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Libraries Asked To Destroy Reports, Databases
unix guy writes: "Our good friends and protectors in the U.S. Gov't have decided that what we used to know we can't know any longer. This LA Times story talks about libraries being ordered to destroy existing government reports and data sources in the name of homeland security." Is it really a fair trade to give up readily-available information about "airports, water treatment plants, nuclear reactors and more"?
trust us you don't need to know this stuff.
welcome to the united police state of america
This sig space tolet, reasonable rate.
It would just make more sense to make documents and such more secure so that they do not get seen by the wrong people. Build some sort of big, vault facility to place things like that in.
Security through obscurity... wonderful.
Keep this stuff up. Grab it from google. Write a program to walk government websites and compare them to google's cache of them and re-instantiate them.
So if they had never wanted to release the information in the first place, in the name of national security, few people would have a problem with it. Instead, they released it, and they think they made a mistake.
If they had released all they ways to track our submarines, including frequencies that they emit and likely positions, why wouldn't that be fair game to take back? So they compromised it, but if your ass is hangin' out, you don't just walk around going, "Oh well, I guess everyone's already seen it, I shouldn't bother covering it now."
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
If the damned terrorists want to know all about our nation's infrastructure, the information is readily available in A LOT OF PLACES, not all under government control. The ways of getting at such data are simply innumerable.
This is wrong, and yes, I'm going to mention 1984 here. How much closer do we have to get? The government is, in effect if not by intent, enforcing the concept of revisionist history. I don't pretend to understand how to deal with our current problems (here in the U.S.), but this isn't the way.
Maybe it's time to really step up efforts to archive data in places out of the reach of such efforts. Data warehousing might be what saves us in the future from this sort of insanity. Yes, it would have to have significant funding to work, but that funding could come from anywhere, anonymously if necessary. I for one would contribute.
Of course, even given that, the government would no doubt make accessible such digital troves illegal at some point, potentially classifying the very action of such access as "terrorist in nature".
Nobody is going to tell me I can't access public domain information and knowledge. No matter what, people will find a way. Sorry about the rambling here, this just pisses me off.
Web hosting by geeks, for geeks. Now starting at $4/month (USD)!
Yes, this is my protest to the sig char limit
But on the other hand, beeing targeted by terrorists are not very fun either. I don't think it's an excause by the government.
I think it's a matter of evaluation of who has the most use of this material. How many people except terrorists have use for those documents and how high is that value. Is it high enough to make it worth a possible use of it by terrorists?
Man this is conflicting. Sure, it's bad to let a potential terrorist gain access to info about a nuclear plant that may help them kill millions. On the other hand, the slippery slope to police state only requires a 1 degree dip to start the ball rolling. Hmmm...
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
Tom Ridge also has a history of denying information to his citizens. As the former governor of PA, he made it illegal to have cellular phone programming information if you were not directly related to a cellular company, whether a seller of phones, repair shop, etc. The Black Crawling Systems BBS archives formerly for sale by l0pht could not be sent to PA because of my wonderful unconstitutional legislature and governor. I fear what else Tom Ridge will try to take away.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Accually I was making a cynical joke about all the posts that will be posted by the real karma whores. My post is redundantly funny.
This is the most upsetting story I've ever read on Slashdot; it reminds of Fahrenheit 451.
Please, citizens of the US, stop your government before it's too late.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
This is the 1st step in eroding whatever accountability that exists for big government.
Also, it makes it that much harder for scholars of economics, etc to access information that they need.
This sig space tolet, reasonable rate.
All a person REALLY needs in life is McDonalds, Music, Movies, Sports and Religous Dogma.
It is dangerous to give people Education, Information and Freedom. After all, they might be terrorists like the evil Taliban who refuse to give their citizens Education, Information and Freedom.
Hey, did anyone watch the debate a couple of weeks ago on CNN where they discussed giving U.S. federal agents the right to use torture?
Get ready for the future: it is murder - leonard cohen
ipv6 is my vpn
This is the sort of move that to Bush administration has been wanting to do for months, and has been building the fear up to accomplish. Three months ago, average, intellegent people would be making lots of noise against destroying public records, and because of sunshine laws and the like it couldn't have been done. But now, because the government has been sewing fear rather than hope, people are ready to give up all sorts of important civil rights because the think that they going to be killed by crazy terrorists at any moment.
50 years ago, the government told us "There's nothing to fear but fear itself". Now they say "You're all going to watch your loved ones die of chemical and biological warfare, and then die yourselves". Is it any suprise that an agenda has now shown up?
Narrative
One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist (or, say, Arthur Clarke) to see this coming since Reagan's US. Maybe it's visible only outside of US?
US problems aside, how long can Slashdot dive like this?
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
If you wanted to burn your tax records, nobody's gonna stop you,
They would indeed.
If you can't produce the required documents when they are demanded, you can be tossed into jail. Which is a pretty good incentive to protect said documents and not burn them.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Hey moron, in case you didn't know..I AM THE GOVERNMENT, AND SO ARE YOU
. The govenment was created, and is there, to serve me, and the rest of the citizens. Those aren't the government's documents, they're mine!So a Syracuse University library clerk broke the disc into pieces, saving a single shard to prove that the deed was done."
And then later in the story...
"Officials acknowledge that there are very few examples of terrorists actually using public records to glean sensitive information, but they say that the terrorist attacks prove the need for extraordinary caution."
What's next? Memory holes? This is completely rediculous. The orders coming from the US federal government are becoming extremely worrisome. Before long they'll ban the Constitution, and we'll have a lovely police state.
To steal a line from Idioteque, a Radiohead song: "We're not scaremongering/This is really happening"
I mean, come on foks, these belong to the Government!!! Who are YOU to say what the Government does!!!! If you wanted to burn your tax records, nobody's gonna stop you, why should it be any different for the Government!?!?!?!
The government is not a private citizen.
Zeshan
Another point is that you need those papers to check the government, you shouldn't blindly trust politicians you know. On the other hand, if you look at the circus you americans made of the last elections this isn't very surprising...
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
hehe, looks like the us is quite a ways behind russia in hiding data from the citizens. russia has been hiding government for who knows how long. people do not have access to any civil information, and there is only one possible result: halt of progress. people who tried to make advances in russia could not get the information needed (ie. a bridge builder not being able to build a bridge cause he couldnt get data on the sizes of ships). i truly hope that idiots in dc dont do this: we would lose our global technology advantage!
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I argue it never should have been so carelessly deployed in the first place. The hype and the rush to make information available on the web could have been more carefully evaluated, especially by the holders of the plans. Not just plans to dams and waterways, either. Now it's deployment-readiness is being re-evaluated. I doubt it's much more than that.
It is time for our government to introduce the same amount of security that we've been deploying on company webservers and mail systems for years.
I dont believe for a second that this information will now not be inaccessible to someone who is interested for any non-deadly reason.
I believe in Librarians too much for that.
oh, what a circus our DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IS.
first you remind us of our rights as US citizens, then you mock our democratic process. you are such a hypocrite.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
the RPG called the morrow project?
Everything happening parallels the prologue of the morrow project awefully closely... Governments destroying knowlege databases and books, and controlling access to information in the name of security.
I urge many of you to start an information cache. If you must, bury PVC vaults with information in them in safe locations (Geocaches)
Myself? I have all of my water filtration information from when I ran a water planet 3 years ago.. I have all of the theory, chemistry, microbiological and design information. (Heck I think i even have a copy of the plant's bleprints from 1929 and the revisions from 1978.)
Whats next? ban chemistry and chemistry information for the safety of the country?.. Outlaw science outside sanctioned government departments?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hey moron, call up the various government offices and demand, as the boss, that they stop this madness.
Good luck, drop me a line when you succeed.
I may be "part of the government" and "one of its bosses," but see if my individual voting brings the government back in line with the Constitution nd the principles the nation was founded on (NOT the Bible, BTW).
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
About two years ago, I became really interested in urban exploration (exploring storm drain tunnels, etc). While I never actually went down in a drain (maybe some day), I remember going to city hall and spending some 5 bucks for gigantic plotted maps of the city storm drain and sewer system. The guy behind the counter in the engineering department gave me a few weird looks as to why I would need these maps and information, but legally he had to do so for various reasons, one of them being that I'm paying for these systems to be maintained with my tax dollars, I have a right to know about them. I think some of the more libral libraries might still give out this information, I have a hard time believing any library taking the US gov't seriously about this.
NerfOnline - Because Nerf Guns aren't just for kids -
This guy has got to be out of his mind...
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
Security through obscurity only works in a "police state" like a company intranet where there are cleck-points (i.e. firewalls) and good records of every request to pass the check-point.
Russia for a long time made use of this method to protect their nuclear facilities: Obscure the facts, have everyone be watched by the KGB, and give the nuclear workers the best of ecerything. This worked in a closed society with closed borders because the nation was secure even if the facilities were not. However, this does nto work for Russia today, and their facilities are extremely insecure.
This is the wrong sort of security through obscurity to have in a free nation. Unless the NSA, CIA, and FBI want to join forces and spy on all Americans for evidence of terrorism (and maybe bring back the UAAC from the 50's) it prevents the dialogs from occuring that bring about better security policies...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
At the end of this path is a society in which a few, carefully screened individuals have all the knowledge and the rest of the population lives in ignorance. In fact, throughout history, we have had societies like that. The "knowledge elite", of course, derives lots of power and wealth from their knowledge and soon dispenses with the need to consider input from the masses, who don't know what's going on anyway.
It is up to us in a democratic society to decide how far we want to go down that path. At least we still have the choice for now--once we are too far down that path, democracy inevitably disappears, since you can't make informed political decisions if you don't have information.
The article made it sound like a lot of the destruction has already been accomplished. I want to know why the media took so long to report it?
It's almost as if it was embargoed until it was too late to stop it...
--RJ
Way back about 20 years ago when I was entering the World of Work(tm) I worked at a university, in their data center. A prof was doing research on the state of bridges in Connecticut (there had been a recent high-profile bridge failure in the state).
Anyway, he got a data tape from either the state or federal government (I don't recall which) of a bunch of bridge-related information. It was my job to pull the data from the tape, and do some initial checking to make sure we read the data correctly. In order to make sure everything looked OK, the tape came with a record definition, showing each field in the record, its size, and the type of data it contained.
The interesting thing was that two fields were listed in the record definition, but were zero'ed out on the tape -- the latitude and longitude of each bridge. It turned out that the agency responsible for the data would not release that one datum; the concern was that the data could be militarily significant in time of war.
So making data harder to find in the name of homeland security is nothing all that new...
Ed
1) Demands access to nearby water treatment procedures and the core architecture to the local thermonuclear reactor
2) Yet cries foul when asked to produce even the vaguest form of identifications such as a SS#, driver's license, non-web based email address?
Just a question...
They should publicly burn those documents. It's the only way to be sure.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
How come we didn't know there was a water main running underneath that stadium?
Well back in 2001, the government ruined all records and we had no idea where anything was, so we just built over it and hoped for the best.
This is also why schools are not allowed to operate anymore. If we give people knowledge, they will only use it for evil purposes.
So, wanna talk about the new advances in pen and paper technology? Sorry, stick and dirt technology. It is safer.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
Sorry Mr. Ridge. There is this invention called the Google Cache. A new terrorist tool used to defeat draconian ISP's, the RIAA, and now the US Government from stoping the flow of information.
;)
Speaking of flow, how about some USGS dam safety links at
http://www.wes.army.mil/ITL/damsafe/sites.html, what??? 404? Not found??
Lets try this google cache thingy
Wow. I can still see the website. We had better shut down that evil Google
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Google was mentioned as a place to get chached information, but no one drew the conclusion that it could be considered a circumvention device under the DMCA.
Scary, really, scary...when you consider that it is not the "powerful" aspects of the DMCA, but the more subtle/incidious/recurring detriments of the act/law.
What I find even more sad is that even though you consider the damage Bin Laden did, it pales to what we are doing to him. We are taking his life, his livelyhood and turning his own people, much less the whole world, against him.
Be careful what you wish for, eh? He wanted to see those towers come down, I believe was the direct quote.
So, limiting access to information in this way, well what happens when the people who need it can't get it? And the damn breaks quite literally and figuratively?
Again, I say, be careful what you wish for.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
The debate here is between the idea there is and that there is not a net benefit in having an open society, where individuals by virtue of citizenship have access to whatever information they want so long as it doesn't post an immediate and vital security threat. Once you start censoring papers and publications because they can fathomably be used to hurt the government, you limit the public's ability of oversight in public health, security, and spending. No longer can public-interest groups review and recommend changes to public works and such. You also reduce accountability of the government to the people and the press: if the plans on public works are state secrets, graft and corruption become much easier and less dangerous. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, because this style of censorship does not have a clear standard of justification - a 'clear & present danger', say - the issue of a slippery slope comes into play. There is, I suppose, one fundamental questions to be asked: first, is the realistic danger of the censorship greater than the realistic danger of the information being censored?
Anyway, now that i've vented... let me say my true view on this. Chances are it's information we currently (as the US NAtion) know. If we come to find out it's just a coverup, then this is retarded. But if it really is for the sake of the nation, then damnit, i'd rather not know some survey info then have my water contaminated!
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
If I want to find out about US weapons I'll have to get a brochure from the manufacturer, or ask military in another country about how they perform in combat conditions (I'll just need to go to Latin America).
Seriously, any street map or telephone book has military value, but that is no reason to go overboard and ban them. If information is only a tool of the state, the state will soon run out of people that can use information.
Open Source is unAmerican or perhaps it's the US government who's unAmerican. You decide.
2) Yet cries foul when asked to produce even the vaguest form of identifications such as a SS#, driver's license, non-web based email address?
It's not paradoxical at all (assuming that's the word you meant. A discrepancy is a divergence of facts). We have the right to demand accountability from our government. Businesses have no right to demand accountability from individuals.
Happy to help.
-Legion
Well they didn't have terrorism in Orwell's 1984, right?
Next we won't need to vote because terrorists could go to the polls and vote for terrorist friendly politicians
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I didn't think i'd need the sarcasm tags but I should have used them. Yes, I'm kidding, I think people missed the whole point of my post, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!!!!
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
This from an article published in 2000. It's so easy for people to:
A. call clear statements like this The Obvious, and thereby ignore it, not bothering to REPEAT IT, as often and to as many people as possible, and ACT accordingly;
B. Brush off anything that attributes non-pop media patterns as "conspiracy theory" junk - hey, anything's possible, so why should I believe you?
Somebody took the time to write this out, hence the quote, but it's what A LOT of us really know, and ignore on the day-to-day, for reasons A or B (that latter usually being plain fear):
Pubished in 2000. My emphasis and updates added...
MHO: People of good conscience should start with acquiring knowledge, actually locating, discussing, and, on the basis of having checked out, supporting organizations like EFF. For a start. Maybe repeat in front of the mirror: "Every day, in every way, my Internet is shrinking to nothing, unless I do something about it." Try rereading the Emperor's New Clothes... Ask yourself: Where was I when the DMCA was passed?
You also wrote:
I argue it never should have been so carelessly deployed in the first place. The hype and the rush to make information available on the web could have been more carefully evaluated, especially by the holders of the plans. Not just plans to dams and waterways, either. Now it's deployment-readiness is being re-evaluated. I doubt it's much more than that.
I can't think of information that would be of more public interest than whether my community is at risk from a poorly built chemical plant, from an ill-placed dam, or whether a watershed or water supply is at risk from logging or contamination.
Your view is the traditional "security through obscurity". It doesn't work: it only puts people at risk from accidents and exploitation. Vulnerabilities need to be corrected, not hidden, no matter how inconvenient that may be for industry or the government. A smart terrorist has lots of time on his hands and doesn't need the library to figure this stuff out for one target; the people who need that information are environmentalists and citizens, who cannot devote their whole lives to this stuff but still want to protect and create livable and safe communities everywhere.
Plus he lost his senate election to a dead guy.
Sig: Where I'd put something witty if I could think of it.
Insert totally inappropriate reference to "security through obscurity" here...
Seriously, folks, sometimes security through obscurity is exactly what you want. You don't chmod a+r your password file, do you?
The point is not that denying world-read to an encrypted password file makes it *impossible* to crack a server. The point is, it makes it quite a bit tougher than it otherwise would be.
Likewise, making information tougher to come by is not being advertised as a guarantee. But, it can make an attack harder to do, which is a good thing.
Maybe what we need is more security around the information. We allready have most of that stuff available online.
So the simple fact is, by not being on the net, inside of a library that was built to also serve as a fallout shelter, inside of any united states city within the united states border, really does make the information that much more secure.
Uh oh, I hope I havn't given homeland security any idea's that they should be targetting website's instead of libraries. Awe man sorry my bretherin slashdotters I think I did a boo boo.
While it is true that the terrorists may be able to access particular information if they try hard enough, there is a lot to be said for making sensitive and detailed information harder to get to. For instance:
A) By making each piece of sensitive information harder to get to, you make it exponentially more time consuming to query FROM vast realms of it. e.g., if the terrorists wanted to know the exact engineering specifications used for all the nuclear plants around the country to look for a particularly weak design.
B) By making information harder to come by, we can up the ante by forcing the terrorists as a GROUP, to become more sophisticated/educated. e.g., the size of the effort rules out the few top level people, but the scope/difficult rules out the average ignorant terrorist.
C) By making information harder to come by, we can make the act of looking for that information much riskier. For instance, rather than merely having to go online or to any public library (anonymously), they must go to a few enumerated locations and risk being spotted and/or creating a trail after the fact.
D) By clamping the flow of information, we can force the terrorists to work with far many more unknowns.
Lastly, these various elements play off each other greatly. Just as widespread efficiencies in capitalist markets have allowed for expontentially more efficient production, so to can this widespread "inefficiency" make it vastly harder for the terrorists to get _all_ the intelligence that they need.
The Press uses your same argument in defence of some of their more questionable publications. Besides being a disingenious assertion, it very much under-estimates the value of good intelligence. Intelligence is even more important for the terrorists in many ways, because they need to make their relatively few resources stretch much further. The further they stretch, the more they expose themselves and the fewer manhours they can devote to actual acts of terrorism.
Btw, I would not at all be surprised, for instance, if Saddam Hussain got more worthwhile intelligence from the likes of CNN (e.g., troup movements, morale, technology, etc) in the comfort of his bedroom than he did from his entire intelligence service during the Gulf War. The Press can use their apparent legitimacy to get DIRECT, NEAR REAL TIME, and RISKLESS (for the enemy) access to top level officials; whereas with proper controls in place this kind of intelligence would require a capable intelligence agency with significant resources.
I don't see God coming to me and taking away my freedom to speak, read, say dirty words, have sex, drink beer, go out, etc. just so he can guarantee my security. The government should look at that role model and do what he does (nothing).
Freedom has it's pains, but it's worth it. Enough is enough, it's time for our governments to take their responsibilities and leave us alone.
What really scared me about the Sept. 11 attacks was not that I would get killed/injured/harmed by a terrorist attack, it's that people would effectively give the government free reign to do whatever they want. Right now, President Bush's approval rating is an astonishingly high 89% -- this is at least close to the highest it's ever been. Doesn't that scare anyone out there?
The problem is that everybody's still shell shocked over the Sept 11 attacks and everybody wants closure over this and the feeling of security. Sure, airports security has been stepped up, but has it gotten any better? They're collecting far more nail clippers now, but they're still getting knives through. No matter how much security they place at the airport, or any other place for that matter, "bad stuff" will still get through. And even if they made something completely safe, the terrorists will simply go elsewhere.
Let's face it, had the government pulled this shit a year ago, people would have been absolutely pissed. People would have been writing to their congressmen, there may have been protests, but bottom line it would not have happened. Does anybody out there think that government documents like this would have been pulled a year ago? Do you think there would have been an anti-terrorism bill a year ago?
The only good thing is that this will probably come full circle. Maybe it will be in a year, maybe two years, maybe longer, the general public will want this stuff public again. Some accident will occur, people will want to know more about what their local chemical plant is doing, people will want to know where their water is coming from, and after all this terrorist fear has blown over the people will want this stuff back.
Just wait.
So now terrorists won't be able to get access to the information that was freely available years prior to this.
Oh.
Ok.
I feel so safe now, knowing that the people in charge of so-called homeland security are a bunch of idiots.
It reminds me of the whole "STOP DECSS" thing.
I take offense to this not because these documents are being lost to the memory tubes, but that the administration is showing their incompetence / ignorance.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I've had enough of this incremental approach to securing our country. Let's ban mischievous, deviant, dangerous, and all other kinds of "bad" thoughts. All in the name of homeland security, of course...
If it's illegal to think about terrorism, there won't be any terrorists, right?
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Yeah, look at how effective the effort to censor DeCSS was.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
It makes you wonder huh? why a person like Bin Laden, would want to hurt a peace loving, free, democratic country like America, where the people are free to say and see as they please, and justice is served fairly and just... anyway i digress:
Howdy!!! My name is Osama^H^H^H^H^H Bob^H^H^H Jim-Bob, and I am a good old Apple(tm) Pie American (alrights reserved). I was born here in err... Texas, in a cave^H^H^H^H ranch. We have many goats^H^H^H^H^H sheep^H^H^H^H^H cattle here on our diddley old farm, and I was wondering - now that those infidels^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H jolly ol' smart men in them there suits down in washington with that Bush fella have done away with those public records to protect us good ol' law abiding capitalists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H citizens, where could I by chance be able to happen across some of those records to see if me' ranch is on any errr... um.. telephone cables so as to not disturb anything when digging my well. I would also like some maps of government buildings, for err.. my site-see'n tour of washington for when me and my wife Abd^H^H^H Mayble vist by plane^H^H^H^H^H car next month. I will no-kill^H^H^H^H^H^H^H be indebt to anyone that could help me kill those pigs^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Is there legislation, either new, or changes to existing ones like Freedom of Information, to back these "ordered destructions" up?
Are they actually classifying the data now formally (eg, slapping a Secret or Top Secret designation)?
If not, I don't know how it could be justified. What happens if someone doesn't comply fully (eg, secretly burns a copy of the CD?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm sure it took the terorists a lot of research time to find the location of the Twin Towers ...
The Raven.
The Raven
Library documents doubleplusbad crimethink securewise. Slashdot doubleplusbad crimethink duckspeak purgewise. America doublsplusgood keep citizens safewise via purges rightswise recordswise miscellaneous.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
"discrepancy" merely describes being at variance or disagreeing which can at times coexist to create a paradox. We have the right to demand accountability from our government.
Yes we do. But our government is not an abstract concept. It is made up of us, the citizenry, people like you and me. It is not equally acceptable that the citizenry can expect some meager form of accountability from a citizen who wants access to potentially sensitive information? Would it not be irresponsible of those serving us to not even consider it?
Can the interests of the majority of citizens never prevail agains the interests of one citizen?
That sort of non-political tech site?
The thing is, the terrorists already have all the documents they need. When we raided Saddam's nuclear program during the Gulf "conflict" (not much of a war, really, and no formal declaration then as now, which I find stupid), we found declassified documents gotten from the U.S. government printing office for a modest fee, from the early days of our nuclear program. We also found them being put into practice--we found 1940s era (in terms of the tech) cyclotrons being used to make fissionable uranium. We hadn't thought this possible before because the technology can only produce minuscule quantities of the right uranium isotope, so we wrote it off as impractical and declassified the design schemtics and all for the cyclotrons we'd tried with in the early days. Turns out Saddam was more patient than we are.
Such documents have been available for years. Terrorists already have them. They are already on the Internet. Closing the barn door after the horse is gone is needless. We just need to keep from declassifying anything else that ought not to be. Problem is, the three-letter agencies never want to declassify anything, and that would be even worse than declassifying dangerous infrastructure or nuclear information. I don't want terrorists attacking my country. But if my country becomes any more backwards and secretive than the Star Chamber it's already fast becoming, then I wouldn't mind so much if the whole thing gets destroyed and we have to start from the fundamentals again. I believe it was Jefferson who advocated periodic revolutions, to remove the "cruft" that accrues around any government.
In two centuries, we've gone from isolationist "paradise" happy to revel in our beautiful countrysides and stay out of world conflicts for our own good, to the Roman Empire of the modern world. I'm not one of these assholes who whines about how America deserves what it gets--certainly innocent people just going about their daily lives don't deserve to die--but frankly I'm not surprised nor dismayed, either. I don't really like my government. It did worse things than pulling easy-to-get-elsewhere data from libraries, even before Sept. 11. While I lament the deaths of the innocent, part of me hopes our government keeps baring its true fangs until everyone sees what it is and gets fed up with the cruft and corruption. Our government taxes us to death to do worthless things like give 2 BILLION dollars of aid ech year to Egypt, which hates us, hundreds of millions each year to Afghanistan, whose government sponsored terrorism against us, and BILLIONS to several other countries which almost all Americans couldn't care less about. Why should it be the responsibility of a teacher making near-poverty wages to subsidize third-world regimes? That's practically communism. After all, "to share everything and be poor together is madness." Why do we do it? The stock answer, political stability. The real answer, to subsidize regimes that are favorable to U.S. corporate interests, so that people who would cut off U.S. trade don't get into power.
That's what it's all about in the end. Take from the average working class citizen to subsidize corporations, corporations which get tax breaks to "stimulate the economy" (read: get companies to make more stuff and get people to buy more stuff, whether the stuff is necessary or not). The rest of the world objects to so much American stuff floating around and destabilizing their own native industries--and I can't blame them for that; I can sympathize since corporate America's stuff also destabilizes native industries here in America (average citizens can't compete with the Wal-Marts; we all become employees whereas in the old days many, many more of us would be owners, and could work towards being owners). In turn America is hated and attacked, though unfortunately foreign terrorists don't want to make the distinction between American citizens and the government which lords it over them. In turn the government acts even more repressive. The question is if and when we will reach the breaking point, where pressure leads to a breakdown in the economic and social structure. I have to say, I hope so. It would give us a chance we won't have otherwise to return to the core fundamentals of the Constitution, shedding all the strained and bogus interpretations and omissions which have been imposed in the intervening years--such as the fact that the Tenth Amendment is entirely ignored.
There are so many parallels between the U.S. and the Roman Empire--our history and development run along the same lines. Agrarian Republic to world-shaking Empire. True Republic to puppet government controlled almost exclusively by the elites. A country which avoids warfare once it consolidats itself and expands to its natural boundaries, to an Empire which thrives on warfare to promote economic interests.
This has digressed from the small topic of restricting information to the larger issues which have spawned such restriction. But it is undoubtedly an action which is a thread in this larger tapestry. We really ought to examine proactively the reasons behind our government's actions, rather than reacting to them one by one. This is the problem the media has--they promote dwelling on the small issues, while ignoring the bigger picture because it won't fit into a 90-second segment. We really need to examine these themes when incidents arise, instead of treating each as if it existed in a vacuum.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Which libraries are using the government demands as lists of materials to move to overseas public Internet archives? Those CD-ROMS they break, keeping a shard as evidence of their distruction, they burn a few copies first, somewhere, right?? (Oops, "burn" in the "lase" sense.) As Ashcroft goes increasingly over the line, who will organize his impeachment?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
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If there is one thing everyone needs to learn from crypto, its that security by hiding is no security.
Sure, actually fixing problems is more expensive in the short term than hiding the problems, but fixing problems is the only way that engineers et al will actually get trained to build things securely.
Otherwise, you just wind up with a large insecure infrastructure. Bad bad bad.
A more immediate solution to this situation would be to download and mirror as much of this information as possible. Preferably on overseas servers, however I dont see why you cannot mirror it on an American webserver most, if not all government-produced and publically available information is placed into the public domain; they cannot actually order you to remove it (because its not classified, and they do not own any copyrights on the material).
Liberty in your lifetime
Liberty in your lifetime
Where is the discrepancy?
"We have the right to demand accountability from our government."
Yes we do. But our government is not an abstract concept. It is made up of us, the citizenry, people like you and me. It is not equally acceptable that the citizenry can expect some meager form of accountability from a citizen who wants access to potentially sensitive information?
That's not what you said, nor was it what I was referring to. You were talking about people who demand information from their government but dislike providing information to others, as if they were hypocritical for doing so. I merely pointed out that that is not the case.
Would it not be irresponsible of those serving us to not even consider it? Can the interests of the majority of citizens never prevail agains the interests of one citizen?
If you want to start debating a new topic I'll be more than happy to, but let's finish the one you started first.
-Legion
I'll agree with you that making information harder to come by increases security. But really, doing chmod a-r on the password file is a bad example. The reason is that the password file is the ONLY PLACE in the system where the lgin is stored. If the password were stored elsewhere (eg. root making a personal copy of it in his own directory and leaving it 755), turning off permissions does nothing.
Liberty in your lifetime
Syracuse University needs new compact disc reader. If the disc gets broken then how are Syracuse University associates able to prove that the compact disc has any data from the report.
This could create new business for new types of compact disc reader. The broken compact disc can not spin so the new reader has to be able to scan the compact disc piece. If there are multiple pieces then the compact disk reader program has to sort the pieces in order to complete data tracks.
(c) Two Thousand One
I am currently working on a homeland security project involving military forces. Yes, there are very good reasons why some of this info is being pulled. No, it is not a good thing to pull this info, but as I said there are reasons for this.
As for you Orwell, F451 folks, no one I've dealt with (up to the General level) has any interest in censorship or any of that nonsense. These people are extremely pissed off and want to go kick someone ass, but since they're techies they need to stay in the US and do some tasks here.
As for the top politicos in Washington, I have no first hand knowledge, but 3rd or 4th hand knowledge tends to support the belief that they are concerned with securing our country, not a bunch of Mr. Burns' holding their hands saying "Excellent!" while contemplating implementing censorship.
I wish I could go into more detail, but I can't. Of course, all of you now think I'm a lackey of the establishment anyway. Oh well, I tried.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Well, it started out innocently enough. I popped up Slashdot and read the top story. Something about censorship. Clicked the news article and got taken to some LATimes article. Was reading it and then noticed "Anarchist's Cookbook."
I'd heard of it before, but never actually read it. My curiosity was piqued and I fed in the info to Google. Luckily enough, they have a section devoted solely to this compiliation. I managed to find it after the second or third link.
After agreeing not to use the information improperly, I found it laying before me... the Anarchist's Cookbook, in its entirety, along with an added bonus of the Terrorist's Cookbook.
I soon found myself thinking rather nasty thoughts and reading up on interesting sections in the Anarchist's Cookbook.
By chance, I happened to look outside my window and noticed three police cars, lights flashing, less than 50 yards from my house.
They weren't there for me, but the effect was chilling enough. I swear I have never ALT-F4'd, deleted my History, and cleared my browser location bar so quickly in my life.
Whew.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
All this crap being done under the name of "homeland security", just wait till it doesn't go away after the war is over. If they ever declare the war over.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Now with all this crap going around, gnutella will not only have porn, mp3 and DiVX-encoded movies and warez going around... it'll be jammed with blueprints and engineering stuff...
I'm sure it's all a big plot to clug the bandwidth so people stop leeching warez and vids and go buy them for all the trouble it'll take to get them for free...
...brilliant...
heh
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
What about people who have some of this information memorized. Should they be destroyed as well?
It kind of makes me want get the information and put it up on web server located in switzerland.
It's book burning time. Well, we don't have flame resistant houses, but I'm sure the fire departments will gladly assist in the destruction of so called "sensitive documents." While there at it, lets destroy all books too because they only make people unhappy.
It's ok for certain things to be classified, because for something to be classified, it must be registered and must be deemed worthy to classify by two government officials. There are checks and balances to make sure that things aren't just classified for no apparent reason.
Just deciding that something is sensitive and then making all these rules about giving access to it is just ridiculus. Anyone can access classified information too, they just have to be able to demonstrate a Need-To-Know and have received appriorate security clearance.
So now, you can be deined access if your background is shady and to be able to view this material, you must present a need to know.
Gee, sounds to me like there is a new level of classification that is bi-passing the safeguards of classification.
If it can be reasonably assumed, that the undisclosed release of this information is likely to cause damage to national security, then it should be classified and be treated with all the same safe guards as anything else that is confidential.
What this is, is a loop-hole. And it probably is illegal.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Whatcha goota do is to get rid of cars. Automotive accidents cause 6 yimes as many deaths each year as did the disaster of sept 11. Further, you gotta think how much crime this would stop in general. Are you gonna rob a bank and do a getaway on a skateboard? And terrorists, if you can't have cars, you can't have air travel cuz you can't get to the airport. Whatcha gonna do? Crash a scooter into the pentagon. As usual, the silly government goes for the easy target...
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.
If the government created or collected that information, then yes, the government should have a say about who gets access to that information.
Hey, time to start burning some books! I know this is reminiscent of something in history, but next time I go to the library I probably won't be able to pull out my favorite history book to find out because it'll probably have been destroyed.
--
That person would cry foul for reasons you're conveniently ignoring. You remember from history class who Richard Nixon is, right? You know what Watergate is, right? You know what Nixon did to people he didn't like, right? So, if someone in the government holds a grudge against you, and you happen to legally obtain these sensitive documents, what's preventing that someone from painting you as a terrorist, now that they have a monopoly on truth and information? They have the records that you checked out those documents, they have, real or fabricated, records of your activity, and wouldn't have much difficulty convicting you in public trial of espionage or other trumped up charges.
Remove all the information after its published, cached, archived, and probably already been read by anyone planning to use it soon should be most effective. The next step is to try and outlaw the information itself, because we know that if its illegal to possess the information, the terists will just hand over what they have and miraculously forget what they already read, just like if we outlaw strong encryption.
Maybe we should just get to the heart of the matter and outlaw terrorism. Oh, wait...
Liberty in your lifetime
Actually, the same thing applies to 1984. The main character, who as I recall was working for the Ministry of Truth, was responsible for both propaganda (writing Big Brother's speeches) and destroying sensitive information.
What sucks is that the information is already out there. Those that are interested in this sort of thing already have it and have mirrors too.
Wonder if cryptome has any of this laying around?
Blogging because I can...
I think its time for people to take $50 and make archives of their favorite books, databanks or documents that the government wants banned using that wonderful piece of technology by Xerox.
The Xerox Machine has been used for decades by people who wanted to read a reference or other unborrowable book on their own time, now it will be a handy tool for keeping certain pieces of content available.
Sure, its an inelegant solution, but if enough people do it and make multiple off-site backups in the public domain, the appointed censors that keep passing stupid edicts like this will have to do something REALLY stupid and REALLY public.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Not to mention the ones you don't know...
Well, let's start with throwing the bums out. Not the terrorists. I'm talking about the politicians who are, with this boneheaded act and many, many others like it, are finishing the terrorists' work for them. I like to think I've done my part. Perhaps not as well as I could have, but I've done what I was allowed to: I'm certainly not the one who voted them into office. Most of the folks I know whom I could convince didn't either. Unfortunately, they're still there and still in power. Let's scratch that technique off the list.
Well, another possibility is this: Let's throw the bums out at the point of a gun. I'm certainly not the only one whose ever thought of this; Just ask any member of one of the many "militias" which have sprung up in this country over the past couple of decades (and don't let your eyes swim too much at the speed with which he or she tries to recruit you). Before any of you think I'm advocating this kind of response, let me assure you that I'm not. Bloodshed is seldom the right response to anything, this included. Bloodshed is what started all of this in the first place and I just can't bring myself to see it as a part of the solution. Let's throw this "solution" out too.
The only other thing I can think of is to go somewhere where this sort of #^#$^$# isn't a problem. Can anyone think of somewhere where this sort of thing doesn't go on? (Again, I'm not talking about the terrorism here...) I can't, but let's assume you can. Out of those places, can you think of any that haven't or aren't in the process of adopting the U.S.A.'s way of thinking (for any of a variety of reasons, potential terrorism included)? Maybe you can, but I can't.
So what's a body to do? I'd love to hear some good answers and I'm sure a lot of other folks would too. The clock is ticking.....
OOOH!!!! You're so hardcore, you quoted 1984!!! WELL DONE I say to you!!! You really STUCK IT TO THE MAN!!!!
If your non-existent opinion was any more irrelevant, you'd be Richard Simmons.
Take for example, The CIA World Factbook, essentially a full-fledged atlas/almanac published by the CIA, yearly. See the copyright notice on the publication:
Liberty in your lifetime
Please, citizens of the US, stop your government before it's too late.
I normally don't push libertarianism in this forum, other than via my sig, but this is getting way out of control. If we want to do something about this long-term we need to work on getting people in office which share our ideals.
After being fed up the last presidential election with the Republicrats, I decided to go out and look at the different parties. After much searching I discovered the Libertarian party.
Without going into a long post about their ideals, I'll just summarize by saying I hear a large portion of the vocal slashdot community spouting those ideals. Perhaps the most relevant portion of their platform to this discussion is this:
We oppose any abridgment of the freedom of speech through government censorship, regulation or control of communications media...
I'll spew one or more two references and then shut up. If you'd like to figure out where your views really fit in with politics, the libertarian party has The World's Smallest Political Quiz which is a set of ten questions which will rank you into which area you best fit.
For more info on the Libertarian party, click on the link in my sig...
Didn't you hear? They ratified the 28th Amendment today:
Amendment 28
1. This amendment officially renders Amendments 1 through 27 invalid, unless otherwise specified with an executative order.
2. All existing states shall be consolidated into 5 milirary districts, for the purposes of control. All state Constitutions are hereby invalid.
3. Christanity is the only permitted religion in the United States. Any attempt to practice atheism or any other religion shall be considered treason. Any violation of the 10 Commandments shall be punishable by death.
4. The Supreme Court and Congress shall disband immediately. The Executative Branch and the military shall assume control of government functions.
[not.]
P.S. - I bet Ashcroft is having a wet dream just thinking about this.
Do we? Generally speaking the people want security officers who know what they are doing as much as possible. Would we want to put a garbage man friend-of-a-polotician the role of head CERT offical. Heck no! So why do we seem to always get these knee jerk reactions for covering up information that is, well, informative?
This isn't the America I read about in books.
"discrepancy" merely describes being at variance or disagreeing which can at times coexist to create a paradox.
Where is the discrepancy?
The discrepancy lies in wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
"We have the right to demand accountability from our government."
Yes we do. But our government is not an abstract concept. It is made up of us, the citizenry, people like you and me. It is not equally acceptable that the citizenry can expect some meager form of accountability from a citizen who wants access to potentially sensitive information?
That's not what you said, nor was it what I was referring to. You were talking about people who demand information from their government but dislike providing information to others, as if they were hypocritical for doing so. I merely pointed out that that is not the case.
I misunderstood. I thought your disagreement was substantive, not semantical.
Ironically, the story mentions another bit of government suppression of information:
So the same government that has been invading our privacy and publishing the data now says that "some things shouldn't be made public." The same government that says we shouldn't be allowed to hide things that might be used against us has decided to hide things that might be used against us. I wonder if this new-found interest in information security will also be applied to our personal information. (Now taking bets.)
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
first the kind of info they are wanting to destroy is not super sensitive in nature. It doe snot include the presidents motor route. the things we are talking about is simple information, nothing life threatening. however what is to stop them from doing what Nazi germany did and start outlawing other forms of information ??
I am remindd of a quote tho I can't remember where from.
"Beware of those who would deny you information, for in thier hearts they dream themselves your master"
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Documents don't kill people. People kill people.
All the worlds indeed a
Time for me to go dig up that old 'Ask Slashdot' article about which country now most deserves the title "Land of the Free."
The dog ate my
And at the moment, I've even got the points. But it's currently marked "Funny", and maybe it would be, if it weren't true.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You know what Watergate is, right?
A testament to how well the system works -- that no individual is more important than the system -- even if that individual is the President of the United States
what's preventing that someone from painting you as a terrorist, now that they have a monopoly on truth and information? There is nothing preventing "them" from painting "you" any way they like. That is the andvantage/disadvantage right of a free media. To restrain that right would be censorship. Even Bush, Clinton and others have regularly been portrayed as terrorists in various media. However, there is no monopoly on truth or information in this country. And who is the "they" you are referring to?
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They just strike me as similar.
My great hope is that I am paranoid, because if I am not, we are fscked. (Disclaimer: I am rather pessimistic about humanity.)
I am all for anti-terrorism and all that, but if BOOK BURNING(information destruction) doesn't raise some red flags, maybe terrorism isn't the thing we have to fear the most.
I want to be safe, but at what price...
Secondly, that's my point, that we CAN say that some information should not be so readily published without being pushed ANY closer to a Nazi regime. [In other words, you're contradicting yourself, at least by implication that we should NOT publish the President's motorcade details.] Thirdly, what stops us is the same thing that would allow us, should we choose to do so, to stop this action in the first place: our Legislative, Executive, and Judicial process.
Why is anybody surprised about this? The US government is simply trying to protect citizens. They're using the time-tested and mature method of security through obscurity. If the terrorists have trouble getting information about something, how can they blow it up? Its the same method that made Microsoft products so damn bullet-proof, and it will definatly make the US a safer place to live!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Find your local Federal Depository - the 1,350 libraries that they are asking (telling? ordering?) to destroy documents.
Go talk to the librarians, ask their opinions, voice your opinion, read some documents, see how or if they are actually disposing of them, etc.
I wonder how long it is before we can no longer access this list.
If there was ever a reason to use Freenet, this is it.
By the way, I have long thought that the Slashdot moderation system is a total sham. But this proves it: this post has been assigned a "troll" rating. Hey, just because I present an opposing viewpoint, it becomes a troll? The ignorant political bias of this totally uninformed, immature and out-of-touch forum finally comes through. Suck my ballsack, moderators.
This sounds just like the "Ministry of Truth" as I believe it was called from 1984. For those of you who don't know, the Truth office was in charge of destroying historical documents that had any content that was against the beliefs of the government. People had to go back and rewrite historical events so that the government was always "on top". hmmm, only 17 years too late, but hey... at least we got there!
Excellent! We can get together to solve this problem. We can build proper repositories of information so that all people can read and learn. The place must be large and well airconditioned to preserve the things put there. It's called a library. If we really get enough public support we can make a University so that people can be guided in their learning, organize the materials stored in the library and create new content for the library.
Computers and technology are not going to save you. The government has ordered the burning of books. The USA act gave the federal government access to any and all databases, so you can't hide there. While it is possible to set up distributed encrypted libraries, the network itself is not under your control.
The only defense is to point out the folly. Hiding "Evil" information will insure that only evil people have it when it's needed. This will not make the world any safer, it will make it dumber.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
is sufficiently cloudy on access to information about airports, nuclear reactors and power stations. I see "freedom of speech" in there, but I don't see "freedom of access to information" present. I don't see how "Speech = access to info". Perhaps you could enlighten me.
But we do have something called the Freedom of Information Act. This requires the government to make non-classified information public. There are only a few exceptions to this, including the internal operations of agencies, personal memos, law enforcement, and this little piece:
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
Now, IANAL, but it would seem like the government is breaking the law. As far as I know, there has been no Executive Order (re)classifying this information.
There is another question: can previously unclassified information be classified? Is this similar to trade secrets where, once its made public, its no longer subject to trade secret protections.
Unfortunately, our government is acting on their belief that the people they serve are a danger to the publicly-elected officials.
Ignorance Is Strength
It's true that our American way of life is under attack...at least Bush, Ashcroft and the rest of them got that one right.
Congress has also declared that locations and schedules for the following: shopping malls, highschool football schedules, church services, boyscout jamborees and tupperware parties shall not be given out to the general public in an attempt to keep us all safe. Anyone wishing to find out any of the aforementioned top secret info should register with the thought police to get clearance.
Also a number of subjects are now considered dangerous and contraban. Anyone caught teaching or even knowing about electricity, metal shop, chemistry, automechanics, water purification and/or piloting an airplane shall be lobotomizd unless proper security clearance can be obtained. That is all.
Total and complete nonsense. The Constitution, article III, section 2, states that "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution". This means that the Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution.
You wrote:
This is just not true. The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution. It is not -- nor has it ever been -- absolute. Any juris doctorate graduate student will tell you that. The power of the Supreme Court to interpret and judge ALL sections of the Constitution is every bit as important as the Constitution itself.
Totally untrue, although a totally different topic. Radio, television and books are businesses. We all have freedom of speech, but that speech carries repercussions. No one is free from these repercussions. We can say whatever we want against the government, we can spew whatever misinformed garbage pops into our heads. But television, radio and books don't have to print it -- they are businesses, and their bottom line is making money . This is such a different subject, I'm surprised you even brought it up. Some ignorant fuck (let's say, Bill Maher of Politically Incorrect) makes an unfortunate statement. Sure, he's free to MAKE the statement -- but now he must live with the consequences. ABC is trying to make money. Millions of people call into ABC, swearing they'll never watch the show again. It is totally within ABC's right to cancel Bill Maher, for any reason or for NO reason. They are a business, plain and simple. Quite frankly, if they ask him to show up on TV wearing a fucking ballerina costume, they can do it -- he signed the damn contract.
This misdirection doesn't work -- let's stay on the topic here. Radio, TV and books are private businesses and as such, they can print or not print whatever the fuck they want. Public libraries are public property, but still under the jurisdiction various governmental entities. If you want to create a website containing information about nuclear power plants or airports, you are totally free to call these places up, collect the information and organize it yourself.
Law does not prevent crime. There is a reason for this, namely, because laws are absurdly easy to disobey. So easy, in fact, that you and I probably break laws every day, most of which we're not even aware of.
To counterbalance this, laws have to be crafted to make them impossible to disobey. For example, rather than saying "action x is prohibited" (which anyone can do) you say "action x is punishable by sentence y" (which then leaves the matter to the courts to obey or disobey, and obeying the law is basically what courts do, so you're safe).
If you want to prevent crime, there is only one way: education, not legislation. And even this will fail sometimes. That is something a free society must accept; sometimes the bad guy will get away with crimes, but this is worth it if the innocent remain free because of it.
All governmental actions like this do is keep the information out of the hands of innocent, law-abiding citizens who have legitimate reasons (or at least non-malicious ones) for not wanting the data. Criminals will get whatever it is they want, no matter what you do, so the difference that these orders make is negligible at best.
The Constitution does not, anywhere, guarantee "freedom of information."
Sure it does:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Nobody has the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, though.
...then only outlaws will have knowledge.
Security through Obscurity is not automatically bad. In fact, security through obscurity is pretty damn good, especially in the real world where reconaissance is much more difficult. (In the digital world, intercepting data or playing with a digital black box in your basement is much easier.)
A well-designed system AND obscurity is a harder target than a well-designed system alone. The warning about security through obscurity is to those amateur cryptographers who think that cooking up a secret algorithm will get them mathematically sound security. The rule just doesn't apply in the same way to physical security. (Would you post a sign on your door saying, "I have tens of thousands of dollars in my safe, but my vault is secure!"?)
That said, I'm still against hiding this information simply because it's ineffectual. They'd probably be better off tracking people who looked it up; that'd be just as bad a civil rights infraction, but might actually make a difference...
Do we see the beginnings of a new religion there?
Not if they succeed.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I'd be surprised. And it's starting to bother me that these old tired saws are trotted out time and again. Where is the evidence that Hussein does this? That the 9/11 terrorists used public data? That any of the Orwellian measures being proposed, had they been in place, would have actually prevented these atrocities?
Before we sign away all our traditional freedoms and legacies -- and opennes of government is certainly one of these -- perhaps we should be asking more questions about the effectiveness of the "solutions" and the motives of the people pushing them.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
This is exactly what goes on in George Orwell's 1984. Information that is considered harmful to the government's control is thrown in memory holes, where it is taken by vacuum to huge furnaces (they burn a LOT of documents in 1984).
This kind of move will only take away from the average citizen's knowledge of his country, and won't take anything away from the terrorists. If they want to know something, they can find out with little or no trouble.
The feds need to shutdown most of the news media. It seems to me that they are the ones providing most of the information the "highly intelligent terrorists" are using to attack America. By the way, would someone show me one thing that the terrorists have done so far that requires an I.Q. over 10?
Blockquoth the LA Times article:
OK, if some of the more radical quantum infortmation theorists are right, information can't really ever be destroyed. But I think it falls within the commonly-accepted use of "destroyed" when we start smashing CD-ROMs.
What's next? Torch-lit parades and book-burning rallies?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
what, you read fahrenheit 451, 1984, brave new world, animal farm, and suddenly you're some sort of expert in the world of politics?
i don't even think you read 1984 if you think the world we live in vaguely resembles that book. you do orwell a disservice to suggest otherwise.
if you want to have a taste of what he was writing of, think of the khemer rouge, the USSR in the 40s-50s, PRC in the 80s, and iraq today. this was what orwell was warning us of. in cambodia, people were killed for wearing glasses - that being a sign of being a member of the intelligentsia. for control of thought and ideology, the USSR and PRC were both world ahead of where we stand in the US. you can still be jailed in China for being a part of the falung gong, loosely classifiable as a religion. the only news you would get is from the state-run media.
you spoiled, spoiled person. of course we need to be vigilante, or people will try to take away our rights for their own power. but to paint a picture where we have close to the situation in 1984 is outright nonsense. 80% of the world doesn't enjoy the rights we do in the US. and if you don't want to end up in an orwellian dystopia, then vote these people out of office. we still live in a democracy, lest you forget.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Ack! The government is following M$s advice....
...guess that answers that question!
Information is the lifeblood of a free society governed by the consent of the governed. If information is destroyed (or even made inaccessible to all but the most determined individuals armed with subpoenas), the practical effect is that the governed don't know what we're consenting to. Policies that prevent open disclosure of information are ripe for exploitation as tools to conceal embarrassing information. Public outrage is a powerful motivator in an open society, but how can the public express outrage when the information that would prompt such outrage may be cloistered away by embarrassed bureaucrats who can simply claim the information could be dangerous in the wrong hands?
I have news for everyone: almost any information can be dangerous in certain circumstances. What our illustrious and infallible (ok, only 89% infallible) administration has apparently decided is that information no longer need be imminently dangerous to fall subject to the censors. Unfortunately potentially dangerous covers a lot of vague territory (or perhaps fortunately if that information contains something personally embarrasing to you).
Now if the chemical plant down the street is poisoning your water, you just have to hope that the regulators responsible for letting the water become contaminated don't decide that the chemicals aren't too scary to talk about. If you live downstream from a dam, don't bother asking why/if the security team failed their last test. Just trust that everything will be Ok; you don't need to know about it!
This isn't about not trusting government. I don't distrust government, rather I doubt that everyone in government will always necessarily do the right things. Individually government consists of people with emotions, agendas, visions, and goals that I may not share. I can't trust that without meaningful oversight and clearly defined standards for making information secret, that everyone who governs will always do the right thing. You see, open information means I don't have to trust those in government.
Unfortunately, it is in times of crisis that open government is most important, because it is easiest to precipitate abuse when there is 89% approval and everyone is looking the other way. In fact, it is considered unpatriotic to even suggest that times of crisis are times of opportunity for abuse.
We know that with attention diverted, this would be the perfect time to make politically unpopular decisions: give vast tax breaks to huge companies, strip away environmental regulations, invalidate laws in states that legalize doctor assisted suicide, etc... Why can we rest assured that no lower level bureaucrat might take advantage of the situation to obfuscate potentially embarrasing or dangerous agency screw-ups?
Our military has many legitimate secrets, but as the agency given the greatest freedom to keep its activities secret, it has not done an excellent job of obeying the spirit of the law. Now with civilian agencies also keeping secrets (that I believe everyone agrees are less threatening than military secrets) isn't the potential for abuse proportionally greater?
If there is necessity to obscure information -- and sometimes that's hard to say because we don't know what information is being blocked -- then there should be extremely clear guidelines on exactly what should be controlled. Information that does not pose an imminent security danger should still be made available, but perhaps with some authentication of those requesting it, i.e., require written request and valid ID. Finally, the clearly defined regulations limiting access should automatically expire after five years unless Congress decides that there are ongoing security risks that require an extension of the controls. Of course it goes without saying that the information should not be destroyed.
Doubtless some of you may take the view that we need to surrender some of our typical openness to secure the safety our our nation. To this I would respond that: a) by surrendering openness we're simultaneously surrendering security -- we just don't know how much; b) if something must be surrendered we should consider very carefully what should be surrendered and how we should do so; and c) we must keep in mind that information is a double edged sword and our society is based upon the assumption that openness is our guarantee of freedom. This country would look very different without freedom of information; please consider very carefully where to draw that line.
There are consequences to viewing open information as our enemy. I can only hope that more rational minds soon prevail; rights surrendered in times of crisis are rarely returned.
Of course, all this is an aside to the question of the efficacy of blocking the information...
It would be much easier to avoid the allusions to Orwellian horrors if our own government didn't insist on Orwellian policies labeled with positively Orwellian names.
Of course, Farenheit 451 also hasn't been more relevant anytime in recent memory than now. I hope everyone reads it.
God help this country.
Wrong.
When a newspaper prints or does not print profanity, it is not 'because the government told them they couldn't ... print it in the press", it is because the Editor decided not to include it so as not to offend the readership and taint the 'family' attitude of a particular paper.
There is no government pressure on newspapers not to print 'fuck', and there have been many cases in the past couple of years of major papers printing 'fuck'. In eaach case, the decision is made by the editors, without giving a damn what the government thinks.
In much of the 'old school' newspaper business, the 'First amendment' is more important than life itself. A newspaper may engage in self-censorship, where they choose to print or omit 'fuck' or 'shit' based on how the readers will respond, how the editorial board of the newspaper want to present the issue and the paper itself, and how the word fits into the story... but not because of government pressure.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
It was. I regret that you still can't see the difference between demanding information from the government (individual government employees are still representatives of the government, regardless of your semantic games) and demanding information from normal citizens (whom I believe compromise more of the Slashdot readership than government employees do).
When you understand the difference, you'll understand that there is nothing wrong with demanding accountability from the government while striving to protect personal privacies.
-Legion
The big obscenity here isn't September 11th. It's our own government USING September 11th to take away our liberties! These law enforcement republican zealots are using the worst thing to ever happen to the United States to further erode the freedoms that we hold dear. They wave the flag, and Congress says "yup yup yup" and passes things that they've been rejecting for years as major invasions of our privacy. Want to know the really scary thing? Sen. Leahy of Vermont is now speaking up on how: "all our liberies have been taken away"... Uhm excuse me Senator but DIDN'T YOU VOTE FOR THIS BILL??? That's the scary part...these clowns (obviously) vote for things they have no clue about...then they say: "oops" once they realize that their constituents are pissed at them for doing so. Maybe we need to make a new movie: "Mr. Moron goes to Washington"!
Sam Lowry: Excuse me, Dawson, can you put me through to Mr. Helpmann's office?
Dawson: I'm afraid I can't sir. You have to go through the proper channels.
Sam Lowry: And you can't tell me what the proper channels are, because that's classified information?
Dawson: I'm glad to see the Ministry's continuing its tradition of recruiting the brightest and best, sir.
Sam Lowry: Thank you, Dawson.
Welcome to the United States
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Thank you,
Bob
PS. If you can't tell, I'm speaking facetiously. I think I have made my point.
i'm really sad that we as a profession have no protection against the will of the government.
We have our freedom to read policies, but they are worthless against this kind of bullying.
Libraries have been under threat from so many different challenges, so that just proves how powerful information is.
Unfortunately, the ALA is not an especially strong lobby group and this situation is unlikely to end soon.
As an Australian, I can only say how glad I am that our government has not resorted to this kind of action.... yet.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/01facts/99mortali ty.htm
in 1999:
44,536 deaths from Alzheimer's
28,874 persons died from firearm.
19,102 persons died of drug-induced causes.
19,171 persons died in 1999 from alcohol-induced causes.
In 2001:
~5000 ppl died in 2001 due to terrorist.
~5 ppl have a died from a local terrorist group with anthrax.
So where do we focus our energy and money?
On stopping dangerous information from going out to US citizens. BTW, more money is now being spent on "homeland defense" than on Research.
Pretty soon it will be the "fatherland" that must be protected at ALL cost.
The funny thing is, this information is available in libraries in britain, italy, france, canada. Basically in all free countries. Bush and cronies are stripping us of our rights and liberties and many have not learned from our and others past abuses. This information that bush/ashcroft want hidden is easily gleaned from so many other sources that ony we suffer.
It is amazing that these idiots who understand the danger of having our gun rights stripped would so quickly strip us of our information rights and liberties.
Have you ever heard of preventative measures? we are castigating the CIA for not preventing the Sept. event; would we not castigate the US government if another event occured, this time from publically available info?
If you have money than you can find out the info you waht. But to stop poor me to find info is not right!
This makes a load of sense doesn't it. Lets "protect" our citizens from terrorists by taking away their access to government information. This type of knee-jerk reaction has been tried in the past and HAS NEVER and WILL NEVER WORK!
About a year ago, I was purusing(?) the web and came across a bunch of active DARPA projects, specifically biological, technological, and military. I was blown away at the detail with which they described and outlined the project, its goals, and its overall implementation. I emailed the DARPA contact for questions concerning DARPA projects and asked him why this information was available on the web, and much less to the public at all (I know that may be a little naive, but there are some things I think the public doesn't need to know). Anyways, I recieved an email back stating that due to international security agreements or some shit, that we must provide information about our military projects (DARPA) to our allies over seas. That also meant it was provided for our enemies as well.
I have many mixed feelings when it comes to our governments role in the global stage. This example above, is one instance in which I totally and completely disagree. This information should be kept within the confines of the intelligence community(contradiction). PERIOD. Information about landmarks, geographical data and so forth I could care less about. If you remove the ability for terrorists to physically attack us within our countries border, what does it matter what information is out there?
anyone looking it up looks suspicious anyway.
Why?
Maybe an environmental activist wants to locate the reactors to study the pollution or safety of stored materials. Maybe my grandma wants to know if there is a reactor near her potential retirement home because she's afraid of nuclear stuff and wants to be far away.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
By it's very NATURE. It infuriates me to see things like this, and to see a good two-thirds of the country supporting the idea of a national ID card. You know what, I can't fucking stand it. You whining little pansies need to MOVE TO LONDON where there's a camera on every street if you like the idea of information being restricted for 'our safety'. America might be the only truely free country, with a bill of rights to back it up. People who want to live in a society that treats it's citizens this way have more places to choose from than I care to count. So excuse my attitude, but FUCK OFF.
Since 11 Sep 2001, there's been a lot of jibber-jabber by supposedly socially conscious Americans and pundits that we foolishly display our weaknesses to anyone and everyone that's listening. A well-meaning, but misguided, person finds it easy to reason that our greatest problem is the media's willingness to exploit our (greatest) problems. "Why, I can't even tune in to the nightly news without hearing about yet another security breach/scare at an airport and someone telling us that airport security still sucks." ... Doesn't this smack a little of blaming the messenger? Someone who exploits the message to do wrong is clearly to blame, but aren't those that are
regularly told of the security holes also responsible when other people get hurt? I call it negligence.
But here we are and the bipartisan, belligerent cries have struck a chord with our less-is-more (when it comes to individual rights) Administration. Suddenly, the information is to blame, and not the people that neglect to fix the problems that have been exposed. Does this sound like Security by Obscurity to anyone? The American people have a right to know our inadequacies. It's just too damn bad that we didn't give a damn before 11 Sep 2001 -- and we don't really give a damn after it. Instead, we've given Bush carte blanche and he's telling us to put our heads in the sand... Well, here we go.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
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Why wasn't this so obvious before? Daddy Bush is pulling the strings behind the scenes. Look at the appointments G.W. has made..every one one of his daddy's cronies from Cheney on down! Not a single one of them under 60 either...doesn't this seem strange for a 'young' president? Add to this the fact that Daddy Bush used to head the CIA, and the administration's terrorist policy becomes crystal clear. It's DADDY BUSH'S policy we're seeing here.
Right... It took a hell of a lot of brain power, and classified information to crash a f***ing plane into the WTC.
The focus of anti-terrorist efforts should be security rather than obsecurity. Would you rather live in a country where it's illegial for reporters to tell the public that airlines are vulnerable (obsecurity) or a world where we actually address the security problems and make the airlines more secure (security)?
This path of restricting information, that is taken by the government as a solution to all problems, must not continue. The process of natural selection will ensure that the USA has no future if this continues to be the means of public protection. Just as with the former Soviet Union, restricting information will only lead to the downfall of our country; and because of the powerful position we are in-it will lead to global instability.
Something dramatic must be done soon to turn around this remnant of WWII. We've seen time and time again that groups of people sending mail to government officals has made no effect in even the most insignificant issues. So the only question here is what is to be done that will cause an about face in this 50 year old communist policy?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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You can still get such things from Loompanics.
Al-Queda has demonstrated that they already know how to build bombs. And this info has been available for years. It's not a big deal at this point.
Congress did NOT pass a law abridging free speech in this case.
Apparently, the materials are ON LOAN from the government to these "depository libraries". The government owns these materials. It can do what it wants with them. Having the librarian destroy them just saved the cost of shipping them back so the govt. could destroy them. Perhaps it would have made less waves if they had shipped them back and destroyed them themselves.
So, if you want to hire a bunch of guys, do a survey of all the water systems in the US and then publish it, go ahead. If the government then refuses to allow you to publish, then you have a 1st ammendment case.
As representatives of the people, the government determined that the people desired this information only to the extent that it would not jeopardize our lives.
You can hardly argue that the government fails to represent The People in this case. The vast majority would agree that we are better off without uncontrolled access to this information.
There is a fine line that must be walked. Take away too much information, and we end up with Chernobyl--a classic example of what happens without an informed, active environmental lobby. Give out too much information and we end up with terrorists knowing where the Cole is docked and just where to ram it.
The fact that we are having this argument on /. and in the media is encouraging. When people are afraid to dialog like this; afraid to be controversial, that's when I'll be afraid.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
All open source software used in critical applications
is to become closed source immediately. Apparently
hackers and terrorists can read through the source, if it's made available and may
discover bugs, which can be exploited to harm the American way of life.
Removing access to the source code, and making reverse engineering illegal,
is clearly preferable and safer.
This event seems to be the latest in a string of events our government justifies in the name of "national security". Unfortunately, these actions will make us LESS secure in the long run.
Destroying information in public libraries, restricting requests through the Freedom of Information Act, Bush's executive order that allows a sitting president to seal presidential records indefinitely - all of these events result in less information for the public to properly judge the actions of our government. This is inexcusable in a republic.
Without public accountability, our elected leaders will have carte blanche to commit aggregious acts in the name of our country. Any illegal actions that they take, clouded in executive priviledge and secrecy, could very well sow the seeds for future terrorist attacks.
We need to know exactly what our government is doing, particularly while we are at "war". The only way we will win a "war" against terrorism is to stand the moral high ground, and wage it with justified, measured response. If our government begins to wage it with illegal and extreme methods (in our name and without our knowledge) we are assured to locked in a vicious cycle of retribution and revenge that will only hurt ourselves in the long run.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
A) By making each piece of sensitive information harder to get to, you make it exponentially more time consuming to query FROM vast realms of it. e.g., if the terrorists wanted to know the exact engineering specifications used for all the nuclear plants around the country to look for a particularly weak design.
B) By making information harder to come by, we can up the ante by forcing the terrorists as a GROUP, to become more sophisticated/educated. e.g., the size of the effort rules out the few top level people, but the scope/difficult rules out the average ignorant terrorist.
C) By making information harder to come by, we can make the act of looking for that information much riskier. For instance, rather than merely having to go online or to any public library (anonymously), they must go to a few enumerated locations and risk being spotted and/or creating a trail after the fact.
So, by this logic, the only terrorists left will be those who are patient, intelligent, and willing to take incredible risks. By circumventing the flow of information you won't make the terrorists go away, you know. Instead you'll make them smarter, more educated, make them plan more carefully, and make them REALLY commit to a task mentally and spiritually, becuase they will know the risks are great.
How does this argument end up being for the destruction of public records?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I just watched "Saving Private Ryan" last weekend, broadcast in its entirety, unedited, on ABC, during prime time. The word "fuck" was used several times, and the violence was extremely graphic. No one got arrested.
Based on this, apparently you are incorrect. (I'm still waiting for the word "cunt" but I'll bet it's coming soon, and I'll bet it shows up on Fox Network.) There is a complex set of regulatory guidelines which create standards and practices for broadcast television.
Off on a tangent: If Thomas Jefferson tuned into television today, he'd probably puke into his fucking 3-cornered hat. "We should have been more clear about the whole 'make no law' thing," he'd probably say.
Kinkos might refuse to copy a bestiality graphic, but not because it's illegal. The corporation, Kinko's, has a set of guidelines for itself. They don't want to be in the business of duplicating bestiality images. I used to co-manage a large copy shop in Houston, and we'd copy just about anything. The only time we refused to copy something, it was brochures for the local KKK, but that was just because, well, I hate the KKK. But that was our decision as a shop.
As far as I know, there are very few pictures that are truly illegal to print. Our lawyers told us not to worry, unless someone brought child porn in, or wanted to copy money. (There are strict rules about how money can be copied. No, it is not totally illegal, but you're not allowed to just duplicate it.)
I did not mean that the SC can just throw out parts of the Constitution. Sorry if I was unclear.
Isn't it possible to come to a middle way?
like not every idiot can get the data they want but that they have to prove where for they need it.
And thus preserving the knowledge instead of destroying it.
I mean generally speaking not everybody needs to get this information so that when students some how need to know something about how an airport is constructed to can get that info. And by making it restricted will raise the barrier for obtaining the information.
Likely the cowed populace will ask for even more disenfranchisements.
Another one to add is the film Rollerball which fits the same genre of obscure sci fi. A short but key scene deals with the electronic archive which has been used to effectively destroy key information through technological obselecence. There a few large corporations have taken over the planet and run the media and other information channels to keep the masses under control. Is this the path that policy makers wish to chose?
Destroying access to information won't do anything except hurt U.S. citizens. It's a rather unpatriotic move considering the countries background in freedom and openness. It certainly looks like win (or at least a major concession) for "the forces of evil". However, it could be a key tool in certain political agendas.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Reporter's blather in article, supported by quoting various hysterical people (or, probably, selecting only their most hysterical-sounding quotes): the usual assumptions that this is a mere first step in an inevitable long march designed to lock the American people into perpetual ignorance.
Relevant factoid: the Bush administration started by canning Clinton's last-minute imposition of higher restrictions on arsenic levels in water at the national level; claimed it needed time to carefully review the issue before codifying such an imposition; took tons of flak from Democrats and "greens" for "increasing levels of arsenic in our nation's water supply"; waited until after the 2001-09-11 attacks (about last week, I think) to quietly restore the Clinton restriction, with little fanfare or applause from Democrats/greens as far as I could see (especially compared with news coverage of the issue earlier this year).
Does this suggest the Bush administration is using the 09-11 attack to effect environmental protection under the cover of darkness? I think not; rather, I would hope that, after review, the decision turned out to be sound.
Implication: taking careful stock of sensitive information in public view and selectively having some copies of it, especially convenientally accessible copies, rendered inaccessible (e.g. take info off web, destroy a few CD-ROMs) until further review and/or security can be implemented seems not only wise, but consistent with other things this Administration has done, even if some of those things are out of step with the far-right, pro-business agenda with which its critics charge it.
Sad fact: this action is too-often compared with the DMCA, the SSSCA, copy protection, and so on, but the most important message we can send to our government today is, YES, you have a duty to carefully consider which public information should be conveniently accessible (and we'll help you make those sorts of decisions), but you should get the heck out of the business of allowing or sponsoring censorship solely to prop up failing business models being employed by corporate America.
The reason that's a "sad fact" is that the latter specific message is going to be swamped by the vastly-easier-to-flyswat general version that says "any form of censorship is evil", even when it amounts to merely making certain convenient collections of data less trivial to access remotely, even when it is clearly necessary, at least in the short term, for national-defense purposes.
Think about it folks: Jack Valenti is now being enlisted as a friend in defense of this nation against terrorists, to encourage the movie industry to support the war effort a la WWII, etc. As such, he (or, more precisely, his support of what amounts to legalized terror waged against those who share info on, e.g., how to view DVDs on "hacker OSes" like GNU/Linux) cannot simply be broad-brushed as "evil" when most Americans are more concerned about true terrorism than complete freedom to view DVDs.
So "we" have to be much more incisive in the way we simultaneously oppose arbitrary restrictions on the free flow of information among peers and yet support the choice of people to unite to form a common defense against external attack.
Knee-jerk ranting against practical national-defense measures, especially done just to make Bush and/or Republicans look bad, won't get the job done -- it'll actually make things worse (we'll lose more civil liberties, lose the war against global terrorism, or perhaps both).
(Note that if you really don't support any form of censorship, even defense, then go ahead and make that argument as you see fit. I happen to think most people who think all forms of censorship are equally evil haven't really thought the issues through carefully or at least considered which battles are worth fighting today. Even "extremists" like RMS and the FSF finally chose to "censor", or limit, access to their systems -- their information, if you will -- after some 20 years of being, practically, password-free. Even the purest possible spokesman against all forms of censorship might tend to lose his powers of persuasion after being taken out by a suitcase nuke! So please realize that freedoms and rights are abstract concepts, made practical by adhering to them as much as possible, and no further than that.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
As far as these matrerials being "on loan" it is my understanding that surveys produced with public money by a government agency are not copyrightable (or not supposed to be) and that the information contained therein is public domain.
By asking libraries to destroy these materals the agency asking for destruction is asserting there athority over the librarian and library (that they might not actually have) and attempting to withdraw some information from the public domain. That is they are taking something away from us that they had forced us to pay for already.
As far as "too much information" allowing terrorists to know where the U.S.S Cole is docked, that's jsut laughable. It's a fucking big ship! how the fuck are you going to hide it? put everyone under house arrest and higher snbipers to take out anyone near a port who is not authorized to work there that day?
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"When the horse is gone, the fool shuts the stable door."
Since the 9/11 attack, a disturbing pattern has emerged. The rights of law abiding citizens are being curtailed without much effect on those who would enter this country and commit terrorist acts.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
"We" are not, in that "we" includes me, and I am not, castigating the CIA. Not yet. Little has been offered to show that the Sept 11 events were preventable without superhuman efficiency and draconian surveillance.
Under an argument similar to yours, the government would be outlawing box cutters -- heck, we know they can be used for highjacking. We'd also be outlawing airplanes, since they can be highjacked. We'd outlaw trucks and trains, since they too can carry a massively destructive load of kinetic energy, to say nothing of their fuel. TV often broadcasts pictures of the New York skyline -- maybe ben Laden got his idea from a transition pan in "Friends". Better ban that, too... after all, wouldn't we be remiss if someday someone did get the idea from TV?
The problem with that is, the only way to stop people from getting the "bad" ideas is to stop them from having ideas at all. That price is too high to pay.
It might be counterintuitive, but the experience of the software industry has shown that the best solution is more openness, not less. Hiding information doesn't protect the information, and it doesn't protect people. We should be extremely wary of government directives to destroy records... too many people seem to think, "Well, I'm unlikely to need a report on dams, so OK."
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
This country was founded and GOVERNED by self-made experts. If I want to become an expert on bio-terrorism, computer security, US water distribution systems, nuclear weapons, or post-modern cinema, am I going to be told:
"No, you don't need to and are not allowed, but here's a fine job at McDonalds; we're saving all those uninteresting curiosities for select Harvard graduates with connections since we only trust people who were raised and work in the establishment already."
I think maybe the reason this so agitates me (and many of you) is that I am a self-educated college-dropout security and technology "expert" with a successful consulting career. Many of America's greatest "expert" figures past and present: Franklin, Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, Ellison, Dell, Edison, Turner, F Scott Fitzgerald, were not college graduates.
Is denial of information not most importantly an insult to the merits of self-education and curiosity? Isn't that why it rightfully pisses off this community?
Braddock Gaskill
Come on, it's plainly obvious how it would have worked:
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Who was it that said when all you have is a hammer, it's tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail?
.. at least I haven't been pulled over for not showing a flag ..
That's the mentality I see running the show inside the Beltway these days. When we need smarter security, we get dumb ideas like this -- and this one is worse than useless, because it makes people feel safer without actually providing any protection.
That's the upside of it. The downside is that now anyone worried that someone is going to find evidence of their scam, or screwup, in our Federal Depository Libraries can get that evidence destroyed under the watchful eyes of U.S. Marshals and not only can we not stop it, most of us won't even know when it happens.
Oh well
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
What police state?
You guys are just tripping.
Members of the public who want to use reading rooms at federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service must now make an appointment and be escorted by an employee to ensure that information is not misused.
How exactly do they do this? Does this employee escort you for your lifetime to make sure you don't "misuse" this information?
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
What's to stop a terrorist from just going to school in the USA and learning all the particulars they want? Here in Canada, there are flyers all over the place on "Education in the USA". Engineering is the same no matter where you go, as well. All you need are textbooks, which, last time I checked, you didn't need ID and a security clearance to buy. If that happens, I'm going to get real worried.
The only defence against terrorists is an educated, thinking populace. Unfortunately, an educated, thinking populace doesn't knuckle under to government propaganda and control quite as easily as an ignorant, reflexive populace. The strengths of our countries (I'm Canadian) is that we are free to exhange information and ideas to -better- ourselves. It's the free discource of information that's given us the economoies we take for granted. I fear this has been forgotton by those who are too easily scared by sensationalist media, and too easily capitalized on my power-hungry politicians.
..don't panic
Where do you read anything in the fourth amendment that says anything about email headers? I see persons, houses, papers, and effects. Email headers literally aren't any of those things, any more than email itself is "speech" in the literal sense.
What about wiretaps? Remember the Olmstead case of 1928? Our Supreme Court essentially followed your advice and took the Fourth Amendment literally. Since the cops could tap the wires on the public easements (and never set foot in your home), no warrants were required. This was the rule until 1967's Katz v. United States.
Of course, you might say that perhaps we should amend the constitution to add protections as the plain language of the amendments no longer track their spirit. But of course amending the constitution is incredibly difficult, and I daresay that codifying even the limited rights we enjoy right now would be impossible in today's political climate.
Every year, the Freedom Forum conducts a national survey to measure the general public's attitudes about the about the First Amendment. According to the poll conducted this summer, the percentage of Americans who said they strongly agreed with the statement "the First Amendment goes to far in the rights it guarantees" increased from 10% to 29%. Another 10% "mildly agree." That's 39% of the population, plus or minus 3%. I doubt the First Amendment as written to day would be ratified by the states with those numbers.
This survey was conducted in May and June, 2001 by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut. I cringe at the thought of what results 2002's survey will reveal.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
There are some very important points here. The above is something from the Russell-Einstein manifesto, and its essense: That weapons of mass destruction are available and in such a quantity it is not difficult to kill mankind, and even if those weapons are destroyed, the knowledge will always be there, and the weapons can be rebuilt within a short time if necessary.
Thus, for the survival of our species, there is no option but to make an end to all conditions were weapons of mass destruction may be deployed.
This is no less important today, because today, those weapons are so easily available.
Obviously, there are risks of openness, but a closed society will be unbearable, and most probably no more secure.
Real security can only be achieved by renouncing war.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
-miko
TV often broadcasts pictures of the New York skyline -- maybe ben Laden got his idea from a transition pan in "Friends". Better ban that, too... after all, wouldn't we be remiss if someday someone did get the idea from TV?
Obviously, we need to restrict all crime dramas and action cop films from creating original ideas. The only crimes that they should be able to depict are crimes that have already happened several times, and are already widely known. Otherwise, they could be used as ideas by terrorists.
And Tom Clancy should have the same restrictions. Or at least it should be against the law to translate his books to Arabic.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
"....Our federal tax dollars should be spent on defense and national infrastructure, not on foreign aid to bolster corporate sales penetration into foreign markets..." Isnt part of our national infrastructure an international system of commerce?
"Let's destroy the observatory so this will never happen again!" So spaketh Moe.
Or so the ecologists say.
An eagle is swift. A lion is strong. An American society is free.
Each of these strengths comes with a cost. An eagle isn't as silent as an owl. A lion doesn't have the endurance of a camel. And we don't have the ability to control information that a totalitarian state does.
This is just a poetic way of saying that we shouldn't ape the practices of politically backward regimes just because in a few tactical situations they have a narrow and ultimately insignificant advantage. All past attempts to cross the camel and the lion have had predictably unsatisfactory results. Manzanar didn't help us against the Japanese in WW2 and McCarthyism if anything hampered succeeding decades of anti-communism.
At best, these sort of measures are a kind of infantile wishful thinking: somehow if we take measures which seem strong, we will have a strong defense. It is perhaps symtomatic of not having a coherent strategy for dealing with the terrorist challenge, that we are doing everything we can think of. A wise person once said, if you don't think too well, you had better not think too much.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When you say "on loan from the government" it brings up the fact that the government is "...of the people, by the people, for the people...". Therefore this information is our property...we created it, we own it, and we deserve to have access to it.
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
I just bought a new 2002 calendar and flipped open the first page. It says "January, 1984"
What gives?
Vulgrin the Sigless
I sig, therefore I am.
Yes you do. Especially if the theater's on fire. You probably have a moral obligation to tell them.
Just because the government doesn't want the people sitting in the theater to know it's on fire (just carry on watching the movie, it'll all be okay), doesn't mean they can stop you from telling them. That's the whole point of the freedom of speech guarantees in the US constitution.
Broader question: if the government knows the theater's on fire, does it have an obligation to tell the people?
Satan and I discussed Mr. Ashcroft's future plans. /., I'm telling you right now, you are being judged. Consider your fate and prey for mercy.
The Prince of Darkness, in his characteristic kindness kept trying to assure me that the standard fare of a thousand years of drowning in rivers of blood and excrement followed with an eternity of being eaten alive by maggots and assorted virmin and all the rest of that standard Hell fare was good enough for any sinner. Even Ashcroft.
But the big guy knows himself all to well and he is well aware that he always errs on the side of timidity and that's why he comes over so often to consult with me because he knows I'm a real hard ass.
I pointed out that this guy is not just a typical asshole like Bush, but a real sonofabitch that needs The Special Treatment(TM).
Satan gasped at the suggestion. But he knew I was serious. I could see he was shook up over the matter so I poured him another tea.
Look man, I said to the Lord of Darkness, this sonofafuck doesn't even wear cool wear uniforms. I mean the nazis did this book burning shit, sure, but at least they had stylin' Mercedes and death's head tie pins and swastikas and torch lit grope-a-rama rallies and all that good shit. This guy is just a dumb fuck with no sense of style. We can't let that go unpunuished. I say give him the works.
Satan seemed to think I was overdoing it a bit. He left still unpersuaded that Ashcroft really deserves The Special Treatment(TM) but I'm pushing for it as long as this shit keeps up.
Ashcroft, if you or your lackeys read
...India ... Were a lot of such restrictions are there (like restrictions on reasonably accurate local maps etc.). Most of these rules are carry over from the period when British ruled India (BTW British left India in 1947). But inspite of the rules those who really need, get them anyway... I guess :-)
The best way to attack complexity is simplicity. If we can force the enemy into the kinds of elaborate attacks that they are not properly organized to carry out, we have won.
If we learned anything from Sep. 11, it should be that. The tactic used on September 11 was simplicity itself; it was put together from information that anybody who flew could gather with his own two eyes. Granted, flight training for at least two people was important, but it is hard to beleive that even post Sep. 11 that a determined terrorist network can't arrange to get this somewhere. If reservoirs are targetted by some future, it won't be by some elaborate tactic that requries detailed engineering plans, but by something incredibly simple based on observations that can be patiently gathered over several years. For example you could go with a truck bomb or even a backhoe and take out the aqueducts supplying a major city. It doesn't take blueprints to locate these, just common sense and a little time.
This is what we should be thinking about -- the kind of attack that a determined, resourceful enemy could mount without the support of an elaborate and closely coordinated organization. Any defense that requires the enemy to be less intelligent, determined and resourceful than we are is no defense.
I think the right response to security vulnerabilities is to expose them, not to hide them. This means seeing opporuntities for simple but devestating attacks that our most intelligent and resourceful people can find.
For that reason, if we are really serious about hardening our national defenses, we should institute a national competition among engineering students to design the most effective terrorist attack, using the very kinds of public information that the Bush administration is trying to hide. To win, you'd have to have a plan to acquire the resources you needed (with points awarded practical demonstrations); you could win in the "Most Horrific" category for sheer numbers of people killed (e.g. WTC), or the "Most Frightening" category for the attack that affects the most day to day lives (e.g. anthrax).
This kind of contest would be hard to get off the ground, because the results would be frightening and politicians wouldn't like this. It would require that administrators of public and private installations sit up and take action when their facilities are implicated in a potential terrorist attack. We may on occasion have to take drastic emergency action because of a simple but horrific vulnerability that some white hat hacker has discovered.
However, I don't think this will in any way harm us, because the black hats are already at work on this, and we may even be able to forstall some attacks before they happen. We can't rely just on our security apparatus to do this. As they say in the open source movement, most of the smart people in the world don't work for you. Once we mined the best expertise of our police and intelligence people, we end up with the ideas of marginal value like purging our libraries. Far better to open the problem up to as many people as possible.
This suggestion first came to me as a joke, but the more I think about it the more deserving serious consideration it seems to me. Years ago in the Reagan administration, when I was an MIT student, we used to talk about the new defense grant policy of focusing on deaths-per-dollar. We BS'd this around quite a bit. My own contribution was to suggest picking up a waste 2x4 from a construction dumpster and start hitting people on the noggin (a sure winner if we take the common government assumption that staff time is free). However there were some people who had some seriously lethal ideas for cheap ways to kill lots of people. I'm pretty certain that if I could put together a dream team of some of these chemical and mechanical engineers, biologists, and overall smart people, we could think up a few things that the FBI hasn't.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't think that you've really represented what is being said. You've put things in absolutes more than most posts here have. No, government and corporations are not ALWAYS bad. The question is, are they ALWAYS good? And when they're not, what recourse do citizens have? Traditionally, corporations have, in practice, been given more legal rights and protections than individuals. A store can try overbilling me, and unless I catch it, I lose my money. But if I accidentally take somthing from a store, they can put me in jail. There are analogs with environmental law and pollution or just about anything else. The best way to nail bad corporate practices is to demonstrate a particular environment/trend/company practice and that requires information. The same goes for government. A single mistake always has plausable deniability.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Here's what's been removed.
>>fact that more than 1 million square feet were taken off the market that day
d e_Center.html
WTC had more than 1 million square feet closer to 10 million rentable. please see http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World_Tra
And you are correct downtown has leveled off and the hope is that it will start rising.
-Onepoint
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I can't find a reference right now, but Edward Teller was quoted as saying something that paraphrases to:
Classifying documents only marks the good stuff. If you publish everything, we'll bury them in paper.
This falls in that category. By making something difficult to access, you flag it as valuable.
-Zandr
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
I hereby place you under arrest for telling people how to colapse the Hoover Dam.
Sign here to agree to the above statement please.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I specifically singled out newspapers in my comment, because the 'press' (in the oldest sense) tends to be very strict defenders of their right to print what they choose... and generally they choose not to print profanity, solely because of their image as a 'family paper'.
Actually, many newspapers will print 'fuck' and similar language without using ***, where the editors feel that the word is important to the article.
And yes, newspapers can print 'the seven dirty words', without censure by the government. Many papers have printed all or part of George Carlin's original monologue over the years.
Back in 1995, as part of a response to the CDA, the Philadelphia City newspaper and Harper's magazine printed the seven dirty words in reporting on an online article by the American Reporter.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
---Would we castigate the airline industry for allowing terrorists to take over their planes and crash them into skyscrapers? Well, apparently not. Instead we give the airlines tons of money so they can continue to make a profit while their revenues decline.---
It's worse than that.
First, consider that the fact that an airline goes bankrupt doesn't mean the planes stop flying. Plane routes will continue to be flown for as long as they are profitable. If they cease to be profitable, they will very RIGHTLY not be flown. In this case, demand for airline flights is going to fall, because people just aren't as eager to fly. This means that the real market for airline flights is going to shrink: flying is going to become less profitable. But the government, obvlivious to this, is going to keep on trying to fund the airlines in an attempt to get as many flights flown as there used to be BEFORE people became much more averse to flying. The result is, again, huge profits to an industry that's not providing services to anyone at the level they are getting funded.
Then consider stock differentials due to risk. People are willing to pay certain prices for certain stocks depending on how risky they are. The airlines have a certain level of risk that factors in even the offchance of things like this. By basically covering any shortfalls, the government has destroyed these risk differentials.
> Isnt part of our national infrastructure an international system of commerce?
Umm, no. That would be an *international* infrastructure, which is not authorized by the Constitution. The federal government is of course explicitly authorized to conduct foreign policy and enter into trade agreements, but it is in no way authorized to spend its time and our tax money working for large corporations. Trade agreements are about generic ground rules that individuals and organizations wishing to engage in commerce between two or more nations must follow in order to avoid problems with any of the participating governments--but what our federal government does goes ar beyond this. It brokers special deals and breaks for corporations, which veers off from setting ground rules for trade into actually becoming a first party to that trade. My favorite example of this is how our government gives loans to foreign nations and then arranges to forgive parts of the debt through opening up that area for more of our corporate commerce--the federal government should in no way be giving my tax dollars away in order to negotiate a lower tariff for large corporations.
Again, just my opinion on the matter...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Hey, I got an idea! Lets burn the location of New York. That will make you feel good? We'll hide our selves because we're strong!
There is a middle ground. Whether we're following the right path on that middle ground is up for debate. I consistently test as a politcal Centrist, so I feel insulted when people form a straw man argument out of my statement.
The best solution in the software industry is more openness *to those who are interested in improving/learning from the source*. I sincerely doubt that many black hats add anything of value back to a project. (This analogy that we're on doesn't correlate well enough with what the gov is doing).
I recommend you all read Ayn Rand's Anthem. Its a powerful statement about reverse-engineering and fascist control. And its only 100 pages, so if you aren't used to looking at paper, it shouldn't hurt your eyes.
I think all slashdotters should be familiar with this simple, short story.
NOW LEFT THE BUILDING!!!
Standby for more repressive laws and more secret meetings. Not that you non-voters care any. The
WTC incident is a ploy. As much as terrorists might be responsible so could this be an inside job, designed to manipulate.
What if Timothy McVeigh wasn't a disillusioned patriot? What if he was doing a dangerous job that he shouldn't have been caught doing, but knew the risks? (Think IMF -- "The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions". How do we know an IMF isn't a real agency? We wouldn't if you remeber the TV show.)
Who has the most to gain by the U.S. becoming more repressive?
All we have to do is change our intereference-based foreign policy and some of the global animosity from extremists will begin to be less important.
Does this mean that we (for example) should not kill terrorists today. No. Why not? Because they are a threat to the future. What is does mean is that we should not kill Egytians today because their ancestors were killing Romans. There is a difference, and if you cannot see that difference, then find some books and read until you are educated, then we can discuss it.
28,874 persons died from firearm.
19,102 persons died of drug-induced causes.
Some simple math says that a few million people (in the US) die each year. Why not get the big ones? your number one (Alzheimer) is close to old age. why not include smoking , or car accidents in it. Or even better, look at the word population, how many people die of hunger?
For a number of years, American libraries
and book stores have been sponsoring a
"banned books week" to raise public awareness about the
evils of censorship. A typical scare story mentioned
during this celebration might involve some overly
sensitive partents complaining about drug references in
"The Wizzard of Oz." or whatever, as if such misguided
goofball "challenges"
are a great threat to our freedom.
So I wonder what the American Library Association's position
is on the censorship described in this thread? Will they
mention it during next years "banned books week?"
(We're not in Kansas anymore!)
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
Well golly there Miss Ruby; did my bad old .45 Colt Army revolver get up again and take a shot at you?
Hmmmm....cold steel, some brass, lead and fulminate of mercury now, somehow, HAS LIFE!
IT'S ALIVE exclaimed John ASScroft; IT'S ALIVE!
WHEN will people UNDERSTAND the FACT that INANIMATE OBJECTS CAN'AT DO A DAMNED THING, unless
it is CONTOLLED BY A HUMAN!!!!
A gun CAN'T kill, it IS the controlling person that aims, shoots and kills another, the gun can't tell steel from flesh!
Give up freedom and liberty for a bit of security, and you will get, nor deserve NEITHER!
*Oh I'll happily give up my right to bear my child so the big brave ATF agent can kill my daddy...*
Armed assault by the agents of governmental bodies are a REAL form of SOCIAL TERRORISM!
We the SHEEPLE of the UNFIT states of Amooica, and to the dictatorship to which we bow; one nation, in control of many; with despotism, and murderous control over all!
Bush bless us will you please; you're a "god" we all "love"; so, stand upon us...don't trrust us, to be on our own until you fingerprint us all...
FUCK THIS HOMELAND INSECURITY PARANOID DELUSIONS!!
GROW UP...FIGHT BACK!
WE DO HAVE THAT RIGHT!
USE OF FORCE UPON A FORCE BENT ON DICTATING WHAT YOU DO IS NOT THE LAW, BUT TERRORISM!
206.39.38.2, DDN-BLK-36, DOD NET INFO CENTER. 800.365.3642 206.36.0.0-206.39.255.255 NET RANGE.