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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.
I say we all flee to Mars to escape persecution. It's not so bad; I hear they have water there now...
This sounds like the RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers) Act we've been subjected to in the UK. We were informed that the Government had these rights, but no amount of correspondance with politicians would get us a concrete answer as to what exactly 'necessary' and 'appropriate' were defined as in the Government's eyes. It might be 'necessary' to violate our privacy to monitor all of our communications to safeguard National Security, for instance. And the less said about Echelon the better.
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
Officials said they believe that terrorists unknown to the FBI have taken advantage of such policies by meeting in mosques or Internet chat rooms where agents were unlikely to be watching. That was the case with most of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, officials said.
But the NY Times article only says they were meeting in mosques, and I've heard no other proof of Internet chat rooms being a contributer to 9/11.
So that justifies placing agents in chat rooms for the sole purpose of developing leads?
In addition, from NY Times:
Among other changes, the new guidelines let agents search Web sites and online chat rooms for evidence of terrorists' planning or other criminal activities.
It's that "other criminal activities" that has me worried. If someone is talking about drugs (regardless of whether or not they actually use them), does Uncle Sam track 'em down and start a file? And "terrorist activities"...seems that they could possibly keep pushing that one until anything that criticizes "Our Great Country" could lead to an investigation.
Seems to me the Thought Police can't be far behind.
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.
.... Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover enjoy a final, hearty laugh.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
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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Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Finally, the Washington Post reports that banks will be creating a massive financial database/blacklist of terrorists, wife-beaters, anti-globalization protesters, etc.
I searched the article and didn't even find the word wife or global. Where did this summary come from? Wife beaters? Why would you even make up a lie that a bank is profiling wife beaters? Is that suppose to add sensationalism to the article? Because I don't think many computer geeks are wife beaters...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
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...
Okay, who else read the Washington Post article about the "criminal database" and thought "oooh...fun place to insert records...of, say....John Ashcroft..."
Of course, I'm not advocating that...that would be illegal....
The full EFA briefing is found here, and I sure as heck don't like the idea of it.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
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
Spackler likes the FBI. Spackler is a good guy. Spackler thinks you are doing a great job. Spackler will be happy to give up all the rights his forefathers fought for so you can get off finding out if I masturbate or not. Spackler is your friend. Don't investigate Spackler.
2 days later: Sir, here is that report on that subversive Slashdot thing.
Everyone but Spackler is a commie.
Leading financial services firms here have formed a private database company that will compile information about criminals, terrorists and other suspicious people, for use in screening new customers and weeding out those who may pose a risk.
Obviously, that's the catch-all phrase for anti-globalization wife beaters who make intricate gadgets from tropical bamboo and powered by cocnut cream pies.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Ahem. Just to introduce some complication here, there was just a news release about this where the (Libertarian) Cato Institute has "no serious problems":
(this is not false, it's honest-to-god what they said)
There's been quite a trend about this generally, with many hardcore, cap-L Libertarian pundits. saying similar things overall. It's been almost amusing to watch. No atheists in foxholes, and no paens to personal responsibility in the face of suicide terrorists (not all have had "foxhole conversions", but quite a few).
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
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.
Post-September 11th American concerns about liberty and safety are very different from the pre-September 11th concerns. I see a lot of arguments here that do not take this into account. A lot people here are talking about liberty first, safety later. You are not talking to the converted, folks, you are talking to a mob scared about covering their respective asses. So to them, the vast majority of the American public, y'all sound a little hollow, hear?
I'm sure Slashdot would love to be an esoteric forum of quaint thoughts about the exciting rarefied air of liberty for its own sake. I'm sure Slashdot would love it even more if the words that are spoken here had more to do with the common man and woman. TO do that, some of you have to get your heads out of your Ivory Towers and talk about the real world rather than some grand libertarian utopia we should really be living in. I'm glad it sounds like cotton candy. So can you talk about your concerns in a way that the folks living in Paramus, New Jersey and Pasadena, California can relate to? They are SCARED.
A herd of buffalo, once it starts charging, has no intelligence, and will trample the fields that feed it just because somebody fired a few rounds by their flanks. Many decades hence, if we remove a lot of our own rights, there may be a lot of regret about our reaction to September 11th, but right now, we are in the thick of it. People are afraid.
So what am I saying? Y'all sound rather hollow, ok? Because you offer no protection from the kind of folks who committed September 11th. You invoke theories and possibilities of a police state, but the democratic tradition in this country is strong and deep, and the terrorists are REAL and in our midst, plotting our doom. You stand in the way of a herd of trampling buffalo, and you shout slogans that mean nothing to the mob before you, running over their own rights.
Folks, if you want to protect our freedoms, you have to find new arguments, and here is the kicker- you have to invoke those arguments that address the real problem: not our freedom, but our safety! I am with y'all, but I'm just saying: NO ONE IS LISTENING TO YOU. YOU SOUND TIRED AND SHRILL. I agree with you that our rights are in jeopardy, and they need to be saved, but you are doing nothing to appease the approaching mob who will trample our freedom in the name of our safety, get it? THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THEIR FREEDOM THEY CARE ABOUT THEIR SAFETY. YOU MUST ADDRESS THIS.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Gee what a wonderful quote. Any volunteers to write this on a big banner and hold it up in front of a herd of charging buffalo? I didn't think so.
People are scared. They are covering their asses, they are not listening with their ears wide open and their minds in full-tilt. They are scared. You must invoke arguments that include their safety, because none of you do, and safety is what the herd of buffalo is worried most about right now.
Hear me now or regret it later when you are really out of touch with a reality we all dislike, when we REALLY get our rights bitten into. Fight the good fight but fight it with your feet on the ground and your eyes on the mud in front of you, not the glorious utopian fantasies of a world where liberty exists for liberty's sake with no concern at all for real world problems. The world needs the good fight for liberty, but ain't nobody gonna care about liberty if their DEAD.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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
All criminals/badthinkers won't be on that database. Somehow I don't think that white collar scum like Kenny-Boy Lay and all the other Enron and Anderson thieves will ever be blacklisted. Steal ten dollars, and you go on the list. Steal ten million, and you'll be invited to join the board of directors.
Seriously now. This is without a doubt the worst news I've heard all year, and I've heard a lot. This database will be a tool of very powerful and opinionated people to destroy the financial lives of people that disagree with them. And let's not even think about how Nixonian politicians or well-connected cults will manipulate that database to brand people "terrorists".
That word, "terrorist", mark me here, is the shiboleth of the 21st century. It will be used by very motivated political interests to annihilate "enemies", i.e. anyone who opposes their policies. And opposition will be forever muted, because people will learn not to make waves, else be spied on by the world cops, and marked "verboten" for financial dealings by the financial world.
Paranoid, you say? [bang head on wall].
It's already happening. Democratic party members are already terrified of speaking out because they WILL be branded traitors and terrorist sympathizers. The WTO protesters are already being labelled premptively as violent criminals wherever they show up -- and you can bet that is because of the influence wielded by the those they oppose. Oh, and did you know that protestors against Bush are not allowed within miles of the Great Man? They are bussed to cordoned-off "First Amendment Zones" miles away, and penned there by local cops until the Leader is gone, free of protestor taint. Of course, pro-Bush people are allowed to swarm the Bush -- this is democracy???
And to forestall any more "paranoia" strikes -- the use of lists and secret monitoring against political adversaries was used extensively by Nixon -- and a lot of the same moral-free characters than ran his culture war in their youth are now happily and ruthlessly slamming around the Constitution in pursuit of money for their peers and political control for themselves. I've never seen a press corps so utterly whipped.