense in a press release in response to public concern about the case:
A suspect's intent, the amount of loss occasioned by the behavior, and the context of the alleged offense are among many factors that are within the scope of the investigation and weighed in such prosecutorial decisions. Only after all these standards and issues have been considered would the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma prosecute an individual for a criminal offense.

Federal DAs are reluctant to prosecute unless there is a high probability of conviction and a low probability of reversal on appeal.

it seems like cops are getting overzealous in prosecuting tech "crimes"

Mostly one sees complaints about the light sentences hacker receive when the putative damages are in the $billions. These sentences can hardly be an incentive for police to pursue what you call "tech crimes".

Log files of virtually any Web servers will indicate thousands of attempts at hacking. In terms of sheer quantity it must be the most common crime by far. I'd like to see a little more zealousness in pursuing these jerks.

There are some internet users who are concerned about the loss of the use of certain arcane privlages like the use of certain types of cryptography but most Americans won't be concerned with this.

I decided to write my congresswoman, Tammy Baldwin, about this issue. If anyone want's to do the same but needs inspiration, here's my letter. It's far from perfect, and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone, but it expresses how I and probably most of you feel, and explains the basic issue. Feel free to rip it off or offer improvements.

Tammy Baldwin,

I've been reading on internet news sites such as Slashdot and Wired about the pending introduction of a bill known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, or SSSCA. It scares me. This bill requires all interactive computer systems -- PCs, palmtops, possibly even VCRs -- to include certified security technologies, under penalty of law. Major backers of this bill include Sen. Fritz Hollings and the entertainment industry, which coincidentally is a major campaign supporter of Sen. Hollings.
I am a student at Madison West High School, and laws such as these, which overstep the bounds of the constitution and interfere with citizen's rights merely to advance the cause of the media industry frankly, well, scare the shit out of me. It's disturbing to imagine a future where restrictions such as the one's included in the SSSCA are considered commonplace.
Therefore, I ask you, as a citizen who will be voting in the next congressional election, to look into this issue and realize what it's effects might be, before it has a chance to get out of hand on the floor. Laws such as the SSSCA simply serve no purpose other than to restrict the rights of consumers in order to make it easier for media conglomerates to control exactly how their content is used.
I fear that although I may have succeeded in expressing my opinion to you, I have not succeeded in expressing the scope of the SSSCA in terms a congresswoman who doesn't intimately understand information technology can comprehend. I have therefore included links to articles which describe the potential effects of the SSSCA better than I did. Please read them and understand the evil of this law.

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/09/20/2 047211

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46655,00 .html

A current draft of the bill

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.
Sincerely,
Joseph Kohl-Riggs

For those too lazy to check the link, highlights are:

Attack suspected terrorists like bin Laden even if we're not sure they're responsible for last week's attack?
Favor: 54%
Oppose: 40%

Attack terrorist bases and countries that support them even if there is a high likelihood for civilian casualties?
Favor: 71%
Oppose: 21%

Fav/Unfav Ratings ----Fav---- ---Unfav---
Very Mostly Mostly Very
Military 58% 36% 2% 2%
FBI 37 48 9 3
CIA 28 44 9 6

How Confident That National And Local Law Enforcement Can Stop Terrorist Plots In The U.S.?

Very: 32%
Somewhat: 42%
Not Too Confident: 17%
Not At All: 7%

How Much Would The Following Prevent Similar Terrorist Attacks?

Reduce encryption to aid CIA/FBI.

Very Much: 35%
Somewhat: 37%
Not Much: 12%
Not at All: 9%

Should Encryption Laws Be Reduced To Aid CIA/FBI Surveillance?

Yes: 54%
No: 39%

U.S. Put Arabs and Arab-Americans Under Special Surveillance?

Agree: 32%
Disagree: 62%

The poll is elucidate here:

http://www.politechbot.com/p-02530.html

The poll was taken almost immediately after the attacks so it is right up there with the knee-jerk reaction of Congress. A poll taken next Wednesday, if nothing happens between now and then, would probably be more informative of actual (non-reactionary) public opion about this topic.

The Enduring Power of Stupidity

During the past five days I have read many essays. To me, all of them have missed a fundamental underlying point.

There are two basic forces in the world: Intelligence and stupidity. Human intelligence generally is creative, and has the potential to enhance our lives. Stupidity almost always is destructive.

A month ago, the power of stupidity was demonstrated on a routine basis when our president made an "ethical decision" that scientists should destroy small clumps of human cells by throwing them away, instead of using them in research to eradicate terrible diseases. This stupidity was justified by misinterpreting an archaic book of primitive myths.

During the half-century that I have been alive, I've seen many similar examples of stupidity depriving us of the fruits of intelligence. Random examples include the misapplication of Marxism, the Vietnam war, the cold war, dismantling the US manned space program, eco-alarmism, and the war on drugs.

No doubt every person has some favorite examples to add to this list.

At the dawn of the 21st century, when Y2K was averted by a lot of smart people doing intelligent things to prevent the paralysis of modern society, I started to hope that intelligence was finally gaining an edge over stupidity. Here I am now, using a digital computer that not only facilitates my creativity as a writer, but also revolutionizes my ability to create music, videos, or graphics. Its connectivity has changed my entire working and social life. Its power has been almost totally beneficial, and it promises still greater benefits in the future.

Computational molecular biology has the potential to eradicate all hunger and disease. Ultimately computational power should enable us to manipulate matter itself, enabling a new era of unlimited wealth while eliminating side effects such as pollution and global warming. We may also defeat death: I may die, but I believe my daughter has a chance to achieve biological immortality.

At least, I used to believe this, until last Tuesday. On Tuesday I saw that stupidity still trumps intelligence. Those hijacked airplanes were an amazing feat of intelligent engineering, making the miracle of flight not only safe but universally accessible. The World Trade Center was a brilliantly innovative piece of architecture. Yet a handful of thugs armed with box cutters destroyed those fruits of intelligence within a few hours. The thugs, of course, were acting in accordance with their stupid misinterpretation of yet another archaic book of primitive myths.

Regulatory stupidity facilitated the terrorist acts. According to the Washington Post, FAA regulations have always permitted knives up to 4 inches long on domestic flights, and all cockpit doors on all airplanes can be opened with the same master key. In any case, the doors are flimsy enough to be kicked open. At least 14 times since 1998, drunk or disturbed passengers have tried to force their way into airplane cockpits. They succeeded on 6 occasions. In 1999, a passenger on All Nippon Airways fatally stabbed a pilot.

Thus, this country has pursued an aggressive, punitive foreign policy that was guaranteed to create enemies, yet took only cosmetic steps to protect its own citizens in a situation of notorious vulnerability. Worse, in the future, passengers will remain vulnerable (instead of being allowed access to tools of nonlethal self-defense such as tasers), while the foreign policy will become more aggressive, thus creating still more enemies.

I'm old enough to remember how the unfettered, turbulent creativity of the 1960s dissipated in the ugly stupidities of a war in southeast Asia. I fear now that the incredible technological creativity of the past decade may be derailed by some equally stupid, unwinnable war in another remote, hostile country, causing socioeconomic chaos at home.

I feel a great, overwhelming melancholy. The wonderful smart innovations in the past decade have empowered us in so many ways, yet we are still impotent compared with the techno- illiterates who claim a mandate to act stupidly on our behalf.

The terrorists with box cutters, and the militants in the U.S. government, share two traits. They exercise power indiscriminately, and show no great love for technology. In fact, I believe they are hostile to it because they see how its intelligence threatens them.

Their fear is justified. In the long term, I still believe that technology will eclipse dumb political power and render it obsolete.

Alas, I no longer believe that I will see this happen within my lifetime.

--Charles Platt

Sun, 16 Sep 2001

_ _ _ _
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/

The Enduring Power of Stupidity

During the past five days I have read many essays. To me, all of them have missed a fundamental underlying point.

There are two basic forces in the world: Intelligence and stupidity. Human intelligence generally is creative, and has the potential to enhance our lives. Stupidity almost always is destructive.

A month ago, the power of stupidity was demonstrated on a routine basis when our president made an "ethical decision" that scientists should destroy small clumps of human cells by throwing them away, instead of using them in research to eradicate terrible diseases. This stupidity was justified by misinterpreting an archaic book of primitive myths.

During the half-century that I have been alive, I've seen many similar examples of stupidity depriving us of the fruits of intelligence. Random examples include the misapplication of Marxism, the Vietnam war, the cold war, dismantling the US manned space program, eco-alarmism, and the war on drugs.

No doubt every person has some favorite examples to add to this list.

At the dawn of the 21st century, when Y2K was averted by a lot of smart people doing intelligent things to prevent the paralysis of modern society, I started to hope that intelligence was finally gaining an edge over stupidity. Here I am now, using a digital computer that not only facilitates my creativity as a writer, but also revolutionizes my ability to create music, videos, or graphics. Its connectivity has changed my entire working and social life. Its power has been almost totally beneficial, and it promises still greater benefits in the future.

Computational molecular biology has the potential to eradicate all hunger and disease. Ultimately computational power should enable us to manipulate matter itself, enabling a new era of unlimited wealth while eliminating side effects such as pollution and global warming. We may also defeat death: I may die, but I believe my daughter has a chance to achieve biological immortality.

At least, I used to believe this, until last Tuesday. On Tuesday I saw that stupidity still trumps intelligence. Those hijacked airplanes were an amazing feat of intelligent engineering, making the miracle of flight not only safe but universally accessible. The World Trade Center was a brilliantly innovative piece of architecture. Yet a handful of thugs armed with box cutters destroyed those fruits of intelligence within a few hours. The thugs, of course, were acting in accordance with their stupid misinterpretation of yet another archaic book of primitive myths.

Regulatory stupidity facilitated the terrorist acts. According to the Washington Post, FAA regulations have always permitted knives up to 4 inches long on domestic flights, and all cockpit doors on all airplanes can be opened with the same master key. In any case, the doors are flimsy enough to be kicked open. At least 14 times since 1998, drunk or disturbed passengers have tried to force their way into airplane cockpits. They succeeded on 6 occasions. In 1999, a passenger on All Nippon Airways fatally stabbed a pilot.

Thus, this country has pursued an aggressive, punitive foreign policy that was guaranteed to create enemies, yet took only cosmetic steps to protect its own citizens in a situation of notorious vulnerability. Worse, in the future, passengers will remain vulnerable (instead of being allowed access to tools of nonlethal self-defense such as tasers), while the foreign policy will become more aggressive, thus creating still more enemies.

I'm old enough to remember how the unfettered, turbulent creativity of the 1960s dissipated in the ugly stupidities of a war in southeast Asia. I fear now that the incredible technological creativity of the past decade may be derailed by some equally stupid, unwinnable war in another remote, hostile country, causing socioeconomic chaos at home.

I feel a great, overwhelming melancholy. The wonderful smart innovations in the past decade have empowered us in so many ways, yet we are still impotent compared with the techno- illiterates who claim a mandate to act stupidly on our behalf.

The terrorists with box cutters, and the militants in the U.S. government, share two traits. They exercise power indiscriminately, and show no great love for technology. In fact, I believe they are hostile to it because they see how its intelligence threatens them.

Their fear is justified. In the long term, I still believe that technology will eclipse dumb political power and render it obsolete.

Alas, I no longer believe that I will see this happen within my lifetime.

--Charles Platt

Sun, 16 Sep 2001

_ _ _ _
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/

The Enduring Power of Stupidity

During the past five days I have read many essays. To me, all of them have missed a fundamental underlying point.

There are two basic forces in the world: Intelligence and stupidity. Human intelligence generally is creative, and has the potential to enhance our lives. Stupidity almost always is destructive.

A month ago, the power of stupidity was demonstrated on a routine basis when our president made an "ethical decision" that scientists should destroy small clumps of human cells by throwing them away, instead of using them in research to eradicate terrible diseases. This stupidity was justified by misinterpreting an archaic book of primitive myths.

During the half-century that I have been alive, I've seen many similar examples of stupidity depriving us of the fruits of intelligence. Random examples include the misapplication of Marxism, the Vietnam war, the cold war, dismantling the US manned space program, eco-alarmism, and the war on drugs.

No doubt every person has some favorite examples to add to this list.

At the dawn of the 21st century, when Y2K was averted by a lot of smart people doing intelligent things to prevent the paralysis of modern society, I started to hope that intelligence was finally gaining an edge over stupidity. Here I am now, using a digital computer that not only facilitates my creativity as a writer, but also revolutionizes my ability to create music, videos, or graphics. Its connectivity has changed my entire working and social life. Its power has been almost totally beneficial, and it promises still greater benefits in the future.

Computational molecular biology has the potential to eradicate all hunger and disease. Ultimately computational power should enable us to manipulate matter itself, enabling a new era of unlimited wealth while eliminating side effects such as pollution and global warming. We may also defeat death: I may die, but I believe my daughter has a chance to achieve biological immortality.

At least, I used to believe this, until last Tuesday. On Tuesday I saw that stupidity still trumps intelligence. Those hijacked airplanes were an amazing feat of intelligent engineering, making the miracle of flight not only safe but universally accessible. The World Trade Center was a brilliantly innovative piece of architecture. Yet a handful of thugs armed with box cutters destroyed those fruits of intelligence within a few hours. The thugs, of course, were acting in accordance with their stupid misinterpretation of yet another archaic book of primitive myths.

Regulatory stupidity facilitated the terrorist acts. According to the Washington Post, FAA regulations have always permitted knives up to 4 inches long on domestic flights, and all cockpit doors on all airplanes can be opened with the same master key. In any case, the doors are flimsy enough to be kicked open. At least 14 times since 1998, drunk or disturbed passengers have tried to force their way into airplane cockpits. They succeeded on 6 occasions. In 1999, a passenger on All Nippon Airways fatally stabbed a pilot.

Thus, this country has pursued an aggressive, punitive foreign policy that was guaranteed to create enemies, yet took only cosmetic steps to protect its own citizens in a situation of notorious vulnerability. Worse, in the future, passengers will remain vulnerable (instead of being allowed access to tools of nonlethal self-defense such as tasers), while the foreign policy will become more aggressive, thus creating still more enemies.

I'm old enough to remember how the unfettered, turbulent creativity of the 1960s dissipated in the ugly stupidities of a war in southeast Asia. I fear now that the incredible technological creativity of the past decade may be derailed by some equally stupid, unwinnable war in another remote, hostile country, causing socioeconomic chaos at home.

I feel a great, overwhelming melancholy. The wonderful smart innovations in the past decade have empowered us in so many ways, yet we are still impotent compared with the techno- illiterates who claim a mandate to act stupidly on our behalf.

The terrorists with box cutters, and the militants in the U.S. government, share two traits. They exercise power indiscriminately, and show no great love for technology. In fact, I believe they are hostile to it because they see how its intelligence threatens them.

Their fear is justified. In the long term, I still believe that technology will eclipse dumb political power and render it obsolete.

Alas, I no longer believe that I will see this happen within my lifetime.

--Charles Platt

Sun, 16 Sep 2001

_ _ _ _
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/

I'll even give you a hint (sec.832) about how the law will now apply to electronic communications -- that is, the Net.

Excerpts:

The order shall, upon service of the order, apply to any entity providing wire or electronic communication service in the United States whose assistance is required to effectuate the order...
(2) by inserting ``, routing, addressing,'' after ``dialing'... (3) by striking ``call processing'' and inserting ``the processing and transmitting of wire and electronic communications''.

If you look at sec.832, you'll see it amends the U.S. Code to include electronic communications such as the Internet. Before it was just wire communications. The Wired article is right, and even underplays how dangerous this is.

Sen. Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Levin (D-MI) are the only ones asking for restraint and thought before bulling forward with this amendment to the Commerce, State and Justice appropriations bill (which is sure to pass).

SSSCA Resources:
Wired Article
Slashdot Discussion
kuro5hin Discussion
Text of SSSCA
Additional Information Regarding Implications of SSSCA at politechbot.com

SSSCA Resources:
Wired Article
Slashdot Discussion
kuro5hin Discussion
Text of SSSCA
Additional Information Regarding Implications of SSSCA at politechbot.com

This seems a little suspicious to me - from what I've heard, most of the wireless providers are well on their way to providing the federally-mandated wiretapping access. They can't be very far off from completing the technical setup that is involved. It seems like the Feds are useing the missed deadline (which really was an artificial deadline anyway) as a convenient excuse to expand their wiretapping powers. It's not like there were crimes that just had to be wiretapped on September 30; as long as the wireless carriers get things rolled out reasonably soon I don't see how the government could legitimately complain.

And yes, anyone can tap wireless, but the issue is what can be used in court. If the government is sucking in more information, then there's more of a chance that a bad judge somewhere can be found who will let unrelated intercepted information into evidence.

Of course, since you have no privacy right on a land-line phone either, maybe Carnivore isn't such a big deal either :)

However their ecelon archives of private person to person mails would probably be _much_ more interesting to read!

There was an interesting post about this on the Politech list, which includes a response from Elias Levy (the guy who runs BUGTRAQ).

There was an interesting post about this on the Politech list, which includes a response from Elias Levy (the guy who runs BUGTRAQ).

Personally I'm hoping this problem will solve itself as technology progresses, and the cost of running a site like SA is about what you would pay for your internet service. Because the only alternative is a situation where advertisements are as unavoidable as TV commercials, and the survival of content creators like Lowtax depends not on their own talent, but on the support of a for-profit business. The internet would become a medium for more of the same; MSNBC and such. Content would be 'altered' so as to not offend the parent company. Small, competing sites, with actual integrity, would be bought out by the bigger fish. The only alternative would be to go into debt trying to pay for an increasingly popular site that's been boycotted by the major conglomerates and their advertisers. Any remaining hope for the survival of unfiltered, untainted information online would be snuffed out when it tried to compete with the government-subsidized mainstream.

According to Politech, a funding bill in the Senate is pending to give the FBI $7Million to thwart encryption, including "analysis/exploitation of systems to allow access to data pre-encryption".

Guess they want to keep doing this.

We are no longer the land of the free. For your own safety, stay out.

Horseshit. Few other countries have legal precedents and a bill of rights as strong as ours. The DMCA and related court decisions are pretty sorry pieces of work that fly in the face of established precedent- as Touretsky points out. I doubt much of the current nonsense would survive a Supreme Court challenge, even with the current collection of sociopaths on the bench.

Just get a fucking clue and take a look elsewhere in the world. Say, Russia, where a former KGB thug became president and is trying to suppress independent media (makes W. look stellar). Or Italy, where journalists, online or not, must be "registered" and regulated. Or France, which forces US sites to tailor their content for French IP addresses. Or the Third World, where US companies- freed from our watchful government and Constitution- have dissidents murdered (Nigeria) or ethnic minorities massacred (Myanmar) by the local despots to pave the way for new pipelines. Or China, where you can get shot in the head and harvested for organs for - guess what?- tax evasion.

I'll admit the US record on civil rights and liberties is spotty at best. In few cases, however, has the moral high ground failed to win. An innocent black man beaten by police nearly 40 years ago is now a congressman. Pornography is legally protected in most cases. Sure, the corpos would eat us alive if they could, and the Right is pushing filtering in libraries, prayer in schools, and closeting of gays. I'm confident none of this will last long enough to do real damage- can't say I'd feel so great about Europe in similar cases.

The DMCA should of course piss everyone off. It's hardly on par with, say, Jim Crow, sedition laws, local theocracies, internment camps, etc., all of which our country has suffered through and survived with stronger freedoms. So pull your head out of your ass, read some history and world news, and be very thankful you live in a country where you can wail about the DMCA all you want.

-Nat

No, it was attributed.

No, the person who made the original post to this thread did not indicate that he had copied a post by Mr. Hamrick. He did not, in fact, mention Mr. Hamrick's name at all. Instead, a helpful anonymous poster replied to me, and attributed the source of the original post to Mr. Hamrick.

The original poster did not attribute the source of his materials.

In fact, Declan McCullagh, the well-known Wired magazine reporter, has written about just this subject.

Yes. Although it is a very interesting article, it does not claim that Mr. Sklyarov is held in solitary confinement, or that the Russian embassy has been denied access to him.

Before my original reply to the thread root, I did search the net, I read the article the original poster linked to at cryptonomicon, and I read the EFF press release, the DOJ press release, and the AP story linked to by the cryptonomicon story. None gave any indication that Mr. Sklyarov is being held in solitary confinement, or that the Russian embassy has been denied access to him.

Look, what is happening to Mr. Sklyarov is bad. The DMCA is bad. We must fight these things, and make it our goal to get him released, and get the onerous parts of the DMCA struck down. But the contents of the original post in this thread are nothing more than wholly unverified rumors. Nothing is gained by ranting in these forums about unverified rumors. Calling the US State Department and ranting about unverified rumors about the treatment of Mr. Sklyarov can only be detrimental to our goal.

Please, people -- when talking to others about this, please be very clear in your mind what is verified fact, and what is unverified rumor. And remember, the facts in this case stand as testament on their own.

Yet I saw this interesting item on Declan's Politech list some weeks ago: Police raid video stores in Sweden for selling -- imported DVDs Any idea about how this ended?

US residents that don't work in law enforcement are now 2nd class citizens. Whether FBI, IRS, local police, or other, the 'commoners' are prohibited from criticizing you, identifying you to the public, or recording your actions in the same public areas that you record theirs.

US residents that don't work in law enforcement are now 2nd class citizens. Whether FBI, IRS, local police, or other, the 'commoners' are prohibited from criticizing you, identifying you to the public, or recording your actions in the same public areas that you record theirs.

Well, my opinion is based on the EFF legal team's response to 'Barney's lawyers' which shot down their trademark case by defending it as parody also. And for the other genius who responded, it also discusses why criticizing a product with the intent of reducing it's sales is also not illegal. God forbid someone tell people that a product sucks.

You suspect a hoax? Why do you suspect a hoax? because you suspect a hoax? No, you need to provide evidence and reasons. But you haven't. As to why you've had your garabage post upgraded, that might be because scientologists have in fact infiltrated the Slashdot moderation system.

Was it self-promotion for Keith Henson when he was sentenced to jail for criticizing scientologists? Was it self-promotion for Keith Henson when he made posts critical of scientologists on a usenet group? Was it self-promotion for Keith Henson when he was arrested at gunpoint by a heavily-armed "fugitive team" in Canada because scientologists lied to the police and said he there was a dangerous man in their midsts?

I wonder what manner of man you are fm6.

When Declan sent this news to the politech list he cced a verisign contact asking if the list was to be released.

Text URL to the politech post: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02060.html

"Canada might be a kind country with a kind government, but not so kind as to jeopardise its relations with the US for Keith's sake by declaring the US a country that does not respect human rights, which is exactly what a country does when it grants asylum to the citizen of another country."

People at EFC have been seeking help for countries with restrictions on what they can and can't see so this would be a plus to them. (view their email on this)

What will be nice to see is how governments and corporations will respond to this, concerning piracy, patent violations, the typical bullshit we've seen for the past few weeks.

Funny I posted this on my site days ago ;P

Privacy links

Its not Linux related but you may find it interesting. lazy mans link

Read about the cartoon here... http://www.politechbot.com/p-01202.html& lt;/a>

This site clearly shows that Dogbert invented this ages ago, and his patent has already been granted :-)