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Preserve Your Rights Online - Act Now
Let's start with one simple and rather sad truth: You are going to be less free next week than you were last week.
We are already seeing what several newspapers have called "the biggest criminal investigation in history." Sure, a lot of this investigation's energy is being focused on Islamic countries, but it is also going on in Europe and, more than anywhere else, the United States itself. Landlords who have rented to young men with Arab-sounding names are being interrogated. Topless-bar patrons are being asked about conversations they allegedly heard, boasting about upcoming mass destruction.
And then there's email and the World Wide Web. Imagine a technically unhip Senator or Member of Congress who has read about Osama bin Laden allegedly using encrypted email and secret messages hidden in online porn to communicate with his followers and allies. Put the words "Osama bin Laden" in the same sentence as "pornography" and "the Internet," and you had better get out of the way of the avalanche of anti-online privacy laws coming your way -- or get crushed by them, even if people like bin Laden can switch to other means of communication at the drop of a hat.
Worse, disagreeing with the U.S. government right now may almost be viewed as treason in some quarters. "My Country, Right or Wrong" was a popular bumper sticker among the gunrack-and-confederate-flag pickup truck crowd in the late 60s, and this attitude, if not yet the bumper sticker itself, has been making a major comeback
But Dissent We Must
The problem with the "My Country, Right or Wrong" attitude is that it allows our government to go terribly wrong in many ways that may not be made right again for a long time, if ever. As Rep. Rivers pointed out Saturday, once laws are made that are supposed to help law enforcement in some way, they are almost never repealed because Members of Congress don't want to be seen as "soft on terrorism, soft on crime, soft on drugs."
Carry this a little farther. What about treason charges? At what point does it become illegal to speak out against a planned US government action that, on its face, is being taken to fight against the Terrorist Enemy, whoever he or she may be, even though that action may have very bad, long-term consequences for ordinary American citizens who want nothing more that to live their own lives quietly without being afraid of their own government?
Rep. Rivers said half the people in her district's gut reaction to the idea of legislation allowing government to read their email without getting a warrant first was along the lines of, "So what? I don't break any laws, so I have nothing to hide."
Long-time EPIC activist Kathleen Ellis told Rep. Rivers she believed questions about privacy should not be asked in the context of email. "Ask people if they should have the right to keep a secret and almost all of them will answer 'Of course,'" she said. Ellis also mentioned that cryptography is the email equivalent of an envelope on a letter sent by postal mail. "Unencrypted email is like a postcard," she said, "open for anyone to read. Ask people if they want all mail to be as open as a postcard and they're going to say no."
From that point on, the meeting focused on tactics. The question in the room wasn't, "Are privacy and freedom of speech good?" but "What can we do to protect our privacy and freedom of speech?"
Background on the Meeting Itself
The forum in which all this discussion took place was decidedly unofficial. It was an informal meeting thrown together hastily by local Linux user and ham radio afficianado Rob Carlson. Carlson sent a meeting notice to several email lists and posted it at cluebot.com. 13 people showed up at Saturday's gathering, most of whom were Baltimore and Washington D.C. area privacy advocates and/or Linux users. I was there myself for that reason. Wired News reporter Declan McCullagh is another "local" who hangs in the same circles, which explained his presence.
Rep. Rivers was there because her husband, William Simpson, is a computer consultant involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF] who spotted Carlson's notice on one of the cryptography-oriented email lists he's on. He had driven Rivers' chief of staff, who needed to get back to Washington but was marooned in Michigan by the airlines shutdown, to D.C., and was taking his Congresswoman wife back to her district for a little rest and some scheduled meetings (Congress had adjourned until Friday, Sept. 21), and they noticed that UMBC was on their way. So there they were, not dressed in "mover and shaker" clothing but looking like anyone else taking a 1000+ mile car trip.
One doesn't usually think of a Member of Congress fitting in with a group of downdressed geeks, but this one sure did. We only knew what she did for a living because Carlson asked everyone in the little circle to identify themselves by name and job, and when it was her turn Rep. Rivers gave her name as "Lynn," then added "Rivers," and softly, sort of as an aside, mentioned that she was "in Congress." Her husband had already mentioned that they were "from Michigan," which was curious enough in itself for a meeting with a decidedly local orientation. But Linux folks are friendly, and Rep. Rivers was as welcome as anyone else even though she was from out of town -- and freely admitted she used Mac OS, not Linux, both at home and in her office.
When he organized the meeting, Carlson said, "I didn't know whether no one or 100 people would show up." 13 did. And revolutions have started with as few as 13 people, so why shouldn't a strong pro-Constitution lobbying movement? The next step is to get 13 more, and another 13, and so on. This means calling and emailing friends until there are 13X13X13X13.... people talking to their elected representatives about privacy issues in terms they can understand, that will help them change their minds.
How You Can Lobby Against Anti-Privacy Laws
Start with this line Rep. Rivers laid on us, which is not new but needs to be said over and over: "Democracy is not a spectator sport."
Those Americans who don't vote, no matter how they excuse this failure, have no right to criticize their government. And those who don't bother to tell their elected representatives what they want and don't want their government to do should not act shocked when the government passes laws they don't like. It gets sickening, going to hearing after hearing about proposed laws like UCITA, DMCA, and SSSCA and always seeing a whole bunch of industry lobbyists wearing expensive suits, but hardly ever anyone who could be classified as an "ordinary citizen."
You need to make some noise instead of letting "them" talk while you sit around and let "them" get their way. Pump up the volume. Take some of the time you spend posting on Slashdot and register to vote. Write email and snail mail letters, send faxes, and make phone calls to Congresspeople and Senators and other representatives, and tell other people (13X13X13X13.... voices, remember) to do the same. This, not just complaining, is what this whole representative government thing is all about.
Rep. Rivers says phone calls "...have a sense of personal contact to them," and this makes them the most effective grassroots lobbying tool. "Stick to one issue," she advises. "Don't come up with a laundry list."
Also send email and write letters, even though they probably won't have as much impact as calls. And don't forget the fax machine; reps who are too technically unhip to read email read faxes. The ACLU and NRA have both famously used fax as a means of rapid communication with legislators for many years.
Now comes the matter of what to say. A letter, call or email that starts with something like, "I has nevir voted for you I am not registered to vote but you got to lisen to me," will go nowhere, says Rivers, pointing out that many pro-Napster messages she got were along those lines -- and got ignored. Better, she says, is something that tells your representative you are a computer professional (or manager or student or business owner or whatever) whose business, occupation or future will be hurt by whatever legislation you are working against. In this case (this week), privacy and online crypto are under attack. Next week, who knows?
So you're not a business owner? Know any? Know anyone who depends on privacy to transact their business? How about your doctor? Doesn't he or she want to keep patient records confidential? Ditto any lawyer you know. If a lawyer is serious about maintaining client trust, he or she certainly doesn't want the government snooping on email through Carnivore or a similar system with a less aggressive name. Other businesses have client information they want to private, along with trade secrets and other information they would rather not share with competitors. These are all points to bring up rationally, in an orderly debate format, when communicating with an elected rep, and they are ones you should ask others to bring up, too.
Stay calm, in other words. Assume your representative is sane and really wants to do what's right and what most people want, based on the input he or she gets. Your trick is to become part of that input, and right now the input you need to give must be strong and focused because Congress is caught up in post-attack hysteria and, like the rest of us, is saying, "We need to do something to help those poor victims and their families and make sure nothing this awful ever happens again."
The only problem here is that what Congress does is make laws, not post on Slashdot, and a law made in the same emotional heat as a flame post on Slashdot can't be moderated down to -1 after it is passed. Once that law is on the books, if you break it you can be arrested, tried, and fined or sent to jail. You've heard the saying, "If [guns/crypto/brains] are outlawed, only outlaws will have [guns/crypto/brains]." It's true, you know.
Right now, legitimate Americans are in danger of having many of their Constitutional freedoms revoked by a government that is doing its best, possibly in a misguided way, to protect its citizens. This is not about Disney's copyrights or the freedom to play DVDs on computers running Linux. The current debate is about much more basic issues than those, issues I will not repeat here because they have been written about so extensively elsewhere.
An Aside: How Congress Works
Rep. Rivers said it this way: "The House [of Representatives] is ruled by brute force."
Since she was talking to geeks who follow such things, she used the DMCA as an example. She told us that the "unanimous" vote that got DMCA through the House was not really unanimous at all; that the bill got through a committee dominated by a powerful chairman (which is how bills generally get to the floor for a vote) and that the Speaker called for a voice vote. "Most yelled 'Aye,'" Rivers said, and some yelled 'Nay.'"
The voices yelling "Aye" were the loudest, so DMCA passed by acclamation. Brute Force. People yelling at the top of their lungs. If 50 loud voices had yelled "Nay" instead of "Aye," perhaps we wouldn't have the DMCA as law today, and the EFF wouldn't be begging for money to get it overturned in the courts.
Now think about a Member of Congress who is hearing, right now, from all the "Kill-the-Arab-bastards-and-stamp-out-Internet-porn" crowd loudly and repeatedly by phone, fax, mail and email, but isn't hearing from you. Who is shouting the loudest? Which wheel is so squeaky that it is going to get the grease? So far, it's not the voices of reason and Constitutionality. They are getting drowned out. Heck, they are hardly there at all. At least Rep. Rivers isn't hearing them, and if she isn't hearing them -- with her ear attuned to Internet privacy matters and a totally Net-hip husband at her side -- you can bet the rest of Congress don't even know those voices (yours) exist.
Don't Delay! Do It Today!
Congress reconvenes Friday, September 21. The anti-privacy bills and anti-privacy amendments to various anti-terrorist bills are being written now, not someday. This means you must act immediately. If you put off those calls and emails to friends asking them to help support their right to communicate with each other in private, and to live without fear of police breaking down their doors or seizing their computer hard drives without warrants for even a few days, it is going to be too late. We are in the grip of national hysteria. A $40 billion appropriations bill to support the war on terrorism was passed a few days ago, with bipartisan support, almost without debate.
I'm going to admit that I am as ready to kick terrorist butt as anyone else, so I can't really blame Congress for being so gung-ho that it will pass all kinds of measures that will make America a less free country for decades to come in response to the current emergency. All I'm really asking Congress to do -- and asking you to join me in asking Congress to do, and to convince 13X13X13.... others to ask your Representative and your Senator to do -- is remember that the freedoms that make this country great must not be forgotten in our rush to avenge our fallen fellow Americans and our attempts to keep ourselves safe from future terrorist attacks.
Specifically (concentrate on one issue, remember), as a Net user I am concerned about watching our online privacy and freedoms evaporate if the government makes strong cryptography illegal or tries to have it controlled by agencies like the NSA, CIA, and FBI, or starts reading all of our private email without due cause and legitimate judicial warrants.
The deadline is Friday. That's when the legislative fur will start to fly. So let's get to work now!
Do a little research into the sacrifices that our grandparents and parents had to make during World War II to preserve your peace, freedom and liberty. Speech restrictions? How about food restrictions and travel restrictions. Note that after the war, civil liberties came back.
How many more jet liners have to smash into skyscrapers before people think that there other priorities right now? Will it take a nuke hitting a city? I thought Colin Powell made an interesting statement this morning: (paraphrase): "The terrorists don't care how many people they kill. The only thing holding them back is the technology they have available." After this week, does anyone doubt this reasoning?
To many people don't seem to be able to contemplate the fact that this is not an accident, it is not just an isolated incident, it is not just a single strike to "send a message". Unless we act, this WILL happen again, and next time it might be an even bigger scale.
WE ARE AT WAR. I think this story is to spit on the graves of everyone who died this week.
I wonder how long it would have taken Hitler to conquer the world if Slashdot editors were in charge.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
...we HAD rights online? What were you even thinking? Hell, check the YRO section to SEE that we've had little or no "rights" online. I just love seeing how the US govt tries to regulate something that it is only a small part of.
The quotes above reminded me of:
On a more serious note, what makes people think a fundamentalist Islamic group would hide pictures in porn? Wouldn't that require them to go against most of their fundamental beliefs and actually look at nakedness and fornication?
The Wizard utters the word 'frobnoid!' and cackles gleefully
This may sound callous, but the only reasons that this incident seems like that big a deal are 1. the way that media replay this incident over and over - funny how the million-odd who die of AIDS in Africa this year won't get 24/7 commercial-free coverage of their deaths, nor did the people who were bombed in Panama or Lebanon or anywhere else for that matter - consider that the subconscious doesn't really distinguish replays as being the same event; people's emotions get fortified to respond as if it were a new event, so that the death of 5000 people replayed 50 times has a far greater emotional impact than the statistic of 100,000 deaths (like in Rwanda's recent massacre) if the latter has no media coverage, and 2. the economic impact of the attack.
What's really dangerous about curtailing civil liberties in this situation is that, unlike World War 2, there is no specific enemy whose defeat would spell an end to the conflict. Bush has said that this will be an ongoing effort with no conclusion in the foreseeable future. That scares the hell out of me.
At this point, I'm expecting an official declaration of war against afghanistan (and after Saddam's last speech, possibly Iraq too) any day now. Until that happens, we should rally for our rights. But as soon as we are officially at war, we have no rights whatsoever. That's the way war works. And considering the direct and immediate threat at hand, I would rather have my car searched at state borders than my car blown up at starbucks. As long as they don't outlaw encryption and free press, I'll keep my mouth shut. Feel free to argue, it's my opinion, not yours.
I am !amused.
Voting is a good idea, but I'm not aware of any elections in the next few weeks that will have any effects on all these new legislation being proposed. To fight this, we need to be far more proactive than merely voting.
All in all, good article.
Giving up freedom is not waiting in longer lines to fly on an airplane. That's giving up convience. In this country, Flying, like driving is a privlidge, not a right.
The freedoms we risk losing are more fundamental to our democratic process. The freedom to practice religion, to speech, to have a government seperate from our church, to live without fear.
Travis
I am astounded at the number of people so far who seem perfectly willing to give up their free speech rights and to allow the government to read all their personal correspondence in the name of fighting terrorism.
A simple question: should it be ok for the government to open any letter in the US Mail without court order? My guess is that you wouldn't want that. So why should they be able to read our email? It's simple: they shouldn't.
One of the things that makes this country great is our freedom from government interference in our daily lives. One of the terrorists' primary goals is to make us less free. Giving up our free speech and privacy helps them attain that goal.
And no, this article isn't spitting on anyone's graves. How can telling folks to get involved in government and to call or write your representative and tell them what you think be a bad thing? If you're willing to give up your privacy, then contact your rep. and tell them! I'm not willing to give up any of my rights, no matter how terrible this tragedy is, and I do intend to contact my local rep.'s.
Also, someone above said that the people who died don't care about personal privacy. I strongly disagree. I'm sure if there were some way to contact them and ask, "Should we give up our rights to fight terrorism?", very few would say yes.
Look, with a court order, the government can read mail, tap phone lines and confiscate computer equipment. We don't need any more laws giving the government more power over our daily lives.
Don't let the horror of this tragedy blind you. We must maintain our freedoms. Is this article a bit paranoid and perhaps over-reacting a bit to these possibilities? Maybe, but there is nothing wrong with being vigilant against the intrusions of an over-zealous government, and there is certainly nothing wrong with getting involved, deciding what you really want from government, and telling them.
"Unencrypted email is like a postcard," she said, "open for anyone to read. Ask people if they want all mail to be as open as a postcard and they're going to say no."
Now ask people if they want there to be laws against government officials looking at the address information on a letter or postcard, or reading the postcard with a warrant. Most will say no.
Ask people if they want there to be laws making the use of envelopes illegal. Once again, you'll likely get an answer of no.
Carnivore isn't a problem. Banning all encryption is.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Yes, the Supreme Court will protect us! Just like when the Supreme Court overturned the internment of American citizens in World War 2. Oops, they upheld it. You must be thinking it's like when the Supreme Court overturned the guilt by association laws during the McCarthy era. Oops, they upheld those as well.
I'm disappointed as well. These are rights not privileges. We are going to sacrifice very real freedom for very unreal security.
Cryptography rights are the Second Amendment issue of the Internet. If you're going to write your congresscritter, that's a good point to make... tho perhaps not with Democrats. National Review has come down firmly on the side of being careful to maintain civil liberties, and folks like Bob Barr and Dick Armey (majority leader) in the House are well-known privacy nuts, so I'm not overly worried; the quote (yesterday?) by the House minority leader (Gephardt) was disconcerting, hopefully he'll listen to reps like Rivers (whose district is a stone's throw from mine).
And how do you - or they - presume to restrict the rights of those who are located outside the borders of the USA?
By arresting and prosecuting them if they dare to travel to the USA... oh, wait...
Seriously, perhaps people in power need to consider that they can't control everything and instead seek to resolve issues rather than stomp on them...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I heard that as "70% of Americans are willing to let terrorists tell us how to run our country". It's all well and good to talk about how the government is doing what's best for us, and that giving up some "minor" freedoms (clue: there is no such thing) is worth it to prevent this sort of thing; I'm sure it makes the people who say it feel better. It's also hopelessly naive.
Few, if any, of the airport restrictions put in place in the last week would have had any effect on this attack. None of them would have prevented it. There is already a movement afoot in Congress to outlaw crypto which doesn't have a back door installed for government use. Are you really so naive as to believe that backdoor won't be used improperly, or be compromised by people outside the government? And if you are that naive, you can't possibly be so naive as to believe that the people who carried out Tuesday's attacks are somehow incapable of writing (or having written) their own crypto software which contains no such back doors.
The fact is that there are people all over America who are unscrupulously using these events to further their own agendas, whether it be gas station owners hiking prices through the roof or Falwell and Robertson spouting their hatred. Some of these people are in Congress, and they will take advantage of your complacency and ignorance. It's always been true, but especially so now; be very, very careful what you ask for, because you will get it.
All the American groups who are anti-government (those who are portrayed as hiding in the mountains, stockpiling weapons, etc) - have they spoken up? I'd be interested to know what their thoughts are in all this. Are they as pissed off as the rest of us? Obviously, strangers came knocking on our back door. Are they temporarily allied with the government now?
It's been said many times that legislators don't read their email, and when they do, they largely ignore it. This isn't always the case...
A few weeks ago (probably closer to a month, I don't remember) I dashed off a note to US Rep. Sander M. Levin, 12th District, Michigan. My note concerned Dmitry Sklyarov, and his imprisonment for presenting some research which should've been protected speech. I ranted as intelligently as I could about the DMCA and how it hurt all of us. I clicked the Submit button and promptly forgot all about it.
A few days ago, I went through my snailmail inbox. I don't do this very often, so I have no idea how long Rep. Levin's letter had been sitting there. In any case, the letter indicates a clear understanding of the Sklyarov case and at least a few of the issues surrounding it. The letter ends "I will continue to follow this case closely. Thank you again for contacting me on this matter. Sincerely, [signature and closing] SML:ch"
Neat. My understanding of the SML:ch part would seem to suggest that while someone else typed it, this letter was at least personally dictated or composed in part by Rep. Levin himself. Form letter? Possibly. But the existence of such a form letter would indicate the demand for one, which means he must be hearing about this issue a lot.
WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES! They DO listen. They even understand sometimes, and it's your job to help them. My task this evening, after the daylight fades and cleaning my car becomes moot, is to fill Rep. Levin in on some of the subtler details of Sklyarov's case, and point out exactly why we all need to oppose Carnivore. Making it clear why such opposition is justified, even in times of crisis, will be the tough part. Wish me luck, then try your own hand at it. Please?
-Myself-
Voter, Concerned Citizen
12th District, Michigan.
that's a pretty apathetic view of life. So maybe our colonial ancestors shoulda settled for british dominance, after all, we had lives better than say the slaves down south!
We should always strive to improve our government, because when it isn't going forward, it's going backwards
Photos.
What people with this view don't seem to understand is that these restrictions will not prevent terrorism. And when you give an organization like the FBI or the NSA official approval to do something, it's very difficult to take away.
There has already been lots of discussion of deficiencies in the current intelligence and security systems within existing rules. This is similar to the conservative argument regarding gun laws -- instead of always trying to make new laws, why not really crack down on enforcement of existing ones? We can already beef up airport security, we can already do a much better job of collecting foreign intelligence, we can already give law enforcement permission to do whatever data gathering and wiretaps they need when evidence warrants... there is no excuse for infringing on the sacrosanct rights of the people until all alternatives have been exhausted.
Bull, my right to free speech is not regulated by whether or not I voted. Now or ever.
The right not to have to do something is just as important as the right to do it.
Having said that, I can't believe the number of people I've seen that are willing to GIVE their rights away, for the LIE that they will be safer by doing so.
Two or three days ago I sent a letter and en email to both senators and my congressman asking them to tell Americans the TRUTH. And that is that nothing short of 24th century Star Trek type technology can save us from this sort of thing.
They passed an "anti-terrorism" bill after Oklahoma City and THAT didn't stop it, what makes you think a few more draconian words written on paper will stop it now?
We live in (perhaps) the country with the most freedom in the world, and we have thousands of miles of water and land border. There simply aren't enough cops, or military to police every inch of them to keep the bad guys out.
Our war on drugs has failed miserably, and this attempt will too, BECAUSE we are free.
Perhaps all of you are willing to give your rights away, but I'm going down kicking and screaming.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
If we really want to win this war, we should cease diverting energies and debasing the justness of government with the "war on drugs." Declare a total truce and amnesty, or at least offer amnesty to anyone jailed for drugs who will volunteer for the armed forces. This would unify our society where currently we divide it, free us where we currently limit liberty and right of individuals to pursue their own mentalities (a goal the Taliban also pursues).
It would also remove the financial basis that supports certain terrorist groups backed by the illegal suppliers of drugs who flourish in the absense of legal alternatives, and gain the support of peasant populations currently in thrall to those terrorists.
More freedom, not less, is the key to uprooting fundamentalist evils both at broad and at home. In a truly free and open world, their seeds will wither. Meanwhile, by uniting in greater freedom, rather than contracting into less - which leaves many of our own people outside that constricted circle - we can be assured that we do not just advance one despotism against another as we free the Afghanis from the Nazi-like rule of the Taliban. If we will buy their hashish, they will not be driven by desparation to send their assassins, and both their and our freedoms will be recovered.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Petitions are, IMHO, is the second best way to go about influencing congress. What we really need is a concentrated mechanism to gather thousands of signatures on a single, short, and well articulated position paper. Perferably the signatures being "real" and not digitial. This way, when a congress person has a chance to read 10 letters... the petition will be at the top of their stack, beacuse it has so many hundred signatures.
... short and sweet. Then some electronic way to "sign up" and "sort" the signatures by voting district and then send this snail-mail to the congress person's staff for sorting (clearly marking on the front of the envelope the issuse and # of signaturess *in their district* )
Thus, I humbly suggest that someone with some time/skill/influence author such a letter
A well-organized and thoughtul petition is far more effective than a few single letters... certainly a few thousand letters are better; however, most people are too lazy to write their own letter -- while they will take time to fill in information for a petition.
Currently, when a wire tap is issued, it pertains to a particualr phone - all conversations (suspect or not) are recorded, on that phone. A proposal, issued by the Vice President, would be to make wire tap's issued on a per-person basis. This proposal, in theory, is a boost to pesonal liberties, and to security.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
This is not flaimbait -- I was just wondering what party she was affiliated with as I read through the article, and I thought others might want to know as well.
I can't think of any particular reason why the DMCA would have more support from any particular party, and since it was a verbal vote, I don't suppose we can find out. Hollywood may traditionally pay big bucks to Democrats, but Republicans are usually the ones associated with big businesses. Seems like the whole system is shot. Anyone care to venture a guess on whether any one group is favorable for tech issues, or if it's really just an individual issue?
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
The Constitution does not cover freedom of easy communication.
The Constitution doesn't have anything to say about how "hard" something has to be before it is protected. Sheesh. Try reading it. Start with the 4th Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particu larly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Did you see that bit about "papers?" They could not have conceived of a computer, but I bet the Founding Fathers would consider your computer files and communications to be your "papers" if they could be asked about it today. A machine for writing, and sending written messages to people with the same kind of machine... not a hard concept. Not something so alien that the Constitution should't apply to it.
If we sacrifice our freedoms, they are not coming back. Everyone just assumes that bad laws will evaporate, which is stupid wishful thinking. Don't let them turn us into a police state. We can win the coming conflict without doing that.
Assuming that's true, then that means the BAD GUYS can do this also.
This particular attack took YEARS to plan, so what makes you think they wouldn't mind waiting a few days for regular postal mail to receive information, than an instant email?
Not specifically, but it does cover the right to free speech, so they do overlap. And it (was) required that law enforcement authorities get a court order before phone lines were tapped. So you're wrong. Phone calls are easy conveniences which WERE covered by privacy laws.
Oklahoma City did a lot to erode that, and the new law will also.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
Folks, liberty is an intrinsic human right. It is not something the government grants you; it is something that you already have, and the purpose of having a government, at least in the US, is supposed to be to guarantee that nobody takes it away from you. Liberty is not something you should have to register for. It is not something that you should have to go out and vote for. It is not contingent on any demonstration of civic virtue.
Now, it's true that you can't trust the government to do its duty, and that it's therefore wise to do things like voting and writing letters to your representatives and calling them on the phone and all that. I do that stuff myself.
However, if I burn down your house and you're too shocked to say anything, or too afraid of me to say anything, or even too busy dealing with something more important (and, yes, there could be something more important) to say anything, nobody is going to tell you you have no right to complain. They may tell you you were foolish for not stopping me, but they're not going to tell you you weren't wronged.
This "vote or don't complain" crap is just plain buck passing.
Maybe, just maybe, that's because the lobbyists get paid to spend their entire lives on this crap, whereas the "ordinary citizens" have other concerns? Maybe, just maybe, there's a problem with a system that requires people to spend half their lives sitting in hearings fighting back idiocy (which idiocy will be repeatedly reproposed until it passes), rather than rejecting that idiocy automatically and out of hand? Maybe, just maybe, legislators, who are elected to consider legislation, should get off their asses and do that, find out what the implications are, maybe actively find out what their constituents' informed opinion would be, maybe refuse to vote on things they haven't personally studied, rather than just favoring whatever special interest makes the most noise, or whatever position gives the best sound bites? Maybe we could stop measuring the performance of a legislature by the number of stupid laws it manages to inflict on the populace?sting3r, if you are sooo disgusted, why the hell are you here complaining? You're no better than the folks who constantly bitch about Katz yet continually return to read his stories.
Privacy and civil liberties are incredible important to a citizenry that wishes to remain free. The ability of US citizens to openly criticize their elected government is a Right that should not be tossed aside because of a tragedy, no matter the magnitude.
Did you read the news summary? The DMCA passed with a friggin VOICE VOTE. That alone should send chills down you spine. It does mine, and I don't even live there!
Oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, the people who DID this are dead. The USA can only hope to go after their associates and comrades.
Did you expect the world to come to a halt?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Someone is over-reacting here alright, but it is Congress.
I don't argue for a second that we need to improve our security, but lets figure out the best way to do that. Maybe there are better ways than trampling the Constitution and racial profiling.
Point one -- our airport security has been greatly degraded by deregulation. Security guards get minimum wage and minimal training. Now that keeps airfares down sure enough, but it is not without a price, is it?
Point two -- Customs stopped racial profiling recently and their "hit rate" in fact went up. In conjunction with probable cause racial background is just another piece of information. Without probable cause it is a red herring.
Point three -- Jets at Andrews were not on ready status even though the Mossad and NSA both had strong indications of a major attack coming. Are Washington and NY not considered targets anymore? Let's rethink our air defense, even though the next attack will likely be different.
Point four -- banning strong encryption will not stop secure terrorist communications, but it will certainly and definitely weaken our personal, banking, and e-commerce security. This aids the terrorists, we shouldn't do it.
Point five -- the adminstration isn't even telling Congress what is happening. Giving all of us real information might allow us to participate meaningfully instead of just randomly lashing out at any Arab-looking Americans. An Indian was shot to death today because someone thought him an Arab.
Point six -- don't for a minute think that any loss of liberty will be temporary. When the "War on Terrorism" is done (if it ever is) the focus will simply shift to the "War on Drugs" and if we abandon that too, there is the "War on Crime" that will certainly never be over. (We gave $40M to the Taleban this year for "anti-drug" efforts, so there is obviously some priortization to work on here, as well.)
Since there are ways to combat terrorism without giving up our rights I really think we should consider carefully rather than rushing to adopt hasty measures, some of which may actually be counterproductive to our cause.
I feel I have to point out that a very large number of people in this country have been living without any real security for years. If you suddenly feel threatened now, consider what that says about abandoned duties to our own citizens. Is security a right for everyone? Civil liberties are.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Anyone notice that we are expected more and more to conform to popular viewpoints? Usually, disagreement is permissable, but now, if you disagree, you're called a terrorist.
Look for internment camps. Like during WW2, they'll say, "We're doing this to protect them from our society."
Think the Constitution & the Courts are going to save us? Tell that to the sons and daughters of Japanese-Americans that were interned. The 14th Amendment was blatently ignored.
Think your rights are going to come right back? Yah right! When our rights did come back, it was only through the intense efforts of the 60's, and even then they didn't all come back. The 50's parents had a stick up their ass because they had just given up their rights and bent them selves into conformity during WW2. Did you know it's illegal to be a communist in Washington state? It's considered subversion, and still forbidden by law..!
Why do we have to go to war? To save ourselves from Terrorists?!?
What, after World War 3, the world will be safe from terroritsts forever? Nobody will ever think of being a Terrorist? What a crock of Shit!
You can't stop people from being Terrorists. There's nothing you can do about it. The world is an unsafe people.
So 5,000 people died and you want to do something about it. Want to do something about it? Drive safely! 40,000 people die every year through traffic accidents.
Want to save lives? Look where you're going. 10,000 people die every year because they fell down.
This country's nuts. I'm going to be called a "terrorist sympathiser" because I think the USA is full of Shit right now. I'm not going to fight for your war against terrorists (oops, there went hundreds of thousands of innocent people's lives- well, it's a "necessary" tradeoff to keep the world "safe").
Ok - I freely admit this won't be "popular".
As a predominately European culture, and without understanding, we expected our ethnic Japanese citiznes to be sympathetic to Imperial Japan. Given, how afraid and scared our ancesters were, I'm a proud that our country didn't behave like the monsters our enemies made us out to be. We didn't deport our citiznes them to our enemy and we didn't kill our citizens. Those were dark days, and dark ideas were in our minds - we didn't totally succumb to them, and for that we should be thankful, and indeed a bit proud.
It's currently popular to judge our past with the standards of today. Let's hope our children forgive us of our transgressions, and seek to understand out times before passing judgment upon us.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
War is not for revenge. It is not for retaliation. It is for self-defense. If you see an intruder in your home and he's waving a gun at you, and you have a gun yourself, you don't sit and ask him if he'd like a cup of tea while you talk it over. You shoot him so he doesn't do more damage than he's already done.
If this were a war of anger and revenge, it would have already taken place, and Afghanistan would be a parking lot.
Got Rhinos?
"The United States government has so far shown a great deal of restraint..."
I don't agree with this. There have been many, many calls for action. Bomb someone! I think the U.S. government would have bombed already, but no one knows who to bomb.
I think for most people in the U.S., bombing other countries is like an adult video game. They don't have any feeling for the pain that bombing causes.
Citizens of Saudi Arabia want to be able to try to change the political structure of their country. They want to do this without U.S. interference. This is not an unreasonable request. Certainly if the Saudi government tried to involve itself in a political dispute in the U.S., the U.S. would put forward whatever resistance was necessary to stop the interference.
For years there have been Arabs who have said that if the U.S. continued interfering, there would be attempts to bring the conflict to the U.S. After years of warning, that's what happened.
It seems self-destructive that there is never any serious consideration of their complaints. People in the U.S. expect to have self-determination. Should the U.S. deny that to other countries?
See http://www.hevanet.com/peace/ for more on this subject.
Bush's education improvements were
Well, I don't know anyone in NYC, but I've lost loved ones to a lot of sensless things -- drunken driving, firearms, disease -- all things that claim a lot more than 5000 lives. But none of it made me lose my reason.
Not that having emotion drive out logic is unusual or something to be ashamed of -- it's just best to recognize this, and wait until you've calmed down. There is a reason we don't let the victims of a crime grant the sentence.
And while I for one would love to be able to ensure that this never happens again, logically that is impossible. And frankly most of the actions our elected officials are talking about taking will do nothing to stop it from happening, and everything to make it much more common. Ask Israel how well using the military to fight terrorists works. Ask a Palestinian in the West Bank who _they_ think are the real terrorists, who keeps _them_ awake at night.
This isn't a normal war. You can't make the enemy surrender by killing their troops, occupying their land. There isn't an emporer who will fear for his peoples' lives and call an end to fighting. Kill them, and you just give more people reason to hate, and reason to die trying to hurt us.
Ah, I get emotional too, just thinking of the hate that's being spread and our willingness to continue doing it. I'd better go cool off.
The enemies of Democracy are
Once they're gone, they're a little tough to get back. This "war", if you can even call it that, will never be over. You can't "defeat" terrorism, like you defeat a world government -- it will always exist. People keep citing WWII as a time when we lost rights and got them back. Real wars have a definite beginning and end. At this point our "war" is as ephemeral as the "War on Drugs". Don't expect this new "war" to be any shorter or more successful than the latter.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Not only was decision upheld, the legal precident is still on the books. This precident states that the government may bypass the 5th and 14th amendments out of military necessity. Once those are bypassed, freedom of speech doesn't matter because no one will hear you.
The United States hasn't jumped the gun, and we should be careful not to either. So far all I've seen on sites like Slashdot is rambling about how the tyrannical U.S. government is trying to strip us of our rights. It's good that we're being vigilant (that's one of the requirements of a good citizenry), but we must take care not to make quick judgements based on preconceived notions.
Did you even read the article?
Rather than inaction and restraint, I think vigorous action is a much more responsible way to deal with this situation. Something needs to be done RIGHT NOW, or else more planes may fly into tall buildings, or nerve gas may be released in a stadium. We have to hit back quickly, because we're fighting a war unlike any other war we've ever fought. The United States is not fighting against an organized nation. Instead, the target is terrorism - something that is BY ITS VERY NATURE sneaky and underhanded. Terrorism will remain sneaky and underhanded no matter what laws we pass, and I think it would do many people in this country a lot of good to realize that.
Making laws that give investigators carte blanche to Carnivore our email won't stop Osama bin Laden. (A law that would give any investigator access to email records for three days without any sort of warrant other than the investigator's desire to have the information is being written into the appropriations bill that the Senate is pushing so hard to pass.) If we make it illegal to encrypt things that the government can't decode, then terrorists will simply be breaking one more law when they plan and execute their next attack...and I don't think they'll worry too much about it.
These laws cause ME a lot of worry, though - part of being in America is being able to walk around and talk without the fear that someone is listening and my words could come back in an entirely different context to haunt me. It's not that I'm against security... I just feel that the police should have to get a subpoena BEFORE they collect information about a person, no matter what medium the information is transmitted by. It's not an outlandish request, but it's one that the Senate has already decided is not important or not relevant... because they're not hearing the voices of we /.ers, the people who care about things like that.
I understand that the government needs to take action now to protect us. I also understand that I need to take action now to protect me. So, if you'll excuse me, I have to fax my Congressmen. dust
You allow our liberties to be removed, even for a short peroid of time, and the terrorists have won. They are attacking America, and everything it stands for. Our freedoms are what the US stands for, supposadely. We need to keep our freedoms UNCHANGED. We need to show them that they have NOT frightened us, that we will stand strong and continue as normal.
These were terrible acts, and we need to respond to them. We need to look at our priorities, militarily and intelligence wise especially. Fund those seaching for terrorists, but do NOT remove those things that make our country great. Tear down the missle defence program and use some of the $80+ billion to fund a program to protect us from real threats like terrorism.
I will not relax when the government sends messages to me that say that they do not trust us. I will not relax when every one is being treated as though they are terrorists. Our country is supposed to assume that we our innoccent until proven guilty and yet they are doing the opposite.
5,000+ people died becaue we weren't careful. Not because we have too many rights and freedoms. I refuse to reliquish them for I am not a terrorist and do not wish to be treated as such.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
It's currently popular to judge our past with the standards of today. Let's hope our children forgive us of our transgressions, and seek to understand out times before passing judgment upon us.
Let's do one better. Let's learn from the transgressions of the past and do our best to avoid commiting them now. The fewer we commit, the easier they will be to forgive.
I don't think that many people today, in retrospect, would doubt that the internment of Japanese Americans was foolish, disrespectful of individual dignity, and downright wrong. Let us remember that before we do anything in response to the current crisis, blinded as we are by the lack of time for hindsight.
-Rob
i'm a working person not a business. let's see how much i'm getting the shaft: i have my own home,
Which the government can take away if one of your visitors decides to bring some drugs into.
i was educated,
I love big brother too! What a coincedence!
i (until some bastards blew up a few buidlings) the right and capacity to travel wherever i wanted whenever i wanted,
But only on foot. Driving a car is a privlidge.
i have a reasonable disposable income and can buy a whole assortment of goods and services unheard of in most other places in the world,
Given.
i have free access to information (not just on the fucking web either),
Good ol, Time/AOL/Disney/MSABSBC.
i have the right to worship as i please...
As long as it's a mainstream religion.
considering the situation most humans on this planet are in.
It could be worse, it could be much better too.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I disagree, we have basic rights outlined on the bill of rights. Open and unlimited communication is part of our freedom of speech and assembly.
I'm not talking about my right to have a cell phone, a computer, etc. I'm talking about the fundamentals of inalienable rights. Going whereever you want is a right. Getting on an airplane and doing so is not a right, it's a privlidge. Doing it in a timely fashion is a convenience.
Scanning internet communications, which cause people to live in fear of communications goes against those rights. Profiling people and grilling them is not presuming innocense.
Travis
I was looking to form a small group of people to create an online petition to block the banning of strong cryptography. I am not good at drafting these things up, and I feel it's importatnt that the issue and stance not just be in the petition, but also the reasoning why (such as, importantly, that banning crypto will not stop terrorists from using it, AT ALL.)
I have permission to host it on my server at half-empty, giving us access to a connection at Exodus which would hopefully handle the load.
Additionally, I am going to start working on a Java applet which will allow people to sign the petition via mouse (along with their printed name and voting district) in order to make it more official.
I will take the responsibility of printing the petition out and sending it to the necessary parties.
You may contact me at nebby@half-empty.org if you are interested in helping draft up the wording for the petition. Thanks.
--
I think Congress should do a formal declaration of War, just like in WWII. This will make it clear that there is a different set of rules in place temporarily and that these new rules will no longer apply once the war ends.
If you don't formally declare, then you wind up eroding peacetime liberties, which won't be restored when war is over.
My comments were not directed at people who thoughtfully consider our past and learn from it. Certainly no - our generation has learned the lesson, and I hope future generations pay attention. The mistake we made with the internment camps was not that we interred people, but that we interred people based on race, rather than by guilt. There were German, Italian and Japanese spies in out midst, and some of them were not even from those countries - they should have been the ones interred if their guilt could have been established. I suspect that if we had interred people based on guilt - the camp would have been very small indeed.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Man, can't you see the difference between people killing themselves with booze or cars, or several people being killed by a nut with a gun? 5,000 Americans are dead, all killed within hours by some sick bastards who hijacked American airliners. The alchohol, guns, and car accident deaths are regrettable and tragic, but this - this is an act of war.
As for there being no conclusion to this war - sure there is. The war is over when Bin Laden and his cronies are dead - a few years at most. Bush meant it when he said they would not enjoy a moment's peace man - we are going after them with everything we have.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Let me get this straight - you want to arm a bunch of druggies with automatic weapons and high explosives. Might that be unwise?
I'm the stranger...posting to
Well, Ok, then, the government will just regularly read your email, your snail mail and put video cameras in every room of your house just to make sure that you're not doing anything illegal.
You're a law-abiding citizen so I'm sure you'd have no problem with any of that, right?
Don't say I'm being ridiculous, they already read email, they'd love to be able to read snail mail without court order and they already put cameras all over some public places with the result being the harassment of innocent people who happen to look the same as others who are criminals.
We do NOT have to give up privacy to protect freedom. We may have to give up convenience (longer lines at airports and the like) but that's not the same thing.
Don't let the terrorists run your life. They want us to give up some freedoms, that's one of their major goals.
It's another case of "put up or shut up". You're right, of course - our freedoms are intrinsic rights of human beings, not gifts from Uncle Sam. But can't you see how frustrating it is to hear some guy bitch about a given issue, and how much he hates a law, and then learn he's too lazy to even vote - to even do anything about it? It pisses me off royally.
I'm the stranger...posting to
For this reason: Who, exactly, are we at war with? Afganistan? Bin Laden? Terrorists in general? Are we going to want to just pack it in after Bin Laden and the Taliban are dead? No, I didn't think so. Our government, rightly or wrongly, wants to eradicate the terrorist threat - but that's hard to put in a declaration of war.
I'm the stranger...posting to
"Show me the part of the Constitution that guarantees citizens the right to travel"
How about the right to freedom of assembly? Yah, that's in there, and it means I have the right to travel to assemble with like-minded colleages to protest congress for a redress of grievances.
I'm the stranger...posting to
%0K you cite a source for this information?
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
Look, I so badly want to prevent what happen this past Tuesday from every happening again. I also badly want the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
That being said, what is the point of having rights if they can be suspended when circumstances get bad enough?
We can't just have principles when they suit us. Real principles are those that endure even life would seem so much easier without them.
sigs are a waste of space
"Are Washington and NY not considered targets anymore?'
Until tuesday, they weren't. All the other recent terrorist attacks from foreign nationals have been at overseas bases or embassies or other facilities - and I'm sure THEY were on a very high state of alert, ready to whip ass and chew bubblegum. Can you blame the government for forgetting that the continental US is vulnurable? Think before you answer - could you have imagined anything on this scale a month ago?
I'm the stranger...posting to
"Read the Constitution. It's the damn source code for our government."
Unfortuneatly, the forget to comment the damn thing.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The problem Israel is having with the use of military force isn't that military force in and of itself doesn't work. It's that they aren't using it enough. They kill enough people to feel "avenged", but not enough to destroy the threat, and the survivors become very angry at the Israelies. What they should do - and what we should do - is wait. Find the entire movement - everyplace they live, work, play, everyone involved - and kill them all at once, within a week, say. Yes, there'll be innocents killed, but no one will be left to strike back. That, and nothing else, is the proper use of violence - to gring you enemy into dust, and burn the dust.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I don't care if the terrorists are white, black, male, female, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or a group of nice old ladies who meet after church every sunday to drink tea and discuss their gardens - I just want them dead. Is that so wrong?
I'm the stranger...posting to
People are less likely to engage in discussion critical of the government if they fear reprisal. If the government doesn't get to listen, that fear is nearly destroyed. Therefore, it is crucial to the notion of a democratic state that the people be allowed to communicate without government eavesdropping, because it is only in such an atmosphere that the people are truly free to make decisions that adversely affect those currently in power.
Write them today, a short letter is fine, preferably hand written. Links to their addresses can be found at the bottom of the slashdot article.
And if you're really clever, maybe you'll give your congressperson a snappy bit of speech to use on the floor...
I do believe that there is a lot of room for reform. I think that we should allow the CIA to use "dirty" operatives when conducting espionage. There is talk of rescinding LBJ's executive order banning the assassination of known criminal leaders, which should also be considered. The entire airline security industry needs to be reformed and perhaps socialized; it's clear that the lowest-bidder system being used now is a total and complete joke.
But along with those reforms I see the old specter of "key escrow" encryption being raised again. I see lots of talk about a curtailment of our first amendment rights on the "internet chatrooms" (whatever those are) that have become so villified by politicians. These "reforms" are counterproductive to the ostensible goal of fighting terrorists in the first place, which is to preserve our freedom. As such, that shouldn't even be considered.
As an aside, your faith in the Supreme Court is just completely naive. Where have you been living for the past ten years? Would you also expect the Supreme Court to act fairly and judiciously mildly important matters such as determining the true and fair winner in a presidential election? If you think that the Supreme Court is at all a friend of the common man's rights, I advise you run over the ACLU web site and look at the "In the Courts" section. You might be surprised.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Yes, I'm reading the posts I respond to. If you have a problem with a point I make, tell me, please - I post to slashdot so I can debate intelligently with people, not get a "yes-man" club. But speak to the point I make - don't flame me.
I'm the stranger...posting to
That said, there's no need to be insulting. You corrected my error, for which I thank you.
I'm the stranger...posting to
It actually makes a *huge* difference to the insurance companies. They don't have to cover any damages suffered by acts of war. My mom is an underwriter at a very large insurance company, and a declaration of war will decide if they have to pay out close to a billion-with-a-b dollars.
Interesting note: the World Trade Center (Port Authority) only had insurance to cover the loss of one of the towers. They never imagined they would lose both towers at once. Also my mom's company has some of the buildings and companies covered straight up, but her company will pay on some other coverages only after the first $90 million gets paid by primary coverage.
Did you hear that there's something like $500 **million** worth of gold and silver in the basement that was used to secure many of the financial transactions?! Holy crapoli that's a lotta bucks.
Intelligent Life on Earth
This calls for more thorough investigation...can somebody please post some links to these sites?
Though if truth be told, our elected representatives are probably simply trying to head off the censure they will receive if they are caught surfing porn:
"I'm not not surfing porn...I'm looking for...looking for terror messages! Yeah, that's it...!
You're using her as bait, Master!
There is a cycle: 1) The U.S. government influences other governments in hidden ways, including arranging the killing of foreign leaders. 2) Some members of the countries with whom the U.S. has interfered want to retaliate violently to the violence of the U.S. 3) The U.S. government uses the violent retaliation as a justification for more hidden and public violent activity.
One problem with secretly violent agencies is that there is a conflict of interest. If there is more violence, they get more money and prestige. So they have reasons to encourage violence. I am not claiming that they do so consciously. However, there is certainly unconscious pressure to increase violence and de-stabilize governments.
I think the record shows that the secret agencies of the U.S. government don't really work for the people of the U.S. They make trouble, they don't stop it.
See What Should be the Response to Violence? for more on this subject.
Sample headings:
The CIA trained Osama bin Laden.
Once again, intelligence agencies were useless.
There was plenty of warning.
Bush's education improvements were
When you go out into public and transmit messages on private networks you give up some privacy.
Hello? Private networks are supposed to be just that: PRIVATE! There is no reason on God's green earth that I should be compelled to divulge what I communicate to any other individuals with any Government, never mind Dumbya and his minions! They are going to find another solution to this problem without trampling on my rights or liberties. A good start would be not creating the desperate situations that result in these desperate actions in the first place!
You're using her as bait, Master!
New York (and New Jersey, D.C., etc.) congressmen are probably bogged down with an incredible amount of correspondence concerning the incidents, and to me it seems like there is a high chance that a message about preserving your rights in America will get lost within the massive bulk of other correspondences.
Contacting my members of Congress -- getting them to read or hear my thoughts -- is next to impossible to do by Friday the 21st. They're too understandably busy right now. This does not mean I will not write them: I will.
So my question is this: what else can I do? Since contacting my representatives will not do as much as if I were a registered voter in Michigan, what other organizations or people should I try and contact? Is the EFF collecting donations to lobby for exactly this cause? Is someone else?
I've got a hectic week (my office is five blocks north of the Trade Center) and tons to deal with. Who can I talk to that will be able to listen, if only for a minute?
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
This is going out to my Congressman in tomorrow's mail. The same thing with minor variations is also going to each of my State's Senators.
(Note: On paper it is formatted properly.)
* * *
Rep. ,
On Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001 the Honorable Senator Judd Gregg (R- New Hampshire) made a speed on the floor of the Senate calling for global prohibition on encryption products without backdoors for government surveillance.
I am writing to express my vehement disagreement with this sentiment, and to urge you, as my duly elected Representative, to vote against any such bill that is presented to the House of Representatives.
The National Counterintelligence Center (http://www.nacic.gov/) coordinates the US Government's effort to identify and counter foreign intelligence threats to US national and economic security. They are staffed from counterintelligence (CI) and security professionals from the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, the Office of Secretary of Defense, the military services, and the Departments of State and Energy. In addition to annual reports presented to Congress, they also publish special reports about economic and industrial espionage and provide American businesses with materials to help them secure their valuable trade secrets.
These reports detail the billions of dollars lost to American businesses and individuals each year due to economic and industrial espionage committed by foreign and domestic competitors. Many foreign governments are active in assisting their domestic businesses in economic espionage against U.S. interests. Specifically listed are China, Japan, France, Russia, Israel, Korea and others.
Please notice that many of the countries listed are counted as U.S. allies.
Strong encryption plays a crucial role in protecting vital U.S. assets in an ever more networked world. The use of strong encryption by terrorists and other undesirables is inevitable. Outlawing it will not provide any further measure of security, as they are criminals and by definition, will not comply with the law.
In his zeal to act in the best interests of the American people, Sen. Gregg ignored the impossibility of enforcing a global ban on strong encryption. I doubt that in a clear moment he would honestly say that such a ban could be enforced in Libya, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Algeria, Bulgaria, China, North Korea and the dozens of other nations I did not list.
In closing, I again urge you to intelligently consider the dangers of restricting American liberties through knee-jerk, feel-good legislation.
As Benjamin Franklin said more than 200 years ago: "Those who are willing to trade freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
Sincerely,
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"My country right or wrong" is going to get a VERY severe test here real soon. I really believe we are going to use a nuke before this is all over to show everybody thet they mess with the USA on our own soil at their peril. Check out this from today's "talking heads" on TV (from www.drudgereport.com):
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this morning refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in America's coming battle with terrorists.
Appearing on ABC's THIS WEEK, Rumsfeld was asked if a possible tactical nuclear strike would be used.
"Can we rule out the use of nuclear weapons?" questioned ABC's Sam Donaldson.
RUMSFELD: You know, that subject--we have an amazing accomplishment that's been achieved on the part of human beings. We've had this unbelievably powerful weapon, nuclear weapons, since what 55 years now plus, and it's not been fired in anger since 1945. That's an amazing accomplishment. I think it reflects a sensitivity on the part of successive presidents that they ought to find as many other ways to deal with problems as is possible.
DONALDSON: I'll have to think about your answer. I don't think the answer was no.
RUMSFELD: The answer was that that we ought to be very proud of the record of humanity that we have not used those weapons for 55 years. And we have to find as many ways possible to deal with this serious problem of terrorism.
And if, Sam, you think of the loss of human life on Tuesday and then put in your head the reality that a number of countries today have other so-called asymmetrical threat capabilities--ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, cyber warfare--these are the kinds of things that are used in this era the 21st century. And a germ warfare attack anywhere in the world would bring about losses of lives not in the thousands but in the millions.
I think "My country right or wrong" is going to get a VERY severe test here real soon. I really believe we are going to use a nuke before this is all over to show everybody thet they mess with the USA on our own soil at their peril. Check out this from today's "talking heads" on TV (from www.drudgereport.com):
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this morning refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in America's coming battle with terrorists.
Appearing on ABC's THIS WEEK, Rumsfeld was asked if a possible tactical nuclear strike would be used.
"Can we rule out the use of nuclear weapons?" questioned ABC's Sam Donaldson.
RUMSFELD: You know, that subject--we have an amazing accomplishment that's been achieved on the part of human beings. We've had this unbelievably powerful weapon, nuclear weapons, since what 55 years now plus, and it's not been fired in anger since 1945. That's an amazing accomplishment. I think it reflects a sensitivity on the part of successive presidents that they ought to find as many other ways to deal with problems as is possible.
DONALDSON: I'll have to think about your answer. I don't think the answer was no.
RUMSFELD: The answer was that that we ought to be very proud of the record of humanity that we have not used those weapons for 55 years. And we have to find as many ways possible to deal with this serious problem of terrorism.
And if, Sam, you think of the loss of human life on Tuesday and then put in your head the reality that a number of countries today have other so-called asymmetrical threat capabilities--ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, cyber warfare--these are the kinds of things that are used in this era the 21st century. And a germ warfare attack anywhere in the world would bring about losses of lives not in the thousands but in the millions.
Also I should add, our response should maximize liberties in who we attack. Look at Japan. We killed tens of thousands of Japans soldiers, and dropped nuclear bombs on two of their cities, but do we fear terrorist threats from Japan? no! it is specifically because when we rebuilt japan - we set up a government that was accountable to upholding individual liberties like ours is. Productivity difuses hatred, and this is exactly what happened. In many countries, leaders encourage hatred of the US to distract from their own tyrany. If we get rid of the tyrrany, we difuse the hatred.
And what about taxes, it's been showen that time and time again - individuals can distribute and provide more efficiently than governments. We should rely on this. Certainly if voters could accept 20 bil in aid to NY, they they could have done it even better if they had that money in their pockets!
And what about secrecy, America's strength is in it's ability to grow - not in its ability to keep secrets. We should take advantage of that to grow technological solutions at a faster rate than our competitors can copy. We should share knowledge and technology to encourage growth not hide it. Our enemies don't even have the ability to get close to our computer technology - even though how to make conputer chips is pretty well known, and not a national secret.
Think, that is all we half to do.
Also, cheap computers and internet arround the world will help thwart ruthless leaders who try to controll information, and distort truth.
diffs:
The US stock market was shut down for a record 6 days, all 250 million americans plus the 15-25 million foriegn visitors were prohibited from air travel. At least 40 billion dollars are going to be funnelled into rescue, relief, security and millitary operations in the short term, a great deal more in the long term. Plus, over 5,000 American civillians were killed. That's nearly 1/5th the number of U.S. millitary casualties during the Vietnam War.
The Rawandans were in Civil War with each other, not with Americans. Neither party in the Rawandan civil war tried to aquire nuclear and bioligical weapons of mass destruction for use against the United States.
AIDS is caused by a virus, not by mallicious, outspoken enemies of the U.S.
I too am reluctant to support dismantling of our civil liberties. However, I find your comparisions to be completely ludicrous.
Someone you trust is one of us.
bad math, long day: 1/10th the number of US military casualties.
Someone you trust is one of us.
To paraphrase the original article:
;) we're going to have a difficult time making a persuasive argument for protecting a level of encryption that requires the entire computing resources of the planet over the expected lifetime of the universe to circumvent. The other examples, such as patient record privacy or business secrets seem less compelling if the argument is that only certain government agencies would have access to the mandatory keys (and perhaps further protection along the lines of such intercepted/decrypted information could only be used if authorized by a warrant, etc.). Before I started writing this post, I took a (very) quick survey around some of the privacy rights web sites--I didn't feel like I found compelling arguments or examples as why "privacy is good". There's much more along the lines of current proposed legislation, surveys about how people feel about privacy, guidelines for e-commerce related privacy policies, etc. As I was trying to say earlier, taking "privacy as good" to be self-evident isn't as helpful in an argument that pits it against other equally "self-evident" principles (e.g. "protecting the lives of innocent people is good", "exposing criminal behavior that endangers others is good", etc.). The most "compelling" arguments I found on the various privacy related web sites were historical quotes, e.g.:
The question isn't, "Is privacy good?" but "What can we do to protect our privacy?"
The problem I found when I started to think about presenting an intelligent argument to friends, let alone to elected representatives, was that in order to make a strong argument in favor of protecting our privacy, especially wrt strong encryption, was that I couldn't simply take as given, "privacy is good" when the opposing arguments may in fact agree with that position, yet simply add the ostensibly reasonable condition that we need to balance the need for a "reasonable" assurance of privacy against the need for ______ (e.g. public safety, etc.).
The case for (and gaining public support for) protecting our privacy would be much simpler if the other side of the argument was pushing for an all-out Orwellian state with Thought Police and the like. That's not the case. The arguments in favor of limiting strong encryption and expanding government monitoring of communications are made in the context of protecting innocent people, by limiting the ability of criminal activity to escape detection. A sympathetic listener might foreseeably see the reasonableness of the argument.
I believe we need to have realistic examples that people can relate to to understand why we need to protect our privacy. For example, I don't find Ellis' analogy of encrypted email to enclosing letters in an envelope compelling. If we're settling for PEEP (Paper Envelope Equivalent Privacy)
"The right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people."
- Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)
"Those who are willing to trade freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
-Benjamin Franklin
Great for 10-second spots, a little lacking otherwise.
The other tack may be to demonstrate that the proposed curtailings of our civil liberties doesn't in fact curtail the resources available to (mildly) sophisticated criminals. (Incidentally, I think such arguments need to address the objection that while limiting the general public's legal access to strong encryption may not hinder a criminal's access to such encryption, it would raise a red flag when strong encryption is detected in passing traffic).
I understand that one point of the original editorial could be taken as a call to simply be loud and try to match the other, not terribly well-reasoned side of the debate--basically, just get your viewpoint heard. But we ought to be able to back it up with rational argument if the need arises. So, maybe we could get a list/discussion here going about sound arguments for why privacy is good, even against other, "self-evident goods".
Want to really stop terrorism? Try helping improve the economic and democratic situations of the world's poorer countries, rather than ignoring or exploiting them. Try turning the US into a benevolent force in the world, rather than a self-centered, polluting, narcissistic bully. Peoples who haven't been shit on are much less likely to become (or support) terrorists. I'm not saying it would be perfect--someone is always going to get pissed off about something--but each dollar spent helping the world's citizens would improve our safety more than a hundred dollars spent blowing things up.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Only one lawmaker voted against giving the executive of this country broad, sweeping exemptions to following the rules laid out by our Constitution, and that's Barbara Lee. I may not agree with everything she does, but I am glad she is my rep in the house. And, no, she didn't vote against it because of some weird plot or whatever, she just simply refused to hand the reigns of power over to anyone without knowing who that power is being used against. That's the responsibility of Congress, and she stood up and accepted that in the face of the tyranny of the majority. Right now, because of the way the vote went, the US president basically can do whatever he wants to whoever he says is bad, and that is very not good.
I have no problem with finding and whacking whoever did this, but nobody needs to be crowned king in order to do so. We don't need to "go to war" over what is essentially an international law enforcement issue. We may need to go to war when we find whoever it is who was responsible, but not before.
What really pisses me off, and this is from the standpoint of a veteran that has lost friends due to assassinations and bombings, and having narrowly avoided being shot or blown up myself, is that we have all of these people waving flags and howling for blood.
FINE, IF YOU ARE UNDER 35, GO SIGN UP WITH THE ARMED FORCES AND GET SOME!!! IF YOU ARE TOO OLD OR DECREIPT, TAKE YOUR UNDER 35 KIDS DOWN TO THE RECRUITER AND SIGN THEM UP, AND GET SOME!!!!
Nothing strikes me as a greater act of cowardice than to expect OTHER people to do your killing for you, having them take all of the risks (depleted uranium, nerve agents, hell, just plain getting shot), while the person howling sits safely somewhere waving a flag while SOMEONE ELSE'S KIDS GO GET KILLED. You want blood? Fine, you back it up personally.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
...can be found here:
http://www.neoteric.nu
The site itself is about the War on Drugs, but all of the points on effective lobying (and other methods of influencing the direction of our government and society) are applicable to protecting privacy or any other civil issue.
Does freedom of speech not mean the freedom to speak whenever you like, say whatever you like, in any way you like? Is freedom not hurt when one can execise it only in ways regulated by authorities? Doesn't freedom in fact mean to be free of govermental constaint?
The use of phones and emails is a basic right. Making a phone call or sending an electronic mail does not interfere with anyone's freedoms, and therefore I should be free to phone whenever I want, free of governmental control. If civil liberties did not extend to new, more convinient ways of exercising them, then you would need a permission from the goverment to use each of those new possibilities, but any right you have to ask for is not a right but a privilege.
The goverment does not have the right to force me to use inconvinient technologies, because that forced inconvinience would interfere with the right to pursuit of happiness.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
I heard that as "70% of Americans are willing to let terrorists tell us how to run our country".
That is absolutely correct, and in a sense it has already happened (at least) once. In 1980 the U.S. Embassy personnel in Tehran were hostages in the hands of Iranian revolutionaries who, at the time of the U.S. elections, were the defacto government of that country.
There have been allegations that Bush Sr. may have been involved in negotiations with the Iranians in Paris, on behalf of Reagan, to delay the release of the hostages until after the elections. Whether or not there is a shred of truth to such allegations (I would certainly hope not, but in light of some of the other actions our government, and in particular the Right, have taken I cannot dismiss it out of hand), it is a fact that by hanging on to the hostages until after the elections Iran basically "chose" our president for us.
The strategy may have been "Reagan will bring conflict between the US and USSR and that is good for Iran" or it may have been "we can fuck that bastard Carter in one additional fashion," but the reality is that, whatever the reasoning, whatever the background, and whatever the context the Iranians were in a position to directly affect the elections through their delayed release of the hostages, in effect choosing the president we would have for the next four (and, as it turned out, eight) years.
It would behoove us all to be a little smarter this time around. Intelligence (in both senses of the word) is what is going to win this war, far more than kneejerk reactions like these misguided people espouse. Whatever sacrifices we make should be very well considered and very precisely targeted, and proposals such as banning cryptography (something the French already tried and had to discard) or requiring back doors will do nothing -- anyone who would attempt to murder 50,000 people with a jumbo jet, and in so doing succeed in murdering 5,000, isn't about to stop using strong cryptography, steganography, or (more likely) verbal codewords just because the U.S. congress tells them they shouldn't.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Okay, I'm sorry to keep posting like this, but I'm having a brainstorm.
....Enviromental regulations prohibiting the use of Halon should be lifted - it is simply dozens of times better than anything else and could save lives in suvere fires like the WTC and the pentagon. Hell, if it stopped the fires the buildings might not have collapsed. I'm sorry, but this is a bigger priority than the small amout of potential ozone depletion that may be caused.
.... Authentication should be done by digital signatures on the ID card that verify our picture and citizenship, and even fingerprint, not done by centralized databases.. Terrorists are known to use ID theft - and decentralizing would make it a lot harder. This is much more accurate and privacy safe - then licenses which are all checked against a central database. Also instead of halving to constantly update a list of 250 million citizens, the government(s) would only half to keep lists of known criminals. The SS number is so easy to rob, it is a crime and should be abandoned. this would enhance privacy and reduce fraud and more ID theft.
more security should be passive, like the black boxes on airplanes that are never even looked at unless a crime happens. It appears, these are helping us alot more then the X-ray machines at airports (to prevent future disasters)
And silly restrictions like forbiding cell phone use on planes should now just look plain stupid to industry experts. They obviously have helped more than they have hurt.
And what about the NSA. What if all that power was put to use detecting things like rogue flights and responding and coordinating quickly rather than just listening to phone calls - which the terrorists know are being listened to and which didn't seem to help against these attacks anyhow.
I hope we beat the SH*T out of the people who did this to us, and hope even more that we put an information infrastructure in place that would make tyrants unable to controll information or people ever again.
If this were WWI, we would be Austro-Hungary ;)
WWI was, from our point of view, fought against a discreet enemy, and we had discreet military objectives. We knew what we had to do to win the war. Those sacrifices of liberty you talk about were in place only until those military objectives could be accomplished.
We are fighting an enemy we cannot see, which could be anywhere and everywhere, and no one has managed to launch a successful invasion of Afghanistan in 3000 years. If we do this, it will bne our downfall.
Our freedom has made America great and strong. It has allowed us to collectively learn from many mistakes and discuss them openly. If we lose that we will fall and the terrorists will have won.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Terrorists know they are being looked for by Carnivore and will get around it by other measures.
When not planning face to face - they would use personal couriers.
Perhaps give mobile for single message when required - just using message - go with plan a / b or abort.
I have always said - terrorism is just the excuse they use, the US to raise funds for Carnivore - the UK to justify R.I.P. bill - to spy on the people.
Illusion of Protection
(I keep saying this every spot it's applicable.)
Remember ALL the uses of strong crypto. It isn't limited to PGP/GPG and email.
Think SSH/OpenSSH, think system administration. For that matter, thing certificates and eCommerce.
Think about moving ALL encryption to an algorithm with a backdoor. Then realize that simply knowing that a backdoor exists is the first step to cracking it. By that token, ALL encryption with a backdoor whose existence is know is fundamentally broken. It'll be cracked in short order. Shortly after, the only people this broken crypto will keep me safe from are the honest ones, for whom I didn't need crypto, anyway.
Imagine the only legal means for remote sysadmin has a backdoor.
Imagine that the transport layers of eCommerce have a backdoor.
Imagine that EVERYONE knows it, and the people we're supposed to be *terrified* of are actively searching for it.
May as well dismantle the Internet now, rather than let it fail us when we really need it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You know, many people complained before these events about the United States being a more violent country with far more crime per capita than its European cousins. When you start to look at how their governments and secret police and intelligence services operate though, is it any wonder why they have less crime? Europeans have long ago sacrificed some of their privacy and freedoms for safety and I would bet if you asked any of them today they would gladly accept the loss again. Maybe it is the Americans who need to get over this concept of complete and total freedom at any cost. Simple things like increased monitoring of our infrastructure and our citizens would virtually eliminate most of the crimes that occur today from murders to robberies to skyjackings.
When Benjamin Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" he was living in a world where the most heinous thing to worry about was the organized British army. We don't have the luxury of knowing where our enemy is anymore and they certainly don't walk the streets wearing bright red jackets. Our enemies are sleeping among us on our own shores. They blend in among our own citizens and they use our schools to gain knowledge to spread their reign of terror. In light of that situation, I don't think Franklin would've been able to say that line in good faith today. To find the enemy hiding among you you MUST be willing to give up some essential liberties, if only for long enough to rid your shores of them. This is a time of war and we do not have the luxury of due process of law while terrorists are crashing jumbo jets into our crowded buildings.
Ah well, just my $0.02. Flame on.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particu larly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The word unreasonable is important here. The 4th amendment doesn't guarantee an absolute right to privacy. It guarantees a reasonable right to privacy - and that includes reasonable within the grounds of national security. In other words, what makes everyone think the internet is so special, that you should be guaranteed privacy on it even though you are not guaranteed privacy in verbal or telephone conversations, or in the mail?
What we do have is privacy except reasonable cause exists for the government to violate it - in general (a few exceptions such as the drug war) to protect the public from domestic and foreign enemies and criminals.
The only good weather is bad weather.
If you want to work on these issues and are in the vicinity of Boston, drop me a line at cananian@mit.edu. I'm the organizer of the Boston "Free Sklyarov" actions (seven weeks running until disrupted by the WTC bombings) and I'll be pulling together other activist groups now as well. Drop me a line, tell me your interests, and I'll do my best to put you together with other folk who want to work on the same sorts of things.
[
Americans have the legal right to criticize the government. Morally, doing so without at least trying to effect the political system is just whining and although legally protected does not accomplish anything.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
There are a lot of hotheaded people going around right now spouting off what they'd like to see done to the people who committed these acts. That's going to be natural in a situation like this. Remember though that the people in the Pentagon are going to be a bit more level-headed. They know the impoverished innocent civilians living in tents in Kabul are NOT our enemies. Our enemies are the Taliban government of Afghanistan, Osama bin Ladin and his Al-Qaeda terrorist network, and the other governments throughout the middle east and Africa that harbor terrorist networks.
I have very good friends who are Muslim (though they're Indian) and I know for a fact that they, nor their religion, would EVER condone these atrocities anymore than Christianity would condone them. None of these religions teach hatred of anyone, only the radical fanatics who have taken their scriptures and perverted them to fit their political goals are the ones who see it like this. We have some pretty fucked up radical Christians in this country bombing abortion clinics and killing homosexuals and the Muslims have some pretty fucked up Muslims bombing non-Muslims and their supporters.
Anyway, like I was saying, don't judge what is going to occur by the actions of what emotional people are saying right now on CNN. Our military is the best in the entire world and they will plan an offensive that will kill as many of our enemy (the Taliban, not the civilians) as possible with as few civilian casualties as possible. We are not monsters, unlike the terrorists who kill innocent people in buildings.
"For those eager, or at least not reluctant, to temporarily give up your liberties...," I personally recommend enlisting in the U.S. Armed Forces.
:)
The Army's best. At least in my opinion. Those in (or who *were* in) other services will probably disagree.
- Robin
Another difference is that this attack was a complete surprise, and we still do not know who did it. It is far more frightening to have an unknown enemy, especially when they are so ruthless and unpredictable.
Yeah, I know, Osama declared a fatwah or whatever, but I have yet to hear of a single shred of evidence pointing to him.
How can we vote for a paty that is dedicated to keep the constitutional rights of citizens and does not sell itself to business when there is NO SUCH PARTY?
The whole idea of lobbying and buying laws is just sick and should be outlawed.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
"First, your entire post appears to be a cut and paste from the linked article."
Yes, but I wrote the article. The article just pulls together separate sources.
"Which Arabs? Which citizens of Saudi Arabia?
Arab friends of mine have told me that the government of Saudi Arabia is opposed by people who want representation. I've also seen this on television documentaries. Please realize that there are many sources I haven't included. The article I wrote could use more supporting information. The article is only a Slashdot post. I didn't want to take up a lot of space, so I uploaded the article to a personal web page, and provided a link.
"The US military has only been there in force since Desert Storm. The Saudis may not much care for their presence or their government but they also have no desire to be ruled by another Taliban."
Yes, but some Arabs don't like a continued military presence. You are mistaken about the U.S. government being there only for the Gulf War. The U.S. has a long history of involvement with the house of al Saud. Some of those who are not part of the ruling family say the government of al Saud is corrupt. I am not trying to give a personal opinion. This is an opinion of some Arabs.
"If anything, the original author is simply re-iterating the words of bin Laden himself."
That's the point! I am referencing bin Laden and others. It doesn't matter whether you or I consider that bin Laden has acceptable political aspirations! He says he will bring the war to the U.S. if the U.S. government continues interfering. Do you doubt that?
Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen, says he has a right to representation in the government of his country. The point: Does the U.S. have a right to say he doesn't? Second point: Are you willing to die for this cause? Are you willing to be unsafe for the rest of your life over this cause?
Why does the U.S. have to be involved in this dispute? Many bad things happen in the world. If the U.S. wants to help the world, why does it have to be with fighting?
Twenty percent of the people in the world don't have enough to eat. Why doesn't the U.S. help them? My opinion is that there are people in the U.S. who want to engage in battle. They just want to fight. They want to get involved in any battle available. And there's lots of money in secretly embezzling U.S. government funds.
My article: What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Point three -- Jets at Andrews were not on ready status even though the Mossad and NSA both had strong indications of a major attack coming. Are Washington and NY not considered targets anymore?
Once, as an excersize, I asked myself where a Terrorist would strike if they wanted to hurt America. Not one like McVeigh, but a real, professional terrorist. I concluded that there were only three cities that would make sense for major attacks-- Washington, DC; NY, NY; and LA, CA. Washington DC because it is the political head of America. New york is the economic head of America, and the case can be made that therefore it is really the identity center as well (the business of America is business). LA is a secondary business hub for America and the entertainment center. All other targets would be secondarty. Of course at the time, I was concerned about nuclear terrorism, but as this event showed us, airplanes become effective FAE's which can be pretty devestating (note that the use of FAE's, or Fuel-Air Explosives is actually prohibited by international law but that has not prevented their use, f. ex. during the Gulf War).
Moral of the story-- you would have to be insane to exclude Washington and NY fron ANY target list. I think that it was done so because people made a lot of assumptions about terrorists that were false.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Actually regular email is really nothing like a postcard. Posting to a web-board is more like a postcard: anybody who happens by can choose to read it without any other barriers to overcome. Regular email is insecure, true, but in order to "intercept" an email message a person would need to be between mail servers and use some kind of ethernet packet scanner. While this is fairly easy to do for someone who's computer and network literate, it still requires some work. This would be comparable to the real-world example of taking the time to intercept an envelope and open it in order to read it.
Encryption, on the other hand, doesn't really have a feasible real-world parallel, but if I had to create one I would say it's akin to sending your postcard inside of a gigantic steel safe and shipping by courier. Anybody who would want to read your message could, but it would require considerable time and effort to crack the safe.
Now I'm not proposing that all safes, er, encryption, should have government back doors, but an envelope is the wrong metaphore to use. Arguing by metaphore is a bad idea in most cases, as a metaphore will never exactly describe the situation for which it is applied, leaving holes in the argument. Still, I believe that this particular comparison to envelopes is intentionally deceptive, and it brings questions to the rest of the arguments posted above. If we're to argue about the legalities of encryption, let's try to stick to the honest facts.
- j
"Trading one dictator for another doesn't seem very productive."
I agree with that. But some Arabs want to decide this question for themselves. My guess is that I would probably strongly disagree with their politics. A lot of the statements I've seen Arabs say on television seem to me to be foolish at best.
However, the first question is whether the U.S. government has the right decide everyone else's politics. The second question is whether you personally are willing to risk your own life and spend your own money for the principle that they don't have the right to decide their own politics.
"The fundamental problem is that the Saudis do not have a non-violent mechanism for settling their political differences."
Very true!!!! They don't. That is absolutely right. Excellent insight. But, will killing some of them help them find a non-violent mechanism?
Bush's education improvements were
Hitler would be snookered. Everyone would have guns! Most of the countries he invaded had stiff gun control in place and so were initially unable to offer serious civil resistance - in fact, the gun control info was used to arm the nasties and murder potential resistance.
And being Slash-minded, everyone would argue. After a while, there would be no real battles because everyone would be too busy disagreeing over how they should be fought. Yes, I am joking, but not 100%...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A +6 Axiomatic rating, that post!
Why do you think Switzerland gets invaded so seldom? Why do you think that of the many, many attacks launched on and within Israel, almost all fail? Why do you think Israeli airliners never get hijacked? Theory is all very well, but Ben's idea works.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
And so...? What do you propose doing about it? Another case of ``I used to be apathetic, but it no longer matters to me?''
How about some effective snactions against big businesses which unduly interfere with the political process? And after you're done proposing, will you actually carry out your proposals? Fat chance, if you can't even be bothered posting under a name...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
For example, has anyne ever seen a tax law evapourate, unless there was a worse replacement?
Australia's income tax was emplaced during World War II as a temporary measure to fund the war effort. It took a long time for the gummint to get around to do as much about rescinding them as even beginning to index the rates against average income, inflation or or anything. I read about tax revolts at the 6% level and turn to gaze in awe at our 50% top rate... a temporary measure...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You could try here but unfortunately the original article at Buzzflash.com can no longer be found, nor can the two articles in Yahoo and the Guardian. Both, rather conveniently, have expired, but when I found this I can verify that the link to the Guardian worked and it is quite genuine. You can also find it in an archive here.
You won't be hearing much of this on CNN, I can imagine. It's all but disappeared from the internet, and from the public memory...
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
In the afterhaze of the tragic terrorist attacks, it would take an almost unimaginable lobbying effort on the part of privacy advocates to prevent online privacy being seriously eroded.
/. post. But one reason I can think of is OIL GREED, and the average voter's refusal to accept any accountability for any deeper consequences of their lifestyle choices.
But I feel suppressing privacy is a most blatantly superficial solution, that does nothing to address the underlying causes of the attack.
From these attacks has come knowledge of two new weapons - (1) Aircraft, and (2) Anonymity.
Yes - anonymity as a weapon!
Americans would be reluctant to give up cheap convenient air travel/freight, as these are part of America's superlative economic infrastructure, but more and more, privacy/anonymity is being seen as a dangerous luxury.
Terrorists are showing alarming ingenuity at using the most commonplace entities as weapons, and no doubt will adapt to being able to function effectively under any set of rules, and find ways to use any new rule as an actual weapon.
Sadly, no law can suppress anyone's will to attack the USA - in fact, such rules can only increase anti-US sentiment, both within and without.
It refreshes me, though, to see the media giving some airing to opinions critical of US foreign policy and calling for the USA to see Sep 11 as a reality check. Sadly though, the bombings seem very unlikely to trigger any substantial revision of such policy, or any real investigation of the underlying causes of the Sep 11 tragedy.
Ban encryption/anonymity? Terrorists will simply resort to steganography. Any white noise such as image/audio data, even plain text, can be used as a carrier for hidden content. (Imagine lots of high-powered NSA mathematicians looking for hidden messages embedded in people's family photos - just like the religious fundamentals looking for 'secret brainwashing messages' in heavy metal rock albums!)
The only thing that can possibly prevent any future attacks on America is serious and deep reflection on WHY the USA has made itself unpopular in certain parts of the world.
Too many inter-related complex reasons to fathom in one mere
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Here's a hypothetical question: You're walking down the street one day, minding your own business, when a complete stranger approaches you and punches you in the face. He doesn't try to mug you or take your money, he doesn't insult you, he doesn't accuse you of sleeping with his girlfriend. Just socks you squarely on the jaw and goes about his business, offering no explanation. Many people's first reaction would be to call the police maybe, or to chase him down so you could return the favor. Maybe you don't do anything. Whatever. The first reaction isn't important, it would vary from person to person. At some point, though, most normal people would have to get over their first reaction and wonder why they were singled out, out of all the people in the city that day, for a bloody nose. This isn't the best example obviously, because there are enough loonies wandering around in large cities today to make this story not so strange. You'd probably chalk it up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong crazy person and resume your life as usual. Let's put another spin on it, though: you're one country out of many in the world, instead of one person out of many on the street, and instead of socking you in the face, this stranger decides to hijack a plane and topple two of the largest buildings in your largest city, along with a government building in another city. At what point do you stop and wonder why America was singled out? Why not Canada? Why not Mexico, or France, or Estonia? Or don't you care? If your only thought on the matter is to Get The Bastards, then no, you probably don't care. I do. And I'm gonna tell you why we were singled out. We have been waltzing around the world, dictating to other countries how they should run their government and day to day lives. If someone disagrees with us, we simply impose trade sanctions against them, and leave them to starve until they see the light. Worse, we have taken sides in the Holy War in the middle east. We supply weapons and intelligence to Israel. We, the holiest of nations, have decided who gets to live in the "holy land" and who doesn't. You don't know what that whole holy war thing is all about? Don't care? Well you better start paying attention, because your government has taken part, and this is what we, as citizens, get. We have been instigating this. Inviting it. We live in such a bubble that that outside world is like a TV show, and we're surprised when it turns out to be real. I could list foreign policy all day, but that doesn't really matter if all you want is to Get The Bastards. It doesn't matter what we have been doing, because we are The Country That Was Never Wrong. So open up the emails. Outlaw the encryption. Install Carnivore wherever we can. As long as we get the bastards, right?
I don't think Arabs would give the U.S. much attention, except that there has been U.S. interference in the region.
Walk into any bar and start throwing your weight around. Someone will pick a fight with you. Stay out of the bar, no fight.
If you really understand what bin Laden is saying, and you understand the culture of the region, and you understand the long history of U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia, it is not as crazy as it sounds at first. But, I agree with you, there is a LOT of craziness.
In earlier posts, some people have mis-understood my comments. So, I repeat, I'm against terrorism. I'm not agreeing with Arab politics. Osama bin Laden wants to unite all the Arab nations. His method is force. I don't like that method.
There are at least 50 destructive governments in the world. The world is an imperfect place. We cannot intervene in every bad situation. If we do intervene, is our violence really better than their violence?
I tried to gather together what I think is relevant information: What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
Maybe music is a minor issue compared to everything else, but it's happening none theless, Clear Channel, one of the largest radio networks in the world, has issued a list of 150 songs that would be "inappropriate" for airing. I looked at this list, expecting to see a bunch of marilyn manson(suprisingly none were listed) and other death/metal the like. While there was some, there were also inexplicably a lot of songs that were simply put on the list solely based on their song titles. It seemed they just listed the songs simply because they had the words "War", "blood", or "destroys" in the titles. It listed songs that were anti-war("war pigs", "sunday bloody sunday"). Some of these songs actually helped me get through that horrible tuesday(particularly songs like "under the bridge" and "black hole sun"), and now Clear Channel thinks the songs are "inappropriate"? Maybe I am overreacting. I hope I am.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Finaly some truth. I understand why you posted anonymously but what you say is actually true. Too bad the truth hurts so much.
In fact there seems to some evidence that Bin LAden was actually recruied by the Americans to raise money for the taliban during the russian invation there. Creepy.
War is necrophilia.
Where are my points when I need them.
War is necrophilia.
"Yes, the U.S. should be involved in influencing other peoples politics where they differ from the fundamental freedoms..."
I completely agree with this. However, the way to have influence is through understanding 10 years before problems might occur, and then doing something to help. Violence is not a cure for violence. War is not a cure for war.
"Don't bring up the old Cold War coups that the CIA cooked up."
The CIA acted AGAINST the best interests of the the country it was supposed to serve. We tend to hear about things the CIA did about 30 years after they were done. We don't know what they are doing now, but that doesn't mean they've stopped the corrupt activity. Don't forget, the CIA and other even more secret U.S. government agencies are secret. It is difficult to know what they are doing; that means that we don't have a voice. It means that, in that area, we don't have a democracy.
What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
"What should the US do if the foreign government engages in bad public policy that results in food shortages. Should the U.S. charge in and change the policy?"
You brought up some interesting thoughts.
I think the U.S. cannot try to solve all the world's problems. We have extremely severe problems at home. We have the highest divorce rate in the world. We have the highest percentage of our citizens in prison of any country, ever, in the history of the world. We have the highest percentage of obese people. We need to help ourselves.
Where the U.S. feels able to help, the help should come before there are severe social problems, not after. The problems with bin Laden have existed for years; the U.S. government helped him by its meddling and backward policies in the region.
What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
465 comments in the 12 hours since this article was posted.
Alot of people seem to be missing the point: arguing on Slashdot isn't going to have any effect whatsoever on the government passing laws that curtail our rights. If everyone here had spent half as much time writing to, faxing, or calling their local representative as they spent writing posts about civil liberties on Slashdot, the DMCA would have never passed.
Last time I checked flying commercial airliners into buildings wasn't very legal. That didn't seem to worry the terrorists too much really...
Jedidiah
--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
You're falling into the trap of assuming that Slashdot has a homogenous userbase, and that a representative sample of the userbase read every article. That's simply not how things work. People read (and comment on) what interests them. Which means you will see a lot of conflicting views to news items. Deal with it - that's how a diverse user community works. We don't all share the same ideals or views.
I condemn those who would outlaw strong encryption products. These people (including elected officials) are ignorant and they would throw out the baby with the bath water, as many have pointed out.
I also condemn the comments made by those who say "aw shucks, 5000 deaths isn't so bad... X people die from Y each year." Those who make such comments are both insensitive and ignorant. They are insensitive to the pain felt by tens of thousands directly affected as well as those who, like me, take these attacks very personally in spite of not knowing a soul who perished. If for no other reason, the fact that I lived in Manhattan for 9 years makes my blood boil at comments like these.
Those who dismiss the importance of this event have failed to grasp one essential fact about the various individuals and groups who have allied themselves against the U.S. That is, they will stop at nothing. If you think 5000 is acceptable, then next time it will be 5000000, if these SOBs get their hands on a nuke. Would that be OK with you? These people will only stop when we kill them. I refer you to the Washington Post, which has plenty of interesting and compelling information and commentary by people who are in a position to know. For starters, I suggest the transcript of a chat with Vernon Loeb: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/0
Another in-depth viewpoint is offered by Robert D. Kaplan, who has spent considerable time visiting the trouble spots of the world, including the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/kaplan.
Now, to my main point. There is a wealth of technical and creative talent here at Slashdot. In my naivete, I somehow thought that even the radical uber-Libertarian chic here would be blunted by the enormity of last week's events. I figured that maybe, just maybe, these events would unleash a fury which would turn towards fighting the bastards who did this, rather than childishly clinging to yesterday's anti-government paranoia. I somehow hoped that people here would be as outraged as I am, and that they would sign up to use their skills (in their own idiom) to find these SOBs and to protect the U.S. from future attacks, just as countless citizens did after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hah! What an idiot I was to believe that.
Look, I'm not real comfortable with the govt reading my electronic transmissions either. I strongly believe in the 4th amendment. I am well aware that the FBI (aka "Famous But Incompetent") has been a poor custodian of its already considerable powers, and has been quite spotty in its investigatory competence, as the Wen Ho Lee investigation showed.
But, my belief is that if you want to preserve *any* of your rights to electronic privacy, you should moderate your viewpoint. Only children maintain the fantasy that no negotiation and no compromise is necessary. I challenge the
Thank you!
Consider crypto to be a safe, and the key as the combination to that safe. If the gvt. gets a search warrant for my house, and they want the contents of my safe, they can request a court order to compel me to disclose the combination. I can refuse and fight them on the basis that doing so would violate my 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination. The case law on this issue is mixed; if you get a hardass judge you could easily be cited for contempt for not disclosing the combination. However, if your challenge was successful, the gvt. could go ahead and get a locksmith to brute-force the safe open, and you would have no recourse to stop them.
With a crypto key, the situation is a little different than a safe combo - the latter is a sequence of numbers with no significance other than operating the lock. IIRC, current case law says that a combination cannot be self-incriminating because it's just a bunch of numbers, and the combination to the safe is independent of the contents of the safe. There are some conflicting rulings -- suppose the safe does not contain evidence of the crime which they are investigating, but it does contain evidence of seperate, unrelated crime [IE they are looking for drugs: there are no drugs in your safe, but there are records that prove you committed tax fraud].
The passphrase for a crypto key, on the other hand, can be a natural language statement. This means that disclosing the passphrase could be self-incriminating if it contains an admission of a crime. Consider the passphrase: "On October 3, 2000, I bypassed a technical anti-circumvention device in violation of the DMCA". Disclosing this passphrase to a law-enforcement agency would be an explicit admission of a crime; and therefore it would be a violation of my 5th amendment rights to compel me to make this statement.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Songs with Questionable Lyrics
Clear Channels List of
Songs with Questionable Lyrics
Artist
Title
Drowning Pool
"Bodies"
Mudvayne
"Death Blooms"
Megadeth
"Dread and the Fugitive"
Megadeth
"Sweating Bullets"
Saliva
"Click Click Boom"
P.O.D.
"Boom"
Metallica
"Seek and Destroy"
Metallica
"Harvester or Sorrow"
Metallica
"Enter Sandman"
Metallica
"Fade to Black"
All Rage Against The Machine songs
Nine Inch Nails
"Head Like a Hole"
Godsmack
"Bad Religion"
Tool
"Intolerance"
Soundgarden
"Blow Up the Outside World"
AC/DC
"Shot Down in Flames"
AC/DC
"Shoot to Thrill"
AC/DC
"Dirty Deeds"
AC/DC
"Highway to Hell"
AC/DC
"Safe in New York City"
AC/DC
"TNT"
AC/DC
"Hell's Bells"
Black Sabbath
"War Pigs"
Black Sabbath
"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
Black Sabbath
"Suicide Solution"
Dio
"Holy Diver"
Steve Miller
"Jet Airliner"
Van Halen
"Jump"
Queen
"Another One Bites the Dust"
Queen
"Killer Queen"
Pat Benatar
"Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
Pat Benatar
"Love is a Battlefield"
Oingo Boingo
"Dead Man's Party"
REM
"It's the End of the World as We Know It"
Talking Heads
"Burning Down the House"
Judas Priest
"Some Heads Are Gonna Roll"
Pink Floyd
"Run Like Hell"
Pink Floyd
"Mother"
Savage Garden
"Crash and Burn"
Dave Matthews Band
"Crash Into Me"
Bangles
"Walk Like an Egyptian"
Pretenders
"My City Was Gone"
Alanis Morissette
"Ironic"
Barenaked Ladies
"Falling for the First Time"
Fuel
"Bad Day"
John Parr
"St. Elmo's Fire"
Peter Gabriel
"When You're Falling"
Kansas
"Dust in the Wind"
Led Zeppelin
"Stairway to Heaven"
The Beatles
"A Day in the Life"
The Beatles
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
The Beatles
"Ticket To Ride"
The Beatles
"Obla Di, Obla Da"
Bob Dylan/Guns N Roses
"Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
Arthur Brown
"Fire"
Blue Oyster Cult
"Burnin' For You"
Paul McCartney and Wings
"Live and Let Die"
Jimmy Hendrix
"Hey Joe"
Jackson Brown
"Doctor My Eyes"
John Mellencamp
"Crumbling Down"
John Mellencamp
"I'm On Fire"
U2
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Boston
"Smokin"
Billy Joel
"Only the Good Die Young"
Barry McGuire
"Eve of Destruction"
Steam
"Na Na Na Na Hey Hey"
Drifters
"On Broadway"
Shelly Fabares
"Johnny Angel"
Los Bravos
"Black is Black"
Peter and Gordon
"I Go To Pieces"
Peter and Gordon
"A World Without Love"
Elvis
"(You're the) Devil in Disguise"
Zombies
"She's Not There"
Elton John
"Benny & The Jets"
Elton John
"Daniel"
Elton John
"Rocket Man"
Jerry Lee Lewis
"Great Balls of Fire"
Santana
"Evil Ways"
Louis Armstrong
"What A Wonderful World"
Youngbloods
"Get Together"
Ad Libs
"The Boy from New York City"
Peter Paul and Mary
"Blowin' in the Wind"
Peter Paul and Mary
"Leavin' on a Jet Plane"
Rolling Stones
"Ruby Tuesday"
Simon And Garfunkel
"Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Happenings
"See You in Septemeber"
Carole King
"I Feel the Earth Move"
Yager and Evans
"In the Year 2525"
Norman Greenbaum
"Spirit in the Sky"
Brooklyn Bridge
"Worst That Could Happen"
Three Degrees
"When Will I See You Again"
Cat Stevens
"Peace Train"
Cat Stevens
"Morning Has Broken"
Jan and Dean
"Dead Man's Curve"
Martha & the Vandellas
"Nowhere to Run"
Martha and the Vandellas/Van Halen
"Dancing in the Streets"
Hollies
"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
San Cooke
Herman Hermits, "Wonder World"
Petula Clark
"A Sign of the Times"
Don McLean
"American Pie"
J. Frank Wilson
"Last Kiss"
Buddy Holly and the Crickets
"That'll Be the Day"
John Lennon
"Imagine"
Bobby Darin
"Mack the Knife"
The Clash
"Rock the Casbah"
Surfaris
"Wipeout"
Blood Sweat and Tears
"And When I Die"
Dave Clark Five
"Bits and Pieces"
Tramps
"Disco Inferno"
Paper Lace
"The Night Chicago Died"
Frank Sinatra
"New York, New York"
Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Travelin' Band"
The Gap Band
"You Dropped a Bomb On Me"
Alien Ant Farm
"Smooth Criminal"
3 Doors Down
"Duck and Run"
The Doors
"The End"
Third Eye Blind
"Jumper"
Neil Diamond
"America"
Lenny Kravitz
"Fly Away"
Tom Petty
"Free Fallin'"
Bruce Springsteen
"I'm On Fire"
Bruce Springsteen
"Goin' Down"
Phil Collins
"In the Air Tonight"
Alice in Chains
"Rooster"
Alice in Chains
"Sea of Sorrow"
Alice in Chains
"Down in a Hole"
Alice in Chains
"Them Bone"
Beastie Boys
"Sure Shot"
Beastie Boys
"Sabotage"
The Cult
"Fire Woman"
Everclear
"Santa Monica"
Filter
"Hey Man, Nice Shot"
Foo Fighters
"Learn to Fly"
Korn
"Falling Away From Me"
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Aeroplane"
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Under the Bridge"
Smashing Pumpkins
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
System of a Down
"Chop Suey!"
Skeeter Davis
"End of the World"
Rickey Nelson
"Travelin' Man"
Chi-Lites
"Have You Seen Her"
Animals
"We Gotta Get Out of This Place"
Fontella Bass
"Rescue Me"
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
"Devil with the Blue Dress"
James Taylor
"Fire and Rain"
Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein
"War"
Lynyrd Skynyrd
"Tuesday's Gone"
Limp Bizkit
"Break Stuff"
Green Day
"Brain Stew"
Temple of the Dog
"Say Hello to Heaven"
Sugar Ray
"Fly"
Local H
"Bound for the Floor"
Slipknot
"Left Behind, Wait and Bleed"
Bush
"Speed Kills"
311
"Down"
Stone Temple Pilots
"Big Bang Baby," Dead and Bloated"
Soundgarden
"Fell on Black Days," Black Hole Sun"
Nina
"99 Luft Balloons/99 Red Balloons"
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
This week, you and all other Congressmen are very busy preparing new laws and modifying existing ones to help the United States combat terrorism. Unfortunately, I fear that some of these laws will do more to restrict loyal Americans than actually stop terrorists. I hope you can take a few minutes out of your schedule to read this letter.
To put it bluntly, restrictions on encryption technology are pointless. There have been reports that the terrorist networks responsible for the World Trade Center attack used encryption technology in their communication. Many people, none of whom truly understands technology, believe that if there had been limits on encryption, it would have hampered the terrorists. This assertion is absurd.
Encryption is nothing more than a field of mathematics, where the data to be encrypted is treated as a bunch of numbers. Placing legal limits on encryption is the same as outlawing certain kinds of math. One of the worst ideas being proposed is to force individuals and companies to use encryption technologies for which the government has "back door" access. That is, the government is in possession of secret keys that can decrypt any data which is encrypted using these particular algorithms. Other encryption algorithms which don't allow for back doors would be outlawed.
The flaw in this reasoning is that it is impossible to force terrorists to use "approved" technology. We don't even know who or where they are, so how can we force them to do anything?!? The terrorists will simply use "non-approved" encryption technologies while honest American citizens and businesses are forced to sacrifice their privacy. The worst part is that if other countries were to ever obtain these secret keys, they would have access to every piece of encrypted data from the United States.
The truth is, strong encryption protects Americans. With strong encryption, terrorists won't be able to decrypt sensitive corporate data. They won't be able to spy on American citizens. They won't be able to intercept top secret transmissions.
These terrorists were able to strike not because they used encryption, but because our intelligence organizations are incompetent. The FBI is better known for its blunders (e.g. the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the siege at Waco, the assault at Ruby Ridge, and the 3000 documents in the McVeigh case) than for its successes. In fact, it's been over a week since the attack, and the best our government can say is, "We're pretty sure that Osama bin Ladin is the prime suspect."
Therefore, I am asking you to reject any bills that place limitations on the use of encryption. Instead, I think you should focus on how to improve our intelligence-gathering organizations. Perhaps in exchange for bailing out the airline industry, federal officials from the intelligence organizations should get free flights for the next ten years. The money saved can be used to fund more operations.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Boy, has your frog been well-cooked! The US once faced revolution over a 6% tax! That's right - SIX percent. What is a high tax? 99%?
Beg to differ.
Oz hospitals are in bad shape because they're being crushed under a growing pile of (often useless) regulation. If people won't do a good job by themselves, adding ISO-9002 and other paperwork will make their morale (and the situation) much worse.
Schools are in a similar corner, but have the added disadvantage of being founded to do pretty much the exact opposite of what most parents like to think of them as doing. The focus of education moved away from reality more than a century ago, and it's moved again even from the faux reality found in a schoolbook. Nowadays, every student can have their own unreality, as long as they fit into the System, and the System runs smoothly. Of course, we're dealing with people here so they really are pushing shit uphill. And of course, the response every time to the problems caused by an excess of control is to increase management interference in the situation.
Pumping more money into either is just adding more gasoline to the flames. They both need a revolution, education most of all.
They do. And making the tax laws tougher, piling on more evasion rules, will have the effect of further stratifying things. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.
Individuals on the dole in Oz, not doing a lick of work, with no special benefits, pay income tax. How stupid is that?
We pay more for diesel than for ULP in Oz, but diesel costs half as much to make, and produces less destructive pollutants. How stupid is that?
If we can stop or cut back on supporting the self-defeating beauracracies which you advocate paying taxes for, perhaps we can afford to have non-stupid income tax brackets, non-stupid fuel taxes, and lots of other useful and sensible things.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing