Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Proposes Centralized Internet Surveillance
Mr.Intel writes "The Times is reporting that President Bush is 'planning to propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users.' The recommendation is part of a report entitled 'The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace'. It is due to be published early next year."
Well.. I'd write something critical of the plan here ... BUT THEY MIGHT BE LISTENING!
You Americanos scare me sometimes. No, I don't want to see more terror attacks, but isn't this the kind of stuff you hated the Soviet states for? Spying on people can be used easiely for controling people and because it can, it will.
Quod in aeternum cubet mortuum non est,
Et saeculis miris actis etiam Mors perierit
What monitoring everyone all the time does is make everyone a suspect, thus in the eyes of law enforcement a criminal. Everyone's Internet usage is automatically monitored regardless of probable cause. Blanket surveillance regardless of guilt or cause is the foundation for the police state that Bush, Ashcroft, Poindexter, etal. wish so desperately to establish.
STOP ROCK VIDEO
How is Internet or any TCP comnmunication different than a real phone, or a letter ? As far as I can tell to watch over and tap your phone or letter authroity need a special judge writing. So why suddenly Internet which is only another form of communication , is soooo different that it need to be surveyed in real time ?
Second, any terrorist communicating message not encrypted over, hidden in picture or other data, or using a code word system is already a dead or arrested terrorist. How THIS system is supposed to rpeevtn another 9/11 when the FAILURE of theuautorithy was to INTERPRET THE DATA and NOT get the data ?
Call me a paranoid , but if you control the communication between people, you control the people too. It looks more like population control than terrorism fight.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's really disgusting how the US governement is abusing the 9/11 attacks to take away the rights of the US citizens. The victims must be spinning in their graves.
Honestly, does anyone believe that the Feds could actually get through all the data? Sure natural language processing could analyze some of the data, but all of it? And really, do we believe that terrorists really so stupid as to put "Attack this Thusday at Place X--Bring Explosives" in their subject lines?
Apart from the practical nature of the collecting and analyzing data, are we just a little too nutty about wanting to feel safe? Homeland Security, watching our neighbors, analyzing what sites I surf, will that really keep terrorists out of the US? Is this all just a bunch of fear motivated policies that will keep us placated while we go about our day, at least until the next event.
Sure we need to be prepared and all, but at least lets demand a little intelligence and thought.
My little rant.
I run a small website for news and discusion. Last month I had 15,000 visits and served up over 500,000 pages.
How many visits does slashdot get? How many page views? Ebay? MSNBC? Weatherchannel? Tom's Hardware?
Does anyone here actually understand the magnitude of pages, sites, and information that they are proposing on watching and filtering?
The number is mind boggling.
We have folks comparing this to another step twords 1984. In readiong their comments, I wonder if they've even read the book?
All this "surveillance" of the web will accomplish is a useless oversized database with statistics that will take people years to get a grasp on. It'll be a case of "too much information" that won't be easily collated - and hence , pretty useless.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I don't think they could. Sure, they can tell in hinsight that they detected communication that indicated something was going on. But, realizing beforehand what is significant and what is not, not even 100000 trained monkeys could do that.
The problem is "too much information". The problem isn't getting the information, the problem is realizing what is important and what is not. Of course, going big-brother is going to help sooo much on the information overload... :-P
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
After all, nothing assures freedom like constant, unchecked surveillance.
As far as I can tell to watch over and tap your phone or letter authroity need a special judge writing.
Although this isn't really an English sentence, I'll respond. You missed it. Several laws have been enacted in the past few months so that law enforcement people don't even need a warrant (aka: "special judge writing"). They can already listen to/watch anything we say/do without any kind of warrant or even reason. Orwell's 1984 arrived several months ago, they're just tidying up the details now.
Suck me off and swallow, Ashcroft.
no, no it wont. That's why you combine it with PGP or other favorite encryption tool. It seems Bush knows I transferred a 640MB enmcrypted file last night. It must be an .iso, pirate!
NSA spends lots of money decrypting it to reveal a looping video of me laughing at them, telling in Soviet Russia jokes, and http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com about 10 times.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I've skimmed the entire proposal document and read the first third completely (killing a small forest by printing out the pdf document).
I'm not going to cite details as I don't currently have the block of paper in front of me.
However, I do feel I have to comment. This document is based in fear, not hope. It is not a workable proposition in the United States of America, but would have been very well accepted in the former East Germany or in almost any coldwar eastern block nation.
Under the proposals all persons accessing information or making transactions electronically, or having transactions made for them, would be monitored, recorded and archived at all times for later retrieval under unstated conditions, by unstated persons, for vague purposes of security.
Stalin would have loved it.
The next step beyond this would be to outlaw any and all transactions that were deliberately masked to try and hide from the evesdroppers the origin, content, or time of the communication, because if you feel the need to hide, you must have something to hide, and you are assumed to be a criminal.
I can't speak for everyone, but I do know that I felt safer on September 12th 2001 than I will on September 12th 2005 if all this continues.
The article notes that such a plan would require Congressional and regulatory approval.
So with this on our radar, privacy advocates and reasonable-minded citizens can practice good ol' democracy, and stop this thing in its tracks.
It's worked before (c.f. Clipper Chip), and can work again.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
I voted for Al Gore. Thank you, that is all. :)
As for G. W., I doubt that he's going to get voted in during the 2004 elections, since it's doubtless by now that he's going to have half the country nuked by screwing with Iraq.
And now, for the story... this man has been using the Terrorist Protection trademark to invade our privacy, step on our constitutional rights. And he still didn't catch bin Laden.
There was an artist last week who spread 28 large black boxes painted with the word FEAR around Grand Central Station in New York. It shut down the terminal for 5 hours.
Bush et. al don't know what to do. The idea that disenfranchised individuals from a foreign nation might sacrifice themselves and find some domestic support for their cause has him baffled. Like anybody else when he is scared, he is doing anything he can think of, no matter how useless.
Homeland security seemed draconiun, redundant, but understandable considering what the Army/Navy/AF/Marines have been doing over the past few years. Then unlimited detention without arrest, INS prisions, refusing entry for stage performers, a dangerous smallpox vaccination program, a symbolic war with IRAQ, threats against North Korea...
Bush is scared, and helpless. He knows that the information was available to law enforcement before the attack, but he doesn't have enough finesse to understand that processing information is harder than gathering it. So, by the "Bigger is Better" American mentality, he is trying to fix America's intelligence agency by gathering tremendous amounts of basically irrelevant data. Not that this president sees the elegance of checks and balances: let's be honest, if he could get away with Ashcroft declaring him emperor, he would have done it a long time ago. But all that information and power will at some point be used wrongly. Not that it will be abused, but it will be used wrongly. History has proven that.
It's funny, but if the terrorists were attempting to shread American values and traditions, thus making it an unliveable country and reducing it's power on a world stage, then they have succeeded. And by not reappearing and therefore presenting an elusive target, the service their cause even further.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
-C
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Well, the FBI already has such a monitoring system in place with ISPs called Carnivore. They must secure permission from a judge to use the system to track specific individuals. This is how it should work. My concern would be that the current administration wants broad powers to spy on anyone they want, without judicial oversight. That would be truly Orwellian. IIRC, the USA PATRIOT Act already loosened up some of these restrictions, especially where it involves foreign nationals. How much more power do they want or need? How much more monitoring is reasonable for citizens in an allegedly "free" society to tolerate?
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
Since everything you write and create is copyrighed and since they'll have to outlaw encryption on transmissions across the Internet, they will have to make it illegal to encrypt copyrighted material. Should make the DMCA !circumvention provisions pretty moot WRT Internet downloads....
(OK I know they'll set it up so the "little people" get fucked while "trusted" big businesses can do whatever they want, but at least I tried to present what is IMO the logical outcome of this...)
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Fortunately when you live in the day where Bob Barr supports the ACLU, I don't think this'll get off the ground (or if it does, it'll be crippled or shot down shortly after).
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Yes, and the proof-of-concept for centralized internet monitoring is already underway in China. The Bush administratio has only to follow their lead, an we too will be on track to be as free as China one day!
Besides, it would be against the Canadian Constitution's provisions on privacy and security of the person. Any citizen could then sue their ISP and require that all packets not specifically bound for the US not be routed through an American-monitored node.
Third point - this will just spur people to use encryption and/or anonymizers.
Last point - As a matter of sovereignty, other governments may then decide that all packets passing outside their borders be encrypted by the local ISP.
Where does it all end? Do I get accused of being a terrorist because I believe that George W. Bush and his administration are a bunch of fascist criminals who are wiping their ass with the Bill of Rights -- and dare to publish said information? Am I "encouraging terrorism" and thus a "person of interest" for saying such?!
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Doors often impede surveillance. Terrorists and criminals hide behind closed doors as they plot destruction, build bombs, sell drugs, plan murders. Think of how much safer you'll be after all of those irresponsible doors are removed, so that legitimate law enforcement can actively safeguard your freedoms without impediment.
Which means that if/when this monitoring system is in place, it would be in the US government's "security" interest to try to make all traffic of interest go through US-controlled territory at some point.
Which, in turn, means that the US government would be very happy to see US-based multinational corporations gain control of all the main routing points worldwide, because those corps would already have the monitoring technology in place. Even though the monitoring laws should only require monitoring in US territory, what would prevent the US government from making secret deals with those companies to monitor non-US traffic, too? Only if the monitoring can be detected and revealed by third parties can we be sure that this is not happening.
In other words, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - unless there is a simple, reliable way for us peons to monitor the monitoring, the potential for abuse will only be restrained by the conscience of those using the monitoring. Not a good situation.
I think you make a good point. Plus it works both ways:
Here's a realworld example. Guy emails me from San Francisco. I'm in Los Angeles. For reasons that escape everyone, his email usually goes thru Singapore, where presumably anyone with the tools and the urge can read it.
How would the U.S. gov't feel about other countries monitoring what is nominally U.S. traffic, but thru the mysteries of internet routing, didn't happen to stay within U.S. borders enroute? How does this differ from the U.S. monitoring say British or Chinese traffic that happened to get routed thru the U.S.??
(Hint: There is no *logical* difference.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yes, I said "nineteen fifty four," and not "nineteen eighty four."
...and you've got it about right.
The phrase of the day is "chilling effect," brought to you by the letters H, U, A, and C.
Or isn't anyone else thinking that TIA (and friends) is a little closer to the HUAC than Orwell's book? Just alias "Commies" to "terrorists," and it works just fine.
I mean this new plot is like, well, imagine -- naah, hold on, I have to say it -- imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Joe McCarthys...
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.