"They Are Watching Everyone"

A Moscow Times story shows us what happens when privacy protections are few or ineffective. A Russian private-eye firm has bought a $50,000 black-market database "on 140 politicians, journalists, businessmen and criminals," and is now publishing it. Why? Because "we want people to know the spirit of the KGB is alive ... the telephone tapping and surveillance of hundreds of Russian citizens indicates that the country is under a microscope and that this microscope is more intense than that of the KGB/FSB." One woman whose phone conversations were bugged by the free-lance spies says: "Soon, we will look back with nostalgia at the times when we were only listened to by the KGB and not by God-knows-whom, by anybody." Hyperbole? Perhaps. Fortunately, this could never happen here.

Comments

Re:Optimism at work

[Ralph Wiggam]

According to my logs from today, you spent 3 hours surfing the web (an hour of that on Slashdot), an hour and a half playing Minesweeper, clipped your fingernails for 15 minutes, and wrote one email to your girlfriend. BTW, if you're going to do that thing with the baby oil, you should put a shower curtain down on the floor first.

-Agent B

Yeah? And what is the /. crowd doing about it?

[revscat]

Every day, it seems, we see more and more stories about how group X is violating privacy. From Echelon to RealNetworks, privacy abuse is very, very obviously pervasive and almost totally unchecked.

And what does the /. crowd do? They bitch. Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch. Katz spews out another horror piece. User comments that amount to little more than "that sucks!" are moderated up to 5. Endless debate occurs over the rights of states & corporations vs. the rights of the individuals. On and on and on...

In the meantime, little harm occurs to those who violate these rights. Have you written or called your Congresscritter to bitch about this? Yes, money rules politics. But so does the ballot box. If they think that there are concerned citizens out there it will at least give them pause before voting for the "Feinstein-Helms Let's Give the Corporations More Power to Eavesdrop Bill of 2000". PLEASE spend less time posting comments here and more time calling up Congressmembers. Bitch to THEM. Get active! As cool as /. is, it affects policy only marginally. "They've got the guns but we've got the numbers" as Jim Morrison famously said. Bitch, moan, complain and do so loudly and consistently.

[Note: This message applies worldwide: just replace "Congress" with "Parliament" or "Duma" or whatever happens to apply to your particular locale. But fucking DO it. Nothing positive will happen in the "real world", no matter how high your karma is here.]

This should probably be modded as flamebait, because I am trying to be inflammatory. I *want* people to get pissed.

And while we're at it, can someone email me & tell me why IPv6/IPsec hasn't been widely implemented yet? Packet level encryption would help in situations like this.

- Rev.

Optimism at work

[Wind_Walker]

Fortunately, this could never happen here

I hate to be the pessimist/conspiratory theorist here, but truthfully, for all that I know my phones are tapped by uncounted numbers of people/organizations. I would never know about it, from the "end user" point of view, but somebody could easily be eavesdropping on all my conversations, e-mail (can anybody say Echelon?), and God knows what else. Just because the U.S. government says they are upholding the law and not bending it does not make it true. I recall a bit of text placed on the music video for Van Halen's "Right Now" song... "Right Now, our government is doing things you think only other governments do" It's not far from the truth, folks.
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Too late

[Chairboy]

It's too late to hope it never happens here, it already happens every day.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has lobbied for and received an amazing suite of powers, ostensibly for use in fighting the 'War on Drugs'. Not only can the DEA seize cash and assets without proof of wrongdoing, mere suspicion, they can also get wiretaps on suspected criminals with minimal evidence. In fact, DEA and other law enforcement can now get wiretaps without the inconvenience of justifying it to a judge by merely waving the flag of 'Drug War'. After that, it's basically a blank wiretapping check that's written in their name.

For a more pervasive example of observastion, take a look at the grocery 'Club Cards' that are becoming popular. These cards allow the stores to attach names to the lists of purchases made. There is nothing to prevent them from selling this information to insurance companies and marketing companies in the years to come. Of course, you won't realize it until one day your health insurance agent says they are downgrading you to a 'At Risk' group, doomed to pay more, simply because they noticed that you haven't been buying the 5% fat beef instead of the 20% fat beef. A marketer might call you up one day and ask you to try Pepsi instead of Coke, or browbeat you on your choice of laundry detergents.

Phone tapping isn't the biggest problem anymore, it's all the OTHER data that's sorted, collated, and filed under you social security number.

Re:Too late

[rgmoore]

But what do you do about this? Take away all of the DEA's powers? Make everything go in front of a judge? Think of what that will do for red-tape.

I'm not defending them at all, but you have to think of alternatives to give them the tools they need to solve their task. Either that or legalize all drugs and have the country turn into a cesspool.

I certainly do think that the DEA should have to go in front of a judge to get a warrant for a wiretap, search, etc. The purpose of that "Red Tape" is to protect your rights. Going through the trouble to justify a warrant isn't some stupid formality that's there to get in the way. It's a vitally important step in preventing abuse of police powers. If there's actually a problem processing these things promptly that means you need more judges to deal with the workload, not that you should start ripping up the Bill of Rights to save time.

The key is that allowing a minor loophole in an important protection is like being a little bit pregnant. Once there's a single agency that can violate your rights, all of the other groups that want to can just call them up, trump up some bogus grounds for a search, and "happen" to find whatever else they were looking for.

The big thing to remember is that someone involved in a big, organized activity like large scale drug traffic will inherently produce a trail of physical and documentary evidence. Sooner or later some of that is going to show up in a way that will convince a judge that it's worth while letting the police have their warrant. It's people who haven't done anything wrong but just happen to look suspicious (or have pissed off a member of the police) who are the real potential victims here. When you let the police barge in wherever and whenever they want, you'll increase the number of innocent people harmed much more than the number of guilty people caught.

Is DEA not an excuse?

[Poingggg]

First, let me state that I don't like drugdealers and their like at all. Softdrugs (cannabis) is merely OK with me, harddrugs are just bad. But that's off-topic. But the Mafia was born in the time that alcohol was illegal in the USA, and gangs started making big money with it. It turned out that prohibiting alcohol gave more trouble than allowing and controlling it. The same goes, for a great part, for drugs. One can easily become 100 years using heroine of a good, pure quality, and noone has to bother about people using this. Now, it's big money and it's mixed with all kinds of shit that causes users to become sick etc, and it's expensive, so people have to steal to use it. IMHO it'd be better to legalize it and control it.
BUT America wants to have an excuse (yes, I'm finally coming to my point here :-) ) to have a finger into everything, everywhere. So what works better than to create a devil (drugs) and have a force with almost unlimited power to 'fight' it?
The DEA is such a force, it's everywhere and when America thinks it's needed to do something about a thing they don't like, they use it. And. of course, everything and everyone has to be monitored everywhere. I think the DEA is just an excuse to get influence.
Am I lucky I live in the Netherlands! (Yes, I have used cannabis for years, absolutely problemless, I stopped, without any problem, and I'm not using any other drugs (apart from caffeine), never have used other drugs, and never wanted to. But that's off-topic again :-) )

Re:Wakeup Call for the US!

[carlos_benj]

This should be a wakeup call for anybody who belives that nobody cares what they do with their private life.

That still probably holds true for most of us. The only names on the database are high-profile: 140 politicians, journalists, businessmen and criminals.

I doubt anyone's Slashdot Karma level is sufficient to bring about such scrutiny.

Let's say someone did tap my phone. What will they use the information for? Will they attempt to blackmail me with information regarding cheating on my diet? What would they expect to gain? My assets are few. I try to live my life peaceably with others and within the limitations of the law.

The simple fact is that there are so many people and only a few of them can be dedicated to playing back every phone call (even at high speed) or tailing a person in hopes of finding something useful. Targets have to be picked based on high profile or probable cause and I don't qualify. Neither, likely, do you.

carlos