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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.
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
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 ]
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.
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
Umm... In my opinion that is the wrong way of looking at it.
Think about it. These documents are, in effect, a way of saying "security weakness". By making the documents closed, we are promoting security through obscurity, which has been proved time and time again not to work.
Perhaps instead we should be concentrating more on how to secure those places which the documents, well..., document. We've already seen from September 11th that terrorists and the like are capable of incredible ingenuity, and we must not forget that they are capable of doing their own research - just because we consider them to be mad, doesn't mean that they are stupid.
Or to put it another way, burning all of the documents that happen to detail airplane security and it's weaknesses will not stop hijackers from taking a plane. ACTING on those documents and improving security will.
What was the example in the article - a cd containing a dam and resevoir survey? So why not consider the ways that the water system can be attacked, and then safe-guard against these kind of attacks?
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!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 -
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
Actually, lots of people would have had a problem with it if they hadn't released it in the first place - hence the popularity of websites purporting to have "leaked government files" and such like. People like to know what their government is up to in america, given that the government is supposed to be working for them, not vice versa.
How long before 1984 is removed from the libraries???
Choice of masters is not freedom.
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.
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
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)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course I do. Only the shadow knows....
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
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.
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
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
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...
"Security through obscurity" is not bad. It's only bad when it's your only line of defense. As an extreme example, I would be really upset if my credit card information was published online, but I could still cancel the card and have various insurance against abuses. Similarly, we shouldn't hand terrorists information to use against us, but we also shouldn't remain under any delusion that pulling documents is all the security we need.
IMHO, during the debate over destroying/not publishing government data you need to ask several questions before restricting information:
- Would a terrorist really want or need this information?
- Does not publishing this information make the terrorist's job substantially more difficult? In particular, how easily might he do his own research or find the same info in other sources?
- Will beneficial programs (including security) be able to continue with little disruption after this information is removed?
- Will people continue to improve security and minimize weaknesses in the absence of these publications?
Unless the answer to all these question is yes, I'd say there is no justification for removing the documents in question. It is particularly important that physical security be continued even in the absence of detailed public accountability. The department of defense certainly maintains efforts to promote their security without ever publishing lists of weaknesses, but less well-funded and less paranoid agencies may not even notice vulnerabilities in the absence of external review.There will always be government (and for that matter, corporate) secrets, and they have a valid place in a security scheme, but just not the only line of defense. I can believe that there are some things that might be too compromising, but I hope that the US government continues to record what was destroyed and why, and that a copy be stored somewhere to await a more peaceful time.
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
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.
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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.
Sure, it's bad to let a potential terrorist gain access to info about a nuclear plant that may help them kill millions.
Which, for all you pro-nukers out there, may be a good reason *not* to build nuclear power plants...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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.
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.
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.
...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...
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
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
>
> This guy has got to be out of his mind...
No, he's not. He's doing his job, which is to retard the development of biotechnology.
He's a bioethicist, not a biologist or bioengineer. That means he knows a bit about how living things work, and everything about why biologists and bioengineers shouldn't be allowed to work on 'em.
(It sounds like I'm speaking in irony, but I'm not. Think about it. When was the last time a bioethicist said "Yeah, this is pretty cool tech, let's build it"? I mean, they're always saying "Wow, sounds promising, but dangerous. Better ban research in that area for 20 years 'till we get a handle on the consequences.")
100,000 years ago, he called himself a pyroethicist, and if we hadn't clubbed his kind into submission, we'd still be living in caves and eating raw meat. ("Well, we see the potential for fire, but look at what happens when it gets out of controlTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKOOF")
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.
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
Nor anything essential for you to conduct a full and happy life. Why do you need detailed information about the structure of the Hoover Dam, for crissake?
You might live down stream from the dam and want to know the possiblity/probablity of complete collaspe if some nut wanted to ram a plane into it. I really doubt that nut would want that information at all, or even most of the information being removed.
There is legitmate reasons about wanting data about things near where you live or want to live. Would you like to know that a chemical plant exchanges its water near where the cities intake is? Most of this information was used to calculate risks in areas and to know who is doing what. Taking it away does nothing to really help national security, but does everything to pervent people from being informed about what the government and others are doing to the communities in which they live.
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.
Maybe because I'm studying Civil Engineering, moron.
But more to the point, it's because the government has NO FUCKING BUSINESS telling me what I can and cannot read, write, say, or publish, nor may they dictate how or to whom I may pray, nor may they tell me what groups I may join. The government is EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN to do any of these things, and if it does so it has surrendered any claim of legitimacy it may have.
Detailed knowledge? Hardly. All you need is to read a college level physics textbook, or even apply a little common sense. In theory, the ideal place to hit it would at the base, where the stress is the greatest; however, this is also where the structure is the strongest, so you run the risk of not damaging the structure sufficiently to cause a catastrophic failure if you fail to hit it hard enough. Therefore, you probably want to hit the structure at it's thinnest point (top center) and try for a progressive failure -- make a small hole, and hope that the force of the water rushing out gradually causes more of the structure to fail. [actually the BEST way to burst a big dam is to burst a smaller one upstream]
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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.
By making the documents closed, we are promoting security through obscurity, which has been proved time and time again not to work.
Quick, what's my password?
I suppose what you really mean is that obscurity alone will not work.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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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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"?
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
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!"
Wouldn't be a problem if the US simply quit letting the "wrong people" into the country. We know what countries they come from. We know that they're male. We even know about how old they are.
Well, the fact is that even you're ancestors were not native Americans.
And, please can you change "letting the wrong people in" in "letting the wrong people out"?
We don't want all those American morons over here...
The thing is, that the whole world knows what kind of idiots live in the US.
The problem with the US is that it thinks that it is the most important country in the world, which in reality it isn't.
Nor anything essential for you to conduct a full and happy life. Why do you need detailed information about the structure of the Hoover Dam, for crissake?
:)
Any nut with a hijacked airliner can find the Hoover Dam, but it takes detailed knowledge to determine exactly where impact will create the most damage.
Do you also have armed guards for the people who built it? Best also get rid of all the records of Sir Barnes Wallace too
Likely the cowed populace will ask for even more disenfranchisements.
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.
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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'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
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.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
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.
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0111/07/tl.00.html
CNN Talkback Live
November 7, 2001
Torture: Should It Be an Option When Dealing With Terrorists?
It is offensive to even discuss it.
Have a NICE DAY!
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
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 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.
An e-mail header is definitely an effect, and arguably a paper since it serves precisely the same function as writing words on parchment.
As for Olmstead, the mistake is that once again, those electronic impulses are clearly a person's effects. Therefore warrants would be required even on public easements, because law enforcement would be intercepting your property while it is transit via courier--the courier being the telephone line.
Notice how very simplified that is--quite on purpose. It doesn't take interpretations of what the Founders meant and where their limits were--it just takes reducing any item which did not exist at the time of the Constitution's writing to its most basic functions and seeing whether it is therefore covered or not. One could call this process interpretation--I'd call it using common sense, personally--but if it is interpretation, then it's interpreting the modern item according to its function, not interpreting the Constitution to guess what it would have said about the modern item.
Just the way I see it, though...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
> 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