Cryptome Log Subpoenaed

PaulBu writes "Stopped by on Cryptome tonight... It seems that their logs have been subpoenaed by Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Chief, Corruption, Fruad (sic) & Computer Crime Division. Cryptome's answer was that "logs of Cryptome are deleted daily, or more often during heavy traffic, to protect the privacy of visitors to the site." (Good job!) See here"

Comments

"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Qzukk]

Looks like they're going to be doing a lot of deleting now ;)

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[grub]

Most software can do that, if not just send the logs to /dev/null

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Anonymous Custard]

Is it be possible to just write a quick script to delete all of the logs automatically? Or for that matter to not log anything at all?

Yes, it is very be possible to do that:

cd [log directory]
rm *.log

Would probably be more complicated than that in many systems, but not too much more.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Neon Spiral Injector]

If the log files were deleted all along that is okay, but if they deleted the logs after the subpoena they were destroying evidence. I know some of the machines I maintain generate 2GB of logs in a week. So I don't doubt that a higher traffic site like that would be rotating their logs out often.

Logs are useful. I'd also think like with a site like that, they may get some DoS attempts and the like, so it is useful to see where things are coming from.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[gazbo]

No, they have to backspace through all of the server logs one character at a time.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Zathrus]

Certainly you can disable logging or log to /dev/null in most software. You can also have a cron job that goes off and deletes the logs at regular intervals (and then tells the program to reopen the log, otherwise the file remains undeleted (but not visible) until it's closed, since the program's open is a reference count).

Thing is, you may actually want logs for some small period of time. Most site admins like to know how popular their site is, and logs are one way of doing it. Especially since logs show how many lurkers you have, and not just active posters. Another reason to keep some minimal logging going on is if you get DOS'd, since then you might have a fighting chance of getting things fixed before the attack ends.

It sounds like they have a watcher program that deletes the logs when they get too large... which makes the logs useless for the latter purpose. But you can still use them for the first purpose, which is probably all they really want in the first place.

Alternately they could just be deleting them by hand, but I doubt they're that stupid. If that was true it quickly becomes a case of illegally blocking a police investigation, ignoring a warrant, and possibly contempt of court. IANAL.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[s.a.m]

Yeah....just turn off logging!

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[kevin lyda]

actually, rm is a bad way to delete log files. it's best to cat /dev/null > logfile

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[ReelOddeeo]

Is it be possible to just write a quick script to delete all of the logs automatically?

At present, the answer would be NO.

In the future, with advances in technology, it may become possible to do this.

There is hope. According to Moore's law, cpu power doubles every 18 months. Software becomes more sophisticated by the day. New languages tend to have higher and higher levels of abstraction away from the hardware. It should become possible in the forseeable future.

Check back next year. You might be pleasantly surprised at how much innovation Microsoft will have accomplished by then. You might even find such tools as cron and bash.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[AmigaAvenger]

Why? I often delete 2gb+ log files, takes forever with rm (usually rm *.log &, so I don't really care)

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[glesga_kiss]

Because if the application is still running, it won't like it. Also, if there are processes tailing the log file, they will remain open on the original log files file handle, and not the new one when it gets created. By "zero'ing" the log, you erase it's contents without doing anything that could cause harm to other processes.

Log rollover scripts do this, e.g. when "messages" becomes "messages.0". In that case, the original file was copied to "messages.0", then the original was zero'ed.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[kevin lyda]

you're right on the first para, but kind of wrong on the second. that method of log rotation is a kludge to support poorly written daemons. you'll lose log data.

it's better to mv messages messages.0 and then hup syslog. you'll annoy log tailers (but not smart ones), but it's faster and you don't lose log messages.

of course in this case cryptome wouldn't really mind losing log messages!

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[OldMiner]

If the log files were deleted all along that is okay, but if they deleted the logs after the subpoena they were destroying evidence.

As already noted by another poster, this is inpertitent to the matter at hand, but raises an interesting question:

If you have a cron job that just happens to delete your logs, say, every 7 days, and you don't do any backups of said logs, and you receive a subpoena, oh, 20 minutes or so before that cron job is scheduled to run...exactly how fast are you obligated to walk over to the machine room to turn that thing off? How liable are you legally for taking your coffee break around then? What is the burden of proof on the prosecutor in such a case?

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[5KVGhost]

I'm not a lawyer either, but if they could prove that you had recieved the subpoena before the logs were destroyed, and that you knew your inaction would result in their destruction, then I think you'd be in trouble. Destruction of evidence is nothing to sneeze at.

It's really the same thing as shipping boxes of files down to the shredder and then "forgetting" to tell the employee operating the machine that they shouldn't destroy those documents.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[watchful.babbler]

If you've been served with a subpoena for documents, you can't destroy them, even if your policy is to dispose of them (I have another post around here that doesn't make that clear, so there you have it). So, yes, you are legally liable for obstruction of justice if you don't stop the cronjob.

It's also worth noting that, in some cases, you are obligated to retain documents even though no subpoena has been served: if you have reason to believe that a subpoena will be served on you, destroying related documents may be grounds for an obstruction of justice charge. See, for example, U.S. v. Gravely, 840 F.2d 1156 (4th Cir., 1988).

The burden of proof would, in such a case, be satisfied by showing that the subpoena was served before the deletion took place. After that, the burden is on you and your organization to show that the deletion was impossible to stop -- and, no, a coffee break is not an affirmative defense. ;)

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[matman]

You can move or delete a file while it is open and being written to/read from by any application with no negative results. Once the file is open, the application will address the file by file handle, not file name. The actual file is not deleted until all references to it are removed (including file handles).

Problems WILL arrise if the application attempts to close the file then rename it or something like that.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[MCraigW]

As soon as I received the subpoena I took it to my lawyer to decipher the legalese and determine what action was necessary.

Soo.. when a subpoena is served, do they read it to you, and are you obligated to understand it? ... are you allowed to consult your lawyer before taking action?

In my opinion, if your intent is to protect the privacy of your users, then logging should be turned off in the first place.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[dstone]

Consider a similar, but non-computing, scenario... Let's say you're Joe's Crematorium. A subpoena comes in for a corpse you have on the line on its way into the furnace. As the business owner or manager, you receive the subpoena. You're not certain at this point if the "job" has "run" yet or not. But you think maybe it hasn't. So you hustle over to the phone and call down to the guy in the furnace room who actually does the work. No answer. Crap. You run down the stairs yourself. He's not there. You don't know yourself how to stop the conveyor belt with the bodies on it. You don't know if the evidence in question has been destroyed or not. You make some more phone calls to see where the furnace guy might be. No luck. Bodies are continuing to get toasted. You finally find him (he was on a legitimate break, let's say). You tell him what's going on. 20 minutes have passed now. He stops the belt. It becomes known that the evidence has been incinerated.

Are you guilty of "destroying evidence"? Is your company? Is the furnace guy?

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[micq]

If you've been served with a subpoena for documents, you can't destroy them, even if your policy is to dispose of them (I have another post around here that doesn't make that clear, so there you have it). So, yes, you are legally liable for obstruction of justice if you don't stop the cronjob.

What would be the stance if they didn't actually generate the logs at all? Say, hypo, they redirected all logs to /dev/null initially. Then get served with the subpoena for the logs.. would they be obligated to start collecting logs? Or would the fact that they just don't collect them render the subpoena useless?

Note the difference between "collecting and deleting" vs. "not collecting at all"...

interesting...

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[CoolVibe]

cron(1) is your friend. Oh, and like others said, turning off logging in the configuration file or just logging to the bitbucket are options too.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[ajs]

cron and bash along with most UNIX command-line tools and a good sized chunk of the X software has been available for Windows from Cygnus (now RedHat) for years now.

A Windows box with Cygnus and XFree86 installed and running *can* be told apart from a Linux box that simply doesn't have Gnome or KDE installed, but it takes a few minutes and an inclination to check.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Wylfing]

This is OT, but what the hell. Years ago when an 8088 was a nice machine I caught my mom "deleting" a WordPerfect document from her computer by backspacing through the entire thing. When I caught her she said she'd been at it for about 30 minutes when I showed up. Now the real kicker is that I showed her how to actually delete a file (in those days you used your word processor like a file manager), but after waiting for about 15 seconds (remember, 8088; it was probably a 30 second operation) she grumbled that the speed of the delete operation was too slow and would I please cancel this operation and let her return to backspacing so she could get done "deleting" her file without further delay. I think in the cartoon bubble over her head she imagined the computer was backspacing for her.

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Deven]

Are you guilty of "destroying evidence"? Is your company? Is the furnace guy?

IANAL, but I believe intent probably matters here. If you're honestly trying your best to prevent the expected destruction of the evidence, and you fail to do so, I doubt you'd be held responsible for it. On the other hand, if the evidence is destroyed because you took a coffee break for 20 minutes after receiving the subpoena, and it was destroyed during that time, then you'd probably be in trouble. (You might even be in trouble if it wasn't possible to prevent the destruction -- not making the effort could be damning in itself.)

In the case of computer logs, if you know that the logs in question are about to be deleted by a cron job, you should take whatever steps are necessary to prevent that deletion from occurring. If you try and fail, maybe they'd still crucify you, but I rather doubt it. If you "try" but they can prove you had some passive-aggressive delays that were unnecessary, you might well be in trouble.

I don't think consulting a lawyer about the subpoena would be a defense either -- you should prevent the destruction of evidence first, then consult your lawyer about whether or not to turn over that evidence. If the delay from such a consultation results in the (foreseeable) destruction of evidence, you probably have no defense at all, if you could have prevented that destruction by acting in a timely fashion.

I think the key is knowledge of the subpoena -- if you have knowledge of it, you should act to preserve the evidence. If it is deleted through no fault of your own, and you could not have prevented that deletion after receiving the subpoena, then you're probably in the clear. In the Crematorium example, everyone would probably be in the clear. But suppose instead that the furnace guy knew of the subpoena? Then you may be in the clear for trying to preserve the evidence but the furnace guy may be in trouble for not answering the phone, hiding on a break, etc.

I believe it comes down to knowledge (of the subpoena), intent (to destroy evidence or not prevent its destruction) and ability (if it's possible to prevent the destruction). It would turn on the specific facts of the situation.

But again, I'm not a lawyer, so this certainly isn't legal advice!

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[mengel]

Most people summarize their logs, so the raw logs last just long enough to get converted into fancy reports, and are then tossed.

A summary that says how many hits each directory got, and what the top 10 referring URL's were, etc. is a heck of a lot smaller, and generally more useful, than the full, detailed logs.

Some sites even schlep them over to another machine to do the summaries, so as not to bog down the server doing the work...

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[AnalogDiehard]

It's also worth noting that, in some cases, you are obligated to retain documents even though no subpoena has been served: if you have reason to believe that a subpoena will be served on you, destroying related documents may be grounds for an obstruction of justice charge. See, for example, U.S. v. Gravely, 840 F.2d 1156 (4th Cir., 1988).

How about more recent examples, like Enron and Arthur Anderson from last year?

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[ajs]

As with most GUI-based admin tools, the Windows tools seem much more friendly and useful... until you need to do something that they weren't designed to do :-/

Having command-line tools that can do anything you want them to do is a pain in the ass for the developers who write the tools ("what do you mean he wants to do THAT with cron?!" is something I'm sure Mr. Vixie has said...), but for the systems folk who have better things to do, it's a godsend.

This eventaully boils down to the old command-line vs. GUI argument, and as evidence that that war has finally been decided, I will point to the fact that after 15 years of saying it would never happen, MacOS now has a command-line. They could have gotten rid of it, but when faced with replacing such a robust set of tools with GUIs, the Mac folks had to admin defeat.

One day, I hope there is a GUI that is as powerful as a command-line, but I've never seen one.

I leave you with this daily-show-like moment of zen:

• du -ax | sort -n | tail -20

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[xploita]

If you know a subpoena might be served against you, you might decide not to generate documents at all as there is no legal requirement that you have to generate specific documents in different instances.

This is akin to offices under threat of litigation where email transactions are replaced by phone calls, and meetings are held over lunch so no minutes are kept.

This means, you are legally able to have your logs written to /dev/null since this means that were never generated (and thus could not have been destroyed).

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Cyno]

Those are great examples. Unfortunately their cron job knows how to run shredders, too. ;)

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[Kynde]

If you've been served with a subpoena for documents, you can't destroy them, even if your policy is to dispose of them (I have another post around here that doesn't make that clear, so there you have it). So, yes, you are legally liable for obstruction of justice if you don't stop the cronjob.

But you failed to see the idea the original poster had in mind. He asked something like "exactly how fast are you supposed to run to the machine room"?

Now there is a gray area there no doubt, and the essential question at hand was "What is the burden of proof on the prosecutor in such a case?"

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[feed_me_cereal]

Is it be possible to just write a quick script to...

provided what follows the dots isn't a complicated task involving intellegent decisions and is something you can do manually from a shell, then the answer should always be yes.

Which means, if your job is to delete log files every few hours and some UNIX person walks along and notices you...

Re:"or more often during heavy traffic"

[watchful.babbler]

You've just nailed the reason why companies have document retention policies. If the documents don't exist, or have already been destroyed, there's nothing to subpoena.

However, if documents that fall under a retention policy are subpoenaed before they're destroyed, then you have to produce them.

Prediction

[lightspawn]

Coming soon: legislation requiring access to any U.S. hosted site to be logged and stored for at least 72 hours.

Re:Prediction

[digitalsushi]

I'm cool with the government letting me write off the 2400 bucks for logging disks :D

Re:Prediction

[EricWright]

Writing off? Hell, they want my logs for that long, then they can damn well PAY for the disks to store them on!

Re:Prediction

[bloo9298]

Britain really isn't the place to go if you don't want the government forcing ISPs to monitor you... Look around on the web for "RIP".

Re:Prediction

[4of12]

I'm cool with the government letting me write off the 2400 bucks for logging disks :D

So would I.

Unfortunately, the way the government typically works is "mandate but not fund".

I've worked in government organizations where dictates to do something have come down from on high, but no mention is made of which particular previously authorized and planned project is going to get taxed to pay for the new mandate.

There's a much tighter correlation between cost and benefit in small businesses - I think larger corporations can get the same "drifting disease of disconnect", but not as badly as the government.

Re:Prediction

[Tackhead]

> Coming soon: legislation requiring access to any U.S. hosted site to be logged and stored for at least 72 hours.

Why bother? Pass legislation that requires ISPs log all traffic instead. They're more likely to comply with such a law (and unlike most laws, such as the anti-spamming and anti-telemarketing laws, this is a law where the Government does want compliance!) than end users.

Better yet - why burden the ISP with the added expenses (and bad PR!) of logkeeping at all? This solution would require no new laws; it'd merely have HomeSec allocate a portion of its budget to install a packet sniffer with a hella-fast RAID array at the chokepoints - and log the URLs (and SMTP headers, and USENET headers, and P2P requests, and Freenet requests) themselves.

China's doing it all wrong - the way to deal with threats to internal security isn't to block citizens' access to information, it's to allow access to information - and log the hell out of it! I mean, knowing that Xin Sixpack typed "Falun Gong" at google.com and got blocked when he tried to visit the front page of some website isn't nearly as useful as letting him go to the site, and then watching every click he makes, to find out what (specifically) he's interested in.

Re:Prediction

[bwt]

I would hope that would be Unconstitutional, since mandatory speech is a violation of the first amendment. I also think a 10th amendment argument would be a good one -- there is no enumerated power in the US Constitution that authorizes Congress to impose record keeping requirements on publishers.

But as always, the US Court system is not reliable for getting the right result when it comes to individual liberty, so we would have to see.

Re:Prediction

[CoolVibe]

You are better off in the Netherlands.

Re:Prediction

[WNight]

Logging doesn't need to be expensive. Buy some IBM 75GXP drives, they're really cheap on EBay now and though they often lose data a quick low-level format fixes them up again (for another week).

After all, you can't be blamed if the hardware fails.. :)

In fact, you probably don't need many drives, expect a nice older 75gxp to self-wipe before it gets full.

Re:Prediction

[cyberformer]

Better yet - why burden the ISP with the added expenses (and bad PR!) of logkeeping at all? This solution would require no new laws; it'd merely have HomeSec allocate a portion of its budget to install a packet sniffer with a hella-fast RAID array at the chokepoints - and log the URLs (and SMTP headers, and USENET headers, and P2P requests, and Freenet requests) themselves.

I thought that Carnivore and Echelon already did this!

The thing is, this doesn't give Big Brother all the information he needs. Logs of Web requests, for example, may only contain a user's IP address. This can be traced to an ISP, but Big Brother then needs some way to know which user was assigned a particular DHCP address at a particular time.

Re:Prediction

[4of12]

expect a nice older 75gxp to self-wipe before it gets full.

Now you tell me. (though I heard those horror stories earlier, too.)

I've got one of those 75 GB IBM drives in my TiVo at home archiving some classic shows and it looks like I'm in danger of losing it all...

Re:Ridiculous

[MaxwellStreet]

Mmhmm. And so does the 4th amendment. And the Miranda rule. And . . .

Oh forget it.

This has -got- to be a troll.

Re:Ridiculous

[gpinzone]

That's the price you pay for living in a "free" society. Deal with it...the founding fathers did.

Re:Ridiculous

[digerata]

Oh, that's just fine then. Go along with the argument that we should give up all of our rights and privacy under the pretense that it makes us safer and we catch criminals.

I bet you support the 'Fatherland' security act as well.

Re:Ridiculous

[ACNeal]

The constitution protects criminals also.

This is a fundamental problem with freedom. If you want freedom, your neighbor has to expect that same freedom, even if he is a bigger criminal than you.

Of course, everyone is a felon. Most people just haven't pissed off the correct person yet.

Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[Sean Clifford]

Good move, though I hope they don't get in trouble for making the subpoena public. As I read the subpoena, they were specifically instructed not to make the subpoena public to as not to alert the subject(s) of the investigation to the existence of the investigation.

Not that I support the government's position on this: "It's secret - national security, you know. Nothing to see here, move along."

I'm glad that Cryptome deletes log files. Though most here probably support Cryptome's stance, I doubt that today's slashdotting is going to be welcome.

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[xyzzy]

I don't get it. What amount of mojo does the Attorney General for Mass. have in NY? Can't he just tell them to go pound sand?

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[Universal Nerd]

From the site:

Documents are removed from this site only by order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. No court order has ever been served; any order will be published here or elsewhere if gagged by order. Bluffs will be published if comical but otherwise ignored.

It'll be intresting to see what happens.

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[analog_line]

He probably could, but then how do you know what relationship the Attourneys General of Massachussetts and New York have with each other? Or the Federal Justice Department, for that matter. Remember, the Governor of Massachussetts has been Republican since Dukakis.

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

They requested it, however a subpoena is not a court order, which would be the only legally enforceable manner of gagging the case (at least till it is resolved). Subpoenas often ask for more than the DA is entitled to, assuming that people do not know any better.

Besides I doubt that the case is really against a Mr "John Doe". Any attempt to say they warned the theif would be tenuous at best. But IANAL, hell I'm not even from America.

Sad thing due to the Americanisation of Australia (America's cute little lap dog, it pulls out on a leash any time they need a yes man), I know more about the American system and its laws, then I do about Australia's. Sigh.

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[TheCarp]

Oh they can be bastards.

He can tell the Attourney general of MA to pound sand. However, if a warrent for his arrest is issued in MA, then he can be arrested if he comes here and is caught (which never happens)

Or... if he is ever arrested for any reason in NY, then even after being bailed out, the NY police will alert MA (since states share info on who they have warrent for) and the NY police will hold him for the MA police to come pick him up (I think for up to 90 days)

This happened to a friend of mine about 2 years ago. He had a warrent for his arrest in Waltham, MA (missed a court date) and lived in RI. RI police picked him up for something unrelated (long story). After a month he was bailed out, but wasn't released. After being bailed out, the RI police informed him that they were holding him for up to 90 days because MA has a warrent out for his arrest and they are holding him for the MA police to come pick him up.
(amusingly he missed his court date and had a warrent issued for his arrest because he was in a RI holding cell and thus couldn't come up to MA for his hearing).

In short, yea he can tell the AG to pound sand, he can even come into MA with little to no fear of ever being caught (police here have better things to do than pull people over, and we don't play that dangerous game of letting the cities patrol the highways so they have more incentive to pull people over than keep traffic moving safely). But... he better be sure not to get arrested anywhere else in the US.

-Steve

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[Anonymous Custard]

The exact statement was "As this subpoena is related to an ongoing criminal investigation, please do not reveal this request to any individual not necessary to comply with the supoena or to the subcriber." It is written in the cover letter, and not in the actual subpoena itself, because in public trials without a specific gag order, a piece of mail is still a piece of mail and you can show it to whomever you like. The cover letter was not marked "confidential" and the only reason cryptome would have had to comply with this friendly request to keep it on the down low would be to appease the Attorney General.

Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble

[ewhac]

As I read the subpoena, they were specifically instructed not to make the subpoena public to as not to alert the subject(s) of the investigation to the existence of the investigation.

What subject? The "subject" of the investigation is named in the subpoena as, "John Doe."

Schwab

Who are the criminals

[Qzukk]

I'll bite.

Who exactly are the criminals they are protecting here? people like me who read the site? Did someone pass a law while I was sleeping: "Thou Shalt Not Read Cryptome"?

This kind of behavior should definitely be considered a "chilling effect". The /. effect is already in force so I can't get to the article, so I can't help but wonder if theres an actual criminal investigation that these logs were needed for, or if they're looking to start one from those logs. If it is an ongoing investigation, what information would be gleaned from those logs that would possibly be helpful to them? That the person in question reads cryptome?

Re:Who are the criminals

[jdreed1024]

Did someone pass a law while I was sleeping: "Thou Shalt Not Read Cryptome"?

Nope. But they certainly did pass a law saying "Thou shalt not commit wire fraud". That's what they're looking for (some guy who is passing himself off as a security specialist and is just stealing people's data), and they think the suspect might have visited one page on cryptome. They only want the logs for that page - they don't give a shit about the rest of the site. Why don't you go read one of the mirrors (or one of the many comments paraphrasing the mirrors) before crying "Big Brother"?

Also, when posting something controversial like this, with headlines that can easily be misinterpreted, the editors should really go make copies of the pages (it's just text - that doesn't require bandwidth) and have them available for viewing so people don't jump to conclusions. Of course, while I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony.

Re:Who are the criminals

[oldmanmtn]

This kind of behavior should definitely be considered a "chilling effect". The /. effect is already in force so I can't get to the article

If the web site is now busier than ever, that's a pretty ineffective chilling effect.

Re:Who are the criminals

[5KVGhost]

This kind of behavior should definitely be considered a "chilling effect".

Huh? Why? The convenience store down the street has security cameras. If there's a crime committed then the police will see the video. If the camera also happens to catch me browsing through the dirty magazines then I might be embarrased. Therefore the police shouldn't be able to watch security videos, right?

If it is an ongoing investigation, what information would be gleaned from those logs that would possibly be helpful to them? That the person in question reads cryptome?

Perhaps we should find out the answers to those questions before we go making random unsupportable accusations against people we know nothing about. Apparently the people who do know these things thought there was a good enough reason to issue the subpoena. Perhaps they're wrong, or perhaps they're overestimating how useful the log file might be, but I don't think it's a valid assumption to assume they're all running dog fascist pigs just because they asked Cryptome for some information.

Re:Who are the criminals

[An Onerous Coward]

"Huh? Why? The convenience store down the street has security cameras. If there's a crime committed then the police will see the video. If the camera also happens to catch me browsing through the dirty magazines then I might be embarrased. Therefore the police shouldn't be able to watch security videos, right?"

Listen to what he's actually saying. When the government monitors our daily activities--in this case, web browsing--people have to start second guessing those daily activities. People start asking themselves, "Do I really want the government to know that I'm interested in X?" "Will reading article Y mark me as a possible terrorist threat?" That's what a "chilling effect" means.

Using your own convenience store analogy, imagine that, as part of your police department's procedures for tracking down rapists, they regularly subpoenaed the video tapes of convenience stores in the area, looking for precisely the dirty magazine browsing you describe. Knowing this, people will be even more nervous about flipping through them.

But you might not think of porn browsing as an inalienable right, so a different example may be needed.

Imagine now that your local library is required to keep track of which patrons check out which books. Upon request, any and all police agencies can check out a suspect's reading history for the last five years, to see if they match some "profile."

Would that make you the least bit leery of checking out books on obscure or politically charged issues? If so, congratulations. Your chill has now been put into effect.

we dont log the ip's

[gimpboy]

i work with the local indypendent media center and our solution was to not log the ip addresses. the logs are still useful for diagnosing problems, but without the ip addresses they are useless for finding people.

Re:we dont log the ip's

[photon317]

A good way to do this (which the above guys might be using) is to translucently log critical information, much like the techniques in the Translucent Databases book. In this case, information like the client IP address can be md5 hashed before being logged. In this way, if you need to investigate a particular IP address because of a court order or an attack, you can md5 the neccesary address and know what to search for. And if you're just analyzing patterns in your logfiles, the md5's will still uniquely identify client IPs so that you can see the real flow of events. You can also store the logs a while and not have privacy concerns. The md5'd addresses prevent the logs from being used as a wholesale database of private information, since you'd have to reverse md5 (computationally infeasible) seperately for every customer IP to get the original data back.

Of course I'll play devil's advocate to myself here. There's only 2^32 IP addresses (less than that because of private space and whatnot, but it's good to overestimate anyways), and each takes 4 bytes to store. If you stored the full md5 hashes with offsets as IPs, you'd be looking at a 64GB fool-proof solution. 64G of disk space in a database is not a hefty requirement by any means. Pre-computing 4 billion md5 hashes of 4 byte strings and writing them all to disk would take some time, but not an excessive amount. If I had the free space at home I could probably build this pre-cache of IP md5's in a few weeks tops. So the government could definitely do it.

A potential stop to this sort of precaching would be to mix in more data before hashing. For instance, store the current datestamp down to 1-hour resolution into the hash as well as the IP. You'll then need to know the horu you're looking for to index a specific IP address, and they'd have to do all the same computation and storage once per hour forever to keep the ability to index your hashes back to IPs. While you're at it, each site could also through their own primary IP address into the hash, so that several sites using this same scheme would have to be indexed seperately by the government. Toss in a random tidbit that nobody knows, like the programmer's dog's name or something, and you're set.

Re:we dont log the ip's

[JimDabell]

without the ip addresses they are useless for finding people

Not necessarily. If you are logging referrers or other information, that can be used to track down some people. For instance, what about people clicking on links in their webmail? Some of those webmail urls contain a lot of information, and all you'd have to do is subpoena the webmail provider to get the ip/personal information of those people.

Re:we dont log the ip's

[Dachannien]

What, doesn't anybody block referers these days while surfing the web?

Re:we dont log the ip's

[photon317]

I believe I already brought this up and gave estimates on the complexity above, as well as solutions for the problem. Did you only read my first paragraph?

Re:we dont log the ip's

[photon317]

1) AC go home. Bring an idea to the table or stfu, and why don't you leave your name while you're at it.

2) It's not cryptography. It's just hashing for translucency. I'm not perfect, and that was an off-the-cuff slashdot post. Feel free to argue it's merits with me, but don't just post an unfounded "you suck".

3) You suck.

Logs subpoenaed?

[Anand_S]

How does one subpoena a log file? I imagine the conversation went something like this:

"We have a summons for your log file."

"Uh, would you like us to send an admin to court with the log files?"

"No, just tell the log file to show up in court on the date indicated on the summons."

Instead of deleting whole log files....

[nautical9]

... why not just change the log format to not include any personally trackable data (IP address, username, any cookie info, etc). Using Apache, this is very simple with the CustomLog directive.

Then you still have proper log files so you can create reports on traffic, bandwidth, and all the other goodies logs are intended for.

Re:Instead of deleting whole log files....

[Bios_Hakr]

Because it's easier to use something like HP Openview, CiscoWorks, or MRTG to generate graphs on bandwidth usage. You can even use it to monitor things like requests per minute, messages in the mail que, cpu usage on individual boxen in a cluster, etc...

Re:Instead of deleting whole log files....

[pclminion]

... why not just change the log format to not include any personally trackable data (IP address, username, any cookie info, etc). Using Apache, this is very simple with the CustomLog directive.

That still isn't perfect. The personally identifiable info might not be purposefully written to disk, but it might get paged out during swapping. So a real asshole (i.e. a DA somewhere) might be able to recover some of it from your swap partition.

Re:Instead of deleting whole log files....

[poot_rootbeer]

Logs are also used to track things like 'unique users' these days. Most online businesses need to have this kind of demographic information available.

They still have to produce logs

[PhilHibbs]

If no such log exists for the specific page in question, please provide any logs that would cover the domain together with an explanation of what the log covers.

So upon receiving this subpoena, I'd expect that they are legally bound to provide whatever logs they have on their system that have not yet been deleted. They could claim that it arrived during a heavy traffic period...

Re:They still have to produce logs

[PhilHibbs]

If no such log exists for the specific page in question, please provide any logs that would cover the domain

I suppose the wording is unclear - you could read it as "please provide any logs for the specified period that would cover the domain", or "please provide any logs regardless of time that would cover the domain". The latter could be vast amounts of data, and on reflection, I think is unlikely to be their meaning. That's how I interpreted it first though.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be interesting...

http://130.236.229.26/cryptome-log.htm

Re:Mirror

[Sparr0]

You can't use PGP to sign official depositions like that.

Why not? Have you read the various Electronic Signature laws?

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we that bent on self-destruction

No. We're hell bent on keeping our hard-won freedom and not turning into our enemy.

You cannot have both ~100% safety and freedom at the same time.

Previous slashdot story

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like this?

One problem...

[The Creator]

You have to find a way to force the terrorist to use the internet first.

Re:One problem...

[The Creator]

they surely do not pass up on a tool as powerful as the internet.

Yes nothing like a threatining email to the pilot to make him crash his plane into a building.

Re:Ridiculous

[digerata]

No I *mean* Fatherland as in Soviet Russia.

Its not a leap of faith to look at how our government is increasingly trying to invade and monitor its citizens' privacy and think back to how the Russian government and KGB operated in its prime.

We should be monitoring our government. Not the other way around.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[mstockman]

We, as true Americans, aren't obligated to collect and archive every little drop of information about ourselves, our neighbors, and our customers on the off chance that it may someday be useful to law enforcement in solving or preventing a crime. Especially when you consider that the potential for abuse of randomly-collected information is much higher than the potential for its utility.

As has been said elsewhere, if they deleted the logs regularly (i.e., not in response to a subpoena), it would be hard to pin "obstruction of justice" on them. Naturally, IANAL and all that. But that would be like pinning an obstruction charge on a janitor for sweeping the hallways like she does every night because this time some evidence was swept up.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[k3v0]

do you really think giving the logs of this website will stop terror? i'm sure most things are under the freedom of info act, like the smoking gun. do you think people can't use the anonymizer or some other means of obscuring their true identity? it's not a matter of self destruction. if we give up our freedoms to anyone, be it a foreign terrorist or our own government, the terrosrists have succeeded in their goal of disrupting our freedom.

Isn't that how the UK does it?

[wiredog]

I wouldn't be surprised to see that in the US.

Simple Fake Email

[Deton8]

I read this story on Cryptome before the /. effect took hold -- what happened is some jerkoff is sending around fake emails with forged headers which purport to come from a legit company essentially trying to extort money from people to keep their personal data private. Obviously, the DA has a suspect and a grand jury has been empaneled to try to indict the guy behind the joe job, and they are hoping that the perp has been accessing the cryptome site (less likely, but possible, is that it's a fishing expedition and they will simply check everybody who surfed that page during the timeframe in question). The story has almost nothing to do with the true mission of the cryptome site. As far as posting the subpoena, there is a clear notice on the cryptome site declaring their intention to post the contents of all such legal notices unless it is illegal for John Young (a resident of New York IIRC) to post them.

Re:Simple Fake Email

[stinky wizzleteats]

Considering that the perp's address (or one that can be easily traced to him) is in the e-mail, I don't know why they need web logs.

Furthermore, I don't know why the perp would be surfing the discussion on cryptome, unless he's just reviewing his handiwork.

Is this sarcastic?

[autocracy]

Seems kinda stupid to ask, but you know... it's like somebody asking which peddle is the gas and which is the brake, you can't REALLY be sure they're serious if you don't know them unless you ask again...

I hope it's sarcastic. If it's not sarcastic, you're failing to consider a lot of important issues that this country was founded upon.

Law enforcement is always weeks behind

[defile]

When I used to work at an ISP, whenever we were summonsed for log files they'd always be for records that were weeks or months old. Most of them were from the "CyberSmuggling" division of US Customs.

Right now I maintain a high traffic site that doesn't store more than 4 days worth of logs on each web server (each day is about 2GB). One time they subpeona'd us for logs that were literally 3 months old. Hah.

Re:Law enforcement is always weeks behind

[Moderation abuser]

I presume then that you specifically exclude your log files from your nightly backups then, cos if you don't and your log files are on your backup tapes then you might have broken the law.

You do perform daily backups? No?

Re:Law enforcement is always weeks behind

[jez_f]

UK law is supposed to be changing so that ISPs / telcos will have to keep SIX MONTHS of records. Do they have any idea how much data that is. But it does get round the problem/solution of people deleting server logs.

Here's what they're after...

[imag0]

about 1/2 way down the page you get the gist they were looking for anyone who visited the page http://cryptome.org/sec-con.htm

Of course, the page was taken down / slashdotted, I guess. Google to the rescue!

Re:Here's what they're after...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god.

They are trying to find out who visited a page, which showed a forged email that claimed to be from the ISC or CISSP or something. It also included conversation between Cyrptome, and a representative of that organization who indicated that it was a forgery. The following is an excerpt from their email:

"Regrettably, it is easy to "spoof" someone on the Internet. It is very easy for an e-mail message to appear to come from Pr[]sident B[]sh or Bill Gates, when indeed they did not. "

I seriously hope that this wasnt some mindless drone, with a semi-automated keyword checker automatically checking any page which mentions the obsucured terms (which I did to prevent /. from having similar trouble, if that is the issue)

This would be

1. An absolute waste of government time/money/etc.

2. Completely wrong, and an invasion of privacy.

Re:And round we go, again

[JCMay]

DSL-Admin, are you trying to tell me that you could not judge a barrel of apples without at least a single rotten one in it? "I don't know if these apples are good or not; there's nothing to compare them to!"

Light/dark, good/evil: they are NOT opposite sides of the same coin, no matter what Superfriends or the Masters of the Universe taught you.

BADNESS isn't something in its own right that must "balance" goodness, as if "too much" goodness would be a bad(!) thing. QED.

You'd probably say that if everything in the world were red, there'd be no color in the world.

(I think IHBT)

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[jcoy42]

You havn't ever actually maintained a web site, have you?

Logs typically get compressed nightly, and deleted frequently.

I've maintained sites that literally filled GBs of disk with log data. And it gets much more expensive (CPU cost) to process huge files. Typically, you end up picking some time frame which you compress the files at, and maintain a regular deletion cycle.

Of course you would also create reports for management and marketing, but those reports contain very few specific details like IPs, and lots of details about counts per page/directory/product item.

You really can't maintain an interesting site without frequent log deletion. I'm surprised they took the "protect the privacy of our users" route- it would be a Bad Thing [TM] to have someone get a court ruling made that websites must save all logs for a period of 5 years or something equally insane.

Anyone worth their salt who is doing anything bad is using a proxy anyway.

Huh!?

[giel]

... bring with him/her all logs recording the I.P. addresses and/or users who visited "http://cryptome.org/sec-con.htm" between 11/7/02 00:00:00 GMT and 11/14/02 23:59:59 GMT. If no such log exists for the specific page in question, please provide any logs that would cover the domain together with an explanation of what the log covers.

vi /var/log/httpd/smokinggun.log[ENTER]
256iwww.ago.state.ma.us[ENTER]
[ESC]
[SHIFT+z]z[SHIFT+z]

Ahh, Sir! Here I've got it, see? '/var/log/httpd/smokinggun.log'!
Eh, ahum...

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[sporty]

Yes/No. Everything isn't black and white.

What if the logs were to enforce the dmca (dcma, whatever)? What if it was used to help track down a person who was stalking someone else? What if it was used to track down a terrorist?

What about a law that bans all guns? One place did it and gun usage went up. Old addage of banning one thing makes all users outlaws or something.

Point is, Preventing one crime can cause another.

Asking for student records: old news

[October_30th]

Next thing you know, they'll be asking for student records from universities/colleges

You mean like this?

It's already happening.

Re:And round we go, again

[benwb]

I don't know what the world would be like without evil, but I sure as hell would be willing to give it a shot before tossing the idea out the window. I find that most people who say that good doesn't exist without evil really mean, "I only appreciate my good fortune in contrast to the misery of others."

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Ageless]

Wow, are you a real person?

Didn't Ben Franklin say something about giving up essential liberties? Like privacy?

If "the terrorists" are able to take our freedom and privacy from us they have already won. They just haven't buried us yet.

Re:Just a thought..

[Maeryk]

No, quite frankly I would not.

Information wants to be free. Hiding technological and medical breakthroughs under the cover of national secrecy is a crime against humanity.

Hmm.. information wants to be free.. Okay.. let me get this straight.. you feel that the launch codes and locations of all US nuclear weapons should be published? Military radio frequencies and scrambling codes for the various air wings?
Your Drivers License info should be posted on the back window of your car, right? So if you have two tickets already someone behind you is urged to call the police and let them know you are six miles over the limit again?

Some information wants to be free.. yes.. medical and technological breakthroughs are all well and good, but I think ANY rational person can agree that there is "information" (such as your medical records, or state secrets) that should definately *NOT* be free.

Maeryk

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[theLOUDroom]

Shouldn't we as true Americans

True americans value their freedom. A police state is not free.
BTW 9/11 was not the result of a lack of information problem. They had all the information they needed to stop it. 9/11 was the direct result of a failure by the FBI use properly use the information they already had. Do a little research on what we knew and when. You'll learn that we had all the info we needed to catch these guys.

The current wave of laws and privacy invasions, have just about nothing to do with preventing terrorism. They are thinly veiled ways of using the fears of unwitting Americans (like you) to give up their freedoms, so they have more power and you have less.

Try not to be such a dolt. How exactly are your server logs going to prevent another 9/11? You're going to have to stretch your imagination pretty far to come up with a way your server logs could have stopped 9/11. Now ask yourself: What other things could these server logs be used for? In the case of a site like cryptome.org, you can think of a lot of shady things the gov't could do once it gets its hands one them, most of them a lot more plausible than stopping another 9/11.

You are an embarassment to true americans. Do you think Columbus, the pilgrims, the pioneers, etc. were as terrified as you? No, they wanted freedom and were willing to risk a little safety to have it.

A supreme court judge once said that the safest societies in the world are totalitarian dictatorships.

Send them the logs one line at a time...

[smack_attack]

CustomLog | /bin/mail subpoena@ago.state.ma.us

this could take a while :)

Re: Just a thought...

[BluesGeek]

Just one comment here ... while I agree that there is no "right" that says "Thou shall not to be logged when you visit my site" (the equivalent would be someone writing down the names of every person who entered their home), rights in general are _not_ granted by the government. The Constitution takes the position that certain rights are inalienable and it's the governments job to protect, not grant, our freedoms. Unfortunately, 9/11 has granted free reign to the other line of thought.

Re:Just a thought..

[sporty]

But why does everyone immediately assume the gub'mint is trying to nail someone to a wall unjustly here? Sorry.. your "rights" arent being violated by someone subpoena'ing a weblog. Or what servers you log into. The internet is a public forum.. while the "copyright" on your posts/stories/pictures may revert to you, anyone may read them.

Because, sometimes we have to prevent even the smallest of our liberties from being taken away. Otherwise, we may miss them, or worse, have more taken away. Not saying that everyone who overreacts is bad, but sitting idly and not speculating is much much worse.

Do you trust the travelling salesman?

Re:Just a thought..

[Glytch]

But why does everyone immediately assume the gub'mint is trying to nail someone to a wall unjustly here?

Experience, knowledge of history, common sense, and a deep concern over the "I'm in charge, now bend over" mentality that many attornerys general seem to be adopting.

I think the point is...

[No Such Agency]

People (especially the internet-savvy/hacker types who hang around here, or at Cryptome) just don't trust the guv'mint, or law enforcement agencies. They give us many, many reasons to believe that any information of this type may be used to subvert our civil rights or surveil (is that a word?) us without good reason. The "freedoms granted by the government" are really just a subset of the freedoms we should have, were the government not restricting many of those already. I say, work to change the rules, AND in the meantime, subvert them. You are bang on in that traditional civil disobedience includes accepting the penalties for your actions, partly because doing so tends to increase sympathy for your cause. But I can't really blame people for being reluctant to "get caught", not all of us are as strong as Gandhi...

Re:Just a thought..

[Glytch]

Whoops. Meant "attorneys general". Always wait for the coffee to hit the bloodstream before posting...

Re:Just a thought..

[Zigg]

Information wants to be free.

No, information wants to be anthropomorphized.

Re:Just a thought..

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure where "Maeryk" is located, but in the United States, this is 100% untrue: "freedoms granted by the government"

The US Government does NOT grant freedoms. The people have them by RIGHT. The people have granted (albeit altered by judicial fiat) the *government* limited, enumerated powers. That is all.

PEOPLE are NOT agents of the government and are therefore NOT REQUIRED TO TRACK OTHER PEOPLE. That is a police state, a la the Soviet Union et al.

Regarding this:
"You cant have the freedoms granted by the government (laughable as they may be at times) without also following whatever rules make those freedoms a reality.

DON'T SLASHDOT CRYPTOME

[cygnus]

i know i'm coming in way late here, but JYA pays for cryptome traffic out of pocket. it's his hobby (or mission, the point is that he doesn't get recompensated for it).

so don't lay waste to his site if you don't have an interest. it's coming straight out of his wallet.

Re:DON'T SLASHDOT CRYPTOME

[/dev/trash]

oh well. If you don't wanna pay don't be on the web. I'm sick of hearing about the poor webmaster paying out of his pocket.

Re:DON'T SLASHDOT CRYPTOME

[SuperDuG]

oh well. If you don't wanna pay don't be on the web. I'm sick of hearing about the poor webmaster paying out of his pocket.

Then quit reading comments if you're so sick of it.

Wait was that an obvious answer? Of course it was. The statement is quite true because there are many people who host websites out of their own pocket by a personal server. Here's the problem though. Slashdot and similar sites with high traffic link to the page in order to keep their visitors interested and to sell ads. Why is it okay for Slashdot to make money on someone elses misfortune, but stealing oil from a middle eastern country isn't? Slashdot makes money from people who come to their site (they show their access logs to companies and say "look at how many people come to out site, your ads will be seen billions of times", don't believe me, look at the top of this page) and there are many web hosters that provide a monthly allotment that then charge for bandwidth after that limit is reached or will simply disable the site.

So because slashdot wanted to make more money someone who has a personal webpage has to suffer. The argument of "don't want to pay for it, don't put it on the web" is moot. I've had a personal webpage hosted on a personal server for nearly 6 years and I know damn well that my site is not high traffic. So why should I expect at all to ever have a million billion hits in a 5 day period? I shouldn't unless someone from slashdot wants to make sure they look original and want to bash the hell out of my server when I know damn well that google has a cache of mysite. Google being a server that is used to high traffic already and has their own way of recouping the costs.

How are the personal websites supposed to recoup the costs? HOW? So why don't we just start robbing banks for slashdot, if the banks didn't want to be robbed they wouldn't have unlocked their front doors for business. Or how about anyone who owns a business, since they let ANYONE in their store it should be their fault if someone comes in and breaks everything, right?

You know what I'm sick of? Morons like you who think it's cool to be a heartless asshole.

Re:DON'T SLASHDOT CRYPTOME

[/dev/trash]

Whoa. You covered it all in that reply eh?

I hit a nerve, I suppose.

Anyway, there are means to avert a slashdotting. Joe User out of his bedroom may be ignorant of them but certainly a site like Cryptome has a bit more knowledge.

Re:And round we go, again

[ReelOddeeo]

When will people learn, that good does not exist w/o evil. Evil can not exist w/o good.

I therefore propose that we eliminate all evil. How? By eliminating good.

We can start by having the government establish a system whereby everyone is constantly monitored for any evil. People guilty of wrong-thinking should be sent to re-education camps. Failing that, they should be eliminated. By taking these measured, reasoned steps, we can eliminate crime and all other forms of evil.

Only good will remain. (Or will it? Would such a "good" society be worth living in?)

Re:Ridiculous

[limekiller4]

gpinzone writes:
"That's the price you pay for living in a "free" society. Deal with it...the founding fathers did."

<div class="sarcasm">
Yeah, because the founding fathers never would have done anything under, say, a pseudonym.
</div>

Re:Just a thought..

[Malor]

That is just appalling: "If you are worried about your IP being logged when you get into a server or access online content, dont get online."

Have you ever heard of 'chilling effects'? Do you have any idea just how noxious this idea is to freedom? One of our fundamental principles has always been that you are free to think and read anything you wish; that information (with a very, very few exceptions) should not be suppressed in this country. No matter how noxious the current government may find the spread of some ideas, some of them are undoubtedly going to be right. There is little that makes authority figures more uncomfortable than the truth.

And finally.... freedoms ARE NOT GRANTED BY THE GOVERNMENT. I hope you're not a US citizen... if you are, you should just pack up and move to China. Government can only grant privileges. You have rights, many of which are enumerated in the Constitution (but it was never meant to be an exhaustive list) that cannot be taken away by the government. Instead, we grant the government certain limited powers which it uses on our behalf for the greater good.

They work for US, we don't work for THEM. The fact that you could be mixed up on this issue is scary. The fact that you could be modded up to +5 is even more frightening. What the hell is going on in this country??

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Eagle7]

Damn Right... fucking sheeples...

Shouldn't be a valid search warrant

[multimed]

IANAL (but I watch a lot of law & order ;) As long as a judge has decided there is probable cause to issue a warrant, then what's the big deal. I'm as big of a supporter of privacy and constitutional rights as anyone, and legitimate, valid search warrants are consistent with those rights. Whether it's through log files of a website or physical evidence in the real world it shouldn't matter-if everything is kosher then the cops should be able to get evidence to catch the bad guys. In this case, the first part of the request looks fine, they have requested logs from one week--while I wish more info was given, hopefully the judge who granted the warrant was presented more detailed information and thus granted the warrant. And there is a remedy for situations where judges grant a warrant without enough probable cause--it should be appealed and the appeals court can throw out the search and conviction. I do have a problem with the second request--requesting any logs should not nearly specific enough to be valid

Re:Shouldn't be a valid search warrant

[HiThere]

Ever heard the term "onerous burden"? How about "fishing expedition"?

The fact that some judge somewhere decided that there he would say that there was probable cause does not, in fact, mean that there WAS probable cause. Particularlly when it is reasonably clear that he had no idea of how much data he was thinking of. Logs of sites that you have never heard of can quickly become HUGE! What they were doing is actually something like supeonaing the daily list of phone call destinations in Province, RI. (I was first going to say New York, but on consideration that's a bit too big.) But I may be underestimating ... though probably not. Cryptocrome is known at least all over the English speaking world, though not very densely. And each log entry would be larger than a phone # + time of day. So it's probably the right order of magnitude.

And they were expecting this to be kept for MONTHS! That's absurd. This is a rediculous request, whatever their reasons for making it may have been. And an infringement on the privacy of a huge number of people who are in no way involved. They may not know that their privacy has been infringed, but that just makes it worse. If you know that someone has scanned your credit card number, you can decide whether or not to cancel it, but if you don't, you can't choose to protect yourself.

Re:Shouldn't be a valid search warrant

[ninewands]

> As long as a judge has decided there is probable cause to issue a warrant, then what's the big deal.

First of all, the document in question is NOT a search warrant, it is a subpoena, which lacks MANY of the protections built into a searchwarrant. In fact, in many jurisdictions, the issuance of a subpoena does not require ANY judicial action or even a sworn statement that supports a finding of probable cause that the material sought is even relevant evidence of the crime under investigation.

In short, this IS a fishing expedition and cryptome SHOULD obtain Massachussetts counsel to put in a "special appearance" to contest the jurisdiction of the Grand Jury over itself and to prosecute a motion to quash the subpoena for lack of 1) personal jurisdiction, and 2) relevance of the logs to the investigation.

Re:And round we go, again

[DSL-Admin]

""You'd probably say that if everything in the world were red, there'd be no color in the world. ""

No, I actually would call that a Monochrome World.

You don't seem to understand what the word color means. I'll define it for you "That aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them, definable in terms of the observer or of the light" .... In a world that has all the same color, then technically there would be no color, only shades of the same tone, unless you are now saying that "similar and differ" are the same definition.

This is the definition of the word Monochrome "having or appearing to have only one color "... It can also mean, different shades of the same color, which also applies since we are talking about the color red, which takes light to be visble to us.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Shouldn't we as true Americans be ready to assist in every way we can to prevent future 9/11's? If my providing logs could even prevent one little terrorist attack I would do it in a minute.

Long ago our founding fathers were forced to decide for those they led, which is more important life or freedom? The answer was sewn onto early flags and raised as a battle cry "Give me liberty or give me death" We must remember they were yelling that against a very powerful enemy who could indeed give either of those. However the combined spirit of all early americans (with a lot of unacknowledged help from natives) was able to fight off british rule. So, should I be willing to let the govt. read my logs, tap my phone etc...
Hell, no!

Re:And round we go, again

[WeaponOfChoice]

you should give marvel a chance, some of the storylines (ignoring the whole superpowered thing) can be quite interesting from a sociological pov and have quite a bit of relevance in the world today. That said that goes equally for a lot of areas of fiction...

Your point is a good one (though one that is frequently made and almost as frequently misquoted) and pretty much inapplicable as people just don't see the world that way - both good and evil are abstracts that only have context against eachother and the line that divides appears to be based on personal perspective...

You could just as easily say that "letting someone walk down the street unmonitored" is as bad as "letting a terrorist walk down the street unmonitored". All that differs are the possible consequences, that and the fact that the government really can't tell the difference between the two...

Re:Just a thought..

[vingilot]

If you are worried about your IP being logged when you get into a server or access online content, dont get online.

and if you are worried about government comming down on you for speaking out ...

don't speak out

sorry but that is ridiculous reasoning.

Jonathan

Re:Logs subpoenaed? Summons != Subpoena

[egburr]

Fax the log file in? Better tell them to have someone standing by to replace paper and toner every hour for a few weeks.

Print it out and mail it in? Are they going to reimburse you for the reams and reams of paper, toner, and wear-and-tear on your printer? Oh, you're using an ink jet, not a laser printer? How many weeks will they allow for you to finish printing? Are they going to reimburse you for the wages of the person sitting there feeding paper to the printer?

Oh wait, they want it on disk? Do they want it in Word or PDF format? :)

Something about this bothers me, though.

[dhartzell]

I visit Cryptome on a regular basis and find about one in five of the documents to be of interest, either in my profession or politically. Sometimes, just impulse. So, when I saw the link, I went to the page, read it, and then went to the linked page. And I wondered, WHY would anyone would want to know that I had visited that particular page?

Tthe page is about a possible scam, it looks to me like someone sending fake e-mails to extort money - that in and of itself is valuable to me.

But, and this is my question, why is knowing my IP address, or anyone's IP address that has visited that page, important to the agency that issued the subpoena? What possible benefit could this information be to them??

To me, it's like seeing news coverage about people going around scamming old, retired folk, and then the Chief Of Police goes to the TV station and asks for a list of all the viewers.

Re:Something about this bothers me, though.

[moncyb]

Maybe the person who wants the log files committed the crime and wants to "take care of" all those who know about it. ;-)

Re:Just a thought..

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

A lot of the people here who are complaining about this are probably the same people who defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam King's house. You cannot have it both ways.

The gub'mint (cute) did not take the pictures of the spam kings house. We as Americans have a right not to have the government spy on us (that is why the CIA works outside US only). People can spy on each other and it is a civil matter but the government is NOT to do it.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[sirket]

Isn't it "Give me liberty of give me death?"

-sirket

Re:And round we go, again

[duffbeer703]

The AC just gave you a quote written thousands of years ago the says the same thing as you did. He wasn't pushing religion at you.

The point is that the condition or conflict that you describe and despise exists now, existed then and probaly will continue to exist forever.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[sirket]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

-sirket

No problem Sir!

[jhines]

We store our logs on /dev/null, about 2Gb per day. You interested in how many days worth?

Re:Just a thought..

[GMFTatsujin]

If *you're* a US citizen, I suggest you take a high school civics course.

Yes, freedoms are granted by the government. Your own argument confirms it - the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are there specifically to give them to the citizenry. The Constitution describes the structure of the government and the abilities of each branch. The Bill of Rights grants citizens rights under the law. Surprise. surprise.

Unless you're talking about that whole "inalienable human rights" thing, but that's philosophy, not politics. Even then, the closest that the Constitution comes to expressing that notion is Amendment 10. But it is still granted by the document -- it *has* to be. You can't just assume you have a right to something and expect to be able to back it up without legal documentation.

And they *can* be taken away by the government. That's why the Bill of Rights is composed of amendments, not articles. It would be political suicide (one hopes) to try to amend the Bill of Rights down to, say, a more managable 4, but it can legally be done. This is because, even up to the signing, the framers of the Constitution weren't *really* sure that the rights they had in mind were universally beneficial, or best codified in the language they'd chosen.

I'm with you on the chilling effects argument.

Re:Just a thought..

[dinivin]

One of our fundamental principles has always been that you are free to think and read anything you wish

And how has that changed with this subpoena? You can still think and read anything you wish.

Dinivin

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[GMFTatsujin]

Actually, I value chocotacos.

Columbus wasn't a true American, dumbass. Nor was he seeking freedom, except perhaps the freedom to quickly sail to Asia and make lots of money on a new trade route.

America was settled by slave owners who wanted to be free. - George Carlin

Re:And round we go, again

[schon]

good/evil: they are NOT opposite sides of the same coin

Why not?

For any example of "evil", there is pretty much an example of "good" - it simply depends on how you look at it.

Take the American Revolution. Ask any American if the participants were good or evil, and they'll say "good, of course!"

However, from the perspective of the British, the revolutionaries were treasonous scum.

(Note, I'm not taking sides here, just presenting both.)

Or take the American Civil War - good or evil? Even when you look at one tiny part of it (the welfare of the slaves themselves) it's not so clear cut: many slaves were conscripted by the south, and forced to die in a war for the side that wanted them to remain slaves.

Good and evil pretty much depends on your perspective. It's possible to see anything as "good" or "evil" if you narrow your view enough.

Re:Just a thought..

[dinivin]

PEOPLE are NOT agents of the government and are therefore NOT REQUIRED TO TRACK OTHER PEOPLE.

No one, including the author of the subpoena, said that people are required to track other people, now have they?

Dinivin

Reminds of an old saying

[tkrotchko]

Wrapping yourself in the flag or in the name of "protecting children" is the lowest form of justification I can think of.

Its more likely this is about DMCA violations than it is terrorism.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

9/11 was the direct result of a failure by the FBI use properly use the information they already had.

Not it wasn't. 9/11 was a direct result of US foreign policy, most of which the US population is completely obvious to. They don't teach it in school, and there aren't any movies about it, so you can all be forgiven for this lack of knowledge. More so now that Bush has flat out lied to you and said the old classic "they hate freedom and democracy".

The USA (amoung other countries) has started, aided and funded coups and wars that resulted in democratically elected governments being replaced with ruthless dictators. Who do you think got Saddam into power? Then sold him masses of tanks and the equipment to build weapons of mass distruction (the idea being he'd be attacking the Iranians)? Who is aiding Israel in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinions from their own homes? Who put the vicious Saudi government in power, and is defending them right now with your tanks, troops and finances? This is what the terrorists don't like, and they have said this many times.

If you want to stop terrorists attacking you, first learn what is being done in your name around the world, then let your politicions know that you aren't happy with them killing children to secure better access to oil, for the benefit of their corporate "sponsors". It's a much cleaner solution that asking for log file retention.

Since they are not the accused. . .

[kfg]

and the data is only required to prosecute some other case this is not strictly legal. The hard disk contains records, such as private email, that the government is not legally entitled to.

This protects *you.* For instance, the government can't use one case to supoena *all* the phone company's records and then go digging through them to find something "interesting."

KFG

Re:Try 7 years, not 72 hours.

[HiThere]

7 Years? If they put that in the requirement, then NONE of the logs will contain anything worthwhile. Think of the storage costs! Everyone will trim the logs to uselessness. Not just the libertarians, EVERYONE.

Logs aren't as simple as bank statements. Bank statements are small. Bank statements are infrequent.

Perhaps after holographic memories become cheap it will be feasible to keep logs for extended periods of time. Possibly.

If they were available...

[jea6]

Two thoughts, semi-related...
1) if I have a client request a restore of backed-up data, I bill them T&M for the procedure (especially if tapes have to be retrieved from off-site storage). Does the government ever pay for such a service?

2) If I'm subpoenaed, to what effort do I have to go to make the data usable to the prosecutor? Can I hand over a DLT? Can I print out the log files and hand over multiple reams of paper? Can I provide them the data on media without an obligation to provide them hardware to read that media (say, a really old syquest)?

This subpoena says "bring with him/her all logs recording the I.P. addresses and/or users who visited" but makes no mention of an obligation to provide them in the format most usable to the AG.

And a third thought, I'm curious as to how a Facsimile was delivered to a voice number :-)

Re:If they were available...

[nolife]

IANAL, but I currently work for some..
I've seen Outlook PST files that were over 1GB get sent offsite to be printed for submital in court cases. The result is about 25 cases of paper. I have no idea how they actually review all that information but I'm sure someone attempts it.

Re:Just a thought..

[rossz]

You couldn't be more wrong. As stated by our Founding Fathers, The Constitution is meant to be a chain around the government. The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights being granted, it is a clarification of rights we are born with. The Bill of Rights is saying, "these are rights the government CAN NOT FUCK WITH".

This is one of the fundamental differences between the US and other countries such as the UK. In the UK, you only have rights the government wishes to give you, and those rights can be taken away any time they wish.

I recommend you take a basic civics course that requires you to read related documents such as The Federalist Papers and other original writings by the creators of the Constitution.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Ageless]

That's the one. Thank you :)

I'd just note that. . .

[kfg]

in *America* freedoms are not granted by the government. Freedoms are *retained by the people* and need not even be enumerated to exist.

On the other hand *power* ( not freedom, an important distinction) of the government is restricted.

The government and *the people* operate under distinctly different sets of rules, and for good reason.

KFG

Re:Try 7 years, not 72 hours.

[ostiguy]

The SEC requires logging near that. All email and im traffic have to be logged for 2+ years, IIRC.

ostiguy

Re:Just a thought..

[betaray]

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Here's something you probably haven't read: The Preamble to the Bill of Rights.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

The framers of the constitution originally didn't believe it necessary to define these rights because they had established such a limited government. However, some of the states wanted some basic rights to be enumerated.

The preamble doesn't say that these amendments are granting additional rights, in fact that's contrary to the entire idea of the Constitution. The Constitution is a list of the powers of the government and the restrictions placed on it.

I'd also direct your attention to Amendment IX: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Once again this shows that rights aren't granted by the Government. By default you have your rights, and the Constitution just enumerates a few.

Now your right, the Government can take suppress your rights through legislation and force, but that doesn't mean that you don't have those rights.

I mean seriously, do you think that slaves didn't have the right to free speech just because the government suppressed it? Do you think they magically became humans after the Emancipation Proclamation?

Re:Just a thought..

[Deagol]

The difference with licenses, medical records, etc. is that people are forced to provide such information. Put another way, the respective institutions either log this info against our will, or they extort us to provide it.

Invariable, some schmuck will say, "Well, driving is a privilege, not a right. If you don't like the DMV knowing (and possibly publishing) your current address, then don't drive." While I'm sure that millions of americans don't own a car and do fine, the vast size of this country pretty much demands that most people have some kind of motorized transport to earn the money for bare essentials.

I doubt these same schmucks would say, "Medical care isn't a necessity, either. If you don't want a clinic to keep detailed, intimate records of your health problems (and possibly sell/publish them), don't visit a doctor."

The "don't drive" argument doesn't work for me. I think that absolutely all information about individuals should default to be off-limits, whether it's the DMV, the after-hours health clinic, or the telephone company.

However, the instutions that take our money, either voluntarily (businesses) or at gunpoint (taxes, licenses, etc.) must be accountable, and I believe that such high visibility provides that accountability, to some degree.

Re:OT: story above this one

[josephgrossberg]

How about ...

Ads for Nerds. Stuff that matters.

Please note the wording

[kfg]

It says "Please."It *does not* say "It is illegal".

The construction of legal documents is done very, very carefully. Every comma may have critical meaning. If they had *meant* illegal that's what they would have said. They said "please."

In other words, they are operating under the principle that most people will simply comply with a request on a legal document under the *assumption* that said request is legally binding.

By the way, cops do this sort of crap all the time, implying that people must behave in a certain manner and getting them to voluntarily revoke rights, when no such behaviour is required.

KFG

Re:Just a thought..

[Featureless]

Sue your teachers.

There is, at its heart, no difference between philosophy and politics.

A government which infringes on basic human rights loses its legitimacy. Ergo the founding of our republic. Need I refer you to the source material?

You are saying that there is no arguing with whatever is written in whatever document is held to be the law of the land. However, our history tells us otherwise. Common sense, and a shared sense of basic principles overrides any governmental decree.

You may claim this means moral relativism, or leads to anarchy, but yet I am right, and it has not. Rather, it led to the founding of our country. The principles and mechanisms by which such basic priority operates are fluid and unreliable, but the world is not a CPU.

I'll repeat what Malor said, because it's absolutely correct, and understanding its meaning in the very core of your being is essential to your dignity as a human being. "[basic] freedoms ARE NOT GRANTED BY THE GOVERNMENT."

I'll reiterate my earlier point, because I can already hear the pedants clawing at their cages. This does not mean moral relativism. Just merely that we are never "bound" in any legal sense by a "government" which infringes on basic human rights which have been held, across most of earth's cultures, to be fundamental and universal. If you want to pretend there is no agreement on what a human right is, don't waste our time, or pretend it matters that there is no absolute agreement. Take a look at, for instance, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights if you're confused.

Actually, No

[pythorlh]

The subpeona specifically states "between 11/7/02 00:00:00 GMT and 11/14/02 23:59:59 GMT." Therefore, as logs are deleted daily, and the subpeona is dated 1/16/03, they have literally nothing to submit. The bottom of the page shows croyptome.org's official response, which was basically, we ain't got none.

Re:Just a thought..

[Borealis]

I could be mistaken, but I think there is a common feeling that web logs are a sort of "inadvertent" tracking of people. Nobody I've ever met feels comfy with the idea that anybody can know everything they do.

People keep weblogs for a good reason, but that reason isn't to tattle on visitors. That weblogs can be used for that purpose is repugnant to many that keep such logs. This would then be perceived to be a corruption, by the government, of something that otherwise is relatively harmless.

Of course, in tune with your comment, there isn't currently (in the united states) any requirement that people maintain logs. However, those that do must legally provide them, should they be subpoena'd. That this is so is probably the point of contention, as it could be perceived as government snooping, especially since a site like cryptome is bound to have a wee bit of traffic that disagrees with the current administration's invasive tactics.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[watchful.babbler]

No. It isn't.

You are not compelled by statute to maintain access logs. If your policy is to delete logs, then you're free to delete them. Only when you don't have a disposal policy and you delete the logs in response to a potential law enforcement investigation is there a problem.

What the AG wants access logs of...

[dietlein]

This is what the AG is requesting access logs of, from 11/7/02 to 11/14/02.

Re:And round we go, again

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

seeing as how your mind's made up

So his mind is like the bible then?

Ack... Was I trolled? Can someone help get this fishhook out of my lip?

Peace. :)

A rare "explanation."

[Anand_S]

This is the first time I've ever taken the time to explain one of my posts. I don't intend on doing this regularly.

My posts are almost always meant to be light-hearted in nature. Not withstanding the colloquial or jargonistic meanings of the word "subpoena," a subpoena is a writ to testify in a proceding. As any copy editor will tell you, the headline is the most important part of a story, and in this instance, I was poking fun at the poorly-written headline -- "Cryptome Log Subpoenaed."

Perhaps my post deserved to be "modded" down as it was a few times, but that's not relevant. It was clearly meant to be entertaining to to those who are amused by that sort of thing. If you choose to take it seriously, that's your call.

Re:Just a thought..

[ninewands]

Quoth the poster:

Yes, freedoms are granted by the government. Your own argument confirms it - the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are there specifically to give them to the citizenry. The Constitution describes the structure of the government and the abilities of each branch. The Bill of Rights grants citizens rights under the law.

Well, approximately 200 years of constitutional jurisprudence and the 10th Amendment disagree with your position, so I guess it's *you* who need to go back to your high school civics class.

The Bill of Rights grants nothing to the People that they did not already have under "natural law" which was the leading theory in legal philosophy at the time. Does the phrase "government of the people, by the people and for the people" mean anything to you? How about "government by the consent of the governed"?

When it was written the framers of the The Bill of Rights couched it ENTIRELY in "reservation of rights" language with the intention of making it crystal clear that these rights were fundamental and that the federal government is prohibited from infringing them. This position is made even more clear by the 10th Amendment which explicitly reserves all rights and powers not expressly granted to the federal government to the States and to the People.

The intention of the framers of the US Constitution was to create a limited government that had only those powers necessary to fulfill its unique functions as a national government and "granting rights" to the people is NOT one of those functions.

If you read the history of the framing of the Bill of Rights, you will discover that there was MAJOR disagreement whether it was even necessary given the fact that the Constitution granted such limited powers to the federal government. However, after a number of the larger states, including Virginia and Massachussetts, made it clear that they would NOT ratify any Constitution that LACKED a Bill of Rights, the delegates to the convention agreed that something akin to the English Declaration of the Rights of Man would not hurt anything (more on this to follow, below).

The difference between the Bill of Rights (which RESERVES rights safe from government interference) and the English Declaration (which does, indeed, grant rights) is that in the US all political power arises from the People, while in England (at least in theory) all power flows from the Crown. This fact lead to the arrogant conduct of George III which led, in turn, to the revolution, and the colonists, having recently wrested liberty from the Crown by force of arms, were not kindly disposed to giving it back to another central government founded on the same principles, ergo a written Constitution was necessary to delineate the limits of government power.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Other than the one/won thing, I couldn't have said it better myself.

And you've got one of my favorite sigs, too. That's it, I'm adding you to my friends list. :-)

Seriously, you're right. This is one of those "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" situations. I don't want to give them that first inch...

Clues

[Euphonious Coward]

1. Verio is happy to hand over all the Cryptome traffic to the feds in realtime, and probably does it already. MA should subpoena the feds' logs.

2. What is Cryptome doing on Verio anyway? It's a filthy spammer host.

Re:Clues

[Royster]

2. What is Cryptome doing on Verio anyway? It's a filthy spammer host.

The same thing that any client is doing on Verio -- not getting thrown off.

John hosts a lot of data which is unpopular to lot of people. An ISP which was any less reluctant to dispose of a paying customer would have tossed John some time ago.

Re:virtual private server?

[endoboy]

It means: don't try to followup with a subpoena for my harddrive (in case you want to try to un-delete the logs), cause I don't have it, and don't even know where it is....

Re:And round we go, again

[jgerman]

are you trying to tell me that you could not judge a barrel of apples without at least a single rotten one in it? "I don't know if these apples are good or not; there's nothing to compare them to!"

Insightful no, wrong yes. Worng argument, poor logic and bad analogy, no to mention missing the point. If there were no such thing as a rotten apple, you wouldn't be able to judge a barrel of apples as good, there would be no such thing, there would only be apples. The existence of rotten apples defines what a good apple is.

Yes they are two sides of the same coin. It does not follow, as the original poster implies, that there must be balance** (in the sense that the sides are equal). In the apple example only one rotten apple, or at tleast the concept of rotten apple is required to exist in order to validate the concept of a good apple.

The upshot is good DOES NOT exist without evil.

** You can define balance however in other ways, so I should probably leave that bit alone.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Sacarino]

"Opening Ourselves" to a terrorist attack? You know, 2 short years ago, we considered that "Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness".. Now, we have to worry that if we don't let them monitor us with cameras at traffic lights, body cavity searches at the airport, and logs of all our web surfing, we might let a terrorist get us.

Minor correction... your comment should have said "Now, we have to worry that if we don't let them monitor us with cameras at traffic lights, body cavity searches at the airport, and logs of all our web surfing, we might be accused of being a terrorist. "

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Sacarino]

heh.

Who attributed it to ol' Benny?

Last I checked, Patrick Henry said the "Liberty or Death" line.

Re:Just a thought..

[Fulcrum of Evil]

No, information wants to be anthropomorphized.

All that phrase means is that, once disseminated, it's very hard to bottle it back up.

Not really deleted

[harlows_monkeys]

It will be interesting to see just how much the AG wants those logs. It is very hard to really delete things. See
this paper to find out just how hard it it.

Re:Not really deleted

[rela]

I was hoping someone would bring this up... An AG can legally steall the hard drives and find someone with the technology and a desire for cash to pay to extract it...

I say legally steal because we all know the hard drives would never be returned...

Re:Not really deleted

[krinsh]

I would give him credit given the nature of his site that when he says deleted, he means deleted, as in the logfile location is wiped with something like the tool I remember Norton providing a couple years ago that overwrote the deleted/empty areas of the drive with strings of zeros 99 times over or something similar so that nothing could ever be retrieved from them. Out on a limb here, but he probably takes this and other similar actions (like the uber-electromagnet doorway in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon) to protect the site's overall integrity.

Cryptome logs

[ssimpson]

John Young has posted quite a lot of information about his log policy before....It's pretty widely known that he deletes them very regularly to prevent this kind of thing.

People have asked why logs aren't just sent to /dev/null - that's because John does scan the logs for "interesting" visitors - see e.g. his previous stories about catching various US departments and agencies (FBI, Whitehouse) looking at his site.

The site is currently down I wonder if it has been slashdotted, or.......

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Jeez, 2 posters that I actually agree with in 1 thread. I think I need to go lie down. :-)

Unfortunately, the government here will under no circumstances take responsibility for the present situation. Right after the attack I was scoffed at for suggesting that this just might have been our fault, and that chasing terrorists was just treating the syptoms and not the cause. In all the media hoopla since then, not ONCE have I see US foriegn policies questioned. Not once.

If you stick your nose in other people's business long enough, it will get bloodied. Ours got broken, but we still haven't learned our lesson...

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[salesgeek]

BTW 9/11 was not the result of a lack of information problem. They had all the information they needed to stop it.

This is way off topic... but I'll bite:

9/11 was the result of an act of cowardice by religous kooks bent on trying to impose thier faith on the rest of the world. Fortunately, they will not get to fly an airplane again.

$G

I'm no lawyer, but...

[shutton]

...when I used to deal with this stuff (and I was usually on the "serving" end of the subpoena), entities in other states were under no obligation to honor a subpoena from our state. Only subpoenas issued from federal courts are valid across state boundaries.

This subpoena was issued from Massachusetts for an agency in New York. Not far, but far enough.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Dyolf Knip]

But that would be like pinning an obstruction charge on a janitor for sweeping the hallways like she does every night because this timesome evidence was swept up

You say that as if you thought a bored AG would actually be above such behavior. Such naivete.

Re:Just a thought..

[geekoid]

what does that have to do with a subpeana?
ther is nothing wrong with what they did in the line of an investigation. the fact the needed a subpeana means that checks and balances are in place.

Tracking in and of itself is not a problem. the problem is how the government handles that data.
I got bad news for you, the Government will do this, you should be working to ensure proper controlls are put into place so the governmant can't abuse it.

Re:Just a thought..

[Kombat]

"logging an IP" is the same as "the government coming to get you?"

THAT is a ridiculous comparison. Logging an IP is a harmless, passive audit activity. Being arrested is ... forget it, I can't believe I even wasted this much thought on your absurd comment.

Do some research

[Kombat]

Even though the issue is clearly about an imposter who was fraudulently posing as an ISC^2 representive, trying to extort money from unsuspecting netizens?

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[theLOUDroom]

Columbus wasn't a true American, dumbass. Nor was he seeking freedom, except perhaps the freedom to quickly sail to Asia and make lots of money on a new trade route.

Way to not get the point.
The point is, this country is the direct result of people being willing to put themselves in harms way.

Yeah, Columbus did some lousy things, but that's not the point. The point is he had the guts to cross the Atlantic, dumbass.

Re:Just a thought..

[MrResistor]

Just a fr'instance.. what if some of the info in one of the "eyeballing" pieces was obviously leaked by a defense worker on the inside, in violation of federal law? Wouldnt you _want_ that person removed from the position of spewing information that really doesnt BELONG in the public domain?

What a ridiculous arguement. ALL information belongs in the public domain and is only 'leased' temporarily under copyright. If you believe otherwise you need to actually READ some copyright law and not just take Hillary Rosen's corruption of it at face value.

Information which is clasified under "National Security" is basically the same thing, but with different reasons. However, the governemnt is an agent of the people, and anyhting which 'belongs' to the government in reality belongs to the people INCLUDING ALL OF THE GOVERNMNENTS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION! One should always be extremely suspicious of anyone who tries to hide your own property from you. All too often classified information NEEDS to be brought into the public domain precisely because someone in the government doesn't want it to be.

A lot of the people here who are complaining about this are probably the same people who defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam King's house. You cannot have it both ways.

Absolutely I defend the guy who took pictures of the Spam Kings house. He did absolutely nothing wrong.

As for having it both ways; I really don't think it's OK to punch people in the face, but if you punch me in the face, your god damned right I'm going to punch you back, and no I don't think that makes me a hypocrite.

You cant have the freedoms granted by the government (laughable as they may be at times) without also following whatever rules make those freedoms a reality.

You have the relationship completely backwards. People have rights inherently, they are not granted by the government. The government has NO rights inherently, and is granted rights by the people that submit to its rule, namely the right to abridge CERTAIN of the peoples INHERENT rights in the interest of the common good.

Re:Just a thought..

[bigpat]

Thank you.

This point should be repeated until there is no doubt, The Bill of Rights in the constitution was not a granting of rights, but rather a recocgition of them. Dumb Socialist teachers seemed to have brainwashed generations of children to believe that the Bill or Rights is a list of rights that the government is to protect. This is not correct. The Bill of Rights is a statement of rights held by people that the governments of the United States may not interfere with.

To anyone who thinks this is an unimportant distinction, well before I suggest you move to China, I suggest you read the so called "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" here and marvel at its impotence. This is because it has an inherent flaw. It dictates the actions of others and not itself. The US constitution recocgnizes that the greatest power one has is over one's own actions and doesn't try to dictate things that it has no power to control, but rather constrains the scope of its own authority.

The US government cannot for instance force me to let you in to my home to talk to me just because you have a right to speech. I would burn down my home first. But the government can pledge to respect your right and not keep you from public places so you can say what you wish.

Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, for the rest is not his.

That is what is so powerful about the Bill of Rights and so weak about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Bill of Rights says "Congress shall make no law ..." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that it is a "common standard of achievement" for others to try to achieve and goes on to list many rights without saying what the governments of the world are to do or more importantly, what they are not to do.

So when people tell you that the Bill of Rights is a list of people's rights that are protected, ask them, from whom or from what are we being protected.

Followed by (further prediction)

[phorm]

An large upsurge in purchases for large-capacity drives and backup devices, follwed by an even larger government tax on said devices.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

Getting off topic here; my original post was to point out the fact that we are attacking the symptoms of a larger problem. Oh well, in for a penny...

9/11 was a direct result of religious whackos hi-jacking planes on suicide missions. Blaming the US is like blaming rape victims for wearing short skirts

Excuse me? Haven't you asked yourself by these terrorists hate America pretty much exclusively? Not Canada, Austrailia, pretty much all of Europe, who all have similar ideals and economic and political to the USA. Why is that? It certainally doesn't tie in with the "freedom and democracy hating" nonsence we are being fed.

All the US wants is for other countries to be free so they'd buy more goods and services

Bin Laden has gone on record stating that his aim is to remove the US troops from Saudi Arabia. The troops there are backing up a dictatorship government, hated by most of the people. Where does this fit in with your "US wants other countries to be free"? Why have they done the opposite in more places than they have created freedom? I understand that you may actually believe that, given that you probably haven't read much history. You really should try to get out of that self-delusional world though. We aren't the good guys are represented in the movies. Sure, if you spend your whole life watching them, growing up with images of our troops liberating people and Bruce Willis saving the world, but the historical facts do not match that image. Remember, the Nazi's used films of the same type with the same purpose.

As for the terrorists, they have no other recourse, if they complain about their country they disappear, get tortured then are never seen again. They want the freedom we take for granted. Unfortunatly, they have gone down the route of terrorism to attempt to achieve that goal.

The Saudi dictatorship was put in place by a military coup supported by the USA. The democratic government was ousted to make way for one that was more willing to work with the US. Note that the Saudi women are treated exactly the same as the Taliban treated them, yet you don't see a call for a war in Saudi Arabia. However, Afganistan is now being controlled by people who used to work with George Bush in a private company, but yeah!, we went there to free the women, right!?! The recent Afgan war was to remove the Taliban because they weren't giving the US concessions on anything, such as the construction of a pipeline to a neighbouring country with vast oil reserves. The Taliban were friendly with the US for a very long time, the top officials were over in Texas and Washington on many occassions. It is only when the contract to build this pipeline went to Argentina instead, that the Taliban suddenly became "evil" in the public eye. The war in Afganistan had been hinted at prior to 9/11, and using that tragedy as propaganda to have this war is downright disgraceful and an insult to the thousands of innocents who lost their lives that day.

Other examples of immoral acts...how about creating Saddam Hussain? Again, a perfectly valid government was dispossed with US assistance to put him in power. The idea was that he would fight Iran, who were not very friendly to the US. He was supplied with weapons, vast amounts of credit and the equipment to make weapons of mass destruction. Again, the idea was that he would attack Iran. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, they asked the US Ambasidor what their opinion was on the matter, to which they were told that "the US has no opinion on that".

I suggest you learn some world history before engaging in these discussions. History is not what happens in movies, nor is the education received in school of much use. You ain't gonna get this stuff from your leaders either, and more worryingly, the media seem to be "ignoring" it.

This is what pisses me off most about the west, but more so the USA. We claim to be bastions of "freedom", "truth", "democracy", but we live in a place where the goverment can look at your web/e-mail usage (remember Nixon? How could you forget that lesson so soon?), politicions openly lie about the causes of these terrorists (so much for "truth") and where the leadership of a country is controlled by how good their advertising campaign was, funded by private individuals who's interests become a part of national policy.

I put it to you that west as we see it is merely an illusion. We are just as regressive as many of these "evil" countries, and the population is led around using hate and fear. Go watch Bowling for Columbine, although it does focus on the issue of firearms, it makes good points on the use of "fear" in the US (the UK is pretty much the same) as well as some US indiscressions that our leaders would rather you didn't know about.

I'm glad that there are people out there with the same thoughts as me, e.g. Michael Moore, the creator of the above film. The one great thing about our society is that myself and others have the freedom to discuss these issues, without fear of reprisal. Well, guess what...with all this new net monitoring trends, that freedom will soon be gone. Right now, this post will probably be getting modded as "interesting" by these spy systems. And I'll bet that in a few years, people will be afraid to speak their minds on these sort of subjects as it will become a permanent entry on their file, which will give them all sorts of problems getting visa as they may have "terrorist tendancies". Sounds a lot like the Soviet Russia system we were brought up to hate.

So, if you want to shoot me down and stick your head in the sand on this stuff, fine. Don't expect me to be happy about your apathy, and don't come asking for help when pretty much all the freedoms you used to enjoy are gone or you have lost a family member with all the violence going on.

Re:Ridiculous

[Happy Monkey]

I hate to respond to any article involving Soviet Russia, but I feel I must. Russians refer to the home country as the Rodinia, or Motherland. The Nazis, wanting to sound superior to their advesary, called their homeland the "Fatherland".

And the US, feeling that "Parentland" was too unweildy, but still wanting to be politically correct...

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

I understand that some US foreign policy is bad and need to be fixed, but that's not an excuse to go around killing a bunch of innocent people

I had to laugh at that one! Part of the problem is that much of these policys have resulted in the deaths of innocent people. Amesty International reckons that our meddling in Iraq has killed over a million people, of which 600,000 were children. You can't get more innocent than that! It's these policies that I am angry with. We are also prepared to "look the other way" if it is beneficial to us, so we ignore Saudi Arabias treatment of women, and make a big deal about the same thing in Afganistan. Even if you exclude Iraq (their leader isn't exactly innocent), the numbers of innocent US civilions killed is tiny compared to the number we've killed from other places.

(note: I myself are not from the USA, I am from the UK, but my country isn't all that different to yours, so I share most of the shame of what the west has done to the world)

We wage war and fund terrorists to achieve our own goals. I wouldn't say that it's "bad and needs to be fixed", it's downright disgraceful and we are about to do it in Iraq again! How many next-generation terrorists is that going to create? For what? Removing WMD? What a load of bullshit, we gave them the weapons and did likewise with many other countries. It doesn't take a genious to see the real goal there, and we are being manipulated into being behind this war. It's digusting!

you have to recognize that there are always going to be a few crazies out there.

Absolutly! There will always be the nutter out there that will grab a gun and go on the rampage, or set a few car bombs and kill a few hundred people. However "a few crazies" cannot plan, arrange and coordinate a tradedy like 9/11. And that's my point! Don't go around making enemies. They will stike back. It's like the school yard bully, going around beating the smaller kids into submission. Sooner or later one will hit back, and that strike could cause lasting damage. Or worse, the smaller kids organise and get together. Global terrorist network? Sound familiar?

Even if the US was to suddenly adopt perfect foreign policies, that every country in the world agrees with, and magically right our past wrongs, there would still be people out there who want to kill others.

Sure, but they won't have the funding and resources available to them just now and as such, they will be less effective and historically, most crazy people kill their own kind, not go over to other countries to do it. US citizens would have nothing to fear in a world like that.

We shouldn't decide our foreign policy based on what is going to result in the least terrorism.

Agreed. It should be done based on what is morally correct, not what gives us either more money or more oil.

We should decide our foreign policy is such a way that we don't turn normal people into terrorists.

Again, agreed. Not overthrowing govenments and arming anyone with a checkbook would be a good start.

The first is bad (you let anyone willing to kill enough civilians have control over US foreign policy).

Absolutely, giving in to terrorists goals is the worst thing you can possibly do, as you'll just set yourself up for more of the same. I have always said that terrorism is counter-productive. Look at most of the small-guy standing up to the big-guy incidents over the years that actually produced any benefit. Martin Luther King. Gandi. Tianamin Square. They all acheived their goals/made their point through non-violent means. If you attack your opponents, they will attack back and nine times out of ten, you will be squashed.

Finally, a country's bad foreign policy does not justify that mass murder of civilians within that country, both in Palestine and in the US, asshole.

Hmm, I thought we were having an adult discussion, so I'll let the personal insult slide. I'm fully in agreement with you, on most of your points though. Murder or mass murder has no excuse. Ever.

What do you mean by mentioning Palestine? Are you refering to the plight of the Palestinion people, or the terrorist activity from them against the Israelis? In essence, it's the same problem as the west are having, one country goes as seriously messes up another, then the smaller battered country strikes back the only way they can. I'm interested in which side you take on this matter though...

Civics.

[Grendel Drago]

The US Government does NOT grant freedoms. The people have them by RIGHT. The people have granted (albeit altered by judicial fiat) the *government* limited, enumerated powers. That is all.

It's kind of creepy how no one seems to remember that part of the Declaration of Independence. Parts chopped off to make my point absolutely clear...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [...] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [...] That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

It's all there, in black and white, two hundred and twenty five years old.

--grendel drago

Back that up.

[Grendel Drago]

In the only case where the 4'th amendment came to trial, it was ruled on a technicality that the bureaucrat can make that decision since "no reasonable person" would be aware of the 4'th amendment. (This decision is from the NY State Supreme Court in the 80's.)

That's an amazing claim. Care to back it up with a reference of some sort?

--grendel drago

Eh, no

[Featureless]

So they connect, but are very hardly the same thing.

A childish "counterargument" in a continuing attempt to reject the concept of "inalieable rights" introduced at the founding of our country as "philosophical" and therefore unrelated to "politics" and, we suppsose, government.

Shall we split the hair of "at its heart"?

That alone makes you so clearly not worth answering that I should stop now. Grimly, though, let's see this through to the end anyway.

A government which is unable to compell the cooperation of the people loses its legitimacy.

You need an english class, too. Unless you are intentionally confusing legitimacy with stability to try to make your argument sound less stupid, which I suspect is the case.

Our world's history demonstrates clearly that a shared sense of basic principles is often less important than a mob.

Right, so you're implying a connection between the founding fathers and the KKK. Do you take it to the conclusion you wish you could? No. Because I shut out the pedant's argument of moral relativism at the outset, and you know it.

Tyrants call any three reformers a mob. Their shills equate any questioning of authority with criminality. And you, whatever your motivation, just couldn't resist falling in that line (as I knew you would) - trying to suggest that there is no room between absolute adherence to authority and your straw man of the moment, racist lynch mobs.

Everything else you say is basically attempting to change the subject. Some of it (discussing the erosion of basic rights, and our need to defend them) is even correct. You also spout some inflammatory and deceptive drivel with no relation to anything we've said: "Carry on as you were. Remain convinced of your own innate superiority and posture away. I don't see any reason to continue to bother with you." Pure infantility. You're just pissing into your keyboard.

None of this does anything to defend your (worthless) earlier assertions: "Yes, freedoms are granted by the government." "You can't just assume you have a right to something and expect to be able to back it up without legal documentation." "And they *can* be taken away by the government." This is bullshit. Amusingly, it makes you a Loyalist, and much worse today.

You have ignored the constantly repeated and headline themes of the founding of our nation, backed up in reams of documentary evidence, not least the Declaration of Independence (already cited) and the U.S. Constitution - that the rights we gave ourselves are not political inventions sprining from the caprices of the moment, but truly inalieable human rights, derived from "natural law," granted by our creator (whether diety or chance), and we have merely made our government a democracy that works (as much as possible) in harmony with these ideas... because it's a good idea to do that.

You will notice I anticipated your quibbling about the UDHR, from what I wrote immediately before I cited it: "If you want to pretend there is no agreement on what a human right is, don't waste our time, or pretend it matters that there is no absolute agreement." Go ahead, keep quibbling. Try to suggest that I meant the UDHR as authoritative, or that it matters that there is no authoritative text.

Let me guess. I suppose you will only try to suggest again that there is no room between recognition of basic human rights and anarchy, but since we actually occupy a living proof you're wrong, I don't expect this to get far. Honest men can debate how long a copyright lasts or how to punish a murderer or whether or not abortion is legal, and there, as in a myriad of different ways, the government serves as yet another iteration in our attempt to crystalize a better way to organize ourselves and live, as people. It is essential to have it, to make rules well, and to follow them. But there are lines a government cannot cross without losing its legitimacy. Period. If you believed otherwise, you would have to, if you were a person of principle, abdicate your U.S. citizenship and swim back to England.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with a lot of what you say. After the bombing on Bali I think you have to agree Australia's been targeted as well. About the war in Afghanistan, do you not believe the Taliban and Bin Laden were involved at all in the 9/11 attack? If you do then how was the war a propaganda war? In the videos Osama himself pretty much admits he was behind it, and since the Talibs were in charge in Afghanistan it seems to make sense to target them.
I don't hold the US to be an almighty saintly power but I think they get too much flack from the rest of the world. Money rules the US and that's why they get involved; at least since the fall of communism before that is another story. Bin Laden and his ilk are motivated by religious beliefs, they want US out of Saudi Arabia because that's where Mecca and Medina etc. are. US stays because of oil, plain and simple. US went in to Iraq in the 90s to protect Kuwaiti oil fields, they backed war in the Balkans because it made financial sense to have a more stable Europe. If oil was discovered in Zimbabwe or Cuba, Mugabe and Castro respectively would be goners in 2 weeks flat.
US dishes out more cash to needy nations in charity than all other countries combined, accepts more immigrants than all of Western Europe, creates more jobs worldwide than any other economy I can think of, yet they're the great Satan. It's an easy target being on top I guess.

Re:Logs subpoenaed? Summons != Subpoena

[warpSpeed]

Fax the log file in? Better tell them to have someone standing by to replace paper and toner every hour for a few weeks.

If they supply an 800 number, I have 24pt font. Lets see that works out to about, hmmm, um about 25000 pages of logs per day. What the fax connection dropped? Damn, This crumby open source FAX software! It has to start all over from the begining. Shucks... Anyway here it comes again.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[theLOUDroom]

Actually I don't take a single side on the Isreal/Palestine issue. I recognize that both sides have perpetrated some pretty despicable things.
My opinion, is that the solution lies in removing Sharon (a war criminal) from power, as well as other extremists on both sides of the line.

Both sides need to stop provoking each other. They need to recognize each other's right to exist and stop killing each other. I don't want one side to "win" I want them both to stand down.

I pretty much agree with you, but not totally, and it really pisses me off when people act like the US deserved 9/11 due to its foreign policy. Maybe you didn't mean to imply this, but speaking as though these terroists are rational people trying to defend their homeland is not proper.

I also think it's not fair to characterize the US as a "school yard bully." The US does do some good things too, try not to forget about that.

Finally, on the issue of Iraq: Saddam has to go. It sounds like you're smart enough not pretend that the US has soldiers running around killing children in Iraq. You sound smart enough to know how and why those kids are really dying (from lack of food and medicine).

It's a shame that Bush is too corrupt to be trusted to do the job and it's a shame that Saddam will use any money he gets to buy weapons instead of feeding people. This only demonstates why Saddam needs to go: Saddam doesn't care about Iraq, he cares about himself. As a result, he can't be trusted, not just by the US, but by the UN or anybody else. Do you remember when Kofi Anan worked out that deal with him to allow inspectors back in? He never kept up his part of the bargain and he never planned to. He would rather kill large numbers of people or just let them die due to diseases and starvation, than loose power. You can't trust someone like that with nuclear weapons.
I think that in some cases, the US is justified in overthrowing foreign governments. What isn't justifyable is who they let gain power when they leave.

Re:Just a thought..

[spikedvodka]

"You cant have the freedoms granted by the government (laughable as they may be at times) without also following whatever rules make those freedoms a reality.

Hrmmm... I thought that the way the US gubbernment ran, it was, "We give them these rights, everything else (freedoms etc) we keep for ourselves"

Remind me of a good joke...
An American, A Soviet Russian, and an Austrian (No kangaroos) were talking at a bar... The Russian says, "Where I come from, we have a good law system, If it isn't allowed, it is forbidden" To which the american Responds, "No no no, That's backwards, where I come from it's much better, If it isn't forbidden, it's allowed" but the Austrian, after putting down his beer, shakes his head, "No, Where I com from it is even better, If it is forbidden, it is allowed"

No, it's not

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The government would like to do that, and have tried to get the ability into law for some time. Such powers as they have come from the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and its brethren. However, in spite of widespread worry when that particular Act was passed, nothing much has come of it, mostly because the ISPs turned around en masse and told the government where to go and just how practical it was(n't) to keep all the records they were supposed to have on the terms they were supposed to have them.

We do have problems with Internet-related law in this country, with ISPs being in danger of having no tenable legal position one way or another, but fortunately, thus far the sort of harm we're talking about here has yet to materialise.

How about legal requirements to *keep* logs?

[xixax]

So how likely is it that there's a law in the works somewhere that *requires* you to keep reasonable logs? Especially with all this terrorism stuff about.

Such a requirement would not be considered onerous, and if the logs were gone, the Feds could haul you in for that.

Xix.

Re:How about legal requirements to *keep* logs?

[devmike]

New Canadian laws for ISPs include keeping all system logs for a period of no less than 120 days for potential review and subpe...subpeon---subpoena...however the hell you spell it.

Damn, this was about to be a serious post.

Our weapons are fear and suprise!

[xixax]

And Xin Sixpack is far less likely to try circumvent the Great Firewall if he knows that typing "Falun Gong" into Google is likely to get him noticed. The effectiveness of your firewall is greatly amplified by fear of the unknown.

China's doing it all wrong - the way to deal with threats to internal security isn't to block citizens' access to information, it's to allow access to information - and log the hell out of it! I mean, knowing that Xin Sixpack typed "Falun Gong" at google.com and got blocked when he tried to visit the front page of some website isn't nearly as useful as letting him go to the site, and then watching every click he makes, to find out what (specifically) he's interested in.

Keep the Secret

[hhawk]

I doubt John is legally bound to keep the subpoena private.

It's also interesting that with the mirrors, and other caches (waybackmachine and google), even if he had kept logs, they might not record the person the MA Att. Gen. is interested in.

All of which raises the issue of how vulerable you are to Subpoenas based on which Cache you use.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[thelexx]

"No, why should I? I don't ask a murdering piece of shit why he is what he is."

Indeed, ignorance is truly bliss isn't it.

"We represent everything they are not. ... Our very existence, our very success is a constant reminder to them that they are failures."

So they're just jealous. Which is the only reason why so many people hate MS for instance, right?

"FYI, if I had moderator points I would have moderated you down as off-topic or a troll. Unfortunately, I could not moderate you down for being a complete fucking idiot."

Hate filled speech from a hate filled person. That's the really sad fact. I can absolutely tell that you aren't just trolling. Not that the individual issues you mention aren't at play on various levels. However they are most certainly not the underlying reason the towers fell. But you don't care about that anyway.

Re:Endless cycle

[Catbeller]

Gee, the good guys are just winning way too often and we have to do something about all this peace and prosperity. We need balance, damnit!

Bush was appointed President. Peace and prosperity has been eliminated. Balance restored, Padawan.

(Couldn't resist)

Re:And round we go, again

[susano_otter]

Yeah, but nobody does evil for evil's sake. They do it because they want some good for themselves. It doesn't matter if they're abosulute or not, for the sake of this argument. Evil is a parasite of good. Nothing can be evil unless there's already a good for it to oppose or pervert.

Amusing church/state issue:

[AMuse]

Snipped from the subpoena: "WITNESS, my hand, at Boston in the County of Suffolk this 31st day of December in the year of our Lord two thousand and two. " (emphasis mine)

Isn't there supposed to be at least the pretense of separation of church and state?

Heh

[Featureless]

A philosophy that is believed by a people with the ability and willingness for self-determination has political force. However a philosophy by itself is not politics, and politics is not fundamentally about philosophy.

Since you haven't answered it, I need merely repeat myself. A childish "counterargument" in a continuing attempt to reject the concept of "inalieable rights" introduced at the founding of our country as "philosophical" and therefore unrelated to "politics" and, we suppsose, government. Shall we split the hair of "at its heart"?

I said legitimacy, and I meant it.

And you were wrong. Still are.

The Nazis were, for instance, legitimate.

And this pretty much sums up how wrong you are.

Where do I imply a connection of any kind between the founding fathers and the KKK?

Oh wait... maybe you'll answer your own question.

The only connection is one of kind

That's it. And why did you make it? I'll repeat myself again. Right, so you're implying a connection between the founding fathers and the KKK. Do you take it to the conclusion you wish you could? No. Because I shut out the pedant's argument of moral relativism at the outset, and you know it...trying to suggest that there is no room between absolute adherence to authority and your straw man of the moment, racist lynch mobs.

Do you need a napkin for the froth at your mouth?

You're not just pissing into your keyboard. I think you're pissing into a cup and drinking it.

But putting words in my mouth that I did not say is of no use.

I can't say I'm surprised you'd stoop to bold-faced lies - even when the evidence making your mendacity obvious is in the preceding text. Come on, don't back away now, stand by your principles.

And you are doing what, exactly?

More lies - but I suppose there's little you wouldn't stoop to, after pronouncing the Nazis a legitimate government.

The person you responded to originally was not me.

I see, you just jumped in for them.

For the rest, you heritage is immaterial - go bait people with it elsewhere.

I also note that you are wrong about the USA being founded as a democracry.

Hmm. The republic/democracy dichotomy. What a totally irrelevant hair to split. Thank you for indicating how desperate you are to justify yourself.

Indians and Black slaves.

The glaring, prima facie stupidity of your "argument" is simply breathtaking. You're trying to score points by brining up slavery and colonialism - when your very argument confers legitimacy on these practices. In fact, by extension, you could be thought to denounce the underground railroad as "illegitimate!"

And then you called it universal.

No, I didn't. Go back and read.

That a right not to be a slave is among them is sheer ignorance of your own history.

Now you're just degenerating into incoherence.

Where did I say anything about anarchy?

Clearly implied - "mob" etc.

When it comes to legitimacy, as explained above legitimacy does not mean that I like them. It means that they are accepted as legitimate.

And that's precisely where you're wrong.

If you want to keep up with the foolish and highly ironic attempts to save face... keep posting, by all means... but come to some other site, just for continued streams of urine interspersed with occasional outbursts of elementary-school legal theory? You're dreaming.

Re:Oops, third amendment

[Featureless]

Subject says it all... not to mention that none of your sources have any such quote. LMAO.

Re:And round we go, again

[susano_otter]

It sounds like you need two things, in order to make "good" and "evil" possible: A standard of "goodness", and the option to not be standards-compliant.

If there's no standard, then all phenomena have equal value (which is equivalent to no value at all). Not that anybody would care, because without a standard we wouldn't know any better.

If there's no choice involved, then again nobody would care--we'd all comply with the standard instinctively, and the idea of deviating from it would never occur to us.

In either instance, the concepts of "good" and "evil" would never occur, since there would be no possibility of comparing the value of two things, and no possibility of choosing the "evil" thing anyway.

Good and evil may be two sides of the same coin, but they're not equally valuable. If "good" is that which is desirable, then "evil" is that which is not desireable. If "evil" had the same value as good, then it would be equally as desireable as good.

This is not, generally speaking, the case. For example, sexual intercourse is "good", but rape is "evil". Is there a valid argument that rape is just another mode of sexual intercourse, no less morally or ethically wrong than consensual intercourse?

Technically, I suppose rape is really (or primarily?) an evil form of exercising power, or displaying dominance, but the example still stands.

Re:Shh!!

[Skavookie]

Don't give them any ideas!

Re:Oops, third amendment

[Featureless]

I was really hoping you were making it up. Still disappointed you've given no primary source material to back it up, but at least you're finally not alone in the claim.

Re:Just a thought..

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Just a quickie, since the Patriot(?) Act (or was it the Homeland Security Act) the CIA now operates in the US.

A matter of perspective actually. The CIA advises domestically, they are still quite limited. Purists would say it is wrong, I would say they are right ;-)

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

Have you been brainwashed?

No, I try to avoid watching TV news, and television in general... ;-)

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

After the bombing on Bali I think you have to agree Australia's been targeted as well.

By who? There are a lot of terrorist groups in the world, each with different motives and enemies. On each and every terrorist incident in the past year the media has always asked "are there any links to Al-Qaeda?". I've yet to see any link in this case, other than the fact that they share the same religion. If that's the case and a "valid link", we could make up all kinds of silly stuff, like George W Bush being linked to Charles Manson!

I remember an accident, a train crash if memory serves, where the second question the reporter asked was "is their any suggestion of terrorist involvement?". The media are looking everywhere for their next story (fear and danger sells and gets the ratings), and these "suggestions" plant ideas and preconceptions in everyone's minds without actually saying anything. Ask anyone in the street and they'd probably believe that there was only one organisation responsible for all the recent terrorist incidents.

About the war in Afghanistan, do you not believe the Taliban and Bin Laden were involved at all in the 9/11 attack?

They may have been, it's pretty likely. But Bush is sounding like a child when he says "because! but I can't tell you why". The facts are that this war was being planned prior to 9/11 and it benefited the oil & weapons industries and more importantly, Halliburton. 9/11 was used to get the public behind the war, but the primary aim was not propaganda, but I'm sure that was a side effect. It also solved the desire for blood and revenge. Have a look at the employment history of the people that the US put in power in Afghanistan. Invasions haven't changed much over the years, dispose of the existing government and install your own. It's just worrying when "your own" refers to big business.

Money rules the US and that's why they get involved; at least since the fall of communism before that is another story

Very insightful, I never picked up on the fact that this is merely a replacement for communism. sed s/communism/terrorism/g would probably make many 60s speeches sound up to date. Western society loves to be scared; it's a strange phenomenon. Remember, news shows are driven by ratings and look at what they are using to drag the consumer in. Make sure you stay tuned, because after the commercials there'll be more blood and guts!

US dishes out more cash to needy nations in charity than all other countries combined

They are loans and they cripple their economies for generations. Take a look at the Third World Dept problem, people are dying while I type because of it. Unfortunately, the people of these countries see little of the original loan, as (like in the west) the corrupt officials seem to have holes in their pockets. My country has done a lot of the same, and I am far from proud of it.

accepts more immigrants than all of Western Europe

I disagree with that. Imigration to the US is a lengthy and difficult process. In Europe, imigration is becoming a big issue, especially from the Eastern European countries. Anyone of certain (persecuted) ethnicities is guaranteed to get in. "Asylum Seekers" is a big news item here in the UK.

I've not seen any figures, but on the face of it, I think Europe gets more.

creates more jobs worldwide than any other economy I can think of

Which can be a good thing, but I've always been the opinion that a foreign company has one interest when working in another, the intention is to remove money from that countries economy. :-) OK, there is more to economics than that, e.g. they might aid the creation of an industry that wouldn't have existed. But ultimately this isn't been done "for the good of the people", it's to make money for themselves. A good thing, but I wouldn't be too proud of it from the "helping them out" point of view, more "total world domination" :-)

It's an easy target being on top I guess.

Very much so, it's always easy to blame the US, it's like the "little peoples" fear of big business. Big is scary.

However, I question the "being on top" part! ;-) In what respect? Seriously...

Many people claim that their country is the best in the world. National pride is all fine and dandy, but its usually self-delusional and backed up with other motives. It also makes it harder to be self-critical, which is an important aspect in a democratic country.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

here's why they hate us: We represent everything they are not. Although we aren't perfect, we strive to grant EVERYONE, including immigrants, equal rights. We don't exclude half the population from full participation in society because of gender.

I'm sorry for you. I would have thought inteligent people (like most on slashdot) would not be believing that.

I don't know where to start picking it apart. OK, firstly, the USA isn't some uber-free super state. If you take a look around the world at the other western nations, you'll see we are all pretty much alike. We don't persecute based on race/religion/gender. Everyone has equal rights. We are prosperous, living comfortable lifes with complete freedom to travel and speak our minds. Again I ask the question; why single out the United States?

People do not plan operations like 9/11 because the are jealous of you! To do something as horrific as that, there has to be real hatred. I used to be like you, I thought they did the whole "freedom and democracy" thing as well. Then, post 9/11 I did ask myself "why?" and I started learning about the history of the Middle East. And you know what, it scared me on two levels. Firstly, I was offended that the west could do such things whilst proclaiming that "we are the good guys". Secondly, that this kind of behaviour is completely unknown by the populations of our countries.

I don't ask a murdering piece of shit why he is what he is.

Fine then, but don't expect me to talk to your leaders, who are also murdering pieces of shit. Remember, your country started this whole mess, by killing their leaders and arming terrorists (sorry, "freedom fighters") to attack them. The death toll caused by the USA in the middle east puts 9/11 in the shade. (Note, I don't believe that it makes it "all right" or justified)

We don't completely ignore science and engineering and concentrate our entire education system on religious studies.

Then why is teaching evolution in schools not allowed? Why do your leaders mention God so often? By the way, the USA is not unique in separating church, state and schooling, but when your ruled by fundamentalist Christians, they're bound to break the rules.

Our very existence, our very success is a constant reminder to them that they are failures.

Ah, so you fell for the "inferiour races" part? You know, what's going on in the USA is very reminicent of the rise of the Nazi's in Germany. They proclaimed that the Jewish people were inferior and jealous of their wealth. They said that the Jewish were a threat to them, and had to be removed for the German peoples safety.

Of course, when the trains came to take them to the death camps, the local population did not know what was going on. As far as they were aware, they were doing "what was good for their country". They presumed that the trains were settling the Jews in another country.

And, that is pretty much what is going on in the USA. The US government has, for the past 20/30 years been messing over the middle eastern states for your own gain. You had no interest in the fates of their peoples when you helped dictators into power. You did not care that the people there were being killed by the thousands. You did not care that they lost the right to free speech and expression.

And when these desparate peoples strike back (much like a cornered animal), then the government of your country lies to you about why they hate you, and continues to persecute them, and aids regimes that do the same. What are the long term goals of this approach? All I can see is that you'll be creating twice as many potential terrorists in the next generation. How would you feel if a foreign power murdered your parents? Would you not try to extract revenge somehow? I think so, going by the "nuke 'em" attitudes after 9/11.

Now that the islamofascists have taken control, they are an intellectual wasteland.

And tonight special star prize question: Which superpower put these psychopathic governments in power? (hint: It's a three-letter acronym)

Unfortunately, I could not moderate you down for being a complete fucking idiot.

I am sorry, but it is clearly you that is the idiot. If you and people like you cannot rise above lies and see what your country is doing to the world, you have no hope. The USA will continue illegally meddling in the political systems of foreign countries, pissing off even more people until terrorists do use a weapon of mass destruction. What is completly tragic is that when that happens, it will work in favour for people like Bush, who will say "I told you so". What's more tragic is that you will believe him.

Finally:

I have a Constitution and a gun, and I'm not afraid to use them

Why would you want to use a gun? Do you like killing? Do you have revenge fanasies? I bet you do, you'd love to put a few rounds of lead in the next arab you see, wouldn't you? People like you don't deserve freedom, all you use it for is to negatively impact other peoples freedom.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

Actually I don't take a single side on the Isreal/Palestine issue. I recognize that both sides have perpetrated some pretty despicable things. My opinion, is that the solution lies in removing Sharon (a war criminal) from power, as well as other extremists on both sides of the line.

Wow! When we first started this discussion, I didn't expect us to agree on much. I couldn't have said it better myself. My only addition is that we should create arms embargos on both sides. Continuing to arm either implies that we are taking sides.

and it really pisses me off when people act like the US deserved 9/11 due to its foreign policy. Maybe you didn't mean to imply this, but speaking as though these terroists are rational people trying to defend their homeland is not proper.

Sure. No one deserves to die, for any reason. I was coming from the standpoint that many people asked "why did they attack us, we have haven't done anything to them!!". This ignorance of our actions frankly pissed me off and has shaken my belief that we live in a free democractic and truthful society. I have lost all respect for a number of news publications for their reporting on the above as well.

It does put us in difficult position though. If the press were to do expose's on why we are hated, the terrorists have essentially won and fufilled their aim. This sets a bad trend, as successful terrorism leads to more successful terrorism. It's pretty much why we are tough in e.g. hostage situations. If you make it easy or successful for them, you'll only encourage others.

The US does do some good things too, try not to forget about that.

Of course, but what makes it hard to differentiate between the good and the bad is that the bad things are generally advertised as "good things", such as the lending of vast sums of money to poor countries. This confusion blurs the difference between the good and the bad and it's all to easy to become cynical about them all.

Finally, on the issue of Iraq: Saddam has to go.

I do agree on some levels with that. It would be hard to argue why he should stay in power, apart from the part that we have no right to make that choice. What my biggest beef with the whole afair is the ways that we are being "persuaded" to go along with it all. Linking Saddam to Al-Qaeda is nonsense, anyone who knows anything about the politics of the middle east knows that it's about as ludicrous as linking Tony Blair to Bin Laden.

If they were honest about it all, I'd probably be on their side and agree to dispose of Saddam. However, the lies and the cheap "dossiers" (which I have read) created to get us on side are bullshit. I especially liked Saddam's response thanking the British Government for giving them the equipment to make many WMD. That's exactly my sense of humor, and had I been in the same positon, I'd have done the same. Actually, thinking about it now, if I were an Iraq decission maker, I'd take this a step further and publicly trash the hipocracy here. They probably are doing this, we just don't know it because the only exposure we get to Saddam are a couple of short clips of him, always holding a gun. Bush is a gun lover I believe, but you never see pictures of him with a gun on the television.

I remember a classic Bill Hicks sketch, where he compared the first gulf war to the scene in a western, where a guy throws a gun at the feet of the other guy. "Pick up the gun", he says. "No, you'll shoot me" replies the goatherder. After some persuasion, the gun is picked up and the first guy shoots the other claiming "he had a gun".

And that pretty much sums up the whole afair. You could power most of the Northern Hemisphere with the rotational energy of Mr Hicks, spinning around in his grave!

There are other reasons as well for my doubts, such as the blind eye we are turning to many other similar dictators, purely on the fact that they do business with us. Have no illusions, the primary goal of a war in Iraq is to improve western business prospects. It's not to free the people and it's not because Saddam could arm terrorists.

. Do you remember when Kofi Anan worked out that deal with him to allow inspectors back in? He never kept up his part of the bargain and he never planned to.

Not quite true, another thing that our leaders have mislead us on. The inspectors were operating for a while, but a few of them were clearly inteligence operatives, who were more interested in finding out where Saddam spent most of his time, clearly for an assassination attempt. That's why they were thrown out of Iraq.

You can't trust someone like that with nuclear weapons.

Yes and no. You can trust a country with them, because the response to them using one is clear...complete destuction and nuclear wasteland of your homeland. The only real danger is with terrorists, and again it's pretty unlikely that Saddam would aid Islamic terrorists, especially as he has spent most of the past 20 years persecuting the Islamic Kurds.

We should be more concerned about the former USSR and some other rogue states that are far more likely to aid or supply terrorists. There's a lot of weapons grade plutonium in the world, and a lot of it is unaccounted for. You don't need to be a nuclear scientest to put a nuke together, just as you don't need to be a gourme chef to follow a recipie

I think that in some cases, the US is justified in overthrowing foreign governments. What isn't justifyable is who they let gain power when they leave.

It's not so much "who they let gain power" as "who they give power to". Most of these coups are planned with a new leader/party in mind. These are the people that are aided in the coup. People like Saddam and Bin Laden. They are a "freedom fighter" when their aims match ours, but they seem to have no qualms about biting the hand that fed them.

The "justification" isn't the only argument. There are also moral issues in each situation, as well as juristrictional ones. For example, say a neighbouring state to the USA was to clearly state that they intend to attack you. That's a valid reason. However, when it's a state quite literally on the other side of the world, you have to question the motives. When that motive involves oil, power or money, you have to tread very carefully.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[some guy I know]

everyone should by now have a different individual that they think first said it.

It was Benjamin Santayana.

Third amendment makes much more sense

[billstewart]

That was a fun case; the judge was quite impressed that they'd tried a Third Amendment issue because it's basically never violated.

Re:Straw man?

[schon]

Straw man, you mean like taking parts of a comment and then only refuting part of what those parts say?

No, straw man, like distorting someone's opinion, then attacking that distortion, so that you can claim you are right.

Which is pretty much exactly what you did.

Did you read your own comment?

Yes, I did. Here is a summary of what happened.

Original poster said "US was targetted on 9/11 by terrorists because of their forign policy"

You said "9/11 was not justified! You called it justified!" and proceeded to attack that assumption. (This is the straw man part.)

I said "he didn't say that it was justified."

Pretty simple, huh? The reason I didn't address any of your "points" is because these points weren't relevant to the discussion. But since you want me to address your points, I will.

if you believe that 9/11 was not the way sensible human beings solve problems, then you're going to have to question whether these terrorists are sensisble human beings.

This is 100% true. You and I are in complete agreement on this issue. Why you're bringing it up is beyond me, as it has no relevance to the issue at hand.

If terrorists are not the most rational, psychologically-balanced individuals (pretty much a given) then you have to wonder if doing something rational would even matter to them.

Rationality is subjective. I'm sure Lizzie Borden thought that what she was doing was rational, even though (almost?) everybody else would disagree.

Claiming that the terrorists were not rational does not in any way diminish the effect that US foriegn policy had on their actions.

In the future try not to be both clueless and condescending

Why, do you hate the competition?

Re:And round we go, again

[schon]

Raping, sodomizing and torturing to death a 12 year old girl.

Find some good in that!!

Examine why someone would do such a thing, and you'll find your answer:

It's sick, perverted, and twisted. But it would make the rapist feel good.

Remember, "good" doesn't mean "good for everybody".

Anything else? (Maybe a little harder this time.)

Re:And round we go, again

[schon]

nobody does evil for evil's sake. They do it because they want some good for themselves.

This is exactly my point.

Absolute evil doesn't exist. There is always some aspect of "good" in it, even if that "good" only applies to one person, and the "evil" applies to everyone else.

Re:And round we go, again

[susano_otter]

Actually, it's not exactly your point. My point is that evil is a perversion--a twisting, or misapplication--of good. Good, however, is not a perversion of evil. Nobody says, "evil is the right way to do things, and good is evil done wrong". That's what "wrong" is. You can't take a wrong act, say it's a right act, and that the corresponding "right" act is just the "wrong" act done wrong.

Well, you could, but then you've removed the word "wrong" from the lexicon, and abolished the concept of right and wrong altogether. If you can't measure something as "wrong", then what? Do you say "murder is right, and allowing people to live is simply murder done wrong"?

Turn the concept of wrongness on its head, and equate it morally and ethically with the concept of rightness, and both concepts become useless. Every action becomes justifiable, except that without a standard, no justification is necessary, or possible.

Put another way: if "right" and "wrong" are equally valuable, then how do you distinguish between the two? How do you know which is which? How could you even care?

I imagine there are philosophies (nihilism, perhaps) that propose exactly this. Assuming you're a serious proponent of such a philosophy, how should you live? Of course, "should" probably isn't an appropriate word, in this context, is it? But if you're serious about this, then what? Will you simply do whatever you want, without regard for morals and ethics? So far, so good, but why should you do whatever you want? How do you know that satisfying your desires is better than not satisfying your desires? Because it makes you feel good? How do you know that feeling "good" (whatever that means) is "better" (whatever that means) than not feeling "good"? But you do know that society probably won't appreciate your amoral lifestyle, so maybe you'll privately believe that "good" and "evil" are equally "good", but publicly you'll conform to the standards of society as a whole... assuming, of course, that you have any idea whether or not being shunned, imprisoned, or executed really is "worse" than the alternatives. But of course you don't know if these things are "worse", because you've renounced the whole concept of value judgements altogether. And, having done so, how can you know that your renunciation was the "right" thing to do?

Finally, if you persist in this philosophy, then you have no grounds for protesting any act perpetrated against you. Why should I not key your car, or rape your women, or pillage your home, or cut off your legs, or whatever else I "choose" (while keeping in mind that "choice" is a meaningless concept, since all options are equally valuable) to do? After all, your "suffering" is no less "good" (or no more "evil") than your "contentment", or whatever.

The mind boggles, does it not?

Re:And round we go, again

[schon]

Actually, it's not exactly your point. My point is that evil is a perversion--a twisting, or misapplication--of good.

Ahh.. OK, I misunderstood you.

So it's not exactly my point, but it's pretty close, no? (My point was that any "evil" act can be viewed as "good" if you look at it from the right angle - umm, no pun intended :o)

Turn the concept of wrongness on its head, and equate it morally and ethically with the concept of rightness, and both concepts become useless. Every action becomes justifiable, except that without a standard, no justification is necessary, or possible.

The question then, of course, is justifiable to whom?

Re:And round we go, again

[susano_otter]

My point was that any "evil" act can be viewed as "good" if you look at it from the right angle - umm, no pun intended :o)

No worries--the discussion was getting a little too serious, wasn't it?

The question then, of course, is justifiable to whom?

I'll take the second point first: the question is applicable to the hypothetical "equalist" philosopher, who rejects the idea that good is inherently superior to evil (that is, that both are "equal" in value). To this philosopher, everything is justifiable, except that without a standard to measure by, no justification is necessary, or possible.

Other people, who insist that good is better than evil, still have to justify their actions--at least to themselves. Fortunately, they have a standard which they can apply, so they're in pretty good shape.

But, as you point out, different people have different standards. One man's steak dinner is another man's murder. One woman's sharia is another woman's brutal oppression. One man's art is another man's blasphemy.

Where does this leave us? Suppose I am Nietzche's Superman, free to act unfettered by morality or ethics. I have transcended these things, and they no longer apply to me. I don't have to justify my actions, but if I did, I would say that I do things because I can, or perhaps that the thing itself is its own justification.

So here I am, an enlightened being. I encounter you on the street, and take your life. To me the act itself is its own justification--I do it because I can, and because there is no reason that I should not do it. In fact, my whole enlightenment consists of never having to consider the "should nots" of any action.

To you, my act is murder--definitely evil. But that's only from your point of view. From my point of view, your so-called "evil" act is the act of a supreme being, perfect in itself, and unconcerned with the opinions of others.

Which of us is correct?

If you are correct, then my philosophy is hollow. No matter how fervently I insist that I am the Superman, I am still bound by morals and ethics--by the concept of a "good" which is superior to an "evil".

If I am correct, then only the acts of a Superman are good, and everything you say and do is evil (because it is the product of an unenlightened, inferior being).

If both of us are correct... but how can that be? Our positions are mutually contradictory. We can't both be correct... unless maybe we are correct in the eyes of a third person, an observer whose definitions of "good" and "evil" are different from either of ours."

Of course, my view of good and evil contradicts the view of this third person, and so does yours. Now we need a fourth perspective, to validate all our contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. Where does it end?

Here's the worst of it: if we believe that the value of things is subjective, then how can we possibly prove that such a belief is correct?

Logically, it seems that an absolute good is necessary, in order to say or do anything meaningful at all. We could claim that logic itself is meaningless, that logically true statements are no more "true" than logically false statements, but how would we prove such a claim?

Unfortunately, discussions about absolute good generally turn into discussions about religion, and discussions about religion seldom end happily for anyone involved, unless they begin by agreeing.

Is not sharing this with the public appropriate?

[krinsh]

After all, we, the public, whom cryptome.org does not specifically identify because they value the privacy of the people that view their site, are their customers/clients, and thus it is more than appropriate to share this subpoena with us because we are party to this request [which cannot be fulfilled since logs are not kept?]

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[C0LDFusion]

This may be hard to understand, but in America, common sense doesn't rule. Like the idea that if you take more money from the people who produce (negative reinforcement for working hard) and give it to people who don't produce (positive reinforcement for sitting at home and watching Jenny Jones), you'll create a booming economy. Or that lower-class people will get raises, if you cut the amount of money available to people at the top. People at the top who take home less will not be more likely to give raises.

But that's beside the point. It's just an example. I'm what is commonly referred to as a "moderate conservative". I'm against the war in Iraq. I'm against anything that puts our men and women in trouble for the purpose of meddling in the affairs of another hemisphere. Especially when our borders are so porous. Why should we deploy people to defend other people's borders when ours aren't?

I'm against the US support for Israel. Giving money to a state based on the globalist theivery of land from one people and handing it to another is not a smart thing. It's bullshit. We should pull ALL our troops out of the middle east and drop all financial and military aid to Israel. Tell them that we won't be funding their genocide any further.

I'm also tired of politicians that make laws like the cyberterrorism ones and the Patriot Act. I'm tired of politicians who have no compunction for raising our Social Security taxes and then telling us that we won't have any when we get old enough. I'm tired of them giving away our social security to citizens of other countries, when they have opted themselves out of our system so they can put their money in their own retirement fund.

But you know what? They don't care. They don't care what I think, they don't care what you think. They fabricate the public opinion every time an election comes around, them and the rest of the Madison Avenue boys, and then they walk back into the chambers in January and forget about for the next 6 years!

And slowly, they strip your rights on your computer, to restrict your free speech. They take your guns, to prevent the potential of someone fighting back for their rights when we all wake up in 15 years and find ourselves sitting in Nazi America, saluting to Fuhrer Bush.

Re:Isn't deleting logs an obstruction of justice?

[glesga_kiss]

Good post. I'm totally in agreement with you...our leaders are just as bad as the kings of old could be. Nothing really changes...