Slashdot Mirror
Human Rights and Echelon
Anonymous Coward writes "Proposals for a new definition of human rights now before the European Parliament, writes Duncan Campbell in Telepolis, would ban ECHELON and update data protection rules to latest developments in telecommunications technology." Compare and contrast to the United States, where the only legislative proposals before Congress are to increase government spying on the citizenry. Hey, the FBI says "If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI." What more is there to say?
"If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI."
What's more is that when you only print one line from any source without the surrounding quote, you completely take the quote out of context and nine times out of ten misquote the person. This is what in the news world is called "bad journalism" and it has become a hallmark of YRO reporting on Slashdot (that's right, hallmark, like the standard identifying trait, like the one thing that discredits YRO more than anything else, including the paranoid posters).
What Paul George, the FBI guy, was saying is that everyone knows the FBI could be the Big Brother which is why they're regulated so tightly to prevent something like that from ever happening. He was making a point about how the FBI is being suffocated, prevented by law from being able to do its job, which is monitoring criminal activity, effectively because people are so paranoid that it could be them being monitored. You may not trust your government, but I trust mine, and frankly, I'm happy that someone out there is doing this because it's too damn easy for people to wreak havoc in this world. Trust me, the FBI can do it a lot better than a group put together by Slashdot ever could.
So what more is there to say? Try telling the whole story instead of just one line of it. Then maybe people can make informed, rational decisions instead of the irrational paranoia we see in YRO every other day.
Here's what another article had to say about that same quote. It looks to me as though George himself wasn't the one who talked about the privacy rules. Looks more to me like he was advocating Big Brother. He says "information needs to be collected... if justified," never mind that the FBI would like to justify any "information gathering" it can get away with, as evidenced by many of its recent technology-related actiona and proposals. Recently, to give one example, it tried to persuade Congress to give it the ability to wiretap anyone, at will, without a warrant to do so.
And yeah, the CIA can't legally spy on US citizens. So what? The US government and the various pieces thereof do illegal things every day. I very much doubt the CIA is any different; they're just better at hiding it.
I'm no patriot. There are a lot of things the US has done that I don't approve of. Hell, in recent years I don't approve opf most of the stuff the US government has done.
But every once in a while a truly insipid diatribe comes out, blindly attacking the US without knowing a damn thing. This is one of them.
I'm sick of them trying to make macho posturings about their military on the world stage, whilst not commiting a single soldier in Kosovo.
Strange; I see more than a few soldiers there.
I'm sick of their "moral" centre, whilst at the same time their Red Cross "missionaries" disrupt the lifestyles of villages across SE Asia which had been happy for hundreds of years.
Um... the Red Cross doesn't do that. It isn't even a religious organization; it's a medical one. You're thinking of that other kind of cross. I'm sick of those myself, but at least I have some idea of what I'm talking about.
I'm sick of the US and it's stupid lawsuits - the latest being the woman suing Nike for tripping over her shoelaces.
I haven't heard about this one yet. But I have to agree; the frivolous lawsuits here are way out of control.
I'm sick of the US way of spelling things, and then trying to claim that it's England that are spelling it wrong.
Well, guess what. I'm sick of the British way of spelling things, and then trying to claim it's the US that spells it wrong. They're two different dialects, and within themselves, they're both right. Deal with it.
I'm sick of the US claiming it is the greatest nation on Earth, when any number of other countries could in reality nuke the fuck out of it.
Do you really think a nation's greatness can be measured by its nuclear arsenal? I should add that any arsenal large enough to "nuke the fuck out of the US" would very likely destroy the rest of the world in the process. What, pray tell, is so great about that?
And I'm fucking sick of the US proclaiming that they are the only nation who are "free", when they know nothing about any other country in the world, and precious little about their own.
Here, it depends on your point of view. In one way, the US is actually right in this regard. Read the laws of most nations. To give you one example, take the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 10. It says all people have the right to free speech. The Canadian Charter on is another example, and says, again, that Canadian citizens have the right to free speech. Look, though, at the US Constitution. It doesn't say this. Rather, it says that the government is forbidden to take away the right to free speech. The difference is extremely important; a law can be repealed, thus revoking the right to free speech, but if the government's forbidden to take away free speech then there's nothing it can do. That's the difference; other governments grant freedoms; the US Constitution guarantees them. And there is a school of thought, one with which I happen to agree, that freedom which is not guaranteed is not freedom at all.
And yes, I know the government has been ignoring a good deal of the Constitution in recent years. Eventually that will catch up to it; even the US government can't run from responsibility forever. I don't know how it'll happen, but eventially it will. I certainly hope it comes in the form of something as peaceful as a major legal smackdown from the Supreme Court (the only US court whose job is to actually do justice, rather than simply interpret existing law), simply because that way causes the least suffering for people.
And what defines 'arouse suspicion'? Whose definitions are we going by? Do your political views warrant monitoring? The FBI thought that Albert Einstein's did...
Albert Eienstein's FBI files, recently released under the FOIA
If you have no reason for the FBI to pay attention to you, they won't.
This is similar to the arguement that "You wouldn't use encryption unless you had something to hide..."
Just because I have nothing to hide doesn't mean that I enjoy being watched...
-jerdenn
Recently, I started a small SourceForge project (erm... my project's not much yet, I'll talk about it more later...), and to administer the project, I finally had to get around to downloading OpenSSH ( the Linux Port ), and felt a strange feeling as I watched it compile... the thrill of the would-be forbidden... that which the Powers-That-Be fought tooth and nail to supress.
Finally, after logging into SourceForge with SSH, a profound realization hit me: no third party can intercept my communications. Even if they did, it'd all be gobbledlygook to them. I laughed. True privacy, the most wonderful feeling in the (online) world...
After that, I can't wait until strong encryption becomes ubiquitously integrated into all communications software, (and all new Linux distributions! ;-).
The day when every person can communicate freely, without being spied upon from above, or snooped on from below, will be the greatest day in a very long time.
And don't give me that crap about "criminals" using it to coordinate terrorism. Any serious organized criminal or terror group in all probability has strong crypto, as well as countless other safeguards. Although, I'm not an authority on the subject. (Like Nixon, IANAC ;-)
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Some memorable similar sentiments in the past:
"Rule number four: no cheating!"
-- Merlin, Disney's Sword in the Stone
"The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another."
-- Article I, the Kellog-Briand Pact of 1928, outlawing War.
"Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an equilateral rectangle is to the square on one side. "
-- A bill introduced in Indiana c. 1897
"Your actions are illegal!"
-- Anonymous British officer, c. 1776
Thinking they have some God-given right to stick their noses into the rest of the world's business.
There is some truth in this. The USA has been laying mines in harbors in Nicaragua in the '80s, clearly an act of war. Americans feel they are justified to do this kind of stuff, because "we're the good guys", and "who's gonna do anything about it?"
The invasion of Grenada is another example. You don't have the right to invade another country just because you don't like their internal politics (it would be a different story if gross crimes against humanity were committed, but that was clearly not the case here).
As despicable as Noriega is, the invasion of Panama also left a bit of a strange taste in my mouth. Apparently you can just invade another country to arrest someone. Never mind about innocent until proven guilty.
I'm sick of them trying to make macho posturings about their military on the world stage, whilst not commiting a single soldier in Kosovo.
That's not entirely correct, I think. Also, I don't completely disagree with the argument that Europe has the first responsibility here.
I'm sick of their "moral" centre, whilst at the same time their Red Cross "missionaries" disrupt the lifestyles of villages across SE Asia which had been happy for hundreds of years.
I thought the Red Cross was a Swiss organization originally. Anyway, you can't credit/blame the US for what the Red Cross is doing.
I'm sick of the US and it's stupid lawsuits - the latest being the woman suing Nike for tripping over her shoelaces.
True, it's stupid, but it generally doesn't bother people outside of the US.
I'm sick of the US way of spelling things, and then trying to claim that it's England that are spelling it wrong.
That's too silly to get worked up about, but I guess you could argue that since US English is derived from UK English, Americans can not reasonably claim that the English spelling is wrong.
I'm sick of the US claiming it is the greatest nation on Earth, when any number of other countries could in reality nuke the fuck out of it.
I'm not sure about the nuking part. Fact is that, however horrible nuclear weapons are, they do act as an equalizer in the sense that no country can be protected from them. Not even the USA, and forget about SDI part II, it won't work.
More interestingly, what I have found in the last four years is that Americans truly believe that the USA is the greatest and most wonderful nation on earth, in every aspect imaginable. You can't really blame them for this, since they have been brainwashed with this idea since they were born. Even so, even the most educated, intelligent and open-minded American cannot completely divorce himself from this idea. Although they can accept on a rational level that some things might be better in some other countries, there is always this subconscious part of them that can't fully accept the notion. I have found this rather disturbing.
And I'm fucking sick of the US proclaiming that they are the only nation who are "free", when they know nothing about any other country in the world, and precious little about their own.
Yes, and to give you some examples: even though there is freedom of speech, you cannot say 'excrement' on national television (see, even I'm afraid to use the proper word)
Less than 5% of adult Americans have a passport. So, 95% have never been ouside the US/Mexico/Canada. You can't live in every country, but a little travel now and then greatly helps to see issues from more than one side.
To balance this out a little, consider the following:
- The US Constitution is a brilliant document. Especially the part about being able to amend it is evidence of great vision.
- Americans are not shallow minded. This is a European prejudice that I had myself when coming to the US, and it is not justified.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
What the guy was saying is that out of all the government agencies, the FBI is the one that has the resources and can legally investigate US citizens. The CIA can't do that, at least not legally.
What he was not saying is that the FBI does spy on people. He's only saying that the opportunity is there, but if you read the article, he goes on to say that there are strict laws regarding what the FBI can and cannot do, and those laws are in place for a reason.
Okay, so the FBI can go outside of the law. So what? So could Bill Gates. So could anyone with enough money. It's even more likely that a private company would be acting as big brother -- because there are fewer people watching the backs of private companies. No one is scared of a medium- or large-sized corporations, because they are all over the place. They are part of everyday life. But they are where the danger lies.
I think the intelligent half of Slashdotters could put together a better system than the FBI is today. As computer geeks and scientists, we're familiar with the extreme benefits of peer review. It is the only way to get exactly what you are looking for, whether it is a piece of software, an accurate scientific theory, or a fair and just policing force.
You cannot run a democracy in the middle of a shroud of secrecy. Every American needs to know exactly what its government is doing, otherwise democracy falls apart because we can't make any informed decisions. Since the days of JFK we've been voting for a pretty face and a smooth talker. The reason we're resorting to superficial means is that we really don't know what our leaders and agencies are doing. If we knew what decisions our president made behind closed doors, we might not have reelected Clinton, maybe not even Reagan.
It's easy to argue that a degree of secrecy is required to run a government, that we have to keep secrets from other nations, but I think this arguement falls apart under close scrutiny. The method of government by secrecy is no different from the concept of security-by-obscurity that has been ripped to shreds so many times by computer security experts. It simply is not the best way to do it.
We are entering an era where we need to start acting like a planet rather than a huge tribe trying to make sure the other tribes don't step on our land. The internet has done some wonderful things for international communication, and it's just getting started. Once the communication infrastructure is in place, it starts to redefine the way people think. Within the next 50 years, nationalism will fall apart. People will not define themselves as Americans, British, French, or Japanese, but as people. Boundaries between people can only exist so long as boundaries to communication exists.
When people start thinking as one, the governments must follow suit and stop trying to function by isolation. The U.S. has traditionally been the slowest to notice this. We have blatantly stupid crypto laws because our government thinks for some reasons that only American programmers can write good crypto software, and if we isolate them from the rest of the world, the rest of the world won't get crypto. Yeah, maybe America used to be the software center of the world, but as the internet boomed, suddenly the shift focused. Everyone was shocked when no U.S. universities scored in the top ten at the ACM World Programming Finals. I would have been more shocked if we had maintained dominance.
There have been talks on here before about getting some sort of geek political action committee. We need way more than that, we need to get our ideas and philosophies, the wisdoms we take for granted, and apply them to our system of government in a practical way. The concepts we consider obvious aren't just for world domination of our operating systems, they can actually improve the world. The FBI could learn a lot from slashdotters if we could only teach it how to effectively apply what we know.
More directly, the poster also says:
First, I happen not to feel it's a small sacrifice at all. I recognize your right to feel differently and I respect your exercise of that rightSecond, if these hypothetical terrorists are stupid enough to transmit in plaintext over unsecured routes, then they're so inept that the FBI would capture them without the email surveillance. Let's face it -- the proposed measures won't be effective against true, dedicated opponents. But they'd be perfect against the large, undereducated, unmotivated public.
Existing laws on surveillance, wiretapping, etc., have been (easily) extended to cyberspace. They protect, nominally at least, the rights of citizens. Although the FBI guy intended the oppositie, he's right: These things must be balanced. What worries me is that many (upper) law enforcement officials seem to place no value on citizens' privacy at all. They don't seem clued in as to why people get edgy about this.
Until the government does understand that privacy is a valuable right, I'd rather it not get any more powers to poke around my life.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach