Slashdot Mirror
FBI Adds to Wiretap Wish List
WorkEmail writes "A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public Friday, would require all broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police. The FBI's request to the Federal Communications Commission aims to give police ready access to any form of Internet-based communications. If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development."
Bottom line: The FBI can go piss on itself. Fuck the system.
fp
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Invest in encryption products.
Wait, what about us who still have dial-up? (yes we do still exist) It says nothing about it in the article from what I saw.
>
> fp
well sir you may not be the first post, but you have the first *useful* one.
So instead of paying the ISP, I'd have to end up paying Uncle Sam through taxes. It's a lose-lose situation.
Next, they will come for your encryption. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... but soon.
Hypothesis:
Carless wire tapping will some how turn into a corpate espionage tool. Give yer brother bill whos a cop a couple bucks, get access to the competitions phone wires, walla!! corpate espionage.
can i use the word "walla" in a hypothesis?
Makes you wonder when we're all going to be forced to use high-grade encryption for all connections across the Internet....
buy a sniffer? use ethereal?
its really not that fucking hard to sniff traffic. I used to do it at work when diagnosing routers- to see what "worked" and what just didn't work. Do a qucik writeup and pass it on to the hardware guy.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
if they can't, then whats the point. anyone who's doing anything illegal & knows the FBI can listen in, will just encrypt.
Big waste of time
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
Regardless, this is pretty intrusive on the FBI's part. Even though it isn't a blatant intrusion into our private lines located within our home, it may as well be, since our direct line to the internet for 99.9% of the population runs through commercial ISP's. I hope someone cries foul on this proposal in support for the protection of privacy. However, with the state of most American's line of thinking, such a hope is far-fetched.
ISP's are obliged by law to install wiretapping devices and provide internet connectivity to police to use these wiretapping devices. There's no warrant necessary to wiretap. Best of all, all encryption standards (except GOST, which comes from the government) are outlawed, so you can get hard time for using PGP. I haven't heard about anyone getting sued for using strong crypto, though, so it looks like these laws are not enfoced.
All my commmunication will have to have GW is Double-Plus Good as the header :) Using words such as Terrorism, Nader for President, and Same-Sex Marriage will merit an immediate termination.
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
Well at least if your using Mac OS X 10.3 Mail.app
I used this tutorial on how to certify my email adress so the one receiving my email will know that's it me. Also when the receiver and the sender got a certified email adress you can encrypt your email adress.
Yes I know about PGP but this is much easier since Mail automatically adds the senders key for you when you get a mail that's signed.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
I can't imagine something like this actually happening.. But with all these other absurd patents, copyrights being approved I wouldn't be surpised to see this a few years down the line. Absurd.
Buckethead
Either way, the consumer ends up paying, be it in the form of increased access fees or a tax hike or, most likely with our govt, just tacking it on to the deficit. Bottom line: The FBI can go piss on itself. Fuck the system
Amen
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Yeah. Do so but invest in encryption outside the U.S. because the next step will be to ban encryption on the U.S. part of the internet. Ok, this will severely interfer with all kinds of online payment but how much sense would it make for the FBI if they are allowed to wiretap you but can't read what you type?
To avoid any potentially deadly misunderstandings, I'd advise you not to play a Counter-Strike "terrorist."
Some visionary should write a book about a future dystopia and call it 2040. Then Apple can come out with a cool new commercial in 2040, with a dubbed over voice saying, "god damn it. it's happened.", and have a gunshot fire with the sound of a body falling to the ground. right?
The FBI seeks to appoint a senior AOL linguist. The successful candidate will form a 1337 team able to translate AOL to American English in real-time as part of a stimulating new FBI initiative...
let's assume that the FBI requires the use of wiretapping in less than 1% of all its investigations. So they want to force 99% of the people to pay for something they only need for 1% of the time?
All you did was repeat your assumption. No cookie for you.
Bottom line: The FBI can go piss on itself. Fuck the system.
And to ensure a good mod, you bold the "stick it to the man line" so no one will miss it, ignore the illogical crapfest that was your post and mod you up!
If you boil a frog, it doesn't know that it's in trouble until its legs are paralyzed and can't escape. Yup.
This is probably more for the "VoIP" segment of the universe than "XBox Live", this is a perfect reason to enable IPSEC over VoIP.
Too often the open source community thinks of the unreasonable approaches before the reasonable, and that's only because you have to fight fire with fire. In this case, you have to have as much reason as a politician will -- and yes, that sometimes means being as evil as they can be -- that is to say, with transparent encryption, it makes it unreasonable for a state agency to tap because it would mean confiscating servers and disrupting business (the state, in the US, must have a compelling state interest to do just about anything). This can have two effects: (1) Hosts increasingly require unreasonable agreements (CYA). (2) The disruption of business is so much that is becomes a burden for politicians to support.
My point being: look guys, we're Slashdotters, and we administrate public networks, and we're smarter than them, and with no disrespect, we can make prior art out of whatever aged notions of data security they have. That's what open source is about; the gathering of the people above those with green and power.
We should assume our data is being intercepted in the first place -- that's why you provide data security. Thou shalt encrypt.
ALSO SEE: Due Process, Fourth Amendment.
Seriously. It's nice (esp since I just got cable), but once it becomes Yet Another Intrusive Tool, I -for one- will go back to reading and ordering cds through catalogs or buying them in person.
The internet isn't a necessity, particularly if survellience becomes unavoidable.
Someone forgot to tell the FBI about dsniff?
Seriously though, this will stir a fair bit of controversy; on one side you will have the civil libertarians bitching about how this is a 'massive breach of human rights', on the other you will have the people who spout that 'it could save your life one day'. I don't actually know where i stand as of yet, but im in Australia so it's all good - we probably wont get the technology for another 25 years.
I think our Congressmen, Representatives and top-level government administrators have forgotten that they are servants of the people! They should be honored to have such a job! What I wouldn't sacrifice to have a powerful voice in the legislature of this country, or to head a committee on a topic of national importance. I would sacrifice everything to get there...except my integrity.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
ON the other hand, if the government pays for the upgrades, it will be with tax dollars, so either way the consumer/citizen gets screwed. And, actually, if you look at the number of court cases that are successfully prosecuted nationwide using legitimately-garnered wiretap evidence, it's more like forcing 99.99999% of the people to pay for something the FBI needs only .000001% of the time, or worse. Ridiculous on the face of it: all the numbers I've been able to find simply don't justify this ongoing crusade for advanced wiretapping capabilities. Those boys just hate like hell to have anything kept from them. The problem, as I see it, is that the ease with which the FBI (and the Federal Government in general) was able to grab new powers in the wake of 9/11 has simply encouraged them to go for more of the same, although they've been trying for a national wiretap center for a long time prior to that. This is much like the FBI excesses decades ago, under Hoover, that resulted in Congressionally-mandated restraints upon its' behavior. Back then, of course, wiretapping was a relatively simple affair involving a lineman's handset and a pair of clip leads. Times have changed, and in the modern world the costs of allowing them to run in this open-loop fashion for very long are going to be significant, both in terms of money (tax dollars or on your Internet bill, take your pick) as well as civil-liberty abuse. Congress is the only entity that has the power to reign these people in, and I don't see a lot of effort being expended there on our behalf.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Wiretapping the network for extern traffic might be feasible, but wiretapping a switched network , including local traffic on a cablemodem network, without anyone noticing is almost impossible. You could sniff a switched network and then "fail open" it by bogus ARP floods, but people would notice (either by sniffing) or by the sudden performance loss of the network. Seems like the only sane solution here, thank god, is to physically tap the connection (like you would hotwire a phone). So it seems like these morons should thake a crash course in network-topology.
Ordo Militum Unix.
Next they'll bill the suspect for being investigated and failing to produce justification for an arrest warent.
Improves law enforcment and cuts the budget.. What could be wrong?
Oh right.. paying for being innocent.
I don't actually exist.
everyone should download anything and everything they can think of. Delete it when it is done and then initiate a new down load.
Bottom line: Saturate your download bandwidth.
If Everyone did this, it would likely hamper any monitoring capability.
I hate to advocat this this type of protest, but the bottom line is fuck you, get a warranat if you want to monitor my shit.
From this day forward, my download bandwidth will be saturated.
Like the SBC commercial in CA. "I'm gonna download the whole internet"!
Hopefully this will overload their ability to attempt to monitor anything.
This might be a good time to buy stock in harddrive manufacturers.
Who will guard the guards?
totally radicules idea , aha pity on them for taping
I'm right there with you, but I'm afraid we can't get there without crashing and burning first.
think our Congressmen, Representatives and top-level government administrators have forgotten that they are servants of the people! They should be honored to have such a job!
They certainly carry the attitude that we're lucky to have such generous people in charge.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Perhaps Freeswan went into retirement a bit too soon. Freeswan offered ubiquitous encryption throughout the internet where computers would negotiate secure transport mechanisms with each other on an opportunistic rather than pre defined basis.
I am thinking more a kerberos solution. Literal streaming encryption.
Even so, they know as well as any tech geeks do that its a smokescreen, a feel-good, a deliberate overextension so that when its denied, less extreme but still invasive suggestions look fine by comparison.
We all need to install internet cameras in our tolits...with a direct feed to the FBI.
I can't believe the government is actually considering putting a backdoor in every cable modem. Karnivore, while of debatable, legitimacy, is at the very least, secure because its physical components are kept very far away from crackers (in secured buildings of Tier one providers). Thus, it works on a fairly good premise of obscurity and limited access.
If this type of backdoor was inside the cable/DSL modem next to your computer, imagine how quickly both the obscurity and limited access factors disappear. You can kiss any type of sibilance of security on the internet goodbye because, in no time, every script kiddie running windows will be able to packet sniff your computer.
Sometimes, I really wonder how highly funded groups like the FBI can ignore common sense problems. If there's ONE thing I think we've all learned in the past twenty years in regards to computer security is: if it's even minutely possible for them to do so, they (geeks) will figure it out. If you put an encryption scheme on every DVD drive in the world, they will figure it out. If you don't address a security bug in a prominent piece of software, they will figure it out. And if you put some uber-packet sniffing device on every cable/DSL modem in the country, they will figure it out with probably an extra sense of haste.
So if this does come to pass, how long do you think it'll take for it to be cracked? My guess is a week. *sigh* Your hard earned tax dollars at work.
-Grym
...among many other opportunities, to use the sharp minds many here claim to have and contact your congresscritters...in writing. on paper. that will always bear more attention than an email (or even a phone call).
People really need to stop bitching about this stuff in web fora and actually try to interface with the people that can put a stop to some of these intrusive inanities.
Pry my encryption from my cold dead hand.
Who will guard the guards?
Use cryptografy, end of story.
ISP's have been forced to install tapping devices since december 1998. Accroding to the Dutch Telecommunications Act 1998. http://www.ez.nl/english/docs/tweng.pdf
Yeah, well who gets justly compensated every time credit card fraud occurs online?
It cuts both ways, buddy.
Love your spirit. I mean, why have the FBI at all? Or the police? Let's get rid of the lot of them!
The problem isn't in allowing LEA access to what they want. It's making sure there's a process they have to go through to get them, which prevents them from getting the information when they shouldn't be.
-- james
Wouldn't worry about this.
1. The FBI is only "asking" the FCC which, anyway, lacks jurisdiction to tell IRC programmers how to program.
2. The Internet is becoming more decentralzed (e.g. anonymous wireless LANS,P2P networks, etc.) so there will be too many small time non compliant ISPs to go after. And the government, not for want of trying, has so far shown only futile attempts at regulating the Internet.
3. The only people for this are the FBI and a few conservative politicians. They're going up against the communications giants and equipment manufacuters -- financially secure industries with campaign contributions, lobby groups, and lots of lawyers.
4. Besides all that, they just don't get it. Any two connected nodes communicating by pulses (ones and zeros) can always encrypt their conversation. Language is a secret handshake.
How do they plan on rewritting the software needed for *them* to access a wiretap. Isn't there security issues involved here?
I'll bet Carnivore heard that!
Erm..look at that a purple dinosaur!
Quack, quack.
...a datastream of an unknown kind which is compressed, hidden using steganography, has plausable deniability using an legal, escrowed key and so on?
FBI might as well accept that people are able to talk privately in virtual space just as they usually can in real world. They'll just have to rely on common carelessness or on some other methods to stop crime.
per seconds and save it somewhere for someone to look at ? :O
Time to invest in storage companies I guess
I am pretty sure that the majority of Internet users have nothing to hide, and are involved in no illegal activities, or at least no such activies that would be of interest to the anti-terror force that is the FBI, but privacy is one of the most basic principles of a free society, and making broadband users pay more so that the perverse desires of some unknown FBI agent "searching for terrorists" can be fulfilled is, in my opinion, outraging. The FBI already has some power when it comes to eavesdropping on the Internet, but breaching the privacy of the gigantic Broadband userbase of the USA, when they only need to track a few individuals, is I think horribly exaggarating.
What have the Broadband ISPs said about this? They stick to revolting against delivering confidential information of their heavily downloading clients, but they don't even try to stick a word in when their whole userbase's privacy is at risk?
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
Besides the privacy, police-state implications that I'm sure other people will point out, here are several points:
Firstly, if there is a easily available backdoor for everything, what's to stop criminals and terrorists from using it as well? People don't seriously think that they are not going to be able to get the technical information easily. Especially if *every* software program that allows communication the way they describe requires these backdoors. There's no-way you can keep all those civilian mouths shut. These backdoors will be built-in security holes. Just like mandating only low-level encryption may mean that it is easier for the US government to break into your data, but it also makes it easier for criminals to do so as well. The likely ease with which the technical information will spread will mean that hackers will probably make versions of the programs w/o the backdoors and spread them through the underground. Real (smart) criminals and terrorists will use these backdoorless programs leaving the American government to spy on harmless citizens and the inept.
Secondly, I can see governments like China rejecting any protocol or programs which has these backdoors installed. They are already paranoid enough about rumoured backdoors. If they are sure they exist (say through a FCC mandate) they are going to drop American software like a hot stone. While the Chinese government is a police state and would love the ability to spy on their *own* people, the last thing they want is to allow the American government to spy on *them*. Other countries, like the EU, UK might have a few qualms of letting the US government spy on *them*, though I wouldn't put it past them (esp. the UK ie. Blunkett) to start thinking of mandating their own spyware for their citizens....Say goodbye to the American software export industry...
I also wonder how these things would work in conjunction with Trusted Computing?
The last thing is, I presume that all rules and regulations will apply to open source software as well. So I guess all open source developers of the mentioned program types will have to submit their programs to the US government for approval before they can release it. And how does this affect the open source nature of development if you need government oversight *every* time you want to release any sort of new code?
Beep beep beep.... Here comes NIPR.gov with their shiny black routers. Heh.
They can all fuck off. We don't need them, they need us.
Hammer of Truth
Time and time again, the US federal government has proved wasteful and inefficient. Do you really want the government implementing something that private industry can implement for half the cost? Besides, I'd rather see my ISP bill go up a little than watch the seemingly endless budget fattening of the government. In the end, regardless of who implements it, you will pay for it.
I'd rather pay the ISP.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I disagree. Social programs have been decimated in the past four years. The Great Society has been destroyed in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Defense spending has been astronomical and does not need to get any bigger. If greater power is given for wiretapping we will be running headlong into a police state. At this point the government already has too much power and needs to cut money out of programs that only serve to arm the government to the teeth, only to attack its own citizens and other nations unilateraly. If we need anything right now it's programs that will get the people of this country back on their feet.
Time makes more converts than reason
When it's 5:00 AM and you write more than three flaming sentences, sometimes you miss a word or two. My deepest apologies.
-Grym
Too bad the government just doesn't follow the rules when they don't want to. Just ask the people who have spent years in military prisons in Guantanamo.
Time makes more converts than reason
Anyone else notice that anytime the FedGov proposes something draconian against civil liberties it often seems to break into the news on Friday afternoons so it settles down over the weekend and the masses stay dumbed down?
Kick everybody out of the internet. The FBI computers must UNPLUG their cables. Then only FBI will be in the internet and everybody else outside. Whoever wants to get back in should accept this proposal. Then, FBI will let them connect again.
How about it?
Fucking Bastards Incorporated.
I don't think he meant to say bring the system down, because that's pretty stupid and we don't have a backup plan (rip it down to put it back up WTH?)....
ANYWAY He is agitated like I am at the FBI for their complete incompetence, we already eroded our right for them and they still FUCK UP. The track record of the FBI is they consistently do more harm then good (anyone heard of them going after the guys who wrote Louie Louie for subversion?).
The secret to getting modded up is to allways say i've got karma to burn in your sig..
It seems to me that this proposal is right in line with this
Maybe this particular proposal will not go through, but the government is already working on solving the problem of wiretapping at a more fundamental level - Internet Protocol
Didn't they just get more wiretapping power a few years ago with the patriot act? It seems they won't be satisfied till everyone has a microphone and transmitter strapped to them just incase they might, on the off chance, be planning a crime.
Its a sad situation in any country when the government feels that this is something they need to inflict upon its citizens. Its even more sad when the citizens let them.
Slashdot referer not allowed. Right click, copy link, paste in address bar.
c om_harleydavisdildo.avi
c om_henimasturbates.avi
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/i.trevisani/www.gabrio.
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/i.trevisani/www.gabrio.
For government insititutions, yes. Government-owned corporations may only use certified encryption technology, and only GOST is certified. (It's not a bad standard for strong private-key encryption, but not very popular either.)
It is not clear if the specified regulations actually apply to private citizens or to private-owned companies, but there is no article in Penal Code about illegal use of encryption. It is clear that this law (as well as many other evil laws) was never actually enforced. (Thank God!) The fact that everybody, including government, uses SSL in daily practice due to using existing OS and browser software incorporating it is quietly ignored.
In real life, unless you actually find anyone getting busted for this, you should ignore the rumors and use crypto if you feel you need it. Practice is much more of a criterion than written law in this country. For example, there's no law prohibiting the usage of GPS devices for purposes other than construction work, but people do get in trouble for using them anyway, on the grounds of misinterpretation of the existing regulations - like the absurd notion that all geographical coordinates more precise than 200 meters are classified.
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
If this goes through the whole idea of privacy will be shot, Bush might as well just change his title to "Big Brother."
I assume people would have to vote on it? And so I don't see this happening, though the average person would probably assume this would stop spam and crackers...
I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
Not if pretty much everyone does so, which has a few good effects...
- wireless would be better off that way
- it might be the boost needed for IPv6/IPsec
I'm definitly all for it.
New things are always on the horizon
It's scary how often the U.S. under Bush reminds me of the late U.S.S.R.
Not only is the principal absurd, the only way they'd truly get easy wiretapping is to make all free software/open source illegal, regulate compilers, etc. This is because as long as someone can modify a program they can remove back doors, use encryption and boom, the government won't be able to decode shit.
Granted, you'd want to use something heavy-duty, like RSA 4096-bit encryption or so.
Does this quotation not come to mind. It seems a bit strange to dredge it up now, but if you think about it, it seems that the governments fear the people and the people fear the governments at the same time.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I swear to God, they'll never intercept my messages. As a matter of fact, I use strong encryption on every single communicF23]Fp%3f@3[NO CARRIER]
Won't keep me from encrypting my phone calls when use VoIP. I'll just make sure I give people my public key along with my phone number!
If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development .. what about the US turning into a police state. I'd say that's quite a bit more disturbing than paying a few bucks.
"If fascism ever comes to America, this will only happen because the Americans voted for it."
:)
-- commonly ascribed to F.D. Roosevelt.
Isn't this what happened already?
P.S. Sorry, couldn't find the original quote, (I wonder why) this is a backwards translation from Russian.
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
Don't forget enlightened. This reminds me of one of my favorite Bad Religion lines: "The guy running the government is just another jerk."
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I've had a detective show up twice at my ISP and ask to see records for IP addresses regarding a criminal investigation (eBay fraud, as it turned out). He was amazed that we didn't have *all* traffic, like logs of the actual content of e-mails, from several months earlier. I tried to explain that something like that would require storage that we couldn't afford, and he said "well, AOL saves all e-mails." Rigghht, of course they do. Hell, it would be trivial for us to sniff and archive every single e-mail for a year.
Freaking morons.
The govt. has uncle fucked us there too. I remember rather recently proposed leglisation that would make commiting a crime and involving encryption to automatically have a stiffer sentence.
Encrypted/PGP Voice over IP 256 bit OVER bitch...... :)
Or better yet- keep the much needded social projects and drop a few less bombs next year.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Oh shit, I forgot how much more enlightened they are. I mean, all those things I could be doing to myself and their wisdom is saving me.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Perhaps now some of you will finally understand that listening to politically short-sighted nerds coercing you to willingly piss away your rights to freely communicate at will over the Internet in the name of politically correct spam fighting is in fact the tip of a conspiracy.
http://www.dotcomeon.com/
Then again, perhaps not. Asking you to see a connection between the killing of open relays, wiretaps and more sinister things yet to come is too mentally challenging... bend over once again, bow to Big Brother, and open wide! This one is well-oiled and really painless -- you won't even feel it coming.
Are you saying they aren't already listening in?!
*Removes tinfoil hat*
You might net the Martha Stewarts of the world with wiretaps, but with most criminals you'll have better luck just siezing all their gear and reading their hard drives anyway. For domestic terrorists, conventional surveilance methods seem to fall short anyway, so in either case I'd have a hard time justifying the added cost of being able to tap their internet communications.
I think the best way of defeating terrorists may be education. Convince the people who tend to turn a blind eye to suspicious activities out of misguided loyalty that ignoring those activities is not beneficial to their community or cause. Take Iraq for instance. Terrorists there are merrily targetting Iraqi citizens at least as much as they are American troops. A lot of the people there blame the USA for "not providing enough security," but how many of those same people are letting those same terrorists crash at their houses, or know someone who is? As long as those people tolerate it, the problem will not go away.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The article CLEARLY states that the providers would assume all financial burdens and COULD raise rates to pay for providing this service.
But what about FOSS VoIP and IM programs?
What about encryption wrappers?
No thanks. I'll gladly donate even more money to bomb the bastards to bits.
I give it 37 minutes. Tops.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
According to T. Clancy (ref. "The Bear and the Dragon"), NSA has a quantum computer already in operation and they can routinely break any existing encryption.
How so?
In order to compensate copyright holders for sharing, the alternative system will need to know who's listening to what.
This is why the EFF's support of file-sharing is so out of whack. In this case, they *want* to build a government agency to listen in.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." This was said by Benjamin Franklin. As was this: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." I think maybe he was on to something... Bush's goal is not to be liked... there are many other forms of control available to him... and his power is increasing by leaps and bounds...
Yeah, right. Well maybe at one time.
If VISTA is the answer, you didn't understand the question
Frankly the people in power in this country are out of their fucking minds.
NO WAY. Whatever is left of privacy in this country is going to finished off quickly if our government has its way with us tax payers.
The kings that run this country, do as they please, when they want. Frankly its not for your safety. It's for their safety. The kings who run this country live in very nice neighborhoods, drive nice cars, have full health coverage and generally breed wealthy successfull children. They're worrying about their security, not YOUR security.
They dont give a shit about the average person in the street with no health care and no living wages.
They care about THEIR lives. They're worried that terrorists will destroy their rich neighborhoods. Btw that is what the WTC is afterall... Its a building that generally employed very wealthy folks.
If they cared about the average citizen... they wouldnt look at us all like criminals. They would pass national health care and make sure each citizen can atleast afford food and shelter each month from the wages they make.
The kings who run this country extend outside the senate and house... and of course the whitehouse. They are the corperations of the country who continously follow this exporting jobs trend while maintaining the same priced goods.
The bottom line is, you cant compete with slave labor. In this country we expect a standard of living. Well the rich kings of this country only care about their standard of living.
Will the president have one of these backdoor'd peices of hardware on his texas ranch?
Will Senate and House members have backdoors to all of their internet connections at home and or wireless connections?
Surely they wont because its a security risk.
SORRY.. BUT FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOU JOE PUBLIC for allowing this "GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT" mentality to continue.
Our news media labels Micheal Jackson as a Pedaphile before any evidence has been presented or heard by a jury. Martha Stewart gets ass raped in the media 5 months before her trial goes to jury... NO SHIT SHES FOUND GUILTY... The media had her guilty from DAY FUCKING 1
Even the Lacey Peterson case... GUILTY in the media before trial.
Martha has been found guilty but who knows how much that has been tainted.
EVERYONE OF THEM IS INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW.
This country is so fucking out of control. The Media is out of control. There is no respect for individual rights.
You are guilty the moment someone accuses you of something. BY WHAT FUCKING LAW I DONT KNOW.. but last i heard it was "INOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY"
People are overstepping their bounds day by day in various forms in this country with no reguard for civil rights.
I find it appauling that slavery was outlawed and yet we allow 400 of the nations richest corperations to hire slave labor in other countries and still charge us the same fucking price.
No jobs, No rights, NO GEORGE BUSH.
And the democrats are bunch of fucking tools also... but atleast they're not AS crazy.
I voted for Ralph last time around.. and well if he gets on the ballot i may do it again.
SOMEONE GO GOOGLE THE BILL OF FUCKING RIGHTS because i think we're forgetting something.
Of course the FBI should get whatever they want. They're doing such a great job, moving from strength to strength. I trust them more than ever, and I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover.
--
make install -not war
No matter who pays, software, hardware, or monitoring costs, this will also cost tax dollars. Plenty of them. This would add a big chunk of beauracracy and that means lots of incompetents all hired to boss other incompetents around. This would involve a good chunk of tax money AND raised cable rates.
This is no a joke.
It's time to wear again those tin foil hats and ask our russian hacker friends how did they manage when KGB had similar powers.
DON'T PANIC
Yeah round up the towelheads! After it stands to reason that a bunch of illiterate, starving third world peasants who can't even stop fighting with each other for a day are behind the decline of the worlds great superpower and not, say for example a lot of greedy fat white men who run your country.
into your net connection, then doesn't it make it easier for a script kiddie to tap into your net connection also and intercept what you're doing?
Or spyware for that matter.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Congress is the only entity that has the power to reign these people in, and I don't see a lot of effort being expended there on our behalf.
Congress and the courts. Unfortunately for us all the courts are being packed with right-wing zealots by the current Bush administration. The heavy handed Republican party, having gained the Whitehouse and a majority in Congress, is now on a crusade to change the very nature of our society from one that values individuality and personal freedom to one that values totalitarian security. The Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have used the tragedy of 9/11 to spread fear among Americans, and are using that fear to gain control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial. If we don't stop allowing the right-wing factions in this country to consolidate their power by taking away our freedoms one by one we won't have a country worth saving.
If you don't like what Congress and the Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld administration is doing then place your vote for people who see that protecting the Constitution and individual liberty is what Patriotism is really all about - not protecting Halliburton and the money-making abilities of the fat cats.
Stop being so politically correct. The fact of the matter is that this is a holy war waged by a bunch of religious fanatics. They WANT to die so they may be blessed by Alah and a hundred virgins in the afterlife.
If they won't listen to reason, then they will have to answer by our might. Sorry to spell out the sick sad truth. No one ever said war was pretty, just a fact of life that has been part of Human history...and perhaps into the future as well.
Remember, we are all animals. Some just happen to be more civilized then others.
Life is not for the lazy.
use PGPfone (it's open source)
Legal experts said the 85-page filing includes language that could be interpreted as forcing companies to build back doors into everything from instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) programs to Microsoft's Xbox Live game service. The introduction of new services that did not support a back door for police would be outlawed, and companies would be given 15 months to make sure that existing services comply.
I am going to keep in mind that this is seen through the filter of cnet, which tends to be somewhat Slashdottish -- kind of liberal, pro-tech, anti-regulation. I really need to see the "85-page document" to decide.
That being said, this is possibly the most disturbing thing I have heard proposed from the federal government yet. Besides the obvious issues of holding back innovation, I find the privacy issues unacceptable. If you want to wiretap someone, fine. Go to wherever they are, and use a parabolic mic or physical bug or something similar. Yes, it doesn't let you tap the population en-masse. There is no justifiable reason for this request. The only thing it does is make cheap, easy, and hard-to-detect-abuse-of wiretapping much more feasible and tempting. I *want* it to be a pain in the ass to wiretap people. It's worked well for hundreds of years, and I see no reason to change this.
I also want to make it clear that I will not follow any such directives requiring programs to including monitoring backdoors. If I have to, I will develop anonymously, through Freenet or similar (no, I'm not brave enough to do something like this openly as a protest and get hammered for it), but I will not begin inserting backdoors into the software I work on.
I am absolutely appalled that something like this would be suggested. It is the sort of thing that people that I considered "tin foil hatters" were worrying about for a long time. I would like to see an EFF analysis of this. If this is as bad as the article makes it out to be, this will be the thing that tips me over the edge to sending money to the EFF.
I would like to know what evidence cnet has for claiming that the Bush administration backs this. If they really are, they are going well beyond even what I thought Ashcroft's most tyrannical police-state aspirations were.
Among other things, I claim that this will:
* Limit innovation. This is a *real* issue, not a "we can't bundle Internet Explorer and now innovation is being suppressed" whine. Putting backdoors in protocols is a serious issue.
* Damage US credibility internationally when it comes to secure software. The cryptographic export restrictions did a phenomenal amount of damage to the US computer security industry, and let foreigners take over the market. When you want smartcard systems, you don't go to a US company. This is absolutely unacceptable, as computer security is becoming ever more important as more and more people are using it.
* Provide an impediment to international software projects. The United States is not the world, nor is it even "effectively universal" on the Internet. If you ban something like development of a VoIP system without key escrow, development will simply move overseas. Sure, you could make *using* software without escrow a federal offense (thank you Britain, which has set the path for this wonderfully stupid approach). It will do *nothing* to stop propagation of software. The last time the FBI tried to meddle with the Internet via legislation like this was when they arrested Mr. Zimmerman for releasing PGP. It *didn't work*, and wouldn't have protected their ability to snoop on people. We have come up with many approaches to deal with US laws limiting computer security, and can be used again in this case.
* Is stunningly short-sighted. You can't make a single effective law like this. What if I ssh to a system and use an IM system there to talk to someone else on the same system (and I *have* sshed in and used talk or phone on a Unix or VMS system before).
May we never see th
Yeah! Because Everyone knows that the people who are deing detained in guantanamo are all:
- covered by the US constitution as american citizens
- Innocent of supporting a brutal government that waged war on the US through a proxy
- Legal prisoners of war who followed the geneva conventions by waging war in uniforms identifying theml as combattants
Or, maybe they were not any of those & were thus fair game for being shot as spies & illegal combattants.
Pff...
Posted anonymously because this post is as much offtopic as it's parents.
I want those fucking Islamic extremists killed on the spot.
I suspect many of them would like to see people like you wiped out on the spot for suppressing their religion, intimidating and screwing with their country and economy, etc.
9/11 al Queda members didn't wake up one day and decide, for no reason at all, to spend their own lives to try to hurt people they saw as oppressors. There was a reason that they feel the way they do, and I doubt that trying to use force and intimidation is going to work all that well. It didn't work for the Soviets (and they could be awfully brutal). It just makes more people that hate you enough to die to hurt you.
But, whatever. Bush doesn't need to solve the terrorist problem to get votes. He needs to make people feel good to get votes. And beating the crap out of someone makes people feel good.
May we never see th
This is ludacris. Doesn't the FBI have better things to do than raise prices of Broadband so they can spy on us? This is all for home intruision. Not only will they just moniter internet traffic, Downloads, Uploads So this will make it easier for them to run to the RIAA like a little kid telling on someone.
$>man woman
$>Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Oh, and before you thought this was just something typical of the American government and all the Europeans were laughing at you; we've had this kind of monitoring here in the Netherlands for some time now. To the extent that ISP's are not allowed to offer encrypted services such as IMAP over SSL.
Worse if the fact that on shared media broadband such as cable modems they not only will tap the suspect but every user on that segment.
Diplomatic communications between embassies and the homeland are encrypted. And to make sure they're not vulnerable to decryption, information is continuously transferred. However, when there is no information to be transmitted, random garbage is sent.
So, what we need to do is to flood the Internet with random garbage; let the FBI sift through that!!!
Oh, wait! This system already exists: it's called USENET!!!!
1. The FBI is only "asking" the FCC which, anyway, lacks jurisdiction to tell IRC programmers how to program.
Currently, this is the case. I think that no matter what, there will be pragmatic issues. However, the FCC's role in regulating Internet-based things is very much up in the air, and conflicting opinions have been taken.
The Clinton administration, barring a few moves, took a very federal-hands-off approach to the Internet (taxes, especially, were a big sticking point). Bush largely continued that. At some point, though, it's a good bet that someone's going to try regulating the Internet in various ways, and the FCC is the most obvious choice to designate as a starting point.
2. The Internet is becoming more decentralzed (e.g. anonymous wireless LANS,P2P networks, etc.) so there will be too many small time non compliant ISPs to go after. And the government, not for want of trying, has so far shown only futile attempts at regulating the Internet.
Not necessarily. For certain major systems, like VoIP, there will likely be a few large ones due to network effect. Think of AIM and ICQ today. If you don't play by the rules, you can't interoperate. These services are centralized, so it's easy to monitor and pick up on noncompliant systems.
3. The only people for this are the FBI and a few conservative politicians. They're going up against the communications giants and equipment manufacuters -- financially secure industries with campaign contributions, lobby groups, and lots of lawyers.
Now this is a damn good point, but I can think of a couple of legitimate counterarguments. The first is that telcos are scared of the VoIP. It breaks down barriers to entry that have existed for a long time to nothing. They have a *lot* of overhead and costs that have cropped up over years, and they're looking for a way out. If VoIP systems required key escrow and *federal approval* before they can be rolled out, it makes for a *very* nice barrier to entry. You just have to donate some money to the appropriate politicians, and you've good a good reason for companies to want to play along.
4. Besides all that, they just don't get it. Any two connected nodes communicating by pulses (ones and zeros) can always encrypt their conversation. Language is a secret handshake.
In theory, yes. In practice, there are only so many easy-to-use mass-market clients out there. It would be difficult but feasible to go after noncompliant types. For techies, this is a non-issue, since it's easy to whip something else new up each day. For Joe Blow, this is very effective.
I first realized the "Joe Blow"-"techie" separation when the Feds stopped going after Zimmerman for PGP. It didn't *matter* that a couple of security nuts with the dedication to get gpg and a wrapper and mutt set up. There aren't many people who were willing to copy and paste text in and out of Eudora each thime they wanted to encrypt or decrypt a message. As a result, the masses did not use PGP, so PGP was not a huge issue. The hard-core security nuts and cryptographers are kept shut up, because they *can* set up PGP, and the Fed is happy because the masses *don't* use PGP.
However, with VoIP, the issue came up again. Email is generally read on a computer, where you can add PGP on, and hence software vendors don't bundle PGP support. However, if you start selling VoIP embedded devices, you probably need to bundle native encryption support for it to be used. It will be easy-to-use and probably automatic. This is unacceptable, because the masses will start *using* end-to-end encryption.
The thing is, I can't work up much dislike by the FBI, because they're getting displaced by the OHS, which is ever so much more nasty and has ever so much less oversight. At this point, the FBI is the lesser of two evils -- by a long, long, long shot.
May we never see th
This has little to do with catching terrorists.
This is to catch software pirates, and eventually, should the RIAA whine enough, music pirates.
Your (should you be American) tax dollars at work!
Broadband providers say the FBI's request would, for the first time, force cable providers that sell broadband to come under the jurisdiction of 1994's Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which further defined the already existing statutory obligations of telecommunications carriers to help police conduct electronic surveillance. Telephone companies that use their networks to sell broadband have already been following CALEA rules.
Ok, fair enough I suppose. But the fact however, as has been pointed out here, is that not all programs are being written in the US. To make IM, VoIP, IRC, and or whatever other type of program that allows communication over IP have backdoors is bad enough. But to expect that every program on the planet has one is just downright silly. But, thats not really the bad part...
Under CALEA, police must still follow legal procedures when wiretapping Internet communications. Depending on the situation, such wiretaps do not always require court approval, in part because of expanded wiretapping powers put in place by the USA Patriot Act.
Bad, bad, bad. Is it so much to ask for due process here? I mean it's part of our own set of friggen laws. Is it so much to ask that the Feds follow the laws before they make new ones?
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I trust that timing the announcement of this proposal on the day after the Madrid terrorist bombings is just an unfortunate coincidence. Not that it would affect the public's sentiment one way or the other, right? And we can be confident that Congress will study it rationally and objectively, as demonstrated by their carefully considered passage of the Patriot Act, passed almost unanimously before any single human could even read all 800 pages of it, much less grasp its scope.
The sick thing about all Internet wiretapping is that when asked why this is required, the cops always just say "child pornography", and everybody rolls over; the media has created the impression that about every second byte transmitted has something to do with child porn. Between our War on Terrorism (With an Occasional Aside for Oil) and child porn Internet hysteria, we have two beautiful excuses to slowly rip up the Bill of Rights, piece by piece.
Here comes the next shred.
If every net connection becomes so easy for the cops/kiddies to sniff, maybe this will be a strong enough incentive for the developpers out there to implement good encryption (ssl/tls?) in every internet protocol
Agreed: "The Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have used the tragedy of 9/11 to spread fear among Americans, and are using that fear to gain control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial. If we don't stop allowing the right-wing factions in this country to consolidate their power by taking away our freedoms one by one we won't have a country worth saving."
The U.S. government is rapidly becoming more corrupt. Here are just a few examples, which were posted before to another story:
Killing people and destroying their property:
N.Y. Times editorial
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."
Lying about scientific facts:
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times
The Guardian
Wired News
Union of Concerned Scientists
The present terrorism against the U.S. people is partly the result of the U.S. government's secret violence:
About a year ago, I hastily put together a short, incomplete history that shows what has happened: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.
If you don't like it, vote accordingly.
I, for one, welcome our new FBI overlords.
I've got a shitlist here:
China: Repressive government with deep love for monitoring citizens and harsh penalties for political dissent.
Australia: Extremely socially conservative government with love for censoring Internet.
Britain: Anti-gun, laws forcing people to hand over passwords/keys upon request, leader has mouth firmly glued to Bush's cock.
Netherlands: Apparently anti-encryption government?
Man, I wish some hacker would grab email from a couple of important figures in the Netherlands and post said data all over.
This worked nicely in the United States when protesting "trash rights". Theoretically, when you throw something out, you no longer lay claim to it, and it isn't yours. That means that anyone (even without a warrant) can come along and root through your trash for interesting information. The police force of some town busted someone for marijuana-growing or something after monitoring their garbage for a long time without a warrant. The local paper ran an editorial criticizing them. The mayor and police chief both bashed the editor of the paper, saying that the paper didn't know what it was talking about and should shut up. The police chief sent a letter in to the paper saying that the ability to monitor garbage wasn't an invasion of privacy and was perfectly acceptable. The editors of the paper ran out and collected the *mayor's* and *police chief's* trash for two weeks (using the same argument of legality that the police chief used), then published a rather embarassing dossier on each.
May we never see th
The Great Society is a socialist state. We need less government, less welfare, less projects, less help. The government does not exist to help people. It exists to protect people. But protection, in my opinion, does not mean protection from the realities of life.
If you blog it...
The cable guy left some pieces last time I moved.
Anyone got anymore?
We can rebuild it, we make it run faster, be stronger...
The six *million* dollar network...
The problem isn't in allowing LEA access to what they want. It's making sure there's a process they have to go through to get them, which prevents them from getting the information when they shouldn't be.
We have one. It's called "the current system", where if you want to tap someone's VoIP connection you have to stick someone out by their house with a parabolic mic or plant a bug in their house. This makes for a wonderful check on the system -- LEAs simply can't *afford* to monitor each and every person, do fishing expeditions, or do the sort of thing the French claim in the form of Echelon. I rather like this system. It means that if the police *really* want to bug someone, like a mob boss, they can, but they can't just wildly run out and monitor huge swaths of society.
May we never see th
In principle I have no objection to altering the existing wiretap laws to account for new technologies such as VoIP. However, make no mistake that once this occurs, the next thing on the chopping block are encryption products. The argument will be "We cannot effectively monitor terrorists and child pornographers because strong encryption has become commonplace."
We'll be back to either mandating weaker forms of encryption or requiring backdoors be installed at the encrypted tunnel layer. SSL/TLS, IPSec and SSH all come to mind (key escrow, anybody?). By designating the tunnel endpoints as "service providers" (they ARE in fact providing some sort of service or else you wouldn't be communicating with them), they could require a backdoor be installed at the endpoint.
Shape of things to come...
Man, I wish some hacker would grab email from a couple of important figures in the Netherlands and post said data all over.
Encryption is not illegal in the Netherlands (yet?), it's just that the ISP's are not allowed to interfere with the wiretap systems installed. They're not yet braindead enough to prohibit secure http, but it wouldn't surprise me when they did.
I also hear there are plans to force all traffic to be logged and keep those logs for some years. Would be heaven for storage media manufacturers...
Luckily, my fantastic ISP XS4All offers SSH access to their FreeBSD shell servers, still allowing me to access my mail securely. Apparently SSH usage is not widespread enough for the government to care.
Regardless, this is pretty intrusive on the FBI's part. Even though it isn't a blatant intrusion into our private lines located within our home, it may as well be, since our direct line to the internet for 99.9% of the population runs through commercial ISP's. I hope someone cries foul on this proposal in support for the protection of privacy. However, with the state of most American's line of thinking, such a hope is far-fetched.
I agree, and I'm sorry for the "me too" post. Sometimes it seems like people are unable to view potential consequences for their actions or the consequences of not acting.
anata sekai o kakumei surush ga nai deshou? Anata no susumu michi wa yoi shite arimasu.
ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND!!!! al Queda doesn't give a rats ass about politics. If you are anything BUT of the Islamic faith, you are scum and condemed to hell by the rath of Alah (read the Quran sometime). And al Queda sees themselves as nothing more then an instrument of Alahs will. And you want to talk about oppressive!!...do some research of the Taliban. It doesn't get more oppressive then that. They do it to themselves.
al Queda mainly has America on it's sights because we are everything they hate from a religious perspective. So naturally, we are the first to be targeted. Also, Russia has been targets of Islamic fanatics along with Spain. Let's not forget Israel too.
Please, spare me the BS about America pushing them around! Your insulting my intelligence.
Life is not for the lazy.
They've only got 8 more months to do this shit. I'm a fiscally conservative (and social moderate) Republican, but IF I vote it'll be for Kerry. I want this asshole Bush out of office before kids have to learn to goosestep and wear brown shirts in kindergarten. The religious right must've spooged in their shorts when the supreme court handed the Presidency to Bush, but it's set back democracy 100 years. I guess I'll have to deal with that Massachusetts asshat Kerry raising my taxes and giving welfare mothers more of my money for 4 years, but it's better than the fascist fucks in office right now.
what next? required video camera on every computer monitor or you will be forced to face charges of treason and be tried as a terrorist for defying the us government? it's getting close.. europe has made a few hundred steps backward a few days ago with this act:
n .s html
http://www.ipjustice.org/CODE/release20040309_e
which allows european AND american companies to do whatever the fuck they want to european citizens. raid their houses, force isp's to give personal information, allow them to have access to prvate government records about people (so they can extort people) give them the freedom to do whatever they want to people... freeze their assets, basically, treat them worse than terrorists.
what's scary is that we're about one step away from that.. that bill did every thing the US government would love to do. and will do within the next few years.
this stuff is scary.
time for some new politicians.
That may have been true a few years ago, but fortunately we now have an administration with the will and wisdom to make our children and grandchildren pay instead. So live it up and just hope you die before the bill shows up!
"A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public Friday, would require all American citizens, including anyone who has visited or can spell America, to rewire their assholes to support easy probing by police.
A similar law was passed a year ago in Croatia forcing all GSM operators to enable wiretapping of their customers at the providers' expence. I beleive most European countries have similar laws.
Some people simply aren't going to work. I've seen it, I've lived with it. It's not a matter of a lot of people getting the help they need to get back into a job. Some people just don't want a job. They are perfectly content to get their welfare check, sit at home, watch tv, drink/smoke pot, whatever, so long as it doesn't involve their getting employment. Obviously, there are people who are dependent upon the system who genuinely need the assistance to pick themselves up. However, I have seen more than my fair share of people who fought harder to keep their welfare checks than they did to secure a job.
The civil libertarians realize what none of the tin-foil hat paranoiacs on
Obviously, the first step in defending our rights and freedoms is vigilance. Everyone give yourself a pat on the back for vigilance.
The next and essential step is actually identifying the real problem. Here the problem is not that the proposal will "dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers," because it can't. First, no law specifically authorizes the FBI's wiretap powers, but the gov'ts. Second, the FCC has NO AUTHORITY WHATSOEVER to define when law enforcement can or cannot tap someone's communications. Third, it it was such a realistic threat, it would have already happened, as such laws and regulations have been implemented in the past.
To protect your rights, you must know your rights and understand the system, so that you know when you're really threatened and how and where to direct your energy. Read before you (continue to) rant:
1. Things like this are already required as explained in this summary of this law (remember CALEA from 1994?)!
2. The authority to wiretap anyone's communication is governed not by the FCC but by this amendment to the Constitution (with informative analysis) and this statute.
This is a threat to your ISP service bill and the quality of the services and software, not your constitutional rights. I don't want to live in a market where all communications products have legally mandated back doors, either. But not because I'm afraid the FBI (or NSA or MS or anyone) will then be able to eavesdrop on everything I do. They lack the resources, the skills, and the authority to do that whether the FCC accepts this proposal or not.
The truth doesn't match your political belief system?
"Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs."
Yeah, right.
These people no longer have an interest in what I want. They know that by controlling the masses using the media outlets they can get the votes they want. They don't even have to do what we want.
Instead, I am going to go and, in a legal manner, fund the purchase of two more firearms for friends of mine who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it.
TIP: When a three letter agency operative shows up at the door to ruin everybody's life on some unconstituional law and gets shot up for his trouble everytime, eventually they stop coming. And I mean everybody.
AGENT: "I'm here to enforce the new law that recommends that you brush your teeth at 8:15AM exactly every morning. Toothpaste lobbies, dontcha know. Unfortunately, you and your family brushed your teeth at 8:16 this morning. And sir, you missed a spot. So, we are going to go light on you today and just kill you and your family. We'll leave the dog"
HOMEOWNER: "BLAM!!!!" "Honey, dig another hole in the yard for me..."
i agree with you -- for now. the manpower and cost issue overwhelm the "big brother" specter. however, i am sure the government forsees a day where packets can be analyzed in an automatic way, much as i recall they have voiceprint information to identify suspects using cellphones by their voices. encryption would seem to be the death knell to all of this.
as for who's talking to whom, public terminals such as at libraries -- the 9-11 folk used these -- will still be a problem. however, you're right, this is very valuable information, and also the sort of thing they should not be collecting without legitimate individual suspicion.
the single biggest barrier to effective intelligence will continue to be human intelligence, of the lack of it. it takes a lot to be a thoughtful investigator and there aren't that many of them. there are plenty of mccarthyist idiots, however. we must watch these developments with care, armed with the assumption that the spy tools will fall into the hands of someone with ethics no more developed that those of a script kiddie.
Why is parent modded as flamebait?
That's the most insightful comment I've read all week.
Bush thinks that by bombing innocent people he'll win war on terrorism? please... He is just making things worse for this and future generations.
I suspect many of them would like to see people like you wiped out on the spot for suppressing their religion, intimidating and screwing with their country and economy, etc.
Yes, let's all play nice-nice with the murderous fanatics. Then they'll be nice to us (BTW, why is it that good, hard working Americans, who want nothing more than to live in peace, are seen as evil scumbags, while murderous scumbags are just "misunderstood"?)
By the way, the reasons they want people like the grandparent dead (and you, by the way) isn't anything so noble as he hurt their feelings. It's because he, and you, are not Muslim. That's it, that's their reason. Want to talk about "oppressing someone's religion"? Then talk about how Christians and Jews were stoned to death by the Taliban on a daily basis.
9/11 al Queda members didn't wake up one day and decide, for no reason at all, to spend their own lives to try to hurt people they saw as oppressors. There was a reason that they feel the way they do, and I doubt that trying to use force and intimidation is going to work all that well.
Ya know what? I don't give a fuck what their reasons are. They want us all dead. Yes, you, too, Mr. Liberal. They don't think we're "oppressing" them, they won't be nice to us if we all sit around a campfire and sing Kumbaya, and they will not stop until we all either dead or Muslim. That's what they want, and we've done nothing to bring this on ourselves. We are the victims, they are the perpetrators, and stop making excuses for them!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Get your freedoms back? You really think they will give it back after going through so much trouble taking it from you? Absolutely not. Politics is a game where the objective is to seize and keep as much power as possible, for as long as possible. The difference in a democracy is that we willingly give them power by voting for them... no matter who we vote for.
I agree. The proposal that new equipment conform to these standards is ridiculous, but then the fact that old systems aren't even grandfathered in (i.e. existing systems are also required to upgrade) is even more ridiculous.
Existing factories and power plants don't have to upgrade to comply with new environmental standards. Why should existing routers have to be patched to satisfy Big Brother.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Not to say that we shouldn't criticize America's corruption, but I see little short of an election of an isolationist pacifist and appointment of isolationist pacifist heads, that will change anything about the operations of the American government.
In a democracy, the govt does want you want it to do. If I want a Great Society or a dog-eat-dog authoritarian state, then that's up to me at the ballot box. Of course, if you're stuffing these ideas down my throat, well, don't expect to be called freedom-loving at the end of it.
Bugging on such a large scale always comes up against the "little elves" problem - you have more data than you can possibly sift. The real question is, do you want to fund what amounts to a giant needle-in-the-haystack search which will be less efficient - and more expensive - than what you've got now. Of course, being emporer of those little elves will be fun and powerful; I'm just waiting for a J Edgar Hoover figure too step-to and start flashing all this data at the right people. Of course, he should have the dresses to match...
At the end of the day, the FBI problems are *social problems* and the only way to do that is to talk to people. No amount of electronics. Ooops. This is slashdot, my bad.
h.
Sigs? We don't need no steenkin sigs!
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Osama bin Laden is laughing at the emotions he arouses in people like you (and there are many in Amerika).
If people didn't think and behave on emotion, OBL wouldn't be effective.
these handy-dandy-doo-dads... (Shomiti Century 12 tap)
You mean the Johnson administration? That was more than a few years ago.
If you think deficit spending started "a few years ago" or with the current administration, you're sadly deluded.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Canada has far more social systems in place than the US. Until the early 1990s, you could argue the Canadian government was more authoritarian than life in the US, especially given the higher tax burden. Since the past 10 years, however, I think you'd be a fool to make that argument.
I've never heard of the US called "The Great Society", but if you think things like education, healthcare, social security, and pensions are the makings of an authoritarian regime, then you really need to reconsider your perspective in a worldwide context.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
This is ludacris.
No, THIS is Ludacris.
The word you were looking for is ludicrous.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Am I the only one who thinks it's no coincidence that the Feds sprung this on us right after the bombings in Madrid?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
I suspect many of them would like to see people like you wiped out on the spot for suppressing their religion, intimidating and screwing with their country and economy, etc.
9/11 al Queda members didn't wake up one day and decide, for no reason at all, to spend their own lives to try to hurt people they saw as oppressors. There was a reason that they feel the way they do[...]
Sure they have reasons for what they do. That doesn't make those reasons legitimate, or compatible with what the rest of the world wants. Violent political islamists like al-Queda want the west to go away because it's corrupting their youth and an embarrasement to the idea that the way for the arab world to regain its lost glory is by looking backward and turing to ever-stricter forms of Islam.
It would actually be possible to give them what they want, and they would probably go away, or at least focus on the fact that their homelands aren't nearly as pious as they'd like...but, it'd me much less inconvenient to western civilization to just blow them off the face of the earth.
and I doubt that trying to use force and intimidation is going to work all that well. It didn't work for the Soviets (and they could be awfully brutal). It just makes more people that hate you enough to die to hurt you.
The Soviets actually wanted to do what Noam Chomsky and friends accuse the US of doing; traditional imperialism, taking over and enslaving the locals to extract resources (rather than just buying the resources from them, and yes there is a difference). The US funding the local opposition against the Soviets couldn't have helped their cause either.
The US is being reasonably careful at not killing people that aren't trying to destroy the west. Avoiding Soviet-style brutality makes us more effective, not less.
What are the realities of life? If the government should pick from a list of, let's say, murder, famine, and disease, which ones would you support?
Usually the government is trying to protect our way of life or alliances with other nations. None of the wars that the US was involved in over the past 100 years, with the exception of Pearl Harbor, took place on American soil. At the local government level, police do not serve as your bodyguard, but can arrest someone after they have robbed or murdered you. Hopefully, the punishment that person receives serves to discourage others.
whenever your tax money goes to Welfare Queens and members of racial groups whom you'd never let anywhere near your daughter, think of it as Riot Insurance. Without social programs, the masses eventually run riot. Even the Romans understood this.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Okay ... if you know the names of a few members of any party that are currently running for high office who will provide more than lip service to those ideals and have even the slightest chance of actually occupying said offices, please share them. The rest of us are in the unenviable position of selecting from a few useless "candidates" and an abusive incumbent. For that matter, we could probably generate significant amounts of useful energy by running a V-belt power takeoff from the Founding Fathers, who are no doubt turning over rapidly in their graves right now.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's not all the same whether it's paid through taxes or higher service fees. Not every taxpayer is an Internet subscriber, but only Internet subscribers would have to pay. And yet the benefits-- granting that there will be benefits-- of this program will be shared by subscribers and nonsubscribers alike. Where's the fairness in that?
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Actually the direction the Internet is going, is that to be safe from the government and also from hacker intrusions and also from getting bogusly framed for internet crimes, everyone is going to have to adopt a "whitelist-only" policy of connecting and allowing connections from your machine(s). Else you might as well just simply pull the plug and quit the Internet.
oh wait, still iam glad iam not your boss
This is just part of the natural progression of total control and monitoring of the public.
This will pass, and people will accept it since it 'protects me'..
Eventually we will get to ongoing monitoring of all activities, regardless of any suspicion.. Even in your own home...
Don't laugh, if you don't see it coming, then you are a fool.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- Ashcroft will sneak these provisions into Patriot Act III.
- Bush will use his patrotic propaganda to ensure its safe passage.
- It will become law right under the feet of many clueless individuals.
- Bush will ensure it remains with his "You must be a terrorist if you want to weaken our security forces" rhetoric.
It is a hope of mine that one day, the idiots in the government will come to realize that the Internet is supposed to be beyond any government's control. Unfortunately, I doubt the powermongers will ever let that happen.that's all it is...a wishlist.
hell, I have my wishlists too...some obtainable, some not. Example, a dual G5 loaded with debian and three 23" LCD's (on a trihead), plus a beowulf cluster. (all obtainable if one had the money).
And Jessica Alba as my wife (not necessarilly obtainable), and Jennifer Love Hewitt as my second wife (especially if "second wife" is with first wife, except maybe in Utah).
See?
The religious right must've spooged in their shorts when the supreme court handed the Presidency to Bush
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "religious right", but I think I fit that description (Christian, pro-life, opposed to gay marriage, etc.) and I hate this administration. I despise Bush the retard, Cheney the evil money man, and Ashcroft the tyrant fascist.
I guess my point is to be careful painting people with such a broad brush...
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
And I thought k5 had ignorant political disucssion. They're enlightened compared to this crowd.
Where something like this would never happen in a million years. One thing the Canadian government does right is its citizens right to privacy. It may not be perfect but Canadians are afforded the most privacy of any G7 country.
Though it is an invasion of all our privacy, blah blah blah, Wiretapping the internet is not really that hard, all you need is a laptop plugged into the ISP's central node running Ethereal, where you can filter in only the internet traffic and IP adderesses that you want to see, in the end I don't even think that the FBI really needs any new powers to do this though IANAL
Does China even have something this nasty? In some ways I'd prefer a nationwide firewall to this.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The World Trade center wasn't on American soil?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
However, the consumers will end up paying for the wiretapping regadless, whether the ISP's are forced to do the upgrade themselves, or if the FBI funds since the FBI is funded with everyone American's dollars.
Yes, but if government pays, the cost is distributed much wider than if your ISP pays (where you pay much larger share). If the 260 million want to enjoy the "benefits" of the FBI's snooping into my computer, then 260 million ought to pay for it, not just me and my ISP.
I plead the Fourth
It means that if the police *really* want to bug someone, like a mob boss, they can, but they can't just wildly run out and monitor huge swaths of society.
The Fourth Amendment is only as strong as the judges who are asked to approve the warrants.
If you have good and decent people serving as judges, you have nothing to worry about.
For that matter, if you have good and decent people serving as police, you have nothing to worry about.
Abstractions like the Fourth Amendment are only as good as the people who are sworn to uphold them, i.e. our constitution is really a state of heart, not a state of semantics.
PS: The FBI's request is available here, in PDF format:
Understandably, the FBI wants to get the ball rolling on CALEA compliance; most of the brief deals with timetables and enforcement penalties. The heart of the matter is addressed on document page 37 [PDF page 42], however: and again on document page 38 [PDF page 43]: I don't think the person [or people] who wrote the document realize quite how much more difficult it is to eavesdrop on and record a digital communication than it is to eavesdrop on and record an analog communication. We've had analog recording technologies since the time of Edison, and they're fairly well standardized, but we've got almost no standards whatsoever for recording a digital communication. I don't think the lawyers at the FBI realize how difficult it's going to be to decide on just what it is that will be required of the ISP's - most of the press reports I'm reading involve somebody or other [either the ISPs or the FBI themselves] whining about the implementation of the [as yet to be made] decision, but no one seems to have realized just how difficult it's going to be to make the decision in the first place.I also don't think the lawyers at the FBI realize just how much larger digital communications are than analog communications. For instance, a child molester can sit at his computer and download several gigabytes of child porn every night - it's conceivable that he could be downloading on the order of several hundred gigabytes [i.e. non-trivial fractions of terabytes] of child porn every month. If an ISP is served with a warrant to monitor his activities, then somebody [the ISP? the FBI? the NSA/Echelon?] will have to have a repository to store those hundreds of gigabytes [terabytes?] of child porn that he's downloading. This is not at all a trivial problem in and of itself, especially when you think of the excess storage capacity that will be needed so as to have the capability to monitor this sort of activity in a nation of 300 million people.
Can't have it both ways. If the WTC was an act of war, then all the people being held without trial in guantanimo (sp) bay should be prisoners of war and subject to the geneva convention, instead of being "enemy combatants" and tortured.
Things like that would never happen if Main Street U.S.A. had good education and ability to think outside the box. The PATRIOT act sounds so mighty powerful to an average Joe; he does not know that "patriot" in the title of the act is just an abbreviation for some mambo-jumbo. Then there is our president who is focused on fighting terrorism and he will do anything to make people believe in danger. He portrays himself as a hero while real heros have to eat shit and die Iraq. He waves a flag, that is probably made in China, while taking away medical benefits from our vets. Where is the rage? Where are the Americans who want to live in the land of the free?
One might say that there are educated people that support the act because somebody had to vote for it. Unfortunately this is correct: there are rich and well-educated people who are interested in this act because they do not want to lose their precious multi-million houses, expensive cars and wine collections. These people come out and lie because they know that average Joes will believe them. They wrap themselves into our flag and they say words like "patriotism," "american dream," and "freedom." The sad thing is that many people go for these lies because THEY DO NOT KNOW BETTER.
With that in mind, here is my wish list. I want American kids to study more history, sociology, and political-science. Make our kids aware of what is going on in the world because if you do not, they will turn into pathetic adults who can express no rage when it is needed. I want our future generations to stand up and go on Washington D.C. if their president leads them into a senseless war or tries to take their freedom away.
Why if you vote? Get out and do it! Make a difference.
I guess I'll have to deal with that Massachusetts asshat Kerry raising my taxes and giving welfare mothers more of my money for 4 years, but it's better than the fascist fucks in office right now.
I'd suspect that you see better budgets and smaller deficts with Kerry in office then Dubya. The Republicans don't get to claim they are the party of fiscal responsibility anymore. Clinton managed to balance the budget -- Reagan and Dubya tanked it in the name of defense spending.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually you are wrong. If you take actions outside of the realm of a normal solider then under the Geneva convention you are considered a spy and subject to execution if caught.
During the Battle of the Bulge the Germans sent English speaking special operations forces behind allied lines dressed in American uniforms to disrupt communications. When these forces were caught they were summarily executed by the allies.
If you want the Geneva convention to apply to you then I suggest you put on a uniform and face us on the field of battle. It doesn't apply if you fly airliners into our buildings.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I agree, for chrissakes how long is this going to continue? I mean it's one thing after the next, and so many americans these days are just trusting this blind faith "protection of freedom" what a load of horseshit. How long until we start getting harrassed for simply stumbling upon sites? Popups anyone? This country is quickly becoming what 1984 warned against, and apparently the GW administration keeps using that book as a guide. I swear to God, this country is losing all freedoms that we are supposed to be protecting. What gives them this right? Who asked them to do all of this shit to begin with? When are people going to wake up and realize that they no longer have this "freedom"? Land of the free indeed.
I would vote for a dead horse before voting for George W. Bush for another term (that's no joke). There may be no perfect candidates for Congress or the Presidency, but there are clearly those who are trying to take away our freedoms more aggressively than others. If we have to kick someone out I say start with those.
As Ben Franklin said, perhaps prophetically, when leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1776: "We have provided a Republic, madam - if you can keep it."
Guys, it's nice and all that CNET, the WSG, and the Washington Post have all this info. Is there a link to the filing?
Social programs have been decimated in the past four years. The Great Society has been destroyed in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Defense spending has been astronomical and does not need to get any bigger. If greater power is given for wiretapping we will be running headlong into a police state. At this point the government already has too much power and needs to cut money out of programs that only serve to arm the government to the teeth, only to attack its own citizens and other nations unilateraly. If we need anything right now it's programs that will get the people of this country back on their feet.
Well, for a start, the federal government has a constitutional mandate to provide for a common defense. It doesn't have any constitutional authority to take money away from Party A to spend on benefits for Party B. But I'd certainly agree that the government's military/intelligence activities are far in excess of anything that could be legitimately called "defense".
Both of them are a symptom of the same problem, namely, that our government has long ago slipped off of the leash the Constitution was intended to be.
Now, we have to figure out how to get the leash back on....
Fuck that!
Govt. has NO rights to snoop my communications. It HAS to be against the constitution. When the hell will the fucking right wing conservative supreme court knock down the "patriot" (read fascist in your bedroom bush) act and give us our rights back?
Gonna start encripting everything, and the feds can crack my code or SUCK MY DICK!
ANYONE WHO VOTES FOR BUSH IS A FASCIST BASTARD
For chrissakes, is supporting the citizens of this country really so awful? I mean have you ever been to Europe? lived there? I felt more free, safe, and welcome there than I do in my own country (USA). I mean please tell me that by contributing to a social system that crime increases, people live on the street because they can't work, and health care goes to shit. And also tell me that this costs 90% of your income. Get real. I agree that bush has to go, but I'd much rather have kerry raise taxes and maybe see us get something for those taxes. I'm a graduating student finding work to be less than desirable, no health care, and the lowest wages in recent history. Bush sucks ass.
Social welfare accounts for approximately 50 billion dollars in taxpayer money a year. Corporate welfare accounts for approximately 150 billion of our hard-earned dollars a year, which the corporations take and then say "Sayanara! We're moving to China!"
If you need a site, I'll be happy to dig one up for you.
You want to complain about welfare? Start making noise about corporate welfare!
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
Or better yet- keep the much needded social projects and drop a few less bombs next year.
I've got a better idea.
How about less bombs and less social programs, and letting the taxpayers keep their own damn money so they can figure out how they'd like it to be spent?
It is, after all, their money in the first place. Right?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
I'm all ears. Where are the articles?
Exactly, people across the board have reason to NOT vote for Bush this year. The religious right should be concerned with the fact that Bush lied to get us to go to war. Last time I checked, not telling the truth is a sin.
Now if Bush tries to use the excuse that he didn't know, even though the CIA and many others knew better... well that makes Bush incompetent.
So Bush is either a liar or incompetent. Either way, Kelly is definitely the lesser of two evils, so unless you find one of the 3rd parties interesting... it should be obvious how to vote: that is NOT for Bush in 2004.
But that's exactly my point. In your original post you suggested that the attack on the world trade centre was an act of war. I'm suggesting that if you don't treat any of the combatants the way you would soldiers you can't call the attack on the WTC an act of war.
As I understand it, 'religious right' is shorthand for a group of people with a highly theocratic vision of future politics in the US who also take short-term populist positions for expediency, in order to gain favor. Not the best of labels, but labels rarely are.
If the grandparent poster is reasonable, he is unlikely to paint you with the same brush as conservative Christians who consume the crap these people produce. As an extremely socially liberal person who is also extremely fiscally conservative (as if either of those labels mean anything), I have often thought that thinking Christians were natural allies in the current governmental wars. I disagree with you on theology, you disagree with me, but we both think government is not about religion. Once upon a time, a certain infuential person was tortured to death by a state for having particular religious convictions, which convinces you (or at least I can simplify things to that point for myself). Many times, over the years, many people have been tortured to death by various governments for having opinions, religious or not, which convinces me.
Similar enough for me, so long as we can all agree that people should go to hell, or not, on thier own terms.
I forget what 8 was for.
I find that neo-conservative is the perfect brush to paint Bush and company.
The political divisiveness of this administration has painted everybody in a corner. It's as if the administration is distracting the political factions with petty arguments to implement policy that would otherwise outrage the majority, IF they understood the implications of the policy.
Explaining the impact of subtile policy to the public takes time and requires an attention span and open mind from the public.
In other words, it's pretty hard to have a productive conversation about policy when everybody's at each other's throats over petty issues like gay marriage.
It haven't come to your mind that there might be a reason most of the world "hate" america? (Mind you, not the american PEOPLE, but american [foreign] POLICY)?
And you don't you find it abit ironic (or rather: sad) that both Saddam Husseins Iraq regime AND Al-Queda was more or less officially sponsored/supported by the US government in the 80's to fight the ussr? AND that most of the socalled WMD was actually given (ok, he actually paid for it) by American and European companies?
Or how about the fact that after the 1st gulf war, Saddams remaining troops slaughtered 1000's of shia muslims, with the coalition forces acceptance?
Are you really so naive (or blind?) to think this is just a bunch of islamic freaks who happend to hate "freedom" one day? Or maybe even a direct result of Islam?
Wake up, dude! Things are ALOT more complicated that they appear on Fox! We ALL have dirty hands here: Americans, Europeans, Jews, Muslims!
All those things can be and are provided by private enterprise. The government doesn't need to be a nanny state and take the money from you so they can spend it for you. You people here are amazing - you complain every time a government tries to restrict freedom of speech, but refuse to defend the rights to self-defense and religion. You oppose "corporate welfare," but support socialism.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Do you have any evidence of social programs being "decimated" over the past four years? As part of my business, I read the Federal Register every day, and it contains billions of dollars in grant announcements, for everything from after school programming to job training to affordable housing to PE programs
Defense spending has been astronomical and does not need to get any bigger.
Have you read Empire by Niall Ferguson? In it, he writes about the British Empire and its huge expeditures when it was the world's top dog. The fact is that the United States today spends a lower proportionate amount of money on defense than any other sole world superpower in history. Even then, our power is constrained by our committments. One can argue if those committments are good or bad; but the fact is that the United States spends little relative to other superpowers through history.
Of course, those two items are red herrings compared to your main point, the the false-choice that the United States will either allow wire tapping and become an instant police state or disallow it and be free. I agree that wire tapping should only occur under order of a judge.
Yes, you can, just like spies who are enemy combatants! Read the grandparent post again!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It was an act of war. Just because they don't wear uniforms and don't act like soldiers doesn't mean it isn't an act of war. If the Japanese had sabotaged the fleet at Pearl Harbor using intelligence officers instead of airplanes would that have meant it wasn't an act of war?
My whole point is that in a war (declared or not) if you don't wear a uniform and don't obey the Geneva Convention yourself then don't expect us to do the same if we capture you because we are under no obligation to do so.
I didn't catch your "torture" comment in the first line either. Do you really think we are torturing those people? Maybe some physiological warfare (sleep deprivation) but I highly doubt we are cutting off genitals or using electro-shock to get the information we want. In any case they are being treated a hellva lot nicer then they would have treated any Americans they captured. Care to remember Daniel Pearl or Johnny Spann?
Terrorists and those that support them deserve their fates. I'll start worrying about the Geneva Convention when the cowards have the balls to face us on an actual battlefield instead of blowing up our civilians. And don't give me the "It's the only way they have to fight" bullshit -- we managed to achieve our independence from the most powerful empire in the World (the British) without blowing up women and children in downtown London.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
technically it's forcing 100% of the people to pay, but whatever.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Johnson? It must have been earlier than that, no? Didn't FDR borrow heavily for the New Deal, and then for the war?
Bush didn't invent deficit spending, but he's certainly very good at it. Going into this administration, we had a budget surplus. How long did it take to reverse that? A year, two?
{sigh} no, I understand that, but it still distresses me that our selection process for Presidential candidates is so weak. How is it that out of a nation of a quarter of a billion individuals we end up with a Bush and a Kerry? Why? Because the whole system was subverted a long time ago and no-one noticed. And I suspect that if you could bring Ben Franklin (or any of his contemporaries) forward through time to see what we've done with the Founding Fathers' legacy, he would be appalled. Would he even still consider the United States to be a Republic, as he understood it? I doubt it, given the overall ignorance of (and apathy toward) Government affairs exhibited by our current population. So far as the Founders were concerned we, The People, are the government, and we, The People, were expected to be very involved how we were governed! The modern ideal of "career" politicians would not sit well with Franklin, Jefferson and the rest. Al Gore was once asked about term limits for Congress: his wide-eyed response was, "But ... that would deny Americans the benefits of professional politicians." Dubious benefits at best, I'd say.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yea, but the Clinton administration produced a budgetary surplus in his second term. It was the first time in a long time, granted, but you americans have slid a long way since then.
What? Micro Soft supports Linux? www.mirco-soft.ca
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Even with Echelon, the far reaching wireless call tracker, and pervasive intelligence operations, 9/11 still happened. Then, three years, and a shitload more of even more intrusive, totalitarian style laws, the 3/11 attack on Spain happened.
When will these incompetent fuckers start using the tools they already have, instead of trying to pry into the private lives of decent people? Who the hell are they to mandate these laws? Didn't these fuckers ever hear of the 4th or 14th Amendments? Don't they know that it is fundamentally unconstitutional to make people who've commited no crime to have to pay a tax just to facilitate some monolithic government agency to intrude into our lives?
This is beyond bizarre. The powers centralized in the hands of a few CEOs and their lackies in government is too much. Do they really want a revolution? If they do, keep passing these laws. Keep suing 12 year old girls for downloading Britney Spears records. Keep using these draconian laws to listen to everyone's conversations. Keep giving huge incentives to big businesses to rob and cheat and lie. Keep handing out huge tax cuts that only help millionaires. Keep screwing over the working class.
Louis XIV got his day. And so will the new aristocracy.
There's nothing we can do to stop the corruption. The power lies, in many cases, not in the democratically elected (ahem) president and congresspeople, but in the appointed heads of departments and the intelligence we receive from heads of our intelligence agencies
How exactly does this get the President and Congress off the hook? The President appoints the department and agency heads and then tells them what to say and do! When the administration couldn't get the intelligence community to say the "correct" thing about WMD even under pressure, they formed their own tame intelligence committees outside of the normal intelligence community to gin up the evidence they needed. I do not believe for one second Bush's claim that he got the wrong information from the CIA about WMD. Kudo's to the CIA analysts who wouldn't cave, which as the Valarie Plame fiasco showed was a real risk to life and career.
Not to say that we shouldn't criticize America's corruption, but I see little short of an election of an isolationist pacifist and appointment of isolationist pacifist heads, that will change anything about the operations of the American government.
That is buying into the Great Lie promulgated by the right-wing that anyone who disagrees with them is an unpatriotic ultra-liberal pacifist extremist. Curtailing the lies and corruption in our current government by kicking the lying bastards out of office does not mean we move to pacifist or isolationists (and who could possibly be more isolating than the Bush administration anyway?). It only means that we move toward rationality and the mainstream. It is the false argument of the right-wingers that security and patriotism are the sole domain of the extreme right.
He then did nothing but lob cruise missiles and miss a lot until he left office. It took GWB to do the job - a tough thing to do when the left with its short-term memory had forgotten about President Clinton's act.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"We heard that, Citizen eaglebtc!"
I know, but I was just carrying forward the parent's example for consistency's sake. Nit nit nit. And I suppose you could argue that those without phones or Internet connections would be exempt, but they wouldn't, not really. Policies that disrupt major industries affect everyone, to some degree, and this will affect every industry, from little mom-and-pop shops to major corporations. We'll all pay for this, over and over.
Given that advanced communications are very much a part of our culture and our livelihoods, granting the government (and the FBI at that, with their history of respect for civil rights and the rule of Law) the power to simply say, "Nope, you don't get to ship this product because we can't force you to rat on your users" is a really bad idea. Baaad idea, and one absolutely ripe for abuse. In my not particularly humble opinion, for the FBI to even suggest this evinces complete and utter disrepect for the citizens of this country. Congress bitchslapped them once before: I have the feeling that may happen again, as soon as enough constituents get shot, jailed or otherwise abused by the Feds. However, should they succeed in giving us an East-German-style telecommunications system in the process we are in for a world of hurt. Even if the FBI ultimately gets restrained (again), the infrastructure will still be there for other government (or for that matter, private) agencies to misuse, and misuse it they will. This kind of thing just simply shouldn't be allowed, terrorist threats or not. It's not worth the ultimate social cost.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Education is handled on the State/Local level, or at least, should be. The most advanced and best healthcare is available to every person in the US -- FREE Healthcare is not. As for social security and pensions -- those are investments, and the government has no right telling you that you have to save for retirement.
If you blog it...
It's not a war because there's no other side. At least with the Japanese there is a definite enemy, and you can win the war when they formally surrender. You can't declare war on an idea.
When I said torture I was refering to sleep deprivation. Sure, there are worse things you could do to someone, but how long have they been there now, a year or more?
The real problem is when you look at things in black and white, good and evil terms you never stop to examine the evil you may be doing yourself (not that you're personally responsible, it's your society, but that's another issue).
Painting terrorists as "evildoers" implies that they live just to perpetrate evil acts. Therefore, since America is good, they attack America simply for that reason. When you think like that you never stop to realize that these are real people with real concerns.
Terrorism is wrong, it's self defeating and it's not at all a good way to solve the injustices in the world. However, simply declaring war on terror does nothing to solve the underlying problems. On 9/11 2001 ~3000 Americans died. On any given day ~30,000 children starve to death. If 1% of the attention given to the Americans who died on 9/11 was given to improving infrastructure worldwide we'd be living in a much better world.
Asking me if I support murder is like asking me why I want grandmothers to die when I say social security should be abolished.
Our government was not formed to prevent murders, or famine, or disease. The local authorities do not prevent murders, they punish them. As for famine and disease, private enterprise can handle them far better than the public.
If you blog it...
Sure, I see your point, but I am right now more concerned with the reality of the current mess we're in rather than the problems with the overall system. When you are drowning you first have to get yourself to the surface, THEN you worry about fixing the boat.
Anyone who thinks that the system is wrong should do things like vote for the Greens or for Nader-like candidates - BUT NOT in this presidential election. It is good to get the seeds of change started in other elections, but the sad fact today is that a vote for anyone other than Kerry (not my first choice in the candidate crop) would be a vote for Bush.
My feelings today are that we should not give up on the system just because there are no immediate fast fixes. If you think there should be term limits then encourage, support and vote for candidates who think likewise. Politics is like going to the optometrist who asks you again and again which is better - "one or two", and we pick the best lens of the two. Eventually we get the right lens and maybe eventually we will get this rebublic thing right, too.
Please lick a dick and shoot yourself in the nuts ASAP.
I concur with the parent. However, the consumers will end up paying for the wiretapping regadless, whether the ISP's are forced to do the upgrade themselves, or if the FBI funds since the FBI is funded with everyone American's dollars.
I was expecting to read a post like this. Yes, its ultimately US citizens paying for this one way or another, but the FBI is more likely to play nicely if the funds to make these changes are drawn out of their allocated budget.
Man, I wish some hacker would grab email from a couple of important figures in the Netherlands and post said data all over.
Most of our politicians have trouble using pencil and paper let alone computers, so I doubt there's any e-mail to intercept.
It's bad enough that our prime minister looks like Harry Potter
Yeah, I've met people like that too. They're definitely a small percentage of society, but they do exist. But there are a few points I'd like to raise:
1 - I have a problem with this Puritan idea that work is a moral obligation. "Work" should be something you do to solve a problem: If there's not enough food, you grow more food. If there's a hole in the roof, you fix the hole. If people are dying of disease, you make a vaccine. Our society has reached a point where there aren't enough of those problems to keep everyone employed; so what do we do? We create problems where there weren't any before. 20 years ago, were people truly suffering from the lack of GameBoys?
2 - As a former manager in a small business, I can tell you that I wouldn't want those slackers working for me. I don't want employees who are forced to work for me; I want employees who do the work because they find it interesting, or because they like their co-workers, etc. If I have to give up 0.2 % of my paycheck to keep these lazy fucks out of my hair, I consider that a worthwhile investment.
3 - If we do accept the above-mentioned Puritan work ethic, then we should apply it equally to all. What about the hereditary billionaires who never did a day's work in their lives? If they were forced to work for a living, it might keep them out of mischief. Like running for office.
It is a war and there is another side -- Al Quada and the Taliban that supported them. I don't agree with the whole "War on Terror" concept because I do agree with your statement of "You can't declare war on an idea". We can however declare war on Al Quada and the Taliban that sponsored and carried out the 9/11 attacks. We can declare victory after we crush them.
When I said torture I was refering to sleep deprivation. Sure, there are worse things you could do to someone, but how long have they been there now, a year or more?
Oh my gosh a whole year or two! The people they killed on 9/11 will never be free again. They are getting off lightly compared to the pain and injustice they inflicted.
Painting terrorists as "evildoers" implies that they live just to perpetrate evil acts. Therefore, since America is good, they attack America simply for that reason. When you think like that you never stop to realize that these are real people with real concerns.
And if they want those concerns addressed they should talk to us about them. I don't care how legitimate their cause may be (for the record I never thought it was to begin with -- but that's another discussion) -- the minute they killed 3,000 of my fellow American citizens they became my enemy. In time they will be utterly crushed and defeated by my countrymen and our allies.
On 9/11 2001 ~3000 Americans died. On any given day ~30,000 children starve to death. If 1% of the attention given to the Americans who died on 9/11 was given to improving infrastructure worldwide we'd be living in a much better world.
We'll be living in a much better world when OBL and Mullah Omar are seen hanging from lightposts in downtown Kabul.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, and you're right, of course. However, it seems that in election after election we're in the same boat ... "Hey, I'd vote for (insert principled qualified candidate here) but he doesn't have a chance of winning right now and it would just be a vote for the incumbent so I'm going to vote for the leading outsider just to get the incumbent out." Sound familiar? The same thing has been said for decades. The problem is that we have a rigged system that wants to control very narrowly who we vote for. Both the Republican and Democratic parties decide between them who they want as frontrunners, and make it impossible for anyone else but the anointed to have any real chance of winning. There are a number of token candidates (Nader, etc.) that are allowed to "run" in order to maintain the fiction that there is any real choice in the matter. There isn't, and there hasn't been for a long time.
... that was how she picked her candidate. I remember being so shocked that for once I had absolutely nothing to say. I hear similar reasoning (and I use the term loosely) all the time. The truth is very simple, actually. To intelligently exercise the power of franchise (as in right to vote) requires time, effort and due diligence. How may of us really understand what's happening in our government today, really care what the candidates say (how do you tell when a presidential hopeful is lying? His lips move) or have a clue how to cast our vote wisely? No, we look at the TV spots, listen to some sound bites, and make a casual decision. Unless, of course, we're died-in-the-wool party types and only vote the party line. Doesn't matter ... as a culture we've lost the collective power to control where our Republic is taking us, and that's unfortunate and not a little frightening.
So, yes, I agree that Bush should be removed this time around, but who is to say that Kerry will be any better? I suspect we'll find out, but we will never know who else might have done a fine job as President because they'll never get the chance.
The real failure here, of course, is the American people, a people that vote for candidates based upon absolutely trivial criteria. I had an ex-fiancee' (talk about your near miss) that voted for Clinton for the following reason: "In the debate against Bush (Sr), I thought that Clinton looked the most Presidential". WTF? Now, before you say that she was just stupid, let me point out that this was a highly intelligent girl with a Masters Degree on the way to a Ph.D and an IQ that probably exceeds my own but, still
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The stupid, socially backward violence authorized by Democrats is better than the stupid, socially backward violence authorized by Republicans. Clinton was only trying to distract voters from his involvement with women.
Republicans don't have that problem. Who would sleep with a Republican? Republicans authorize stupid, socially backward violence so their friends can make more money. Actually, a lot of people who call themselves "Republicans" are not really part of any political party, they are only interested in selling anything the government has to anyone willing to pay. (True Republicans do exist, and this comment is not intended to show disrespect for them.)
The FBI have requested you leave your door open from now on so that they don't have to kick it in when violating your rights
i never get why were in debt, and give money to other people. does someone give to us that i dont know about?
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
leeching off the local linksys never looked so good.
I was against this sort of thing until I thought it through.
1. The gov't has the right. Broadband exists because of dispensation granted by the government to providers. They use public land, make use of public roads, and make use of public courts to enfource their contracts.
2. The gov't has the necessity. You can't have a communications system where a populace can be act in complete secrecy. This isn't just about terrorism, collusion is the enemy of free enterprise. You could have groups acting in secret to manipulate the price of any commodity in the US, from stocks to power prices, causing severe damage to the economy by sending out incorrect pricing signals. You could have groups attempting to gather power in secret. Worst of all, under #2, you could have governmental agencies conspiring in secret.
You worry about conspiracies enough, a completely closed communications infrastructure would reduce America to the same sort of torn apart state that Italy was in the 1500s. It would just be absurd.
I don't like the idea of police listening in on my house or reading my email, but the obverse is also true. Maybe instead of being so afraid of all your secrets, maybe we should instead always tell the truth, so that we could take the simple step of getting rid of all privacy.
This is my sig.
It's all FUD and government sponsored busy work. But I'd give them a chance. First they would have to pass a test. Figure out where all the spam is coming from and unplug it. I know. Not a very macho assignment. But if successful then they can have a real budget. Supported by a change of the tax form from
Do you want $1 to go to the presidential election campaign?
to
You taxes contribute $5 to the presidential election campaign (private contributions were banned in 2010). Thank you.
You taxes contribute $5 to the fight of spam. Thank you.
The FBI has been able to tap phone and wireless communication for decades they are just getting with the times, nothing to get worked up over.
Screaming at the "Man" to pay their own bills is like yelling at yourself to pay the bills. When you pay the taxes that's where you are sending them.
NOTE: If you are over the age of 18 and still don't make enough to actually have to pay taxes, well then my friend you are a loser. Get a job already.
> They are getting off lightly compared to the pain and injustice they inflicted.
"They" (the illegally detained people in Guatamalla) are not the people who flew a plane into a couple of your corporate buildings. Those people are dead. These detainees have not even been given a trial so no one who claims to believe in the USA's ideals of 'justice' can say that these people are guilty.
> If they want those concerns addressed they should talk to us about them.
This is either an extremely sarcastic joke, or you are not familiar with your country's track-record when it gomes to dealing with foreign countries. "Talking" to the USA is possibly the worst thing that a nation can do to try to get them to stop doing something... it shows that you're not in complete obedience.
I can't give you the specific details on this example but I do remember hearing on the news a couple days after the attack on the WTC that a Saudi prince offered New York a million dollars if it would meet and talk rationally about reforming its policies in the middle east. Mayor Julliani refused.
another excellent example is what your country did to Nicaragua. The US was attacking this country and funding militant groups in the country in their efforts. Nicaragua was actually pretty clever here - they did not ask the United States to "please stop terrorizing and killing us" because they saw what happens to other nations when they do this. They brought their case to the United Nations.
The World Court declared that the United States was guilty of War Crimes in this case and ordered them to pay reperations. The US ignored the ruling and stepped up the bombing, eventually killing tens to hundreds of thousands of people.
Outside of the United States, your country is well known to be the leading source of terrorist attacks and a huge supporter of terrorists. I implore you to research this yourself and not disregard it with an idiotic statement like "we're jealous of your freedom".
Look up talks or texts by Noam Chomsky (http://chomsky.info), as an example - he is a great researcher and reporter on the US's foreign and domestic policies. A lot of "right-wing" people claim that he just outright lies about most of his facts, but that's just a cowardly way to disregard the truth. If he was a perpetual liar in his thousands of speeches and over 50 books he would not have been kept on as a professor at MIT for the past 30-40 years.
> We'll be living in a much better world when OBL and Mullah Omar are seen hanging from lightposts in downtown Kabul.
This type of logic does not always work. History has shown us that when a man has nothing left, brutally displaying the corpse of someone who was caught will not deter them from trying the same.
Don't misinterpret me as a "Saddam sympithiser" or someone who in any ways is justifying the death of 3,000+ civilians during the '9/11' attacks. I believe that the perpretrators should be hunted down (rationally), put on trial, and, if found guilty, punished to the full extend that you desire.
Rest assured though that no matter how much money you pump into wars on concepts or innatimate ideas, and no matter how many rights your country takes away from it's own citizens, you will continue to face these types of attacks and related problems as long as you stubbornly refuse to analyze or deal with the "motive" of these attacks.
"WinTel Server 10 Times Less Expensive to Operate Than Linux Mainframe" http://www.microsoft.com/canada/getthefacts
You know, the next part of that sentence in the constitution after "provide for the common defence" is "promote the general welfare".
I'd say that's a pretty strong constitutional mandate for social programs.
Socialism isn't a bad thing you stupid ass. Authoritarian Fascism is.
Yes, Johnson wisely knew that Americans would only support a senseless war as long as they weren't made to pay for it. That's how deep even the most strident patriotism runs sometimes.
And I remember the aftermath in the 70s, too: simultaneously soaring interest rates and unemployment. Look for more of the same as the Bushies continue to follow Argentina's example...
Invading Iraq cost America all credibility on the world stage. Causing coups in Haiti, Venezuala and Equatorial Guinea ...
Actions taken to guarantee high energy prices (what would the price of oil be now had the sanctions on Iraq been simply lifted in say 1997?) helps Bush's oil+gas cronies make obscene profits and help to keep the economy inflated... but the deflation is coming, no one is gonna want to buy...
Military spending is just subsidizing goons...
In 1982 the Guatemalan government killed 200,000 Indians...and Reagan (all of Bush's cabinet on his team) focused on "terrorist" Nicaragua...
And they wanna see who's talkin' about it on the net.
So they can blackmail you, or terrorise you with police visits, or simply chill your speech and encourage "self-censorship", or have their private-sector non-government goons kill you in what will appear to be an act of "senseless violence" which will be impossible to solve...
cryptographic algorithms not approved by Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI). Just do a google search, this should turn something up. If it doesn't do a yandex.ru search.
-Nowhere in the constitution are the words "this document only applies to US citizens"
-You don't have to say that the government of Afghanistan was a wonderful government to agree that the treatment of our prisoners is brutal and illegal.
-A good many of the people in that camp WERE soldiers wearing uniforms.
And you will know this... how? Will the Al Quada send us a memo?
I think it is 5 different agencies that tap all internet communications.
All ISPs are required to provide them with hardware for monitoring/recording purposes, and it adds significantly to costs.
We need encrypted VOIP and encrypted email built in as the default configurations for Linux.
Don't underestimate how much info they get from monitoring all the communications you don't remember to or don't bother to encrypt.
Oh well, at least Reiser4 will ensure that if they confiscate your hard drive they
need to extract the key out of you to do anything with it. We all do what we can....
Yes, there is such an "ukaz", number 334, which means just a president's decree. It demands using only certified encryption in any communications with the government and in any communications with the central bank (which is the part that gets executed) and demands to prohibit any unlicensed crypto for anyone. (which is the part that is supposed to get executed somehow, but isn't) You see, an "ukaz" is not really a law per se - the president does not have direct lawmaking powers in this country. It can only directly affect organisations subservient to the government. There's also the FAPSI law which creates FAPSI and mentions licensing and certifying encryption, essentially giving FAPSI some power over encryption use in general. This clause, however, is very much open to interpretation, which interpretation, so far, is largely missing as well.
Unlike the constitution, neither of these two is a direct action legal truth - and the 334 ukaz also directly contradicts the constitution, making it essentially invalid in the parts where it does. This makes Russian encryption law, what little there is of it, a complete legal fiction, totally ignored in practice. For the fiction to become reality, specific regulations must be issued, which, so far, have failed to materialise. You cannot get anyone busted for using SSL until clear regulations exist detailing when and how this is to be done. (The constitution's supposed to be direct-acting legal reality, but in practice it isn't - for example, it allows alternative non-military service for those eligible for draft if they cannot do army service for whatever reason. It took quite a few years for appropriate regulations to show up, and they still aren't executed a lot of the time.)
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
From a 2000 speech by William Mayer of Northeastern University, link [emphasis added]:
I think they already do it under the pat-riot act. Every time I go to get my email or go online some bell tech rep attacks me and tried to intecept my email and when I report it my ISP, which is not a bell company it is level3 net, does nothing. I have representatives in government that will listen as if it becomes necessary to call on them, then you FBI people who cause more problems than you solve watch out because I do have friends at NSA/Homeland security who know all the trouble you cause and are willing to do something. All it would take is for my family to be pissed off and you will encounter the "big guns" as my aunt and uncle who spent summers with President Reagan used to say. The government should butt out but if they can't well then they will get a taste of their own restrictions placed on them. Remember you do have a boss and I know him. He can hire you and fire you.
"we will be running headlong into a police state"?
/. has scary stories like this. Yesterday's was "Thirty-Three States Contributed to the MATRIX".
We already are running headlong into a police state.
Almost everyday
Most social programs are welfare for a select group, not the general population. And I have seen precious little evidence that the general population bennifits from most social programs, here or abroad. There is a fair bit more evidince to the contrary.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Why do government have no respect for your right to privacy?
:-)
This is a post that I have used many times before
Liberty has to be one of the most important things in life. Well up there, behind health and safety of your family, must be the right to go about your daily life without being forced to live it under oppressive surveillance. For it surely is oppression - being spied upon by the authorities in all that you do. Knowing this information could be used against you, for any purpose they see fit. The so-called all-seeing eye of God over you - meant to instil respect of them and fear of authority.
It can be proven they use propaganda to deceive you into believing them. How?
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught!
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (meaning, human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"
This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something illegal.
It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.
They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from ZDNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."
"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. Or, just as dumbly, "They will not be interested in anything I do".
This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in UK when government looked for dirt on individuals of Paddington crash survivors group. It was led by badly injured Pam Warren. She had over 20 operations after the 1999 rail crash (which killed 31 and injured many).
This group had fought for better and safer railways - all by legal means. By all accounts a group of fine outstanding people - with good intent.
So what was their crime, to deserve this investigation?
It was just for showing up members of government to be the incompetents they are.
As usual, government tried to put a different spin on the story when they were found out. Even so, their intent was obvious - they wanted to use this information as propaganda - to smear the character of these good people.
Our honourable government would rather defile the character of its citizens - rather than address their reasonable concerns.
The government arrogantly presume this group of citizens would not worry about having their privacy invaded.
They can also check your outgoings match your income and that you are paying enough tax. What do you think all this privacy invasion is for? The War on Terrorism? You poor dupe. All your finances for them to scrutinize; heaven help you if you cannot a
Nathan's blog
While it is true that US citizens will pay in either case, there are important differences.
If the government pays, the measure has to go through the appropriate branches of government and get approval, which sometimes isn't as easy as, say, the average representative's pork project. The cost is then deferred across all taxpayers.
If the ISP pays, it's much easier for the wiretapping measure to go through, because it doesn't have to jump through as much review. The cost is then deferred to all the ISP's customers.
Because in the latter case the cost is deferred to a smaller group of people, the cost/person should be higher (depending on the level of government corruption and waste of course).
In my opinion, if this is a matter of national security, then the citizens as a whole should pay for it. And if it can't survive the appropriate congressional oversight, then maybe the FBI doesn't actually need it.
Moof!
This is clearly an attempt to enable wholesale spying of the Internet and private citizens.
Anybody stupid enough to think the FBI won't abuse this power INSTANTLY simply knows nothing about the history of the FBI and its abuse of civil rights from the day it was formed.
The morons on this site who support this sort of thing - regardless of who pays for the Net mods - simply have no concept of freedom or the nature of government.
Face it - the US today is a fascist police state run by right-wing Christian fundamentalists,Zionists, corporations and the rich. The Constitution is dead. All bets are off. Do what you have to do to survive and preferably take down as many of these assholes as you can while you're doing it.
Smash the state! Smash religion! Smash human nature!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Without this technology how will the FBI track down pedophiles on AOL?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes, I'm not sure I buy the claims of massive intelligence failure. For example, when Colin Powell presented a case for a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq in front of the UN, I laughed. I was living in Europe at the time. It was totally and wholly unconvincing. It was absurd. If that presentation was based on intelligence, then it was those who were manipulating the intelligence who need to be held to account.
So basically, I agree with you.
I can complain both about social system abuse and corporate welfare, can't I?
Take a history lesson. The Great Society is not a reference to America in general but programs that were instituted in the 1960's. It is commonly called the Great Society.
Time makes more converts than reason
- covered by the US constitution as american citizens
The constitution covers all people, not just American Citizens. You should read it sometime. It is a very interesting document.
- Innocent of supporting a brutal government that waged war on the US through a proxy
Oh you must mean those crazy teenagers and website designers. They must be terrible people since we let them go, after serving years in prison while being tortured and denied access to a lawyer.
Time makes more converts than reason
For anything remotely important transport layer security will take care of snoops.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
You really know how to put words in people's mouths. I don't think anyone said that.
You oppose "corporate welfare," but support socialism.
If I had to choose between the two, then yes I would support socialism and oppose corporate welfare. Personally I care more about people being able to live than bailing out a company that made poor decisions and deserves to go under, especially when that company has a CEO that decided to lay off thousands of people so he could give himself a raise. Socialism and Liberalism have been given negative connnotations by the right for no reason. I'm more afraid of Facism.
Time makes more converts than reason
Which select group are you speaking of? What evidence do you have to support your position that the general population does not benefit from social programs? Is that even the point of social programs? No, it is not. The point of them are to help people who have been marginalized by society.
Time makes more converts than reason
I am going to keep in mind that this is seen through the filter of cnet, which tends to be somewhat Slashdottish -- kind of liberal, pro-tech, anti-regulation. I really need to see the "85-page document" to decide.
That being said, this is possibly the most disturbing thing I have heard proposed from the federal government yet. Besides the obvious issues of holding back innovation, I find the privacy issues unacceptable. If you want to wiretap someone, fine. Go to wherever they are, and use a parabolic mic or physical bug or something similar. Yes, it doesn't let you tap the population en-masse. There is no justifiable reason for this request. The only thing it does is make cheap, easy, and hard-to- detect-abuse-of wiretapping much more feasible and tempting. I want it to be a pain in the ass to wiretap people. It's worked well for hundreds of years, and I see no reason to change this.
I also want to make it clear that I will not follow any such directives requiring programs to including monitoring backdoors. If I have to, I will develop anonymously, through Freenet or similar (no, I'm not brave enough to do something like this openly as a protest and get hammered for it), but I will not begin inserting backdoors into the software I work on.
I am absolutely appalled that something like this would be suggested. It is the sort of thing that people that I considered "tin foil hatters" were worrying about for a long time. I would like to see an EFF analysis of this. If this is as bad as the article makes it out to be, this will be the thing that tips me over the edge to sending money to the EFF.
I would like to know what evidence cnet has for claiming that the Bush administration backs this. If they really are, they are going well beyond even what I thought Ashcroft's most tyrannical police- state aspirations were.
Among other things, I claim that this will:
Now let's see you tell us the names of some famous programs in Canadian history..
Twenties Retirement
Even with a booming economy, debt grew: Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual.
I wish both parties would stop spending the money and start paying off the debt.
The NSA has an oracle machine (find in an alian ship) which can solve any NP-Complete problem in O(log(n)) ...
directly contradict the constitution. And nobody seems to give a flying fuck. Have you tried to choose so called "alternative military service" lately? Or how about decrypting and wiretapping everyone's cell phones during the latest run-in with chechen boeviks?
What's your point? You assumed something and you were wrong. End of story.
Time makes more converts than reason
No, I don't like to work.
At leasty not if I'm working for the benefit of people who's "ideals" I find repulsive, but I do it anyway, because I'd like to improve my situation.
Thatattitude, and my openess about it has made be labeled a "welfare junky" when I have never applied or recieved welfare, an "unemployment cheat" when I have never applied for or recieved unemployment, even when eligible, and a "communist", even though part of what I am working toward is ownership of my own property.
There are those who work hard and recognise it as an unfortunate part of our reality. Those people I can agree with. But those assholes who are unable to allow anopther to slack at their own expense, or are so ready to blame the unemployed for not having a job when jobs are increasingly difficult to come by can go screw themselves. Sure, I am capable of work that is far more difficult, or far more contributory than the shit work I do now, but go fuck yourselves unless you are willing to give me that job on my terms.
I do not agree that anyone should be forced to work, because I know all too well what it is like to depend on someone who is acting out of force rater than will.
It is the same people who bitch about people who are unwilling to work that are lobbying for greater police powers. Wheher it is the broadband customer, the taxpayer, or it magically gets implemented for free, we all get screwed, except for those assholes who have never been hungry, have never been without support, and have never had to deal with the reality of not being born into a family that was not lucky enough top be in the top twenty percent of income earners. If you've hads the luxury of living off of daddy's tab, or the comfort of living in a $3,000.00 apartment for only $500.00 because your daddy owns it, then shut the hell up and get out of the way.
Yeah, I've lived with it too, but in my case it was a bitch who was unwilling to work, lived off her parents, and accused everyone in the house who was actually breaking as sweat for their living of being lazy, pot-smoking no-loads because they weren't able to buy a BMW to cart the bitch around in. I'm sure you've seen your share of assholes who should get a jopb, but from your post, I'm more certain that you've spent more time bitching about people you think were "lucky" or "undeserving" than you've spent actually attempting to make a difference in your own life.
A lot of people work their asses off theirb entire lives without ever seeing anything that resembles a fair payout. These people are targeted as "waste cases" as much as the welfare recipients are.
As for those "successful" assholes who parlay their daddy's connections into high-paying gigs doing little more than shopping for other spoilt brats, they are far worse than the welfare recipients, because they are living on familial charity while thinking that they've actually have done something of worth.
Let the welfare people collect their checks on my tax dollar, as long as I'm not forced to work along side people who would rather cause problems, I'm happy. As for the spoilt brats calling themselves "the new Libertarians", get a fucking life and mind your own business, stay out of mine, and quit asking your uncle to keep tabs on all the people you think are after your inherentance.
Our government was established to ensure the continuance of the Constitutional state, not to ensure that your families get to retain control in the face of a changing economy.
Read, L
KELLY (picking open a lock): Viola!
BUD: That's "voila," Kel.
KELLY: Look, I failed Spanish, okay?
Thankfully there's an equal number of annoying laws that don't contradict the constitution, but nobody gives a flying fuck about enforcing them either.
:) Just radio.
In the end, so far, it's been kind of a balance. It probably won't be for all that much longer though.
P.S. They just turned the encryption off. No 'wiretapping' took place, since if they had switchboard access, they wouldn't need to turn off encryption.
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
"1, here comes the 2 to the 3 to the 4, everybody drunk out on the dance floor, Now everybody in the club gettin tipsy, everybody in the club gettin tipsy"
As to the situation in the Netherlands, a lot can be found on the site of Bits of Freedom. Unfortunately, most of it is in Dutch (very simple english version). I don't remember any significant attention from the international media to this, but if you are really interested, I think delving through the archives of The Register might turn up one or two interesting articles.
This is only a ploy in order for Pres. George
W. Bush an angle on having government mandated
rights to impregnate any woman of child bering
age with his sperm.
John Ashcroft will act as mid-wife in the
process.
Pres. George W. Bush really does believe that
White Anglo Saxon Prostitents are the Super
Race - after Adolf Hitler - except that Hitler
perferred Catholics.
It is only a matter of time, just before the
Republican primary in New York, that Pres.
George W. Bush will inact a law requiring him
to personally review, or an agent he so chooses,
to review the birth records all across the
US in order to "cul" out the "bad seeds" which
be personally believes the Christan Bible gives
him alone the power to take and administer on
the citizens of the United States of America.
Toodles
hmm. First off, you're the only one who's assuming something. (In this case, I was commenting on your response to somebody else)
In the second place, my point is, why in the world would you expect someone from another country to know the name of a social program from the US half a century ago?
Twenties Retirement
people have been saying the US has been turning into a police state for some time... but when are the rest of YOU going to believe it? put a tin foil hat over your ass, cuz your gonna get a big one up it if you don`t wake up!!!
So the G-men think they can just listen in like a phone line. Think again.
Anyone with something secret to say will encrypt. And with a huge key.
As much as the US government can wish otherwise, (remember the PGP wars?) the encryption genie has been out of the bottle for awhile.
This will only serve to increase ISP access rates and degrade basic privacy rights.
Geez, please stop worrying what the normal, average, law-abiding citizens are doing and take the war to the people who are threatening our security -- those in other countries that are trying to destroy us. Go after them and leave us alone.
I dont want to be "secure" and "safe". I want to be free. I'll accept the risk.
I didn't vote for Clinton, but thanks for exposing your bias. Also, if Bush didn't lie, then he must be incompetent as the CIA was saying the intelligence was faulty.
You know, the next part of that sentence in the constitution after "provide for the common defence" is "promote the general welfare".
I'd say that's a pretty strong constitutional mandate for social programs.
Exactly so - "provide for the common defence" and "promote the general welfare". There's a difference there. "Promote" is not a synonym of "provide".
The best evidence of how that was intended to be interpreted is by considering what the people who wrote it actually did.
We know the Founding Fathers established a military. Name a single social program they implemented.
Somehow, it took nearly 150 years before an interpretation that authorized social programs mysteriously materialized.
Kind of peculiar, don't you think?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Which select group are you speaking of? What evidence do you have to support your position that the general population does not benefit from social programs?
Considering that those who wish to establish social programs propose to spend *my* tax dollars on them, I submit that it's incumbent on *them* to make the case that they are beneficial to the general population. Not my case to make that they aren't.
Is that even the point of social programs? No, it is not. The point of them are to help people who have been marginalized by society.
Marginalized by *what* society? Who is "society", anyway? Point to them.
You have a right to equal treatment under the law. You aren't entitled to special treatment just because a lot of people dislike you.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Or, read the Bible sometime. I have a hard time seeing any significant difference between it and the Koran. The God of the bible instructs people to go out and slaughter entire communities, women, children, babies and goats included. Now, Christians will protest "that's the old testament!", as though Jesus actually died for *God's* sins and washed them all away. (The religion would actually make a lot more sense that way.) But mainstream Islam will tell you the same thing - that bad old stuff in the Koran should be ignored, just as the bad old stuff in the bible should be ignored.
Gems such as "The rules should make it clear that carriers are not permitted to argue in any petition for further extension of the Packet-Mode Deadline that the service for which a further extension is being sought is not covered by CALEA."
I'm sorry, but this is the language of paranoid totalitarianism, not of a democratic and constitutional republic. Much as I would like to blame this solely on Ashcroft, CALEA goes back an administration or two.
DoJ: "You must comply." Carrier: "With what standard." DoJ: "We can't tell you." Carrier: "What do you mean you can't tell me?" DoJ: "We're all about compliance, not about standards." Carrier: "But what am I supposed to comply with." DoJ: "What we want you to comply with." Carrier: "But what IS that?" DoJ: "That's not our department, were only enforce compliance."
I believe we must have accidentally outsourced the Department of Justice to a North Korean front entity.
And my hope is the American people make the same realization.
Well, I do. I want to be sure that we have not agrivated the problem. If we are, I want to stop doing so if possible. I want to make sure that the way we stop them is not going to encourage other equally crazy people to take their place. (not all muslims are terrorists, but if we put the terrorists down in a way that looks like we are oppressing them, other muslims will take their place. And I am not interested in pursuing a course that will lead to everyone either dead or not muslim, unless there is no other option. (dead or muslim is not an acceptable option.)) I am also simply curious as to what makes people do the things they do. Understanding that helps me understand myself.
I am not trying to justify their actions. I do not think their actions are just. I do not belive that we deserve their response, but it is at least theoretically possible, and (more to the point)many muslims believe we do.
Do you honestly think we are all good, hard working Americans, who want nothing more than to live in peace? Did you ever hear of Enron, Worldcom, or Haliburton?* Do you remember who put supported Hussien up until he invaded Kuwait? Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, and that would not be the US.
*these are examples of corrupt american corporations, I am not implying that they had anything in particular to do with terrorists, just refuting the good, hardworking americans bit.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Evidence: Most of it is general economic theory, that allowing people to spend their own resources in their own best interest, as they see it, results in the best (or at least, much better than any other practical system known) overall level of wealth and comfort. (general welfare) Government welfare systems (welfare in general) always result in less effecient allocatations of resources and less final wealth. (assumption, free markets, of which I also see precious little in todays economy . . .)
Select group: for social security the group is retirees, widows etc, for Medicade/Medicare it is poor/elderly in need of medicine. food stamps, poor people. HUD, poor homebuyers, etc.
The point of them are to help people who have been marginalized by society.
And that brings me to the original point, there is nothing in the constitution that gives the federal government any power to do that, including the general welfare clause.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Corporate welfare is evil and should be destroyed along with social welfare!
Libertarianism! Woot!
Learn lisp today!
Suggested Solution for ISP's.
Quality of Service (QOS) is matched to supplemental funding.
Sure, patch them into to Pentium 1 box, filled with dodgy hard drives giving errors, coupled with looping overwrite logs. If they whinge, and want an 'upgrade' - then they can pay it. Issue exactly TWO backup tapes, so they get flogged. On paper, it will look you tried real hard, and the universal excuse of 'funding' , will fall on those who did not fund their wishlist prudentially.
Currently, CNN.com's poll is Should law enforcement agencies be able to wiretap Internet traffic? CNN.com does a much better job of getting a "Joe Sixpack" opinion than does Slashdot -- and I was surprised and pleased to see that with over 40,000 votes in, almost 60% of voters opposed law enforcement monitoring of the Internet, even in this post-9/11 era.
People are not thrilled with Ashcroft. I am impressed and pleased.
May we never see th
'm sure that didn't stop you for voting for Clinton. And until you can prove that GWB knew the intelligence was faulty, shut up.
"Sin" aside, I find it far more objectionable for a President of the United States of America to lie about the existence of a threat to further his political and personal goals and start a war (ultimately killing thousands of peple) than I do for a President to lie about his sex life, with no impact other than on himself and his family.
I find it amazing that Bush was not impeached for the first, though Clinton was for the second.
May we never see th
I don't think anyone claimed they were the makings of an authoritarian regime, both you and this idiot seem to mix up economics (socialism|liberalism) with political (authoritarian|libertarian). Check out The Political Compass and see one can be authoritarian and socialist like Stalin, authoritarian and free-market oriented like Thatcher or some other combination.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
You are as fightening as they are. One does not defeat a foe by becoming them.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I agree and another point: the only time the Geneva Convention applies is when people (or governments) are either members or choose to apply it. Japan chose not to involve itself with the doctrine in the late 1930's which, also led to several death marches and 'work' camps that, combined, led to deaths of more than 500,000 POW's in WW2. What's the difference now? Does bin Laden involve himself with Geneva? I think not. Personally, I believe he and his cohorts get what they deserve; even by a Geneva Convention country. Sleep depervation it is; so be it.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Look around you. Watch television. Read the newspaper.
You aren't entitled to special treatment just because a lot of people dislike you.
What the hell are you talking about? This has nothing to do with whether you or I like someone or not. You seem to be upset that people you don't like are benefiting from social programs. Too bad. I don't like people like you very much but I'm not going deny you the right to live or be a part of society for that reason. You and everyone else has that right no matter what. That is what freedom is all about.
Time makes more converts than reason
This is where you and I disagree. If you want to talk about theory then communism is the best economic solution. We don't live in theory though, we live in reality. Communism failed in reality because human nature never allowed communism to actually be instituted in its purest form. The same goes for capitalism. Actaully, capitalism allows for all kinds of abuses even in its purest form. Government, and the welfare of society should not be based on economics. We are not numbers. Society must work together for the benefit of all to succeed.
Time makes more converts than reason
I didn't expect that at all. I was responding to an article written about American laws and American society. It is not my fault if you don't know about American society. If you don't then you have no place making comments about how I should learn Canadian history. I'm not the one making assinine comments about a culture I don't know about.
Time makes more converts than reason
I consider paying hundreds of dollars to go see a concert or a baseball/football game robbery. I don't consider taxing millionaires who play sports for a living, or inherited a bundle of money, robbery. They aren't helping society out and some of the people that are end up jobless, homeless, and miserable.
Freedom of Life, Liberty and the freedom to own/buy/sell Property are the root rights of every person in the world
The problem with your line of thought is that it is western-centric. You may be surprised to learn this, but many cultures did not believe in property.
Time makes more converts than reason
Just call the guy "chechen terrorist" and you can show him on TV all you want. The important part for them to stay safe is to not air anything that could harm president's approval rating.
Let them tap my lines...
PGP-encrypted e-mail over TLS enabled servers
SSH conections for pretty much all of my work
SSL/TLS encrypted webpages.
While they might have the computing power to break that... it wouldn't be worth their time.
OB: Ben Franklin: "Those who give up a little freedom for security deserve, and will get, neither"
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Is that you knocking at my door Big Brother?
You say that like it's a bad thing. I aspire to sit home play video games and smoke pot. Sadly, in the real world I have to work, pay my own bills and can't smoke pot until I'm senseles. Until I hit the lottery I guess I'll have to work and row my own boat.
I think both of your figures are low.
From what I understand, entitlement spending such as Social Security and Medicare far outweigh discretionary spending, such as defense, R&D, roads, etc.
The scary part is the growth of interest on the debt. Just wait until interest rates creep up, too. The recent run-up in government debt reflects some serious mismanagement; those responsible for it should be held accountable.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering the United States sound fiscal policy.
I like to see intelligent social spending as opposed to either letting people die of starvation on the streets or to developing an unhealthy culture of dependency.
I'm paying big time into OASDI for current beneficiaries that are getting a lot more from the system than they ever put in. But I want the system fixed by the time I retire. I don't expect to get anything like the current level of benefits from social security, nor should I.
Raise the retirement age, means-test benefits, index increases according to prices instead of wages, and keep benefits as an absolute rock-bottom safety net, not as semi-comfortable retirement plan. IMHO, we ought to invest much more in kids age 0-20 than in people aged 60-80, but the former don't vote and the latter do.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Took your test, and for the record I'm almsot exactly dead centre (which is what I expected). I disagree with the socialism vs liberalism comparison. In the US 'liberal' mean 'socialist' to most people. Also, Authoritarian vs democractic might be a better way of describing the second axis given the popular views of today. Not classically correct, but probably a better match given popular terminology.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Communisim is not the best economic system for humans, precicely for those reasons that you gave. It is a wonderful economic system for ants, which explains why there are more ants by weight than people. The economic theories that I was refering to specifically take these aspects of human nature into account, and correctly predict the outcome of communisim. And predict that allowing people to spend their own resources in their own best interest will result in the greatest amount of wealth. both mean and median.
These theories have been around for close to 200 years. If they did not perdict what we can observe fairly well, they would have been scrapped a long time ago. Unlike the theory of communisim, or socialism, THEY WORK!!!
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
They already had full wiretap capability with Carnivore (or whatever they are currently calling it).
The actual events surrounding the $1 million was closer to this:
The Prince donated $1 million unconditionally, in the immediate aftermath of September 11, to help the cleanup in New York. When he gave the money, he said something along the lines of "maybe the USA will have to re-evaluate its foreign policy" (that was the sentiment anyway, I don't know the exact wording). Guiliani's response was to send the $1 million back.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. The USA did re-evaluate its forign policy anyway, not in the way that any non-Americans would have liked, but they have made some progress (I hear GWB has even announced a new 'policy'[1] of not supporting tyrannical dictators anymore! Progress?!?!)
[1] of course, *actual* US foreign policy has a long and sordid tradition of being the exact opposite of the *public* foreign policy (Tibet, for example). Presidents have even been elected under such a deception! Democracy (US style) in action!
No, sorry. Those theories failed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The only reason capitalism hasn't completely collapsed is the government promotion of the general welfare by redistribution of some wealth.
A truly free market can't work for the same reason pure communism can't work - human nature won't allow it.
It's more than just that. Even in theory it is a failure. Capitalism allows for monopolies, which can destroy the whole system.
Time makes more converts than reason
Economic theory says that given a minimum wage, which is necessary for survival, unemployment will be proportional to the minimum wage. Thus welfare is necessary for a percentage of the population, which throws your whole point out the window. Yes, it may be the best in terms of average wage but it still allows for people to die on the streets. This is a society, not a business, and should be treated as such.
Time makes more converts than reason
Could you please point out just where economic theory failed to correctly predict the behavior of people, given the incentives and environment that they had in that time period?
That is how a theory fails. It predicts something that does not happen. I think that you are talking about specific implimentations of capitalistic economic systems. Those can fail by not producing enough goods, or the wrong kinds of goods, or by causing lots of poverty, etc. If that is what you are talking about, I at least partly agree with you. I am also aware that this is the time period where modern corporations were forming. It may well be that the modern welfare state system is necessary to prevent our current corporatist system of capatilism from collapsing.
The only way that economic theory could fail here however, is to predict that our current version of capatilsim can/cannot survive without governmnet redistribution of wealth, and be wrong! I have seen exactally zero evidence of this, and while I am not an economist, I see lots of evidence that current economic theory does correctly predict the outcome.
I still hold to my original point, that the best* economic system is one where each person spends his own resources in his own best interest, as he sees fit. And any and all government redistribution of wealth results in a sub-optimal solution. My point of this paragraph is this however: At no point in history has this ever been fully realized. Including the late 19th and early 20th century The best we can do for examples is to look at systems that were close, and compare them to systems that aren't. Looking at any time in history and saying 'look, this failed. that means truely free markets are bad' is wrong, 'cause that wasn't a truly free market.
"A truly free market can't work for the same reason pure communism can't work - human nature won't allow it."
What do you mean by 'work'? If you mean 'make sure that everybody has at least so much' then I agree with you totally. Laziness is part of human nature, and that means that in a truly free market, the lazy often do not get the basics 'cause they didn't do enough to get them. My definition would be something like 'provides the best median standard of living with some nice statistical distribution'. Free markets are unmatched for that.
*see last paragraph for what I mean by 'best'
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
I am of the opinion that this is dangerous. If you take those who would be dying on the street and give them enough to be somewhat comfortable, there is less incentive for that person to really work hard and produce something. Doing nothing has a smaller cost - somewhat comfortable instead of starving in the street. The cost to society as a whole is the cost of supporting these people, and the lost production that these people would have provided. This cost goes directly to those who produce, increasing the cost of doing something productive without providing any bennifit (asside from the 'no more annoying beggars dying in the streets' I guess) This sets up a positive feedback loop: more people go on the dole, - more taxes and higher costs (lost production!) - less incentive to produce - more people on the dole . . . Usually what also happens here is those in power get themselves various tax exemptions/perks etc, because the arguments for this are almost identical to the arguments for greater welfare. The end result is a few really rich and a lot of people on the dole, and not enough peoduction to go around. This is exactally the dynamic that destroyed the Roman Empire.
The only way to control this is by defining exactally what 'somewhat comfortable' is. You have to keep this low enough to avoid the death spirial. Unfortunatly this is a very complex chaotic system that is extreamly difficult to mannage like that. It is inherantly unstable, and the ballance point is almost impossible to determine with any accuracy. The only real solution is to let them starve on the street, harsh as that sounds, in order to prevent the economic system from collapsing and causing lots more people to starve, without the means to produce at all.
Note: this argument assumes that the majority of people who are on the edge of dying on the street, have sufficient means avaliable to go to work and avoid starving, (jobs, or resources available to make stuff/grow food etc.) A healthy economy unfetterd by stupid regulations will always provide this in abundance, and even a recession will not seriously change this. On the other hand, I am not certain that this is the situation we have right now in the US. Dropping welfare without making other changes may not be a good idea at all.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Eventually the ponzi scheme they're running is going to collapse, and when it does we're going to have an economic crisis which will make the Great Depression look mild by comparison. Given a few years of hyperinflation, paying back a trillion dollar debt would be trivial, because all you could buy with that trillion dollars would be a Big Mac & Fries.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
You still seem to be confusing capitalist economic theory with economic theory in general, and worse, you seem to be doing so intentionally.
If you want to say that a free market has never been tested because it's never really been tried, you should also grant that communism has never been tested, and is in itself an economic theory.
But you go on to make the assertion that a free market provides the best median standard of living - which cannot be proven true if it has never been tested, and considering the societies that came the closest, isn't likely to even be close to true.
The "corporatist" system that we have now is very much a likely outcome of any free market experiment, and if the controls on that system weren't in place would likely be an economic system composed entirely of monopolies, which are worse than government control of the economy as they act only in their own self interest.
Another problem is that the people you refer to as "lazy" and who would find themselves without the basics would find ways to get them - and when they start using guns to get them, the market stops being free. You can either hire police to keep the have-nots down, or accept that it is in your self interest to tax everyone to make sure they have the basics.
Close. Money and wealth to me take a back seat to human life and society in general.
Time makes more converts than reason
You administer public networks, as in "minister to".
This is a society, not a business, and should be treated as such.
Only insects create "societies".
Human beings create civilizations.
There is no "society" - there are only individuals and families.
--Margaret Thatcher
There is nothing civilized about civilization.
Time makes more converts than reason