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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.
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.
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
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
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
YHL.
HAND.
Phone companies have be using SUN Sparc Stations and the like for years. What I guess happened is this:
i don't like my old sig.
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.
...have these law enforcement people heard of SSH or SCP or whatever?
You'd be surprised how little most people in important positions know about the IT infrastructure they use. Still in college and working for [company], I got blank stares when I mentioned SSH or its ilk. Security was firewalls and switches (the latter to prevent sniffing, since everything is damn well cleartext).
The experts said "we can detect sniffers, they're not an issue," yet I KNOW how to sniff without ANY chance being detected. They had fancy locks on raised-floor server rooms, yet the walls and doors didn't extend into the crawlspace.
The networks in most geeks' college apartments are a thousand times more secure than real, critical networks. Most "Security Experts" out there do security "by the book," which doesn't exactly work when everyone knows what the book says. They fall behind the waves of new technology, and seemingly obvious security precautions elude them.
[end rant]
I feel better now ^_^
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
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...
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?
The networks in most geeks' college apartments are a thousand times more secure than real, critical networks
Most geeks' college apartment networks are a thousand times less complex than a real, critical network. I do agree that you have a valid point, but I don't think it's a fair comparison.
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
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.
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.