Carnivore Goes Wireless

GMontag writes: "The Washington Post Tech Section is running this story FBI's 'Carnivore' Might Target Wireless Text. Apparently, since the industry can't provide big brothering to the satisfaction of the FBI the FBI will will do it *for* them. This is a collector's item too, with no mention in article of DCS1000 being used to "save" children!"

Comments

radio

[geekoid]

wireless transmission can be monitored by anyone, not just the F.B.I.

Re:radio

[jandrese]

That's not true anymore, at least not in the US. In the US it is illegal to listen in on cell phone frequencies for instance.

Of course it's technicly feasable for anybody to do so, but it's not legal unless you are the FBI (or other law enforcement and you have the proper paperwork).

Re:radio

[Menteb]

well, so is making backdoors in webserver software and selling it to stupid people (euh... M$ maybe ;). I mean, not every person on the planet is born with good brains.

Re:radio

[Kryptonomic]

When will you people learn that whatever's broadcast can and WILL be intercepted. The only question that remains is whether they can break your encryption...

Re:radio

[rark]

"Can" is not the same as "is legal to"

or: it's perfectly feasable, just don't get caught. Wireless anything should not be considered secure (unless steps have been taken to secure it, obviously)

Not that that makes me less uncomfortable with the fbi...

Re:radio

[Anonymous Coward]

"I mean, not every person on the planet is born with good brains."

This is a public forum and therefore please restraint from making personal comments.
People are not that interested in your past.

Big Brother

[jmallett]

I suppose 2004 is just as good as 1984.

Re:Big Brother

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I hate to admit it but Cereal Killer said it best in "Hackers" Orson Wells is alive and well NOW , the book just had the wrong year for the title.

Re:Big Brother

[olivieradam]

1984 was written by Georges Orwell, not Orson Wells.
Orwell was journalist during the spanish civil war (1930's).

Re:Big Brother

[buttfucker2000]

Orson Welles died of terminal obesity, get your facts straight.

And what book are you talking about?

Re:Big Brother

[Anonymous Coward]

terminal obesity

Are you a doctor? What kind of a cause-of-death is that? There's no such thing as "terminal obesity" .

I'd say he died of a heart attack.

Re:Big Brother

[flewp]

Reminds me of a Mr. Show with Bob and David sketch where everyone suffered from Immiment Death Syndrome... Basically anyone could die at any time... (like we all do)

Another reason for encryption

[TrentSeigfried]

There's just no good reason to send plain text over a wireless line. Not only can any private citizen with a decent radio setup listen in, now the government will listen in, too.

What's needed is a good wireless encryption standard with good firmware decoding. A simple hardware setup with centralized servers containing public keys would be a fantastic way for a wireless company to earn my business.

Re:Another reason for encryption

[yellowstone]

What's needed is a good wireless encryption standard with good firmware decoding

Given the current corporate Zeitgeist (what's ours is ours, and what's yours is ours), I wouldn't be inclined to invest a lot of faith in any COTS hardware-based encryption scheme.

Not to say I wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't consider it secure without some open-source software encryption package running on top of it.

Re:Another reason for encryption

[Tackhead]

> What's needed is a good wireless encryption standard with good firmware decoding.

But wouldn't building such a network be in violation of CALEA, the act that requires network providers to be wiretap-friendly?

Yikes

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody call the CDC its gone airborne.

yes, but...

[kurowski]

not legally. well, not in the US at least.

Re:fp

[Menteb]

Thank you dear sir. But I'm gonna stick with fucking Micro$soft.

Greetz
Menteb

*sigh*

[Reality Master 101]

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

Sometimes I think there are people who seriously think we should completely ban law enforcement because there might be some miniscule possibility of abuse.

Re:*sigh*

[Menteb]

abuse can be good :)

Re:*sigh*

[briggsb]

Sometimes I think there are people who seriously think we should completely ban law enforcement because there might be some miniscule possibility of abuse.

Just like authority thinks that all blank media should be taxed because there is possiblity of abuse .

Re:*sigh*

[UberLame]

Yes, but they are still watching everything in that area subject to court order. How are we to trust them if we can review the process that decides which messages get saved, and which don't? Maybe your neighbor is being carnivored, but they decide to also save your message discussing "weaknesses in css style protection flavor of the week" for later investigation. After all, when they see a "crime" in progress, they are allowed to act on it reguardless of if they only saw because of survailence of someone else.

At least that is my understanding as a non lawyer.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

How often are wiretap requests turned down?

We need to be watchful and suspicious because there is a HISTORY of abuse. If it was a miniscule possibility, I wouldn't worry about it. If I was Chinese, the thought of having a rally in Tiennenmin Square would make me nervous. In the U.S., I worry when my government wants to capture legal communications which they have no use, need, or warrant for, and "trust" them to do the right thing with it. We require warrants (and have a consititutional amendment protecting us) because we *know* that's a bad policy.

Re:*sigh*

[stuccoguy]

It is true that the FBI must get a court order in order to use Carnivore to intercept the contents of a suspect's communications. Under most circumstances this would be a satisfactory due process safeguard against abuse. In fact, it has been the status quo for preventing abuse by law enforcement for decades.

This is not the case with Carnivore. The system captures all trafic on the network based on protocol. A court order to intercept the contents of John Doe's email could also result in the capture of your email if it happens to be crossing the same network.

After the packets have been captured they are filtered to present a set of emails to and from the subject of the court order, but your email and the email of hundreds of other innocent individuals is already sitting on the FBI's computer waiting to be misused or abused.

And the threat of abuse of that information is hardly miniscule. This is the organization that withheld thousand of documents in the timothy mcveigh trial, attempted to railroad Wen Ho Lee as a spy for taking his work home with him, kept dossiers on thousands of politicians, businessmen and regular citizens for political motives, murdered Randy Weaver's wife and son, and massacred 33 women and children at Waco.

Re:*sigh*

[BradleyUffner]

Just like authority thinks that all blank media should be taxed because there is possiblity of abuse .

Taxation is not the same thing as banning.

Re:*sigh*

[sphealey]

I think most people in the Western world understand court orders and the need for law enforcement. There are two minor problems, however:

* Law enforcement and the judiciary form a pretty much closed loop system. They come from similar backgrounds, they consider themselves the "good guys", and they prohibit investiations into their own motives/failures/biases. So when there is a problem with a request for a warrent the odds are that the judiciary will approve the request anyway.

* If you have spent much time with law enforcement people, you know that the "observe crime/gather evidence/make arrest" model isn't the only one they use. The "suspect crime/fish around for something/use something to get warrent/intimidate person into confessing or giving up someone else" model is pretty common, too. And the methods used to find "something" are not always pretty, legal, or constitutional.

In the past, while this behaviour may have been bad, it wasn't totally corrosive, because the ability to fish around for "something" was limited by the overall difficulty of gathering information.

The technologies being develped today, in contrast, make it quite easy to fish for whatever one wants to find. And since there are laws affecting just about every action (I am willing to bet you have violated 5 federal laws already today), the widespread availability of this technology gets more than a bit scary.

sPh

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think there is a slight difference between shild abuses and insignificant bs like taxes on blank cds.

Oh! You had to pay a few cents extra, how the #%% can you compare that to child abuse????

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

And the threat of abuse of that information is hardly miniscule. This is the organization that withheld thousand of documents in the timothy mcveigh trial, attempted to railroad Wen Ho Lee as a spy for taking his work home with him, kept dossiers on thousands of politicians, businessmen and regular citizens for political motives, murdered Randy Weaver's wife and son, and massacred 33 women and children at Waco.

I feel compelled to point out that while I'm not familiar with all of the above occurrences, the ones that I am familiar with (mcveigh, weaver, waco) are instances where I do not empathize with the people involved much if at all. McVeigh was insane and murderous, and even his defense admitted that the withheld documents amounted to absolutely nothing that could have helped him. David whats-his-name from Waco and Randy Weaver weren't upstanding citizens, meaning specifically that their behavior was something that I believe was dangerous and should be stopped, and they made it so difficult to stop them civilly that they died... and (I don't say this lightly, but) that's ok with me.

I am not making a point about the FBI's trustworthiness. What I'm saying is that if there aren't any better examples with which to illustrate the potential for the abuses of power, then this is as far as I think the message deserves to go.

Re:*sigh*

[eclarkso]

* Law enforcement and the judiciary form a pretty much closed loop system. They come from similar backgrounds, they consider themselves the "good guys", and they prohibit investiations into their own motives/failures/biases. So when there is a problem with a request for a warrent the odds are that the judiciary will approve the request anyway.

I think most people wouldn't consider police and judges/lawyers as coming from anything close to similar backgrounds. Police are generally come from working-class backgrounds, while lawyers (and especially judges) are generally more upper crust.

Judges are sympathetic to warrant requests, but not because of their backgrounds.

Re:*sigh*

[Stickster]

You are indeed underinformed, but that's typical of /.ers these days. The packets are filtered but then pursuant to the actual court order and normal Title III wiretap regulations the non-pertinent traffic is not retained "sitting on the FBI's computer" [sic] for later use. The irrelevant traffic must be discarded at the time of filtering.

Your obviously polemic (and clearly incorrect) comments at the end of your post don't even bear up to the slightest modicum of common sense. Do yourself a favor and don't believe everything you read or hear. Remember that the news media is a BUSINESS, not a public service. They have no motivation to report truth, especially when it doesn't generate good ratings.

Re:*sigh*

[Kryptonomic]

It's a question of the psychlogical profile.:

"Right now you're thinking in terms of not being a rat regarding your friends. Let me tell you a few things: first, they are not your friends to get you in a fix like this. You don't owe them a thing. Second, you have a duty to do your part to keep this society together. You need to face this like a man and do the right thing as you were rised and trained to do".

To most law enforcement personnel, this argument makes complete sense. Everybody has a duty to do whatever possible to make the world a better place. They learned this at home and had it reinforced by various social institutions such as the church, school, scouts, and the military. Thus, an interrogator might think: "How can anybody not see this? Everybody knows this. I'm merely verbalizing the obvious so the subject will find it easy to agree."

-John E. Hess, "Interviewing and Interrogation for Law Enforcement" (ISBN 0-87084-348-6).

Re:*sigh*

[sphealey]

"I think most people wouldn't consider police and judges/lawyers as coming from anything close to similar backgrounds. Police are generally come from working-class backgrounds, while lawyers (and especially judges) are generally more upper crust"

If you are talking about original background, perhaps, although in Chicago policeman => watch officer => night law school => assistant prosecutor => judge is a pretty common life path. Supreme Court justices probably went to Yale, but there are a lot of judgeships in the nation and most of them are local in scope.

However, by "background" in this case I ment a career of dealing with "perps" and "mopes" in very a lengthy series of very unpleasant encounters, building a shared worldview of us-against-them. See _Bonfire of the Vanities_ for a good ficational description.

sPh

Re:*sigh*

[stuccoguy]

What I'm saying is that if there aren't any better examples with which to illustrate the potential for the abuses of power, then this is as far as I think the message deserves to go.

Very well...here are a few more:

* DICK GREGORY: In 1968, the activist/comedian publicly denounced the Mafia for importing heroin into the inner city. Did the FBI welcome the anti-drug, anti-mob message? No. Head G-man J. Edgar Hoover responded by proposing that the Bureau try to provoke the mob to retaliate against Gregory as part of an FBI "counter intelligence operation" to "neutralize" the comedian. Hoover wrote: "Alert La Cosa Nostra (LCN) to Gregory's attack on LCN."
* FREEDOM RIDERS: In 1961, black and white civil rights workers boarded interstate buses in the North and headed south in an effort to desegregate buses nationwide. The FBI learned that when the freedom riders reached bus depots in Alabama, the state police were going to give the Ku Klux Klan "15 uninterrupted minutes" to beat activists with baseball bats, clubs and chains. The Bureau allowed the violence to occur; activist Walter Bergman spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, partially paralyzed.
* VIOLA LIUZZO: The white civil rights volunteer from Detroit-a mother of five-joined Martin Luther King's 1965 Selma (Ala.) campaign aimed at securing the right to vote for blacks. She was shot and killed after being chased 20 miles at high speed by a carload of four Klansmen. In the car was Gary David Rowe, a well-paid FBI informant inside the Klan; the violence-prone Rowe had played a big role in the beatings of freedom riders years earlier. "He couldn't be an angel and be a good informant," commented one of his FBI handlers.
* FRANK WILKINSON: A lifelong civil libertarian who led the campaign to abolish the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, his FBI surveillance file spans 30 years and 132,000 pages. Estimated cost to us taxpayers: $17 million. Wilkinson never advocated or committed violence, but the file shows that the Bureau burglarized his offices and encouraged beatings of him. The FBI once heard of a right-wing scheme to assassinate Wilkinson-but took no action to inform him or protect him.
* MARTIN LUTHER KING: For years, the FBI used spying and infiltration in a relentless campaign to destroy King- to wreck his marriage, undermine his mental stability and encourage him to commit suicide. The Bureau created dissension among King's associates, disrupted fundraising efforts and recruited his bookkeeper as a paid agent after learning the employee was embezzling.
The FBI utilized "media assets" to plant smear stories in the press - some insinuating that King was a Soviet agent. One FBI media asset against King in the early 1960s was Patrick Buchanan, then an editorial writer in St. Louis.
The FBI once hatched a scheme to "completely discredit" King and have him replaced by a civil rights leader the Bureau could control. The one individual named by the Bureau as "the right kind of Negro leader" was lawyer Samuel Pierce-who years later became the only black in President Reagan's cabinet.
King was hated and regularly threatened by white supremacists and extremists-but the FBI developed a written policy of not informing King about threats to his life. Why? Because of his "unsavory character," "arrogance and "uncooperative attitude."
* PETER BOHMER: For months in the early 1970s, this economics professor and other antiwar activists in San Diego were terrorized-with menacing phone calls, death threats and fire-bombings-by the Secret Army Organization, a right-wing paramilitary group. On Jan. 6, 1972, gunshots were fired into Bohmer's house, wounding a friend.
After a bombing months later, a trial revealed that Howard Barry Godfrey, co-founder of SAO in San Diego and one of its most active and violent members, had all along been a paid FBI informant. Godfrey testified that he had driven the car from which the shots were fired; afterward, he took the weapon to his FBI supervisor, who hid it.
* BLACK PANTHER PARTY: Some critics are denouncing the new movie Panther as an anti-FBI fantasy. But the hard facts about the FBI's war on the Panthers were published in 1976 by the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Frank Church. Using paid infiltrators and faked documents, the Bureau routinely tried to goad militant groups or street gangs to commit violence against the Panthers.
In southern California, FBI agents helped provoke Ron Karenga's militant US group into attacks on Panthers and boasted about it in memos to headquarters. When the FBI learned that the Panthers and US were trying to talk out their differences, agents did their best to reopen the conflict. Four Panthers were ultimately killed by US members, two on the UCLA campus.
In Chicago, the FBI office forged and sent a letter to the Blackstone Rangers gang leader saying the Panthers had a "hit out" on him. The FBI's stated hope was that he "take reprisals against" the Panther leadership.
Although that plan failed, Chicago Panther chief Fred Hampton (age 21) was killed months later in a predawn police assault on his apartment. Hampton's bodyguard turned out to be an FBI agent-provocateur who, days before the raid, had delivered an apartment floor-plan to the Bureau-with an "X" marking Hampton's bed. Most bullets were aimed at his bedroom. The infiltrator received a $300 bonus: "Our source was the man who made the raid possible," stated an FBI memo.
Among the hundreds of schemes detailed in FBI memos were plans to contaminate the Panther newspaper's printing room with a noxious chemical; to inject a powerful laxative into fruit served to kids as part of the Panthers' free breakfast program; and to target smear campaigns at various Hollywood celebrities who had come to the Panthers' defense.
* CENTRAL AMERICA ACTIVISTS: Many recent news accounts say that FBI abuse pretty much ended with J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972, and that the Bureau has been in check since the Justice Department issued new guidelines in 1976. Not true. FBI disruption of lawful dissent has continued-though the terminology has changed, from counterintelligence (COINTELPRO) to "counterterrorism."
During the 1980s, groups critical of U.S. intervention in Central America were surveilled, infiltrated and disrupted by the FBI. Political break-ins occurred at churches, offices and homes-and material from the burglaries ended up in FBI files. In the guise of monitoring supporters of foreign terrorists, the FBI compiled files on clergy, religious groups and thousands of nonviolent anti-intervention activists. The investigation produced not a single criminal charge. The whole sordid story is detailed in Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI, a book by former Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan.

from the book Wizards of Media Oz.

Re:*sigh*

[Steve B]

the ones that I am familiar with (mcveigh, weaver, waco) are instances where I do not empathize with the people involved much if at all.

I am not familiar with the clause in the Constitution that exempts people with whom you do not empathize.

Re:*sigh*

[briggsb]

I didn't. The original poster said that /.ers think that we should ban law enforcement because it could be abused. That statement is ridiculous. I was just making the point that authority sometimes thinks the same way.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

non-pertinent traffic is not retained "sitting on the FBI's computer" [sic] for later use.

Please tell me, Mr. wanna-be-G-man, just how do you know this? They say so? Given the history of abuse the FBI has I won't believe a word they say nowadays.

Re:*sigh*

[briggsb]

True, but if you gave them that option they probably would.

Re:*sigh*

[Mr. Slippery]

Sometimes I think there are people who seriously think we should completely ban law enforcement because there might be some miniscule possibility of abuse.

"Miniscule"? Can I direct your attention to the history of the past few decades? From COINTELPRO to Rampart to the Abner Louima case to Waco to Carnivore, the one thing police forces have shown time and time again is that the probability of the abuse of power is anything but miniscule.

Re:*sigh*

[karb]

You're leaving out my favorite instance of FBI opression ... the KKK.

Why is it my favorite? Because it kind of discredits ideas that the FBI is part of a right-wing conspiracy.

At any rate, the FBI doesn't pull the kind of crap now that it did then. The media wouldn't stand for it, for one.

Sure, there is FBI misconduct. But there is no way to prevent misconduct in any group of people. And it isn't unreasonable for any group of people to protect their own in cases of wrongdoing. And if a group of people doesn't have the opportunity to make mistakes, it's because they aren't doing anything.

Not carte blanche for the FBI, of course ... I just dislike the /. a priori premise of "because it could be abused".

Re:*sigh*

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

Tell it to Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI tapped his phones (*with* a court order) and discovered he was having an extramarrital affair. Since they couldn't arrest him for that, they sent him letters threatening to expose him and suggesting suicide would be a better alternative.

Today, the FBI's headquarters are named in honor of the man who was at the top of the FBI during those "investigations".

Now I'm supposed to believe that they should have access to every letter I type on a keyboard? Even the "independent" review of Carnivore revealed that the system had no real accountability and that a rouge agent could access everything captured without tracing the agent's access.

Re:*sigh*

[BradleyUffner]

If the media is being taxed then they are making money off of it. Why would they want to ban something that is a source of income for them?

Re:*sigh*

[crucini]

The US had law enforcement long before the FBI existed. Law enforcement does not necessarily need to snoop on communications. Real crimes leave evidence in the real world. Crimes that require eavesdropping to prove probably shouldn't be crimes.

I'm sure there are exceptions, most of which involve people conspiring to commit "real world" crimes. But are the exceptions worth the price?

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

This part.

Re:*sigh*

[Reality Master 101]

You know, I hear that during the 1940s, the German police made a few bad decisions, civil-rights-wise. Therefore, the german police of today must have concentration camps, but we just can't find them.

Re:*sigh*

[briggsb]

I don't know. If one copyrighted song gets out into the open the whole of western civilization might collapse. Maybe they're thinking about society with a ban.

Re:*sigh*

[mixup]

Sure, there is FBI misconduct. But there is no way to prevent misconduct in any group of people. And it isn't unreasonable for any group of people to protect their own in cases of wrongdoing.

When the group of people are operating under the guise of "public servants" using public funding, I believe it *is* unreasonable for them to protect their own from the public in cases of wrongdoing.

Regardless, misappropriation of data against stated policies and laws has been de rigeur for various federal agencies. Misappropriation of census data was the number one tool for rounding up Japanese-Americans for the WWII internment camps, for example. But so many abuses have already been cited that I'll not belabor the thread with further examples.

Sure, the FBI are not the only ones illegally misappropriating data. Businesses do it, catholic school girls do it, in many ways it's human nature ... but it is of course still wrong and extremely dangerous when done by a government agency.

What if someone on the same cellular switch as me is being investigated, and my text messages to my gay lover get intercepted, tagged, and stored? That's not information the FBI has any right to know. It's not illegal (at least in my state), but could be easily used against me by a corrupt agent, or in a court case to discredit me to a homophobic jury, or a slew of other ways.

It's the indiscriminate nature of Carnivore that makes it so scary in this instance. If you get a court order to listen in to my neighbor's communications, that should not entitle you to listen to my own.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not familiar with the clause in the Constitution that exempts people with whom you do not empathize

Well then I guess we're all safe from everything, because the all-knowing, never-debated-or-interpreted constitution will make the right thing happen every time. Not just any right thing, but YOUR notion of the right thing. Hurrah!

By "empathize", I mean specifically that my thoughtful analysis of the situation disinclined me to be enraged, write my congressman, change my voting habits, or alter to whom I donate money.

Re:*sigh*

[karb]

If you read this, it's only because the messaging system has worked (I Like It).

I think you can actually get your own FBI records through the FOIA. Anyway, the FBI was kind of messed up in the past, but I think they're more legit now. And, furthermore, although just the fact that they *have* an investigation on you can be harmful, no court will admit illegally collected evidence.

Re:*sigh*

[Stickster]

Seeing as how you're an AC, I'll leave it at this: I don't know it by hearsay.

"WEED" out data

[kenbr]

"But Sobel and Altschul said Carnivore cannot separate address information from the content of a message in a packet, and so authorities must be trusted to weed out data they are not allowed by law to have."

What could they gain by only reading the packet headers? The content is what they really want.

no diffrent than....

[the_2nd_coming]

this is no diffrent than a wire tape on a conventional phone line, they will still need to get a warent to do it so if your not breaking(or known to be breaking) the law don't worry.

Camera!

[Maskirovka]

But I always thought DCS1000 was a Sony digital camera. Isn't this infringing on Sony's intelectual property?

Maskirovka

Ok...bad joke.

Re:Camera!

[Bonker]

Ok...bad joke.

Not really. I think it was funny, and sociallpertinent, especially since I too have a Sony camera and made that connection.

You might as well call the Smith and Wesson 'Peacemaker' a "SWP 45002", and see if it gets quite the same reaction. Better yet, lets call illegal wiretaps "IWS90210's" and see if they get as much attention as they deserve.

Let's call a spy a spy, shall we?

Clarification

[ViceClown]

Here's a point I have been meaning to make for awhile. My uncle does computer fraud investigations for the FBI. Yes, that's right - he's a fed. I brought up this topic to him at our last family function. What most people don't realize is that Carnivore is actually going to be less restrictive than old procedures. If the FBI or one if it's investigators wants to subpeona email know what they do? They take the whole server. They take all the email and just route through until they find what they want. The point is they take it all and have access to anyone and everyone who went through that box. With Carnivore they can pick out who they are looking for through standard procedures and as long as you are not a fedral criminal you have nothing to worry about. Frankly, if that helps stop bombs from going off at olympic games and helps track down illegal malitias, hate groups, etc. then Im all for it!

Re:Clarification

[fishebulb]

okay, cameras in everyones houses will help stop drug use, domestic violence etc etc etc. At what point does it go to far. before it begins

Re:Clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Militias are legal... it's in our right to raise a militia.. do you not know the rights we are given? In fact we are given this right to raise a militia to allow "We the people.." to control our government. In the case of our government needing to be overthrown. We have the right to overthrow our government through several means.. one of which is by raising a militia and physically overtaking the establishment. Now of course, peacefull means (IMHO) are better. But I'll be darned if I'm going to give up one of my rights as a natural born citizen of the United States.

Re:Clarification

[ViceClown]

That's why I said the "illegal" ones. There's a difference. Sorry I kinda hacked my reply out kinda fast. I understand civil rights and Im really ornry about people taking away mine. We have to find a happy medium, though. I don't want to walk into a pizza parlor and have a bomb go off. In that light I didn't really disagree with the camera recognition systems at the last superbowl either. The good's outweigh the potential bads IMHO. Either way, thanks for reading. Have a nice day :-)

Re:Clarification

[fishebulb]

there is no illegal militias, its impossible. militias can do illegal things, but that comes back to the individual people. the militia is still legal.

Re:Clarification

[Peter Simpson]

>as long as you are not a fedral criminal you have nothing to worry about

Tell your uncle that, after Richard Nixon and J Edgar Hoover's reign, the FBI has got a HELL of a job ahead of them if they plan to convince anyone
of the truth of that statement.

Re:Clarification

[nestler]

Frankly, if that helps stop bombs from going off at olympic games and helps track down illegal malitias, hate groups, etc. then Im all for it!

This is exactly the non-sense that keeps average people in support of things like Carnivore: the false sense of security. Hard-core terrorists have been using encryption for a while, and aren't going to be bothered by Carnivore.

Terrorism is the boogeyman that they always bring out to justify increased surveillance. The end result is a loss in privacy and no effect on stopping intelligent criminals.

Re:Clarification

[Aexia]

Frankly, if that helps stop bombs from going off at olympic games

And we all know how well *that* case was handled by the Feds.

There's just a litany of mistakes(and worse) that the FBI has done. Some of them may not have changed things in the end but they do point to a certain attitude of "We don't give a sh*t."

Like the thousands of pages they just sort of forgot to give to McVeigh. If they pull these sort of stunts in a high-profile case like this, imagine what they're doing with anonymous cases involving people who may really be innocent.

Frankly, I'd rather not have people like that have something like Carnivore. The FBI, as an agency, has shown repeatedly it can't be trusted and until it gets cleaned up from the top-down, people have every right to be suspicious.

Re:Clarification

[why-is-it]

as long as you are not a fedral criminal you have nothing to worry about.

I belive that this was the mantra of the fascists in the earlier part of this century as well.

Re:Clarification

[niloroth]

"Frankly, if that helps stop bombs from going off at olympic games and helps track down illegal militias, hate groups, etc. then Im all for it!"

This was rather disturbing.

Stopping bombs is good, however, if a group is going to go about planning how to make a bomb, sneak it into the Olympic games, and then set it up so that no one finds it before it goes off, do you really think they would not think to encrypt their emails?

Um, what exactly makes a Militia illegal? Not all are, some just happen to be rather far right groups of people living together as off the grid as possible. (Sorta like the hippy communes in the 60's, except with lot of guns, and probably less posters of Marx.) Yes, militias have gone outside the bounds of the law, but not most of them.

And finally the part about hate groups, um, what part of freedom of speech, and the thus implied freedom of thought, don't you understand. Do I like the fact that the KKK DO exist? No, not in the least. Will I do everything in my power to ensure that they CAN exist? Yes. Simply because someone is a Klan member, does not mean that the FBI can bug their phones, or email, anything. When they start to do that then we are starting along the path of thought control, and the get really ugly. What happens when they decided that I am not thinking right?

This all comes down to what I believe is a quote from Ben Franklin - "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"

Justin

Man, it's getting bad

[ReidMaynard]

If only we could influence the US Congress like the end of Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor ...

Harrison Ford as US President would be a wonderful bonus ;-)

Re:Man, it's getting bad

[Anonymous Coward]

are they gonna make that into a movie? and I still think they need to redo Red October with ford in it instead of baldwin

Re:Man, it's getting bad

[disc-chord]

Uhhh I just finished Debt of Honor... and without giving away the ending to anyone that hasn't read it yet I'll post in pig-latin.

reay ouyay uggestingsay eway illkay hetay ongresscay? Tiay ouldway akemay orfay oodgay elevisiontay, nday CNN ouldway ebay ovelay ouya orfay tiay... utbay hey'lltay ustjay eplaceray 'em.

So what does that accomplish?

Re:Man, it's getting bad

[Maskirovka]

Just who do you think would replace the congress critters, eh? That scenario (Executive Orders) would require having a real MAN in office, not some pot-headed, DWI convicted, playboy like dUHbya. Dream on.

Maskirovka

From the Washington Post Recently

[ChuckDivine]

There's an article about the persecution of a CIA officer in connection with the Hanssen spy case. They picked out the wrong man and harrassed him and his family for two years. Competent investigation would have demonstrated his innocence quickly.

Then there is the article on Al Gore, Sr. He drew the FBI's fire for complaining about the treatment of a woman accused of the "crime" of having engaged in premarital sex.

You might want to check out your favorite bookseller for books on the FBI as well.

People who say "If you're innocent, you do have anything to worry about" should consider who is deciding what is innocent and what is not.

Re:From the Washington Post Recently

[Anonymous Coward]

woman accused of the "crime" of having engaged in premarital sex.

I smell sarcasm. You must be aware the lack of moral values is tearing our society apart?

If so, I don't see how you fail to see how essential cracking down on premarital sex is in restoring our great society.

Argh

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck those corrupted government assholes trying
to pocket money. They develop shit, release it, claim that it's dangerous, and use up tax money to protect us from what they made.
We should all organize and overthrow those motherfuckers before it's too late. Oops, it already is too late.

Re:Argh

[buttfucker2000]

True that man! I vote we have a REVOLUTION!! Our first revolutionary act will be to smoke cigarettes behind the cafeteria during 6th period, and egg the principals car!! ANARCHY RULZ!

Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there an article about DirecTV piracy where some people commented about it being OK to intercept because the signals pass through their property? How is this different?

Aren't the telcos mostly there?

[ethereal]

This seems a little suspicious to me - from what I've heard, most of the wireless providers are well on their way to providing the federally-mandated wiretapping access. They can't be very far off from completing the technical setup that is involved. It seems like the Feds are useing the missed deadline (which really was an artificial deadline anyway) as a convenient excuse to expand their wiretapping powers. It's not like there were crimes that just had to be wiretapped on September 30; as long as the wireless carriers get things rolled out reasonably soon I don't see how the government could legitimately complain.

And yes, anyone can tap wireless, but the issue is what can be used in court. If the government is sucking in more information, then there's more of a chance that a bad judge somewhere can be found who will let unrelated intercepted information into evidence.

Of course, since you have no privacy right on a land-line phone either, maybe Carnivore isn't such a big deal either :)

You fool!

[Anonymous Coward]

you think any of these irrational morons will care about consistency and logical analysis? They are children, my friend. They ONLY care about what they WANT. Their need to justify comes from their need to shut up their conscience and convince themselves.

didn't they already do this once?

[JDizzy]

I seem to remember back when digital cell phones first becauem populare inthe USA, that the FBI authored, and sponsored a bill in congress that would allow them to force digital cell phone providers with the means to descamble the digital signals. You see, digital cell phones are actually difficult to snoop since the signals are digital, unlike the older analog phones. The FBI was mad that they coudlnt' use their radio-shack scanners to snoop your conversations, they actually have to put forth effort int he form of computer systems that took time to descramble the dgital signals, and by then the call was over. Further complicating the issues was the fact that just descambling the signal wasn't really enough because you conversation was embeded amonst hundreds of other conversations.

If memory servers me right, the FBI got what they wanted, and this only amounted to them having to get a warrant, and then the phone company could then be forced to comply with the goverment spooks.

AS I read the article, this provision appears to take that law to the next step. Premtive sniffing ability. The FBI has a huge convinence by this, as when they get a warrent, they simply open their ears, as opposed to the insecure method of askignt he phone company to allow this.

Um, so??

[Anonymous Coward]

what exactly is the problem with the use of court ordered surveillance? It's not like the FBI is asking for unfettered access; now that would be a story. This is just the same tired old "oh no, the FBI/NSA/govt is keeping pace with technology and that's a bad thing (tm)" rant.

Technology threw a couple of chips into the pot. The Feds have called.

Carnivore FUD

[sourcehunter]

Look folks, I have some friends who work at the FBI - not agents, but the guys who actually setup and maintain the carnivore system, go on raids WITH the agents to make sure the computers are handled successfully, and parse through 100's of GB of data after a raid to determine what is of and what isn't. (this goes against common misconception #1 that the agents actually sort through the data - they do not - they have a computer guy do it).

One day, I asked my friends about carnivore.

Carnivore is a very simple system - TCPDump, a filter, and a sort utility. It is a black box administered from remote, setup at their office.

The filter is setup to only record a handfull of things - a) email communications to or from a suspect as specified in a warrant or b) packets to or from a certain IP address designated by the warrant.

It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire - that would be illegal.

Let me say that again, as it bears repeating - It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire.

Yes, in a TCPDump, all packets are going to be pulled that hit the network interface, but the filter will only save the packets that meet a certain criteria.

They developed this with the WHOLE IDEA of making DAMN sure they stay within the confines of their warrants - because otherwise, they are breaking the law. Also, they would have to go through 100's of GB of data if they captured EVERY packet at a standard ISP. At an ISP like mindspring, the amount of data captured would be unfathomable.

The computer guys actually know how to set the thing up properly, so you don't have to rely on the standard Liberal Arts/Criminal Justice major FBI agent to understand what he or she is doing. All the agent might do is drop the big black box off at an ISP, plug in the power cable and network cable, and walk out.

Don't get me wrong - I personally don't like the FBI or its agents. I've had run-ins with them in the past, and the ones I met I didn't like. The guys who deal with this AREN'T agents... they are computer geeks, like you and me. They read /., the game, they program in Perl and other ub3r-1337 h4x0r languages. They know what they are doing, AND they do EVERYTHING in their power to make sure ONLY those communications that they NEED and are supposed to HAVE get captured.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[buttfucker2000]

I don't believe anything you say, I can't hear you "LALALALALALALALALAGOVERNMENT IS EVIL!! GOVERNMENT IS EVIL!! GOVERNMENT IS EVIL!" You were either paid by them to say that, or you're just another dupe; I know better because I discovered the evil government plot to coerce my mother to put mind controlling nanites in my egg salad sandwich, so I told her "GO FUCK YOURSELF AND YOUR EGG SALAD SANDWICH." Luckily they can't use Carnivore on me because my computer is under a tin foil pyramid and is protected by CRYSTAL POWER.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[stuccoguy]

It appears that the FBI has been less than candid about the technical aspects of what carnivore can and does do. There are lawsuits and congressional investigations proceeding in an attempt to weed out this very issue. We would be remiss if we assumed that we knew exactly how this system does and does not work.

However, there is evidence to support the fact that both filtered and unfiltered traffic are archived and later sorted.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[sphealey]

"It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire - that would be illegal."

It is also illegal to fail to respond to a legitimate Freedom of Information Act request, yet the FBI and CIA do it all the time. What is your friends' justification for that behaviour? If the FBI won't follow that law, why will they follow the law where Carnivore is concerned?

sPh

Re:Carnivore FUD

[Mr. Slippery]

One day, I asked my friends about carnivore.

And you beleived their answers? Sucker.

Never believe anything you are told by an employee of any "law enforcement" agency.

The guys who deal with this AREN'T agents... they are computer geeks, like you and me.

Not like me, friend. I got ethics, and working for a paramilitary law enforcement agency would be far outside 'em.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[sourcehunter]

Yes, I did believe them. They are my FRIENDS and while that word may have no meaning to YOU, to ME that means they don't lie to me. If they couldn't tell me, they'd say "I can't tell you" instead of making up some bullshit for me to spread on /..

Re:Carnivore FUD

[Secret Coward]

They only store the suspect's data? That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Your post is an obvious troll, but I still feel a need to respond. You start off saying:

Look folks, I have some friends who work at the FBI - not agents, but the guys who actually setup and maintain the carnivore system, go on raids WITH the agents to make sure the computers are handled successfully, and parse through 100's of GB of data after a raid to determine what is of and what isn't. (this goes against common misconception #1 that the agents actually sort through the data - they do not - they have a computer guy do it). Emphasis added.

Later, you say:

It does not capture and save every packet going across the wire - that would be illegal.

And finally, you say:

Also, they would have to go through 100's of GB of data if they captured EVERY packet at a standard ISP.

The above contradiction does not leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. The evidence suggests that the FBI does capture data outisde the scope of their warrents. This makes me feel downright cold and prickly.

Carnivore is a very simple system - TCPDump, a filter, and a sort utility. It is a black box administered from remote, setup at their office.

And this simple system is what the FBI outsourced the development on? This is the system which they refuse to comply with FOIA requests on?

If the system were what you claim it is, the FBI would have no reason to keep it a secret.

Virtually all software has wierd, obscure bugs. For all we know, Carnivoure has a bug which causes the software to record data from a different IP number, but only when the word "bomb" shows up in the message.

My hope, is that the first time a Carnivoure case goes to trial, the judge will throw out the evidence on the grounds that it does not meet general acceptance from the scientific community.

Re:Carnivore FUD

[sourcehunter]

You obviously aren't paying attention:

I said: " and parse through 100's of GB of data after a raid"

After a raid, assuming they take 20 computers, each with 10 gb hard drives, each at least half full, that is 100GB of data to parse through - and don't think for one moment that they only will take a few computers - a company I worked for was accused of some wrong doing - they came in and took every computer, even an old OpenBSD machine that I hadn't even setup yet!

The references to 100's of GB elsewhere refer to the amount of data that could be snooped using carnivore if the filter was wide open.

Besides, who ever said you had to feel all warm and fuzzy inside about the FBI? I don't think they care what you think of them.

By the way, my post wasn't designed to be a troll - it is honestly what my friends told me.

Also, you seem to have misconceptions of where carnivore is employed - it is dropped off and set up at an ISP after a warrant is issued... if you want to talk about people sniffing for the word "bomb," go talk to some one about echelon (sp).

"miniscule" possibility of abuse?!

[disc-chord]

While it is true that this is just another hysterical /. story in which the poster saw a headline and just put it up without reading the article...

I think Carnivore is alot larger than a "miniscule possibility of abuse" ... it represents an "actuall violation of privacy". I would not ban law enforcement because of this, I just want law enforcement to play fair. How would you like to play Cops & Robbers where the cops get to have unfair advantages like not having to play by the rules they are supposed to be enforcing? That's no fun, that's cheating! Criminals are people too, stop taking away all their fun.

Reality Check

[n0-0p]

This whole scare over Carnivore and other related issues is just uninformed noise. Monitoring email or wireless traffic is no different than authorized telephone wire taps. They are a necesarry tool for law enforcement, and I consider them completely acceptable as long as there is proper discretion and judgement applied to their use, and a reasonable set of checks and balances exists. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate within the bounds of our laws; if they violate these laws there are severe forms of reprimand. Given that, would be more dangerous not to allow them the tools necesarry to do their jobs.

Re:Reality Check

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a fed--get him!

mmm... cookie...

[thePfhitz]

But Sobel and Altschul said Carnivore cannot separate address information from the content of a message in a packet, and so authorities must be trusted to weed out data they are not allowed by law to have.

This is like saying to a kid, "We'll sit this cookie and these lima beans in front of you, but we're trusting you to only eat your lima beans and not even look at that cookie!"

And what about how using Echelon to spy on US citizens was circumvented by intercepting the information and giving it to foreign groups, which would do the same with their info? Who's to say that this info isn't going to be handed over just like that?

Re:mmm... cookie...

[n0-0p]

Do you have any idea how strict the regulations are regarding intelligence collection and dissemination? Do a little research and you'll find out that someone working for the government can go to jail for a very long time for collecting information illegally. The laws don't leave much gray area there. How about doing a little honest fact checking and not spreading rumors and propaganda. If you're genuinely curious fas.org has useful information and for further clarification there's always Freedom of Information Act requests.

Re:mmm... cookie...

[sphealey]

"Do you have any idea how strict the regulations are regarding intelligence collection and dissemination? Do a little research and you'll find out that someone working for the government can go to jail for a very long time for collecting information illegally"

Sort of like the Detroit police department? While what you say is technically true (a) the perp would have to be discovered (b) the crime would have to be reported (very unlikely due to the "code of silence" in all tight-knit professions (c) management would have to take action {see (b)} (d) the action would have to be prosecuted.

I do see the need for law enforcement, and I do respect the job that most law enforcement officers carry out.

Unfortunately, the power inherent in law enforcement is so, well, powerful, that when it is abused the results are very bad for the victim. And I am afraid there are quite a lot of documented abuses (Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and the IRS anyone?).

They do not need Carnivore...

[Ave_menteM]

they have Echelon, the satellite spy that does that job.

The next step

[JDizzy]

I belive the public will eventually see the need for more encryption in their everyday lives.... For example, the digital phones introduced a higher level of security compared to the analog phones, and I recall thsi being a selling point for those. Now in thsi day and age, the public will soon find the need to encrypt every form of comunication they participate with. Eventually web servers, for example, will be strong enought to use pure ssl for all communications, once the ability to generated the shear volume of random seed is at the proper level.

What I'm gettign at is that RC4, or RC5, encryption will eventually be a feature on all cell phones as the cost of fabricating the chips to do this fall to reasonable levels. The 802.11 folsk have already done this for my WaveLAN card, and some European comanies have also started selling crypto-phones, crypt-walkie-talkies, and other high-end comm gear. The problem is that the crypto must be a point to point system, never needing to relly on the public key of the tower, bt tower to node crypto is also a good counter-measure on teh part of the phone companies.

Of cource the FBI, and NSA, percieve the use of crypto as only being used for criminal activity. I mean to say that if you have to encrypt your communications, then what exactly do you have to hide? The gotch-a is that if everybody were to use crypto by default, the issues would be moot. The infrastyructure to decypher everyones cell phones would take a cluster of quantume computers or something drastic like that. And the Entire cell phone using public would essentially be considered criminal by the FBI, and NSA, as that is ther presumtion about keeping secrets from them.

As it stands now, cell phone towser trunk all their customers conversations into a massif data-stream in the CO office, and you cannot simply single out the bad apples of the bunch. The very nature of the technology prevents that as to gain some compression advanges in the digital technology.

Re:The next step

[fishebulb]

The NSA doesnt give a damn about crypto. if its out there, im willing to bet they can crack it. the FBI on the other hand cant crack it so they need laws. The FBI has never been extremely technically knowledgeable. the NSA they have the best and the brightest with the machinary behind them

Re:The next step

[JDizzy]

Yeah, but public available crypto systems are tough to crack, even for the nsa, or anybody else for that matter.

The NSA gives a damn about crypto. THe NSA does hire the best, and brightest minds from around the country to work on crypto...... but the NSA doesn't have quantum computers, and cannot crack 128 keys in any amount a time that is of usefullness on a cell phone. With the best distributed super computers we humans cannot hope to crack these crypto schema's anytime soon.... we are talking the fasted might be months, to years, and the non-classified super computers would take at least 2 years under the best theoretical condidtions.

Have you read the book applied cryptography.... I suggest it to you.

Re:The next step

[crucini]

I think that any crypto built into hardware sold to consumers will be deeply flawed. So far, this has been true. The crypto is too strong for the casual hobbyist, but easy for the government to crack. You mention 802.11 encryption. Recently, researchers at AT&T implemented a previous theorized attack that allows a notebook computer to penetrate 802.11's WEP (wired equivalent privacy) crypto.

Eventually they will get smart enough to make crypto that isn't obviously flawed. The flaws will only be visible to those in on the secret. This is called 'red threading'. Anyhow, the fundamental problem is that making chips is hard and expensive, and chips are opaque to users. Chip makers are very vulnerable to pressure from government agencies. However, so far I don't think they need much pressure - industry associations keep standardizing on bad, flawed cryptosystems.

I don't have anything to hide.

[ghislain_leblanc]

Why would that be a concern if you got nothing to hide? I mean, Big Brother is not so bad if you are a lay abbiding citizen and even if you are not, I don't think he cares much about you smoking drugs or going over speed limit.

Re:I don't have anything to hide.

[Aexia]

Then you won't mind if Big Bro installs a GPS device in your car to track how fast you're driving. If you go over the limit, automatic fine!

After all, you're just a law abiding citizen, right?

(FYI, a rental car company(ACME) did just that.)

And if this system helps the government track your movements as a bonus, well, we can trust them to discard this information.

There already is a Wireless Carnivore!

[V50]

The FBI has already got a Wireless Carnivore. It only effects CPIP right now, but it's a disturbing start.

What would Ben say?

[Bizzaro]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Heh...

This attitude never ceases to amaze me.

Once upon a time, when I was sixteen years old and driving home from my girlfriend's house one evening, I was pulled over by a police officer in what could be called the bad side of the town. Although North Amarillo is still a fairly nice neighborhood, it does have a slightly higher crime rate and lower property values than the south side.

Thinking to my self... 'I wonder why I've been pulled over?' I remained calm because I had done nothing. What could I possibly have to fear from a uniformed law enforcement officer when I hadn't done anything wrong.

Said officer pulled me from the car at gunpoint and shoved my face into the asphalt... the gun pressed into the base of my skull... while he cuffed me and frisked me. He threw me into the back of his patrol car and then illegally searched my car.

I learned later that he did all this because there had been reports of a 'drive by shooting' in my girlfriend's neighborhood. My car matched the description, so in the cop's mind I was a dangerous unknown... dangerous enough to hold a gun to my head. He felt he had 'probable cause' to search my car for firearms based on an anonymous 911 call.

An attourney later told me candidly that I had very little chance to win a court case because the policeman released me after searching my car and the judges were all highly sympathetic to the police.

Now, what lessons should we all learn from this?

1. American criminal and police law is not designed to protect innocence. It's designed to punish the criminal.

2. Police will do their best to uphold that law out of honor, duty, hate, fear, or any other of a hundred positive or negative reasons.

3. Police don't care about innocents who get hurt or get their civil rights violated, so long as *they* aren't hurt and *their* jobs don't become any harder. There's a reason we have the term 'Police State'

4. Power breeds corruption. Any given law enforcement agency may have a policy against abuse, but almost all law enforcement officers will abuse their power in one way or the other.

I'm not the only one who things these things. There's a reason we have the fourth amendment, after all.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anml4ixoye]

I was going to quote one section, but can't narrow it down.

I am truly sorry that you were not the right person. And yes, it was unfortunate that you were in the 'wrong place at the wrong time.' But, as much as I believe in individual liberties, if I was that cop I would have done the same thing.

I work in computers, but have spent 4 1/2 years as a firefighter as well. I am 22 and have seen a lot more than I would like. Like the outright murder of not one, but three police officers (two Tampa detective and one Highway Patrolman) as well as recently another murder of a Tampa Police Officer. Why? Because they did not do exactly what the police officer above did.

Let's play what if. What if you would have been that shooter? What if the officer had a report the shooter had high-caliber weapons? What if the report also involved possible other shootings? What if you had not been the shooter, but had a gun?

Unfortunately, because we are all human, mistakes are made. You were not held illegally, not tortured, nor beaten, you were 'secured' via a legal method of takedown in a possibly hostile situation. And if I was in your situation (and I have been) I would only be upset if the police officer would have continued to hold me for hours, or would not have released me, or would have had no reason at all.

As far as your points? I am not even going to start on them. I can say that you appear not to even know a Police Officer or (obviously) be one. As I tell people who complain about how open source projects are going, if you don't like it, do something about it. Don't sit on your freakin' butt and come up with reasons to make you feel better about yourself. Go out and do something. Become an officer. Put YOUR life on the line. Or help those that do. See how it feels to arrive on the scene of a shot officer, to see the destruction caused by it. To do everything you can and it not be enough. Do that, then come back and see how your viewpoints are.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Reality Master 101]

Once upon a time, [... blah story]

Thus illustrating the danger of anecdotal evidence. I wasn't there, I don't know all the details. However, when I say "miniscule possibility", I am saying that statistically this just doesn't happen that often. Does it happen? Of course. Does that mean we should ban law enforcement? No. Does it mean we should continue to watch them very carefully? Yes.

And does it mean we should "handcuff" law enforcement because of the *possibility* of abuse? Absolutely not.

Now, what lessons should we all learn from this?

That police are human, not perfect, and will possibly err on the side of caution when their life is in real danger. Sorry, but I can't say that I wouldn't have done exactly the same thing, particularly if it occurred in a dangerous neighborhood (which presumably it was if you have drive-by shootings). Personally, I would rather live and apologize, than die knowing I didn't frighten a possible innocent.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Become an officer. Put YOUR life on the line. Or help those that do. See how it feels to arrive on the scene of a shot officer, to see the destruction caused by it. To do everything you can and it not be enough. Do that, then come back and see how your viewpoints are.

Hear! Hear!

Damn right. I'd like to see the parent poster in the same situation facing a possibly armed, homicidal drive-byer, and have him politely ask the guy to step out of the car.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

You were not held illegally, not tortured, nor beaten

Bullshit.

So, one should be happy about not getting held illegally, not tortured nor beaten by the police? It really doesn't matter if the put a gun against your head and shove your face against the ground to "protect themselves"?

You're full of crap. I've been abused by the police in this fashion more than once. If I just can help it, I try to make their job hell. I'll be a difficult jury member, sue them no matter what the cost and so on.

Fuck the pigs!

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Frederic54]

reminds me Robocop... which has better laws

1 - serve the public trust
2 - protect the innocent
3 - uphold the law
4 - classified :o)

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have a feeling that you have deserved whatever you got?

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you stand up for your rights and get trashed for doing it you deserved it?

What an upstanding, sniveling toad of a citizen you make.

I bet you think that demonstrator in Genoa deserved a bullet in his head, too. Fucking fascist.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you stand up for your rights and get trashed for doing it you deserved it?

Depends. If creating a public disturbance, and an officer tells you to stand aside, and you don't, then you're probably going to get "trashed". Is that what "stand up for your rights" means?

Or maybe they shut down your little rave party, and interfered with your drugs. Poor baby.

Frankly, you sound like a sniveling, immature little worm who thinks you should be able to do anything you want, other people be damned.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Tackhead]

> I was going to quote one section, but can't narrow it down.

Thanks for saying it better than I could. (Moderators, please consider the parent of this post...)

There's a world of difference between stuff like Carnivore (which I regard as an abhorrent evil), and an officer in a potentially life-threatening situation doing his job.

Had I been the cop in question, I, too, would have done the same thing. Had I been the "guy in the wrong place at the wrong time", I'd have been scared shitless, but once the mistaken identity issue had been clarified, and assuming the officer had acted professionally (and as it appears in this case, he did), I'd have complimented him on being safe and wished him good luck in catching the perp.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Damn right. I'd like to see the parent poster in the same situation facing a possibly armed, homicidal drive-byer, and have him politely ask the guy to step out of the car.

I might as well as you to put yourself in *my* position... wondering why there was a gun pressed in my face, knowing that all that stood between me and 'massive cranial trauma' was some fat cop's nerve. Heaven help me if I was black or hispanic and the cop happened to have a racist bent...

I could have twitched in the wrong direction. The cop's fingers could have gotten sweaty...

I was *this* close to being Amadou Diallo and you want to ask me how I would feel if my life was on the line?

There were dozens of ways the cop could have *not* violated my civil rights and put me in danger of being shot and losing my life. Instead, he chose to use the treath of deadly force on a person who had no clue what was going on.

The next time you think about cops wanting to protect them selves from 'possibly' violent individuals, why don't you spend a few minutes thinking about people like Diallo or any of the other perfectly innocent individuals who were killed because a cop thought they had to protect themselves. Think about Dmitry, who has been jailed under a bad law for a non-violent crime in a foreign government in clear violation of *our* bill of rights. Then ask yourself if we should be so quick to give *any* law enforcement agency more power.

Thank you, but when the cops ask for bigger guns, I'll pass.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

There were dozens of ways the cop could have *not* violated my civil rights and put me in danger of being shot and losing my life.

Name one that doesn't involved the cop pulling his gun. And if you think he shouldn't pull his gun in that situation, then you need to attend a few cop funerals. Hey, but it's only a dead policeman, right? They're better off dead.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Name one that doesn't involved the cop pulling his gun. And if you think he shouldn't pull his gun in that situation, then you need to attend a few cop funerals. Hey, but it's only a dead policeman, right? They're better off dead.

Man, I could feed you trolls all day...

First of all, I'm sitting in my car making no threatening moves. Why did the cop pull his gun in the first place? Why did he point it at me? Why did he use it to force me to the ground? I didn't struggle. Frankly, I was too busy trying to keep from shitting myself because I had a gun in my face.

The cop could just as easily have asked me to exit the car with his loud speaker.

Let me ask you what's more tragic and senseless? A cop who is killed in the line of duty, whose friends and family all knew the risks he chose to make, or an innocent person who never invited any of those risks who is killed because a cop made a mistake.

Law enforcement brings the most force it has to bear 99% of the time. You've heard the expression 'Shoot first and ask questions later?'

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[romco]

"I would rather live and apologize, than die knowing I didn't frighten a possible innocent."

So it's ok frighten your wife or your child
as long as I apologize after?

Can I shoot them if I think they might have
a gun?

Where do you draw the line?

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're an idiot who believes anyone a cop thinks is a bad guy must be a bad guy? No, no... you're an idiot who thinks cops never hurt innocent people? Hm. Okay, I'm not certain why you have that feeling. But I'm pretty sure about the idiot part.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Chris Burke]

A friend of mine had his front door kicked in by police on a drug raid. He and his unarmed parents were beaten so badly that they will never recover from the hospital debt. The doctor mishandled his medication and now he's addicted to painkillers. He gets arrested a lot because whenever he sees a cop he runs in fear. The punchline? It was the wrong house.

An honest mistake? Well, going into the wrong house was. Crippling unarmed people was quite deliberate on the other hand. Is this SOP?

A much closer friend was attacked by a man on PCP in her own apartment building. Her skull was cracked open, and aside from nearly bleeding to death she still doesn't have full feeling back in her hands. When the cop arrived on the scene, did he arrest the perpetrator? No. Instead he informed this man of his right to have arrested the woman who had tried to save my friend by using an illegal can of mace. The cop took a perfunctory statement and to this day the man roams free.

Was that SOP?

Or I suppose the cops who beat Rodney King more than 60 times were doing so in fear for their lives.

Ever been pulled over for "driving while black"? I guess all people of african descent might be the suspect of a shooting nearby, so that makes sense, right? It's to save officers lives.

Sorry. It's bullshit. Yeah, maybe the poster's case was mistaken identity and an obnoxious but necessary use of procedure. But don't sit here and tell me that police abuse is necessary.

I do know a number of cops. I'd label all of them "basically nice guys". However, they all share an interesting viewpoint. In their mind, they are the "good guys", and thus anything they do to catch the "bad guys", or do to the "bad guys" once they are caught, is justified. They might feel bad if they screw up the wrong person, but not too bad, since it was all part of the process of getting the "bad guys".

Did I say interesting? I meant scary, because these people carry guns, authority, and far too little accountability.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Or I suppose the cops who beat Rodney King more than 60 times were doing so in fear for their lives.

No, Rodney King was beaten because he was on PCP and kept trying to get up when the officers told him to stay down.

I'm not saying that the force used wasn't excessive, but let's not paint Rodney King as some innocent bystander.

If the facts are really as you lay them out, then sue the police department. And please don't say that they can't win, because people win police abuse cases every day.

Again, no one says the police are perfect.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[merchant_x]

Personally I don't think that police abuse of power and breaking of law is as rare as you'd like to think. I had a very similiar thing happen to me as the post you replied to. If police can't do the job they're supposed to with out violating rights and breaking the law because they fear for their lives let them find another line of work. They knew the job was dangerous going into it. Sure everyone makes mistakes and I'm willing to allow for that to happen. But that does not mean that we should just ignore them. They should be noted when thet occur and if an officer mnakes to many he should be fired and possibly barred from law enformencment permanently. I fully beleive that it is arrogant overzealous law enforcment that are one of the primary factors sending this country to the shitter.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't say that everyone deserves what they get, only that the poster sounded like someone who deserved what they got.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Chris Burke]

No, Rodney King was beaten because he was on PCP and kept trying to get up when the officers told him to stay down.

And why did that have to result in being beaten? Were they afraid for their lives? Wouldn't at some point grabbing him and cuffing him be the more sensible option? Certainly less harmfull. But I guess I get the point -- do what the cop says, or get the shit beaten out of you. *hums America the Beautiful*

I'm not saying that the force used wasn't excessive, but let's not paint Rodney King as some innocent bystander.

Hardly at all. He was a bad man. That because he was a bad man the police thought it was okay to beat him 60+ times with clubs is exactly the thinking I am trying to expose to analysis.

It's the disturbing police mentality -- "It's okay because I'm the good guy" for any value of "it" -- that I'm speaking of. It is this mentality that causes me to have less than 0 trust for law enforcement, and fear giving them any more power.

If the facts are really as you lay them out, then sue the police department. And please don't say that they can't win, because people win police abuse cases every day.

Thanks. And I'm sure that knowing the bad cop lost his badge and that she'll get some nice money will help compensate for the irreperable damage to her body and career by the attack. Not that seeing the attacker go to jail would either, but I'm not here to discuss him.

Don't get me wrong. We'll sue. Without a doubt. I hope we'll win -- people win police abuse cases, every day, but they also lose some no-brainers *cough*RodneyKing*cough*. Of course it won't make up for what happened, it's just you -have- to sue because otherwise they get away with it scott-free.

But being able to sue if the police abuse their power doesn't make me feel good about giving them more power to abuse.

Again, no one says the police are perfect.

Hey, I'm not perfect either. Then again, if I beat you with a baton until you had brain damage, I don't think anyone would be trying to defend me by saying "no one ever said he was perfect".

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Tassach]

And does it mean we should "handcuff" law enforcement because of the *possibility* of abuse?

Sounds like a good idea to me. Police misconduct isn't a "possibility", it's an all too common fact. There are far too many cops who wouldn't think twice about planting or manufacturing evidence, committing purjury, or conducting illegal searches & surveillance. Cops are rewarded (by promotions, raises, &commendations) for making arrests [particuarly ones that lead to convictions], and are only rarely held accountable for their own misconduct and criminal actions. Law Enforcement has too much power and not enough oversight and accountability: either we need to reduce thier power, or increase their accountability. Cops who break the law should be disciplined by the courts, not by their fellow officers.

We would not need so much "law inforcement" if we didn't have so many asinine and unconstitutional laws. Being safe from government oppression is just as important, if not more so, than being protected from violent individuals. It's fairly easy to defend yourself against random thugs; protecting yourself against an out-of-control government is much more difficult. Even as an upper-middle-class suburban white male with a squeaky clean lifestyle, I am far more afraid of being victimized by the police than by street hoods. I can only imagine what urban blacks and hispanics must go through.

Of course, in order for legal & police reform to work, we would need a criminal justice system that actually worked and kept the truly dangerous and violent people behind bars. Instead, we keep paroling murderers and rapists after they serve a fraction of their sentences, while keeping non-violent drug offenders incarcerated on inflated mandatory minimum terms.

The plea bargian and parole systems are hopelessly broken and need to be scrapped. I don't have the exact figures handy, but the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a comparitively small number of repeat offenders. Eliminating parole will keep these people in prison longer. There have been numerous studies that show that the recidivism rate among violent convicts is inversely proportional to their age when released

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Bonker]

Sure everyone makes mistakes and I'm willing to allow for that to happen.

The sad thing about this is that when I make a mistake, it means that my web server crashes. It means some data gets corrupted. At the very worst, it means that money is wasted or lost. I could lose my job.

When cops makes mistakes, people are injured. Their lives can be ruined or ended.

I'm not saying that most cops out there aren't doing their level best in a world that is openly hostile to them. I'm not saying that cops don't die when they make mistakes.

The above, however, is damn good reason to limit cops' power and their ability to make such incredible mistakes. If we can take away powers from the police and keep 'mistakes' and 'accidents' from happening, then let's do so.

"41 shots they cut through the night
You?re kneeling over his body in the vestibule
Praying for his life..." - The Boss

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[merchant_x]

I agree completely.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

oohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh give me a break on this Rodney King stuff. Have you seen the full videotape? I doubt it. Did they go too far? YES/ BUt most of the cops did not and that's why they got off.

If stuff happened as you say it did I hope they hang that cop. But perhaps the cop didn't have all the information, we can't tell from your side of the story. And just so you know there are crooks in the medical profession, the legal profession, and every other profession that hurt and inujure lives every day

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[flewp]

I think the fact that there are so many people (All my friends, much of my family, and me personally) have first hand witnessed or been the victim of police misconduct says something to the state of the police force in the United States today. Sure, mistakes will happen in a high stress environment that police deal with everyday, but I hardly think denying our rights (guilty or not) is a mistake. And if it were - get the offending officers the hell out of there. I also hardly think stereotyping is a mistake, and that is something that occurs every minute of everyday in the United States by police officers. And don't even try and tell me a black man in a white neighborhood is just as likely as a white man in that neighborhood to get pulled over for driving perfectly legally. - Just me vennting, but I firmly believe in what I've said, and I also believe there are many good cops out there, who genuinally want to serve the public for the good, but I believe they're a dying breed. Nowadays, it seems all the cops out there are looking out for promotions, not for public protection.

Re:Miniscule possibility of Abuse

[mosch]

if I was that cop I would have done the same thing.

This is incredibly sad. I had a similar situation occur, when working late one night. It was about 1am and I got a call that there was a personal emergency I needed to take care of. I left the office and drove very quickly towards home.

I got stopped in Warminster PA, held at gunpoint and had my car illegally searched because the police refused to believe that I was the legal owner and operator of my vehicle even after giving them all the relevant paperwork. It was only after the search came up empty, AND they got second-hand verification that my paperwork was legitimate that the guns were no longer pointed at me.

The only reason I didn't file a complaint was a fear of retalitory behaviour from the officers involved. After all, these were people who thought it was reasonable to keep multiple guns trained on an unarmed civilian for almost 15 mintues.

All this because I'm a relatively young guy who was driving a nice car a little too fast.

I'm fine with this...

[moniker_21]

I've been thinking about Carnivore a lot lately and it's not so repulsive as I first imagined it to be. They probably should have picked a much more PR name for this then the connotation that Carnivore invokes, but I digress. From what I've read Carnivore only filters/captures data (wireless or otherwise) from specifically targeted individuals. It would reason to stand that the villains of tomorrow will use the Internet (are already using the Internet) to plan, coordinate, and research their illegal activities.

If Carnivore can stop someone from shooting up a school where my kid is, without ever having to look at my data, then I have no beef with Carnivore. Yes, the thought of the Feds being able to snoop on your online data is scary, but it's the price we have to pay for safety. They need a warrant to enter your house, and they need a warrant to use Carnivore to snoop on your data, it's really nothing new.

Re:I'm fine with this...

[Steve B]

From what I've read Carnivore only filters/captures data (wireless or otherwise) from specifically targeted individuals.

From what I've heard, Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman Monica Lewinsky and Gary Condit is a dedicated family man.

Re:I'm fine with this...

[Aexia]

If Carnivore can stop someone from shooting up a school where my kid is

Honestly, do you really think Carnivore would stop that? If the Feds had cause to think a kid was going to shoot up a school, they won't need Carnivore to prove it. Or, more likely, they won't be checking the kid's e-mail until *after* the fact.

Re:I'm fine with this...

[Mr. Slippery]

If Carnivore can stop someone from shooting up a school where my kid is, without ever having to look at my data, then I have no beef with Carnivore.

Ah. So Carnivore makes kids bulletproof, does it? Or does it stop guns from working on school grounds? (Which would be bad news if I saw a machete-wielding madman headed towards the middle school across the street and grabbed my revolver to go help...)

Yes, the thought of the Feds being able to snoop on your online data is scary, but it's the price we have to pay for safety.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client =googlet&q=liberty%2C+safety%2C+neither

Plutonium, uranium, kiddie-porn, terrorism

[JasonVergo]

Plutonium, uranium, kiddie-porn, terrorism, bomb making, marijuana, pot, cocaine, J edgar hoover, herion, crack, blowing up, intern sex, kill the president, nuclear bomb, top-secret, russian, meth, lab, electronic bug, whitehouse, mueller bullet, iraq, bin laden, mob,...

I have 2 words to say to you FBI and they ain't merry christmas!

Hello there pedophile friends...

[Anonymous Coward]

IT IS USED FOR SAVING CHILDREN!

It may come to a surprise for you paraniod slash bots but the FBI is in the bussiness to stop criminals, and pediphiles are one hell of a important category of those assholes.

They don't give a shit about non-criminals, they have more important things to do.

Re:Hello there pedophile friends...

[codepunk]

But I am not about to willingly give up my personal protection rights just because someone wants to search for pedophiles. Yes they are a sorry group but dont infringe my rights in the process. That is the problem with america today, we do not need that type of government intervention.

Re:Hello there pedophile friends...

[No One]

Nope. Just like they have been forever, they're in the business of intimidating, discrediting, and eliminating people who are dangerous to those in power. That's always been their main focus, and it always will be.

the dignified history of the FBI

[nido]

... there was an article recently on mises.org on the FBI's "great tradition" (GWB's term). I don't know that I want those people protecting me from olympic park bombings (they did that one real well...) or tracking me down for imaginary crimes.

"If you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about" - famous last words. See this story.

Other countrys

[Anthet]

Does any one know what would happen to someone not in the states if the FBI cought something interesting from me on the web for instance. Since i'm not from the states could they even touch me? I guess my government would have a thing or two to say about it since the jail time in the states vs sweden are a lot different etc. Does any one know?

Re:Other countrys

[sh64109]

Ask Dmitry Sklyarov.

Not getting caught

[Katravax]

Okay, how many of us, if we were inclined to do something illegal and talk about it or plan it via e-mail, would send messages Carnivore can see anyway? I don't think the criminals are that stupid, at least not those Carnivore puports to be searching for. I would also think the FBI would brag about any collars they made, in part, because of Carnivore. So where are all the terrorists they've captured?

I think that Carnivore is another attempt at monitoring where a scare tactic was used to get it implemented. It doesn't work on those it's intended to work on, but works fine for those that should not be monitored.

Cointelpro and Filegate

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "subject to court order" don't you understand?

This part.

"The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to this Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and to inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant."

This part.

"In June of 1996, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno asked that the Whitewater independent counsel's mandate be expanded to include an investigation of how the Clinton White House had come to hold about 900 files on former Reagan and Bush appointees. The files had been gathered in 1993 and 1994 by Livingstone, then-White House director of personnel security, and his aide, Anthony Marceca. The White House has always contended that the acquisition of the files resulted from a series of bureaucratic blunders and that there was no evidence that anyone was trying to dig up dirt on political enemies."

That's the tip of the iceberg. That's the part you can see in public. Imagine the daily abuse of FBI intelligence gathering that hasn't made the national news yet.

Re:Cointelpro and Filegate

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the daily abuse of FBI intelligence gathering that hasn't made the national news yet.

"We were only following orders".

I don't see any problem with that. Don't blame the FBI for legitimate orders.

Carnivore vs. DMCA ?

[sh64109]

Carnivore could intercept a copyright-protected transmission without permission from the copyright holder. The fact that it is not intended to do so (at least according to its supporters) and is not supposed to be used for that is moot; if it can, its mere existence is illegal under the DMCA.

Of course, IANAL and with "justice" going to the highest bidder I'm not optimistic about this technicality being worth anything.

Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to prove the need for use of strong encryption for everything, even to just send an email to say hi. Even if they can break the encryption the mass amount of encrypted traffic would make it near impossible to much less feasable to continue with carnavore.

Ahem...

[GMontag]

Ahem... actually, I did read the article. What portion of it do you *assume* that I missed?

BTW, the title that I submitted was "DCS100 aka Carnivour goes wireless!"


"The Washington Post Tech Section is running this story FBI's 'Carnivore'
Might Target Wireless Text.


Humm... can't be that part...

Apparently, since the industry can't provide big brothering to the satisfaction of the FBI the FBI will will do it *for* them.

Was not a quote from the article, it alludes to the industry itself saying that it can not meet a 30 Sept. deadline for providing eavesdropping services to the FBI.

This is a collector's item too,
with no mention in article of DCS1000 being used to "save" children!"

Perhaps you saw a "save the children" refrence that I am still missing?

Why so much anger towards Carnivore??

[Sarcasmooo!]

I mean, hello!? Carnivore saves furry little kittens. The real question is; why do Slashdotters endorse the virtual torture and murder of innocent little replicas of a baby kittens??

could??

[canning]

Civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers have expressed concerns because the system could scan private communication about legal activities of others besides those under investigation.

Could scan? Could? It hasn't already? They say this like it's an option that can be turned on or off.

It's virtually email already...

[Traicovn]

I don't know how other peoples phones work, but I know that my phones sms is email based anyway, which is what I suspect most networks in the US are using. IMHE (in my humble experience) the only time that I have ever met a network in the US that appears to be using any TRUE based SMS network was Powertel. Now I'm on the east coast, and I know that TRUE-GSM900/1900 sim based PCS systems have been more widely used there *or so I've been told* in my personal experience, out of five different carriers I've used, and dozens my friends have used, our 'SMS' messages have always been sent in email format, just without all the header junk. Seems like this won't really require THAT much modification to the Carnivore system if it works like they say it does.

Of course [BOMB] I am not sure that [Terrorist] [Echelon] Carnivore isn't [2600] anything except a [hacker] paper tiger, [UN] or in this [FBI] case, a paper [Area 51] Dinosaur. :)

Re:I'm fine with this...Who are you?

[codepunk]

If you wish to stop school shootings you do not do it by infringing my personal rights. The government is using sick examples for a reason to infringe everyones rights.

Too bad that doesn't work both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind being trusted to gather all sorts of drugs and then WEED out what sorts of drugs I was allowed to have.

Or better yet, gather all sorts of women, and then weed out the ones that weren't my wife.

Or gather all sorts of weapons and then weed out the ones I wasn't allowed to have.

Or best yet, gather all sorts of money, and then weed out that which wasn't mine.

The FBI can read my email?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash.

So can every two-bit system administrator sitting on a box that your mail goes through. :)

Privacy. Fight for it in all situations, just not specific applications. ;P

Challenges of Wireless Security

[kaladorn]

Briefly:

I've worked with non-US federal policing agencies. They've had the challenge to protect _their_own_ datastreams from the bad guys. Try this sometime over 14.4 or 9600 bps links. Even 28.8. And try doing it with a large organization with hundreds of members where biometric keying or hardware keys would be prohibitively expensive and management of public keyrings would be very involved and extensive. No small feat.

Encryption (due to overhead on embedded (read: often old) processors and via slow wireless links) can be pretty ugly. But the opposition (the Mob, other bad guys) can crack some of the low-overhead encryptions in real-time on common PC hardware.

This set of problems will continue to plague cellphone users as well. The low data rate of most cell nets make practical encryption difficult and most users aren't up to the challenges of key management. Most can't even stop their VCR flashing 12:00 .

It would be nice if some cell network came out with a system that was high bandwidth and that allowed the end user to load his own encryption and authentication software (and maybe that had some interface for hardware keys). But the odds of this happening are pretty low.

Any anyone who thinks the public has nothing to worry about if they are not a criminal and that the cops can be trusted entirely because their are punishments.... oh boy are you naive!

Most cops are good folks trying to do a crappy job and stop scum. But, who is or is not a criminal is sometimes debatable and if you'll note trends via DMCA and other legislation, this is more and more being defined in a corporate manner and not necessarily along lines we'd all appreciate.

And not every cop is a good guy (they get some bad apples too). If you get taken advantage of, is it much consolation that they cop in question eventually gets punished (if that happens)? I think not.

So, do you depend on the action of someone else (a politician passing legislation, a police watchdog agency trying to keep an eye on things, the integrity of the cop or the tech reading your email, etc) to secure yourself? I suppose you might if you enjoy playing the lottery or going to casinos. This is the equivalent of driving in a car without crumple zones or seatbelts because you're pretty sure the other drivers are competent and their is legislation to prevent them from doing wrong and punish them if they do.
Does this seem sensible?

Take some steps to defend yourself. Watch what you say in voice or email correspondences if they aren't heavily encrypted. Heck, just watch what you get involved in! And support the EFF and FSF and the ACLU and other liberty-defending organizations. Freedom is not a state of being, it is a continuum and where your country sits on that continuum varies... central control and strong government forces (and corporatist) forces pull one way... maybe citizens interested in freedom and quality of life should pull the other... often by the time you discover your Freedom has eroded to an unacceptable level, it is kind of late to do much about it.

Tomb

PS - No, I am not a crackpot. ;)

Re:Challenges of Wireless Security

[crucini]

I don't understand the tradeoff between bandwidth and encryption that you posit. When you feed cleartext through a block cipher, the result is roughly the same size (rounded up to the block size, typically 8 bytes). If you use a stream cipher like RC4, the encrypted product is the same size as the cleartext. So encryption won't make a 14.4 link any slower.

Maybe you're talking about public key encryption used to establish a session key? I don't think it's enough to really impact your bandwidth.

Re:Challenges of Wireless Security

[kaladorn]

That is in fact what I was referring to. We looked at implementing some third party (there name started with En and ended with trust) software. But the number of transactions at the front end to establish the session, already a painful process if 30 cops hit the same tower at shift change, was prohibitive. I think we figured the overall size increase was somewhere between 5 and 15% (nearer 5 I think) in the overall dataflow, but the logon hit (and the necessity to repeat the authentication process a few times during a shift on a periodic basis) was no small matter.

100 Kbps wireless nets will remove this item as a concern, certainly.

Oh, they're geeks? Nevermind! Carnivore is OK!

[Chris Burke]

I wouldn't mention this except that some might not get it, but the subject above is sarcasm.

Seriously. Why should it make me feel better that the people who are using this system understand technology? What difference does that make, exactly? As far as I'm concerned, that just makes them more capable of committing abuse.

But maybe you're implying that geeks are morally superior beings who would never do anything bad. Which I agcree with. Because no geek has ever done anything like try to lock out competing programs through incompatability, create huge databases tracking customer behavior, or prevent people from exercizing their fair-use rights. Or build nuclear weapons, for that matter. Oh, geeze. There I go being sarcastic again.

It's okay, because it's geeks? Sorry, but I don't buy it for a millisecond. Because I know how this works. Let me ask you a quick question, which I will alert you in advance is to test whether you are a hopelessly naive person with no grasp of human nature:

The geek you speak of is sitting at his Carnivore terminal tracking communications by a suspect when his manager walks up to him and says "We haven't gotten anything from this guy's email yet... Can you expand your search to include these neighbors, aquaintences, and relatives? And this unrelated person we think might be dirty." Does the geek answer:

A) "No, sir. That would be both illegal and immoral"

B) "Yes, sir!"

Hint: The answer is the same as when the geek is at MS and the manager asks "Do you think you can break Samba's compatability in the next release?"

Who Cares??

[Sanford]

Really though, all I can think of is:

"Excuse me stewardess, I speak jive"

who doesn't use a slang term for things around their life? mine evolve constantly, and I really doubt that anyone from the outside would understand me communicating with my friends if we were really trying to hide things. This whole idea strikes me as completely worthless, but if it makes someone sleep better at night thinking that we are protected, I will not be the one to ruin the illusion.

"abracadabra, b, abracadabra!"

Fool or Troll?

[Chris Burke]

Seriously. Which are you?

In one sentence, you say you hope Carnivore can stop school shootings. In another in the same paragraph, you say you think they'll only search the emails of people for whom they have a warrant.

Do you see the problem? Even if the school shooters were sending out emails with the subject "Re: Upcoming massacre of our peers" (ludicrous in and of itself), the email would never be found because the FBI wouldn't have a warrant for a couple of school kids who as of yet had done nothing wrong! The only way they'd find it was if they were searching _all_ email for keywords. So to get your supposed benefit, they will be looking at your data.

The price we have to pay for safety? No. No. No. I'm sick of explaining. If you want safety, turn your house into a fortress and never let yourself or your kids venture outside. Leave me and my rights alone.

Not with WAP

[Serveert]

WAP uses decent encryption so if you use WAP you shouldn't have any problems. SMS messages, on the other hand, are unencrypted so avoid those.. try using an instant messenger over WAP, no probs.

Re:Not with WAP

[camusflage]

WAP uses its own encryption. When dealing with most web servers, it's SSL from the server to the WAP gateway, then it's WAP security from the gateway to your client. Oh, you too noticed that it exists unencrypted on the WAP gateway? And this is decent encryption how?

My scenario...

[PHAEDRU5]

I mean, we now have jurisdictions in the U.S. that automatically photograph drivers and run face recognition software on them.

Then there are jurisdictions that have banned mobile phone use by drivers.

And of course, there are the intersections with cameras at stop signs and traffic lights.

So, you're driving down the street, sending messages via your cell phone. You're discussing a new rap tune ("It's the BOMB!") and in your excitement, you run a red light (it's ok, there were no cars coming the other way).

Meanwhile, however, you've attracted the attention of BB, and his software's having a bad day.

You end up with various citations for improper use of a cell phone, running a red light, etc., but the kicker is that the "BOMB" part gets the local G-men totally foaming when the local face recognition software identifies you as OSAMA BIN LADIN! They dispatch the Hostage Rescue Team ("Women, children, and weird cults our speciality!") to the address associated with the number on your car's tag.

You arrive home just in time to be raked by .50 caliber machinegun fire. In the end, the mistake is covered up when the local police put out the story that your were shot resisting arrest over major traffic violations.

Just for good measure, they burn down your house as well.

Meanwhile, various quislings on /. post comments to the effect you got exactly what you deserved. After all, we can totally trust our government.

Think a little bit more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a system which records data only about specifically targeted individuals going to stop someone from shooting up a school?

Answer: it's not. The only way to get the "stop someone from shooting up a school" effect is for the FBI to run a dragnet on all info it captures. Which they probably already do covertly, and will do openly as soon as they find a popular law to enforce.

Not only random hackers, but also the FBI?

[iabervon]

Didn't we just hear that wireless security was broken and an exploit published? I'm all for limits on law enforcement, but it's a bit silly if some guy driving by in a car can monitor your network, but the FBI can't...

The issue with carnivore is that it will be put at ISPs on parts of the network where most people can't listen; for this reason it can invade privary, and thus requires a court order (in theory). But wireless networks can be passively sniffed without any government powers, so it's much less of an issue.

As a news man...

[El Camino SS]

Trust us, when it comes to radio frequencies, there is definitely someone listening. I drive through cities with at least two scanners running, and I know coworkers that sleep with the scanners rolling.

If we could hear it, we would listen. There are more specific questions involved with the sitaution as far as cell phones, (someone please back me up here) but the reality is that I don't think that you can ACT upon the information. Even that is an issue for law enforcement personnel... that rarely happens because news people are close to the police, and often aid them in terms of manhunts and tipping information. Most of the law enforcement officers are more concerned about open burn ordinances rather than the radio laws.

Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it changes the fabric of society from the ideal of free individuals protected by a vigilant police force to a nation of suspected criminals under constant watch by keepers. The latter guarantees a slide towards tyranny. Arguing otherwise ignores the history of the 20th century.

be carnivore!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok people, heres how you do it. Get an old antenna tv that goes up to channel 83(it has to be like from the '70s or something).
Now put up a good UHF antenna somewhere.
Now tune the tv's uhf knob until you hear a buzzing noize that sounds funny. Wait until you hear a ringing noise like a phone and you can hear people's phone calls!! Its too much work though to really do alot.

"miniscule"??

[Gorimek]

Are you not aware that the FBI under J Edgar Hoovers 48 years as it's head was practically controlling the federal government of the USA? Mostly through blackmail, but also intimidation and murder.

Hoover spied on everyone and had incriminating files on pretty much every politician that could end their career, which enabled him to rule Washington.

That is not "miniscule" in my book.

Remember that those not aware of history are condemned to repeat it.