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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."
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.
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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.
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!
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.
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.
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The more data the US gov gets, the more they slip. Remember, the snipers were stopped 5 times after shootings at roadblocks. See, data is worth sh*t if you don't use it. This plan is really for the lawyers, and those making money. That way they can have proof that pirating, kiddie porn and the like happened, or catching terrorists after the building already collapsed.
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.
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
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.
Where did you come up with this nugget of wisdom? Non-US citizens, at least while within US borders, are supposed to be extended the same rights and protections afforded citizens, with the exception of those rights afforded exclusively with citizenship - such as voting, serving in elected office and on juries, etc.
The Constitution and Declaration of Independance do not suppose rights because of fortuitous national origin, but because these are asserted to be the inalienable rights of mankind. It is this concept of rights afforded to all that made the US potentially more promising than other attempts to define what civilization means.
It is now this basic concept which is being callowly disregarded, as manifest in the suspension of habeus corpus, etc., that we have recently witnessed. These things are now so poorly cherished, and so carelessly transmitted by systems of news and education, that you are even in ignorance of them. These rights are not the ephemera of US nationality, they are its raison d'etre.
Every right and every respect denied someone because they are a foriegn national, is a right you, as an American, are being denied too...
Why is it that non-Americans are better informed and educated about the US than its own natives?
Think hard. You know who betrayed you.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.