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DOJ Already Monitoring Cable Internet Traffic
According to this Wired News article, the Justice Department is already using its new powers under the USA Patriot Act to obtain subscribers' identities and other information from cable operators without judicial oversight under Section 211 of the new legislation. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff also says that the act has allowed police to obtain IP addresses of cable subscribers and has enabled DOJ to obtain court orders for ISP logs outside a court's traditional jurisdiction. The Senate Judiciary Committee has convened hearings to review the impact of the Bush administration's actions on civil liberties, but A.G. Ashcroft is not scheduled to appear until December 6. One wonders what effect the upcoming cable failure will have on government surveilance of the potentially criminal citizenry.
Whats not mentioned in the register article (but recently had an article on slashdot) is TLS with SMTP - most people have no clue what this is, and how much of a potential headache it can be for carnivore operators to monitor smtp traffic.
:)
Carnivores purpose is twofold - to sniff your mail obviously, but dont forget it also builds tables of who emails who, and makes it easy for the carnivore operator to track who is associated with who. PGP doesnt help here since it just encrypts the message. However TLS combined with PGP does since it does its mailfrom and rcptto _after_ starttls is issued. Next time you set up a MTA make sure it has TLS support! Shameless plug: TLS for Dummies.
On a side note, dont forget you can tunnel your web proxy via stunnel, assuming you can talk the proxy operator into installing it for you
The most disturbing suspension of civil liberties is the power the Bush administration has given itself to try suspected terrorists in secret military tribunals - all non-US citizens, even long time residents of the United States, can be tried and sentenced in secret military courts.
0 8_1.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/vvny/20011126/lo/301
If you're non-US citizen residing in the United States, you should be extremely worried.
Quite a few European countries have had problems with terrorosts for years. The UK with the IRA, the Spanish with the Basque (sp?) seperatists etc etc.
In these countries laws on human rights and free speach prevail. (Albeit precariously sometimes, I admit!)
The US, confronted with some of its first terrorist attacks imediatly goes into panic, ignoring the spirit of its consitution.
Not. Jingoistic bunk.
UK Antitterrorism legislation has been around for more than a decade, provoked precisely by the IRA issues. It, too, had sunsetted but repetitively renewed investigatory powers and it, too, treats hackers as terrorists.
It was one of the models from which PATRIOT/USA was cast.
No doubt, the US fell to the standards of its EU allies in adopting PATRIOT/USA, focusing more on getting trains to run on time to defend a nation than to maintain a nation worth defending. No doubt, it was not the American thing to do.
But far from being an icon of liberty, the EU legislation was the harbinger of what happened here.
Most cable modem DHCP pools issue IP addresses based on the MAC address of the requesting device.
How to Set the MAC Address For Dummies:
[root@box]# ifdown eth0
[root@box]# ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:14:D9:AC:D3:12
[root@box]# ifup eth0
This should get you a new IP address on most cable modem services. Replace the MAC address (that string with 5 colons) with any similar string in the format
00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
..where each X is a value from 0-9 or A-F.
Write a script and set it as a cronjob. If your IP is changing every 15 minutes they're going to have a hell of a time keeping tabs on you. If thousands of cable users' IPs are changing every 15 minutes they're going to have a hell of a time keeping tabs on anyone.
A simple IP address is not big deal. What would they do with that?
21:14 192.168.0.1 -> http www.2600.org
21:14 192.168.0.1 -> nntp news.premium.com
21:35 192.168.0.1 -> http astalavista.box.sk
21:40 192.168.0.1 -> http www.princeton.edu
21:42 192.168.0.1 -> http www.slashdot.org
21:43 192.168.0.1 -> http www.islamicjihad.com
21:44 192.168.0.1 -> http goatse.cx
21:45 192.168.0.1 -> irc irc.dalnet.net
21:50 192.168.0.1 -> http gnutellahosts.com
21:53 192.168.0.1 -> http dormroom.school.edu
.
.
.
Looks like probable cause for a search warrant for software piracy, terrorist activity, and obscene pornography to me. And I can already picture the prosecution detailing what's on each selectively chosen site, outlining your criminal state of mind for a jury. (Unless you're not a U.S. citizen, in which case you may well be before a military tribunal).
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag