Slashdot Mirror
Sybase Advertises 'PATRIOTcompliance'
xmtrx writes "While everyone is rabidly pouncing, pounding and going pundit on Palladium, little-to-no attention is being paid to enterprise-class spyware such as Sybase's PATRIOTcompliance Solution. Their ad includes such gems as "Non-compliance is not an option" and "...helps you satisfy the many integration requirements of the USA PATRIOT Act by... filtering your customers, employees and suppliers against known suspects, and then... continuously monitoring their future activities." No punchline." The laws passed which affect financial institutions are mostly opaque to Joe Citizen. Sybase's press release sheds a little bit of light on what is going on behind the scenes.
This world is getting scary.. with things like this the only way to really find a solution is to ask "What would jesus do?"
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Move back to Europe! We don't a PATRIOT act promoting to spy your neighbours, friends, employees, ...
With extra power comes extra responsability.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This is just plain scary and one of the reasons open source is the only way to go for enterprise (you could also say all) software. This sort of crap is much more difficult to put into open source programs.
The even scarier thing to think about, is what happens when goverements want to make this sort of thing compulsary ? Then they'll have to go after open source projects, as this just doesn't work for them.
It's a bit cliche but 1984 was a typo....
We are the Borg, your species will be assimilated. Non-compliance is not an option.
We will add your biological and technological
distinctiveness to our own, however your technological distinctiveness will be filtered against our database and monitored.
Every new requirement by the government like this will mean a lot of money to be made by relevent software companies. (And will it stimulate economy?)
If your don't like this sort of stuff, stop buying (or considering) stuff from Sybase.
And let them know your doing this.
And why.
Revolt now - tomorrow you'll be in jail for posession of computer programs anyway.
Who's Sybase? Do they still make a product? That's what people in CS classes will be asking when they're learning about the history of IT 10 years from now.
While theoretically troubling, this really isn't that horrific. The Federal Government just doesn't have the resources to persecute a lot of people. There have been various reporting requirements on financial transactions for quite a while. These new requirements are not coming out of the blue.
People also tend to forget that we are fighting a war. It's fine to be snide and cynical, but American troops are in combat abroad right now.
That all being said, I doubt these reporting requirements will do much to stop terrorism. The evidence is mounting that our failure to stop past terrorism was not due to a lack of power or resources, but due to ineffective leadership and incompetence. All the information in the world won't help our government agencies who in the past have shown a frightening lack of intelligence.
And I don't trust Ashcroft. He's grandstanding to score political points without actually achieving any worthwhile results. Of all the thousands of suspects rounded up and detained on suspicion of terrorism, only a handful have been charged with anything terrorist related, and all of those charged are pretty much low-level dupes (Lindh, Massaoui (sp?), etc.).
Let's face it, anyone competent enough to pull off a real terrorist attack is also probably competent enough to know about and know how to circumvent these reporting requirements. The only people caught by these new rules will be the stupid and the uninformed, both of which may be up to no good, or more likely just unaware that they are doing anything wrong.
Our country is at war and it is deadly serious. I just wonder if our biggest impediment to victory might be certain political hacks like Ashcroft who now find themselves in positions of unexpected power, with the ability to further agendas beside winning the war on terrorism.
Maybe we all ought to start exercising our Second Amendment rights, which seems to be the only ones he finds sacrosanct.
Come and get me coppers!
(Huh? What's that knocking on the door?) = ^ &
evanchik.net
While reading this crap which verifies itself that its ideas about slashdot are crap itself...
:)
I have an idea...
What about banning those AC's IPs/Subnets from Slashdot? I mean the guys sending this crap post? It will be good for them too, than their wonderful bitching will have an excuse.
If you are that much mad about those, dear moron AC flooders, why don't you dare to post via your own nick? Why are YOU reading/wasting your bandwidth with Slashdot than anyway?
This is the 30'th story I figure this crap.
Although in troubled times restrictions are necessary I fully believe that "In times of emergency, restrictions on the freedom of the individual and imposed in the real or assumed interest of the community. We hold it to be essential that such restrictions be confined to a minimum of clearly specified actions ; that they be understood to be temporary and limited expedients in the nature of a sacrafice ; and that the measures restricting freedom be themseles subject to the free criticism and democratic control . Only thus can we have a reasonable assurance that emergency measures restricting individual freedom will not be degenerate into a permanent tyranny." - sec. 7 of the manifesto of the Congress for Cultural Freedom published in 1951 In was true then and it is true now. The steps of government and corporations that seek to influence the gov be be in the light, and not hidden, espically under the guise of "protecting the people". Peace folks,
There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. -Hamlet
Just remember people... Under the new act, anyone who speaks out against Bush will be branded a terrorist & monitored....
Scared yet?
The CIA etc already had enough power to stop sept 11th, they just didn't care... They were even warned 3 weeks before hand by the British!
The PATRIOT act has NOTHING to do with terrorism - it's just about controlling what you do by paranoia and FUD. Bush wanted to spy on *YOU*, not anyone else or he'd have made it a foreign policy, not a domestic one.
p.s. To americans: Regardless of what you read, there aren't thousands of terrorist plots against you... The government are leading you on, so you'll take whatever they want to give you next... Now bend over and take it like a good patriot... go on... It won't hurt... much.
Sybase isn't putting this in because they feel it's the next big thing from their marketing department. They are offering it because Dubya decreed via the USA PATRIOT act that institutions *have* to do this sort of thing. Sybase are only responding to a government created market.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
What country is the U.S.A. "at war" with?
you shoulda picked gore.
Right, a liberal like Gore would have definitely limited the scope of government intrusion.
Fucking idiot. Read deTocqueville before passing judgement. What socialized corner of the planet are you from?
Got rights to lose?
The functionality advertised should already of been part of Sybase, which leads me to wonder if it's actually any good in terms of security.
No doubt, Ballmer will make Windows Patriot compliant, and score political brownie points in doing so.
This is another factor to taking away our democracy, people, do you see it yet?
"Dubya decreed via the USA PATRIOT act..."
Um, it was passed by Congress. That's the House of Representatives and the Senate. The President then signed it into Law.
You really should learn about how the U.S. Government works before making assertions that are false.
Hasn't been a decree in the U.S. since George III (although FDR came close a couple of times.)
I'm not saying the Patriot Act is a good thing. I think some of it is stupid, illegal and downright sleazy. It was NOT, however, passed by fiat.
The opposite of progress is congress
Much of what has been done has been done to disrupt terrorist support networks. Money, training and housing. Without these the terrorists will have a much harder time. If you read detailed accounts of what terrorists went through on their way from teenager to terrorist it becomes evident that support networks were in place across the world for at least a decade.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Reading this and putting the 'vision' (if you can call it that) of the USA's government in perspective, you start to wonder why the USA still are calling themselves "Leader of the Free World". Must be a different definition of 'Free' than I have...
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Mod parent up
Is this an attempt at packaging software that either automatically includes Carnivor, or allows for the virus-like installation program "Magic Lamp" (which was finaly admitted by the Gov'mint to exist) without it triggerering virus alerts?
Let me guess. Any american with nothing to hide wont object to PATRIOT? Only terrorists should fear carnivor? Wonder just how much hype will be issued?
The government is good, it is god
Report your family's crimes.
The State is all powerful
Report your friend's crimes.
Resistance is Futile
Report your neighbor's crimes.
Privacy is UNAMERICAN
Pay no attention to the face scanning spy cameras in your neighborhood.
Open source is TERRORISM
Your crimes won't need to be reported. The SWAT team is already on the way.
Corporatism != Free Market
The American government will not, indeed cannot, actively monitor the terabytes of data this act will generate. They are far too busy just trying to keep their collective heads above water. Ten years of "peace dividend" has taken its toll in staff reductions, atrophied skills, no operations, and no training. Do you remember the mid 90s when several U.S. congressmen questioned whether we even needed the CIA and other intelligence organizations?
I expect that the resulting database will not useful for finding terrorists in real time. However, once a suspected terrorist is known by other means, be it hours, days, weeks, or months later, they will be able to search through the data for his or her trail to provide proof or refutation, as appropriate. Better yet, the search should also show the tie-ins to the others of a terrorist's organization so we can pursue the whole lot.
This kind of trade-off between increasing security at the price of privacy is a good one, IMO, and has has commonly been made in times of war for at least the last 200 years. That said, the trade-off is still a risk. We must remain vigilant and pick our government leaders carefully so that those in power will dismantle the process when the threat is over. It could otherwise become the means of terrible abuse.
Magna est veritas et praevalebit.
(Mighty is the truth, and it will prevail)
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
While theoretically troubling, this really isn't that horrific.
-----
No? Your anti-terrorism is investigating a guy for fraud right now as we speak. FRAUD.
The reason why people were afraid about the Patriot Act is that it uses nebulous definitions about what is or is not terrorism. The reason why people were afraid about THAT is because it gives so-called anti-terrorism squads carte blanche to do anything to anyone so long as they're quick enough to find ANY POSSIBLE LINK to terrorism. At this point, if you're of a specific nationality then any crime you commit makes you a potential terrorist.
This should frighten the living crap out of you.
-----
People also tend to forget that we are fighting a war. It's fine to be snide and cynical, but American troops are in combat abroad right now.
-----
-----
Our country is at war and it is deadly serious.
-----
Maybe, but not the war you think. For all its rhetoric America is the one who is at war with freedom.
-----
I just wonder if our biggest impediment to victory might be certain political hacks like Ashcroft who now find themselves in positions of unexpected power, with the ability to further agendas beside winning the war on terrorism.
-----
Or political hacks like Bush, who appointed the guy, and who coincidentally named those Axis-of-Evil countries (despite the fact that the vast majority of the Sept 11th terrorists didn't come from one of those countries) and who coincidentally is trying to make everybody belive that Saddam Hussein is the next big target in the War on Terror despite the fact that he had nothing to do with what the War on Terror is all about.
This is much bigger than McCashcroft. This is a problem that starts all the way at the top.
Methinks its all just overkill, given that 9/11 seems to have been caused by some very basic oversights* rather than high-level terrorist subtlety.
* BTW, I doubt any amount of reshuffling is going to fix this. Methinks the FBI and CIA should be run more like the millitary. Leaders need to be held accountable. If anything bad happens on their watch, or if any over their subordinates screw up, they should be punished.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Your ISP realizes that the Fed has a gun pointed at their head. It's only natural that they hand over their wallet and carkeys. Thanks to wonderful campaign finance reform law that restrict the first amendment so that only the lapdog press can "fight back", ISP's have no other choice but to lie down and take it. That goes for the users as well.
I'm sure he'd kick an ass or two,
That's what Brian Boitano'd do. . .
from the sybase announcement:
The potential for abuse here is incredible. Meanwhile, our institutions of research and higher education are ready to do their part to help the U.S. government digest all of this lovely information: National Academies: Universities to play key roles in response to terrorism
Most of the measures mentioned in that article seem reasonable, but I'm worried about the "data mining" initiative. If you can mine data looking for "terrorists," you can mine for just about anything else, such as potential political opposition.
Also consider: given the plethora of intricate financial disclosure requirements, a list of one's political opponents and vast mountains of data available for mining, it would be no trouble at all to neutralize the opposition.
Imagine what the dirty tricksters of the Nixon administration could have done with a system like "PATRIOT".
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
all your sybase are belong to us!
I'm sick and tired of hearing you rant that PATRIOT takes away freedoms, makes us faschists, etc. IT DOESN'T. The US is trying to destroy an evil terrorist group that threatens our livelihood. The PATRIOT act may have some clauses you don't like, but you forgot the part that says you need a COURT ORDER to be able to execute anything under PATRIOT.
Now, to be a bit on topic, this is a waste of time. They don't need extra software to help in the war against terror. Why not extract the data from their current databases with some Perl scripts?
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
So all this financial snooping actually does have some terrorism implications.
War is Peace
Ignorance is Strength
Freedom is Slavery
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
I didn't see it listed anywhere, but I did find:
And on Sybase's Compliance Approach page I find:
Bold emphases mine, of course.
For an innocent system there's quite a lot of room for abuse of power, don't you think? Secrets lists and investigations are the kind of things that give Hitler-wannabes woodrow.
You are correct that the Patriot Act doesn't make us faschists. It makes us sheep. We all know what happens to sheep when the farmer doesn't think anyone's watching. Do you really think the US Gov will be any different?
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain
Whizzmo
I think we all know who knocked down the towers.
Does anyone forget that his daddy has been funding
terrorists for decades?
Who's presidency was in question when he was suddenly
give great approval ratings? Coincidence? It's not a
conspiracy who is behind all this, it's public knowledge.
Face it, our president hates his own people, he's only
done things to make things more expensive for us so he
and his buddies can get even more rich and powerful than they all
ready are. You want to go fight a 'war' go ahead sucker and
die for that oil baron. He won't mourn you. Look how
he treated his good buddies at Enron. And this guy talks about courage,
the old fighter pilot flying away right after 9-11.
Sad, stupid, suckers.
"Non-compliance is not an option"
Is that the same as Resistance is Futile?
Permits the government to label groups as "terrorist" without proof or procedural safeguards.
Expands agents' authority to secretly enter homes and offices during criminal investigations and search, take photos, and download computer files.
Allows the FBI wide latitude to wiretap and spy on activists' phones, faxes, and e-mails.
Provides for indefinite detention of noncitizens.
It's bad. For the record, I agree with what's been said in the higher moderated comments about the U.S. becoming a police state. It is.
And we are not at war.
Except for the war on the Constitution. That's more real than their war on drugs, or terrorism.
anyway... A few cities, Portland, Oregon, Denver, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, are opposing the PATRIOT Act. Others haven't officially done so but are refusing to participate in the screenings their police departments have been asked to do. People are standing up to this and seeing it for the unconstitutional nightmare that it is.
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him!"
- George W. Bush, September 13, 2001
(how'd he know who was responsible so soon, hmm? hmm....)
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- George W. Bush, March 13, 2002
-- haaz.
What I want to know is why every little bump on the road in the entire fucking world classifies as a "Your rights online" - but slashdot doesn't even bother to discuss the whole TIPS program in America where we're going to generate the largest citizen informant system in the history of the world, trumping the stasi, nazi's and everyone else.
I don't see any of the quoted text in the article...Is this guy quoting the article itself or just his interpretation?
--- Robert Strickland
All your base are belong to us
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Both Gore and Bush wants Big Government, but maybe for different reasons.
I am always amazed at how americans time and again are using the word "liberal" to describe "non-conservative" or "socialliberal". This is ofcourse not right. A liberal is a liberal, and Gore (or Bush for that matter) is not a liberal in the true sense of the word. A liberal seeks a minimal government and maximum of individual rights and freedoms.
One thing is for sure, the terrorists aren't hiding in my house, I never met one, I don't even remotely resemble one, have no use for one, and would shoot one on sight if one entered my property. It's no one's fscking biz what I do, what I buy, where I earn my money or how much I earn because it's *MY* money, I am the one that breaks my back in the hot, hot sun and no one comes out to help me or offer me a cool drink so I'm not sharing *MY* money with anyone. It's no one's fscking biz what websites I browse or what I talk about to my friends. I'm an American and I am at war with those that would rob me of my privacy, my right to free speech, my right to be secure in my home and my papers, and my right to defend my self against those that would deny me those rights. We are looking down the barrel of a Stasi government. This spy on your neighbor shit, spy on your spending, spy on your habits shit is too much. Will your postman mark your name down in his little notepad because he see you get a magazine or newsletter that *HE* deems to be subversive? Or your meter reader man peering in your windows and sees your workbench and reports you for having "suspicious looking" materials, devices and tools in your home? What would those items be? Hmmmmm, he has a computer! That could be a terrorist weapon! Uh oh! He has EIGHT computers in one room! he must be hosting a terrorist network! This is Fing too much. This *IS* 1984. We all have an appointment in room 101.
Fact: This legistaltion (Patriot Act) is not designed to affect Joe Average Citizen PERIOD, as far as banking is concerned.
There is, as Sybase stated (quite correctly), a well defined list of entities with whom financial institutions can not deal with. The list is VERY small (being an employee of a trading company, I get compliance lists in company-wide e-mail virtually every week).
Fact: In part, this regulation is designed with the same purpose as "Have you ever been member of nazis/Communist party?" question on INS forms. Its purpose is NOT to stop ex-nazis from entering US (who'd say the truth answering that question?), but to give INS legal ground to deport ex-nazis once they are found out, for lying on INS form. The same way, US Patriot act allows US govt. to go after any financial institution which does help terrorists financially and lies about it.
Fact: the Sybase software is there simply to make sure that Joe Schmoe Bank Programmer who codes trading systems doesn't have to break their brains trying to find out a way to help his company comply with the legistaltion. So don't go bashing Sybase for trying to make a buck solving an actual problem requiring programming solution. Bash them for having Fsck-ed up isql if you want to find a real reson to yell at them. <g>
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Jesus (if he wasn't dead) would tell all these WWJD morons to shut the fuck up and make up their own minds.
I'm sorry sir, your papers arent in order. You and your family will have to be "relocated".
USA is turning into a Paranoid, over-controlling goverment...the exact traits seen in Soviet Communist goverments.
What's wrong with isql?
(Serious question)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.