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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?"
"It's not like I'm doing anything illegal" says the name of the man with the uid of a virus. Maybe in France you aren't, but here in America we have rules. So please, take off your shoes before you enter the house.
remember, no matter where you go, there you are
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.
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
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
Coming up on CNN.com:
A suspected Internet Terrorist Hacker has been arrested yesterday as he was photographing potential terrorists targets. He was postinng messages to the hacker website called 'slashdot' and distributing photos of previous targets such as http://derekarnold.net/archives/00000048.php and http://derekarnold.net/archives/00000045.php - He goes by the name of a very popular destructive computer virus W32.Klez.H
When he was detained he said 'I did not do any crime', but under the USA PATRIOT law he will be held for interrogation without a lawyer or a court hearing until he confesses the names of his fellow terrorist cell contacts.
W32.Klez.H was caught because of the new Total Information Awareness program which monitors internet activity for suspicious content 24 hours a day.
This is a win for America and the USA PATRIOT law as the FBI has successfully used this law to pre-emptively stop a terrorist attack in the future.
ipv6 is my vpn
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.
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.
Only boring people don't need the right to privacy.
Heh, that's funny. A government clerk, unlike some of you, wouldn't try to fuck with identity or steal his money. Evil indeed.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
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.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
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.
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"
Of course, you being prepared to give up your privacy sure helped when those Saudis crashed planes into the Pentagon and WTC. Tell me why you think the government snooping on YOU (or any other law abiding citizen) would prevent terrorists from blowing up a city?
Are we having trouble connecting the dots here?
I wasn't prepared to let the government into my private life before 9-11; however, after watching the utter destruction of two enormous and inhabited landmarks outside my window, I'm now more than a little convinced of the neccessity for a more "proactive" governmental response to the threat of terrorism.
Those Saudis and others who commandeered the airliners were seemingly "law abiding" residents while they were in this country. This didn't stop them from launching the attacks that snuffed out the lives of some 2,500 people. Maybe "Big Brother" would have came across something that would have prevented such an audacious assault on my city and nation, maybe not, we'll never know. What I do know is that in the future, I would very much like my tax dollars to be spent first and foremost upon providing basic personal safety.
Ever heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?
Also for this to be a truly Orwellian and "Big Brother" type system, we won't even know we're being watched.
Too true. Which is why I suspect we've not had any privacy for about 20 years, at least. The only difference is, now they have computers that sift through information to figure out with whom you sleep, what you read, how often you pick your nose (and with which digit), and whether you might post incitefully to forums such as Slashdot.
With new laws that allow the government to arrest and indefinitely detain people without formally charging them with anything more serious than "possible terrorism" (no evidence needed, thank you very much), the final tumbler is in place: profiling.
As far as the "if you've got nothing to hide..." remark: I disagree with my government's policies. Under the new regime, I might just have something to hide.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"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.
Since you are convinced you are doing nothing wrong, don't hesitate to accept a free webcam. Everyone else, don't take them! Throw them in the trash!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
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.
"People that are dead don't exist anymore. What does freedom matter then?"
- Anonymous Coward
According to that logic, why don't we install a camera in your bathroom? After all, it's not like you're going to live forever.
Freedom might not matter for dead people, but if you're not dead yet it's a different story.
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
While I have sympathy for your pain and fear, there is no evidence to support the theory that any of these means will prevent terror. All it will do is provide our government a massive database about private, law-abiding citizens that they can monitor and control.
The attacks on 9/11/2001 *could* have been stopped - that's the truth behind all this. As soon as a commercial airliner deviates from its flight path, contact is immediately established. If they can't make contact for some reason, aircraft are launched to intercept and identify the problem. A pair of F15's launched from any airbase in the region would have had plenty of time to intercept and destroy the aircraft. Yeah, yeah, cry me a river for the poor innocents on board. However, 250 lives to save 2500 (or more) is acceptable.
What is not acceptable is the continual erosion of our civil liberties. It's these fears that you're describing that our government is counting on in order to keep us better under control.
There's an old saying, "I love my country, but I fear my government." I believe that statement more than ever now with the pattern of control and dictatorship that they're demonstrating daily.
Join the EFF. Use cryptography. DON'T buy into the conception that all this shit is done in the name of "Preventing Terror". Compare our political climate today to the "Red Scare" of the 50's - replace Communism with Terrorism, and you're right there. Was there a Red Menace? Apparently not...
I thought about posting this anonymously, but "THEY" will be able to subpeona my IP address from my provider and from Slashdot logs, so what the hell.
I'm not trying to belittle your fears and the pain you suffered, but we need to take the much longer view, here.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Really? Some might disagree with that:
And as long as we're on the subject - while 9/11 could have been stopped by having (with several billion more dollars in extra defence spending, but would those on the Left have supported such flights before 9/11? All that JP4 being turned into noise, all those evil military planes everywhere) 24/7 combat air patrols over all major cities - I'd point out that just as there was a Red Menace in the 50s, there is now an Islamokazi Terrorist Menace (tm).
Perhaps, as with McCarthy, some elements of our response to the ITM(tm) may, 50 years from now, be seen as disproportionate to the threat, but if you dispute that there's an ITM(tm), there are 2800 ghosts in the vicinity of lower Manhattan who will respectfully disagree. (And around the world, several thousand from the preceding 20 years, and a few hundred more since then.)
As someone who has chosen not to reside in Manhattan, I have no sympathy for you. Is someone forcing you to live in Manhattan? If you don't like us retaining our civil rights, why don't you give up your 212 number and just move to Brooklyn?
Many areas of the country are associated with their own specific dangers. People live near volcanoes in Hawaii that sometimes engulf their houses and towns. The Mississippi river is lined with communities that are periodically flooded. The coasts are lined with houses that get wiped out in hurricanes. Millions of people live in Tornado Alley, and tornadoes actually kill people. Hell, millions of us live in crime-ridden inner city areas, and even these people are not screaming for a police state even though a police state might actually have an effect on crime in those areas.
Compared to these places, Manhattan is relatively safe. The terrorists chose the twin towers for their large symbolic value. Unless you live or work in one of the few remaining skyscrapers that loom large in the symbolic view of the country as seen from overseas (Empire State, maybe the Chrysler building) you are more likely to be a spectator of a terrorist attack in Manhattan than a victim of one. Even if terrorists manage to produce a nuclear weapon, it will be a small one (with the range of a city block) and they'll go to D.C. with it, not New York.
But this is all beside the point. Who the hell are you to demand that the country turn into a police state so you can feel some false safety in your Upper East Side apartment? If you don't like the peril associated with your choice of where to live, MOVE.
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
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
Worse yet, you could be arrested on a 'suspicious pattern' of activity. You looked at an Arabic website two weeks before September 11th? You must have planned it. The police will be at your door shortly. See anything wrong with this picture?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
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?
Wellstone.
Wellstone.
Wellstone.
Hammer of Truth
Under surveillance it's not enough to avoid doing anything illegal...you have to avoid doing anything suspicious or matching the wrong profiles, or you might become the target of an active investigation (brought in for questioning, search warrants on your home, etc.). They can't tell you what patterns they're searching for (or they would be easily avoided by the criminals), so it won't be possible to know what behaviors to avoid unless you're picked up by the police, or know someone who has been.
In a free society you are who you say you are. -- Mumford
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.
> -Thomas Jefferson
1) Thomas Jefferson was a great man, but he didn't make any claims to infallibility.
2) It's up to each of us to decide whether our government's (IMHO limited and measured) response to the terrorist threat qualifies as placing us under "slavery".
From this, I draw the following conclusion:
3) If you believe you're being enslaved (IMHO a highly questionable belief), and you believe Jefferson was right about slavery (hey, that's your call, but 200 million Britney Spears listeners would probably disagree, and between them all, that's at least one brain's worth of neurons :-), then I'd remind you that (at least in the United States), the First Amendment grants you a right to shoot yourself in protest, and many believe the Second Amendment protects your right to do so with a really gr00vy-looking gun. *G* :-)
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.
you mean the internet isn't secure???
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.
As a voting citizen, I have every right to demand this, just as you have every right to disagree.
Of course you have a legal right to demand a police state, just as I have a legal right to say "Who are you to demand that the country turn into a police state". Usually when people say "Who are you to say blah blah blah" it's understood to be in a rhetorical and not a legal sense.
If I and other likeminded citizens either outnumber or out-organize those with dissenting opinions such as yourself, then we have every right to expect the reforms and changes we desire.
I'm not sure of the procedural issues, but I think modifying the Constitution requires a supermajority at some point. Of course, the correct way to implement a police state is to undermine those rights so that they continue to exist on paper and yet are meaningless in the real world. That doesn't even require a majority at all.
Do you realize you sound rather like a right-wing bumper sticker? "If you don't love your county, LEAVE IT!"
Yes, the sentence structure is much the same, but the meanings are way, way different. Those bumper stickers are telling you to leave the country rather than express any dissent. All I'm saying, is that if you feel nervous living in Manhattan because of your (disproportionally large) fear of a terrorist attack, you should probably consider one of the other boroughs of New York or even New Jersey which is a fine state to live in. I would say the same sort of thing to people who continually build new McMansions too close to the beach and then whine for help after every hurricane. Except that there is an obvious hazard living close to a beach. The same doesn't go for living in Manhattan, even considering 9/11. Manhattan is still a very safe place to live. I live in Silicon Valley and I would trade places with you in an instant if I could convince my company to relocate there, because this place is too expensive.
No, I'd suddenly find myself gung-ho for a gun so I could track down and shoot the bastard that did that in the kneecaps and other vital, but nonlethal, regions, so that he would be in permanent pain and would never be able to do any such thing to anyone else again.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
> I will gladly trade my right to privacy for a
> bit more freedom from the fear of terror.
No need to give up anything. Just quit believing the lies.
> After all, having government spooks reading my
> email is infinitely preferable to being
> incinerated in a nuclear fireball.
If there is any correlation at all between spooks reading your mail and the probability of nuclear incineration it is positive.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
Your right, it's not funny.
You're damn right it's not funny. My right is a very serious matter.
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 ----
You know, something like 911 is exactly what the price of freedom is. If you want to live in the land of the free, you have to accept that sometimes these things happen; you'll just have to make sure that you don't piss off the rest of the world.
/with your active consent!/! It's real scary to me how Bush got his Reichtag and is using it in nearly exactly the same bloody way as Hitler did. Don't you learn from history?
And don't you think it's odd that the only thing which could have prevented 911 (installing locked, iron doors to the cockpit) hasn't happened yet? And at the same time, your privacy has been taken away,
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I will gladly trade my right to privacy for a bit more freedom from the fear of terror.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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.
But let me clarify: I don't want a police state - I just want to give the guard dog a few more links of chain. As the house has been broken into, this is perfectly reasonable. That the kids will have a bit less yard to play in is unavoidable. That they will in some short order have absolutely no yard whatsoever to play in is an unreasonable assumption.
Well, this is an interesting analogy. I had been thinking in terms of popping a hole in a balloon or making a crack in a dam.
Where did the robbers come in, the front door? Did the dog's chain already reach the door? Maybe instead of a longer chain, we should get a dog that won't be asleep when the robbers come the way this one was!
And this isn't an ordinary dog. This is a dog that can put you in jail and take your house away from you. The dog has already been busy, lengthening its own chain one link at a time, granting itself powers that previous dogs have never had but that subsequent dogs will always enjoy, using your own fear of the robbers coming back as an excuse. Its chain is now longer than it will even let on. The dog can now hold you and not even give you a bail hearing if it considers you dangerous. It can conduct surveillance of your private life. Once the dog acquires the ability to unilaterally lengthen its chain, along with the ability to hide its chain length from you, the entire concept of a chain becomes meaningless. Maybe the dog can reach the part of your yard where your kids are playing. Maybe not. Are you comfortable not knowing? Maybe it will stop the robbers next time. Who knows? What if it turns on someone you like someday? What if it turns on you?
Such "domino theory" logic has reared its ugly head before in American history. It would seem prudent to me to circle the wagons around the truly important rights.
Yeah, but back then the abstract concept of a "domino theory" was incorporated into a larger political theory that made no sense. Nobody ever explained how or why communism should spread from Vietnam to Laos. (Nor was it ever explained why we should even care.) The abstract concept of evolution has also been dragged into confused political thought, more than once in fact, but this says nothing about the validity of biological evolution as a theory. And we don't even have to talk about dominoes. Ever hear of the expression "give them an inch and they'll take a mile"? That sums it up!
When Jefferson said "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance", this is what he was talking about! We have to constantly be on guard against the chipping away of civil liberties by those in government who falsely promise security and safety in return. Which rights are "truly important" to you? The ones you aren't using personally, right this minute? Please don't hand away any that I might need in the future when you're adding more links to your dog's chain.
Neither are a bunch of the "american Al Qaeda" that they've found.
Bottom line, you should worry. Not because you're doing anything illegal, but because they feel the need to watch you.
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.
DavittJPotter wrote:
> The attacks on 9/11/2001 *could* have been stopped
> - that's the truth behind all this.
Yes, they could have, and no innocents needed to be shot down. If the FBI had had its act together and listened to its field personnel, and if the INS could be bothered to check a list of known terrorists before admitting people into this country, 911 need never have happened.
Also, don't forget that one plane out of the four was stopped, by its passengers, who gave their lives to save many others.
> A pair of F15's launched from any airbase in the
> region would have had plenty of time to
> intercept and destroy the aircraft.
That won't be necessary. Flight 93 showed the way to stop a 911 style attack, and every airline passenger with half a brain knows it: if an evil terrorist brandishes a weapon or lights his shoes, do the 50 passenger pileon and have the stewardess call for help. Your F15's accompany the plane to a safe landing, and the bad guy, if not suffocated, goes to jail.
Heck, even the al Qaeda know it; that's why they've taken to using shoulder mounted anti-aircraft rockets. Thankfully, they can't hit the broad side of Godzilla, let alone an airplane, with those things.
> It's these fears that you're describing that our
> government is counting on in order to keep us
> better under control.
I see three reasons for the government's current behavior:
1) The American people are stampeeding out of fear because of the traumatic events of 911.
2) #1 makes it politically desirable to hand out anti-terror security blankets (take any old security measures just to calm the public).
3) As you said, those greedy for power want to take advantage of the people's fear to seize more power.
#1 is key to the whole thing. If the American people replace their fear with courage and wisdom, the demand for security blankets (#2) will not exist. Without #1 and #2, there is no excuse or opportunity for #3.
> There's an old saying, "I love my country, but I
> fear my government." I believe that statement
> more than ever now with the pattern of control
> and dictatorship that they're demonstrating
> daily.
Fear is what those greedy for power use to control you. Fear is bin Laden's weapon of choice. To fear is to hand the victory to the King of Terror, that great devil that comes from the sky, the enemy outside our borders and inside our hearts.
Cast aside fear, replace it with courage, wisdom, and love for your country and compassion for your fellow humans. Take a stand for liberty and justice. The EFF is good, but you might want to try the ACLU too, especially in light of such government antics as this:
http://www.aclu.org/ (see the "Rounded Up" story)
Looks like we need another one of those new births of freedom that Lincoln talked about in the Gettysburg Address.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves."
Belebera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Congressman Curt Weldon's comments
Excellent points, all. I'm heading on over to read that story now...
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Probably get modded -1 tinfoilhat for this but:
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All the Patriot Act did was codify existing policy. The government already was tapping communication without warrants, they just couldn't use that information in court. But they did use it to step up investigations.
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The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
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
Jefferson, for all his wisdom and intelligence, had his flaws. The fact that he was a fallable man does not tarnish the grandeur of his accomplishments; nor does the fact that he failed to live up to his ideals diminish the enduring truthfulness of his words.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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...