Slashdot Mirror
HomeSec In the News
The U.S. Homeland Security bill is steamrolling through Congress, on target to be passed within a couple of days. Since its passage is guaranteed, in whatever form it finally ends up, lawmakers are attempting to tack on their own pet projects to the bill so they can ride its coattails. A CNet article mentions that a version of the Cyberspace Security Enhancement Act has been appended to the HomeSec bill. William Safire blasts the addition in the New York Times. The Times has another story on the bill that notes some of the corporate pork that is also being added to the bill.
Just to put it into more context...
Lets say that a bill is going through Congress to put better controls on Ketchup manufacturing, because some people got e.coli from ketchup. This is going to sail right through; think of the children! So they start tacking on little bits that have nothing to do, really, with the problem at hand. "100 million to the FDA for improved Ketchup testing. And 500 Million to NASA. For, umm...space..ketchup...testing."
Now, the President has the ability to only say 'yes' or 'no' to the entire law, as presented to him. This is, I think, how it should be; y'all need to attack the root problem of fucked up laws going through Congress. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; America's political system would work far better if y'all used it as intended, and abolished the concept of the 'career politician.'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
(Emphasis mine)
Apparently prior to 9/11 ISPs were prohibited from giving away that information without a warrant. Now they are allowed to, but apparently not compelled to. This is an important distinction. Would an ISP violate customer faith and give out this information in situations that really don't warrant it? I doubt it. I doubt they'd give away anything without a warrant, allowed or not, simply because it costs money to store that all that crap and then look it up.
Lets see in the US gov't we have the following agencies to "protect" the citizens
CIA
NSA
FBI
ATF
DEA
And probably a few others. All of these agencies are empires in their own right and the interface between them is largely opaque and there is lots of redundancies and external friction.
Why do we need another empire!
BTW, Canada has one the RCMP.
I wonder... is email header information analogous to the address, return address, and postmark of a snail-mail letter? Is the post office currently allowed to track these w/o a warrant?
How much time would the gov waste if we all sent blank emails to Kabul?
How about a flat tax break? Everyone pays %2 less. Or, better yet, everyone pays $1000 less. If you're already paying nothing... you get nothing. Liberals would have shut up, I guarantee you.
Ask an economist... the capital is there already. We're just worried that the consumer doesn't have the money to buy. Right now we need trickle *up* economics. Capital gains/high end income tax breaks aren't going to make people invest when those investments can't make money anyway.
The socialized welfare garbage is stupid... it's just also inneffective. The best example was the Democrats arguing over unionization of the homeland security agency. Who cares?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
There ARE ALWAYS checks. The citizenry can recall elected officials. If we made a mistake by electing Republicans, then in two years we can correct it. However, I believe, the Republican philosophy is better suited for the world we live in.
Our economy will certainly (hopefully) get a jumpstart if nothing else
--Joey
I had submitted this message to my fraternity Egroup. It seems appropriate here.
k C: www.clsp.jhu.edu/ws2000/presen\a ry/jim_mayfield/homewood_ir_tutor ial.ppt+darpa+tides&hl=en&ie=U\
d c.upenn.edu/Projects/EARS/
a vios/1184 -1.html
n _langua ge.shtml
l . ht ml
.edu (learning institutions, .mil (US Military, they are funding
TIDES
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:1jQijQR-t9
tations/prelimin
TF-8
EARS
http://www.darpa.mil/iao/EARS.htm
http://www.l
SPINE
http://www.speechtechmag.com/issues/7_5/
QANDA, KL-WEB, and more info on TIDES
http://www.mitre.org/technology/mtp01/huma
Copy and paste what is needed.
Hmmm...
Now what could I do if I had a system to automatically transcribe
human-to-human speech over the phone??
Maybe I'd put it in a big fat fucking database, and use some of the
other contextual data-mining techniques to give me some useful
information.
Read for yourselves, and make up your own minds.
I purposedly didn't put forth some kind of fucked-up conspiracy
theory, but the sources do not lie.
The US government IS going to put all electronic info in a database -
that is NOT contested by anyone. It is a law that will soon be passed,
as mentioned in the earlier "Homeland Defense" email.
DARPA is spending a lot of money on text-to-speech.
With those two facts in mind (they are FACTS, not speculation), read
some of the web pages above. The language is fucking spooky.
Automatic transcription of phone calls, context-sensitive search of
text (from the transcripts, or the e-mails, or the web pages you look
at, etc...), and other bullshit.
ROAR
http://www.hltcentral.org/page-975.0.shtm
http://www.darpa.mil/ito/Solicitations/RFI_0103
This one is fucking scary, that is all I have to say.
Notice that most of my sources are either
the ones who develop the tech) or
the projects).
These are not tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists.
Again, read for yourself and decide.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
The big problem is the increasing scrutiny that we will all fall under. And the fact that we are moving towards a war under the vaguest of terms. Hate to do it, but I'm gonna have to drop a quote:
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power... Power is not a means; it is an end...not power over things, but over men...In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement...There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother... Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. " - George Orwell
> When did the word Liberal become an epithet
.
Newt Gingrich started the game back in 1994 when Bush Sr. lost the 1992 election. They put together a plan to make the world "Liberal" worse than "Communist" and basically wage the same war on the Democratic party that they waged on Communists before that. For more enlightenment, read David Brock's Blinded by the Right
It doesn't go both ways though. I have never met a Democrat or Liberal that responds to the other side with the same visceral reaction as a conservative when you say, "Liberal"
Conservatives have learned since 1992 that if you say something enough times people will take it as conventional wisdom. For example, despite the fact that the media in general has been giving G.W. Bush a free ride since Sept 11, 2001, they still claim there's a "Liberal bias" to the media.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
The bill also tacks on loosely worded research funding for Texas A&M. It also lets the White House decide who gets hired and fired, bypassing employment standards regulations (who's gonna be suprised when it's 99% white?). The government can now slap wiretaps whereever they think appropriate, and ISPs can divulge information without fear of reprisal. The nice people who make the smallpox vaccine are now protected from litigation, as are the nice people who make metal detectors, and the nice security guards who man them. So when the big bad man carries his briefcase of smallpox through JFK International, you won't be able to sue anyone for reading Archie Digest when he was supposed to be watching the screen, and when it turns out your smallpox vaccine was in fact a dose of really, really dilluted cherry Kool-Aid, well, sucks to be you.
In other news that undoubtedly went unreported, your faithful representatives have bitten the bullet, and given themselves another pay raise. Now your Reps, Senators, VP, and about 1000 other people (literally) make over $154,000 a year, not including kickbacks, expense budgets, under-the-table exchanges, contributions to their re-election fund...
God Bless America.
(I'm legally required to say that, now that Bush signed a bill re-emphasizing the importance of "God" in the pledge of alleigence, as well as "In god we trust" as your national motto. So much for separation of church and state, eh?)
(And before your left-wingers start running your mouth off, I'll point out that the Democrats didn't oppose any of these bills, admitting that the soon-to-be Republican majority would make the effort useless. So much for standing up for what you believe in.)
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
OK,
We all knew that this was going to happen. Most of us, anyway, saw it several years ago. DMCA, Stamp Tax. SSSCA, Tea Tax. Homeland Security Act, Boston Massacre. Did any of you pass American History? America did not rebel because Britain suddenly unilaterally invaded the shores with thousands of troups; It rebelled because the British Parliament steadily eroded what the colonists perceived as their basic rights. Insert citizens for 'colonists' and congress for 'parliament' and you'll see we find ourselves in exactly the same predicament now.
On the one hand, you have a legal/democratic system that supposedly protects and represents your rights as a citizen. On the other hand, you have the reality of experience which says that congresspeople in D.C. don't really give a damn what you think. Frankly, your name isn't on that fat check they got for their reelection. Therefore, you don't count.
So, the question once and again is, what are you going to do about it, sitting in your dimly lit basement out in suburb USA? Let's look at the list of possible responses:
1. Do nothing. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off
2. Bitch on Slashdot. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
3. Write a letter to your Congressman. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
4. Vote. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
5. All of the above and join the EFF. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
6. Stand up and protest, take to the streets. Result: people in power pay lip-service to your cause. Mostly, this stuff still happens and pisses you off
7. Go on strike, refuse to return to work until stuff changes. Result: People in power pay lip-service to your cause, try to co-opt the outrage of your movement for their own gain. Pretty much this stuff still happens and pisses you off.
8. Form a political party and vote for candidates who support the way stuff outta be. Result: Opposition parties roll over and fawn over your agenda while working behind the scenes to undermine it.
9. Armed insurrection. Result: A whole lotta innocent people die. Old regime is sent to the wall to be shot. New regime ?
The way I see it, slashdotters and champions of liberty ought to be on level 5 looking to jump to levels 6&7. Bring Wall Street and every corporate LAN to a standstill with a sick-out and you'll start to see some action. Advancing to higher levels would be great, but anything less will get you a big fat nothing.
Now, as my high school history teacher liked to say: "chew and digest."
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Sarcasm aside, you are on the right track. That is, the punishment should fit the crime. Therefore, the question is, How broad is the impact?
I think all of us, deep down inside, have a gut feeling that 'punishment should fit the crime'. The problem is that it gets difficult sometimes to measure the impact of a crime.
Let's consider a drastic example: a sexual predator rapes and kills a 5 year old girl. Forensic evidence indicates that she died a very slow and painful death. This is obviously horrific but what is the "impact"? A girl is dead and her parents and a handful of others who knew and loved her will suffer severe emotional distress. Now consider someone involved in white collar non-violent crime, like the Enron debacle. Scores of people have lost their life savings. Scores! Now here's the question: which of these crimes has a more severe impact on society? I certainly wouldn't want to be the one crunching the numbers on that one.
And who is going to compute the impact? It's hardly a straightfoward calculation. So that leaves it open to broad interpretation. In other words, you can probably come up with any number you want. A hacker could be accused of providing sensitive information to terrorists. As for proof, the government would simply state they didn't know who the hacker gave the data too.
Another thing to consider is premeditation. A white collar crime is ALWAYS premeditated. A violent crime may not be. The legal system is set up to punish premeditated crimes much more harshly than 'heat of the moment' ones.
Trying to make the punishment fit the crime sounds great in theory but there are some significant problems with trying to implement it in practice.
And, for the record, I think life in prison for hackers is a bit steep, myself.
GMD
watch this
Liberals Encourage Selflessness, Conservatives Encourage Selfishness
No, the difference is that conservatives believe one has the freedom to either be selfless or selfish. Liberals believe that you should be FORCED to be selfless -- by their definition of selfless -- or else.
Personally, I generally believe more freedom is better than less freedom. No one stops you and those like you from being selfless, by whatever definition of selfless you want to use.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.