Slashdot Mirror
French Prosecutor Opens Echelon Probe
gillbates writes: "A French prosecutor is conducting an investigation into the workings of the Echelon system. The article is here, and it details how France is concerned that Echelon is being used for invading its citizens' privacy. France lost a contract with Saudi Arabia due to Echelon, and knows it. How much else will they learn? My question is: What's going to happen to U.S./European relations when they find out the truth about Echelon?" SWroclawski [Updated 6 July 2000 by timothy: sorry 'bout the spelling, Serge! :) ]
points out this link to BBC Coverage, noting "France's laws on privacy are very strict and in a world where one's rights of privacy are being challenged all the time, it's good to see one country taking a stand."
This is yet another piece of French petulance because their repeated requests to join the UKUSA pact have been rejected (UKUSA is the 1948 treaty under which signals intelligence is shared between the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.) They refused to join in the last bit of nastiness against Iraq because of it. In comparison, the Australians assisted immediately - but then, they already *knew* what was going on in Iraq because of - yes - the UKUSA pact. I'll leave the readers to surmise as to why the French don't get allowed to have the priceless primary intelligence. --
Somebody ought to be investigating this. If it's the French, so be it.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
I can't really tell from your post what you're trying to say. But just in case, have a look at this:
Main Entry: humor
Pronunciation: 'hyü-m&r, 'yü-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English humour, from Middle French humeur, from Medieval Latin & Latin; Medieval Latin humor, from Latin humor, umor moisture; akin to Old Norse vokr damp, Latin humEre to be moist, and perhaps to Greek hygros wet
Date: 14th century
...
3 a : that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous b : the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous c : something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing
synonym see WIT
--
One thing that seems to be forgotten is that you can wear an echelon proof condom...
It's called PGP, which is short for Pretty Good Privacy, and at high encryption levels, it is uncrackable (in public knowledge, and very likely still uncrackable by the government).
I would heartily recommend you use PGP or some related encryption software on your email, and recommend all your associates to do so - it's not that hard - check out www.pgpi.com.
That said, one must have good network & physical security to prevent our brilliant law 'protection' agencies from just hopping onto your computer and stealing your secret key, otherwise the whole exercise has been a waste of time.
"A PGP a day keeps the NSA away"
"For spirit of Minjin, who feeds on the souls of those who graze too late"
>French foreign policy since WWII has mostly been
>based on repeated iterations of the
>question "Will it piss off the English-speakers?"
>I'll admit that this approach is probably as
>valid as anything else, and they have certainly
>been consistent and fair in its application, but
>basing relations with the rest of the world on a
>grudge over holding a losing ticket in the
>dominant culture sweepstakes is not terribly
>praiseworthy. Sorry
Well ! what some (not all) Americans fail to understand (in fact mostly those who still believe that the earth is flat) is that there are many cultures around the world and many many other ways to view the world ! not necesserly the way America view it.
What France is trying to do, is to simply protect it's language and culture in a world perceived as more and more English-speaking and Ensglis dominated, can you understand that ? I hope so, as you are hanging in a minority (open source)forum. America has it's own minorities and it tring to respect them, "some" americans must learn how to respect other minorities in the world and be less arrogant and imperialistic!.
Note : I am not even French, but as myself a member of minority I pefectly understand the way the french act.
It seems more likely that the UK would spy on Ireland for hisorical reasons than share spy data with it :)
I agree with your point about nicking secrets. Whatever we (meaning the UK) do as far as espionage goes, it should be for the interests of this country. Seems a bit funny to me.
--
--
Andy
France really isn't a country that has a right to cry foul over anything. Using their nuclear weapons research as an example, France simply wants to stall the progress of others until they can catch up. How long was it before they finally halted nuclear testing???
Nor is the USA, but it still does. If I remember rightly the French asked the USA for the necesary information that would have made the nuclear tests unnecessary, but the USA refused - nice to see NATO members sharing info ;-)
The French are also sensitive about their language for the same reasons. When there is a perfectly good English word for something, they must wait until a suitable French word can be used in its place.
As if a big noise isn't made about spanish words leaking into American English!
At the end of the day the USA is in no position to complain about the French and vice versa - they are as bad as each other. They are both defending their national pride.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Before we all get on the "France is standing up to government intrusion" bandwagon, let's remember that France is well-known for "borrowing" travelling executives' laptops at customs, long enough to copy the entire hard drive. And they have, at least once, completely trashed the hotel rooms of major aerospace executives during the Paris airshow to gather information.
Further, their "invading our citizens' privacy" complaints are ironic in light of their own law requiring private encryption keys to be held by third parties so the government can snoop.
Hell, they took a privacy-killing concept we invented and have repeatedly discarded as a bad idea, and implemented it as law. Fix that before you bitch about us, France.
EPIC has called France's encryption policies "perhaps the most restrictive in the world next to Russia".
They require a license to *IMPORT* crypto, and even DES keys are required to be deposited with the government.
Yeah, big on privacy, those French.
--
It's easy for countries with no experience of fascism to take the moral high ground. Just another opportunity to pontificate about Liberty in pompous tones.
You're overlooking the fact that most of Europe would probably like a way to chuck us obstructive Brits out so they can go ahead with becoming a Federation of States.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
> BTW, do any Brits think it is a gross breach of sovereignty to have foreign bases in the UK? I
> mean, how would Americans feel if foreigners set up a military base here?
Well, if Britain had bailed America out in WWII, I'd cut y'all some slack, o "This means peace in our time!" people...
Most of the time, americans are OK, but when it comes to politics... Why do you flame any contry taking actions about some silly gov agency of yours ?
First, it's not France, it's some attorney, as justice is independant there. What is pointed there isn't industrial spying, it's the lack of concern for citizen's privacy, WTH don't you get it clear !
And the ease to get informations justifying ECHELON, something whose existence has been covered up for so long, should warn you.
About french laws about privacy check out
http://www.cnil.fr/
the whole problem with this lies in the fact that if an ISP is doing its job properly, then their dial up sever (or whatever) should be secure against hax4ors and other nasties. if the bill goes ahead, then the ISP's are going to have to provide effectively root access to all their servers. This is much easier to tap and trace information than the traditional phone and letter thingys, and it can be automated.
{shhhhh... the froggies are asleep.}
spam-proofing?
.................................................
France is just twanked because Echelon caught them on a little deal with Brazil not too long ago. (read it here)
If you are included in the ECHELON network, like the UK and Ireland, then everything is just peachy...else, you cry foul. What of the countries that are in the "network" that are spying on their own companies? Is this suddenly OK?--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Why are they so bitter now? Maybe they should take it back?
If France was actually taking the path of righteousness here, I'd applaud them. However, they are primarily upset because it's not their system. Most of their civil service is wildy inefficient - often by design, since it allows them to hire more civil servants - but their own spies are top notch. And they don't have laws against bribery to gain foreign contracts, such as the US has for its companies. Its not the privacy concerns that bother the French here, its getting caught.
French foreign policy since WWII has mostly been based on repeated iterations of the question "Will it piss off the English-speakers?" I'll admit that this approach is probably as valid as anything else, and they have certainly been consistent and fair in its application, but basing relations with the rest of the world on a grudge over holding a losing ticket in the dominant culture sweepstakes is not terribly praiseworthy. Sorry.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Thank you for being so (Informative: +1) and (Insightful: +1). What you fail to realize is that Slashdot is merely nature's way of making sure ignorant people like you don't affect the political state of the country.
I'm going to live forever or die trying.
There was an item in the UK newspapaper "The Independent" last Sunday which dealt with habitual US usage of Echelon and the American intelligence services to give unfair trade advantages to American companies in competition with European countries.
Are they scared American companies can't succeed on their own merits, or something?
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
It's operational expenses are paid by it's onStar division.
- My password is slashdot
Hey, I can't abide prejudice or bigotry at all, but censorship is obviously not the solution and it never has been. Now all the same posters who keep crying for free speech are going to ignore the fact that France is the leading censor in Europe? Give me a break.
French industrial espionage is a well-documented fact of life and even the article here stresses that what the US might have uncovered was evidence that Airbus was trying to bribe their way into the Saudi Arabian market because they couldn't sell into it any other way. F**k the French...they are the supreme hypocrites of Europe and nobody really gives a shit what their impotent courts do...not even Jerry Yang. If Yahoo feels confident in ignoring their rulings, how do you think the US government feels about it?
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
So two wrongs do make a right, eh?
Well, i just spent half a hour reading replies to this story, and all i can say is... very sad... this is all very sad... there are so much messages of hatry here against the french or the EU, i can't believe i'm reading slashdot...
I'm a french guy working for an US company... so what ? we're all the same... and we all would like some privacy ! So it's not just because its the french who are showing the way that it MUST be a bad way, with some evil goal behind that...
So is it like 'If the french do/did something wrong, then fuck them, let's do something even worse!' Is that thinking ?
Future french generations will be very happy if the US one day does something to raise the french population against a government which would just pee on their rights... and i guess americans may be happy in the future if what comes of all this france vs echelon story makes things a little better for them.
I'm not saying that france does that for the US people, i'm not that naive, but if everyone (US, France/EU, China, etc etc) is keeping an eye on each other, only good can come of it!
We're supposed to be geeks, firsts of a generation of people that can think without frontiers... live up to that, start actually doing it.
While we're sitting on our geek self satisfaction, a very small group of people are taking advantage of a technology we all own.
Take a look at
http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/stand/hoc2.jpg
This is a letter from my MP on the RIP issue. The first line states :
The Bill is designed to ensure that the intercept regime, which already exists, takes proper account of technological developments.
This is a letter from a member of parliament in England, on official House of Commons letterhead paper. (take a look at hoc1.jpg for proof)
So what's to investigate ? =:-0
/* Wayne Pascoe
I wrote a couple of questions to try and get you to tell me why you think me ignorant or how you think Slashdot affects my political action, but then I read your User Info and determined you to be a troll.
Only (?!) one person lost their life in the Rainbow Warrior bombing, a photographer if my memory serves me correct. And they DGSE agents got caught.
They could likewise turn a significant part of the US to a glowing pile....Plus, they seem to buying a lot of US companies now!
Hypocritical or not, two wrongs don't make a right. Let 'em fight Echelon. I think that if my government is spying on French civilians, then they are probably spying on American civilians too.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I wouldnt say anti-Europe, more anti-Federalism.
I agree that most of the heat for this will fall on the UK, as we're the ones hosting the base(s) that are used for the majority of the EU espionage. This worries me quite a bit, as I'm one of the people who believes in further EU integration.
Ultimately, this could be used by nations like France and Germany to keep the UK at arms distance in Europe, and by that weaken our economy (which would probably be strengthened by further integration) and strengthen theirs.
--
--
Andy
Secrets are what the government wants. They don't care about whose secrets they are.
<rant on>
I swear.. I think its time for another revolution in this country where we correct the errors from the constitution (term limits, no "professional" politicians, the abolishment of the Federal Tax, reworking of the Social Security System, rework/abolishment of the welfare system).
As an aside, most people don't realize that the Federal Income Tax wasn't ratified by all the states and is therefore unconstitutional.. They don't realize any of the power they hold on the US Govt.
We elect these bozos and if they stay in office its our fault... If they aren't voting for the common good, then get them out of office and put someone in who will !
<rant off>
UPS Sucks
Well, is there actual, physical proof that the system exists? I remeber reading about it some time ago on /., but I don't have the time (or the patience) right now to look it up.
Michael C. Hollinger
"France's laws on privacy are very strict and in a world where one's rights of privacy are being challanged all the time, it's good to see one country taking a stand."
Yeah, and encryption is so tightly regulated there that nobody can keep a secret. So, they seem to want to at least be able to listen in.
Eh...
I have to say, I've always harbored concerns about the FISA courts (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), which are essentially a shadow judiciary that supposedly oversees, reviews, and approves FED intelligence wiretapping within the US. Congress has been looking into it sporadically since the 1997 wiretap report, but though they find abuses left and right, and issue sternly worded rebukes, they haven't taken any action yet.
The last I heard, the FISA court had never refused a single one of the 15,000 requests for domestic surveillance made of it, and only a tiny handful (under 10, IIRC) had even had to resubmit, and requests have been skyrocketing since 1993 (averaging about 250/yr in the 15 years from 1978-1993, but currently at 1000+/yr per Freedom of Information Act documents) Meanwhile, 'normal court' wiretap warrants have grown only several percent a year. (*)
The NY Times and other newspapers have written about the FISA system, but the Web has made me lazy (and besides, how many of you would look up a dead tree citation) so here are two URLs [Artcle I] [Article II]. You can find much more info with a G oogle Search for [FISA wiretap] (without brackets).
BTW, if you're interested in such things, you should look at the many articles on the huge increase in state wiretaps and the LA County DA's investigation of massive illegal wiretapping by the LAPD
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Absolutely nothing. Why you ask? Because Tony Blair is our little bitch!
As a friend of mine says, the description politically ambitious prosecutor is redundant.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
:wq
What else is new?
Doesn't the US-goverment and many US company's do the same?
Ever heard about that problem with Lockheed and the Dutch government?
Had something to do with Prince Bernhard too.......
The answer is easy - all French companies can use strong encryption for their internal communications! Er, wait a minute...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Yes, and a communications disruption can mean only one thing -- invasion.
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
If france is restricting encryption and such why should they be the country to probe the USA's privacy? doesnt sound like france is actually in a position to do this and where do they get there authority to do this from?
What will they find? Oh, I have a pretty good idea. It's sitting on top of a flag pole outside the parliament. Etched in .15 microns inside the chip is the words: Gee, took you long enough. ~ uncle sam
It is the right of the United States, and Great Britain (which shares the information, and has the European Echelon headquarters), in order to defend their industries.
No, it is not the right of the United States. If a company wants to spend its own money on industrial espionage, fine, it should do what needs to be done in order to maximize shareholder value. But don't tell me I have some kind of moral obligation to support corporate interests with my tax dollars, either through Echelon or the countless existing corporate tax breaks.
France has been in the forefront of government-sponsored economic espionage for some time, so this whole "Echelon is bad" is fairly hypocritical
:) Still, if even half of the stuff I've read about Echelon's capabilities are true...it's kinds frightening to realize that my weekly calls to Mom could possibly be in the voice analyzer right now. Perhaps it's time to take a cue from another slashdot posters Sig...
So in other words, they're saying "Echelon is bad", but what they really mean is, "Echelon is cool and effective, and we're really pissed the US didn't include us in it".
Sigh. Everytime I read an article similar to this one, I become more and more convinced that I must be a Libiterian. The Horror!
president bomb threat Iraq Oklahoma City fertilizer diesel Waco
I don't know for the brits but we had US bases in France (NATO bases) but it didn't please us very much so De Gaulle told them to go back home and went out of NATO. Now we are alone and well.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
by your attitude towards French anti-fascist censorship. The French
laws do not try to make general distinctions between good speech and
bad speech, they specifically target Nazi propaganda (including Nazi
and Vichy memorabilia) and holocaust denial.
If the KKK had tyrannised the US in the same way that Fascists did
in Germany and France, I would not take a smugly superior attitude
towards anti-KKK censorship in the US.
Back to the thread, I think it would be hypocritical for the French
intelligence services to complain about the CIA. It is right and
proper for the French justice system to do the same.
I think its high time someone constructs a simple substitution language based on key words that Echelon picks up....
for example:
Bomb assassinate Libya
Would be "how are you?"
This way those of us with nothing to hide who just don't like the whole East German-esque gestapo tactic of recording any conversation/E-mail I make... can ensure that our rights as human beings to have some sembelance of privacy are thoroughly destroyed.
The East German regime used to do this to its citizens... only it would store physical things, saliva, mucus, hair, skin samples, etc... this is worse, it is intellectual sampling... I don't want to slide down any slippery slopes, but the implications of this are wide spread. The best and most opressive tyrannies slide slow on you...
~- Llah -~
I will attempt to answer the questions you wrote (but didn't post, and yet still managed to express...). I considered your post ignorant in the sense that you dismiss people you disagree with as stupid and confused.
As for claiming that Slashdot is a way of preventing you from affecting the political situation in the country, that is more a slam of Slashdot. Specifically the frequently observed phenomenon of a story being posted that draws the outrage of ten thousand Slashdot readers in what the editors hope will be a way of igniting true action against some injustice. In reality, Slashdot serves primarily as a way for its readers to let off steam and forget all the myriad terrible ways in which their rights are being taken away and instead focus all of their engery on the minor irritation of the trolls.
I'm going to live forever or die trying.
>nice to see NATO members sharing info
Last I heard France was not fully integrated into NATO (didn't participate in the military C&C structure), periodically contemplated withdrawing from NATO and generally disagreed with U.S. involvement in Europe.
Basically, they're in it for their own purposes.
>As if a big noise isn't made about spanish words leaking into American English!
While we do periodically get our panties in a bunch over whether or not the gov't should publish documents multi-lingually, we don't have a gov't group making up English names for foreign words that are commonly used and then out-lawing those foreign words from publication. Nor do we have laws requiring businesses to only use English words.
I considered your post ignorant in the sense that you dismiss people you disagree with as stupid and confused.
I've met a lot of people who say they are libertarians, and no two of them agree on what it means to be a libertarian. Some of them have political views that I agree with, some of them have political views that I disagree with. But if all libertarians have different political views, being a libertarian means absolutely nothing.
Coincidentally, the European Parliament is due to decide in Strasbourg Wednesday whether to set up a commission to investigate whether Echelon infringes the rights of European citizens and industries.
Anyone know of any investigations on how it infringes on the rights of US citizens?
Or do we supposedly still not know about it?
Uh.. Two words: Campaign contributions. Wonder why they're investigated all the time. Could it be that all those people weren't just giving money away for nothing..
all gorerments do this stuff
ALL? That's pretty strong. What about Sealand? what about the local village of Mazomanie? I don't recall any village board appointed spies "borrowing" any laptops and copying hard drives or ransacking any hotel rooms at conventions.
Well, now that I think of it our village cops fairly suck. There was that one incident where six cops with guns burst into my buddy's house and practically beat everybody up looking for somebody to arrest who wasn't there and to my knowledge had never been there, and they never even apologized because these were the town "potheads". So forget everything I just said.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Let's see now. Most likely it was Eschelon that allowed the US to identify that Kadafi and company were responsible for the bombing of the nite club in Germany that killed some US service men. Then France didn't allow over-flight of our bombers because they didn't want to upset the Colonel.
;-)
So now you come along and tell me that the system was used to beat out France in a business competition where the French were dropping bribes?
Uhm - Good!
I do, however, get concerned when such technology is turned on US citizens going about their legal business primarily because the CIA, et al is prohibited against operating against it's own citizens. THAT needs to be watched closely.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
You didn't prove to know anything about french laws, there are laws agains foreign bribery. You're certainly an expert at french diplomacy, but I don't think french dipomacy differs much from others: promote french interrests and values (sometime even values before interrests). Our public services may not be very efficient, but at least that means we're not a dictature. Even if your assertions were true or funded, that still doesn't say anything about Echelon. Yes it's a great piece of technology but the purpose is not so great, and come on... it's closed source! You can't even buy it!
We're not perfect and we don't claim to be, but you're right -- we continue to take the high moral ground. And even if Fascists came into greater power, that still wouldn't be a good reason to take the low moral ground, would it?
You don't defeat bad ideas with censorship...quite the opposite...you defeat them with information and knowledge.
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Given America's actions in the past, I think we all know how much "Echelon info" the governments of Australia, NZ, etc. can expect - diddly squat. They probably get reports like this:
"Hey, you remember that bomb that took out half the parliament buidlings the other day? We knew about it three weeks before it happened, but we figured we wouldn't tell you 'cause the Secretary of State was on a golf trip, and we didn't want to disturb him 'cause he gets real pissy when he misses a shot. Still, better luck next time, huh?"
The HK government are planning to force all ISPs to be completely responsible for all traffic that flows through their systems. They have to filter anything the government tells them to, etc, etc.
The punchline is that the ISPs have to do this "...whether or not it is technically feasible to do so..".
Do you laugh or cry?
The RIP bill requiring ISPs to fit the often-mentioned "black boxes" is, I'm afraid, a myth. The bit of bill which has been taken as requiring black boxes (section 12.1) reads "The Secretary of State may by order provide for the imposition by him ... of such obligations as it appears to him reasonable to impose for the purpose of securing that it is and remains practicable for requirements to provide assistance in relation to interception warrants to be imposed and complied with."
Apart from the fact that this is in appallingly bad English, it seems to say that if the police need an ISP to help them tap someone's traffic then the ISP must comply. Is it really that shocking? Okay the wording "measures which appear reasonable to the Secretary of State" is a bit open-ended, but it only applies to the execution of particular warrants. I dislike the bill very much, I have written to my MP to protest about it, it is flawed in a thousand different ways, but it does not require the installation of any "black boxes" to copy all net traffic to GCHQ.
Check out this :
Australia Admits to sigint
Good on the aussies.
--
--
Andy
Ack, they'll come to some compromise and the whole thing will blow over - it always does.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Crypto is allowed with keys up to 128 bits - only the software used has to be registered with the gov (as is PGP). Crypto used to be limited to 40 bits keys only a while ago, and Netscape had a 40 bits key version available for France. But it still had crypto.
Paper by Kenneth Neil Cukier, Communications Week International on Frenchelon.
Also mentioned in this issue of Cryptome.
Took away your guns to make people feel safer. Sure you *feel* safer walking down the street but statistics show that crime is going up, Home invasions are up 44%! What are you going to do when someone breaks in, call 911 and hope they don't kill you with the gun they were supposed to turn in?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Which is worse: French bribing(a normal business practice) or US spying one everyone. Personally I think that the French have a case regardless of bribery.
Knowing a thing or two about doing business in Russia I'd say that there is nothing unusual about bribery. If you want to get something accomplished you give money to the right person and things get done - unless someone got to him before you.. And don't pretend this doesn't happen in US too. Sure you can't give money directly but other benefits are most likely exchanged..
Don't you think it would have great advantages? After all it's our money!
All Eavedropping softwares in the world would benefit from it. Some parts would serve for OCR / Voice recognition systems / Encryption cracking. And citizen's privacy will suffer some more.
But do we need privacy ? We could even build an distributed spying agency to spy our governments. Like this no one has privacy and anyone can spy everyone.
No more secrets, no more lies... NO MORE LIES
RATM song following
Actually there was a guy named Jesus who was crucified in Palastine. Maybe you meant that he wasn't a deity, but he did exist.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
I like the new News Icon! It's much nicer than the old one.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
...or rather, half-facts
I remember reading a lot about Echelon (mostly suspicions, though) a while ago in c't magazine (German).
If you like, you can try to find it somewhere on http://www.heise.de/ct/
From what I remember, Echelon is believed to have enormous computer systems and electronic spy stations (in England; Germany; Australia; US (obviously) and somewhere else).
They said they only spied on the East Bloc and assured the German government they weren't spying on Germans at all, but interestingly enough they had rented the rooms right above the Frankfurt main post (including huge telephone arrays) for decades and only moved out a few years ago.
I think it has also been proved (at least there are strong rumors) that the NSA (which is not mentioned in the US constitution, controlled directly by the President and financed through black accounts) was used to gather information about 10.000s of anti-Vietnam activists in the 70s; this information was then used to sue them.
The French aren't all nice guys either. Remember the Rainbow Warrior? This was the original Greenpeace Ship which was bombed and sunk by French agents.
Two people lost their lives.
When the US wanted an high-speed train, there were two possibilities: the French TGV or the German ICE. Strangely, the French always offered slightly lower prices than the Germans although in the selectins neither party was supposed to know the other's prices. The US bought the TGV. It has since been discovered that the French secret service found out about the prices.
Also, the CEO and the board of the French government-owned Oil company Elf are traditionally ex-secret service types. If you look at your newspapers, you can find their works now. In Germany, there's a huge scandal at the moment because ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl obviously has ordered important documents about the vending of the East-German Leuna refinery to Elf to be destroyed.
It's the same wherever you look, just that not everybody gets caught.
It makes me sick.
DONTdave@SPAMworldserpent.MEorg wrote:
The problem with this is that you forget the weak link. It's not the algorithm. It's your computer. Here's what the FBI (or pick any 3 letters you like) will do:
* go to the secret national security court to get approval (or not ;) to plant a small keysniffer/program/recording device/pinhole camera;
* record your password (or just the keystrokes to your message, or just the image from your monitor);
* care less about RSA/IDEA/3DES/Blowfish.
Remember, security is harder than it looks, and only as strong as the weakest link.
The same would apply in a criminal investigation. If I were an FBI agent, and I was targeting a money launderer (e.g.) who was using PGPdisk (or whatever), the last thing I would do is try to decrypt the hard way (or give away the secret that I could decrypt by using the information in court). Rather, I would use conventional (video, telephoto) or computer-based methods (sniffers, trojans) to get your password.
I remember back in the early nineties when vast ammounts of the US appeared to be about to be bought by Japan, there was an article in one of the US news or science(sorry don't remember which) magazines about the state of the respective economies it discussed the fact that 5 of the top 6 and 8 of the top 10 Chemical companies were European amongst other things. but it ended with this analysis of the situation.
Imagine that the economy of the US is the US soldier in WWII Comics. then the Economy of Japan is roughly the same as the japanese soldier in the same comics. it has roughly the same chance of overwhelming the US soldier. however if you then turn and look at the Economy of Europe as a whole if it was drawn to the same scale it would be in effect a 900 lb Gorrila.
So in other words, they're saying "Echelon is bad", but what they really mean is, "Echelon is cool and effective, and we're really pissed the US didn't include us in it".
Actually what happend was that the United States flat out told the French ambassador that either (a) France must stop these black bag jobs, or (b) the United States will turn over it's survellance information gathered on French companies (and French companies only) to US companies, in order to keep the playing field level.
France did not stop.
Seriously, can you imagine Gendarme Ludovic Cruchot pulling off what you're implying?
That must be the French strategy... export lots of comical caricatures of your police and in the meantime build up your secret police into an international menace. Much like Canada.
=)
--
Another important question is, what's going to happen when Americans find out what is going on? Less than a year ago, on 60 Minutes, a woman stated that she had heard Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina on a telephone wire tap in an Echelon center (I believe it was in Britain). Any such intrusion is not only in breach of Echelon's internal policy as stated by the NSA (no spying on US citizens) but a severe breach of the Senator's civil rights.
If I recall correctly, the basic point of that story was that American intelligence is using Echelon stations in Britain (and the foreign agents running them) to get around the rule that bans surveillance on U.S. citizens.
After this current round of accusations, the story has been all over the mainstream media outlets.
The answer to the question above is nothing. On the whole, Americans just don't give a damn. In fact, they seem to like the idea of their intelligence looking after them, despite the inherent risks and problems it creates.
I have talked with all my friends, some of them extremely well-informed and intelligent people, and I could barely get an ounce of concern out of them.
The prosecutor's move is quite demagogic, he only wants people to think "Hey, look at me, I'm not afraid to fight Echelon !". But his action is bullshit, he already knows he can't do anything : Do you think he can go to Washington DC and invetigate in the Pentagon, or to London to invetigate the MI5 ?
come on guy, this is the story of a prosecutor who is looking for fame !
By hthe way, I think the French govt and the French secret service don't support him, they are rather embarrassed by his action. Legal action is not the way things are done in the secret service world.
Come on now, it's not as if the majority of American citizens knew about this system. I can't beleive that the EU is gonna whoop our ass because of some spy systems we didn't even know about. Harldy any of our senators and representative know anything about it. The only thinge we can do at this point is get on our congressmen to cut the intelligence services (yes, plural meaning _all_ the depts) spending. If we get the NSA down to 1million a year, I doubt they'll be able to afford to run the operation ;-) Of course this'll never happen so be prepared to get your ass kicked next time you visit France.
Bob
I've worked at a French company here in the States and I've also worked at a few homegrown, American ones. The difference was less than stunning. Same pay, same benefits, same cubicles, same projects, same Harvard MBA-driven culture. And the company paid taxes in this country as well, as does Chrysler and countless other foreign-owned businesses that employ millions of Americans. It's a global economy, so whether you're a wage slave at Boeing or Airbus matters little, if at all.
I'm pretty sure that the Europeans aren't the only ones who don't trust "Uncle Sam". There are plenty of Americans, myself included, who don't trust "Uncle Same" either.
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
blah blah blah....
"ns1.menwith.army.mil appears to be a proxy server (or firewall) of some description, hiding their real machines behind it. There are no names assigned for the Class C addresses where ns1 lives, (yes I did look) You just know they are not short of cash with monitors and graphics cards of that size. Shame on you for running Windows NT! This machine seems only to accept connections to port 25 (mail) and 53 (DNS), if you really want to annoy these good folk you can use this machine to send your mail, it does work."
I'm too much of an anonymous coward to try it, but if anyone wants to spend the rest of their lives being probed...
The site this was from is http://www.nukem.freeserve.co.uk/contents/localare a/menwith/
I concur
The situation is so bad that many business travelers that go to France must bring their own shredders. It seems the ones supplied in certain business hotels have cameras in them. They also bring with an interface for the powersupply. This is made to scramble carrier band signals. It seems that a "disproportionate" number of portable scanners break in France. There are also reported problems of listening devices in the headrests of certain airplanes.
I'm certainly no CIA agent or the like. But I can tell you about experiences certain industries deal with on a routine daily basis. Think pharmacueticals. Business people traveling there are briefed as if going into a hostile country, they are...
France has the worlds 4th largest economy (after US, Japan and Germany) - larger than China, India and Russia combined according to The Economist book of Vital World Statistics I have on my desk.
Plus it's a nuclear power, the world's leading commercial satellite launcher and the second largest producer of commercial aircraft. World's most popular tourist destination. Huge energy, water, electronics and comms industry (can you say Vivendi?)
And it can call (sort of) on the backing of the other EU states.
So how is it small? Can't imagine you would say that if China or Russia pulled the same stunt...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
I believe my command of Mandarin Chinese is getting a little stale.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
The real point behind the EU, is creating a federation of states.
Anything else being said is pure disinformation.
... an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain ... -- T. Jefferson
I do not remember the refrence and did not see one in the responses, but, I remember France announcing several years ago that they were going to use their intel infrastructure for industrial intelligence.
Perhaps this is just a spinoff, i.e., tactic within the french intelligence community to obscure their own actions?
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past century, you should realize by now that every organization (gov or not) with intelligence gathering power shares info with their "friends". This is nothing new and it will never go away.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
In the end, if them kicking up a fuss can result in ALL nations co-existing and co-habiting the same planet WITHOUT waging full-scale wars over who's turn it is to take the trash out, then I don't give a damn who complains or why, only that they did.
Sure, I'm a dreamer to think that nations can ever move out of the social stone age. But it's not from a lack of ability. It's a lack of want. If there were votes to be had, by creating sane nations, then they'd do so. And if this continuing scandal persuades voters that sanity is worth the effort, that could happen. Maybe.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Now, that's what I call being under the thumb...
In fairness, there is now talk of Australia trying to do a bit more for themselves vis a vis defense, i.e. with less dependence on USA.
I wouldn't hold my breath, however, waiting for it to happen; I predict that it's going to be deemed "Too Hard" (expensive), and the latter idea will die.
No ID cards in the UK. (not yet anyway).
Perhaps it signals that it's time to rejuvenate that rumor that Microsoft is going to freely license its OS.
In addition to France's history of being, shall we say, overly interested in other nations' economic secrets, a report on BBC radio yesterday shed some additional light on the issue. According to Nigel West, an espionage expert interviewed on the program, once the nature of France's complaints is fully revealed, they won't have a leg to stand on. Apparently, the information acquired by the U.S. government concerning French business dealings revealed that several deals made by the French were the results of bribing foreign businessmen (a practice which is encouraged by the French government). When the U.S. blew the whistle on these bribes, the deals were blown and the French cried foul. Whether the French are justified in their complaints or not remains to be seen. However, getting only part of the story can result in unfair assumptions. Specifically, most readers of the short BBC article assume that the U.S. used Echelon to intercept business-related transmissions from France and pass them along to interested U.S. business's. What probably has happened is Echelon uncovered some shady dealings, and now the French are whining because our spies brought them into the open.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
BTW, do any Brits think it is a gross breach of sovereignty to have foreign bases in the UK? I mean, how would Americans feel if foreigners set up a military base here? Maybe there are foreign bases in the US and it's just a NATO thing...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
Ummm...the Home Secretary? Find out more about the exciting Home Office ministerial structure by going here (and no, it's not really exciting).
I find it funny that there is an ISP/ld provider/telephone provider called Eschelon.
I can just imagine the slogan. "Eschelon telecom. We're listening"
Rather, I would use conventional (video, telephoto) or computer-based methods (sniffers, trojans) to get your password.
Thats exactly my point. Echelon, concealed cameras, net sniffers, wiretaps et al are not the problem - theres already so much info you have to make available in order to have a reasonqably functional lifestyle that in the face of a determined investigation the means used to gain the info are moot. As far as I'm concerned the issue is not what info can they get their hands on but what controls are in place to ensure that they only go looking for the info with a genuine need, and once they find it they validate it properly and use it responsibly. That is where my doubts and distrust lie. If I'm using crypto on the net I'm doing it to validate my own identity and protect my business and myself from gratuitous snooping by individuals or competitors and they dont have the kind of resources your common 3-letter agency does. Regarding Echelon particularly, if they cant play with that toy its no big deal, they have a whole box of others. I just want things to be set up so that mom makes 'em play nice :)
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Before we all get on the "France is standing up to government intrusion" bandwagon, let's remember that France is well-known for "borrowing" travelling executives' laptops at customs, long enough to copy the entire hard drive. And they have, at least once, completely trashed the hotel rooms of major aerospace executives during the Paris airshow to gather information.
France has been in the forefront of government-sponsored economic espionage for some time, so this whole "Echelon is bad" is fairly hypocritical.
For further information, check out Secure Computing's April 1998 issue (the first hit I got from google, I'm sure there's plenty more out there): http://www .westcoast.com/securecomputing/1998_04/cover/cover .html#French.
david.
freedom is illusion; illusion is freedom
"The Internet is made of cats."
Perhaps *now* the French can be bothered to allow some decent crypto.
BTW, do any Brits think it is a gross breach of sovereignty to have foreign bases in the UK? I mean, how would Americans feel if foreigners set up a military base here? Maybe there are foreign bases in the US and it's just a NATO thing...
Ahem... Yes, it is beyond "just a NATO thing", but a common thing anyway. The Gremans have aviators stationed at Dulles Airport, in Northern VA. Other countries have joint operations units stationed throught the USA: Singapore in TX, CA and MI(?), Japan in TX.
All I could think of this moment, but it is pretty common.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
or it will be if the allegations of espionage are verified. Thanks to US willingness to invoke WTO regulations and charge penalties for Europe's just support of carribean banana farmers, the game is hotting up. United, even only economically, Europe now has plenty of stick to make the Boss of the World take note. As well, and this is unfortunate, there's an almost bigoted suspicion of America's intentions inside Europe, and plenty of people/lawyers/officials willing to "take up arms" against the US. If these allegations prove true it will only verify what a lot of Europeans have belived a long time: that you can't trust Uncle Sam.
--
(author unknown)
10. When speaking fast, you can make yourself sound intelligent.
9. Own half the world's perfume and still never have to use deodorant.
8. You get to eat great food like snails and frog's legs.
7. If there's a war you can surrender really early.
6. You don't have to read the subtitles on late night films on TV.
5. You can test your own nuclear weapons in other people's countries.
4. You can be ugly and still become a famous film star.
3. Allow Germans to march up and down your most famous street humiliating your sense of national pride.
2. You don't have to bother with toilets, just shit in the street.
1. People think you're a great lover even when you're not.
Cheers,
The UK government's Regulation of Investigatory powers (see notes on it here) has got it exactly right. It going to insist that every UK ISP fits hooks to their infrastructure to allow them to tap e-mails and web traffic, at the ISPs expense. Not only that, but they are enshrining it in law, and talking about it publicly !
....)
Now that's open government for you....... It dosen't solve the problem of your diminishing privacy, but, being British, they are nice enough and fair enough to tell you about it first.
(.....Sh*t - where is the HTML irony tag when you need it
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
France is NOT a member of NATO.
France IS a member of NATO, they just withdrew from the integrated military structure in 1966.
And then there's the Russian space-shuttle "Buran".
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
2) In the 70's/80's, there was (and is) a pervasive attitude of denial and stubborn skepticism (both in the public and the intelligence community itself) regarding ECHELON, the NSA -- the CIA was the 'designated bad guy' in the post Watergate/Allende/Whitlaw era:
3) Without meaning any criticism of France, the fact is that they have been very well aware of ECHELON for decades. Like most governments, they often use such "investigations" for public relations purposes. Does anyone really think that the French (oe anyone) conducts *genuine* intel review/investigation in the public eye like this? Or that a federal prosecutor is the best qualified to ferret out these facts?
4) (personal observation, possibly unjustified) It's always seemed to me that the SDECE is far more adept -- and interested -- in espionage than counter-espionage. I can only speculate on why that is (*if* it is), but it's beem something that I've been noticing consistently since I learned (in the late 70's) about the theft of the Concorde plans from France in the late 60's (to forestall the inevitable rejoinders: yes, I know there were some significant aerodynamic differences between the Concorde and the 'Concordski' (TU-144), but the former Soviet team leaders have admitted to using the design as a basis, they just couldn't utilize the plans properly, as they have admitted in Western interviews such as this one on the PBS show, Nova [transcript], and many earlier ones I'm not going to bother tracking down). Paradoxically, the Concordski flew before the Concord did.)
Comments, clarification, and additional details are solicited, as always.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
I'm curiouse what makes ANYONE think that suddenly the US government will make all sorts of information about Echelon, that will allow them to gain information regarding the functionality, type of data it expects, etc??
Let them inquire. It'll be denied. Nothing more to say, really.
'Common guys, we KNOW you do it, fess up.'
'Nope, we don't. Never heard of such a thing.'
'But we KNOW!!'
'Nope, we don't. Never heard of such a thing.'
(continue untill france gets bored)
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I'm no political genius.. but isn't France a little too small to go against the covert government-funded load of FUD named Echelon ? To me that's kinda like a bunch of script kiddies trying to overthrow the RIAA with squirt guns. The balance of power just isn't in their favor at all.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Liberian (ly-beer-ee-n)
noun A native of Liberia (a west African nation established in 1847).
adjective Of or relating to Liberia.
I hope this helps you - or maybe you were just being pedantic?. Thank you.
--
--
Donald "Don Juan" Kerr
And [companies] provide jobs to people like me and you.
And [companies] provide goods for consumers like me and you.
In case you haven't noticed, companies are as much a part of the economy as you are. They are therefore entitled to get some tax spending for their benefit. If they go down due to some French spy, so will you!
I have such an underdeveloped sense of humor -- I can never tell when someone is kidding, and when they're clueless.
But, just in case you're not kidding, and are instead some kind of moron with an underdeveloped sense of ethics (and no understanding of capitalism to boot), I'll try to explain why taxpayers should not be subsidize corporate espionage.
The idea is that we all benefit from properly regulated capitalism -- when several companies compete fairly, on a level playing field, we all benefit from competition. We benefit through lower prices and a greater variety of goods available. However, when the government chooses to elevate certain companies off that playing field, and instead gives those firms special favors unavailable to others, then we all are hurt from the damaged competition. We are hurt through increased prices, and a smaller variety of goods available.
Understand that governments are not, by nature, capitalists. When the government interferes with a bussiness transaction, it nearly always does so to constrain the firm with the lowest prices or best product. Think about it -- if the firm didn't have the best product or the lowest prices, it wouldn't need to be constrained; it would be self-constraining.
There are clearly cases where some form of regulation are nescessary. Anti-trust cases are one reason -- monopolies that don't continue having the best product or the lowest prices through constant innovation, but rather by abusing their market power to destroy innovative competitors, are good targets for government constraint.
But situations like this -- where one large U.S. Military-Industrial company (Boeing) is "competing" with a Quasi-Socialist state-supported company (Airbus) -- makes it very difficult to decide what is the "right" thing to do. Given the ugly nature of this type of thing, no-one can honestly claim that any path will actually benefit the citizens any country. But what is very clear is that the best path does not include subverting tools for international espionage to use them for corporate espionage instead (unless, of course, you feel that governments should go out of their way to decrease competition and support monopolies).
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
If Big Bro is watching me then I hope he's getting a cheap thrill. They are going to get a whole load of noise before they find any signal in my life. If I'm using such easily intercepted stuff as email for anything critical or secret (like, for example, details of a bid for a contract or anything like that) then of course its going to be GNUPGed with the highest key length my version can generate. In the absence of back doors in the algorithm (which is why I prefer open source - better coders than I have already looked at it in detail and if there were holes I'd have read about it on BUGTRAQ) then the data I'm protecting is not invulnerable but by the time anyone has managed to crack it I'd hope it would be obsolete. Somebody wants to wiretap me? Good luck hearing anything to make it worth your while. Of course, unless you're the government and able to make the laws fit whatever you want to do if you get caught you're in a world of hurt. I can live with that. Government agencies already have so many resources for finding out about people that the addition of things such as Echelon doesnt really make that much difference although it may improve their accuracy.
Dont know about you but I'd rather if folks were going to be looking over my shoulder they got it right rather than confusing me with somebody that has the same name that happens to be a serial goat-rapist believed to be hiding out somewhere in Montana. In all seriousness, with minimal info to start from any governmental agency can find out all they need about you. Provided there are controls in place to ensure the info is accurate and open to challenge it doesnt really matter how they get it, because they COULD find it out anyway, Echelon or not. Unfortunately with recent reports of the use of "secret evidence" by government agencies in the US it seems those controls are not in place... The problem is not Echelon or any other info-collecting tool, its what is done with the info afterwards. Do you trust 'em? I sure dont.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
I think that this is a good way to start nestling up all those scary "big-brother's-watching-you" things introduced in the recent history of world and cold wars.
If they would find out that I my whole life have been watched by US Gov. I'd prefer to get to know it than to have the situation continued.
PS.
I'm not French, I don't even speak it.
Geek rants since like... 2000 or something.
Hey, the French made Godzilla, and he ended up trashing New York city, right?
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Here:
EU probes Echelon spy net
EZ
-'Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on..'
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
A "Libiterian" (a misspelling of "Libertarian") is an individual who is confused about his/her own political beliefs. An entire party of such persons exist, and they regularly vote for candidates who are also confused about their own beliefs. Luckily there are not enough of these people to make a difference, and no one else votes with them, so the Libertarian party is like Nature's way of making sure that stupid or confused people don't affect the political state of the country.
It sounds a bit funny that France of all countries is complaining about Echelon. Even though a system like Echelon would not exist in an ideal world, the fact is that all countries have similar espionage systems. France in particular is one of the countries which is known to be one of the worst culprits.
I for one, am sick of the French and their hypocrisy. Our company, which was trying to expand in the European Union about two years ago, participated in a number of bids. Somehow we lost all the bids. By strange coincidence, the winner in all the cases was a French company whos proposals looked remarkably similar to ours! And their price was about 1% lower than ours! If this isn't espionage, what is?
What right do the French have to complain about Echelon? It is the right of the United States, and Great Britain (which shares the information, and has the European Echelon headquarters), in order to defend their industries. If the French have a problem, they should create their own Internet, and their own Echelon to monitor it.
AC (for obvious reasons)
What, are you saying people don't generally know that CSIS is respected enough that they frequently train foriegn agents in their facilities here in Canada?
Intolerant people should be shot.
Breaking news! A commission may be set up that might look into whether or not Echelon may have infringed on the rights of Europeans!
Coincidentally, the European Parliament is due to decide in Strasbourg Wednesday whether to set up a commission to investigate whether Echelon infringes the rights of European citizens and industries.
(Whenever I see "whether" nested like that, I cringe. *shudder*)
--
Cool, I'm not sure I get the wording. Are they saying that a key escrow is still mandatory? It's good to see that they are allowing 128 bit, but only 56 for international. Hrmm, still, definately progress over the truly severe registration they used to have.
Eh...
I believe, many of you miss the point!
... because money/power (The hidden Corporate Nation) currently controls all our destiny. Corporate spying under the cover of state spying.
Who are US and Who are Them? The EU and US people are all us folks that will suffer during times of war. Don't be quick and stupid to blame UK, US, France, China, Russia,
The war profiteers are as always them folks that keep low profiles, forment discontent among good people (with beleavable lies) and then insist that we all die for "God and Country" and their bottom "profit" line.
We the people must unite, identify the real enemy, and live in peace with mutual respect for the individual, commuinty of humanity, and the environment.
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
And Canadian, and australian.
And always remember: freedom and linguistic inventiveness grow out the barrel of a gun.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
What if they find out that Eschelon is real and responsible for them losing out on those contracts? What will they do about it? Maybe they'll pass a law requiring all French to be rude to US citizens. Oh... wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Echelon is just one of the many programs you will find in operation. Nothing really big or secret, it's just weapon systems like many others. At the Federation of American Scientists you will find not just numbers, costs of development but also analysis of past military actions. http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/echelon.htm tons of recent intelligence pictures... Israel nuclear project, NoDong... No conspiracy buffs, just plain research.
All right, how about Libertarian. The spelling police seemed to have passed by my house today...
What's going to happen to U.S./European relations ?
The real question is rather What's going to happen to GB/European relations ?
Indeed the whole mess is rather directed toward GB.
Because of its situation inside Europe (as a member)and the fact that communications were intercepted for the US from Great britain is really perceive as a trahison...
All European knows that each country practise Economic Intelligence (French DGSE was even pointed out before) the problem isn't really Intelligence but rather the real commintment of GB in the Europe.
Especially in those times were the French President M. CHIRAC) is proposing the idea of a pionneer group (France and Germany) dedicated to make Europe grow faster and stronger...
The real commitment of GB (which has a special status in Europe and has never hide its anti-Europe opinions) is the real question...
Anyone who believes that the French are not engaged in espionage against the United States and that information does not make it to state-owned or quasi-governmental entities like Airbus, is naive. My sense is that they don't like the scale, style and effectiveness of the eavesdropping.
All countries engage in espionage. Due largely to resources, some are more effective than others. It is also meet to remember that nation-states do not have friends, but national interests. I'm not saying that I like the Echelon program, just that we are not alone in the pursuit.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
It's a difference of quantity alone -- if the KKK were to take control of the US government, then they would be fascists for all intents and purposes would they not? And I guarantee that given a few years of free reign, they could commit just as many atrocities as Hitler.
I don't think that the advantage of free speech in opposing hate crimes lies in `defeating bad ideas'.
Did I say that? I thought I said "Things never got any better because we tried to pass laws against them -- they got better because we educated people enough to where they realized those guys in white sheets were crazies who fed on hatred."
Passing laws that limit free speech based on whether the speech is "good speech" or "bad speech" presupposes that the person(s) passing those laws is able to distinguish between the two. Personally, I don't want the US government or the French government making that decision for me since they have both proven to be motivated by forces other than my best interest. As soon as I give US lawmakers the opportunity to do that, some idiot like Jesse Helms will want to ban discussion of gay lifestyles, communist and socialist ideologies, and maybe even strawberry ice cream just because he doesn't like it. More importantly, if we happen to be in an economic recession at the time, he will probably succeed because he will blame strawberry ice cream and the rest for the fact that many people have no jobs.
But anyway...the point of the entire post to begin with was just this: The French would have us believe that they are going to take the CIA to court for industrial espionage -- that is a load of bullshit because everybody knows that all G-8 (and most of the second tier countries as well) do the same thing whenever it benefits them and the opportunity presents itself. Or would you have us believe that France, the UK, et. al. maintain intelligence services only to spy on countries they declared to be enemies beforehand? Please, assure me how they have NEVER spied on the US or any other allies for any reason at all because they always play fair. The entire article and the premise behind it was nothing more than a bunch of hot air being used so some politician or other could play to an audience of conservative businessmen somewhere.
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
This bill allows the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to enter, modify, delete or copy data as well as disabling any cryptography one may be running, in order to make it easier for them to get future data. Despite the Attorney General, Daryl William's reassurances that the legislation was "designed to ensure an appropriate balance between individual privacy and the public interest in effective law enforcement and national security;" and that an access warrant is required in these cases, I am fearful of the abuses that are bound to follow. Under this act, ASIO will be allowed to cover up the fact that they hacked into the system and will not be subject to the Crimes Act that forbids computer hacking in Australia surely raising the possibility of framing dissenters and now under the auspices of business, perhaps conduct industrial espionage.
Have these recent laws been instituted in order to legitimise hacking by the Australian Government and pave the way for the legal usage of Echelon by the Australian government? Is there some greater conspiracy I am failing to foresee? I hope not, otherwise my future civil liberties online are already under great jeopardy.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
Errr..
/. readers are excempt ;) are welcome to NT (just count me out).
Sort of hard to explain. It is meant to be interperated -both- ways as it reads. It is both a statement of fact, and a sarcastic reference to the fact that -you- (in a generic sense, most
Last I used was 4.0 If you no longer have to ctrl-alt-del to get into W2K, is this some kind of innovation??
EZ
-'Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on..'
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
The French Academy should be happy about Echelon, because it means that people in the English-speaking world alliance (note Echelon membership) will have to study French to read and listen to all those intercepts!
First, the French plot to poison our minds by exporting deconstruction. But it's lost something in translation. They should realize that it's not so much the flavor of philosophical poison (anyone remember extentialism?), but the language itself that contains the toxins. Encouraging our 'intelligence' community to continue to study French is the surest way to incapacitate it.
On second thought, French complaining must be meant to encourage exactly that. Reverse psychology. "Oh, don't delve into those French language intercepts, that hurts us so much!"
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The french are just looking for an excuse, For reasons they get there asses kicked by american companys. Wake up Idiots you make an inferior product. Even if America was spying on them what are they gonna do? they cant sue the NSA in a french court so they can spin their wheels all they want and if they try anything we can turn their country into a glowing nuclear ash pile. see how there stuck up asses like that.
Two words: Absolutely Nothing.
Why? First of all, the British were willing co-conspirators in all of this. There's a scapegoat inside the European community waiting for us.
Secondly, every other European nation that counts has just as barbaric national security measusers as Echelon. They may not actually be Echelon, but they're concerned about the almighty National Security as much as we are too. They understand why we need Echelon.
Thirdly, France is a muckracker. Nobody else in the community cares, and France can't do anything on its own without the support of the community.