Slashdot Mirror
ACLU Takes Out NY Times Ad Against Echelon
loosenut writes: "The American Civil Liberties Union has purchased an ad to appear in the New York Times on April 15th and April 16th, as reported on their web page. The ad reads "Now equipped with 3-way calling. You, whoever you're dialing, and the government." Will the threat of having cell phones tapped be enough to mobilize people against Echelon?" I doubt it. But it's a good effort.
If the US government wasn't so keen on spying on everyone, there wouldn't be 24 American citizens sitting as hostages in Chinese territory while the Chinese military carefully takes apart and reverse-engineers millions of dollars of US technology.
Oh wait a moment, I forgot. It's fine for the US government to spy on OTHER nations. It's only their own citizens which people don't want them to spy upon.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
That article is pretty bogus.
It claims that the NSA has a device which can translate radio transmissions from any language to any other language.
riiiiight.
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If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Anyone know if the CDMA (Sprint PCS uses it) network's signal is known for this? How about dual band phones? DOes it still cook you if it's not in analog mode?
...while the Chinese military carefully takes apart and reverse-engineers millions of dollars of US technology.
Here's an insightful view as to why this may have happened: http://www.almartinraw.com/column12.html
"In the continuing effort to make China the bogeyman of the 21st century, Washington has scored yet another coup - the loss of the EP-3E Aries II surveillance aircraft.
It's very reminiscent of the phony FBI Hanssen Spy Case. In other words, what the US Government is saying just doesn't jibe with the facts.
The implausible government story states that the Aries II aircraft was supposedly escorted by ancient Chinese F8 fighter planes to a Chinese military base at Hainan Island.
The Aries II has an electronic counter-measure capability that could completely fry the electronic components of a state-of-the-art MIG 29, let alone a vintage Chinese F-8. Its defensive capability consists of highly advanced directional microwave weaponry." cont'd...
The general opinion of Average Joe is, "Why would they bother to listen to me?"
If there's millions of people using cell phones, then A. Joe will assume the expense of listening to his particular one is not worth the benefit, and not care. Like how one of my friends has Windows shares on computers with DSL--and no firewall. "Oh, there's so many other computers, what are they going to do with mine?" And since his parents, not him, will be going to jail if kiddie porn shows up, he doesn't care.
So I don't see how this ad is going to affect anyone.
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
Ok,
this sucks ass. A week ago, we get some stupid crap about a student that wants to form a multicst lab with an athalon cluster that makes the front page. Now we get a new story that means something to the real world, in the back section, with no discussion. Slashdot needs a larger and more attentive leadership. Place this on the front page, you pussies.
Thanks,
Mr. Consumer
"C" is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
Anyway, I'll be heeding the call to harass my elected reps with fax and mail. I'm not convinced that it will do any good, but one has to fill the empty hours somehow...
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Anyways, the ACLU cares about my rights, please! All they care about is fighting for anyone and everyone to have freedom - but without responsibility for actions. But enough ranting on the ACLU.
What I really need to say is this:
Despite the fact that I think Echelon is wrong, it's not going to go away. Simply putting an ad in the paper, fighting it in the courts, and ranting on slashdot will not make it go completely away. It may get scaled back a bit, for a time, but the government has undoubtedly spent far too much money on it to pull the plug. Plus, they get to listen in on the governments of the world whenever they want! Why else would you have such a worldwide device?
A recent epidemiological study would tend to indicate that not only cell-phones have not (not yet?) triggered any surge in brain cancer, they also have had an effect on the reduction of early lung cancer occurence. The only current explanation is socio-economical: cell-phone use competes with smoking in young adults' finances and adulthood self-image. As for echelon, watch that ulcer.
not true; more recent studies have shown that that's well, frankly, bullshit. i dont have a link, search google (or your favorite search engine)
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