Slashdot Mirror
Government Takes Control Of The Net; 2000 In Review
An Anonymous Coward (what, nobody reads The Economist?) sends us this excellent piece: "This is a review of several developments in internet regulation, pointing out several ironies and possibilities, quite lucid and clear. Stop Signs on the Web." There are a lot of thoughtful points in this article - it bears a thorough reading. It is my belief that the end of online "freedom" is just around the corner, and I think this article lays out a number of the forces that are going to cause that to happen.
Of course 50-100 years ago they would have been shocked at police wearing masks.
"Why would they have to wear masks?", they would say. It was perfectly acceptable just to shoot people in cold blood in the name of law and order.
I suggest you go back and read your history books. Pay particularly attention to the labor battles such as with Carnegie steel, the docks in San Francisco and New York, etc.
Check out Joseph McCarthy. Check out Wallace on the steps in Alabama, or the assassination of two Kennedy's and King.
Then come back and claim we are worse off today.
One thing I really hate are people who never learned history and are doomed to repeat it.
We must be ever vigilante in the defense of our freedoms, but we also must be rational and intelligent in the discussion of same.
I definitely agree freedom is disappearing on the net -- the same thing has happened with other new technologies, such as radio (which got licensed), the aircraft industry, etc. I'm unclear if this happens due to demand from industry to protect their revenues from innovation and competition on the grounds of 'interference' (which is what liberal conspiracy theorists would propose), or due to inherent "nanny-state" government regulators who either feel a moral compulsion to regulate (the right-wing argument) or are simply political opportunists.
Groups like the cypherpunks have forseen this on the net for a long time, and I'm sure the general fear of authoritarianism is sufficient, and far older. Many people believe the current middle-ground level of regulation is not a stable position; we will either have full regulation or no regulation. Since I believe global revolution to protect Internet freedom is highly unlikely in a world which has allowed every other technology to become fully regulated, the only thing that can possibly make the Internet free again is the technology itself.
No other technology lends itself so easily to encryption, steganography, and traffic analysis protection. Thanks to the widespread deployment of "politically acceptable" applications like ecommerce, chat systems, etc. on the Internet, there is a huge amount of cover traffic available.
The ultimate goal is a network resistant to arbitrary degrees against traffic analysis, malicious attacks, denial of service, and physical compromise. Of course, to have this in practice, a lot of separate technologies must be integrated, and one thing learned from ssl vs. pgp, it must be presented in a relatively seamless and simple way to the user. There have been some good beginnings made toward this goal, including ZKS, Mojonation, and e-gold, but nothing has yet become so seamless and easy to use, as well as "full-service", that it is the final solution.
I think the value of such technology is non-linear; being able to know that it isn't *possible* for your communications to be tracked by your adversaries is worth more than 10x as much as a system 1/10th the strength, and something which is as easy to use (or easier to use) than insecure tools is worth far more than something which requires even the minor level of additional work required by the user to browse SSL websites securely.
I'm happy to be involved with HavenCo, as one of the essential parts to this is having a physically and legally secure environment in which to host your servers. After all, it doesn't do a lot of good to use SSL or a new anonymous anti-traffic analysis successor if you're putting personal information on a server which anyone can subpoena or black-bag. At HavenCo, we're focusing on secure managed colo of business servers (USD 1500/month including bandwidth, which is fine for business and other serious users but is more than most individuals can afford, unless they share), and that's going quite well. We are also looking at ways to support consumer/end-user privacy, both on the web/email hosting front, and core technologies like traffic analysis protection, cryptographic tools, and a solution to the pervasive payment problem. We've been a bit quiet on the marketing and PR front as we expand, but that will change soon.
Even though it means more financial success for me if the US/UK/etc. tighten regulations more and more, driving businesses to places like Sealand, I would definitely prefer the outcome where individual freedoms are respected worldwide. After all, Sealand isn't exactly the best vacation spot in the world, especially in the current winter 30kt winds and 7' waves.
have you read the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999?
Funny how you can be breaking the law without even knowing it. Maybe in 5 years time we will all receive daily email updates from the government on what is and is not illegal now.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just because the bill was turned down once doesn't mean a similar bill wont be brought before congress again. Besides that, his post "Knowing how to make illegal substances is not illegal" would not be illegal if this bill had past either. The point is, with bills like this passing through congress it may very well be illegal to even think about illegal substances in the near future.
How we know is more important than what we know.
it's not absurd at all. It's a violation of my god given rights that I have to grin and bear on a daily basis. If my opinions are absurd then so are those of your founding fathers. So are those of the men who wrote for free markets and a free press. I have the right to do and say as I please. If I physically harm you or your property then I forfiet these rights. Nothing more, nothing less. Your "reputation" is something you will have to work out with your peers. Once upon a time the majority voted to put a short mad dictator in power who commited some of the worst atrocities our collective memory has ever seen. The majority can go off and herd itself without me, thank you very much.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Is there some way of tracking people's comments on Slashdot regarding various subjects? It would be interesting to see who the people are who:
:)
1. Bitch & moan about governments/corporations legislating our freedoms away on the 'net.
2. Champion government/corporate efforts towards reducing SPAM.
3. Champion government/corporate efforts to protect our privacy.
Of course, such a tool would be very handy if it could be used on politicians/ceo's as well (hmmm, this year they're supporting this concept but last year they said it was a joke - interesting
Unfortunately, If we want the government/corporations to do #2 & #3, we're opening the door to #1! If we want freedom and anarchy on the 'net, then we're going to get SPAM and lack of freedom. It becomes a "ding-dong" battle between the people inventing technology to give us freedom and those who would then use the technology to piss us off. How do people feel about anonymous systems being used to protect SPAMer's? Does this make up for their use to protect your "legitimate" privacy needs?
As previously mentioned, all too many people want legislation to protect them from themselves! I have been told by police in the USA that they have occasionally been called by parents and asked to discipline their children. Erm - hello???? All too many people want to abdicate responsibility and the need to think for themselves. Perhaps it's a sign of the times - they're too overloaded and just want the "simple" life (read: over regulated, hyper controlled, "I'm happy in my easy chair watching TV" life).
Anarchy vs freedom vs SPAM vs anonymity vs privacy vs legislation vs control - what's happening on the 'net is an extension of what we're seeing in life around us. Are we just going to bitch & moan about it all (and thus be part of the problem) or are we going to do something about it? If the latter, what are we going to do (or what are we already doing)?
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Knowing how to make illegal substances is not illegal.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Why stop with regulating the internet? Everyone knows that the people causing trouble on the internet are the ones with all the computers. All computers should be registered with the federal government, because they could be used to violate copyright, circumvent access control mechanisms, produce and distribute kiddie porn, steal your credit card numbers, spread harmful ideas, and contribute to our society's moral decay. There's no good reason for a decent god-fearing person to own more than one computer - people who own multiple computers are therefore criminals and must be stopped before they destroy our peaceful civilization. It is time for us to stand up against these techno-weenies and take back the country God gave us!
Think for a second about how ridiculous this image is. My college's library and the local public library both have policies that say they'll ask anyone who's pornsurfing to stop doing it. When I talked to the librarians about it, they chuckled, because -- duh -- nobody would even do it in the first place. There are lots of goofy or offensive things that people could do in public, but they don't do it because of ordinary social constraints on behavior. It's not necessary to pass laws against it. It's like the laws that have been passed here in the U.S. against burning the flag. The plain truth is that nobody really does go around burning flags. But it's a good way for a politician to score points.
Liberty and Freedom doesn't mean that you have the right to force the rest of us to pay for your habits.
I have this silly habit of going to the public library and checking out books to read. I know, it's really offensive of me to ask to have this habit subsdized by the taxpayers.
But seriously, I feel sorry for any librarian who is forced to choose between quitting her/his job and becoming a censor. It's a sad thing when you can no longer trust the librarian to help you find information because she's been turned into an organ of government censorship.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
This is probably one of the more relevant and interesting posts here in a long time. Kudos to the moderators.
Keep it up, y'all.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
in a court of law is VERY IMPORTANT.
Under the treaty, an online store could be liable under laws in any of the 48 member-countries of the Hague conference. That is why the American government is opposing, among other things, a clause that would ensure that consumers could sue businesses in the courts of the country where the consumer lives.
Instead, the Department of Commerce and e-commerce firms are pushing for a different solution: in effect, a new system of private laws, which would avoid the requirement to abide by the laws of the countries where their customers live. As in the Safe Harbour agreement, web firms could seek a certification that they follow certain minimum rules of consumer protection and privacy.Conflicts would be resolved by so-called "alternative dispute resolution".
Dispute resolution by who? This is the same kind of self-policing that gives business the advantage over the consumer in other global trade agreements. Who will create the forums for alternative dispute resolution?
It is essential for the consumer to enjoy protection of some set of laws when he or she uses the internet in business. as more individuals use it to maintain their livelihoods, states actually have MORE legitimate right to police fraudulent business practices on the "global" Internet.
There must be some kind of democratically legitimate constructuion of relief for consumers under a global system. If not the laws in the state where the consumer has citizenship, then perhaps some other global body such as the United Nations should step in the fray. If it can start an international criminal court to seek genocidal leaders and try them, it can try consumer fraud.
Don't let the businesses entirely police themselves.
Goat sex free since 2001
This would be OK if they just blocked pornography, but they also block hacking sites (such as 2600.com) and, as with all other censorship, they also block their fair share of non-offensive (by their standards) websites. www.newton.org.uk is the only example I can think of now, but I've seen more. Previously, an anonymous web browser could be used to get around this, but they caught on and decided to brand those as "offensive" too.
So, if you ever feel like your government is clamping down on your freedom, just remember that there are people like me in countries where the government is <WORDPLAY> just plain unjust.</WORDPLAY>
Oh, I forgot to mention that the single, government-owned ISP provides 56kbps as its fastest option (unless you are a government agency or Internet cafe, in which case you can have 256kbps for a measly $2,500 a month). So, not only does it block many interesting sites (I keep seeing links in /. comments - click - D'oh! That stupid "Important Notice" again) but it provides a very slow, unreliable service with which to access then non-offensive content.
There's one slight problem here. In my understanding of government, laws serve the purpose of jailing people who hurt other people or their property. Actual real physical harm. If someone makes me cry or offends my moral code, I have no right to call upon my government to protect me, because I have not been physically harmed and neither has my property. Now I would dare to say that physicial harm is not possible on the Internet. Even the damage done to my computer during a hacker attack is not physical harm. So why do we need government? Let's face it, not everyone agrees with this. Lots of people want governments to protect them from every little thing, tell them what to do and ensure they can't hurt themselves. These are the people calling for Internet regulations.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If governments began to regulate the internet, you would more than likely see the days of old revived. Bulliten Board Services (Bobcat, PowerBBS, etc) would begin to spring up, but, of course, they would be more advanced and more accessible. I think that now people have gotten a taste of the internet they will not give it up with a nod and a wink. The underground would flourish - peer to peer connections would soar, thus cutting out the middle men, and evading regulation. Either way, it is my belief that the government can do what they will, but the people will find a way around it.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
In russia they have SORM. It's philisophically a bit like Carnivour, or the RIP software or basically privatised bits of Ecshelon. SORM is a black box that sits at the ISP and stores, indexes and analyses packets. It basically legalises what the FSB (former KGB) were doing already. It also decentralises the work which means it's easier. The guy who told me that works for a former part of the KGB that was split off and privatised with partly US venture capital. Their team is all pretty young, all pretty bright, and all prett keen on real time decryption of 56 key decryption of the voice channel on gsm cellphone traffic. keen distributed computer guys who do their jobs cos they love the intellectual challenge of it. And they are not alone. So the idea of data privacy is a joke. IBM can number crunch uncrunchable primes using quantum computer make of 5 fullerine atoms. That was months ago. A network of specialised computing devices on that sort of scale makes for some pretty interesting chips. A quantum ray tracer would be faster than light. A quantum based encryption/decryption race will yield incredible bounty for those of us whose privacy needs are minimal anyway. Let the NSA and the FSB and the banks and cartels and the triads and mafia and NATO and WTO and every damn sovereign nation on this earth spend as much of their budgets as they dare to out encrypt/decrypt each other. You can't have anything without securing it, but you can't secure it anymore. But then again, you never really could anyway. In Russia in Soviet times everyone could have been an informer. In the modern world everything will be. The 100,000+ cameras in every london street are a more insidious presence than anything the russins have done though. The footage from those cameras can be stored for future analysis and indexing. The indexing that can be done today is not bad to tell the truth. They are taged with GPS locations, the new lingua franca of where things are, as well as orientation data, such that their fields of view can be combined, like a smarter version of Canoma. That's spooky. George W Bush wants to put missiles in orbit to keep the peace. So do the Chinese - all of 'em apparently. The CIA just released a report saying the world is going to shit and needs more guns, nanotechnology is looming. run to the hills. Still even though I am subliminally aware that my every move is being watched and recorded, i work in a room fullof machines with permanent net connections, cameras, microphones, proprietory operating systems an software etc that could make a person paranoid; life is not a movie and much of my life is not that riveting.
If the They know that at 3am on the morning on 13th january i was watching the x-men on dvd and catching up on some email - mostly rants to friends, and jargon laden banter to workmates and associates, and work, mostly writing stuff that will end up online anyway, good luck to 'em. By the same token i hope the guy out there with the dungeon full of kiddies and the global napster style swap club get's busted badly, and i hope the girl and her brother, refugies from some shithole get to a webterminal somewhere, email someone, anyone and even though it bounces, an analysys system recognises an anolamy and passes in on for further analys. and as a result two kids are retreved from otherwise certain suffering.
Be sure they will be an age of all encompasing cradle to grave to indexed archive surveillence. in such an age the conspirators messing with Will Smith's life in enema of the state wouldn't have had a chance.
In amsterdam people live with huge open windows that face the street. you can see into people's houses easily, especially as you wander around of an evening and people are eating their dinner. It's weird. Their red light district is a reflection of this, with the women in neon lit up amluminum sided glass boxes. Like the Tescos of Soho. But the dutch flaunt their disregard for privacy on a social level you'd never see in england or australia (outside of queensland).
We are lucky that for the most of us, the system seems to tolerate us. As I write this my housemate has just walked in, she is opening a box of freeby makeup and saying "Look what I got for free... all i had to do is put my name and address is a website. This is hairspray!" I gotta go...
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
What I'm afraid is that the imminent clampdown of the net will lead to the same nationalistic confrontation bullshit we're familiar in the real world. A good example of this is the French decision to ban certain sites that offend the "public morale" (ugh!).
Up until now the Internet has been a great projection of the entire human culture. Everything from its darkest and seediest side to the greatest cultural achievements have been available to everyone. For awhile the Truth really was out there and the people have been free to choose either to read it or ignore it. Now the governments want back the authority to decide what the citizens are allowed to see.
Yes, the "free world" might be idealistic but nonetheless a worthy cause to fight for.
The Web is free, you can get on for free, with mildly annooying ads, or pay for higher bandwidth, ;-)
lets leave it like that, not tax it and regulate it.
Example, so many people complain about Porn, why?
Just don't look up "Sex" in a search engine, and it'll never bother you. Don't try to regulate someones for of entertainment (or exercise
We could just aswell make a big deal out of Warez, or Moviez, or people telling you how to make drugs, or any number of things that is illegal.
But that's not freedom, you are arguing for legitimized theft.
The United States was founded on a principle of intellectual property. It is a protected right by grant of the US Constitution.
An assault on freedom would be if the RIAA were to prevent you from recording your own music and selling it on the market. This hasn't been what the internet debates have been about.
If you don't like the restrictions placed on you by the content creators then DON'T UTILIZE THEIR SERVICES! Don't listen to the music, don't watch the movies, don't use the software. That is the only lawful, moral and ethical way to cause them financial harm.
Better yet, go out and create your own music, your own movies, your own software! Then compete with them fairly!
Otherwise if you just sit around whining because the RIAA, MPAA and SIIA is protecting their constitutionally guaranteed right...
You are a parasite. We don't need parasites in our society, as they provide no value.
...is that most, if not all, of the posts are focusing on *government* control of the Internet.
Sorry, guys, but that's a dead-wrong approach. The only governments that are directly squelching the Internet are a few totalitarian regimes with far worse problems of human rights violations than just a bit of Internet-blocking.
No, for most of us Internet users, the problem is not with government control: it's with Corporate control. That these corporations may weild the government as a weapon against us it irrelevant: the fact remains that it's the EULAs, MPAAs, RIAAs and suchlike that are squishing hell out of our 'net freedoms.
The government never gave two shakes about whether you and I swapped software, music or video. Only the Corporate owners cared, and they pressured/bought the changes the government made to our laws.
If you want the Internet to remain free, you've got to battle it on two fronts: you *must* pressure your government into slacking off, and you *must* pressure Corporations into backing off.
And the only way to do the latter is to cause them financial harm. Corporations must ultimately be responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders demand profits.
So you need to get serious about boycotting, serious about spreading the boycott, and serious about letting the Corporations know that you're boycotting them, and what they need to do differently to win back your financial support.
If you don't take those steps, you--and your use of the Internet--is fucked. Kiss all the freedoms you've come to enjoy on the net goodbye.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The Constitution says nothing about the duration of copyrights and patents, except to say that they must be for "limited times". Originally, the term was well under 20 years, but that was a term set by Congress, not by the Constitution.
The next ten years will be the time we fight. We will be fighting Corporations that want the Internet to be turned into the perfect medium for delivering demographically tailored marketing to Consumers and the Governments from preventing us from "being culturally subversive."
In ten years we'll know what happened. Will the Internet be a tool for individuals to share information or a tool for Corporations and Governments to spread Propaganda and enforce the Status Quo?
I'll see you in ten years.
--
Scott Brady
While some people laugh and say things like "That will never happen" or "Thats impossible" and "They can try and stop me, but they will fail, *maniacal laughter*". Let me give you a brief history lesson. 50 short years ago, policeman dressed up like militia members with ninja masks on would have shocked the nation. No knock warrants would have never been allowed, and there would have been a huge broohaa over police "anti-drug/anti-terrorist" tatics. These all exist today. We even expect our police to have fully automatic weapons when they charge into a house to resolve a custody dispute. I know that no one really wants to hear this, BUT, we have less "freedom" now than our grandmothers and grandfathers had. Between the War Powers act, the "War on Drugs" and various other "emergencies" that call for action. Get used to carrying your "ID card" and get used to the phrase "Where are you papers?"
If we continue to elect Nazi's instead of buying old memorabilia we're in deep doo doo, and that goes for the Internet as a whole. Well at least we all will look good. The Nazi's were the best dressed soldiers of modern times and I hope the underground will be alive also.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
The Internet was never immune to current law. You have lawyers who claim it isn't tacked down because there is no specific mention of electronic media in copyright law, slander laws, etc. But we know what was intended.
The Internet was never private. It was the rise of typically private transactions that led the hue and cry for privacy. In fact, the Internet was bare, naked, and exposed for all the world. We demanded privacy after-the-fact. This is the same thing that happened with telephones.
Perhaps we should understand the realism, recognize that our states and countries have laws, and instead of expected some sort of Idealistic free world to come about on its own, we should try and create it.
Despite the cynicism of my view, I think the Idealistic views of the Internet have a lot of merit. I also believe that many of the local laws being passed violate existing laws or even, heaven forbid, the Constitution (in the US anyway). Don't take things for granted, they aren't.
----------------------