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How The Government Spies On Your Internet Use
intnsred writes "In explaining the recent PATRIOT act ACLU lawsuit, a D.C. civil rights lawyer writes, "I am sure that many of you reading this (and I, likely) have the government in our computers....Until now, we did not know much about how the government goes about this procedure. Now we do." Fascinating details of the case and how easy it is for the gov't to get warrantless access to you through your ISP. This clarifies and expands a previous /. article."
Thank goodness.
I mean, who would have expected anything less? They can already tap phones, why not the Internet. All in the name of protecting the world from terrorism. Hooray.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
i guess if you keep repeating "but we are free" enough people will believe it
50% of USA still think Saddam and Al-Queda are connected so it shows psy-ops works
What's the point of an 'internet wiretap' when anything important to law enforcement is probably encrypted with a key long enough to take years to crack?
Am I the only person who has 4096-bit RSA?
All I can say is.....I'm glad I'm Canadian!! Our government here in Canada certainly isn't perfect....but looking at the USA from the outside, they are heading down the slippery slope towards a police state. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." At this rate, the average American will have neither liberty or safety before long.
"If it's stupid and it works....it's not stupid."
It you are an American and you don't like this, get out and vote in November.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Can someone please explain to me how this is indicative of the principles on which the USA was founded ? On where John Hancock and his mates saw a US goverment with the ability to spy on its own citizens, and on how this all makes sure we have a goverment "of the people, by the people and for the people" ?
I might be a bit depressed having just re-read 1984, but with the US and Airstrip 1... I mean Britain, working together on a strategy underpinned by propoganda and the continual spying on its citizens by the US Goverment you have to ask whether Orwell was just out by 20 years.
Jeb's Big Brother is in the Whitehouse folks, trouble is he kind of looks likes everyones Big Brother right now.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Just assume you have no privacy, at least not in the classical sense of the word.
Do you need a website upgrade?
In other words, the Patriot act is being used to stifle dissent against the act itself.
Well I for one welcome our new American overlords....oh wait
In Soviet Russia, the Government spies on YOU!...oh wait...DOH!
They are (supposedly) elected representatives of the people, its in your power to sack them if you are unhappy with what they are doing. Start explaining vociferously to you CongressPerson/Senator what the issue is and act with your ballot.
That aside, I am surprised at how strongly I feel about the by passing of legal stewardship in these issues. Normally I dont have alot of time for them but they do have their uses in a checks and bounds system. Obviously secrecy is required to carry out these operations but whats so hard about going to a judge if you have a valid case ? I think the recent statements by Ashcroft are indicative though. After Sept 11 all Arabic young men were potential terrorists. Now this has been expanded to include all young/middle aged/fathers/European looking Arabic men. No doubt Europeans and Asians will soon be included based on this logic.
Its becoming a concern that the US its leaders and institutions are becoming more and more isolated from the people they are supposed to represent and serve.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Saves them from dealing with many small fish.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that posting as AC while still being logged into /. as your username was a pretty transparent beard to the editors. Also, one of the editors mentioned in IRC once that every comment was trackable by IP records in their logs, but no gov't agency had (as yet) cause to request them.
Which brings us to this Reality Check: There is no anonymity on the Net, period, full stop, end of story.
Was there ever supposed to be? (Did I miss a meeting?) Is there some constitutional sub-text granting us anonymity on privately-owned Internet bulletin boards/communities? I don't believe there is... Should there be? Maybe, maybe not, but that's a topic for a different thread.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of the your life (to paraphrase the old song), never post anything "anonymously" on the Net that you would be uncomfortable scribing on your T-Shirt or your bumper sticker. Obviously, the owners of the boards you frequent don't stress the traceability of their membership's rants because they are in the business of _attracting_ posters, not scaring them away.
I see this less as an Evil, "They're Taking Our Rights Away, Big Brother is the SuXXor!" thing as I do a testimony to the naivete of so many people raised on the Internet thinking it is some kind of Magic Utopian Prometheus-Provided Happy Cyber-Town Forum and not the built-by-the-military and run-by-businss entity it really is.
If I were to post: Bush is a liar,
as an anonymous reader, and if this would make me a terrorist, then so be it(They should come and get me).
I will not live in a world in which I cannot speak my mind.
I repeat: Bush is a liar and spreads terror faster than Bin Laden could ever dream of accomplishing.
One could argue that the government is using unfettered powers to protect the people by finding out who could be potential 'terrorists'.
Now the problem is, who is a 'terrorist'?? Who defines the term 'terrorist'?
For instance take this ridiculous example (only to make a point, and makes silly assumptions that does not reflect their true nature):
Say, in a Democrat controlled (assume that they are all pro-Abortion etc.) government, would I be a terrorist if I advocated avoidance of abortion and extolled the virtues of abstinance?
Say, in a Republican controlled (assume that they are all xenophobic and White only), would a person be a terrorist if he/she were of Middle-Eastern descent.
Say, in a Stallmanist regime, would Bill Gates be a terrorist for advocating non-free software :-)
Another irritating point is the use of fancy words to which you cannot say anything near 'no' or 'I object' without the danger of being attacked, like 'Pro-Choice', 'Pro-Life', 'USA Patriot Act', 'Homeland Security', 'Intellectual Property' without looking like a bigot, one-who-condones-murder, unpatriotic, one who does not care for their patriotic duties to protect their homeland and one who condones thieving, respectively..
I have leaned to view everything with such names with suspicion.
Don't believe everything you see in the mainstream media. They are are liberal (which has proven again and again), they hate Bush, they want him to loose in Nov., they currently want to make the US look bad. Question EVERYTHING you see and read, consider that everything in the media has BIAS. Don't be dumbass sucker and just take newspaper headlines and top stories as truth. It's classic Plato Cave/Matrix. See the world through your own eyes.
People, write you representatives and congresspersons and let them know you are *tired* of this shit.
And for fuck's sake, VOTE IN NOVEMBER!
nope; it is about governmental disregard for constitutionally guaranteed due process rights.
But I guess conformists/authority-lovers (like you) fail to grasp such distinctions. And I feel quite comfortable airing my sentiments online like this, whereas a bumper sticker would afford people like you the opportunity to vandalize my car.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I don't have a problem with the concept of the Patriot Act. There must be a way for the law-enforcement agencies to be able to track criminals. We had the same problems with drug dealers and cellphones.
The obvious (and constitutional solution) is to have judicial oversight. Just like the s.o.b.s at RIAA, you must go to a judge somewhere and say "we suspect this person of doing this. Please give us a search warrant." No problem. The FBI would be limited in what information they can use for procecution. That is the way the Constitution is supposed to work.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
To think that the fed does not tap/read email or any other electronic transmission, this posting included, is simply delusional. All the paranoia in the world will not protect you from this, only 2 things can fix this:
1. Never log on to the net, never use your telephone, never mail anything via USPS. There, now you are safe.2. Make a change in goverment - the election process. Yeah, I know it is a slow, ugly process to get any kind of change done, but it is the only way to effect change in this country.
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
But there is an expectation of privacy and we have to be careful not to allow the separate issues of privacy and anonymity to be confused. It is in the interest of those who want to limit free speech to remove the expectation of privacy from communications over the Internet.
It can also be argued that there are cases where guaranteed anonymity is essential to privacy, but in mosts cases posts to a public web board don't qualify.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
someone has to configure the router / intercept device! Probably not the head of operation.
Really. You do business with an ISP owner who likes to talks about politics. All of a sudden, he becomes REAL quiet and looks scared all the time. D'oh.
The sad thing is, people will figure out who he is despite his best efforts, and the government WILL blame him.
Then why do we have secret balloting at all of our elections?
By the time you get a "National Security Letter", it's too late to complain on Slashdot about it, because you'll be under a gag order.
;-)
So instead, today you should make up a webpage stating basically what you've just said above: "I have never seen any requests for passwords or email from any law enforcement agency in my time working here." and post a link to it for us. That way, if you ever do get a NSL, then you don't have to violate your gag order and tell anyone about it, you just need to take down the webpage telling them the opposite and wait for people to notice.
Part of the problem is a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" atmosphere in Washington for a president. If you implement things like the Patriot Act and increased spying you are dinged for eroding liberties and not living up to your country's ideals. If you *don't* implement them and something happens (aka 9-11) you are dinged for not "doing enough" and all your opponents open up multi-year inquisitions into why you didn't stop it.
Noone said after 9-11 "Well, that sucked. But that's the price of living in a free society. We could have engaged in massive spying and black ops and we could have made it a living hell for any Muslim to get on a plane but we didn't because we wanted freedom." No, instead we open up commissions and inquiries and try to assign blame
And note that this same process would have happened no matter if a Democrat or a Republican were in office. I can't imaging what kind of criticism Gore would have faced during 9-11 from the right. Most likely, something like "See you elected that spineless eco-hippy and he let THIS happen."
We need to drop this "us vs. them" attitude FACT. Otherwise our country is in serious trouble. It is not healthy for political discourse when you believe your side is the almighty righteous and the other side is Hitler reincarnated (Bush for lefties and Hilary for righties).
Brian EllenbergerThe secular dictators in the middle east are the sworn enemies of Islamic fundamentalists. Saddam Hussein (and Assad of Syria) are know to murder these folks.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
You can't assume the last three years have been safe because of the PATRIOT Act, that's an unfounded statement. The WTC was first attacked in 1993, and we changed NOTHING about our security policies; NOTHING. There was no other attack (I don't count Oklahoma City because it's a different group). There was no attack on our soil for 8 years, 2001.
All I'm saying is that we have no evidence on whether the PATRIOT Act is working or not.
Something I've thought about, Big Brotherism can exist, but I don't think it would be run by a few malicious power mad individuals at the top. I think it would turn out to be more of an emergent behaviour of the type of system in place right now. Nudged in the right direction by some laws just as PATRIOT. Never underestimate the complexity possible from the emergent behaviour of single entities...
The WMD's were only one of many reasons put forth by the administration for justification of war.
Yes id feel better myself if they were found, but it was not the only reason we went back, and the other reasons were more then enough justification.
Concerning the first gulf war, no i cant answer why he was left in power.. I agree he should have been removed the first time.. Why we stopped 1/2 way is beyond me.
As far as other places that are more of a threat, they should be on the list too, and we had to start somewhere.. Due to his ties with Al Quaeda, it seems like a good place to me.
( I also re-read the original post, and he did say Hitler was a threat.. my mistake.. i read it too fast )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Big brotherism is Stalinism which actually existed in the Soviet Union.
It is not too complicated to exist. It DID exist.
Who is more dangerous, Saddam, messing only with people from his country or bush , who invades other countries and HAS WMD??? hmmmm. The one with more power decides who are the good guys and who are not.
Check out Website development, maintenance and accesibility cons
In spite of the fact that the debate about the alleged "War on Terror" is lively and informative, I think it represents a good bit of cyber-turfing in support of various non-domestic agendas.
The article is about the abuse of the US legislative, judicial, and enforcement power to silence and oppress american citizens, yet the bulk of the discussion seems to be about the war. It's a classic case of diversion, imo, depite the fact that many valid points are being made on other (arguably related) subjects.
"The Internet is made of cats."
At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinburgh) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
I'm pretty sure we're right in around the apathy phase...
And that's exactly the problem.
As long as things aren't that bad, there's nothing to worry about, right?
I really fear for what this country is going to be like in ten years. Looks like it is time to start packing my bags.
Now as this is a mainly yankee forum, I'd like express what I see is wrong with your country, though I've never been to USA and base my views on literature, internet, newspapers and TV. So why are you loosing your freedom? Lemme explain it from the beginning:
The problem number one and root of every other problem is the American dream: every individual is economically on it's own and everyone has the possibility to become rich one day, if you just work hard enough. That's why you don't allow too much social security ("get some work, you hippie! don't live on other people's money!"), taxing ("once earned money shouldn't be taken away") nor state controlled monopolies (even on fields like media nor health care) and instead give free hands to coroporations.
The problem is that the American dream is 100% BS. You have the system called capitalism. The #1 law of capitalism is that those who already have money make more money on the expnese of those who have fewer money, who become poorer. See it for yourself: play a few rounds of the Monopoly game with your friends. The natural sense of most people should say, that a system which gives more to those who already have and takes from those who don't, is unfair. But no, remember that we have the American dream: everyone is on his/her own and if you're not receiving enough material goods a) you're not just trying enough b) it's the will of Lord c) other BS. So just let the rich make their money and poors starve!
Now why are the people in USA not realizing that the system sucks and throwing those fat pigs away? Because the second law of libertarian capitalism says money=power. In USA even the medias like TV and the newspapers are free to markets. In most European countries there are state-controlled TV stations who don't go for market profit, but more like objective truth (i'm not saying that neither this system is best possible: the state may lie just like corporations, but this doesn't seem to be as frequent). When I open my local TV and they are airing american TV series or I go to cinema to watch an american movie, I see 90% times mind-controlling shit. Your media seems to want make people stupid sheeps who can be easily persuated to buying more stupid things or believeing the lies that your politicans feed you. Now please mind that the the politicans are also chosen by media: those who have enough money to commercials and close contact to media owners to persuade them to write/air good articles/news about them are chosen, because american people are mostly stupid as sheeps and vote the one who is praised in TV and the election is just a formality. Not every individual in USA is stupid, eg. most people in Slashdot seem much more aware than the avarage John Doe.
Because media is controlled by the rich class there is only one truth in USA: the truth of the rich. A good example of this mind-control: it was no long time ago when Michael Moore's movie critizing the Bush regieme was banned in USA. The supercapitalism is to blame: it has sold the truth and "democracy" for money.
We have an almost perfect system: the rich class has everyone else working to give them more money, media feeding the poor more lies and the power of everyone ("democracy") in the richs' hands. There remains one problem, though: the freedom. If people were really free and knew how bad they are treated, they'd kick the richs' asses. We have to rip people off their rights so that they keep on working for us. An example of which you see right in this article.
I'm sorry, but if you put Osama Bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein in a room together, Osama would rip Saddam's throat out in under two minutes.
These two entities, Al-Qaeda and the B'ath Party, were as far from each other on the spectrum as Timothy Leary and John Ashcroft. Hussein was a secular aristocratic illegitimate leader, while Osama is a fundamentalist populist exile.
In Osama's dreams Saddam gets deposed right after the US stops funding Israel and the House of Saud. We just gave him his wish early.
Are there 'links?' between the B'ath Party and Al-Qaeda? Not NEARLY as credible or numerous as there are 'links' between the current administration and Osama, or the current administration and the B'ath party. Who do you think gave intelligence to Saddam for his 'ruthless murder of innocents with WMDs'? Who do you think trained and armed the first incarnations of Al-Qaeda?
I'll tell you: the USA did, because our leaders' vision is limited to a MAXIMUM of eight years. I and all Americans have to take the full responsibility for the sins of our previous leaders. We could reduce terrorism a whole lot better if we stopped using our economic and millitary power to foist up terrible governments around the world and developed reasonable long-term foreign policy.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
For example, back when talk of "the importance of 128 bit encryption in your browser" would have been met with blank stares by most organizations like the ACLU, the EFF was fighting for the right to real encryption. Privacy, technology and Carnivore? Or DRM and HDTV and the implications for Fair Use?
But like any non-profit, especially small non-profits, the EFF is limited by the amount of funding it has: they more you donate, the more cases they can take. So donate or volunteer now-- its your freedom of technological development insurance policy. It helps to ensure you can call someone who'll understand why your prosecution under the "2006 XYZ DRM Technobabble Here Act" has constitutional implications. The EFF was there for 2600 and Dmitry and many more. How many other organizations would have been ready to care about DeCSS or UCITA... not many. Other organizations get cases that 20 million people really care about. The EFF has taken cases that only a fraction of Slashdot cares about- but are still just as important. (Slashdot has 100's of thousands of readers. The EFF has an order of magnitude less members. Why haven't you joined? Quantity isn't everything, but it helps impress the congresscritters and it makes it more likely they can afford to take your case when you call them up. Take your case to the Supreme Court if needed.)
Parenthetically, 2600 wasn't an easy posterboy for programming rights case: neither the government nor the RIAA / MPAA / Disney conglomerates are ever going to be that nice. The EFF took the case anyways.
If I'm going to be terrorized by someone, I'd rather it be by actual terrorists than by my own government. If they're going to take down my country, they're going to have to do it one building at a time, dammit, and I'll be casting votes based on it. I'm going to law school in Chicago in the fall, my rep is Danny Davis from the IL 7th. He voted against the PATRIOT Act, one of 66 NAY votes. Maybe you should check up on your rep and see how they're doing.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.