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Deliberation of "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace"
An anonymous reader writes "Per the Federal Register the National Infastructure Advisory Council will have a public meeting (telephonically) from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm EST on 1/8/2003 to deliberate on the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. 'Written comments may be submitted at any time before or after the meeting.' Details can be found in text format or in PDF."
Yes, but how much does it cost for someone to actually read my proposal and take it seriously? iopha
Well they might as well wrap those packets in a hand basket and deliver them to the man at the top.
Everyone else gave up on their freedoms.
Shame.
The last thing these people need to hear are the psychotic ramblings of someone like RMS. Be polite and to the point, don't yell and scream about freedom and the GPL blah blah or you'll be passed off as a nutcase and lose for sure. Got it?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
you!
Something like a condom or shield over comms coming into the USA or going out...and MORE freedom under the shield (USUS) communications.
Please let there be some tattered shred of freedom to hang onto...it's terrible about 911 but there have been worse death counts in history with no enemy to fight...the "Death Fog" in London (1952?) comes to mind.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I have to say, it sounds like a wonderful thing, and we can even make suggestions - the National Infastructure Advisory Council must love us!
(Does National and Internet go together... I smell fish!)
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
Don't muggers also obtain their monies via the threat of force?
Libertarian: Leave cyberspace alone.
/.: Leave cyberspace the fuck alone.
Linux: Leave cyberspace alone.
Conclusion? "Cyberspace" isn't under anyone's control because it can't be bought, sold, or bribed.
U.S. law on the other hand, can be bought and sold like trading cards.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
So I asked myself, how can centerlizing the internet prevent terrorists from taking out large chunks of the system? Answer: It can't, and in fact makes it easier to do so. But it does make intercepting e-mail much easier.... Ahh. That's the REAL answer.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I Owe U.S. Congress $15,000,000,000.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Attention American Government Officials:
The internet is not on American soil and will never belong to any goverment, neither will you ever have the jurisdiction to secure it.
Trying to Secure the internet is futile. The internet was never created to be regulated or controlled rather, allowed to evolve free of the contraints of the non-virtual world.
So... I suggest the following.
1 - Remove your heads from your asses.
2 - Concentrate on your own Nation's concerns, like the economy, and social issues.
3 - Stop invading not only your own citizen privacy but the rest of the worlds.
Thankyou for your time.
After all, how much more it will cost to track and keep every single goddammed fucking packet flying on the #matrix#??? Surely twice as much as it would cost to implement the same current infrasture another time...
and sometimes nutcases have the right idea.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
My understanding is that what they want to do is require or ISPs to monitor all users and give all information to the goverment.
Isnt this basically impossible? First off, the bandwidth requirements alone would make the process unfeasable. The whole reason the internet is a called a network and not a bus is that the information is distributed. This distribution is what makes the internet possible. Funneling all the information into centralized locations would violate the network topology.
Next, many ISPs are not registered or licenced to be ISPs. What defines an ISP? Does my wi-fi count? Policing this would a complete farce, especially with freedom advocates taking every opportunity to bypass and befuddle the law.
Next, any terrorists/criminal would start using (if they are not already using) at least simple encryption which would not generally be detectible by monitoring bots. The amount of effort to avoid even the most sophisticated monitoring would be quite small.
Also, if all this data were stored up in some central location, wouldnt that be the best place for hackers to crack to get vast amounts of info? Has anyone ever made an uncrackable system connected to the public networks?
Guarenteed someone will bring free software into this discussion. You do have to admit hes a fucking lunatic who looks like a street bum. As George Thoroughgood says: Get a haircut and get a real job. And stop wasting modpoints on me fucktard!
...it is first necessary to secure the operating system that most frequently is connected to it, ie Windows. There's little point in securing every non-Windows server (or even every server, Windows or not) if an insecure client platform (read: Windows + IE + Outlook) permits a small group of individuals to own enough client PCs to DOS the root servers. Or the 50 largest e-commerce sites. Or the most popular intercontinental routers. This is feasible NOW; all it needs is a determined, intelligent adversary (China, perhaps?). Even scarier is the possibility that there will be intelligent use of DOS attacks (hijacking of presumed secure connections, perhaps), but I'd rather not consider that while sober.
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Bureau of Industry and Security
National Infrastructure Advisory Council; Notice of Open Meeting
The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) will meet on
Wednesday, January 8, 2003, from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. EST. The meeting,
which will be held telephonically, will be open to the public. Members
of the public interested in attending by telephone should call (toll
free) 1-899-7785 or (toll) 1-913-312-4169 and, when prompted, enter
pass code 1468517.
The Council advises the President of the United States on the
security of information systems for critical infrastructure supporting
other sectors of the economy, including banking and finance,
transportation, energy, manufacturing, and emergency government
services. At this meeting, the Council will continue its deliberations
on comments to be delivered to President Bush concerning the draft
National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.
Agenda
I. Opening of meeting and roll call: John Tritak, Director, Critical
Infrastructure Assurance Office/Designated Federal Officer, NIAC
II. Opening remarks: Richard Clarke, Special Advisor to the President
for Cyperspace Security/Executive Director, NIAC; Richard Davidson,
Chairman, NIAC; and John Chambers, Vice Chairman, NIAC
III. Presentation of draft Comments document: Mr. Davidson
IV. Discussion and adoption of Comments: NIAC Members
V. Discussion of next steps/timeline for publication and delivery of
document: NIAC Members
VI. Adjournment
Written comments may be submitted at any time before or after the
meeting. However, to facilitate distribution of public presentation
materials to Council members, the Council suggests that presenters
forward the public presentation materials, ten days prior to the
meeting date, to the following address: Ms. Wanda Rose, Critical
Infrastructure Assurance Office, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S.
Department of Commerce, Room 6095, 14th Street & Constitution Avenue,
NW., Washington, DC 20230.
For more information contact Wanda Rose on (202) 482-7481.
Dated: December 19, 2002.
Eric T. Werner,
Council Liaison Officer.
[FR Doc. 02-32435 Filed 12-23-02; 8:45 am]
Should be simple enough with some simple serial software, a modem, and some low-end sound recording software?
yes/no? =)
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I usually object to government interference, but for once I think they're really on track here. If you read the draft document, available here, you'll see that the government really wants to keep its hands off as much as possible, but also realizes the fundamental need for central control for security.
It's nice to see they also want to work with a strong public/private partnership, not solely one with private organizations. I'll try and be listening in for sure!
"There really is only one way to secure cyberspace as we know it. We need to create in secret an army of clones to protect us from all of our enemies."
-AZ Sen. James Palpatine (D)
Will this be the first time the slashdot effect has effected a conference call provider? Details?
The original is here.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I claim ze internet in ze name of Fronce! Viva La Fronce!
[I'm aware that this is a US initiative. France just sounded funnier.]I think we're missing the point here. Taken from the article: "Council advises the President of the United States on the security of information systems for critical infrastructure supporting other sectors of the economy, including banking and finance, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and emergency government services." They aren't trying to control cyberspace, or take away your privacy. (just yet....)What they are trying to do, however, is secure networks critical to the national infrastructure(ie banking systems, etc). Easy fellas......
I would like to propose a corollary to Godwin's law: In any online thread, any mention about how the Internet was designed to survive nuclear attack immediately terminates that thread.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is not "Public Notice and Comment", but rather just "Public Notice" that a meeting will take place. As noted here [PDF] the comment deadline was 09-18-02.
way to take something out of context you cunt.
I print this every day for my boss and find it easier to just look at them rather than try to use the search function on their page. You can find the listings here. of course next week you'll just change the 2 in the url to a 3. we are usually searching for grant opportunities- this looks pretty interesting, I think I'll have to start looking for similar items.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Banks run on private networks like SWIFT, not on the internet. Your personal account might have some kind of web access, but not the intra-bank network.
The same goes for any large enterprise that gives a damn about their security and reliability. The internet is unreliable, insecure, and can never be anything but by the very nature of it's design. (Note: fault resilience such as rerouting around failed nodes is not the same thing as fault tolerant -- the segments behind the failed node are still unreachable.)
When you say they "aren't trying to control cyberspace", I just have these visions of the founding fathers of the US inscribing "the right to bear arms" with the intent of allowing the country to defend itself, and the modern twisting of those words to justify possession and use of assault weapons and handguns far beyond the defense of a nation.
I look at the "temporary" income taxes that were to pay for war costs, which are still in place and increasing.
I look at the insanity of a "War on Drugs" that destroys the careers of hundreds of thousands of people for smoking a joint, while the death toll on the highways and roads due to "legal" drunk drivers continues.
I look at Hollings & co. selling out to the entertainment industry, even though it damages an IT industry worth many times that amount to the nation.
Trust them? Sure, I trust them. I trust them to steal my income, invade my privacy, interfere with my life, and ignore our objections to what is rapidly becoming a police state.
Thank God I'm getting out of this screwed up country in a few days. Maybe in a few years after the American people have revolted against the insanity it will be safe to come back with the expectation of being allowed to live without excess interference from a corporate-run government.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Cyberspace is a big fucking place that extends far beyond the borders of North America in all directions. Instead of "fortifying cyberspace" wouldn't it make more sense to just secure government machines?
I don't go out forcing everyone to do something one way or another or take over the internet when I can just put up a proxy, firewall and virus scanning on my own network.
Step 1: Create .kids.us domain to protect the children.
Step 2: Create a "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace".
Step 3: Centralize the Internet.
Step 4: ? (InterNIC)
Step 5: Profit!
[insert witty comment here]
We absolutely have to lock down cyberspace for national security. Just think what would happen if the terrorists found out that planting a nuke or anthrax bomb in Redmond Washington would be the worst possible thing they could do to the U.S. economy? Why if this important secret started flying loose around the internet Al Quida's people could find out and then all Americans would be totally screwed. My bunghole is puckering up just thinking about the unparalled consequences. So everyone make sure they keep quiet about how important it is for Redmond Washington to NOT be terrorist attacked!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The truth in that the people who create these committies don't know what the fuck they are talking about. If they were any less clueless they wouldn't be having this discussion.
You sound lost. Perhaps you're looking for this thread?
The United States Government appears to actually be taking a privacy issue seriously for once - it's on the front page of the White House website.
Members of the public interested in attending by telephone should call (toll free) 1-899-7785 or (toll) 1-913-312-4169
Huh?????
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
oh I miss read it ..
now it probably will get ignored..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
SixDimensionalArray has provided a good resource - read it before the knee jerk reations reach your fingertips. The wakeup call for this is allged to be NIMDA, which infects 'computers'. It would be useful to remind the authors of this paper that it infects Windows computers. Linux can be more secure than this, but it is not a complete solution. Simply encuraging a polygot of OS's will help. Monoculture (in OS or an ecosystem) & inbreeding (restricting evolution in OS to one town, say Redmond) lead to weaker systems. Mutts dominate in nature - purebreads are weak. We need to support Linux, Windows, BSD's and others to make a healthier Internet.
Think global, act loco
assault weapons and handguns far beyond the defense of a nation
I don't know what rock you crawled out from under, but if you plan to defend your nation with anything *but* assault weapons and handguns, then you can move to another nation and try to defend it with whatever rocks and sticks whiny liberal jackasses like you think constitute "arms".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Whats the deal with the toll-free number?? 1-899? Is this some sort of government scam? And why isn't the number complete: 1-899-7785? Someone please figure this out!
$DEITY bless $NATION
The backbone providers are not the internet. They provide dedicated, optionally secure, and optionally fault-tolerant data links.
The internet may or may not use fibre that is strung in parallel with those links (i.e. part of the same bundle), but it does not run on the same physical fibre. I've worked on a provisioning system that is used to manage those resources, and the "internet" is miniscule compared to the number of links that are managed for private business and government.
Want to take out those links? Go to isolated spots along certain railway tracks, highways, and other infrastructure where the physical fiber is run. Cut the fibre or plant a bomb. Goodbye several petabytes of capacity until someone can find the breach and fix it. How did any of the government proposals even try to prevent the damage from happening?
"Security" has never been anything but a smokescreen to justify increased power in the hands of a few, and anyone who thinks they are "secure" just happens to be naive enough to believe them.
The worst "terrorism" we have to fear in North America is from our own governments. Not to offend anyone who lost friends or family in the WTC on 9/11, but more people than that are killed every year by terrorists in many countries, without having led to knee-jerk police state behavior.
Don't believe me?
Look at the current crop of anti-drug ads in the US. Blatant lies and FUD -- most marijuana is grown in North America by North Americans who keep their assets in North America and spend most of the profits in (you guessed it!) North America. Heroin and Opium might be another story, but that isn't what the government is trying to convince everyone, because it wouldn't make people as nervous (everyone knows at least one pot smoker, but how many of you know heroin users?)
Do some checking and find out how many innocent people have been killed by government agents (police SWAT teams) raiding the wrong house. Look into the number of people currently being held because they immigrated from the wrong nation, or because their second cousin has a friend who knows a guy who claimed to be with Al Queda. Ask someone of Japanese descent how much more "secure" they felt for being imprisoned until the war was over.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
With all this securing the internet crap going on, you'd think there would be jobs for people who engineer computer (security) systems. (re: the story earlier today)
So Al Gore invented the Internet and now George Bush wants to own it?
The military and police have those weapons, as approved by the constitution. You will never convince me that a 30-round assault rifle (automatic or not) has any business anywhere except in the military, the police, or a licensed, registered collector. By the time anyone gets close enough to US soil for you to use your "personal protection" weapons, the war is already lost.
If the trillions of dollars worth of military personnel, nukes, missiles, air craft, naval armadas, subs, and satellites aren't enough to keep out "the enemy", what makes you think some guy with an assault rifle is going to make a damned bit of difference?
Don't get me wrong -- I like guns. Target shooting with a Sig is an absolute gas, venison brought down by a skilled hunter is damned tasty, and I've used them many times for butchering pigs or cattle. I just think they have their uses and their place, and assault rifles in the home isn't one of them.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It doesn't work if they're all trolls. You combine one or two of those points with several legitimate ones, like government aid to linux on the desktop or new open source ways of pirating movies. Working Natalie Portman petrified hot grits would help too. We haven't heard about them in a while.
- The Air Force's definition is "Write a purchase order to buy one."
- The Navy's definition is "Tie it down so it doesn't roll or bounce around."
- The Marines' definition is "Machine-gun it and post an armed guard once you're sure they're all dead."
They've already got their own Milnet, so they're not trying for the Air Force approach....Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Cyberspace leaves you alone.....
Now you may be thinking of private data networks (e.g. private lines, ATM, SONET, etc.) offered by backbone providers, which don't form part of the internet.
I would mod that up if I could; too bad it's at 0
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The US was founded on the recognition that all governments tend, sooner or later, to oppress their citizens. Thus, the only government which wouldn't be oppressive is one that is of, by, and for its citizens ("the people").
We're at a pretty critical crossroads now, where the rights of large organizations (corporate and governmental) are at a precarious balance with the rights of individual citizens. In particular, democracy coming into direct conflict with safety, and, in other arenas (such as intellectual property issues [eg, RIAA, MPAA]), clashing directly with capitalism.
If the government feels that the best way to ensure safety is to prevent the unfettered, unmonitered flow of individuals, then one has to ask how true democracy can really be practiced.
The "war on terrorism" threatens to turn us from a nation-of-rules to a nation-of-men. Once we entrust *any* group of people to regulate us with minimal checks and balances, then any sense of democracy will is doomed. I can't think of a better environment for abuse then monitoring virtually all electronic communications between private citizens.
Imperfect security is the price we pay for our democratic ideals. This is a price I think most of us are willing to pay for our freedom.
I know you meant it as a joke but the statement Gore made related to the internet and his involvement in it is completely true. He did NOT say he invented the internet and believe me when i say that there is a good chance if he did not do what he did, you wouldn't be posting on slashdot now. Infact the internet would probably not have come so far had it not been for Gore.
The following is from Vint Cerf, if you don't know who he is then you really shouldn't have ever bashed gore:
"As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out, as well as releasing the Internet from the control of the government agencies that spawned it. He served as the major administration proponent for continued investment in advanced computing and networking and private sector initiatives such as Net Day. He was and is a strong proponent of extending access to the network to schools and libraries. Today, approximately 95% of our nation's schools are on the Internet. Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation."
Hmmm... Pie...
The article in question reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
I've always considered "the enemy" that threatens the "security of a free state" to be internal, as opposed to crime. As to what compromises militia, the courts have ruled:
The significance of the militia, the Court continued, was that it was composed of ''civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.'' It was upon this force that the States could rely for defense and securing of the laws, on a force that ''comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense,'' who, ''when called for service . . . were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.''6 Therefore, ''[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well- regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.''
So call me nutty, but the constitution protects my right to own a weapon, for militaristic use, to defend the country against enemies, domestic or foreign, that threaten the freedom of the country. It's a democratic failsafe against government.
An important part of network design is understanding what traffic is going to "nearby" locations, and designing things so most traffic stays local and doesn't use expensive or scarce facilities - things like putting big hulking routers in San Francisco and San Jose so traffic between Silicon Valley companies stays in the South Bay and Multimedia Gulch companies stays in the City without needing to use too much bandwidth around the Bay, much less sending copies of all of it on three-part-carbon forms to NSA's Fort Meade, Ashcroft's J. Edgar Hoover building, and Dick Cheney's stockbroker before delivering it.
That doesn't mean that there weren't rumors from reputable sources a few years ago about active wiretaps on MAE-West sending extra copies of some packets to somebody else, or that the Russian renamed-KGB's 1998ish SORM (another URL) project didn't try to force Russian ISPs to build a full-sized wiretap feed to them (at the ISPs' expense, of course) or that there aren't Eurocrats trying to do the same thing in their countries today. And then there's the whole Echelon Wiretapping System. But it's still impractical for them to force ISPs to deliver everything everybody's reading or emailing, though I'll be happy to send them copies of most of my spam if they'd like.
On the other hand, the publicly-accessible parts of the web aren't all that big. The Wayback Machine has a copy of all of it, with reasonable samples going back a long time, and Google and the other search engines crawl it periodically, and AllTheWeb.com presumably claims to have All The Web.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For a clear and informed argument. Most of the pro-gun people I've run into tend to be fringe lunatics that I wouldn't trust with a butter knife, much less an assault rifle.
I still think it's over before your home armoury can do any good. *g*
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not a democratic failsafe against government. It's a failsafe against--among others--democratic government. If you're a member of a minority that the majority wants exterminated, you may fare better if you're armed.
Oh, now I remember. It can't happen here.
OK then, so how did these weapons protect you from the corrupt and freedom bashing stuff going on in Washington? I'm not trolling, I genuinely believe that that part of the constitution is completely outdated. Owning a gun may have protected your freedom in the old west, but nowadays you'll just end up like the people in Waco should you decide to take up arms.
Most successful revolts/revolutions and protests have been non-violent, certainally in recent times anyway.
But there aren't. There are, however, lots of opportunities for little sell-outs who would help the govt. spy on it's own citizens.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I've been thinking about doing just that for some time now. Problem is, so far I've not found a place that was over all better.
:).
Out of curiousity, where have you selected to live now?
p.s.
This is not a flame, I really am curious
Funny as hell. Sophomoric at the end, try something a little classier.
It's pretty obvious most of those replying haven't read the draft proposal. Regardless of whether you genuflect three times to it or think it sucks pondwater, it looks kinda silly to rant about things that aren't in it as several here have done.
The draft proposal. Dry government-ese, but worth reading, yay or nay.
The US has it's downsides. Certain powers are getting out of hand. But realize that we also have a lot of checks to these powers.
For instance, a few months ago, the judicial dept. made a small grunt and sort of woke up out of the post 9/11 slumber to call the guvment's handling of suspected terrorists unconstitutional. IIRC, three district judges denounced the administration's actions and called for change.
In short, we have a design of checks and balances in this country to help ensure that no groups gets too powerful.
The only thing we're missing today is an informed populace. Most folks make decent dicisions, given the proper information, but the trouble is, almost no Americans have it. Our lives are care-free, and we like it that way. As long as we can eat our Big Macs and idly bitch about other dumb people, we'll roll over to anyone.
Bush or someone will take it too far, and the pendulum will swing back, eventually. This country is too well founded and the people too (thankfully) brainwashed into holding freedom dear to turn into a Nazi-like state.
Just don't be a minority and you're ok.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Because you disagree about the terrorism comment, and I didn't spend a couple days preparing a research paper to prove my point with quotes and citations, all other points are are to be taken with a grain of salt?
9/11 is a sensitive topic for Americans, and I understand that. But it does not negate the fact that there are dozens (if not hundreds) of terrorist attacks world wide each month througout the mideast, asia, and europe. You just don't hear about it because CNN didn't have cameras there, and even if they did it would have been a footnote filler item unless an American died.
The US, Mexico, and Canada produce at least 90% of the marijuana consumed in North America. Or did you translate "North America" as "US", forgetting that Mexico and Canada are on this same continent?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I always wanted to know how I can own millions of square feet of cyberspace WITHOUT PAYING ANYTHING. So one day this popup ad appears telling me that I was PREQUALIFIED to receive 500,000 SQUARE FEET of FREE cyberspace without paying ANYTHING! All I had to do was supply my email address and the email address of 5 close friends and I would be emailed my new cyberspace certificate within 7-10 days, AT NO COST! I finally received my certificate, so one day I am going to sell it when my cyberspace appreciates.
More accurately, according to YOUR interpretation of the signers' intent, they didn't mean that. On the other hand, a lot of people think they meant that the people had the right to revolt against the government if it failed to serve them. After all, the Declaration of Independence says so... So while I agree with much of what you say, be careful not to confuse your beliefs, even closely held ones, with solid facts. Even if you're right, you can't prove it.
Interesting though, how often the cannard gets repeated (even by me), and how it appears not be be completely true. Look how that fire in the tunnel in the N.E. slowed down MAE East and connections through them. It should have re-routed (and did, but not very well according to reports I read) and folk shouldn't have noticed. They did notice. Point being that perhaps re-routing around major damage isn't working as well as could be hoped?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
When they say "secure the internet" they mean seizing the opportunity to harvest all of the intelligence available through eavesdropping. The internet is a national security risk just by existing, being such a powerful tool for organizing people. They want to balance that risk by using the vast surveillance capability afforded as more and more communication converges on the net.
for militaristic use, to defend the country against enemies, domestic or foreign, that threaten the freedom of the country. It's a democratic failsafe against government.
And suppose you believe the government the government has tripped that failsafe. What are you going to do? Start shooting cops? Shoot the president? After gunning you down or capturing and executing you the government would simply start a propoganda campaign against you and everyone who shared your opinions. Your life would end, and you would provide them the perfect excuse to hunt down everyone else who shared your opinions. In short you would become the next Al Queda. They've even got the perfect term to use in any propoganda war they choose to start, and use it atleast 13 times in every sentence when they're trying to convince the lemmings (read: majority) in this country that something is a Good Idea, you know the term I mean. The fact is your gun doesn't protect jackshit, and we're at their mercy if they ever decide democracy went out of style. The true failsafe is that there are a whole lot of people in positions of power and it would take the colaboration and secrecy of an enormous number of them to orchestrate any sort of legal or organized undermining of the goverment (remind anyone else of political parties?). Think of the government as a kind of internet: a few nodes go bad now and then, hopefully we can still route around them, and they don't take too many others down with them.
And for all the "external enemy" types: The constitution was written in a time before stategic aerial bombardment, thermonuclear weapons, ICBMs, and MIRVs. Anyone without military training and sophisticated weapons equipment can't make a damned bit of difference in a real war against a real military. When the constitution was written, they could. I challenge you to defend yourself against an incoming cruise missile with your assault rifle. Don't think the enemy will be stupid enough to send in troops for you to whack until he's glassed your city one or twice from several thousand miles away.
Any programmer worth a grain of salt could take down the internet at any time and cause horrific infrastructure damage. Writing a worm or virus that causes extreme outages and infrastructure damage might take at least a hour or so to code. I could do it as well as most programmers I know could do it. On the other hand I know most of us would not like to go to jail for doing something like this. Is it a threat, why sure it is any of us could do it any time we want it is just a matter of if we wish to stay free or be locked away.
Got Code?
Not a joke this time around.
In Post-Soviet Russia law mandates ISPs securing a pipe of 10% of all their other bandwith straight to FAPSI (read - KGB). This is not impossible, they atcually do it. Watch this. 10 % is not here, but it was hotly debgated in russian press back then in 90-s.
And to answer "Internet is not US property" - they don't care. They only need to control every single ISP in US (which is feasible), to control every single Net user in US plus a great deal of transit traffic.
The information retention is not The Bad Thing in itself, it's how its used what matters. Everybody would be happy if information was retained, but only court order would allow anyone to get specific pieces of it. Cops would get all their bad guys (as defined by judge, not cops) while privacy would be preserved.
securing the internet.
A: Godwin's Law says nothing about terminating threads.
B:Godwin's Law is redundant when the subject *is* Nazi's.
C:The same goes for discussing how to secure the internet.
It's the bloody *subject.*
KFG
There are plenty of well-intentioned folks around who are capable of finding and documenting security holes of every kind.
The problem is, it is illegal (in America) to do this in most cases, and it's becoming more illegal all the time. I believe this is completely the wrong approach if what we want to have is a secure system.
One can say that when hacking is outlawed, only outlaws will be hackers. There has GOT to be a better way to benefit from all this unused talent.
If some 8 year old kid figures out how to crack into your local phone switch and perform call intercepts, as long as he's willing to tell authorities how he did it, certainly I think a huge reward should be in order. Don't you?
But if there's a disincentive for him to report it (as there is now) then the security hole will likely just stay open, to be potentially discovered and exploited by some organization or a hostile nation with far more insidious intentions.
One should compare the security of cyberspace to the effectiveness of encryption algorithms. Just as one should only trust an encryption scheme which has been subjected to scrutiny and challenge, so also have security software companies offered monetary rewards in public challenges to see if anybody can penetrate their security. Greater security, or at least greater confidence, is the result.
I can see how legalizing hacking would be the single greatest thing the USA could do to improve the security of cyberspace. There would likely need to be some kind of framework, or registration to obtain your "license to hack" in which the applicant pledges not to intentionally cause any harm. The licensee would be given instructions for reporting security holes, and a sliding scale of monetary rewards would be established to compensate the hacker according to the seriousness of the security holes which will certainly get discovered.
Benjamin franklin.
I admire and respect the US founding fathers, something not many Englishmen will admit to, they stood for something above the petty power politics and bowing down before powerful men.
Looks like your current President and his administration have forgotten if indeed they ever understood how important those principals are.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
If this administration is quick to violate the rights of the people in the name of national security, why doesn't Mr Bush release details about the secret organization he belongs to, the Skull and Bones? How far is he willing to go in the name of National Security? Is one of the stipulations of this organization, to keep it a secret? Hmmm...
FLR
...any government agency who uses a word like "Cyberspace" scares me. Bigtime. How old are the people on this board? 12? "We n33d to s3cur3 Cyberspace cuz people with l33t skillz can Cyber and we won't know ab0ut !t..."
FLR
It's about time the government takes care of those deckers who keep breaking into systems, destroying my ICE.
I'm just glad they're working on Cyberspace rather than the Internet. 2d non-VR browsing is sooooo 1990's!
Perhaps we should remember that architecture and implementation are two different things. What the Internet was designed for, and how we have implemented it can be two very different things. Don't forget that it was also designed as an 'end-to-end' dumb (dumb in the good sense) transport, and there are very powerful (and rich) forces that want to change that to make it smart and preferential.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
First Reschedule
This is important stuff. It neads to be covered on CNN, CSPAN, TECH TV, and PBS.
Folks this is Bill of Rights material we are talking about, not some local option sales tax, or exemption of Church Vehicles from registration fees.
The future of every person, every election, and every human rights effort in the United States and possibly the world rests in the balance.
The removal of Ma Bell from monopoly status was an admission by the government, that concentration of power for commerce or monitoring is a bad thing (from a bill of rights view).
The bogus initiative to 'secure' cyberspace has nothing to do with rights, freedom, or liberty and exceeds the constitutuional authority of the Federal Government.
There are no provisions, allowances, or safeguards to insure any of the requirements of due process.
In short, I'll repeat what I said before, Stalin would have loved this.
It seems the net is under constant attack these days.
Its design purpose and its ideals of freedom of information are under constant attack.
No problem though. It can be secured from those who would destroy it by simply cutting every wire connected to america. And the satellite links. And the phone lines.
And it would free up a few class A's.
Mod me down now.
That poses an interesting point. The trade of freedom for security happens on a variety of levels...but when it comes down to it... Most people are more than willing to make the trade.
...And thats why I got extended clips...
You are leaving the country soon? Good. you are whiner and are not contributing to any solution.
Sure things aren't perfect, but that doesn't mean you should not try to attack the issues you can reasonably expect results with. Only so many resources are available, so pick the battles with the most reasonable chance of success first.
For the record we DID try to police alcohol once..
Nor is the US perfect, but we are still the best damned country out there.
And what the hell does cyberspace have to do with the 2nd amendment? Which btw you have totally wrong.. it was about the rights of the INDIVIDUAL to bear arms to protect ones self.. the preface of the entire constitution was based on individual rights and governmental RESTRICTIONS. It had little to do with the rights of a government..
Though I also disagree with their plans to regulate data traffic @ the backbone level, due to individual privacy issues and implied regulation of free-speech. Things that are also in OUR constitutional bill of rights which you seem to have a dis-taste for..
Go back to your socialist country and stay.
Oh, and don't cry for assistance later, as most every other country has done, after bashing the US.. we are bad.. so bad, until you need us.. screw off.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't shoot the horse if the cart is broken. This is what I, repeat, I need from the Internet: Assuming that I am not engaging in criminal activity, any data either sent or stored by should not be read in plain-text without my knowledge. (Those that are suspected of criminal activity should lose the above right only after exercising the due process of law currently in effect.) The vast majority of people, like me, view the Internet's biggest problem to be its lack of security during transactions. Most of the people think that the IP question is ranks right up there with abortion and affirmative action -- not on the to-do list today. Having work for Uncle Sam as a cryptologic technician for more than a few years, I know the technology exists to secure each and every transaction. The cost is, however, steep. The cost would include allowing government, or whomever is holding the "key", to have access on demand. *Cough*Hack* That is, apparently, a little tough to swallow for some folk. Until all conversations and transactions are absolutely secured, the Internet is merely an dim image of its potential. Happy New Year.
That is Bill Clinton's web site.
They're setting up FEMA camps and training our troops to enter suburbian residence and confiscate guns, as well as target right wing extremists. It's all true.
Jealous, are we?
> The internet was created by the United
> States Department of Defense.
Actually that is not true.
NO! Actually, that is true. The origin of something is the origin. You CANNOT CHANGE THAT. Yes, it was sold off. But its origin is fact. The beginnings of the internet were created by the US military, trying to split hairs on when it became a different type of network is ridiculous.
Stop trying to put an anti-US spin on everything, you nutters.
I don't hate your differences as much as trying revisionist history, so shut the hell up.
I read your journal entry here
Are you aware of the Free State Project?
Software Wars
I think it's funny (and a bit scary) how if it was China that were enacting these measures America would be all over it and point out their stifling of freedom. However, there's not a word to be heard in the media when it's America doing it. So much for the free press.
You need to look at other countries to see where armed resistance from citizens could have been relevant. During WWII, common firearms made their way into various armed resistance groups, such as the French Resistance and the few cases of resistance in Germany by Jews.
You could think of the prevelance of death squads in Latin America that would show up to "disappear" people. An armed citizenry would certainly make that difficult, especially if a military was poorly trained or stretched thin due to war.
No, it's not appropriate to kill police or government officials due to dissatisfaction. But there are various scenarios within this world where an armed citizenry made a difference. Those scenarios could happen here, especially considering the current state of affairs: rounding up Arabs under false pretenses and deporting them, harassing those who speak out against possible war, the alarming infringement of civil liberties by a purchased congress, a president intent on monitoring his citizens, race relations that have increasingly been strained due to documented police corruption and government racism.
Quoting Waco or Ruby Ridge is certainly relevant, since I believe the government fears this scenario of armed resistance. It's true that these people and any armed groups that may someday form would be classified as terrorism and hunted down mercilessly.
It's inconceivable how this could end up in armed struggle by citizens. We have to look at other extreme examples to get even the slightest clue: Nazi Germany, various communist revolutions, death squads, Eastern Europe concentration camps, African genocide, etc.
Some keywords to think about: Chechnya, Osama-bin-Ladin, Viet Cong, Hezbollah, etc. There is such thing as modern armed resistance in this world, despite technology. And who says you have to wear fatigues and march down the street to have an armed struggle?
This is mostly hypothetical. I personally believe that peaceful resistance and activism will invoke change in this country and that armed resistance is a nearly inconceivable last resort. But it's on the books, kind of like nuclear powers with weapons of mass destruction. There's this implied contract in the US that "the people" allow others to govern in their name, and will take back the country if that trust is broken. Firearms are the enfocement device of that implied contract.
Hmmm. If you think that the 2nd amendment doesn't (or shouldn't) allow for people to personally own firearms... how do you propose that they rise up against the oppressive government?
Sean
I love you bb!
Why is Triangle Man so MEAN?
It is time for the InternetII to take off. The feds should start building some of their own network, IP6 based, to take advantage of the security and QOS features.
The increased demand will help private industry adopt it as well. And if the networks themselve are different than the current ones, that is good as well. Light up some dark fiber.
Again, the use the original DOD Internet as the model.
sounds ike a bullshit meeting to me.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Banks really run on for all intensive purposes "Virtually Private Networks".
Those networks aren't cheap. I probably costs them a nominal egg.
January 2003 has been designated Universal Personal Security month. Those who wish to participate are asked to make their kind wishes known throughout the month telepathically and to be receptive to ideas from other participants. All life forms are cordially invited to participate. Good attendance is desired and encouraged. All creatures, great and small, please take note. Think of how nice a place this could be.
Anyone without military training and sophisticated weapons equipment can't make a damned bit of difference in a real war against a real military. When the constitution was written, they could. I challenge you to defend yourself against an incoming cruise missile with your assault rifle. Don't think the enemy will be stupid enough to send in troops for you to whack until he's glassed your city one or twice from several thousand miles away. .
I am not sure what you are smoking , but it must be good sh*t.
Can you say VietNam? I knew you could.
There are several "reasons" for war - to take what someone else has, to prevent them from takng what you have, to exert your will on another nation or people, or 'for one people to disolve the political bands which have bound them with another', etc. (I didn't say they were all GOOD reasons...) "glassing" my city from several thousand miles away using conventional nuclear devices will render the area uninhabitiable for several centuries and useless for ANYBODY; in addition, as I live in midwest USA, doing so would render hugh amounts of farmland unusable for any purpose; doing so with non-nuclear devices will destroy the infrastructure and presumably kill the people - unless you are waging war for territory for your own people to live in, and expect the entire world to allow it, you have just destroyed what you were fighting over.
In VietNam the people were able to make the price of waging war high enough that the US stopped sending troops and declared a cease fire; two years later the south was over run - we did not win that one. Note that no cities were 'glassed' - partially for political reasons, but also partly because the 'enemy' was not found only in the cities, but mainly in the boondocks, and that the US forces were generally better equipt and supplied than the opposing forces.
Also note that in Desert-Storm there were no cities 'glassed' even once, either.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
charge? Because they will take what you have written in and spit it back in your face (read the last paragraph of the section titled "Software Patents"). It has been a problem for a while that only the highest-paying lobbying groups have been able to influence the decision making of elected officials, but now it is also the case that commissions of any kind can disregard the wishes of those they are supposed to represent and justify it by "interpreting" their input to correspond to whatever the commission's preconceived goals were. The sham of public input is so thinly veiled that the pre-decided decisions can be just passed into law straight away, and not many more people would mind. What a shame.
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
Windows is the single greatest threat to personal privacy, national security and personal freedom in all of recorded history.
It is the SINGLE goal of the United States Government to oppress personal freedoms and rights in every concievable manner possible. Windows makes this dream come true.
In short time, the thought police will be arresting Linux users because they harbor hateful thoughts towards M$ and His Majesty, Bill Gate$..
M$ is working hand in hand with the USG to develop a system that will give the USG and BIG Corporations the means to spy on and pry into every aspect, every thought, every action of every living being on earth.
It will be, just like in 1984, illegal to turn your TV (or PC) off.
These hearings are crap. They don't give a damn what ANYONE has to say because they have an agenda and it is to squash the freedom that we have now.
They will do it under the guise of "national security" but that's just a password for government oppression.
Our freedoms are only a pen stroke away from a swift death...
Sounds like a US proxy to me. Soon the citizens of the US will be as safe as the people of China.
==========
Error in module creativity.dll : Unable to create witty comment.
Abort / Retry / Ignore ?
Regarding that whitehouse.gov document...
I find it somewhat interesting that just using my browser's `find' function, I was easily able to find something like around seventeen mentions of the word ``reliability'' and yet not a single instance of the word ``liability''.
This whole thing is a big joke friends. It's just a buch of pols doing their usual ass-covering schtick. In case something major goes wrong, they want to be able to say that they were VERY concerned (and having public meetings about it and everything, gosh!) before the feces really hit the rotational atmospheric transporter.
If you want security, pay for it. There's no free lunch.
In the case of ``cyberspace'' the price tag is just making all of the relevant responsible parties *liable* for their major screw ups. If the entire Northwestern power grid goes down then the idiots who failed to properly secure it should be held legally and financially liable for that. If eBay goes down because it is getting DoS'd from 100,000 unsecurable Windoze boxes, then there is unambiguously one very specific company that, by all rights, should at least share in the liability for that, and it is located in Redmond, Washington.
Want security? Three words: software product liability.
Microsoft is second only to the tobacco industry in terms of shipping known-dangerous and fundamentally defective products.
Let the tort attornies have a fair whack at THAT piggy bank, and I guarrantee you we'll see a big change in overall Internet and National Infrastructure security toot sweet.
The problem is that software product quality and network security are both like the weather... things that everybody talks about, but that nobody ever *does* anything about.
The way to solve these problems is the way we solve all such problems in our society... hold the criminals who are creating the problems upside down and then shake them until their wallets fall out.
You only need to do this a few times and then everybody else gets the message and starts to act responsibly (e.g. testing/code-reviewing software before they ship it, auditing network security, you know, those kinds of things... the stuff that nobody does anymore these days, because it doesn't seem very ``cost effective'').