Slashdot Mirror
Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running
wildfrontiersman writes "NY Times article, Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running, quote: 'Because of the inroads the Internet and other digital network technologies have made into everyday life over the last decade, it is increasingly possible to amass Big Brother-like surveillance powers through Little Brother means. The basic components include everyday digital technologies like e-mail, online shopping and travel booking, A.T.M. systems, cellphone networks, electronic toll-collection systems and credit-card payment terminals.' This is too scary. I am now ready for a little less convenience and a little more privacy. How about you?"
Dear fellow Slashdotters,
/dev/null, that my body
Soon enough, many of you are going to be ingesting many litters of cheap wine, beer and
turkey. This will be a time of disappointment for everyone when you will open your
gift and realize that the dream of this so incredibly l33t Zaurus handheld has
vanished and instead materialized into YAFCCD (yet another f**cking Christmas
CD) or even YAFWPOFYM (yet another f**cking wool pullover from your
mother). You will also have to face many long hours, politely explaining to your
uncle (formerly referred to as Joe User) that you wont fix is computer again this
year, scratching your head to find the absolute words which will instead make is
mind focus on nagging your 18 years old blonde cousin, the one which you think
about while you wan.... Well you know what I mean. You will also have to tell your old
grandma that you are not at school anymore and that no, you don't have a girlfriend
yet and that no, you are not gay. To undergo the assaults of all your aunts telling you
that you are fatter then last year will be just unbearable. You will suffer, it will be
hard. You will want to turn back, swearing you won't come back next year. On the
way to uncle "Joe user" house, you will see numerous wooden Santa Claus on the top
of almost all houses, representing the originality of each and everyone in this O so
wonderful world at this time of the year.
Yes fellows, those will be hard times. But fear not! Remember that you are not alone.
We, as a community must virtually hold each others because only united will we survive!
When in despair, sit back for a while and try to remember all the wonderful
duplicate stories you had the chance to read over here. Think about all those amazing
flame wars you fought. Remember all the great typos and think about the ones in
needs, because in Soviet Russia, spell checkers are correcting you. Take 3. 2. 1. step
back and profit brothers because this is our destiny. Remember all those boring
Friday afternoon when you got modded down as Troll for posting a link to this real
gem, this unique piece of art. I look forward to bash
The Beast (tm) with you again my friends, pursuing this never ending quest which is
to bitch about any conceivable companies, lawyers, governments, laws, closed
source software, or anybody which does not approve what we say, from our
theological ideas to our rocket science knowledge passing by our insatiable appetite for
pushing new, novel ways of compressing porn.
Yes fellows, together we can make it, together we can survive away from our keyboards.
Keep the faith and go thru it like a real geek, in the most profound slashdotter spirit.
I hope this is only the beginning, that many will come and join us. I hope that this
tradition will find its way thru time as years and century pass by, long after I will no
longer be, when all my lines of code will have vanished to
will have rotten since a long time and that my soul, the one and only, which gave me
the power to procrastinate all day long at your side on the great highway of informations will have
disappear from the memories of the two or three persons who coincidently happens to
know me, I hope that this tradition will still remain; as a mark of our passage, of our
endless sense of getting nowhere soon.
Sincerely, deep from my disturbed mind,
Happy Holydays.
NorthDude.
I'd rather be sailing...
This makes me perform a hearty yawn.
Why should I worry about surveillance on my online activities? It's not like I'm doing anything illegal.
If you have bad karma, like me, you lose your right to post anonymously on slashdot!
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
I already gave up expecting to ever have privacy again quite some time ago. I now care as little about privacy as I do about politics. There are other things I can spend my energy and time on that I actually have some _control_ over.
Google is to the rescue
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running
By JOHN MARKOFF and JOHN SCHWARTZ
In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian population, the most remarkable detail may be this: Most of the pieces of the system are already in place.
Because of the inroads the Internet and other digital network technologies have made into everyday life over the last decade, it is increasingly possible to amass Big Brother-like surveillance powers through Little Brother means. The basic components include everyday digital technologies like e-mail, online shopping and travel booking, A.T.M. systems, cellphone networks, electronic toll-collection systems and credit-card payment terminals.
In essence, the Pentagon's main job would be to spin strands of software technology that would weave these sources of data into a vast electronic dragnet.
Technologists say the types of computerized data sifting and pattern matching that might flag suspicious activities to government agencies and coordinate their surveillance are not much different from programs already in use by private companies. Such programs spot unusual credit card activity, for example, or let people at multiple locations collaborate on a project.
The civilian population, in other words, has willingly embraced the technical prerequisites for a national surveillance system that Pentagon planners are calling Total Information Awareness. The development has a certain historical resonance because it was the Pentagon's research agency that in the 1960's financed the technology that led directly to the modern Internet. Now the same agency -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa -- is relying on commercial technology that has evolved from the network it pioneered.
The first generation of the Internet -- called the Arpanet -- consisted of electronic mail and file transfer software that connected people to people. The second generation connected people to databases and other information via the World Wide Web. Now a new generation of software connects computers directly to computers.
And that is the key to the Total Information Awareness project, which is overseen by John M. Poindexter, the former national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. Dr. Poindexter was convicted in 1990 of a felony for his role in the Iran-contra affair, but that conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court because he had been granted immunity for his testimony before Congress about the case.
Although Dr. Poindexter's system has come under widespread criticism from Congress and civil liberties groups, a prototype is already in place and has been used in tests by military intelligence organizations.
Total Information Awareness could link for the first time such different electronic sources as video feeds from airport surveillance cameras, credit card transactions, airline reservations and telephone calling records. The data would be filtered through software that would constantly look for suspicious patterns of behavior.
The idea is for law enforcement or intelligence agencies to be alerted immediately to patterns in otherwise unremarkable sets of data that might indicate threats, allowing rapid reviews by human analysts. For example, a cluster of foreign visitors who all took flying lessons in separate parts of the country might not attract attention. Nor would it necessarily raise red flags if all those people reserved airline tickets for the same day. But a system that could detect both sets of actions might raise suspicions.
Some computer scientists wonder whether the system can work. "This wouldn't have been possible without the modern Internet, and even now it's a daunting task," said Dorothy Denning, a professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Part of the challenge, she said, is knowing what to look for. "Do we really know enough about the precursors to terrorist activity?" she said. "I don't think we're there yet."
The early version of the Total Information Awareness system employs a commercial software collaboration program called Groove. It was developed in 2000 by Ray Ozzie, a well-known software designer who is the inventor of Lotus Notes. Groove makes it possible for analysts at many different government agencies to share intelligence data instantly, and it links specialized programs that are designed to look for patterns of suspicious behavior.
Total Information Awareness also takes advantage of a simple and fundamental software technology called Extended Markup Language, or XML, that is at the heart of the third generation of Internet software. It was created by software designers at companies like Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and I.B.M., as well as independent Silicon Valley programmers.
The markup language allows data that has long been locked in isolated databases, known in the industry as silos, to be translated into a kind of universal language that can be read and used by many different systems. Information made compatible in this way can be shared among thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of computers in ways that all of them can understand.
It is XML, a refinement of the Internet's original World Wide Web scheme, that has made it possible to consider welding thousands of databases together without centralizing the information. Computer scientists said that without such new third-generation Web technologies, it would have never been possible to conceive of the Total Information Awareness system, which is intended to ferret out the suspicious intentions of a handful of potential terrorists from the humdrum everyday electronic comings and goings of millions of average Americans.
Civil libertarians have questioned whether the government has the legal or constitutional grounds to conduct such electronic searches. And other critics have called it an outlandishly futuristic and ultimately unworkable scheme on technical grounds.
But on the latter point, technologists disagree. "It's well grounded in the best current theory about scalable systems," said Ramano Rao, chief technology officer at Inxight, a Sunnyvale, Calif., company that develops text-searching software. "It uses all the right buzzwords."
People close to the Pentagon's research program said Dr. Poindexter was acutely aware of the power and the invasiveness of his experimental surveillance system. In private conversations this summer, according to several Department of Defense contractors, he raised the possibility that the control of the Total Information Awareness system should be placed under the jurisdiction of an independent, nongovernmental organization like the Red Cross because of the potential for abuse.
Dr. Poindexter declined to be interviewed for this article. A Darpa spokeswoman, Jan Walker, wrote in an e-mail reply to questions that "we don't recall ever talking about" having a nongovernmental organization operate the Total Information Awareness program and that "we've not held any discussions with" such an organization.
The idea of using an independent organization to control a technology that has a high potential for abuse has been raised by previous administrations. An abortive plan to create a backdoor surveillance capability in encrypted communications, known as Clipper, was introduced by the Clinton administration in 1993. It called for keys to the code to be held by an organization independent of the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies.
Speaking of Dr. Poindexter, John Arquilla, an expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey on unconventional warfare, said, "The admiral is very concerned about the tension between security and civil liberties." He added that because of the changing nature of warfare and the threat of terrorism, the United States would be forced to make trade-offs between individuals' privacy and national security.
"In an age of terror wars, we have to learn the middle path to craft the security we need without incurring too great a cost on our civil liberties," he said.
Computer scientists who work with Darpa said that Dr. Poindexter was an enthusiastic backer of a Darpa-sponsored advisory group that had been initiated by a Microsoft researcher, Eric Horvitz, in October 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The group, which was composed of 41 computer scientists, policy experts and government officials, met three times to explore whether it was possible to employ sophisticated data-mining technologies against potential terrorist attacks while protecting individuals' privacy.
A number of the scientists proposed "black box" surveillance systems that would alert human intelligence analysts about suspicious patterns. Once the alerts were issued in such a system, they suggested, legal processes like those used for wiretapping could be employed.
But a number of the scientists and policy experts who attended the meetings were skeptical that technical safeguards would be adequate to ensure that such a system would not be abused.
The debate is a healthy one, said Don Upson, who is senior vice president of the government business unit of a software company in Fairfax, Va., webMethods, and the former secretary of technology for Virginia.
"I'm glad Darpa is doing this because somebody has to start defining what the rules are going to be" about how and when to use data, he said. "I believe we're headed down the path of setting the parameters of how we're going to use information."
if they can link my AC postings to my ID then I am screwed
What a dim outlook on life you have. Perhaps you need to spend some time in the Ministry of Love...
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Many are concerned about the government because of their new spyware, the Big Brother affect. Oddly enough, I'm not concerned because I think the government might be "reading my mail".
There's an old saying that goes something like the master swordsman doesn't fear another master, he fears the amateur.
I feel the same way about Big Brother. I don't consider them to be a threat about what they might intentionally find out about me or my friends/family. I fear what they might "think" they found in a fit of total incompetence.
> This is too scary. I am now ready for a little
> less convenience and a little more privacy. How
> about you?"
Anomolous behavior will flag you as a "person of interest". Find out what the typical consumer of your age, income and education does and do it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I will gladly trade my right to privacy for a bit more freedom from the fear of terror. After all, having government spooks reading my email is infinitely preferable to being incinerated in a nuclear fireball.
Enjoy the story.
I have always been for less convenience and more privacy. However, I think it should be a matter of choice. The choices *should* be available, and many times they are not, and that really fries my goat.
For example, Social Security numbers were never meant to be a general ID number. Every chance I get, I opt for a different number [e.g., driver's licenses usually us SS #'s for the DL #. Here in Missouri, you can have that changed so that your DL# is not equal to your SS#, which is nice.]
I encourage everyone to limit any personal information you give out, and check your credit reports often. Ultimately, the choice is yours: restrict the broadcast of your personal information [at the expense of some convenience], or face identity fraud of one kind or another.
All we have to do is hope that all the government departments carry on like they currently do, not talking to each other or sharing information :)
Get your own free personal location tracker
This same Article was carried on other wires as well.
It scares me that my entire financial history is documented in a single report. This isn't something new, but I am finding that information is being increasingly consolidated. This makes them more of a security risk.
Who doesn't have any subscriptions to anywhere except for my driver's license, bank cards (one credit, one debit) and Social insurance number?
People who become peons of Big Brother do so because they want big brother to nurture their lazieness... It's almost like selling your soul to the devil in exchange of comfort.
I could travel to an arab country and back (from Canada - with a canadian passport), and nobody would know.
Wake up people - it's not that hard.
you haven't been paying attention.
;)
If you don't realize that your electronic footprint can be tracked everywhere, you haven't been keeping your eyes open.
Your posts to slashdot can be subpeoned (sp?) for dates/times and content. "I was in my office at 4:00 on tuesday" "Oh, well why were you posting to slashdot from your mother's computer?"
Your ATM transactions, pictures and times and dates. Your logging into NYtimes to read an article - your IP and browser and all that were logged. ad infinitum, as noted in the article and elsewhere on what were once called "conpiracy theory" and "right/left wing wacko" sites that have been talking about this for some time.
If you're only scared after reading an article in the New York Times, you're blind as a bat and half as smart.
Now, if the other 17 people who are still at work after 3 pm on Christmas eve will post replies to the thread, we can all go home now
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
... for email. They blithely put whatever comes to mind in their email as though it's private.
I like to ask them how they'll enjoy explaining such emails after their company's email is subpoenaed in a lawsuit. It's usually just an "it'll never happen" shrug.
So the threat of being spied upon doesn't seem to make a difference to most non-geek people I know, even if they do things that would be embarassing to them if they were publicized. Odd.
I don't see what the big fuss is all about. They already know everything about you, down to what toilet paper you buy. You've been tracked for years thru your SS# and credit cards. You pay over 50% of every dollar you make to keep this system healthy.
Mad enough to DO something about it? No? So why should I listen to you bitch?
So George Orwell was off by 20 years.
Hey Democrats. Looking for an issue? How about dropping the "Tax cuts for the Rich" and the "It's the Economy Stupid" Garbage and adopt a platform based on the Protection of civil liberities? With all of this "Homeland Security" running out the wazoo and back, and our freedoms going out the door one by one, maybe you would get people listening to what you have to say if you start informing people that their freedom is at risk.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Would the guy who cut and pasted the NyTimes article into his post be prosecuted under copyright laws
Or did he think Anonymous coward really meant that??
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
... posting your driver's license and Socialist Insecurity (or your country's equivalent thereof) numbers here in the thread you started.
I am now ready for a little less convenience and a little more privacy.
that's the kernel of truth here in a nutshell. some would have lots of convenience, and care less about the privacy. others would rather have nothing made public, and will go to great lengths, ie, less convenient means, to ensure that.
where there is a will, there is a way. effortless privacy has always been, is, and always will be impossible. privacy will always be more expensive in time and resources for those who want it than convenient straightforward daily life. so let people vote with their level of paranoia. if you believe the government will never hurt you, let it all hang out. if you believe mccarthyism is right around the corner, cover your tracks.
the problem is believing you can have your privacy without any effort on your part. never will happen. or have your convenience with privacy inherent in the deal. nope.
also, if somebody somewhere in power says you HAVE to do things one way or the other, either some will scream foul at the inconvenience, or some will scream foul at the lack of privacy.
and, btw, medical data: be careful when you fill out your prescriptions. doctor confidentiality is iron solid, but there all sorts of breaks in the system of privacy when it comes to different parts of the healtchare industry. however you feel about privacy/ convenience, drug companies and maybe even potential employers knowing about your diabetes/ high blood pressure/ AIDS is just plain orwellian.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You all thought how peachy it would be if everything was connected. Well, now it is and we are fucked. Thanks guys!
...let's talk about John Markoff. He's a tool, and Big Brother used him to make Kevin Mitnick more feared by the ignorant American masses than Stalin was by the average Russian peasant.
i have EZ-pass. i like the fact that it speeds things up for me, but more than that, i like the fact that i no longer have to worry about keeping a ash tray full of change sitting around. i'm not really concerned with people knowing where i went when. sure, i'd rather people didn't keep that sort of tabs on me, but y'know what? i really don't care so much. wanna know where i drive? fine, whatever.
similarly with credit cards. if my credit card company want to keep tabs on what i buy, fine. as long as they don't spam me with "promotional offers" (nicely worded spam), i don't care.
as long as the person on the other end doesn't care, i'm happy to tell anyone who wants to know who i call on the phone, who i give money too, who i send email to.
i agree it'd be a problem if this sort of stuff was unavoidable. but you don't like EZpass tracking where you drive? don't use it. pay cash for things.
the obvious counter-argument is that, in things like credit cards, you often don't have a choice. but if enough people "defect", somebody'll come along to fill that market demand. it's just that most people don't think about it. and many who do (like me) simply don't care that much about keeping their lives a secret.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I laugh at all those who wear a tinfoil hat and all those who said I was crazy for having a metal plate put in my head, but look at them now AHAHAHA >8 D
Seriously.
http://freenetproject.org/
If a good number of the slashdotters here donated that old box in the closet as a dedicated nodes this could easily be the next step in secure, anonymous communications for everyone.
It's stable, runs on several different platforms and just may be an answer.
Oh, and get out and vote sometime as well. That always helps.
Spart people, and that includes criminals and "terrorists" (which nomenclature, like history, is determined by the most powerful publishers and may not be based on truth), will use PGP, steagano, distraction, and other means, as they always have to bypass governments. Like laws enacted to stop, oh lets say drugs, or alcohol, all that these laws do is punish the weak and provide opportunities for the smart and strong.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/23/technology/23PEE K.html
(some useless text for the lameness filter) ^^^^
NO, he would not be prosecuted if he acknowledged the author and the copyright owner.
If you've got nothing to hide does it matter? Also for this to be a truly Orwellian and "Big Brother" type system, we won't even know we're being watched.
because when I go to the shops I want them to have the things I want to buy.
I want to be stereotyped, I want to be classified.
card for ya
If only they would listen to my preferences the world would be a better place 8)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This is too scary. I am now ready for a little less convenience and a little more privacy. How about you?
As much as I would like to, I don't think there's anything really new to say here. We have the way out -- it's called donating to and becoming a member of the EFF. Writing lengthy and important-sounding posts is just preaching to the choir at this point.
I'm glad to see that instead of making the inference that our dependence upon convenience has consequently taken from us any sense of privacy; that you understand that the idea of convenience is by no means a right or privilege that you have. Likewise privacy is not a whole and encompassing right or freedom that cannot be taken away from you. You do although have the rights and privileges to pursue happiness, which for some may be brought about by convenience. In other words, if making three right turns instead of one left turn is going to assure you more privacy, what's stopping you, certainly not the law (3 right turns in this scenario are legal) it is certainly your right to try, just no promises on whether there will be a pleasant outcome.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
+5 funny for him
+5 insightful for me!
Public Web sites that require registration to gain access to the the articles.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Is it just me, or are the terms "World Wide Web" and "Internet" gaining a certain sinister meaning?
:oS
Eek.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Only boring people don't need the right to privacy.
A few hundred web sites devoted to tracking the mundane habits of the guy who wants to do the same to you seems rather appropriate.
Is an admitted criminal. This man is as much a terrorist as any of them. Bush should put him on the hit list. Somebody put him out of our misery now!
The co-author of the story is John Markoff... author of "Cyberpunk" and the very same guy that helped capture Kevin Mitnick with Tsutomu Shimomura using mobile phone taps and server logs? I don't know, maybe this article seems a tad hypocritical coming from an guy who got a lot of success for himself and his books by infringements of the privacy of another individual.
i am now ready for a little more intelligence .. how about you?
and a little less OSDN
* Send secure email without having to convince everyone else to install PGP or a similar client? A killer OSS mail client/PIM with built in encryption is in order (Mitch Kapor?). Maybe the solution involves an offshore ISP? Data haven?
* Sign up for an offshore credit card account that doesn't assume you're a criminal or tax evader by charging you hefty fees. There's gotta be a data haven offering cheap accounts. It's not illegal.
Anonymize my phone charges. Sounds like a useful startup. Program your phone to dial a centralized number before forwarding to your party. Maybe it involves disposable cell phones?
Use digital cash for purchases. How do I create a PayPal like account that issues a valid credit card number?
This could actually be a fun hobby. Plus, the more people that do it, the less you're opting out makes you look guilty.
or did Ray have give the gov't a back door key in exchange for the contract?
"John Spartan you have been fined 5 credits for violation of the verbal morality code."
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Cos Big Brother wants to keep a protective eye on you!
The movie (1984) has a very cool scene where the protagonist (Winston, played by Joh Hurt) is doing his morning 'aerobics' at home, in front of his viewscreen, following the instructions of the rather stern lady on the screen... she stops and says something like "Number 1048, you arn't doing it right! Like *this*... Thats better."
Anyone who thinks that the whole 1984 thing is overrated and the Big Brother surveillance society can't be *that* bad should grab a P2P file sharing app and download this movie...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Of coure they'd know. First, you need a passport. To get that, you need to present a birth certificate or other legal proof of identity. Then, you plaster a nice mug shot of yourself on the passport.
If you fly, you'll need to present your passport multiple times before you board the aircraft. And, the airliner will feed all that lovely personal info into databases shared with scads of agencies.
Don't forget passport control at your place of departure and at your destination. Oh, odds are you'll need a visa to get into that Arab country. A passport alone won't cut it. More database entries.
Now, once you beyond passport control and out of the airport at your destination, smile at the local police officers, 'cause you are almost certainly already in there records. And, if you appear sufficently interesting, the local intelligence service knows you're there, too.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
George Orwell got the year wrong and the name of the organization, but man did he call it: the ministry of truth.
"This is too scary. I am now ready for a little less convenience and a little more privacy. How about you?"
Hey... the genie is already out of the bottle, the only question left is who will he serve? The rich, powerful, well-connected or crooked could always find out whatever they wanted to about you. The only difference now is they can do it a lot faster. Privacy laws only prevent us from spying on them.
What we need are sunshine laws that allow everybody to spy on everyone. I don't care if I live in a fishbowl as long as everybody else does too. Big deal if they put cameras on every street corner, in the police departments, at my work. If you want to se how much I earn or what I bought last week fine. Just set up the system so everybody can see all of the info, not just the rich and powerful. That will give us true freedom. Who will watch the watchmen, the watched.
it said electronic TROLL detection.
That this is the government that *you* voted for. Don't like what they are doing - then vote a change. Otherwise, quit bellyaching and say a big *thankyou* to the team in Washington DC. Don't vote -- then you loose all rights to complain. Do vote and it's your choice. The country has spoken and it's for less privacy and greater security.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
John Markoff?
Hmmmm.
I wonder how many remember Poindexter and Iran/Contra? Iran/Contra was the last time the government broke the law in a "the ends justify the means" sense where they not only sold arms to Iran, which supported terrorism at the time, but used the money to support the Contras, a South American terrorist group, which they also helped sell cocaine in the US for even more terrorist money. All parts of the deal were illegal, the congress had told Reagan not to sell weapons to Iran, and not to give weapons or money to the terrorists; importing cocaine was illegal, though I think that took everyone by surprise.
I think there are few that would justify Poindexter's pro-terrorist ends in this day when we are at the unfortunate end of the terrorist gun. But, knowing that he was part of such a conspiracy tells you that he has a contempt for the law and so can expected not to follow any meagre protections that may remain in it.
No! DON'T vote! It's uninformed voters that are causing the problem. If you haven't researched the issues, then stay the fuck away from the polls.
A lot of problems are with security, and opinion
do you want:
-The current gov't party to know who b*tches about them the most, and exactly what they say, etc
-The intimate details of your life revealed. Should the gov't know about that mole in an odd place turning an odd colour... or your fetish for sailor moon action figures
-A giant repository of information on you, waiting to be hacked
-Anything that could be acquired to be used for information against you in legal issues. If you are ever accused of a crime you didn't commit... sometimes even the most innocent comment can come back to bite your ass if it's taken out of context.
They haven't read the book most likely. Took me a second but I got it.
For the record, it's talking about the "Ministry of Love", which was actually in charge of distributing hate, in the book 1984.
Heck, a lot of people probably don't even know that the reference "big brother" is from there as well
More info
Movie? Pff.
The issue is not whether we should be afraid they may find something, it is that they will.
For years, the NRA has been fighting gun registration. Guess what, they just lost and it did not even require a vote. If I can record every electronic transaction, then the legal purchase you just made at Walmart was recorded and we know who bought the gun, where you live, etc... Now before you hit reply with "maybe we should know.." maybe we should. But, it should be explained to people that way, no usurped.
Working in the travel business, specifically hotel systems, we try to have a "no spook" policy. We do not tie anything about your stay together. We don't send a "thank you for staying" note to you and your spouse just because two stayed in the room. We also don't comment on things you did there. (Porn channel, liter of scotch, etc.). This makes people uncomfortable, because they learn they are being tracked to an incredible detail. (when you entered and left your room, what you ate, drank and purchased in the hotel shop)
The Information Awareness Office(IAO) is going the opposite route. They will be tying all this type of information together with your financial, banking, medical and police records. Consider what Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich would have been willing to do, to avoid having their "indescretions" revealed? Simply tying Newt's calendar to the hotel registrations in the area to the credit card paying for it...
The problem with this information is we cannot trust people not to abuse it. The IAO is currently being run by John Poindexter a person convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing the congressional inquiry. He thought he knew the best course of action for the country. Now given the information that would influence where we might go, that beats dollars any day.
So if you don't do anything wrong why do you care? Because people in power will do something wrong and this makes Hoover's files first grade stuff.
The article says "In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian population.."
Since when monitoring the civilian population has protected anyone from terrorism? Every hacker knows that you can become untraceable and undecryptable if you want to. Terrorists are not stupid, they are able and have the will to use every trick in the book. Real terrorists aren't sending uncrypted emails, or chatting about their next strike on public forums.
Big brother's monitoring system is targeted to civil liberties, not outside threat. The same thing has happened many times in the history. You think that you're saving your country by giving up your civil liberties, but you're not! And by the way, gaining back those liberties is ten times as hard as losing them. You might want to check from your history books how east germans, russians, finns, etc. won back their liberties.
You have no privacy. Get over it.
It's utterly pointless to whine about "I want more privacy!" or "I'm ready for a little less convenience!". If that's true, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
NOT write your local MP/congressman.
NOT publish incensed diatribes on web sites of already like-minded people.
NOT bitch on blogs about the sordid state of affairs.
GET OFF THE GRID.
Don't wanna? Too bad for you then. It's easy, if you really want to:
(1) Stop using checks, credit cards and debit cards. Use cash and money orders.
(2) Only use the internet from libraries and public places.
(3) Switch ID's very often when you do use the Net.
(4) Only use pay phones and disposable cell phones (the prepay kind). Change your number often.
(5) If you have a PC (and I mean PC, not a Mac or Sparc) in the house, do everything from inside a VMWare session, which you restore clean each use. This means creating a virtual machine, copying the machine to a new location, and every PC use, copy the VM over and start fresh. Store all docs on external media.
(6) Get off the public utility grid. In the US, form corporations to buy property, and do not have utilities (i.e., use candles).
If you're serious about wanting privacy, then take matters into your own hands. Complaining that we SHOULDN'T track everyone's activity is a waste of time. If it's possible, and marginally legal, someone will do it.
I am a marketer. I make a living building profiles of consumers and tailoring messages for them. I can buy, for most Amercians, and some Australians, lists with your address, income, # children, ages and genders of children, value of your house, income of your neighbors, your age, interests, hobbies, education, assets, your past addresses spanning roughly 10-20 years, how long you've lived at your address, how often you improve your property, what catalogs you buy from and how often, a decent guess at your ethnicity, and nearly anything else. The only thing that amazes me is that we're not further than we are in knowing everything about you.
Because there's an important fact that college students et. al. need to be aware of - big brother is not the government building spy lists of data on you to further their nefarious control over you. Big brother is marketers for whom it is financially critical to know everything about you. Politics may change, but economics rarely do.
Tread lightly. I'm watching.
I don't want the government to be able to access anything about my life anytime they feel like it without having a good reason, and without having some valid checks on the process. Just because some agent of the government thinks I may be a terrorist or other criminal mastermind should not be reason enough to order taps on my phones, continuous surveillance on my net connection, my person and my friends.
There was a reason that search warrants used to be required before the gestapo could 'zoom-in' on your life. It's called the Constitution. The reason isn't to make it hard for law enforcement to do their jobs, it's to prevent them from REPEATING past violations of people's rights. I'm so sick and tired of hearing people say, "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to fear." They always forget to add 'yet' at the end. As you sit back and let your freedoms erode, you lose your voice in what's right and what's not. 'They' will decide what's right and not right.
Finally, I would encourage people to top thinking that the ACLU or the EFF is going to bail them out . These are important organizations to people who believe in freedom, but they're just one voice. 1000 letters/voices from concerned citizens (and I don't mean 1000 cut-and-paste form letters) means a lot more than 1 from the ACLU or EFF. [Maybe that's naive in the U$ of today, but I like to maintain the illusion that people do care about a greater good].
Sorry this turned into a rant, but it's amazing how everyone seems to think that freedom and safety are mutually exclusive.
This makes me think that a nice idea would be a 'lost identity road trip'. Other than the registration of your car, from your license plate, do you think you could make a trip halfway across the country and back without being identified?
Cash for tolls...
Cash for all food and gasoline purchases...
How about hotels? Can you get into a hotel without a credit card anymore? How about without ID?
You can get a campground site without id, at least a tent site.
And all those cameras - at all the gas stations, etc.... I'm think a 'filthy dirty car' with filthy dirty license plate would be in order.
If I had time to make such a trip (and cash!) I might try it.
Would be a great subject for a stupid 'I sold my life on ebay dot com' kind of web site. 'I disappeared for two weeks without getting identified by anyone and you can too dot com.'
Hrm.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
I think the NY Times failed to mention you must register to access their web site to read news about Big Brother.
Dawn of the Dead
of the bad things. You've been a good neighbour for 35 years, a husband for 40, etc etc. Very few care when it ends you up in court or something similar. Think about it in terms of light paints. White paint is nice, but it's easily covered over or marred with the slighest smear of dark. Black paint, on the other hand, may be covered with a lighter colour... but usually tends to show through.
And pleaaaaase, don't use my white/black colour comparison for racial meanings... I skew what I say enough myself without having help.
... that Slashdot hasn't secretly been a US govt spy project all along?
For the longest time we could alway count on the greed of other corperations to keep personal information private for two reasons. One they might get sued and the other is money, corperations are by nature greedy and information is money. This was a natural and for the most part balancing nature of true capatalism.
Now we have TIA which forces these small pockets of data into the governments hands with ot without our explicit knowledge or concent. Statics will do the rest. It won't catch terrorists ( http://www.bgladd.com/Total_Information_Awareness
Before we know it we are srtipped of all civil rights since for the most part people are more conforatable no longer thinking for themselves.
When all of these laws are being passed: DMCA, that evil "Hate Crime" thing in the EU, etc. And yet you liberals still give up guns thinking they are evil. Don't you realize that when the shit hits the fan they are meant for the citizens to violently overthrow said government? We need more Timothy McVeighs.
Whoo ees thees beeg borotha you speak ov? I no see eeny beeg barotha. You must meestaken.
Hammer of Truth
Gathering this information might nab poorly planned terrorism. If Ted Kaczynski and The Snipers didn't get caught until they wanted publicity. If Mr. Kaczynski hadn't posted his manifesto his brother wouldn't have fingered him. If The Snipers hadn't taunted and called the police they would not have been caught when they were caught. If a dedicated, zealous terrorist keeps silent they might never be caught.
This information collection scheme is more of a threat to individual privacy than a tool for finding careful terrorists. Once terrists realize how to avoid the system they can terrorize and remain anonymous.
We are sold the fact that in order to get more convience we must give up our rights to privacy. This isn't true, most systems that grant convience and save time can be implemented in a way that will grant the user MORE privacy than they would have had otherwise. The problem is that most people are willing to give up anything for convience, being lazy asses, and the companies that implement the solutions to grant more convience, implement them in a way that the user trades off private information that the corporation can use for profit, or the government can use to fight dead beat dads, terrorists, drug dealers and those people who rip mattress tags off.
For those of you who always bring up 1984 and Brave New World, read Brave New World Revisited, it is a collection of excellent essays by Huxley written towards the end of his life describing nearly exactly the society we are living in today and where we are going. Read about the roots of propaganda and marketing and it's rise in the 20th century. Noam Chomsky has a great book on that called Manufacturing Consent.
Time to lower the antenna and crawl back down into my lead shielded underground vault at an undisclosed location (Cheney and I had the same realtor).
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
Benjamin Franklin duuring the revolutionary war...
" A man who would trade his freedoms for security, deserves neither!"
makes you wonder what happened to the american mentality.....
Or, as one of my not-so-computer literate teachers explained it, "Your computer broadcast an IP address to every computer on the Internet. That's why you get so much spam."
________________________________________________
suwain_2
What I can't understand, despite many many hours of thought, is how so many people are deathly paranoid of their government spying on them, believing that the USA will instantly turn the world into 1984 overnight.
Its as if they believe civil rights trump ALL other rights, even the right to life, no matter how extreme the circumstances. Yes, civil rights are extremely important...I'm glad the USA is very watchful any time any civil rights have to be taken down to make room for more important rights. But when articles like this appear on slashdot, somehow trying to claim that the internet has turned us into Big Brother...its downright annoying. What, should we remove the internet? Should we all turn fanatically paranoid and become distrustful towards our government? Do we all run around continuouly yelling "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
Perhaps some of you can help me out. Why is it when people hear that the internet may or may not be on the road to Big Brother, that so many people seem to lose all common sense and become so paranoid?
Honestly, if someone wants to track what I do and what I like, more power to 'em. I'll give you a hint, I wake up, shower, go to work, have a few beers and go to sleep. On the weekends, I get up, shower (sometimes), have more beer and go to sleep. So, I'll use everything out there that they can track me with because I do not have anything to hide (except sleeping at work). I'm not paranoid. I do not feel that someone sits there and watches my E-Z pass register (or not). With the size of the internet and the amount of data that comes though, it is impossible to monitor it all. So, frankly, I don't care if they have it. Doesn't mean they really look at it. And if they did, they are absolute losers that need something better to do while on the crapper.
Many of the Big Brother tools are up and running...
/me goes off to root some more US servers. Penalties for hacking are less than the penalties for downloading MP3s. What you gonna do.
Many more of the tools to circumvent them are already in place.
I hope you've all updated your ssh/bind/apache installs.
It's very scary and eventually we WILL be living in a big-brother society.
:-)
Recent terrorist attacks accelerated this process; government can get away with anything nowadays...
I myself don't think democracy will stop this, I think the majority of people will start to complain when it's too late.
This is one of the reasons we need a good open source community including a lot of good hackers that are able to undermine big brother whenever we reach a point it's gone too far. Maybe a bit far-fetched... but seems logical
you may leave a mark at an ATM, but where you went after that is only traceable by cameras (assuming you don't use a FastPass toll device).
Everytime someone posts about a new technological device/method/way/means of doing something, people scrutinize it for how it can be misused or controlled.
In all honesty, big-brother is nothing more than someone else poking their nose into your business for their own means. In other words, I could go out my door and follow one of my neighbors around for a week, observing and noting what they do. Perhaps I cannot observe all of the things they do/say, but I'm quite certain I could observe enough to gain insight into their daily life and use it for whatever purpose I want.
With that in mind, any time you use a public infrastructure - be it the internet or a public switched telephone network, you are giving up some privacy (That's why they call it PUBLIC) and the ability to be observed.
Each must judge for themselves what they deem intrusive and if you don't like a device/method - don't use it. Leave it for the rest of us who deem it an asset to our lives.
You name and information about you is linked to more things than you think. I do agree with you about your lack of spam. I keep another mailbox (like most) to subscribe to web sites. But you can't "travel to an arab country and back (from Canada - with a canadian passport), and nobody would know.". No one maybe intrested in your travel plans at the moment, but if the need arose to find out when and where you went. That information CAN and would be available.
Safeway knows how much of a pervert I am because I use my club card when buying peanut-butter and condoms.
I always choose odd things to buy together to really throw them off.
"Hey Martha, the BI server says we should but anal lube next to the frozen pizza!!!"
I'd love to write a well-worded and cleverly thought out post which details exaclty why, in precise detail, this system can never work.
However, Since it's christmas eve, and I've already been down the pub for a few pints, this post will have to do instead. Feel free to mod me down to -something. It's waht happenes to the rest of the AC posts I make to slashdot on a regular basis.
There's people... lot's of them... to whom this privacy issue is a non-issue. And then there's others who live in fear... like myself. I've noticed a media trend. It seems to be happening more and more, and I live in total fear of someone pulling the same stunt on me. I'm not convinced on the validity of the arguments, but my main concern is the 'child pornography' issue.
I have no interest in child pornography. I don't partake in it. I don't download it, I don't look at it. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to have anything to do with it. Don't get me wrong... I look at porn... I just draw the line at anything under 18 years old, which is the legal limit in my state.
Why am I concerned. Well.. it's all about accusations and evidence..... You see... here's my issue..... Say someone wants to end me.... and by someone, I mean government bodies, military organisations and those lots... (i.e. the 'Powers that Be'). Now, it seems to me that all it takes these days is the accusation that child pornography has been found on your computer to end your marriage, career, and life as a normal citizen of the state. I am fully convinced that if I was accused, everyone I know would treat me like a pariah and that includes my girlfriend (whom I've lived with for about 7 years) and my parents.
You see... an accusation like that doesn't need evidence to back it up. Any evidence... at all....
All you have to say is... "We've traced this person's activities and they've been downloading child porn" and you've effectively ended someone's life.
Please do try to understand my viewpoint here. I'm not in the slightest way any kind of advocate of child pornography. I don't like it, and don't think it's in any way right, good, or anything positive about it. I've just thought... (about a year ago)... What if someone accused me of it... How could I defend myself.
The contents of your hard disk aren't the issue here... The issue here is your online activities.
Let's face it, you don't need to be storing the stuff on your own disk to be involved in it...
All it actually takes is an accusation from some large and responsible body.
You... the individual have no defense whatsoever against this.
The government says... The logs from your ISP says you did XXX... and therefore you get four walls, four bars, for years...
As far as I can see, the only defense against this kind of accusation is total anonymity for online activities _unless_ (nad note the _ for emphasis) you personally sign/consent with your digital signature.
I'm not talking about a net of total anonyminity here... Just that there should be two distinct levels.... 1.) Total anonyminity... no-one can trace anything.... and 2.) Total authentication... definately me, no shadow of a doubt.
I wouldn't object to providing my PGP key in order to search on google, as long as that was made clear from the start.
I would object to google recording a log of my IP address against everything I search for.
The system's always going be abused by the _bad_guys_ but since most of them are already a part of congress, what you gonna do.
snork54@icleveland.com
First - how else could they make the movies? Eh? Eh? ;-)
:-P
Really though, if you go back to the original StarTrek there is a trial where they actually show what everyone did. Obviously they have some kind of way to observe what everyone does (with nice camera angles and the ability to wipe out morning face!). Actually, to expand upon this a bit - StarTrek is the total abdication of your right to privacy if you are a part of the federation. The computers keep total watch over what you do, when you do it, and how many times you do it. No wonder no one brags about what they do on the ship or where. Makes you wonder where Captain Kirk got his reputation from. Of course, he did rig the Kobayashi test so he could win it so he could also have rigged the computer to lie about how many times, where, and with whom he did it too!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
I didn't vote for this government, and I didn't vote for the other mope either.
I did vote, I just didn't fall into the stupidity of thinking that a third (or fourth of fifth) party vote was a waste.
I stood on principle.
And they're free, and you don't even need a hard disk in the computer.
Sorry mates, but for every one of "us" who care about our privacy and protecting it in the future, there are MILLIONS of sheep to take our place... And in an economy based on majority wins philosophy, there is nothing else for us to do to accept our defeat.
PS. If anyone is interested in buying an island and establishing it for the sole purpose of "Laissez faire" society, please give me a ring. Thanks.
-Bob
Let's get at the crux of the issue - why do we fear the inevitable erosion of our privacy? Because we feel our laws are unjust, and we don't want to be caught breaking them. Maybe if we fix some of our laws, privacy will remain an issue only for prudes and violent criminals. Someone will always have a tool to violate your privacy. We must ensure there are reasonable laws protecting your private information, and lessen the possibility the leaked information can be used against you.
you mean the internet isn't secure???
> NY Times article, Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running
Yeah, like "free registration" so they can track you better.
When Nixon was President the FBI and CIA were actively engaged in suppressing expressions of political ideas that didn't conform to the Republican party line. Their activities included character assasination, IRS audits, getting people fired and ruining their careers, even blackmail and extortion.
Later, under Reagan, you could be investigated if you participated in organizations (don't try to be smart here - this included Catholic Church activities) trying to stop the wars in Nicaragua or El Salvadore, and these investigations involved agents coming to your workplace and making you look like a criminal in front of your employer.
Now the current administration is hiring people convicted of previous political crimes to run various agencies, including the Total Information Awareness initiative, which involves collecting ALL data about you, including now intercepting e-mail and phone conversations! This agency is run by a man convicted of using his job to engage in political activities any engaging in a cover-up so that Congress wouldn't find out. THIS is who is running this operation, and this should tell you all you need to know about the Administration's intentions!
This will be a political spying operation.
Read this about the Clipper Chip and get mad!
nothing is as easy as it seems.. just because "they" can get ahold of all this information doesn't mean that are able to easily... so it's your duty as morally responsible programmers to keep writing buggy software and introducing badly designed systems to the world ...
At risk of bringing back memories of Jon Katz and "The Hellmouth"... A lot of the postings I'm seeing is that we geeks object more to the fact that information about us can be twisted to the benefit of those in power than to the fact that it's available in the first place. I also gather that this concern is totally lost on the "average" American.
Could it be that the sorts of experiences we had as teenagers fosters these particular kinds of fears? One of the things that hurt me the most in high school was the way anything I said got twisted around as something to make fun of me for until the only way to escape was to never say anything. I've also got an enormous distrust of those in power and a persecution complex from hell, and all this is suddenly sounding very familiar now that I sit and think about it.
Of course it's not a scientific argument by any means, but I have to wonder if there's something to debate here...
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety... Damn, forgot that's already been posted about 176 times in this article already hasn't it? Many apologies.
A J Nonymous has died,that's for sure.
All the technology everyone wanted. all the convenience..
Now that its here, its not so grand is it? I've been warning people for years this would happen, and was called a nut.
Now that its here. I wish I had been wrong. And its only going to get worse.. far far worse..
And anyone that thinks they can just 'avoid' it is either horribly naive or a moron.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
'nuff said.
I'm not a paranoid freak, but that's just me.
I never have, and never will, register with the NY Times to read their articles. Is there no other source to link?
dont you moderators recognise humour when you see it? :-)
Thats a good analogy for what is going on. If the government finds out that I am involved in something from reading an email that I said the statements in, then shame on me.
But if the government comes bashing down my door because they think that I'm talking in code and because they can't think of a reason that I needed to change a course abruptly in college, thats different. As long as competency and common sense are used to moniter the population then there shouldn't be too many problems.
With good and thorough use of encryption there is no reason we can't have all the high tech devices and conveniences imaginable and even more privacy than we had decades ago. Of course there is the small matter of the US ignoring the Fourth and other Amendments in the name of "fighting terrorism". Many other countries have their own supposed rights of much less importance than Big Brother government knowing all and controlling all also. Personally I will take freedom from government intrusion and take my chances with terrorists - as if such snooping is actually at all effective.
TIA watchs YOU!!! er... there's something wrong
I've got nothing to hide. If the government wants to waste their time reading my emails, then let them. If you are really that worried about what you send, then encrypt your data. Most online purchases are also encrypted so it doesn't really matter anyway.
SIGFAULT
...that a terrorist would be stupid enough to
use the same name such that multiple electronic
events could even be correlated. A stolen or
fraudulent credit card here, a little cash there
-- the terrorists will never appear -- all anyone
will see a bunch of unrelated minor crimes against
other citizens (credit card fraud and identity
theft) by apparently disparate but untraceable
criminals.
these "tools" have been up and running for some time now...about a year or more to my knowledge. Its known as the "Echelon" project. The main idea is that incredibly powerful (KH-11) satellites are able to pick up digital signals on earth (mostly cell phone coversations). However, a CIA contact that I have spoken with has stated (as of last fall) the system was still in an early stage. He implied that it was able to pick up the data, but had difficulty in sorting the data and creating whole conversations. The contact stated that it was like going into a busy restaurant. You can hear all the conversations going on around you, but to your brian it sounds like noise. It is almost impossible to piece together a conversation on the other side of the room, yet you are still able to hear it. But, it is possible that, by now, they have solved this problem.
SIGFAULT
What device did you post that with? A cellphone or PDA? Just wondering.
Spending billions more on defence would not have stopped the 9/11 attacks. Let me tell you two things that might have.
1. If Bush hadn't thrown out the Hart-Rudman report which specifically warned against the possibility of using airplanes as missiles against American cities and had recommendations to help prevent it. Instead of heeding this report, which was two years in the making, Bush simply threw it all away and said that someday, eventually, he'd get Cheney to do an investigation himself. You'd think Cheney would be busy enough running the government and all.
2. The Pentagon attack could have been prevented if Bush had taken any sort of executive action (like maybe scrambling fighter cover) rather than spending 40 minutes reading a children's story to an elementary classroom. Nice to know we've got such a leader looking out for us. I guess the worst terror attack in history didn't measure up in his list of priorities to a meaningless photo op. Possibly he was waiting for his handlers to tell him what to do. Or maybe he hadn't read the children's book before and was really getting into it.
I always use a site-specific email address, so I can tell that (with one exception) none of the sites I've given my email address to have resulted in spam
Um. I agree that using a site-specific email address is a wise choice, but your argument is flawed. Did you ever consider that it's possible to filter out the obviously site-specific subscribed addresses when a list is sold on?
The Pentagon attack could have been prevented if Bush had taken any sort of executive action (like maybe scrambling fighter cover) rather than spending 40 minutes reading a children's story [unansweredquestions.net] to an elementary classroom.
He's a President, not a psychic. He couldn't respond until told. Could you?
Funny, the article is (apparently) about the collection and use of personal information and the threat posed by these actions. The first thing I have to do to read the article is, ummmmm, register with the NY Times. How rich.
Guess I'll schlep down to the market and buy the hard copy version with cash.
Have a happy holiday.
War on Terror? right. You're absolutely bang on: if someone has an axe to grind, all they need is for some guys in suits to forcefully drag me out of my place of work, or to accuse me of dealing in drugs, or child porn. That's it. What recourse have I against it? I live in the UK but even here that's not so far fetched.
Congressman Curt Weldon's comments
Yes, but apart from being incredibly impractical and other downsides, the EU plans ID-chips for Euro bank notes. Starting 2005 (if it goes well for them). Only for 200 Euro ($200$) and up at first, because of costs, but costs drop, of course.
Bye-bye anonymous shopping.
Break it >:)
Every computer system has a weakness that can be exploited. Especially if your a uber-whackjob like me. I mean, really. I wear the same clothing every day, religously almost, I never show when I don't need to, and when I do I shower every day. I eat ketchup with every meal, and I engauge in other activities that are rather bewildering, even to me.
That, and a system like that is bound to gain sentience one day and either begin governing, or see me and crash, badly. Or someone else will come along and make it go insane. To think, someone could probably have so many cache-22's going through it's little microprocesser system that it'll think it's a tweeety bird or some other form of land animal, and be asleet at the cranks.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
The Times article talks about past and present discussions about putting these types of programs under a non-governmental agency, but instead, the Bush administration put the project under a man whose record demonstrates he believes he is better equipped to decide what's best for the country without the help of its laws or Constitution. IMO, this either represents extremely poor judgement, or is a cause for real concern.
Of course the realy odd thing about this is, you have to register to read the article. Kind of ironic posting about wanting privacy and fearing Big Brother, and then sending people to a link where they have to register.
----- "It's all fun and games 'til somebody puts an eye out, then it's just funny."
There is no way to stop this; the forces of
:-)
t .html
g n/23AR TS.html
commerce are way bigger than the forces of the
government. One might, however, work to make
it "fairer". There is still a fighting chance
of that and small interventions might change
the direction positively.
The 1974 Privacy Act requires agencies publish
database descriptions and audit policies. Open
the source and publish it. Get a catalog of all
the databases and their audit proceedures (who
can query, how authenticated, etc...) for your
state. You cannot expect to discuss your rights
online without knowing WHAT data is being
collected and HOW it is being used. All you can
expect otherwise, is compromise, compromise and
compromise. Just what "expectation of privacy"
will remain?
Open up the system, publish what is being
collected and how it is used.
Just because the Act says so does not mean you
can get this information easily - I've been
denied recently because 1) it would "compromise
security" and 2) computer records are not written
documents, hence exempt from Maine's FAA. And
after a process carried out entirely by email,
my denial arrived by snail mail, giving me one
day to appeal, Friday before Christmas.
Don't think it will be easy. You will need to
use the courts. Recruit a techie lawyer to help
and build a small group.
And after you get the government to open up, on
to the private industries where the real abuse
is happening.
See EPIC.org, their FOIA for TIA.
1974 Privacy Act:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/laws/privacy_ac
And of course, Lessig's CODE.
How censorship will dominate the net:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/23/arts/desi
I'm not a loser either
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This talk of "balancing security with freedom" and "compromising some of our freedom to gain a little security" indicates a total lack of knowledge about American history. The Founding Fathers (remember them? Jefferson, Paine, Washington, and others?) were well aware of the tradeoff between security and freedom, and they founded a country on the principle that they would not sacrifice freedom for security. Consider this quote:
"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
--Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin made an almost identical remark. And anyone who reads the Federalist Papers (written by the Founding Fathers) will also see that the founders were aware of the tradeoff, and chose--without compromise or hesitation--freedom over security.
The people in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon died because they possessed the courage to live free. I stood there on the sidewalk and watched people jump from a quarter-mile-high building because they chose the Land of the Free over someplace more secure but less free, like Singapore or China. To trade the freedom they died for, for a little more security, is an insult to their sacrifice.
If you want to trade your freedom for security, move to Singapore or China or some other country that has already made the tradeoff. Do not stay here and ruin the freedom our Founding Fathers risked everything for, the freedom those people on 9/11 died for, just so you can feel a little safer. To trade away your, and my, freedom is an insult to all who have sacrificed themselves so that we may continue to live free.
I encourage you to consider the following quotes:
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was
freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."
-- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
"[I]t is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
--- Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering
Hmmm, with all due respect I'd be very suprised if this is the last time the US government broke the law. I am sure some interesting stuff will come out in ten or twenty years about vested interests in certain Middle Eastern countries, for a start.
The Iran / Contra history certainly is one of those events US citizens should bear in mind when they get all suprised at other people's lack of trust in their government or its aims. Though I am in no way suggesting any other country is necessarily more ethical about the manner in which it pursues its aims...
smart and on topic.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
is that everyone is a little bit fucked up.
Everyone watches a little porn and drinks a little vodka and buys a little too much soda or else 90% of people are fucked up and 10% of people got all their shit together.
I for one think only the mormons will survive the puritanical restrictions the rest of us pretend to hold for ourselves.
It will be funny to go to "whorentsporn.com" and look up your child's 6th grade teacher. It will be even funnier when that same teacher looks up all the parents of his students and points out to them that they all have done the same thing.
silly puritans.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre