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Cringely On Electronic Tapping
sckienle writes "Robert X. Cringely, the PBS one, has an editorial discussing electronic wire-tapping and the Big Brother concerns. There isn't any new information in the article, but he does a nice summation of the state of law enforcement today. This may be a good article to show your family, friends and congressmen."
Yep, if Bush had his way, the law would assume that everyone is a suspect. Nostradamus has nothing on Orwell.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me NOW?
FBI Spook: Yep!
Verizon Guy: urk...
As long as the government can't control what we think...
I find wire-tapping repulsive, but if it occurs more frequently (as the article sugguests it very may will, due to lax laws some places), people will start using phones like they do e-mail at work. People will just stop trusting in phones to quickly convey information privately.
I know that I don't treat phones as perfectly secure, neither does the government.
Stand by what you say! : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
that says that unless you are a criminal, you have nothing to hide and thus nothing to fear from the goverment.
"There isn't any new information in the article"
;P
I'm glad Slashdot is sticking to the established traditions
Banaaaana!
I'll have to do that quickly. They get suspecious if I turn off the Telescre^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFreedomScreens or the PatriotSpeaker off for more than 30 minutes.
The main enemy factor came when it was believed that a recording couldn't be faked and was garunteed to be genuine, it wasn't until it was proven that simple technology could fool even the best recording devices that this belief was debunked.
The most incriminating factor will always be someone believably speaking out against you. Has been and always will be. Especially with Juries, people can tell usually when someone is lying and when they think that someone isn't lying about an acusation against you, then you're toast.
It's been said before a long time ago, if you don't want anyone to ever find out about something never say it or write it down.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The NSA has already read it. Thanks anyway.
But at a time when intelligence agencies are under fire for being not very intelligent, when our leaders are sometimes in too big a hurry to cast blame and take credit, we are building huge information gathering systems that we can't completely control ...
In other words, when granny farts, smack the dog. What's new? Most of Cringley's article is ripped straight out of the original information source. A bit like my post.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Robert X. Cringely, the PBS one
Ahhh, the PBS one.. as opposed to Robert X. Cringely the nuclear physicist, Robert X. Cringely the investment banker or Robert X. Cringely the astronaut.
Trolling is a art,
I just had this weird flashed and imagined "FBI Proposes putting Videocameras in every room in America to catch criminals" The inevitable first post might read something like this:
I drew first post! I drew first post! And before any of you liberals spout off, unless you are a criminal you have nothing to fear from cameras everywhere you go. Well... unless you are a criminal or gay or really ugly in the nude or read socially unacceptable books or masturbate or pick your nose and scratch your butt. But, we don't like people like that anyway. This'll finally give us an excuse to get rid of all of THEM.
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
From the China perspective this seem a funny situation for America. America say that everyone in America has freedom and to an extent that is very true, more so than other countrys. But then American citizens, writers, academics, so on, all claim that American military (DARPA being a department of which?) are using latest innovations to spy on people!
I am sure American army has many more important things to do than spy on its own people. And the main question are.. would the army really give up highly valuable new military technologies to the domestic guard anyway?
I cannot say much but I know that in People Republic Of China, we keep military and police very seperete. Although, being an 'academic', I do not need worry to such things so often...
-- Dr. Fu Ling-Yu, Internal Technology Consult; Tongji University, People Republic of China.
Oh wait...I was supposed to read the WHOLE thing?
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
But slashdot will post 2-3 stories about it anyway.
sulli
RTFJ.
This is why programs like Nullsoft's WASTE are going to be so important in the coming years.
Networks of trust, wherein all communication is encrypted and idle channels are filled with random noise. Privacy may or may not be a right, but that doesn't mean you can't just fight for and have it.
Granted, Big Brother can probably crack most encryption given time and money, but what if EVERYONE is using encryption? Different kinds, as well (geeks using a number of home-grown variants, the masses using Microsoft whatever...). Decrypting everything becomes less and less feasible. Is that a terrorist or some kid playing CounterStrike? An mp3 "pirate" or just a randomly generared noise packet?
Encrypt everything. If they try to outlaw encryption, well... I'll get back to you on that one.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
From the article:
"They can listen to what you say while you think you are on hold. This is scary stuff."
Televoice: Your call is important to us. Thank you for waiting. The next available assistant will be with you shortly.
Me: G****mit! What the fsck is taking so d@mn long?
Gummint: Sir, we'll be there in 20 minutes to wash your mouth out with soap.
Why precisely is it scary that they can hear you on hold compared to other times? I'd think it would be painfully obvious that they can hear ANYTHING you say into an open connection.
Actually, what's really scary is there's nothing that says The Man couldn't activate the mic on your cell phone remotely, but not have it go into "call" mode, so they could just pick up everything you're saying. THAT is scary.
This is totally new information to me anyway. What's really bizarre about this is the fact that supposedly they just slap a solaris install on these CLEA things. The SUN FTP server in solaris 8 for example has a flaw that can get you root in about 2 minutes, I know because one of my boxes got rooted this way just a few weeks ago when my firewall went down and I had accidentaly left FTP up in inetd (yes, yes, bad oversight).
In any case, have these law enforcement people heard of SSH or SCP or whatever? There is a repository of recordings and data and some Fed IT guy is FTPing it across the internet back to HQ for analysis?? Does that freak anyone else out?
Considering people scan the net for vulnerable FTP servers, I wouldn't be surprised if many of those boxes are rooted right now. Probably running an IRC bot or running attacks on other hosts.
I refuse to believe it's unsecured but my gut tells me it's probably true, knowing most IT people and knowing most developers. You'd think they would put a firewall in front of these boxes and treat them as highly secure boxes and then maybe VPN in and retrieve the information via a secured protocol.
Oh well. What a nightmare.
This guy is a TROLL. There is NO Fu Ling-Yu at Tongji. Say the name out load and then try not to laugh.
...that the paranoid people may be right.
phone message 1
phone message 2
phone message 3
phone message 4
And while they may not be implanting tracking device pellets in our necks now...just you wait.
YHL.
HAND.
How exactly do you know that, Dr. Fooling You?
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
At Slashdot we hash the news, then we rehash the news, but wait, if someone else hashes the news, we'll hash their hashing of the news.
But wait, there's more. Our editors don't always read the articles we post, so sometimes we get reposts of the exact same article.
Does everybody now understand why "Key Escrow" was such a stupid idea?
Ignore the 1st Amendment, 4th Amendment, and 5th Amendment issues raised by mandatory key escrow. Instead, just consider the national security implications of a key escrow system that is as badly secured and badly managed and easily abused as CALEA.
Scary isn't it?
This may be a good article to show your family, friends and congressmen
Its a good thought but my friends would reach "Siemens ESWD or a Lucent 5E or a Nortel DMS 500 runs on a Sun workstation" and that would essentially end the article for them. We need some articles with less Tech and essentialy the same meat.
Hell, show me a reasonably good voice or handwriting recognition program, and I'll be impressed. Neither of these exists yet.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
You mean, as long as the government is not able to use the media and the Courts to convince the public a stolen ellection was clean or to lie extensively in order to gain public support for a special interest war abroad? Yes, I agree. But wait...
The article was quite informative, but there are a few problems with it, related to the above quote.
"Total Information Awareness" has had its name changed to "Terrorist Information Awareness." Cringely gets this fact wrong and so one has to wonder if there are other inaccuracies in it.
The other problem I have with it is that it mentions the Patriot Act, but doesn't go into much detail about it. It went on for quite a while about CALEA, and understanbly so. But I think that more about the Patriot Act and its implications should have been included.
Lets see here...
It's an invasion of privacy
It's unsecure with a direct connection to the net
It's being hacked
Private information is being stolen
It's being used as a tool by other countries
Our Goverment knows this yet it isn't fixed.
This is a dumbed down version of big brother. If you're going to do this or any type of wire tapping then why not make it secure at the very least.
Why do we let our goverment get away with this shit? I don't support funding any goverment to spy on me and/or listen to my private conversations since I am not a terrorist but if they're doing it anyway keep my shit secure and private.
I wonder if Orin Hatch knew about this and the intrusion into our citizen's privacy would he support small nuclear strikes on said servers and their admins? I would.
It's amazing our goverment can function at all.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
I remember when I was a kid, I was told about how the Soviets were always being watched by their own government and that one of every three soviets or so were spies for the KGB.
I guess we're not much different than the Soviets. Just more efficient.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Almost everyone on /. has heard this all before.
This info needs to get out to people who don't know this at all. It is surprising the amount of people who trust Bush/Ashcroft implicitly to do what is right, and that by doing so they will be better protected from terrorists.
Send this article along to people you know. Let them know why you think the Government is not to be trusted.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Government organizations are completely inefectual about managing the data they currently have access to. What is gathering more data going to gain them?
Of course it does...
A recent Time magazine had an interview with a woman who is a right-wing commmentator/author. Some of the more notable statements in the article:
Liberals are anti-USA.
The Democratic Party should just go away.
"In that light, yes I am defending McCarthyism."
It must be *good* to be SO certain in your views that public dissent and debate are unnecessary and unwanted.
Or is it? Personally, outside of a few carefully chosen beliefs, I *never* want to be that certain.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have heard what you have been saying Dave... you know I don't like that.... No Dave I can't let you do that. Dave. Stop Dave. Please stop that...... Daisy Daisy........
The Ministry of Love will be by to discuss this with you. Just sit there and wait.
http://rwor.org/badmoonrising/
This sums it up nicely http://www.markfiore.com/animation/tia2.html
And not just CALEA, either. There are other pieces of telecom software and equipment that have been hacked in the past. Some of this eavesdropping by foreign spooks acquired a lot of notoriety due to its interception of highly sensitive traffic.
But it's safe to assume that there was much more eavesdropping that wasn't reported or even discovered.
If this goes on, it will be faster to call the Mossad or the FSB to fix a phone problem in DC than to call the local phone company.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I have worked for several clec's and long distance companies and I happen to be sitting in the same room with a DMS 500 that was installed in 1999 and have never heard of or seen one of these boxes. Also I have dealt with the law on several occasions regarding bomb threats and other situations and there was never any mention of these boxes. What phone companies use them?
OOOH! CRINGELY UPDATED! SPREAD THE WORD!
Seriously, who really cares about what this guy has to say. He's almost as bad as the grc.com nutjob.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
You have to wonder, though. How much of this forgetfulness is due to the amount of time it takes for the case to actually get to court?
While I'm willing to concede that a large number of witnesses are simply full of it, or grandstanding out of some perverse sense of participatory thrill, I'm also aware that I couldn't possibly expect to remember what I was wearing as recently as last weekend. Imagine how hard it is to try and remember (under extreme testimonial pressure, no less) every detail of something you may have said, done, seen, or heard some six months in the past.
Maybe Justice is blind because she's seriously overworked . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Scary stuff, very scary stuff... but oh, so cool at the same time. Damnit!!
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy
Verizon Guy: Can you hear me NOW?
FBI Spook: Yep!
Verizon Guy: urk...
This is a true story, I swear:
When I was in college, I knew one or two of the student sysadmins. One of the more flamboyant campus personalities(small campus) would, all the time, infer on the school newsgroups that the student sysadmins were reading other student's mail(they sysadmin'd all the non-school-administration servers). It always pissed off the student admins, because they didn't read other student's mail, and found the insinuation insulting.
One day, this jerk was emailing a friend and made some nasty comment- something along the lines of "you better call me, the student admins here are always reading our email". Somewhere along the line, either he, or the friend, mistyped the email address- and a bounce of the message went to postmaster.
The student admin grinned ear to ear and said "so I sent a reply to them both that just said, 'No we don't.'"
Please help metamoderate.
It'll happen soon after the Euro becomes an acceptable currency for oil purchases. The moment that happens, all those US dollars will start coming home like so many bad cheques, the US economy will fall to pieces, and either the US will fall, or they will become the next Axis and (hopefully) be pulled down.
The war against Iraq was all about preventing this from happening. Right now, the only currency that countries can buy oil with are US dollars, so countries all around the world hoard them and trade them with each other, rather than trading them in for US goods. Iraq decided to start accepting Euros in exchange for oil, and suddenly, the bombs are falling and the US has control over the Iraqi oil fields.
The government decision makers know all this. The writing is on the wall. Preparations for this inevitibility are obviously being made, and US dominance is more important than the freedom of US citizens in the eyes of those that hold the reins.
Bottom line: your world is a great deal less secure than you think it is. The sooner you internalize this fact, the less it's going to hurt later.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Slashdot: When Granny Farts, Smack the Dog.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
You'd be surprised at how small of a percentage of calls that are intercepted by CALEA actually are used for call CONTENT. I've been working on this system for over a year. You don't know the hoops a LEA has to go through to get a Title 3 subpoena/warrant. Well over 95% of CALEA usage is for trap and trace. Big Brother is not as big as everyone thinks he is.....
OMG, you can shut_yours_off???
X10, the makers of miniature survailance equipment have signed an agreement with the FBI to make sure no seductive women go unsurvailed at any given moment.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
So does this make ham radio more or less useful? While unencrypted broadcasts are not private, they're also hard to monitor. (Encryption is illegal in the amateur radio service.) For the govt to listen, they'd have to know what frequency and mode I'm using, and when and where I'm transmitting. The relatively low fidelty would make automated voice recognition with keyword-searching difficult.
spells SKYNET!!!
Give me beer or give me hot women.
If we have to use a specialized language on the phone,
Oh, God, you mean...
Verizon guy: K4|\| j00 h34r nn3 |\|0\/\/?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
And I bet most of these folks listening wouldn't know USB from LSB (upper side band or lower side band).
I always thought it was funny how we furiously value our freedom with one hand and then mindlessly give it away with the other.
Quack, quack.
<:-O
Opps!
Quack, quack.
Makes you wonder if they can listen when the phone is on-hook (i.e. hung up).
Everyone is getting in a big huff over this, but it isn't the wiretapping that's new. The phone company has ALWAYS been able to listen in on your conversation. The FBI has ALWAYS been able to listen in on your conversation, with a court order. This has not changed. The only difference is, the material that is recorded (which is done so only on a court order) is not secure. Incompetency? Yes. Congress trampling all over your civil liberties? Not really. A hacker can't listen to you unless the FBI already did, in which case you're probably screwed anyway :)
I'm not saying this shouldn't be fixed, I'm saying it's not a big deal.
Whether you are a Believing Christian or not does not change the inevitable. Jesus IS coming back to establish His Millenial Kingdom. This is stated numerous times in The Bible. While Europe, Russia, Iran and Iraq are mentioned (either directly or the region can be inferred) in The Bible (Daniel and Revelation being relevant to this conversation), the United States of America is not mentioned.
We (The United States of America) are not a player in the end times. So, rather than internalize the fact as the parent mentioned, I would rather suggest another thing. Because this is not just going to hurt you later.
Accept God's Gift of Salvation through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. It is a free gift. That way you will not suffer for eternity in the Lake of Fire.
This link will show you The Way. http://www.hallindseyoracle.com/4steps.asp
Also, if everybody was being watched, no one would really have to worry about it that much. There could never be enought watchers to effectively deal with all the watching. Also, I doubt that an AI that was proficient at coming up with bad things could easily be developed.
It goes something like: The better the tuning of the AI to avoid false positives, the greater the number of real positives that slip through, and the better the tuning of the AI to never miss a real positive, the greater number of false positives generated. The two supposed goals are directly opposed to each other. And really, I don't think it would take very many false positives on the wrong people before something got shot down.
So put down the aluminum foil, take a deep breath, and relax. And maybe look out the window. We can go outside tomorrow, after the weather clears up a bit.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You are wrong about Switzerland. I happen to know it is France.
And, if Bush's brother Jeb says anything George doesn't like, he will be declared a terrorist brother.
You said:
The problem I have with it is the exclusivity of the last part, "save for being caught if you're committing crimes". I don't think that can ever be the only outcome of this surveillance.
Knowledge of 'questionable' activities can lead to harassing follow-up searches and actions. Owning a hookah, for example. Is that a novelty tobacco device, or drug paraphernalia? Or, to hit a little closer to you and I, attending religious seminar that turned out to be further right than expected.
Once the humans interpreting this data have formed an opinion about the people in question, their attitudes and behaviors in the future will be changed. You still haven't broken (and may well never break) the law, but the way that you're treated is significantly different.
Add to that the old addage that if you look hard enough, you're guaranteed to find something illegal, and you have a gigantic possibility for harassment.
The danger I'm talking about so far is just from the human nature of the investigators. If you imagine a situation where the powers in question have another reason to dislike you (you favor the legalization of a currently illegal act, or the reinterpretation of some law*) and you're in harrassment city.
This could certainly be considered a 'chilling effect' in many discussions. Say, for example, the discussion of the competence or even corruption of the chief of police.
I think so long as people are running it, it all leads to too much power, too much danger.
-Zipwow
* for the record, I'm *not* talking about marijuana (or not just marijuana, anyway). Most of us
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
The frog in the pot, is it still alive? I can't tell, and the water's too hot for me to check. Rrribbit!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Cringely gets front-page billing so frequently on Slashdot that I think it's time he got his own icon.
Da Blog
-Bush Sr. on Iran Contra.
I don't know how many times I heard that expression as a kid during the 60's. Whenever someone criticized anything about American government or society, someone else invariably asked if they would rather live in Russia, which we all knew was an oppressive police state. I even read about apartment buildings over there being constructed with microphones built right in, so the evil commie government could listen for subversive activities. No, I didn't want to live in Russia.
Every telephone switch installed in the U.S. since 1995 is supposed to have this surveillance capability...
I'm sad for America because I do love this country. I dread the inevitable day when the rest of the world is forced to band together, at tremendous loss, to dismantle it like the USSR.
Oh my god! I thought you were joking! Your serious about this god stuff? Wow. Don't meet too many people on Slashdot that promote not using your brain. But hey, whatever gets your rocks hard.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Your annual fee of $50,000.00 is due the first of next month. Otherwise, we will no longer link to EVERY ARTICLE YOU WRITE.
Just make them rename it to SkyNet.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The big deal is that in the old days, the police or FBI had to present a court order to the telephone company to get a wiretap. A telephone company technician installed the wiretap, not an FBI agent. With the new systems, they have removed the telephone company's participation, making it a self-serve system. What is the software going to do, put up a dialog box saying "Do you have a lawful court order? [Y/N]"? This is bad news in a society where many police officers believe that the end justifies the means.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"Robert X. Cringely, the PBS one"
Who gets to be a Robert X. Cringely? Just Mark Stephens (PBS) and anyone Infoworld gives that column to?
<veruca salt voice>But I want to be a Robert X. Cringely too!</veruca salt voice>
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
The Hell's Faire book is worth purchasing just to get the CD alone, having a hard copy of one of the stories on the CD is just a bonus. I also highly recommend getting the first CD, which was included with War of Honor by David Weber (http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=dwe ber).
The formats and style is the same as you would get the Baen Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library/) and Baen's webscription service, but if you don't like reading electronic copy, use them to gauge your interest and borrow them from your local dead-tree library.
I'm just taking a stab in the dark here, but I think this is why the police take statements from witnesses.
The FBI has ALWAYS been able to listen in on your conversation, with a court order. This has not changed.
They no longer need a court order. The previous system turned out to be unpatriotic.
Muhahahhaha.... it's all a part of the Statist conspiracy! How could even the most hotheaded Libertarian muster the will to resist after slogging through all 100 pages of Galt's speech? :)
> So put down the aluminum foil, take a deep breath, and relax. And maybe look out the window. We can go outside tomorrow, after the weather clears up a bit.
Naw, I still need to recover from having my brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped 'round a large gold monologue. *g*
If I vote for the other guy come election?
Upon making an attempt at being informed(beyond having read that damn book a few years ago), I found it interesting to learn that she claimed to not be a libertarian, but is still widely regarded as such.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This is the story in Australia. I used to be in the part of the telco that provided this... assistance.
And as far as people hearing that their phone is tapped by hearing the interception team- not going to happen. Corocodile clips on a wire may look good in movies, but switches are a lot easier to work on.
Telcos and ISP must provide assistance to police and intelligence agencies to interecept phone calls and interent trasnmissions. It's a requirement of their licences. We used to do landline, mobile (cell), and internet- including VoIP, email, chat and web browsing.
To get the intercept, the police must get an interception warrant from the court. Intelligence agencies (ASIO- Aust. CIA equiv.) have to get a warrant signed by the Attorney General. And it's not difficult to get a warrant- it is in fact rare to get one knocked back. Once that's been signed, the telco or ISP has 4 hours to get the intercept in place.
Australia has the highest rate of police intercepts in the world. The justification for this is that it is cheaper to set up an intercept that physical surveillance. So there's an awful lot of it. And an awful lot of irrelevant data obtaned- and not discarded.
The telcos provide a report to the Privacy Commissioner on the numbers of interceptions done each year. Not who, just he numbers. ASIO doesn't do any reporting.
The agencies also don't mind droping trojans onto people's win boxes. I saw the test of one- and it wasn't bad. Wasn't good, but wasn't bad.
If you would like to learn how to get around them, sorry. That one will cost big,
too late already, next comes Soylent Green
Knowledge of 'questionable' activities can lead to harassing follow-up searches and actions. Owning a hookah, for example. Is that a novelty tobacco device, or drug paraphernalia? Or, to hit a little closer to you and I, attending religious seminar that turned out to be further right than expected.
Yes, but why should we reward subterfuge?
To drift over to economics for a bit: Capitalism succeeds because it aligns the base interests of the individual with the higher interest of the people. Communism fails because the base interests of the individual are best served through crime.
Now, in a nation that prides itself on democracy and free speach, why should we have a judicial system that rewards the better liar, the more clandestine criminal, and the shy radical?
I think a better argument is that such as system just isn't feasable to carry through to its moral implementation. If the police can monitor us, then we must be able to monitor the police. While I would be fine living in a society like this (I'd have to adapt, but I am willing to adapt), the benefits of doing so do not seem likely to outweigh the costs.
I am using my brain. I'll pray that you start using yours (and I mean you no offense with that remark -- just that what The Bible says HAS happened, IS happening, or WILL happen). The Bible is God's Word. Save yourself a lot of anguish and check it out.
..she ignores data-facts- that are embarassing to the current regime of neocons. I just listened to a radio interview with her tonight, stuff that is verifiable (like some of the 9-11 hijackers being trained at pensacola naval air station, or elements of the current admin trying to stifle the 9-11 investigation) she was dismissing as if they didn't exist. She's just another propaganda mouthpiece, nothing more,she lies and commits the sin of omission lie with the best of them, so called "left or right wing". Currently very popular, historically will be proven irrelevant and will be added to the list of compromised has beens and turncoats. She even called the attack on the Liberty by the Israelis a lie, that it didn't happen, or that the then current president and mucky mucks tried to conspire to blame it on the egyptians, which has all been proven, it's just data now.
I have much more respect for journalists who are neutral, who let the chips fall where they may, and do articles and opinion pieces and books based on ALL the relevant data, not pick out bits and pieces to support an obvious agenda. It's quite easy to counter every "democratic and liberal" scandal with a republican so called conservative scandal, which means BOTH those parties are A composed of human beings, some of whom are crooks, and B it proves the old adage there ain't a dimes bit of difference between those phony artificial extremes. Rational people apply the scientific model, they don't try to force an issue to fit pre conceived notions.
AMMV but that's my opinion of her. You want an example or two of more rational, factual and more believable woman traditional conservatives, who aren't liars, I'd say women like Phyllis Schafly or Charlotte Iserbyt are better examples. They aren't afraid to dare call a capital R republican a crook or a skunk when it fits, they have this now rare element to their character called "ethics", something totally absent in the current crop of neocons with their whopper lies du juor.
if I may quoteth:
"Furthermore, the pragmatic reality is that corruption and gross incompetence are a reality, and I don't think that this reality is unrelated to my basic argument. If powerful entities did not routinely abuse their powers then we probably never would have bothered to create the bill of rights. Although based on idealistic principles the constitution was made to address pragmatic injustices."
One of the best paragraphs I have read on slashdot. kudos.
left-right whats the difference? they both want to control you.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
stuff that is verifiable (like some of the 9-11 hijackers being trained at pensacola naval air station,
untrue embry riddle at opalaka in fla (you were only off by 150 miles
also embry-riddle is a civilian flight school (one of the largest in the world)
they don't train civilians at Pensacola NAS
that is a Navy field.
so if you got that wrong why should the rest of your post be any more revelent?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
This has gotta be a troll...
Innocent guyz who are convicted because somebody got time knocked off their sentence by fingering whoever the prosecutor sez, might disagree. Or the poor dudes that did hard time when the prosecutor had evidence that they did NOT do the crime. Or the guy whose court appointed lawyer feel asleep during his trial.
Remember the law is blind. The rich guy that steals a loaf of bread because he's starving is treated the same way as a poor dude that's starving.
The prison-industrial system doesn't care if you are guilty or not, just so long as your ass is theirs. If you get caught in their revolving door you'll do more time for violating terms of your parole than for your original crime.
best regards,
buck
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"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced." - Frank Zappa
I do my research. I don't post bs, on slashdot or any place else. Pensacola trains foreign national pilots, same as various other US military bases train other foreign nationals: Here ya go:
/t imelinebefore911.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/629529.asp?cp1=1
Google has 804 more links with the search term, hijackers, pensacola
For anyone who wants to do some more research into government involvement and prior knowledge of 9-11, here are some URLs
http://www.911timeline.net/
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main
http://911citizenswatch.org/resources.shtml
http://www.infowars.com/resources.html
there's hundreds if not thousands more, these links take you to more links
Here's a transcript of an interview with david schippers, and his frustration of trying to warn the government of the upcoming 9-11 attacks, prior to 9-11. Schippers has definete "street cred" in the federal LEO community:
http://www.infowars.com/transcript_schippers.htm l
There's just so much more. What is the real flamebait is this administrations and the past two administrations lies and coverups about "terrorism" in general. Propaganda and disinformation of the highest (new world) order. The US people were manipulated.
Here is the latest on the US government and the apparent interferring with the 9-11 investigation. this is nothing new, I along with millions of others, sat through the old bogus "warren commission report" on the assassination of JFK. Nothing new here, same old junta members faking out the people, it goes back decades.
Take yer pick,79 current news links on the 9-11 commission
Here's a link to the "northwood documents", a set of plans to use phony terrorist events in order to manipulate the US public. This "terrorism" a la reichstagg fire type events is a tried and true classic political manipulation technique.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/join tc hiefs_010501.html
I will copy some of this here:
By David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1 -- In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Secrets
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.
"The whole point of a democracy
Point still is that the Saudi Government was paying for Civiliian flight school eg 737s at embry riddlehttp://www.pr.erau.edu/http://www.pr.erau.ed u/
the navy does fighter pilot training at Pensacola
the two skills if you had bothered to ask any pilot are not totaly transferable.
I have about 1500 hours in a light plane could I fly a 737 no way There is a lot of difference between flying a 2000 lb trainer and a 200,000 lb transport.
Your sources are the usual
your trick is one that I pulled in high school called packing the biblography as you can see by the Embry Riddle website they train the big ones http://www.pr.erau.edu/
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
--if they even flew them, or even who was on the plane. The story has changed a lot, I have no way of telling decisively who was on the plane, what with the government changing the story, phony IDs used, etc. You have to look at it in the gestalt, there's tons of evidence of insider western white guys in suits having prior knowledge, if not even involvement. It's not a can of worms, it's a case of cans of worms and no way does anyone have all the answers now, but there's certainly enough smoke to indicate fires. My original point is ann coulter is ignoring *all* of it, she denies any of it has any relevance. Sorry, but a lot of it does, I've spent hundreds of hours reading documents,you can see fbi agents being told to shutup and quit looking,the bush families long running business ties with saddam hussein and the bin laden family, the cia running saddam and al queda, al queda members inside the albanian kla getting training in US bases by military and spooks, insider stock trading primarily at a brokerage house run by a top cia official(that's a huge smoking gun that's unaswered to this day), ashcroft dodging schippers, wtc victims families getting the run aeround, etc, etc. And yes, those are the "usual sources" because they are relevant. As to flying, the hijackers didn't take off or land, all they did was steer, I think that's much less training involved in order to accomplish that.
I'm in the middle of moving, won't be back online for a couple days so this will have to do for now, thanks.
is that wild claims are posted provably wrong and we are supposed to take the rest on faith?
As for Ms Coulter (she hates that) she is no better nor any worse than say peter arnett or peter jennings. They are all spinmasters and whatever they say should be subject to as B.S. check.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
LOL! Yeah brains... is that what you call it. I'd suggest wiping your ass cause you've got your brains sticking to your butt hair :)
And I mean no offense by that, I just mean that if you cannot figure the contradictory nature of an omnipotent, omnipresent being, you must not being using your brains properly. Hell, even the dead sea scrolls proved it was all metaphor; there were no miracles. Read up on the pesher method.
The sin is mightier than the lord. Grow or brain or climb back into the trees with the rest of the monkies.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
True - though I'd actually intended it to be taken, in a ha-ha-only-serious sort of way, that there's another interpretation of "subversive" that could be used here:
Namely, that one would have to subscribe only moderately to the views of the current society/gubment to claim that being outpsoken and critical of our "mixed" economy as also subversive. After all, was John Galt a traitor to his nation, or not? :)
Two points, the first is that I think implying that no subterfuge would exist in the world with as-ubiquitous-as-we-can-make-it surveillance you describe is being a little too optimistic. Are the monitoring systems able to tell the difference between hiking in the woods and visiting your meth lab in the woods?
Setting that aside for a moment, consider that our current laws should not be enforced in every situation. Every person breaks laws daily, be it accidentally speeding, jaywalking because its 2am and nobody's coming for miles, or not reporting the $20 you sold your couch for.
This is all currently handled with selective enforcement. Which sounds like a bad thing, and to some degree, it is. Selective enforcement opens the door to harassment. IDs checked more often for the racial group not in power. Jaywalking tickets for people dressed like a political group, this sort of thing. And as I said before, this behavior is magnified a thousand times with unhindered surveillance.
The alternative to selective enforcement is to adapt the legal code. This is a tempting approach as a programmer, I want to just fix the bugs that are in the system, and have done with it. Obviously, though, the problem is that this creates a legal code that is a nightmare to understand and maintain. Laws are already complex enough to allow multiple interpretations by a reasonable person. More laws doesn't fix that problem.
In the end, you may have less subterfuge (can't hide in your basement). However, that subterfuge will be replaced with corruption. It all starts with this kind of conversation: "Jaywalking's not a big problem, hey I can overlook that. Thanks for the donut last week, by the way..."
The system you describe still rewards the better liar, "It was just a donut, just an unrelated favor from a friend...", and the clandestine criminal. The amount of crime won't change, but the amount of protection that enemies of the state receive is reduced nearly to zero. Unless, of course, they lie as well. Which makes them seem like criminals, of course.
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.