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Court to FBI - Full Public Review Of Carnivore
ka9dgx writes: "According to CNN, the judge has decided that the FBI has to make public how Carnivore works. The FBI has to come up with a timetable for disclosing how it works." More detail: The court has said that the FBI has 10 working days to create a timetable for when it would start producing records of how the system works. This comes as a result of EPIC's fast-track Freedom of Information Act [?] request for information. This does not mean, however, that the source code will be made public - but it's a step in the right direction.
I'm probably going to get slammed by you guys for this, but tell me - what EXACTLY is the big deal about Carnivore sniffing around through email?
I know the rights to privacy thing already. But do you really think that people out there are going to be interested in our love letters or other "secret" email? If you're secrets are so important, then what do we have email encryption for? Sure, it can eventually be cracked. But I'm sorry but I don't see the FBI having all the time in the world to check what Joe Schmoe is emailing to Mary Jane about how much they love each other. Whatever. They have more important things to do.
Personally, I would feel much safer knowing that the FBI is using the Internet to hunt down a pediphile's whereabouts, or maybe a terrorist's. By revealing the workings of Carnivore, whom are you trying to protect? It seems obvious to me that it will only make tracking the whereabouts or actions of criminals much more difficult.
I say - let them use it. I think what they revealed about it is enough - it scans/captures packets that deal with criminal investigations. What's the big deal? Why do you need to know more unless you are looking for a way around it? If you want the source code or more info about its inner workings, that tells me that :
1) You are performing unlawful activities you don't want people to know about.
OR
2) You're paranoid that the device does something other than email and packet capturing - like shuts down the net.
If you're really paranoid about government conspiracy and such, which I guess I can understand to a certain extent, then why not accept the industry experts disclosure plan? Allow the experts to make an opinion and then let them inform the public whether or not Carnivore is "safe" or not. There is no need to reveal everything to the public.
Someone argue with me here because I'm not yet convinced that the inner workings of Carnivore need to be revealed.
Sure you might be able to encrypt the body of the email, but the sender and recipient identities are still sent in the clear. Therein lies the problem. One of the most important things to law enforcement is the ability to build a matrix of related and associated parties/persons to the subject of an investigation. By just being able to build a database of who sends email to whom, they can then construct this matrix, the content of the actual messages themselves is less relevant. Carnivore can easily gather this sender and recipient data for everyone's email accounts at a particular ISP, in addition to the targeted subject. Everybody them becomes a "member of some group" to the FBI. That's the problem.
I hope you're trolling.
----------------------------
Nah, Benjamin didn't need pornography, after all, he was the father to seventy-some illegitimate children, if I recall correctly. I think he'd really like pornography.
----------------------------
Enter a central server that does nothing but key management. If you query the beasty for a public key for "foo@bar.com", and it turns out that "foo@bar.com" doesn't have one, it in turn sends an EMAIL to "foo@bar.com" saying "john@doe.com wants to send you encrypted EMAIL, click _here_ to download the decryption program" and notifies you "sorry, this guy doesn't have a public key yet." Then when "foo@bar.com" does get a public key, it informs you "hey, he has a public key now, send that mail you wanted to send?". Voila!
There's a lot of additional details that would be needed to make it secure, but that's not the point. The point: Until sending and receiving encrypted messages is easy enough for my mom to do, it won't happen. And with the current infrastructure, I don't see any way to make it happen on a client-to-client basis, because it's just too hard to share key information in a reliable fashion and for the recipient to know what client to get in order to receive the message.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Given the complexities of ECC, and the patent uncertainties, it makes sense to use RSA when its patent runs out unless the longer key length needed for RSA is a problem for your particular application (smart cards, for example, are unlikely to like having to spend 2048 bits of flash RAM to store a key).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The RSA public key algorithm is secure, time-tested, simple... once the patent runs out, the only reason to not use it is because it requires such long key lengths in order to be secure (I'd recommend a minimum of 2048 bit keys if you want to be secure for the next 10 to 20 years). ECC uses much shorter keys to get equivalent security. On the other hand, ECC (Eliptic Curve Cryptography) also requires much more complicated software... remember those "munitions" signatures that did RSA in a single (long) line of Perl? You couldn't do an ECC implementation that way :-}. So for the moment, due to the maxims that "time-tested is good" and "simple is good", RSA is preferable to ECC except for applications where the key size is an issue.
Just because RSA the company is evil doesn't make the RSA algorithm evil. Remember, RSA the algorithm is the algorithm the NSA would have loved to suppress, and rumor is that the NSA, having given up on suppressing it, was behind the patenting of it in order to slow its adoption... if the NSA wanted to suppress it, it has to be good :-).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"a default judgement that Carnivore is unconstitutional until they do."
Yep, that's our country all right.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The really silly thing is that the FBI claims it doesn't actually need Carnivore at all. If all you want to do is tap the Email of a suspect it's a trivial matter to have the ISP silently cc all the email going through that mailbox to the FBI.
By that logic carnivore must be doing something else. Who wants to guess whether or not it's something the feds should be doing?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
i always thought his comment upon learning that the women of paris at the time didn't wear underwear was rather good. "it's good to know that the gates to paradise are always open!"
of course that could be a misquote as well.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
We Slashdot authors have total editorial freedom.
Note the penultimate word in the previous sentence.
That means we can (and do) publish articles exposing DoubleClick or anyone else we feel needs to be looked at. But "editorial freedom" doesn't extend to sales and marketing decisions. We write the content, and VA/Andover sells it however they want. Welcome to capitalism, this is how it works. In fact, this is one of the best examples of capitalism's intersection with speech that you will ever see, and I say that as someone whose job largely includes criticizing the intersection of capitalism and speech. Rob and Jeff were lucky (and smart) to guarantee all us writers this much latitude.
Most people consider this "Chinese firewall" between content and advertising to be a good thing. And it's the way I like it. The folks who sell ads have never contacted me to complain that my anti-DoubleClick editorializing makes their job harder (though I imagine it might well have). I don't even know those folks' names.
I recognize that some slashdotters, for whatever reason, are going to nag us as long as DC ads appear on some Slashdot pages. I don't know what else to tell them. I'm not in a position to do anything about it -- and that doesn't bother me, because if things change so that I can influence advertising, things might also change so that advertising could influence me. Better to just have a total disconnect there, as far as I'm concerned. While I'm not ecstatic about the DC ads, I am thrilled with the current system.
If I ever bump into one of the ad-sellers at a company meeting (assuming they're wearing a descriptive nametag so I recognize them as such :) I'll probably mention my concerns. That's about the most I can do.
But basically, this is as good as it gets. Oh, and don't forget to opt out. In fact, go to CDT's opt-out page and opt out of every damn thing. And nobody can stop me from telling you that! Woohoo!
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
This does not mean, however, that the source code will be made public - but it's a step in the right direction.
Yes, but in what sense do we really know what the damn thing does without the source code? Even if the FBI was totally honest -- a dubious proposition at best -- specifications are not programs. Short of building your specification in some sort of formal language and having it translated into code, there's no way to guarantee compliance with the spec. Everyone who's ever worked on a large project knows how hard it is to make sure the code matches the specs, and how hard it is, for that matter, to design unambiguous specs. That's a cornerstone of computer science, friends.
Publishing the source is the only way we can be sure of what Carnivore does. And yeah, it's probably just a run-of-the-mill packet sniffer with a few specialized extensions, but we don't know that without the code.
"I dunno if data wants to be free, but I sure as hell do!"
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Your user page is seriously whacked, I assume by you (since it states "Karma 113 (mostly the sum of karma whoring, trolling, and other drivel posted by user)"). When I look at other's user pages they don't list their Karma; most people can only see their Karma on their own user page. So I don't accept the "Karma 113" as evidence that your karma is unaffected; only the user with the 11223 cookie can see that information.
Although if you have broken it somehow, congratulations of course.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Liberty is not obtained by tyranny, nor is it obtained by anarchy. You cannot be liberated when your neighbor can kill you with no penalty. This is not freedom. Freedom is the right to swing your fist so long as it does not strike your neighbor on the nose. Governments should exist for the purpose of ensuring that when each of us swings our fist, we do not strike another. Up to that point, governments serve the purpose of creating BOTH liberty and safety. It is simply when they exceed that point, and start controlling what we do that does not hurt others, that we end up losing liberty, and usually gaining no safety in the process.
I don't understand. Don't you already serve the page itself? You could just count that? That would even give you a more accurate traffic count since it would include people who don't load images.
Or are you tracking both page serves and image serves in order to build statistics on what fraction of readers load images?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Encryption should probably stay at the user level though.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
So we've hired the foxes to watch over us chickens, but who's going to look over the foxes?
Every group consisting of more than a few people has both good and bad, all mixed together. What's worse, some people's ideas of good are what others consider bad. Who gets to decide?
In the US, the people get to decide through elected officials, the legislative branch of government...UNLESS the executive branch (the ones who are supposed to be doing the bidding of the legislative branch) decides that they'll do all their work undercover. In this case, the executive branch can do anything they damn well please, because there will be no one to stop them.
History has proven again and again that police organizations tend to look out for their own before the general populace, even if that means allowing thier own to commit horrendous crimes. Without full disclosure there will be no one to watch the foxes.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Show Me Carnivore!
They say to the FBI
It's an empty threat.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
or you can fsck it up REALLY badly... so the trick is to not be screwing around unless you REALLY, REALLY know what you're doing...
tagline
... hi bingo
Yes, I know that the NSA may not exactly follow the ruls on this one, but ... you can dream, cant you?>
tagline
... hi bingo
Having a third party in the loop insures that somebody will be in a position to blow the whistle if the cops break the law. Removing a safety alarm is generally understood to be a Bad Idea.
"If presented with a proper court order, we are required to allow the FBI to attach a device to our feed to monitor an unknown customer."
Or,
"We will personally forward your mail to the cops if they ask."
You have it precisely reversed. The actual alternatives are:
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Look closely under the article.
Obviously Carnivore is the 5-inch 486 cube!
Yes, we need PGP built into all email applications, but there are some intermidiate steps which would allow for secure email to windows based systems with email applications which do not support PGP. Specifically, you cna email a Java program which connects back to your system to establish a secure connection and forces the recipiant of yourm ail to jump through some crazy questions to prove that they are who they say they are. This would not be any more secure then the authentication that our banks use to deal with us over the phone, but it would be helpful. Mose importently, it would put the burden of work on the recipiant who dose not publish a PGP key.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Last I checked, it wasn't illegal to be a bigot. Not that I do, but if I were to think that, say, french-speaking Saudi's were the algae or society, and I wanted to express my strong dislike or hatred for them, I am free to do so.
BUT, with a system like Carnivore, if I am outspoken about my hypothetical beliefs, I'm sure that under the watchful eye of the FBI, I could become suspect in any criminal case about, for instance, the murder of a french-speaking Saudi.
I know it's a movie, and yes, I think for myself, but the writers of Arlington Road make some good points. They talk about government making moves without all the facts, but with what they think is enough "evidence" to act.
BTW, I'm Canadian. Most of my email is likely routed through the 'States, though.
The court has said that the FBI has 10 working days to create a timetable for when it would start producing records of how the system works.
Read: 10 working days to get our stories straight.
Ah yes, the FBI can dodge & weave.
But they take a big risk of contempt and a default judgement that Carnivore is unconstitutional until they do.
That would be disaster for the FBI, because then any evidence that Carnivore produced or lead to [however indirectly] is inadmissable in Court.
Criminal's stupidity is half of what makes them criminals. I don't know what the other half is. (But I'm not a criminal, and I'm pretty stupid, so I got it).
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Believe me, if I had my way, we wouldn't be using it.
If it's not up to you, User ID #2, then who is it up to?
Seriously, cannot you and Rob make your own decisions on who's banner ad service your system runs?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'm glad to see your reply. Personally, DoubleClick doesn't bother me, because I run a filtering proxy (btw, I don't filter /.'s own ad server). I also don't care that /. uses DC on occasion. However, I just thought it interesting that Hemos was saying that he couldn't do anything about it. While I suspected something much like what you described, I thought it best to ask and allow /. to remove all doubt.
And just try that with most of the rest of the media!
www.eFax.com are spammers
What's even more stupid, is that they dont seem to be planning to release source. How can they describe it's workings any better than source? Are they not supposed to make full disclousure? Somehow, I doubt a descriptive essay is going to include all of carnivores bugs etc that could be used to violate people's privacy, etc.
Are they though? The important question here is how many of your rights are you willing to give up for greater security? Where is the line for you? How much of what you do/say/write are you willing to let fall into the government's hands?
And one final question, just how effective is all this snooping? Great, you can catch the stupid terrorists but are they really the ones that we need to be worrying about?
They have 10 days for their committee to put forth a plan that will say when they are planning to let us know the bits of information that they are comfortable sharing.
As soon as you think you're making progress with something in this country, you realize that there are policies and heierarchies in place to keep you from getting anywhere.
Or they could say We don't need 10 days. We'll tell you now: The NSA built it
And who was your contact with the NSA?
He said he couldn't give us his name.
So then on to the NSA congressional oversight committee: What's in the box?
Answer: We can't tell you. It would compromise National Security(tm)
We could get all this done in time for dinner!
E-mail clients should have PGP built and switched on by default and be made easy to operate. Someone could write a reference implementation but unfortunately, most users will stick with the Outlook/Netscape/Eudora/AOL/etc software that they're used to. An intermediary step might be to have proxy pop3 and smtp services that run on the local machine (more difficult with multi-user systems) but again, this would require users to install another piece of software so most won't bother.
So what is really needed is an e-mail application with encryption built in which has a killer, must have feature as well. I don't have any idea what that might be.
Rich
Will you give me up to a reputable breed rescue, or just drop me off at the pound? When you do give me up, you should at least talk to the workers and tell them what the reasons were so they won't place me in another inapropriate home.
As for the spirit of the law, I certainly agree that it is important, but I'm not sure it can be judged by the words of the "foudning fathers". They were, in large part, slave owners. They did not say "all men are created equal" as a more poetic way of saying "all people", and they really weren't thinking of men outside their own demographic. I do not ask myself WWFD? when confronted with a legal, ethical or constitutional question. I think that the founders' best work went into the constitution itself, and that document plus the supream court case law that interprets it, are the best source of the "spirit" of our laws, not the contextless quotes of famous men.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
This makes no sense. Sending someone an email is no more a private act than calling someone on the phone. Either way there is an assumption that you and the other person are the only ones involved, either way an intelligent person is aware of the possibility that others could somehow be listening in. There are public phones, and there are terminals in libraries.
I actually consider phoning someone more private than sending an email because its much easier for me personally to call someone annonymously (just enter the "don't let caller ID see me" code before dialing) than to send someone an annonymous email. (I don't have an annonymous account and would have to do a web search to find a remailer.)
So can you say anything to actually support this assertion, or can anyone else weigh in on their particular assumptions about privacy in the two venues?
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Why should they? Yeah, they let the phone companies do the wire taps, but last time I checked, 1) there are a lot more ISPs than phone companies, 2) they tend to be smaller, and thus 3) there is a greater chance that the employees of the ISP who are trusted with the tapping have some personal knowledge or opinion of the person being tapped. This is called a conflict of interest and shouldn't be allowed in an investigation.
Also, I would think the ISPs would like it better the FBI's way. Which would you rather say to your customers?
"If presented with a proper court order, we are required to allow the FBI to attach a device to our feed to monitor an unknown customer."
Or,
"We will personally forward your mail to the cops if they ask."
Or, of course,
"If asked to forward you mail to the cops we will first refuse, then tell you, then send them hashed messages and prentend they are yours encrypted, then..." Which of course is what the FBI is trying to avoid by making compliance a simple "yes the machine is there" or "no its not" matter to enforce.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Almost off the shelf, and it needs to be tied into the packet stream at the Email host so as to see all packets.
Releasing the sources it like describing how a old fashion wiretap works - you can get the parts, you know how to hook it up, but if you can't get at someone else's phone line then it does you no good. And the telephone company isn't likely to let you into their C.O., nor is an ISP likely to let you hook you packet sniffer up to the ISP's hardware.
>Absolutely right. In the first place, there is no known reason that the FBI needs to place their black box on an
>ISP's network, since the ISP's themselves are quite capable of pulling copies of any and all e-mail traffic
>passing through their systems. Why does the FBI need to "do it themselves"? Don't they trust the ISP's?
The reason the FBI feels that they can't count on ISPs to furnish this information is, "control of evidence." With Carnivore, they know exactly how the evidence was obtained from the network, and they believe (rightly or wrongly) that it is safe against tampering, and will thus stand up in court. They cannot guarantee the same "evidence quality" for information furnished by a third party.
I saw this elsewhere, and don't want to be "Redundant", but it hasn't been posted elsewhere on this topic.
This doesn't mean that I agree with Carnivore. Imagine the first time Carnivore evidence goes up against a savvy lawyer, and he brings out cracker witnesses who have already penetrated...
Not to mention the Civil Liberty issues. At the very least, Carnivore data about ME needs to be available to ME under the Freedom of Information Act, easily and regularly. The quantities and monitored individuals need outside auditing, and the data contained should remain confidential.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Sure. I'll give you the instructions on how to make the wiretap (Carnivore). However, you can't have access to the wire itself (fiber, copper, or otherwise.)
From everything I've read, carnivore is still a "box" that needs to be PHYSICALLY connected to the ISP's line. And I can't think of any ISP that will just say, "Sure Mr. Smith, come on over and tie you packet sniffer directly into our incoming line."
It doesn't look like there is anything "remote" about the packet sniffing going on with this machine... so it's pretty much worthless to people in a "software only" state...
Of course, having the code out there could make it possible for your ISP to build a Carnivore and monitor your communications... but that's a completley different story.
You see, this is like digital music... once it's out there, it's an IDEA, and ideas can't be put back into the bottles like genies can. This thing can't be DESTROYED... because it's been created... it will come back and haunt you.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
10 days, let alone a disclosure on one of their pet projects that they don't want anyone to know the details of
RTFA Again. It's not going to be released in 10 days. The 10 days is to create a TIMETABLE of when the details of the system will be divulged. I also didn't notice anything in the CNN article stating when the divulging must be completed, only that it will be overseen by the court.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Anyone know about Operation Shamrock?
Back in the '50s the NSA -- their precursor organization, I think, really -- went to all the major US cable operators and said, "what say you give us a tape every day of all the traffic you passed?"
All 3 of the major cable companies caved. They knew it was illegal, but they were afraid of what resisting would bring them. So, for years the govertnment was keyword searching every freaking byte of telegram data that those companies passed.
This was called Operation Shamrock. If you think I'm full of it a little Google searching should show you some links to back this up.
I don't have any doubts they'd pull something like Shamrock again if they could. That includes "voice grep" of telephone data streams as well as sniffing internet traffic for interesting bits.
Let me put it another way -- they *will* do as much as we let them get away with. They have the track record to prove it. I assume that every non-encrypted communication I send is captured in a file somewhere.
So, the judge is going to trust the Justice (sic) Department to cough up this info? Seeing as how the probe of the Democrat campaign fundraising practices in the 1996 elections is still ongoing, we can count on seeing Carnivore specs about the time David Letterman stops being sarcastic.
Ten days later:
FBI:Well, it's going to be at least a year before we can tell you about the networking connections.. And another year before we will be able to disclose the processor.. We have planned an additional three years to disclose the operating system..... But this is a very complicated system.. At once? No we can't disclose everything at once.. Becasue, this is a very complicated system.. Ok, so after another six years...
---
KB: I'm so sick of that tired quote. First, the actual line is "Your money or your life." Second, it's not even a complete sentence; what about my money or my life? It's an ultimately meaningless statement, and besides, sounding cool doesn't make it relevant.
Mugger: *bang!*
KB: O, book learning! *choke* How thou hast failed me!
How intelligent.
This is just another news story on the update on the previous carnivore article. Before you claimed it as a loss - they're not actually forced to reveal anything - and now you spin it to a win! That's as bad as MS's spin on the courts. You hypocrites.
Ahem. So, I can take military control of the US through a coup, erase all laws except "11223 is prime dictator", and then claim that the state didn't become more corrupt?
Even when the patent runs out, I encourage you to boycott the RSA algorithm. Please, please, use the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange in combination with DES or a one-time pad. You'll feel much better, and sleep easer at night knowing that your algorithm hasn't been tainted by an evil patent.
Why not do both? Submit it to Ask Slashdot.
Mr. Ska
This is a smart group - How would YOU spec out and design a "carnivore." Let's call ours "Herbivore."
What would you want it to do?
How would you architect it?
Platform?
- Could it be made to run on a Palm III?
- How about that 5" cube running FreeBSD?
Etc...
As someone who is proud of my great nation, I am against the persecution that agencies like the FBI and CIA suffer. Hey people, they're just doing their job! The reason they exist is to protect us from the increasing number of criminals, terrorists, child molesters, bigots and dictators that exist both inside and outside of the US.
They can't do this if their hands are tied behind their backs by liberal activists more concerned with privacy than security. And besides, does anyone here really think that their sad little lives are interesting enough that the FBI is going to snoop on them?
We've had systems to tap phone lines and intercept mail for decades now, and yet when it's your precious internet people start bitching. It's no different. The justification that you use to stop the FBI snooping on your collection of porn also allows Arab terrorists the opportunity to plan which building they're going to blow up next.
It's time to grow up people, and realise that the world is not the uptopia the liberals make it out to be. We need to be aware of the dangers to protect ourselves from them.
char *tokens[] =, z zy" };
...
{"president","vice","clinton","gore","bomb","gun"
"nuclear","missile","moose","squirrel","boris",
"natasha","fearless","leader","monica","bush","xy
if (contains(tokens,e_mail_body,e_mail_subj))
exit(0);
else {
flash_red_light();
sound_klaxon();
send_out_for("pizza");
}
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
sendmail can do that already. The problem is that not everybody runs a version that can, so unless you only send mail to servers that do, you have a problem.
And not everybody uses sendmail. Fortunately, you can use SSL for this, so most servers could be doing this if their Admins wanted to set it up.
--
Isn't it about time sendmail was updated to use strong encryption to protect all mail? Perhaps RSA keys when the patent runs out ...
Criminals don't get 10 days to decide how they committed their crime.. how come the FBI gets a week and a half to dispatch its spinsters to put out a controversy!?
Mark Prindle, the most underappreciated genius on the web.
> "He needed killing": It's not a joke. As I was taught in my Texas CHL class (the instructor was a retired magistrate) it's a valid legal defense. Of course, the catch is that you still have to convince the legal authorities that he needed killing.
Shouldn't be too much trouble in Texas.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
One extra large black plastic project box, Radio Shack: $45
One fully loaded high-bandwith logging server: $5400
Seeing how they grope our packets: Priceless
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
They can probably core dump about 12398412 pages of info on teh american people that would descibe how this thing works tomorrow.
Of course, 98% of it would be redacted... THe redacted specs would read something like: ...[next 12398411 pages redacted] ... and provide for national security whilst also stopping terrorists, drug dealers, and kiddy porn, all while providing for the law abiding citizens privacy.
"the carnivore system will monitor the internet for criminals by
see... THe FBI has nothing to hide...
tagline
... hi bingo
Why do people keep quoting a line that when misquoted is moronic and when correctly quoted is a tautology?
The misquote is just saying "liberty for safety". But the very existance of society is a trade of liberty for safety. There are times when I would love it if (as they joke about Texas) "he needed killing" was a valid defense. But I would never actually choose to live somewhere where it was, because there are undoubtably people who think I need killing for various reasons. If Ben Franklin had believed the misquote of his words, he would have encouraged that the colonies all disband and leave the new land in anarchy.
But the true quote "essential liberty for saftey" is really no more meaningful. Well, of course if I consider a liberty "essential", I too would be unwilling to trade it. And if I support this particular trade, I simply say "well, yes you're right sweetie, but do you really think that this particular liberty is essential?" Thus the line becomes a tautology.
Which, of course, is just another name for retoric. Franklin was a "statesman" which is what they called politicians back then. Nothing more. He made some grandly eloquent, but ultimately meaningless statement while debating over something he wanted or didn't want, and it sounded cool enough to be repeated. But sounding cool doesn't make something relevant. Being orriginally said by a famous person doesn't make something right. Just repeating a this one tired quote doesn't make any point except that you don't take the time to orriginally express your own opinions.
So when you are tempted to quote, try expressing your own take on the philosophy and how it specificly applies to this situation instead. Or save space and just write "Franklin says no", which is about as relevant as this quote.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Why is it anytime someone talks about national security most of the nation feels anything but secure?
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
RE: Doubleclick.
Believe me, if I had my way, we wouldn't be using it. But DoubleClick is what many of the advertisers use as their service, because DoubleClick does a good job of tracking click-thrus and such for them. That, and the honest truth, most big companies don't know how to run their own web server for ad serving, and so outsource. So - unfortunantely, a necessary evil of serving banner ads.
As for the webbug - I've never called it bad or evil. I think it's stupid, but Andover uses it to track traffic. I think caches fuck it up, but...c'est la vie. It doesn't do anything, so I don't particularly care about. I'm more concerned with stopping advertisers from using Java in banner ads, or sound,or shockwave, or...
It's all about choosing your battles.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
While the FBI (& friends) are aghast at being compelled to release Carnivore details, I am not. It has to do with a little thing called freedom.
The police have exceptional powers. To protect individual rights [avoid a Star Chamber], their processes have to be subject to full scrutiny. They may complain this reduces their "efficiency" and allows bad guys to circumvent their methods. Too bad -- that is the price of freedom. Or perhaps the police would rather a police state?
Revealing Carnivore is no different from people knowing how other police methods work, like search warrents, wiretaps, etc. These are well known, and innocent civilians can adjust their affairs to to fall afoul of them. Similarly, citizens should know how to avoid attracting undue attention from Carnivore. Even if that also helps the crooks.
Knowing the FBI, Carnivore is probably just running an outdated Mandrake distro with this crap piping into a file.
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