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."

Comments

What about /. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

While in their FAQ's they (/.) state that they've only ever removed one comment... how does that apply/work now? Slashdot is an equal target for the PATRIOT act, as well as their hosts and the people who post here... hell even posting under the 'Post Anonymously' option may have certain 'caveats'.

Food for thought people, food for thought.

Re:What about /. ?

[wfberg]

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.

Checking out books at the library is also not anonymous, and never has been. However, there is an expectation of privacy; you don't think a librarian would run to the feds to tell them if you read one book too many about Stalin. And even if one librarian did, most of them just wouldn't give a rat's behind, nor would they feel inclined to cooperate with bothersome government requests for information on all sorts of "suspicious" persons. Not without a warrant. That stops a lot of unwarrented (no pun intended) government intrusion right there because there's this little thing called judicial oversight that curtails some of their powers. Suddenly they need a good reason to get that information. Like, due cause.

The "PATRIOT" act changes that so that librarians, ISPs, banks, etc. are forced by the FBI to spy on their customers on their behalve - on NO basis for suspicion whatsoever. There is NO judicial oversight, and the government is entirely free to do with that information what it wants, and gag everyone involved in the process.

Are you old enough to remember McCarthy? Read up on him some time.

This suit is a prime example. The feds can already get secret wiretaps if they want. If this guy was so dangerous, they could just bug his home, attach all sorts of wiretapping equipment on his telephone line, etc. But they're too lazy to do that (or more likely the guy isn't a threat), so they go after the one guy running an ISP, and then tell him that he can't argue; and now that he does he's prohibited from even discussing the effects of the "PATRIOT" act.

The "PATRIOT" act is just a thinly veiled instrument to establish a secret police that spies on US citizens. Any country that has had such a secret police can tell you how wildly succesful that approach is to enhance "national security".

There are firms out ther pushing "intelligence" software that can track people's "association" 30 degrees of separation deep. Talk about guilt by association, when it's widely assumed that you know every one in the world in only 6 degrees of separation..

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.

The toilet at work is owned by your boss. I don't suppose you mind if he is forced to install a covert and secret FBI camera to check for suspicious, well.. weenies..

Re:What about /. ?

[maximilln]

-----
The "PATRIOT" act changes that so that librarians, ISPs, banks, etc. are forced by the FBI to spy on their customers
-----
Schools have been using our most gullible resource, children, to spy on their parents for years. Children who are less than conformist are approached more often by counselors and teachers. They're engaged in more conversation and encouraged to tell things about the family. Human society, as a general rule, seems to be a suspicious lot of witch hunters always looking for the next witch.

I'm not so much worried about coordinated government big-brotherism. I'd like to hypothesize that Big Brotherism doesn't exist. It can't exist. It's too complicated to actually formally exist. What feeds the concept of Big Brotherism are individual abuses made by vindictive people who find themselves in positions of available power and who get their feathers ruffled by someone who isn't in a position of power.

Like McCarthy. He wasn't targeting all the communist pinkos. He only targeted the ones who personally got under his skin.

I guess the trick is to fly below the radar. But how does one fly below the radar when they're being squeezed by taxes which keep going up and and up and up?

Encryption

[tindur]

If all email was encrypted by default the spies would need a lot of computing power.

Re:What's the point

[Delta-9]

"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?"

(paranoia-filled comment)

That is assuming their isn't some backdoor written into that encryption software that would let the gubermint easily decode your heroine habit with some "master key."

(/paranoia-filled comment)

Student Uncovers US Secrets [Reloaded]

[m1kesm1th]

Numerous words, sentences and entire sections of the documents related to the suit, which are posted on the group's website, remain blacked out.

Sounds like a job for Claire Whelan, a dictionary and text analysis software.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/16/1448 21 4&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=172&tid= 93

Re:Open source economy

[s0m3body]

terrorists are not that dumb to send unencrypted emails about their plans

they can use web sites, ssl connections, etc

noone is able to monitor (and decrypt) all ssl connections, but if they can get an access to the site itself (when it is running on ISP's server) they can easily get all the information they need

on the other side, i'm running smtp server and web server on my own pc at home

so i'm lucky that i'm not an US citizen, otherwise i would be probably accused of terrorism because FBI cannot get access to my web site just by asking my ISP

Re:I've never seen these, and I work at an ISP

[allgood2]

No offense but how would you know? Typically speaking these requests go to heads of operation (position titles vary) and they also include a gag order around them. For example, our local library has received numerous requests. Enough so that to get around the fact that they can not tell staff or effected patrons that requests were issued, they started the policy of announcing when no requests were issued.

It's simple, and effective, and chilling, that the past three staff meetings have had no mention of it.

Re:Article too long, here is the short version

[gcaseye6677]

Now if the RIAA can succeed in getting online filesharing declared to be an act of terrorism, they can use these National Security Letters to get around that pesky court order that put a stop to their warrantless search powers.

Re:USA = China-Lite

[Colonel Cholling]

Well, then assume I'm stupid and show me exactly where this evidence is. If there's so damn much of it, it shouldn't take you any time at all to provide examples.

Farcial nature of case

[tehanu]

The description of this case reminds me of two things. The almost farcial nature of many of the rules and regulations in Catch 22. Secondly the way trials were conducted in China when the Communists came to power. As my grandparents tell it, they'd put you on trial but the best thing is they *won't* tell you OR the public what the charge is! The assumption being that if the government puts you trial, obviously you are guilty and the whole point of the trial is to exact your public confession. To make it even better they were allowed to beat and torture you until you confess. The problem being that not knowing what the charge is, even if you wanted to falsely confess to stop them beating you, you couldn't! The only way around this is if you had contacts amongst the Communist officials who would tell you the charge so you could say "Yes, I stole Mr Lee's chickens last Saturday". You'd get punished, but at least you'd skip the whole beating and torture business. And of course the info on which the trial is based on were usually informants, of whom they never tell you who it is or what the details of the evidence were (as I said, they didn't even tell you the details of the charge) so that you have absolutely no chance of defending yourself against the evidence as you are not allowed to see any of the evidence!

Of course the details of what's going on in the US is doing is different from what my grandparent's described about China, but the whole farcial nature, the whole "Sorry we can't even talk about what the charge is." (at least the defendents are allowed to know), the whole beating and torture until you confess (Guantonomo Bay), the whole lack of oversight to prevent abuses, the whole "we can't allow you to see/challenge the evidence/witnesses" (that trial in the US right now with that guy connected to 9/11) seems very very similar. And with the recent torture cases in US prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan etc the US is sliding down a very slippery slope.

Re:Big Brother, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

All in all, neither country is perfect, and neither is heading down a slippery slope toward having "neither liberty or safety" (all right, please stop bashing us over the head with that quote, I know it's not just you but all of Slashdot). You've got plenty of liberties in both countries, and pretty incontestably more in the U.S. Now put down your George Orwell and enjoy the good life.

Wake up and read the following!

The Patriot Act is hideously reminiscent of the "Decree for the Protection of Nation and State" that became law in Nazi Germany in February 1933. Its provisions were described by John Toland, in his masterly "Adolf Hitler", as ostensibly innocuous while in practice destroying every reasonable humanitarian right formerly possessed by the German people. There were "Tribunals set up to try enemies of the state", and Toland observed that Hitler made his legislation (the "Enabling Act") "sound moderate and promised to use its emergency powers "only in so far as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures"." Does that sound horribly familiar? And who would decide whether a measure was "vitally necessary"? " Why, the man wielding total power, of course. ("Trust me!" is ever the cry of the incipient dictator.) So Hitler"s Decree and the Reichstag"s subsequent Enabling Act were never modified or repealed, because they gave the man who was served by a compliant and intensely patriotic legislature the instruments he needed to keep him in total control. This is the reason for Bush"s energetic campaign to prevent the Patriot Act being subject to the existing "sunset clause" whereby most of its more despotic provisions should lapse next year. It was passed by a compliant and intensely patriotic legislature : will it be repealed by one?

Cloughley

Re:USA = China-Lite

[Mac Degger]

Yeah...it originated at my uni.

Anyway; I do quite a bit of 3D work, and also do a bit of compositing to integrate my 3D work into real footage. I have an interest in special effects. You know what the first three things are which struck me about that video?
1) the guy seems too calm for someone who should know enough arabic to know what the guys behind him are going to do to him
2) what a convenient cock up of a zoom, just as they're grabbing for his head to behead him...in sfx land they'd call that a convenient cut so they can montage in the fake. It really is amazingly convenient
3) where's all the blood? They're cutting through his jugulars: the arteries which have the most blood running through them at the highest pressure...ever seen a cow get slaughtered? There should be more blood.

Now the video could be real...but I have to say that, even knowing nothing more about the guys who are supposed to be involved, there are some real convenient (there really is no other word for it) bits in that video. It's not tinfoilhat time, it's just knowing how such things are done fro moving images and some healthy scepticism. I for one would like it if an independant forensic scientist went over that video, together with a special effects artist.

They're all the same

[Infonaut]

It isn't a matter of changing out one group of people for another, because that won't improve things.

Right. They're all the same. Always have been, always will be.

* Carter tried to distance the US from dictators, took the Soviets at face value when they claimed to desire co-existence, and was shocked when they invaded Afghanistan.

* Reagan believed in the notion that it's better to have a dictator who is on our side than a totalitarian ruler opposed to us, and he pushed the Soviet Union to collapse by forcing them into an arms race they couldn't win.

* Bush 1 put together a very strong alliance to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, but didn't take over Iraq for fear of breaking the trust he had established with the Coalition partners.

* Clinton believed in working in close concert with America's European allies wherever possible, did not believe in unilateral "regime change," and deliberately limited the scope of operations against Serbia and in the Middle East, believing that effective use of American "soft power" ultimately provided better results than constant use of "hard power."

* Bush 2 eschewed long-standing European alliances and incorporated pre-emptive invasion and regime change as a core element in American foreign policy oriented almost exclusively around hard power. His post-liberation plans were based on faith-based intelligence and wishful thinking.

You're so right. No differences between them. Give up your right to vote, and let the knee-jerk flag-waving "Creationism is science" crowd take over America.