Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 NSA has already read it. Thanks anyway.
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
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!
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 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.
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.
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.