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Network Associates Buys "Better Carnivore"
ShaunC writes "CNet is reporting that Network Associates has just purchased a software company called Traxess, whose main product - DragNet - supposedly makes Carnivore look like a toy. DragNet is capable of monitoring everything from email to web, FTP sessions to IMs, even print jobs and VOIP conversations; sorting the protocols and logging it all to disk at gigabit speeds. One NAI exec envisions "the government using it to investigate employees and hackers." NAI has also issued a press release about DragNet."
I will continue not caring as I use my SSH sessions with impunity.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Encrypt your traffic!
They might see that it is SMTP traffic, but they can't see what you wrote. They might see it's web traffic, but they can't see exactly what it is. They might see an ssh session, but they can't sniff your root password. (Thanks to sftp, they can't grab your password there, either!)
Since some protocol headers can't very well be encrypted, there's no good reason to try running services on alternate ports; maybe now I can finally get my friends to install PGP (or similar) on their machines.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well there is one positive thing to this story, the fact that a private sector company got a hold of this software before the govt. did.
At this in this case, NA will be somewhat hesitant to allow the government to use this technology (the FBI could even turn it against NA!) to invade the privacy of citizens, whereas as we saw with Carnivore, the FBI pretty much gave us the answer "we have this technology and we are going to use it, too bad!"
the whole internet. While it's obviously no good that something like this exists, I'm not too worried. Sure RIT (the college I'm at) could install one of these systems and see what I do, but there is no way that anyone can watch the whole internet. And as other have said, encryption is nice. VNC is encrypted too.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The technology itself is fine, and potentially beneficial, if properly and very narrowly used. It could accomplish a lot of good. But any good it could accomplish would be obliterated by the vast rights violations that would take place if it was mis-used.
In other words, this technology should be controlled by courts, which would grant access to government agencies to use it (i.e., by giving a temporary pass for limited purposes) for very specific and targetted purposes, when warranted by probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
But if we fear this kind of technology and want to outlaw it off-hand, declaring the technology evil, then we're no better than the RIAA/MPAA, who want to ban technologies (DVD-R(W), DVD-RAM, CD-RW, CD-R, P2P, etc) simply because they *can* be used for illegal purposes.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
FYI - There are no such things as civil liberties. The U.S. Constitution never mentions them. The ACLU, for example, believes in only the ones they think we should have and makes up some that could not otherwise exist. Statists like to call them that so that they can be taken away or sold - after all, they only exist through civil (government) fiat.
There are only human rights. When people tread on them they are acting less than human. They are undeniable, inalienable, and exist regardless of your race, citizenship, or religion. The U.S. Constitution is the only one that recognizes this and which does not claim to grant such rights. Alas, it's been long since abandoned and now we are reduced to discussing "civil rights".
When you lose the language, you lose the ability to defend the things it used to represent. Stop using the language of the enemy and insist that they recognize and respect your human rights and individual liberties. Live up to your personal responsibilities.
> glad that things are moving in a direction so that criminals can be caught quicker (or even before the act)
.. placing more emphasis on the analysis of why people do these things could save millions of BA grads from Starbucks and Footlocker jobs, and prevent the american economy from becoming 100% service/retail/maintenance based in the future.
Have you ever heard of the cliff metaphor when discussing technology as solutions to problems?
This town had a cliff. Kids kept falling off the cliff, so they put an ambulance and a few nurses at the bottom. So, people got less careful around the cliff, and more folks fell off. So they added more ambulances and more medical staff. A small group of people in the town wanted to put some signs up at the top of the cliff saying, "Do not approach the cliff. In doing so, you are at your own risk," and conducting some classes around the town on how the cliff is not to be triffled with. But they were ignored. More ambulances, more nurses, more technology were added. Soon, everybody in the town was falling off the cliff. Nobody could act in a responsible manner, since the technological barriers were in place to prevent real-world (tm) tragedy.
This is the real problem. In placing all our eggs in the technology basket, we might be better at catching criminals, but we're doing very little to try and resolve the problem of why people are criminals in the first place. If you ask me which is the smarter society, the one that treats the symptoms, or the one thay tolerates symptoms to deal with cause of the problem, I'll take the society that can exercise tolerance and sacrifice for the overall good of the future. Unfortunately, the cliff story above is particularly blasphemous to the lifeblood of the american economy, the entrepeneur, although it would be music to the ears of all the folks getting BA's in psychology and sociology. Think about it
"Old man yells at systemd"
Okay, if the cops get to watch us all the time with cameras, why don't they let us watch too? Why not put the closed circuit feed onto the net, or cable tv? I mean, have you ever put a camera on a cop before? I have. They aren't exactly happy about it, and you can argue all you like, but they have intimidation down to a science. But if they can watch us, why can't we watch them?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.