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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.
It is 10pm. Do you know where your karma is?
Right! Let us get started... In order to get maximum karma from Slashdot posting, you can follow a few simple guidelines.
- The University you go to. Regardless of where you actually study, saying that you're at MIT automagically gains you +2. Slashdot, like the glorified student notice board that it is, has a special place in its heart for anything from MIT - whether it be a teddy bear stuffed with a switch, or some wankers wrapping a yellow banner with elvish text around the main dome. Even if you didn't go to university, qualify every comment with a "My professor told me" to bask in the warm fuzzy glow of +2, Insightful.
- Linux. The basis of the "Slashdot Experience". Claiming you run Linux also gets you +1, Interesting. It doesn't really matter if you've never actually installed it, or your Red Hat box still doesn't have PPP running after 2 years of reading FAQs. The important bit is - You're part of the community. You can bathe in the refelected glory of years of shoddy, buggy code. You are exempt from the Microsoft penalty (see below) as, of course, your Win 98 install is only used for playing games. And reading Slashdot. And using MS Word. And Photoshop. And....
- Microsoft. Slashbots and the editors hate Microsoft. Period. Use of a $ symbol in every iteration of their trademarks gets you a +4, Funny. Even though it is far from original, it still manages to raise a grin in those people reading Slashdot between episodes of Cowboy Bebop. You will get a -1, Flamebait or Troll for any post even hinting that Microsoft products are any good / useful / intuitive / user friendly. You will also quickly be shot down with replies about how good GNOME and KDE are, which will then in turn erupt into a flame war.
- Freedom / Privacy / YRO. The bread and butter of Slashdot. It fits in sublimely with the whole "Linux" thing. You'll get a +3, Informative for any post containing the Ben Franklin quote about sacrificing essential liberty. It makes no difference that the quote is totally irrelevant in the modern world - Hey, you've got karma! Mis-credting the quote will not end up in a karma penalty, as has been demonstrated countless times. You will gain extra karma if you make reference to your experiences of being wire-tapped by the NSA, and throwing in a vague link to Echelon, black helicopters or Tin Foil Hat Linux. Include a link to the First Amendment for a +1, Interesting mod. Give yourself a pat on the back if you manage to include some extra raging paranoia with no evidence to back it up. Nice!
- BSD. If you use it, don't mention it on Slashdot. Most of the Linux-using friendless wonders that inhabit Slashdot wouldn't know quality and stability if it strolled up and kicked them in the throat with a size 13 HiTec Magnum boot. Any mention of how a Firewall running OpenBSD with pf is far superior to Linux's pathetic offering will soon see you as -1, Troll. Much like the post you're reading now.
- Yearning for yester-year. Although most comments are written by first year "wannabe-CS-guru" students or links to goatse.cx, there is still the fallout dregs of the dot com boom lurking around slashdot. You can get +5, Insightful for telling how you were so badly treated after the bubble burst. Whining about the lack of jobs where you get paid to fire foam darts at colleagues is a good start. Don't forget to mention how you've now been out of work for months - It starts a "I'm about to graduate and there's nothing going" fuckfest which can spill over into hundreds of comments. Although all the staff who were any good simply got hired into another company, it makes "Good Karma Sense"® to hide the fact that your passing familiarity with Perl and C simply can't get you a job. This is also a prime opportunity to show your egregious personality, as Slashdot rewards arrogance and elitism.
DON'T FORGET TO MOD ME DOWN!www.kubik.ru
nice crap but please login, you AC bastard. Claimed for CLIT
who's yore daddy, BITCHh?!?!??!?!?!
Here are your recent submissions to Slashdot, and their status within the system:
2001-01-11 20:10:14 Canadian Internet Access (askslashdot,news) (rejected)
2001-02-28 21:34:29 New security exploit puts companies at risk (articles,news) (rejected)
2001-03-12 06:38:52 DMoZ promotes the wrong people (askslashdot,news) (rejected)
2001-04-06 01:17:08 Bearshare = Spyware (articles,news) (rejected)
2001-08-17 22:07:40 Open Sourcing your Telephone (articles,news) (rejected)
2001-09-30 22:39:32 ECA's Programming contest at the Eggforge (articles,programming) (rejected)
2001-10-09 14:34:13 Network Solutions resorts to Telemarketing (articles,news) (rejected)
2001-11-27 18:49:49 The "Courtesy" Support Team (askslashdot,news) (rejected)
2001-11-27 19:34:42 Has anyone on slashdot ever gotten a story publish (askslashdot,news) (rejected)
2002-06-03 21:09:19 Slashdot, Slashcode and the W3C (askslashdot,internet) (rejected)
Summary:
rejected (10)
Interesting the last question was regarding slashdot's outdated code.
You want real news? Me too.
Ace
Well, i could invoke Godwin's Law here, but i won't... Instead:
Yeah, and how about those slimy companies that made the socks worn by the Nazis? What a bunch of scumbags!
And the farmers who grew the corn they ate!
And the people who made the shirts the farmers wore!
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
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...