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Verisign Offers Wiretapping Services
LinuxDeckard writes "According to this article at FindLaw, VeriSign will soon be offering its 'NetDiscovery' wire tapping services for a monthly fee. NetDiscovery will allow Telecoms to comply with court ordered wire taps." Verisign's press release is informative. This appears to be tapping of voice calls rather than internet usage. I assume it would work something like this: telecom company gets a wiretap notification from the FBI or local police; it routes all calls to/from $TARGET through a Verisign switch; Verisign does the tapping and reporting to the tappers. If you think this doesn't affect you, keep in mind that under the PATRIOT Act the barrier for wiretapping is set very low indeed.
s/ISP/\$TELCO/
This is like, so 1984.
When why will they stop trampling on our rights? When the private sector offers wiretapping, then the terrorists have already won.
This is not another carnivore.
... I live in Europe
I really don't care if they listen in on all my phone calls. For that matter, I don't care if the entire world listens in on all my phone calls.
I can't remember when I last used a phone, but it certainly wasn't any time recently.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Let's not give Verisign a hard time - they're just trying to make a buck by filling a need that is currently out there. If you really have a problem with this, you should focus on the politics that allow wire tapping in the first place and then consider taking an active role in government by contacting your Senator or Representative.
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Now when they start doing the internet stuff... We are supposed to trust them with our encrypted keys?
..because you're all encrypting your communications, right? You're also all inquiring as to why there isn't more transparent encryption and authentication going on too, right?
Sad I don't want to post this logged in, though.
heh heh. michael used an environment variable.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Today we outsource wire tapping.Tommorrow we will outsource the analysis of the wiretaps.Then outsource "crime detection and response systems" and mebbe do away with judiciary. Bah!
What is concerning is that this is the same company that does not think twice about either law or morality when it comes to business. Mebbe with companies as liberal as Verisign we will also be able to buy wire tapping services on ebay. ~!nrk
.sig(Anarchy Rules)
I dunno if I can call 900 numbers now that I know that the FBI might be listening!
It is ironic that one of the sleaziest, untrustworthy companies on the internet expects people to buy "trust" in the form of digital certification from them. I suggest people remember that next time they need a certificate and instead turn to one of their competitors.
My anti-social Canuck friend, it'd be cool if we could "webcast" your "phone" conversations. If you "ever" plan to have "one" again some time "soon".
If any small telco needs to create a secure repository, some will not be as secure as others... and privacy might be more compromised that it should according to the wiretap order (i.e. hackers accessing the wiretapped phone calls...)
OTOH, this is a kind of single point of failure I do not entirely like...
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
Verisign uses equipment from Verint, which is formerly known as Comverse. We all know the story about the spy network, right? (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/ 18/224826.shtml)
The Patriot Act? That's great. The terrorists have won. Their purpose was to change our lives so we'd never be back to the way we were. We give them fame and glamour. A Patriot Act is just one more way we have proven how stupid we really are. The only way to beat the terrorists is to not let them phase us. Let's not talk about them, not care about them, and maybe they'll go away. Here we go, let's make some laws to restrict our own people. It's all bullshit.
Why would Verisign get into such an unrelated business as this? They're not a telecom company! If CALEA-compliance is too expensive for the telcos, I can't believe that Verisign is better positioned. This is totally unrelated to their business model!
I love the taste of fresh asshole in the morning
Of course, this method works EXTREMELY well for us with broadband connections....
very low indeed
In fact, even without the patriot act, state courts did not deny a single law enforcement request for a wiretap. Not a single one.
--G
...to help U.S. telecommunications carriers comply with wiretapping regulations that have gained more prominence since the attacks of Sept. 11.
I prefer to see them as regulations that were pushed through legislation by taking advantage of public fears after Sept. 11. I'm from NYC and I hear the warnings every week and occassionally still hear military fighters and helicopters fly over my home, but that batch of regulations under the Patriot Act are nothing patriotic. I want terrorists caught just as much as anyone else. Some people had been pushing for more wiretapping freedom for years. They took advantage of our fears to slip these regulations through which give too much power to our government.
Developers: We can use your help.
The only question where the constitution is silent is whether the restriction of rights (in this case privacy) is the lesser of two evils (the other evil being not catching the 'not so law abiding'). Is it? Do we believe it to be so? Is the potential for abuse of power justified? Does the end justify the means?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
One should think that the "professionel" criminals would be smarter than that. One should think that it was only small time dudes that would blabber away on the phone etc.
my sig
You might want to read the blurb a bit closer (or follow a few of the links). It's not "Verizon" but "Verisign"
Verizon is not the same company as Verisign. Two different companies.
Ideally this is good. Wiretaps are a needed part of law-enforcement. You have evidence against a suspect, you go to a judge, show him the evidence and he makes a informed decison on the matter. Wiretaps, traditionally, were pretty hard to get.
The part where this breaks down is the recent Patriot act (damn I hate calling it that), where a FBI agent hands a judge a list of 5,000 names and says "I think that these people might be terrorists, gimme a wiretap."
"Do you have any evidence Mr. FBI agent?"
"What do you care Mr. Judge? US law says you have to let me spy on these people, even if I don't have any tangible evidence. Just don't mind my wife's name hidden in the list."
"Ok, here's your signature." (Thinking to himself: Man I wish my job was more than fulfilling the function of a rubber stamp.)
Without the aforementioned act, this would be semi-good news. With that act, more peoples privacy will now likely be senselessly violated. Oh, well.
That's whay I like to live in a small country and speaking a languange only 2 Million Popole speak - so come on FBI/CIA/NSA tap me, spend millions on translations and listen to all my boring phone calls to my girlfriend...
Now, Correct me if I'm wrong, but does verisign even offer a voice service?
I havent seen a single thing on their site about offering a voice service.
Would this be some sort of insight that their planning on offering some sort of VOIP service?
Or perhaps their just letting big brother listen in on people calling to bitch about why their domain is suddenly under their control. *snicker*
-Una
This is how the Patriot Act is explained if you follow the link: Expanded Surveillance With Reduced Checks and Balances
I wonder how long until Verisign offers this "service" to the business community at large. PI's, security firms, stalkers, and identity thieves will be jumping at the chance to fork over money to them.
What Constitution are you quoting from? Article III, Section 2 says nothing of the sort - in fact Article III deals purely with the judicial branch. I don't recall that quote ever appearing anywhere in the Constitution (and it most certainly isn't where you cite it). Check Article I, Section 8 to see an actual list of the powers of Congress.
Furthermore, the Eighth Amendment does not carry that quote anywhere in it. _Nowhere_ in the Constitution or the Amendments is privacy _ever_ mentioned. The actual text of the Eighth Amendment reads, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Ok, let me get this straight, they plan to route all voice calls from/to $TARGET thru verisign.. There's a lot of different phone / conference apps out there, which all use different ports, and most of the time ports are configurable. Presumably the fbi/cia/nsa/mib do not want their wiretaping so easely defeated, so they would want all trafic routed thru verisign right?
;-)
So if you want to find out if you are being wiretaped, simply do a couple of traceroutes and see if you hit verisigns switches? It beats listening to clicking sounds in the background of the phone conversation i gues
Just replace $TARGET with $VICTIM and then re read the story. *shudder*
How secure do you really need to be, though? I'm sure that most people on this list are not criminals, and don't lead lives so exciting that they're worth listening into. That's not meant as an insult - I'd feel sorry for the poor people stuck tailing me or listening to my phone conversations (most concern wedding planning, which even we don't want to be hearing! :).
Why is this such a hot button with some people? Do you really think Uncle Sam / Big Brother cares about your personal lives? Unless your doing something illegal (beyond the odd burned cd or speeding ticket), why worry? With limited resources and public pressure for results, the FBI and other law institutions don't have the resources to spy on us all.
cheers,
Andrew
Your response is 100% in line with the situation.
Verisign, a company which sells secure communications methods is now in the business of wiretapping?
A quick look at their product page shows that they are pretty vested in their SSL, PKI (public key infrastructure) and other privacy products.
Why then would you announce you are working with the Federal(?) government to tap communications. Sure to the stockholders it sounds great, but what about those customers.
Now they are just another notch up on the scale of slimey companies who will do anything for a buck.
Get your Unix fortune now!
That when the Government screws up, its the citizens that get punished for the mistake? I couldn't believe last week that the FBI's solution to its screw up was to give itself new powers so they can make sure that I go to confession before taking a communion. Spying in churches? Is nothing sacred anymore!?!?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I cannot help but wonder how usefull the efforts put into this service is going to be over the next 3-5 years during the take-over of the world by broadband and IP telephony. With the dissapointing earnings produced by all the major telco's they are all putting a lot of effort into getting IP telephony going in order to boost sales.
...
...
I must say this whole thing is going to let me think twice about that Verisign Certificate I bought which only I have the private key for
I guess the moment we have our SSL encrypted, fully fledged PKI infrastructure based IP telephony system up and running Verisign will be selling our Private keys to the highest bidder!
Now if you take that into account this is not all that far off the Business Model that Verisign has been following
Maybe they are just one step ahead of the rest of the pack!
There are a number of commercial entities that provide these services, or at the very least turn-key systems that handle the information. Do you really think that law enforcement organizations can build their own from scratch? (Yeah, that's funny...imagine Sipowitz from NYPD Blue debugging!) The thing that made this newsworthy is that instead of some obscure firm that solely does LEO support and that 99.9% of the population has never heard of, it's a well-known company this time.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
What if someone develops a way to encrypt all voice phone traffic in the US? Something like ssh for audio (I know that ssh is a bad analogy because of man-in-the-middle attacks). If all phone traffic was encrypted then wiretaps on random citizens wouldn't matter. Just like ssh for remote sessions and gpg for email. I understand the value of wiretaps for legitimate law enforcement, but when it evolves into a Big Brother watch-everyone-for-the-sake-of-the-children kind of thing, we have to fight back somehow.
How is this "informative"?
Didn't anyone notice that his "quotes" from the Constitution are completely bogus? Anyone with basic working knowledge of it knows that Congress isn't given any powers in Article 3 of the Constitution! That section describes powers given to the judiciary.
The phrase "Anysuch powers as are found Necessary to Provide for the Security of said Lands" doesn't appear anywhere in the Constitution.
Also, there is nothing in the Eighth Amendment about giving up a right to privacy or soverignty. That amendment mentions only cruel and unusual punishment.
It was a good troll, though.
No comment at this time
I can see the banner ads now... get your tap in telecommunications! you can get wiretapping service at the number of your choice, (if it's not taken), free redirect, up to five POP email accounts, and up to four MB of webspace, all for the rock-bottom price of $70 for two years!
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Don't blame Verisign, they're merely complying with tne new regulations as required.
If you ask me, this wiretapping business is little more than a measure to make us feel safe at the expense of our privacy with little hope of actually capturing terrorists.
Looking back to 9/11, the feds obviously don't have too much trouble getting a hold of our phone conversations. How do you think that all of those cell phone transcripts were made availabe so rapidly, or evan at all? Someone constantly has the record button on, regardless. We've all read in the news about just how close US agents actually were to these guys using only their previously available methods. Now the US agencies are looking for deniability so they blame "limitations" placed on them. The terrorists aren't stupid, and they obviously know better than to speak in more than vague terms when they are in the presence of a possible rat, including unencrypted communications on the internet and on the phone. They're not using this technology to catch anything but small fish.
Personally, I'm not afraid of terrorists. I don't think they could ever launch an attack powerful enough to topple the institution that our belief (if hypocritically administered, looking at foreign policy) in individual rights and freedom stand for. What I am afraid of is our paranoid fear in terrorists destroying those rights that have made the free world great. Once our freedoms are gone, we may as well have let the terrorists kill every one of us. Death would be preferable to 1984.
~Ben
Does anyone have any idea how this would actually work? I've worked in telecom for several years, and in PKI for several years, and I really don't know how this could work from a technical stand.
Anyone have any insight? The press release is mighty vague, as usual.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
Let's all learn Navajo! After all if the Japanese can't break it during the whole pacific war....
:)
I run the risk of getting hammered here, but I fail to see why this is such a big deal. For years the Feds and other authorities have gotten the wire-taps they needed. Technology progresses and so does their methods.
I have absolutly NOTHING to hide from the feds. They can tap me all they want. They will hear phone sex with the girlfriend, Hey mom & dad how are ya to the parents, and damn did you see that chick in the corner lastnight to my friends...
If it stops some jacka$$ from flying a plane into a building them listening to me talk here and there is a small price to pay.
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
"Sex" is a keyword? there goes about 80% of the internet's traffic then.
I especially love the name, the Patriot [sic] Act. Bush is using the so-called war on terrorism to justify trampling over civil rights and expand federal powers to a ridiculous amount. The excuse they had their hands tied pre-911 is a load of crap. Look at the recent info about the 2 terrorists they knew were in this country for more than a year, both involved in the 911 act. They had the information, but the CIA/FBI screwed up, and their answer is to give themeselves more power, it's complete bs. What sickens me the most, is the idea questioning the government is unpatriotic. If it were, we'd all be British still. 911 was terrible obviously, but so is stripping away rights, sneaking by new federal powers, and making anyone who says "wait a minute Uncle Sam" seem like a traitor - isn't much better.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
s/patriot/tyrannist/
Memebers of the CIA (crimminally incompetent a**holes) and the FBI (fumbles ball intermitently) are not deserving of the title "Patriot", and since this act grants them more power, it is improperly named. A true Patriot loves freedom above all things, and it seems to me that a group that has long violated American freedoms are a far cry from patriotic.
They should have called it the "Snatch more power and freedom away from the people act." Its sad how they can use their own incompetence to justify this theft of our freedoms and rights. I have no faith in their abilities, and lose more and more faith in the president I helped vote into office. However, it could have been worse, we could have added Gore to all this terror.
Our forefathers are rolling in their graves. Its funny how they feel more information can help them catch terrorists, however they couldn't even digest the information flow they had. So now with CIA and FBI agents selling this information they shouldn't have on common, everyday people, they want more information and more agents. Try to tell me this doesn't mean that more information will be sold by more criminals in these agencies.
Fibbies only seem interested in constitutional rights when it comes to examining the laptops of flight students who don't give a shit about takeoffs or landings, but do wish to learn how to fly straight & level for some reason...
Me
Become informed; read the CALEA standard (TIA/EIA- J-STD-025):
g C: ftp.tiaonline.org/TR-45/TR452/Incoming/EIA-J-STD-0 25.pdf+J-STD-025+pdf&hl=en
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:EOI2S1LqKL
Let's not forget that modem singalling is also able to be intercepted.
Locally we had at least one police department farming out their photo radar to a third-party. In essence, a non-police entity handing out tickets for speeding. It was challenged in court, and several thousand (pending) tickets were thrown out. I don't see much difference between this, and what Verisign is proposing.
Overall, I'm not sure it's a good idea to have private companies assume responsibilities that belong to the government- especially where enforcement is concerned. It's just one more point of failure - if something goes wrong, it makes it that much easier to pass the blame.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that it would take a real stupid t3rr0rist to conduct business in any way that might be tracked so easily?
It's all about the money. I read somewhere (I forgot where) that the average wire-tap costs about $50,000 a pop, and rarely results in a conviction. For me I feel like this a waste of the goverment's (and by extention my) money.
This kills me that the govt is wasteing my hard earned tax dollars on this crap. Wire taps need to be difficult to get if only because they are too expensive.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Can you provide a single instance where the murderer of an abortion doctor went unprosecuted? It's been my experience that government at all levels bend over backwards for abortion doctors and clinics. Locally, Meredith Rainey and other Operation Rescue associates were banned from restaraunts that are within a certain radius of a clinic. Never mind that they were only eating breakfast. Never mind that they were paying customers. Never mind they weren't protesting. The police came and threw them out.
Second, this "right" you speak of? Is it a natural right, like those of the Declaration of Independence? If abortion is the right of the woman where is it? In another window I have a copy of the Bill of Rights open. I find nowhere the right to kill unwanted babies. What say you to her baby's Fifth Amendment right to due process:
So what? Don't you not know that there's no such thing as good people? There's not. NOBODY is good. I'm not. You're not. CmdrTaco isn't (Sorry, Taco). To think otherwise is to be blind. Have you done anything bad? Have you thought about doing things that are bad? Have you not done things that you knew were good? Go ahead and feel bad for answering yes, but understand that there's never been a person that hasn't answered yes. Pointing out bad in people is easy; it's hardly sporting. Now, keeping that in mind, please direct me to a country that does more right than the United States. You won't be able to.
Now, after writing all this, I think IHBT...
The end always justifies the means for anything that is worth doing. The problem is when the means become a goal in itself...
You need to install an RTFM interface.
Then its RIGHT I say.
What if they tap my phonecalls? They'll waste their cash listening to my whining about the cost of imported beer?
Oh, what if they tap your whinning about god-knows-what?
And what if they tap all of your phonecalls? You really think Bob-the-FBI-Officer will give a damn about what you're saying as long as you're following the law?
You think those officers will sell out your god-given-privacy to some corps, so they can know what you are buying or talking about. Why Psychiatrist dont do the same while we're at it.
People are being paranoid.
A tapped call will be the same thing for an officer as an unknown-face is to you when you're taking the bus.
Enough said, I dont mind having my own phonecall tapped. Got nothing to hide, really, even if im not saying it all out loud.
You got something to hide? Well, maybe it would be a good idea to actually tap your line.
So the goverement allows anyone (within limits) to get a wiretap on any unsavory characters. It looks like to me that Al-quada won round 1 where Americans lose all their privacy from the goverment. The intention of Al-Quada was to get Americans so parinoid they use the goverment aginst themselves. 1st rule of terrorism is to use anything you can aginst your enemy--this includes the goverment. They won that round and there is no turning back as long as the pussys keep bending over. So whos going to bend over for round two?
All this BS over some deaths in the lower east side of NYC? Keep in mind that Sep 11th didn't even make a stistical blip in the death rate in NYC since the first major cold of the winter will kill somewhere between 5 to 10 thousand elderly and wtc only has about 900 confirmed about about 1700 maybes. There have been over 3000 investigations and fraud arrest in NYC for WTC death fraud over this. Consider only about 50,000 people could have been in the area at the time. 3 out of 50 is a very high rate for any illegal activity.
This may seem a bit callus but most of the people that have tried to rip me off in the last three years worked in those buildings. I don't have any problem with thouse assholes ending up jobless or even dead. I've got names of 8 jerks that were involed with things like over billing fraud, insurance frand and loan fraud that had addresses as 1 WTC or 2 WTC.
What does bother me is how Americans are bending over and getting screwed in the name of anti-buzworrd of the year. Does anyone remember the concepts that created America? Is histroy that forgotten? Much worse things have happened but can the average American name even one? I suspect not.
I feel sorry for you.
For example, one commonly used feature is "Internet Offload". This replaces ISP modem pools. When you dial up an ISP's "dial-in number", what may actually happen is that the call gets diverted to a unit in your local central office which performs the modem/POP function and forwards the data as IP messages.
The SS7 system has the database that determines when this happens. Every call today goes out to the SS7 network and its databases to determine where it goes. Thus, control of the SS7 network allows calls to be diverted to wiretapping access points.
I'm surprised that the telcos put up with Verisign having a monopoly in this area.
Poor Pro-Lifers! The torture that they suffer so that they can impose their views on how other people can live their lives and treat their bodies.
1. Nowhere in my message does it state that those pro-life monsters don't get prosecuted, but they're free to continue their yihad against abortion clinics, doctors, and patients. Time and time again, their "peaceful" protests turn ugly.
2. Dear Moron: a fetus is not baby. Not in my eyes. Not in the eyes of most rational people.
nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
You made a good point against yourself. Liberty, wouldn't that be the personal freedom? Just as it doesn't exactly state the right FOR abortion, there isn't anything stating anything AGAINST abortion.
So what? Don't you not know that there's no such thing as good people? There's not. NOBODY is good. I'm not. You're not. CmdrTaco isn't (Sorry, Taco).
That's the point I was stating. No one is right and no is wrong.
In your blind fanatical rage, your brain shut down. Look at yourself and the garbage you spew out.
Does more right than the US? Just off the top of my head: Germany, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Japan, Australia, Denmark, and Netherlands.
Go back to cleaning your gun, take your medication, and memorize the Bible.
...and amazingly enough, they are even spelled differently!
This is an ex-parrot!
neeeed a con.spir..acy..... Once upon a time there was a system that would systematically screen every machine based communication... Echelon. I wonder if the NSA is outsourcing its aging snooping machine.. ---> http://civilliberty.about.com/library/weekly/aa022 100a.htm
(not completley off topic)
Maybe verisign is leasing a search engine based on Echelon's accumulting database?
(google....teoma....echelon!...perfect!)
.. for those who don't think any wiretapping on them could pose any threat to them: think again, taken out of context and used by skillfull(evil) people any random chatter can be used to make you look like a commie(say, mention that bush sucks cock to your friend).
war on terrorism on my ass.. much more humane would be putting even third of the increase in defense funds into helping third world countries build themself up, so that they would americanize too and become trailer trash of the south themself, lazy big assed idiots who don't care about anything. there's no need to fear terror from such.
...to start rolling out VoIP with strong encryption.
Now they can use their popups as blackmail, anyone who closes them without clicking the ad can be labeled as a terrorist...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I have been less than satisfied by the difficulty in moving a domain from one host to another, and would much like to move from VeriSign to another registrar. Who did you move to? Can you provide any links that might help me out? Pretty please with sugar on top. And moderators, this is directly related to the article in question.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
About a week after the catastrophe, a friend admitted, after much prodding from me, that he though GW was probably behind it in some way, or at least "let it happen." That gave me pause, because the cynic in me could see that the political shift in the aftermath clearly helped GW and his big business friends. How much military spending has been approved since? How quickly did the issue of His Fraudulencey disappear? Then when I read 8 months later that the FBI field agents felt that their pre 9/11 investigation of suspected terrorists had been actively impeded by HQ...it gave me chills. What else will never come to light?
Am I the only one who thinks this is more funny than interesting?
Come one, get it together moderators.
(looking forward to having my karma decimated)
-
I've long wondered about Verisign. Any organization that controls most of the digital certificate and domain name registrations as well as buying up commercial PGP have a little more power than I'm thrilled with, but Verisign has something more... they've managed to land some awesome deals with the US government and have done so seemingly without significant competition. Why?
If I'd suggested yesterday that Verisign was going to get into the wiretapping business, I would likely have been laughed at. Well, it's not a laughing matter any longer. What's next? Ever wonder who else Verisign gives your certificates to?
Bah! Ignore all of that. There's one and only one reason that you should never do business with Verisign. Their customer support is some of the worst in the world, and that's a challenge. Just call them sometime and try to get an HST record removed... you'll know fear, then you will know pain and then you will wish you were dead to badly paraphrase Babylon 5.
Now the government can listen to me telling telemarketers to go fuck themselves.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Question to those with more expertise on moderating, is the above post a subtle troll or flamebait? Making a buck by filling a need is about what one could say about the sale of drugs.
I'm glad for the increased ease of govt. wiretapping. Screw terrorists.
Not so much that Verisign is acting "wisely", but that the problem should not be dealth with at the Verisign node, and that this is probably wise while the problem has not been dealt with.
As long as US law makes it disturbingly easy for different agencies to get a wiretap on a private citizen, such wiretaps will happen. If said wiretaps happen, it would be nice if only the FBI were listening to your calls and there were no mistakes in the process.
If going wiretap crazy creates a logistics problem for the telcos, and the results of the telcos' messing up is more likely to be more private information flying around (I would think it more probable than cancelling the wiretap), I'd prefer them to outsource the effort to someone with a higher level of commitment to the task.
The telcos' business is not wiretapping. If they screw up, they don't lose business. It would be Verisign's business, however, not to screw up... plus I expect they would be under constant surveillance by the ACLU and similars.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...