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."

Comments

Big Brother 1.0

[Foofoobar]

Yep, if Bush had his way, the law would assume that everyone is a suspect. Nostradamus has nothing on Orwell.

Re:Big Brother 1.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the parent is going to get modded as a troll, but it's unfortunately true.

"Enemy combatants" who never fired a shot at the US get locked up without legal counsel, and without even knowing the charges against them, for over a year and counting.

Immigrants who are muslim locked up for a year or more without access to legal counsel, and without knowing the charges against them and often there aren't any!

TSA in airports assuming everyone and their grandma is carrying bombs and patting them down. TSA assuming that nail clippers are terrorist weapons and confiscating them (they've relented on this one).

Bush saying to the world "either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists."

Doesn't get much clearer than this.

New cellphone commercial

[dmuth]

Verizon Guy: Can you hear me NOW?
FBI Spook: Yep!
Verizon Guy: urk...

Re:New cellphone commercial

[micromoog]

In the information age, who will guard the guards?

Seems a bit daft of me to guard him when he's a guard . . .

Well.

[Jonsey]

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! : )

Re:Well.

[Ptahian]

Controlling how we communicate is a first step in controlling what we think. If we have to use a specialized language on the phone, then what's to stop that requirement moving to other areas (think microphones in public spaces)?

It's double-plus ungood. Give me Liberty or Give me Death.

-ptah

Re:Well.

[Surak]

The government doesn't control what we think. No, not all. That's not propaganda you hear on the media, it's the truth. The media would never be used to propagate government lies. Nope. Never.

Re:Well.

[nanojath]

Stand by what you say! : )

I'm sorry, but that is a piss-poor excuse for not standing up to the current administration's land-grab on our civil liberties, and congress' spineless acquiescence to the same. This is tantamount to saying, if you don't have anything to hide, why do you have a problem with the police searching your house/car/person?

There are reasons why issues of civil liberties and constitutional rights tend to get publicized, exposed and worked out in cases involving people who (probably) did something wrong, and it isn't just because people are never wrongly investigated, accused or prosecuted. The reason we are less likely to hear about the innocent people who should have been protected by the law but were not is that the authorities have a vested interest in keeping them quiet. The victims often accept freedom from further persecution in exchange for dropping the matter, and more often than not noone in authority is punished for THEIR violation of the law.

As long as the government can't control what we think...

Yeah, tell that to Reverend Accelyne Williams. Oh, sorry, you can't - he's dead. Google his name and you'll end up learning about a whole lot of other people who were killed or otherwise violated when the Constitution let them down. But don't blame the constitution - it's hard to maintain your integrity when politicians keep pissing on you all the time.

Re:Well.

[Nutcase]

"Give me Liberty or Give me Death"

Be careful what you wish for.

Re:Well.

[nanojath]

Two things.

I think there is something to be said for the principle of the matter. When the constitution and bill of rights were created the U.S.A. was in a hell of a lot more danger of being destroyed by huge, powerful, imperialistic and militarily superior governments than it is now from anyone or anything. Yet it was not felt necessary to water down the protection against illegal search and seizure. I believe in the principle that one has a fundmantal right to freedom from having their personal information examined by the government without a justifiable cause that has undergone judicial review.

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.

If you don't think that a federal agency, snooping for terrorist activity, will start a file on you for completely legal but (by their definition) "anti-American" sentiments and activities then you are hopelessly naive.

Finally, with regards to "castrating" the government - don't make me laugh. Since P.A.T.R.I.O.T. was passed the government has hung itself like a freaking Clydesdale in terms of their right to invade our privacy. There is a simple way to balance the need for an effective federal executive with personal liberties which is sound legislation defining reasonable restraints and conditions with judicial review.

Re:Well.

[Yet Another Smith]

Assume that the police can do so without . . . having any impact on your life whatsoever, save for being caught if you're committing crimes.

Now, what's wrong with this?

What's wrong with this is that we're rarely sure that someone is committing crimes. Language can often be interpreted in different ways. FBI agents reading the transcript or hearing a phone conversation cannot have all the context. Even hearing the entire conversation will leave him unable to know what has been said away from that phone call, or what sorts of 'in-jokes' may be used.

In reality prosecutions based on this evidence would rely heavily on interpretations of intercepted conversations. By the very nature of terrorist attempts to disguise their conversations as normal, most of the evidence from these intercepts would be highly ambiguous. I certainly don't want the Feds going through the entire record of everything I've ever said looking for things that could be interpreted as criminal! I'd be locked up in a heartbeat.

But even if you don't buy that the Feds might make mistakes, there's one very important thing wrong with it. It is expressly unconstitutional.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This expressly forbids general searches. It states that you have to have a reason to search ahead of time, supported by either explicit witness testimony or by direct evidence. And it states that you must limit your search to only those places specified in the warrant.

This was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. Police were using infrared scanners to non-invasively measure heat output from every house in a neighborhood. They found one house with unusually high heat output. They assumed that marijuana was being grown there, and searched. Sure enough, the heat was coming from UV lamps used to grow pot. However the Court ruled that the mass search of all homes in a neighborhood via infrared scanning was unconistitutional, becuase there was no specific cause to do so, and that it did not target a specific place. The police were just trolling for pot growers.

Now if you think that the Fourth Amendment is no longer relevant, you can always get it changed. All you have to do is write an amendment (perhaps worded "The government shall have the power to search everywhere and anywhere, so long as only criminals are inconvenienced. This supercedes and nullifies Amendment IV."). Then you just have to get both the House of Representatives and Senate to pass it by a supermajority, and then have the legislatures of a supermajority of states to pass it, probably by a supermajority. No problem, dude!

Waiting for the first comment...

[Homology]

that says that unless you are a criminal, you have nothing to hide and thus nothing to fear from the goverment.

a

[Lord_Slepnir]

This may be a good article to show your family, friends and congressmen."

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.

This really isn't anything new ...

[SuperDuG]

Back before technology, spies would hide in places of conversation and follow targets and either remember what was said or write it down.

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.

Re:This really isn't anything new ...

[prhodes]

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.

Not sure if this is exactly what you are referring to, but as DNA testing becomes more commonplace, so-called "reliable eyewitnesses" are being found to be mistaken more and more often. Seems that most people just aren't that good at remembering faces and/or exact events.

Re:This really isn't anything new ...

[Gallowglass]

Dang right! Most western police ofrces have an exercise during training where some other police officer comes in and does something loud e.g. points a banana at the instructor and yells "Bang!" After he leaves the rookie cops are to write down what happened. The resulting reports are never consistent across the class or even between individuals.

The RCMP classes even warn them that this is going to happen so that they will watch carefully. Same results. No one remembers all the details correctly.

The objective of the exercise is, of course, to let the rookies know just how un-reliable eye wintess testimony is.

(I recently saw a story on Discovery about memory research that confirms this, but I'm just about to leave work, and I don't want this post to cut into my beer-drinking time ;-)

We've seen it...

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be a good article to show your family, friends and congressmen.

The NSA has already read it. Thanks anyway.

Logical Absurd conclusions

[coyote4til7]

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.

Article

[sulli]

There isn't any new information in the article

But slashdot will post 2-3 stories about it anyway.

WASTE, Encryption, Trust

[Schezar]

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.

Re:WASTE, Encryption, Trust

[StringBlade]

Encryption is already limited by governmental law. I believe 1024-bit encryption is the current limit according to the FCC and other federal bodies. The government doesn't want people to be able to communicate using an encryption algorithm that they cannot already break. IIRC, IBM had developed an incredibly strong encryption mechanism many years ago and were forbidden by the US govenment to implement it without relaxing the strength of they cipher. If I only had a link...

Re:WASTE, Encryption, Trust

[Troed]

Lucifer, by IBM. Later known as DES - when the keylength had been lessened but the characteristics of the cipher had been strengthened against differential attacks (then unknown outside the NSA).

On hold?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

unsecured sun solaris?

[redwoodtree]

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.

Re:unsecured sun solaris?

[noah_fense]

Carriers will often time keep their billing systems highly firewalled, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to protect CALEA. There is no excuse for exposing this system. If kevin mitnick was still around, CALEA would be just as recognized as "carnivore"

I've worked on a carrier VoIP solution for CALEA before, and the version i ran actually ran apache for the administrative side. Most telcos run solaris on Sun Netras for most of their applications, so their employees should know how to secure a Solaris box.

Interesting note: Level3 communications used to run a custom version of solaris (encrypted and secured up the ass), but it just made it a pain in the ass to run any additional applications on the server.

-n

Re:unsecured sun solaris?

[Schezar]

...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 ^_^

Re:There are others?

[hedronist]

Yes. Robert X. Cringely was an invented name for a column in InfoWorld (I think). When the guy who was writing the column left the paper after many years, he took the name with him. Lawsuits followed, etc. He ended up reatining use of the name, but so did the paper.

The "PBS one" is the original RXC.

Friends and Family

[MonolithicX]

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.

Outdated and Missing Information

[Shackleford]

From the article: "CALEA represents mid-90s thinking about electronic intelligence, but now we have the Patriot Act that goes so much further. And we have a program at the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency called Total Information Awareness."

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.

Goverment at it's best

[felonious]

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.

Fighting both sides of the cold war.

[PsiPsiStar]

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.

Doesn't get much clearer than this.

[dpilot]

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.

TRON meets 1984

[canadiangoose]

While the paranoid (sane, perhapse?) side of me believes that a system such as TIA should never be built, the Pure Technical side of me finds this sort of thing very exciting. The DARPA document in the article mentions the need for some sort of large, distributed, flexible, inteligent database backend to manage everything. As soon as I read the requirements, I thought about the Cyc information server from CyCorp. Even the name is creepy. Cyc is, in my opinion, the best approach taken towards AI thus far, and as such it would be perfect for managing this sort of project. It creates logical associations between data objects automatically, finds discrepencies and asks for clarification automatically! It also supports plain english queries, and allready has a good knowlendge of the human world. You could populate it with the information from the TIA project, teach it what a Terrorist is, and it could spit out all sorts of names.

Scary stuff, very scary stuff... but oh, so cool at the same time. Damnit!!

True story

[SuperBanana]

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.'"