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Surveillance Update
Several things occurred within the past few days on the privacy/surveillance frontier. First, the EU Parliament decision we mentioned yesterday is being widely reported as an assault on privacy (the European press barely mentions the spam angle we covered yesterday). As far as I can tell, this decision will loosen the EU's protections against surveillance, but does not implement any spying itself - national governments are free to NOT spy on their citizens, in the (perhaps unlikely) event that they don't want to do so. In the U.S., the FBI will be increasing their general surveillance - that is, they'll be doing more surveillance unrelated to any suspected crime, using commercial databases, etc. We can expect the Bureau to be used for more overtly political uses in the future - spying on the not-in-power political parties is no longer prohibited and will, therefore, occur. The NYT has an interesting analysis. Finally, the Washington Post reports that banks will be creating a massive financial database/blacklist of terrorists, wife-beaters, anti-globalization protesters, etc.
But really... wouldn't a free big-screen high-definition plasma television in exchange for allowing the goverment to plant a camera behind the screen be great?! I want my Phillips Telescreen!
Learn to Play Go
That gets a big, fat PFFT from me. I didn't know George Dubya logged onto Slashdot as tps12.
Come on, man. The government does *not* need to be compiling a database worth of material on me. I haven't done anything. I'm not a terrorist. So why am I being investigated? That's just not cool.
Learn to Play Go
The question you should really be asking yourself is "Would I gladly give up a lot of privacy for a false impression of security?", because that's what is really happening.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
I've started carrying Orwell's 1984 around in my pocket with me now so that I can show people the parallels between it and what's going on in America today. I may have to buy more copies so I can start lending them out. This is absolutely ludicrous. Did Ashcroft ever consider that there were valid reasons for having those limitation on there in the first place??
The NRA's slogan "Vote Freedom First" seems kind of ludicrous when you consider that it was used in support of this administration. Mod me as flamebait if you must, but increased FBI powers and freedom are not in any way compatible.
On all fronts our freedom is being assaulted. Technological and now social. We don't even have a Congressman to write to and complain in this cse; where are the checks and balances on the FBI? Oh yes, in the hands of the man who just gave them broader powers. And, given their track record for reporting the information they receive to their superiors...
These are scary times.
However, that's not directly what I wanted to say. I'd instead like to point out the two main reasons we got to this point:
And you do it too. Every time you say, "I wish the federal government would just regulate <foo>" or "I can't believe those ball players/lawyers/neurosurgeons make so much money," you're demonstrating envy and righteousness. Realize that if you think someone you don't know owes you something just because of your circumstances or his, someone else thinks the same about you. Realize that if you have the power to take away another's liberties, he has the power to take away yours. The only way to combat this is to deny government the power to forcibly take away any of our liberties.
If you're not voting Libertarian, donating to the EFF, the ACLU or the Institute for Justice, and the NRA, your complaints about big government taking away all your freedoms one-by-one is pointless blather.
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In a masterful spin, Bush said:
"The FBI needed to change," said the president. "It was an organization full of fine people who loved America but the organization didn't meet the times."
Excuse me, but I don't see how increasing their monitoring capabilities has anything to do with a reorganization of the FBI.
The organization is broken, so we'll fix it by giving it more powers. Argh.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that I will gladly give up a little privacy in exchange for a lot of security.
is too dangerous by far -- how much is a little privacy? Who would you like to determine how much privacy you are allowed to keep versus your security? Unfortunately, we have already seen, in the month of May alone, how many breaches of security within the FBI? Insider trading, Carnivore overstepping its bounds, and the current disaster investigation are only the tip of the iceberg....As far as
...the American intelligence community is well within its Constitutional rights to create these databases and monitor our transmissions
... what Constitutional rights? The rights you allude to are rights of the citizens, not the police/investigative forces created to enforce the law. As much as I crave the feeling of security, the loss of privacy and the rest of my Constitutional rights you offer up in the name of this security will always be too high of a price to pay....we are from the government - we are here to help...
The problem with the intelligence communbity is lack of communication. They all report to the president but the president can't filter and remeber all the intelligence information that is passed his way. From what I understand the FBI handles all domestic crimes(i.e. kidnapping, bank robberies, inter-state crimes. ) The CIA gathers intelligence about foriegn powers. The NSA is electronic surveillance. And the NIS handles Illegal immigrants. These groups (some or all i don't remember) report the National Security Advisor to the President. What has been happening is that all the information the organizations gather get lost in the mix because of the large scale that they are. What needs to happen is that every report that the lowliest field agent files regardless of classification needs to be submitted to an independent but small group of experts with both clearence and access to all this information. Obviously this is alot of information so I believe they need to set up some sort of small and secure network to file and review all this info. Like I said I earlier I always believed this to be the job of the National Security advisor but I believe this has now been passed to the Office of Homeland Defense. What has been happening is shameful rather than try to improve communication between these agencies, the government tries to tighten up on our rights. Which happens to fall right in to step with what the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA want: A very monitored and restricted internet. Of course like most /. ers this is my antichrist. I only hope some one in this administration has enough balls and/or knowledge to see what is going on.
Semper Fidelis
It's all Politics
We can expect the Bureau to be used for more overtly political uses in the future - spying on the not-in-power political parties is no longer prohibited and will, therefore, occur. Finally, the Washington Post reports that banks will be creating a massive financial database/blacklist of terrorists, wife-beaters, anti-globalization protesters, etc. (emphasis mine)
I hope I don't have to point out the logical fallacies in the above argument - the above train of thought is so poorly constructed and hate-filled that it can't even begin to be taken seriously.
Michael, there's a reason you're not a journalist for anything more than Slashdot, and it isn't because you're too good, or there's a conservative conspiracy against your liberal views, etc. etc., it's because you are a horrible "journalist."
Michael writes stories like this every so often; he writes stories and headlines claiming far-out conspiracy angles as fact and generally spewing hatred and venom towards those he disagrees with.
It's unfortunate, because I agree with most [of the objective parts] of what Michael said, but he does it in such a silly, infantile manner that it's unbearable to read. Please, Michael, spare us the melodrama; this isn't the end of the world yet.
I have some unfortunate news for you, Michael: the "freedom" and "democracy" you no doubt feel you're trying to protect by [rightly] informing the citizenry does not approve of or recognize slander, hatred, or general whinyness as legitament forms of political discourse. You have done nothing, I repeat NOTHING to make your conspiracy angles and ranting seem credible. All you have done is stoop down to the level of those you're fighting against, and then gone lower.
In conclusion, I would like to resubmit my original suggestion to CmdrTaco and the Slashdot editorial board: fire Michael. He's detrimental to the credibility of this site, and his hatred and name-calling should not be given such a place of prominence. Please show him the door and strongly encourage him never to return.
Go ahead and mod me to oblivion, oh unthinking moderators: my karma can take a hit for the truth.
They're scared because they've been told to be scared. The shrieking hysteria emanating from TV sets, the reassuring paranoia that politicians advocate, the mass hallucination that is popular media. All of it.
People like to be scared, that's the reason why 1984 is so popular. Fear gives people a sense of place, the security that all they have to do is wrap themselves in a blanket and they can get on with doing nothing. Without fear, people would have to think, and would have to actually do something. People like to be scared, and that's what they're getting.
The one hope, the way to get out of this, is to move this critical mass all at once. Drag an entire mindset out of its creepy little hole with no light (but at least it's warm there). If there's one thing that fear instills, it's an affinity with leadership - sombody else that's making decisions and doing all of the thinking for them.
In an age of information "overload", this leader is just whoever happens to be shouting the loudest. Democracy, an excuse for people to feel less guilty about not thinking, is the means by which those that shout the loudest get to maintain their position. In order to shift the mass of the masses, an assault on their perception is needed. Independent media is one start, but it needs to progress into and right through dependent media and the word on the street. We can argue for liberty over safety, we just have to make sure it's heard above the noise of calming warmongering.
Seems to me the Thought Police can't be far behind.
/join #killtheusa without having to get a warrant first is the penultimate step towards Thought Police, you're friggin' insane.
That's completely asinine.
According to the Washington Post, "The new guidelines state simply that FBI agents may enter public places and forums, including publically accessible Internet sites, to observe, develop leads, and investigate."
What's intrusive or scary about this? If you're engaged in public activity, you don't have much of an expectation of privacy, do you? Previously, FBI agents were restricted from doing things you and I can already do, like walk into a mosque and look around on a whim.
If you think that changing the rules to allow FBI agents to
By your own argument it would be futile to reason with the herd. So why bother?
FWIW, even a casual observation by the most obtuse person in the US would realize they are more likely to be struck by a car than a terrorist's bomb. That's where we need to be arguing - risk and proportion. But until people quit watching TV news and learn to read between the lines in their newspapers we will always have a government that manipulates its population out of fear and ignorance.
The only thing that changes is the names and efficiency of propagating a meme.
Unless you're the subject of an active criminal investigation, however, there's a reasonable expectation that you should be free from undue scrutiny. Why? Because it has that ever-popular "chilling effect on free speech" that you see mentioned so often in First Amendment cases.
Example: An FBI agent walks into a mosque and says, "Hey folks! No cause for alarm. Just wanted to let you know we'll have three agents with tape recorders at every public meeting held here from now on. But hey, as long as you're not doing or saying anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about, right?" It'd be hard to argue that this wouldn't have a profound impact on legitimate discourse in that particular forum.
Face it, observation by the law carries with it (rightly or no) a certain presupposition of wrongdoing. For instance, pretend you're driving along when a police cruiser comes out of nowhere and decides to sit five feet from your rear bumper for the next 20 miles. I guarantee you at least two things are gonna happen. (1) You'll sit there furiously trying to figure out what it was you did wrong. Speeding? Illegal turn? (2) Your manner of driving will be greatly impacted while the cruiser is there. You'll become overly cautious.
(And yes, I know this is an apples/oranges deal. Driving isn't a constitutionally protected right. Just wanted to get across the point that even within the bounds of legal behavior, we act differently while watched.)
Friendly tip: insulting people or their opinions usually isn't the best way to begin your arguments.
To put all this hysteria in perspective, about the same number of people as died in the WTC disaster die on U.S. roads each and every month and few seem to mind. If writers want to end a character immediately in a soap opera, they can just say they had a car accident and no one will question it. Yet, U.S. policies still promote cars over other alternatives (mass transit, working from home, mixed use zoning). Millions more middle aged lives are cut short each year from lack of exercise -- where are the walking trails and bicycle trails in every U.S. city and suburb (compared to say, the Netherlands)? So from this point of view, even if a million U.S. citizens are killed a year by terrorists, bicycle paths are still a better investment in American health and safety than more surveillance. So, my starting position is what people care about seems really strange when looked at from the big picture perspective. And fear, and building and economy and tax structure and new laws based directly on short-term fear, have direct negative effects on U.S. society, as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
The problem is that the ways to safety have all been outlined for the last forty years and ignored. They are essentially summed up in: people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. So, as an action agenda for the most safety:
1. Stop throwing stones.
2. Make houses out of something else than glass.
3. Help others to live in non-glass houses and to stop throwing stones.
I'm not going to talk about stopping throwing stones as that is now considered unpatriotic (although I have done so for a long time in the past). But I can still talk about glass houses, I guess.
Consider this book "Brittle Power" written around 1980: http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/art7095.php Federal energy policy continues to promote the most centralized, unforgiving, and vulnerable sources and infrastructures, while ignoring or suppressing the more efficient, diverse, dispersed, localized, and renewable options that could in time make major supply failures impossible by design. At present, the Department of Energy, apparently unwittingly but quite effectively, is undercutting the antiterrorist mission of the Department of Defense.
The problem with the U.S. from a safety perspective is that because the way the economy is set up, the most money can be made by centralizing a service, like Microsoft centralizes the OS, or agribusiness centralizes monocultures, or the oil company centralizes with a few pipelines. All these are the most profitable concerns because they are centralized, and backed by social, legal, political, and financial systems that keep them that way and supress alternatives. And because they are centralized, they are vulnerable.
What are the safe choices?
Consider, for example, a suggestion I read years ago that taking one year of the money spent on maintain the Persian Gulf Deployment, and applying it to insulating U.S. homes, would eliminate U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The figures may have changed since (and may have been optimistic) but do you see the point? Passive solar architecture shouldn't just be an oddity -- it should be the law, if we are serious about building a safer society. Yet, it is more profitable to centralized companies for have the U.S. government subsidize oil costs (some economist say to $60 per barrel) than to consider a decentralized approach like home insulation. Same with resisting the non-brainer of fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.
Another safe choice -- local community supported agriculture, to reduce the length of food supply lines (typically 1500 miles). Other forms of alternative energy (especially wind power) could be developed. Well insulated refrigerators can be 10X more efficient than current ones (that is the major consumer of electricity in many american homes).
Basically, take much of the stuff environmentalists, consumer advocates, small farmers, civil rights leaders, and probably the green party have been saying for years, and do it. But you know what, it isn't "profitable". It's somehow "profitable" to tax Americans a trillion dollars a year to prop up the current system, but somehow talk about doing things that provide true safety, and while we're at it, also compassion, and justice, and humaneness, and fairness, and one will get mostly blank stares. Seems so much easier to just declare a war on terrorists and the problem seems almost solved -- it seems like the president is doing something, instead of providing leadership on home insulation (an effectively impossible thing for an oil man to ever do...)
My own tiny efforts along that line (mostly laughed at or ignored): http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak That, and helping people learn how to grow more of their own food with a garden simulator. The problem is, when the current approaches keep being tried, and they keep not working, any alternative is going to seem laughable. We can spend $300 billion dollars on defense, but suggest spending $100 billion dollars a year on sustainable technology research and that seems laughable.
The ironic thing is, all the people who messed up the system already as far as promoting policies producing an unsafe U.S. are mainly the ones getting rewarded by the new spurt of government funding. And we get solutions like pump more arctic oil when it will take ten years to get it, it will be expensive, and any yahoo with a hunting rifle can shut down the Alaskan pipeline for days or weeks (as recently happened from one shot).
These people are working on a report for Congress that will hopefully show a better way: http://www.nepinitiative.org/ Bet they recommend insulating homes as the number one way to fight terrorism. A laughable idea, or is it?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
While it is historically true that these provisions will be shifted back after revelations of abuse, that does not make it any better for those targeted. Plus, many people here use the web/email for their correspondence, or chatting where this was once much more private by its physical nature.
/. as real and start screwing with my life?? I now have 147 posts on /. as my permanent record and have often opposed government action or suggested software projects that might facilitate anonymous music piracy. Should I be worred? I Don't think so. But I do have empathy for those organize or participate in anti-globalization protests. They will have more difficult lives b/c of their political beliefs. Or those that buy falafels using their Safeway Card and protest...
A political undesireable would be exposed to the authorities much faster by talking to joe via icq than having a physical or phone conversation in the 40s. So much more of people's lives are now online and in central databases than the paper records filed in so many offices. The efficiency of any targetted operation would be staggering.
This places a chill upon any dissent, because people are dependant upon banks and governments for their every day needs.
For instance, I'm a Canadian Citizen who is living in the US. I have an application for an Employment Authorization Document with INS that is taking a month longer than it should. Now I belive that this is due to some FBI checking procedure. Now, I have to think: what if they take my tounge-and-cheek hacking posts on
These things do affect the lives of real people, and many real people will have to get their lives messed up before the pendulum swings back.
Cheers,
-b
Bullshit. As has been pointed out time and time again, you can increase security all you like, lock down men, women and children in their little homes with their little TVs just so they can't be harmed, and bring in all the laws you want. But at the end of the day if someone wants to inflict horrible damage upon you and your population, then they will.
Privacy and rights are not mindless. It's standing up for what makes the human race so great - individuality, and the ability to think and speak for oneself.
If you want answers, first you have to find the questions. Now, the question is not "how can we stop people killing us?" but rather "Why do they want to kill us?" Once we've asked that (which is currently a rarity, thanks to the loss of freedom of speech), then we can sort out the solutions. Don't claim that security through obscurity is going to help anything, because it's not.
just watch things get back to being like hoover's fbi.... something like less than 200 files on the KKK, while who even knows how many on abbie hoffman.... the us government, especially when projected through the fbi has a huge history of having a bias towards 'leftist radicals.' in a country where 'freedom', 'democracy', and similar terms are catchphrases that it's known for gets this corporate owned and biased.... it should be obvious that something needs to change....
and reformism doesn't work, either.... look at what the trade unions of the 30's fought and won... look at what we have now.. things have turned back to the same sort of shit. the fbi got fucked over, but it's building itself back up. eventually a revolution's gotta happen...or things will end up like 1984 or brave new world....