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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...
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.
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)
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 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.
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)
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.