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The Empires Strike Back
Alien54 writes "Back when the Internet was young - oh, say, eight years ago - there was a school of thought that held that cyberspace was its own sovereign nation. For one thing, 'The Net perceives censorship as damage, and routes around it.' What government could control what was said on the Net? [...] Maybe it's time to change that into, 'Governments perceive the Internet as damage, and gang up on it.' So says Net War columnist Wendy Grossman in an article discussing the recent raids on Indymedia. She makes an interesting case."
four words:
amatuer orbital server farms.
cut down on those pesky armed intrusions and silly warrant nonsense.
Mr Rutan, could you loft my rack? thanks.
"Allies of the willing" cooperating in stings to shut us up.
FEC looking to quiet "dicent" on the internet regarding campaigning.
Indymedia attacked for pictures of police shooting innocent protestors..
The internet is a medium of hypocracy as much as a medium of truth - states don't deserve the right to control, police or determine what i read. If i can buy the BS in books, i can certainly read it on the net.
Is it past time to use digital certificates, ssl, keyfobs and encryption to protect ourselves from "evil doers?" (aka governments with something to hide..)
Tin foil hat? dunno.. all i know is media is so left or right and when independants are being busted for telling the truth it disgusts me.
They weren't told but its under the assumption that Italy protested about pictures of there police force shooting protestors at the G8 summit.
Apparently they don't want people to recognize them for the ***holes they are.
It talks a bit about how there are colonies on the moon and mars where people aren't afraid to read books other people own, because they're so far away and the government can't punish them.
10 karma points to s/he who finds this story. It's perfect for this topic.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Whether you think the IndyMedia incident was a harbinger of things to come or not, bad things could easily, and probably are, on the horizon. This is why I support the movements true cypherpunks everywhere. The ability to be as anonymous as possible is arguably important these days, but I'm sure one day, probably more sooner than later, it will become an issue-I'd rather prepare for it now. You don't plan to succeed, you succeed to plan, better safe then sorry, etc, pick your cliche', but keep your eyes open and your movements hidden.
I know nothing
To expand on this, people who seek positions of real power (meaning the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end, i.e. government) are those who wish to control others through coercion, not those who wish only to mind their own business and live their lives in peace.
Really, what other reason does one have for seeking a position in government? (I know there are a select few who actually work to reduce the powers of government, but those are the very rare exceptions.)
This is good example of why businesses such as www.havenco.com will become more important in the future. Volunteer-based sites and non-profits will need to rely on sovereign nations such as Sealand for hosting services which are outside of the jurisdiction of our "democratic" law enforcemnet authorities. Mirroring and distributed networking architectures are still physically located somewhere. Unfortunately, there will be fewer and fewer nations willing to stand up to Western law enforcement in the future. Hence, business will boom for those nations willing to provide truly secure and sovereign hosting environments, much like the Caribbean does now for banks and investment firms.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who refuses to listen to reason"
Government can be your friend - when it's controlled by the people. The problem with the American government is that it's controlled by the corporations, not the people. This happened because of the lobby groups and corporate-level funding. In the same vein, less government is not the best, because it leaves a hole where corporations can take over (think of who mostly controls your retirement funds and your health care in USA). The best government is a people-controlled government.
The American government has become "the enemy" because the Americans have let it happen, because they've become slaves to the corporations, because they refuse to look beyond their borders and look at what other countries are doing better, because they're so arrogant they think they're best at everything. And stop equating USA to "the world" that's just ignorant.
All of these sorts of functions have been necessary as long as humans have been social creatures, and they have been filled, by kings, tribal chieftains, religious leaders, or elected governments.
An ideal government is one that balances minority rights (i.e. the basic human rights and principles of equality that we believe in) and the interest of the many, and one that maximizes personal freedom. But this is a very complicated equation, not something easily solved in some optimizing equation. Yes, generally less intrusion into our personal lives is a good thing, but sometimes I want peoples personal lives intruded into (if they are beating their children severely, for example). Anytime my rights and somebody else's rights come into conflict, I still need some sort of intermediary to resolve the conflict, or else we just all end up shooting each other to resolve our conflicts.
When it comes to solving a crime, stopping terrorism, ect I'll gladly risk a single instance of "censorship" before I start whining
You need to understand that when it comes to individual rights governments must not be allowed to make exceptions. Not one, even in the investigation of a crime or terrorist activities.Some time ago GW Bush promised us that the new powers granted under the Patriot Act would never be used for anything but the investigation of terrorist activities. He even said "Trust me".
Yet those same powers have now been used to investigate college students who were alledgedly downloading mp3's from the internet.
Every potential for abuse by a government will be realized eventually. So the potential must not be allowed to exist. Governments around the world have repeatedly misled their own populations regarding the motivation for new powers, wars, censorships, etc.
Your previous military experience has no bearing on this subject. History however, does
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
The took rackspaces servers...it just so happened that indys data was on it...sheer coincidence and hardly the governments fault!
Seriously though...that's a loophole that needs to be closed...I would really really check with your ISP about who 'owns' the physical hardware when you buy space (i.e. do you 'rent' the property, or just use it to put data on). Very valid question for anyone looking into hosting something. At the moment I doubt that they have to tell indy anything, they already have told the property owners (rackspace) why they were taken...then hit them with a gag order, which is quite clever (diabolical?) really.
Anyway, host-er beware...check the legality...if they're actually renting you the hardware I would imagine that anyone wanting to take it would have to issue the seizure order to you, otherwise they can issue it to your ISP and tell you nothing...though IANAL.
It is, but you also have to consider not only Indymedia, but other cases as well.
In the Indymedia case it is interesting how Swiss (or Italian or whatever else) governments can simply go to any MLAT partner and seize anything they want for their "investigation." Were Indymedia or Rackspace in violation of the U.S. or U.K laws? I don't know, but it doesn't look that way since neither British law enforcement, nor FBI initiated this action. So, by the magic of the MLAT, you, as an online service provider or entity, are subject to the laws of other countries where you don't even operate or have anything to do with. Want to express your frustration with EU, World Bank, WTO, etc.? It only has to be "illegal" in one country, and your speech will be suppressed for all the rest.
The practice is becoming increasingly common - Yahoo! cannot list Nazi memorabilia in its auctions (the burden is on Yahoo! to make sure the French don't have access to them), Google cannot return advertisements for the words/phrases that are trademarked in the U.S., etc. So, the trend is that once you are online, you are subject to laws of all the nations that could potentially have access to your content or services.
I think it is premature to say that the Internet is doomed, but the beginning of this trend is troubling.
The government can always "abscond with people's property". That's what they're for. Otherwise, that FICA guy has got a lot to answer for after stealing bits out of my paycheck. :)
In a criminal investigation, there are two ways evidence can be collected, first through application of the fourth amendment and a search warrant, and the second through subpoena for criminal investigation, specifically by a grand jury. Grand jury investigations are nearly always kept under wraps until charges are filed, because they may be investigating something that turns out to be nothing. In that case, it's better that the grand jury's investigations remain secret to protect the privacy of all involved. It is believed, and this is all rumor and innuendo at this point, that the action against Indymedia was a subpoena, not a search warrant.
It isn't stonewalling. It's part of a normal criminal investigation. Let's say, for instance, someone is being investigated for...oh, I dunno, screwing sheep. A grand jury issues a subpoena for all of that person's clothing from the dry cleaners (the clothes that hadn't been washed yet) to look for fibers. Do you really think it's the right thing to do to tell everyone "Hey, we're investigating a sheep fucker over here!!!". Nope. That'd be more against the "acceptable norms in every western liberal democracy" than keeping it under covers. On the other hand, telling the guy he's being investigated for illicit sheep interfacing might lead him to destroy evidence, duck and cover, flee to (country where it's not illegal to screw sheep) or whatever. That's also an undesirable outcome. Telling people they're being investigated before you arrest them is not only not required, but very stupid in some cases.
For the purposes of a grand jury, from the 5th amendment: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury"
So, it's kinda obvious something's being investigated. Could be Indymedia, one of their posters, or someone totally unrelated (in my example above, the drycleaner was given a subpoena, but wasn't involved in the wrongdoing).
You do have the right to hear what you're being accused of, but nobody's being accused of anything yet. Grand juries happen to see if there's adequate evidence for the accusations to happen. At that point, the crap you're spouting about being told what you're being accused of kicks in, not before.
As another use of my sheep-playfulness example earlier, if the charges were not true, but the investigation was open, people would always remember and link in their minds some connection between the accused and sheep in a nasty way. Grand juries are secretive to protect people from bad accusations as well as to enable law enforcement to collect evidence without scaring away the perps. It's a balancing act that you don't hear about very much because it works, you very rarely hear about grand jury investigations until they are over.
Say 15-20 years ago, any type of commercial activity, including advertising, was pretty much banned. If someone so much as tried to sell their car on the internet, they whole on-line community would come down on them for "spoiling" the sanctitiy of the free exchange of intellectual discourse. Now, of course, the exact opposite seems to be true - nothing but e-commerce and advertisements.
The US is a Replublic. Not a Democracy. In the US we elect representatives to make decisions for us.
Unfortunately power corrupts. Those representatives make decisions based not on the needs of all the people they represent, but based on their own personal needs. Of course the thing that anyone in power needs most is to stay in power.
The primary purpose of the beurocracy is to maintain itself. The larger it grows the more resources are required to maintain it. Thus we have regulatory panels, review boards, oversite commitees, and departments dedicated to managing communication between other departments!
Governments act to protect themselves just like any other organism. New segments (regulations and personell) will be formed to protect against any new threat -citizens having easy access to information which might make the government look bad, for example. This is a bad thing. Ergo government is bad.
We need government. That much is true. But only because we havent discovered anything better, yet.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Is the loophole in the law, or is it simply an invention of the courts? When a person's property is "accused" of a crime, that person is consequently deprived of property without due process for themselves. Any lawyers out there mind explaining how the courts explain this away?
cannot have a true democracy.
Once you get past a few tens of thousands of individuals, a genuinely representative democracy is no longer a realistic possibility because you lose the ability of every member to directly address the forum deciding the issues. What is fucked up is that we still refer to the US's government as a democracy when that's really no longer an appropriate term.
A true democracy would be based on referrendums on issues which people would vote on directly. Real democracy does not require representatives to speak on issues. Anybody who wishes to participate in the congress may participate. Representatives in a real democracy only serve to organize the democratic institutions, not decide upon issues for the citizens. The citizens must decide on the issues for themselves in a public forum in a real democracy.
That's how a real democracy works. But, like I pointed out, you really can't use this system once your population grows too large because the possibility for direct dialogue that is an essential part of the decision making process becomes unmanageable.
Intriguingly, a forum system not unlike Slashdot could be used to modernize the ancient concept of direct participation in democracy and apparently can scale up to around a million users and still maintain some functionality.
So, Slashdot could become the replacement for the misused sense of democracy that we now have in the States. We'll just break the granularity down into sections of one million instead of States.
For some less populated states this won't be much of a change. But for places like California or New York it will create the issue of major legal distinctions between geographically close districts. You'll be able to traffic in kilos of Coke in Santa Monica, but be careful when you cross over into Orange County.
In theory, they might want to fix some of the really broken laws that have been passed...
Its hard so say why it was done, but until the governments involved stop gagging everyone you have to assume it was the for the reason everyone knows about, photos of Swiss undercover agents photographing protesters.
Assuming that is the reason there are multiple cases of an out of control government here.
First off the Swiss undercover agents have apparently bestowed upon themselves the right to photograph protesters but the protesters can't take pictures of them back. These agents were in the public. There is absolutely no reason anyone doesn't have the right to take pictures of them and post them. If their identities are top secret then they should have sent some cops out to take the pictures whose ID's no one cares about.
Second, the photos were no doubt being used to identify and catalog protesters, most probably for law enforcement agencies inside and outside Switzerland. Anti globalization protestors are being tracked by all the countries who are pro globalization now. Since these protester were in public so they have to live with being photographed and should wear masks in the future. But those photos are no doubt going to be used to build files on them and label them in perpetuity as trouble makers so they are designed to strip them of their rights. They have basically been given criminal records without having been convicted of anything. There is potential they may be wiretapped, Internet use monitored, movements tracked especially as they move towards protest sites, and groups they belong to may be infiltrated by more undercover agents. If they were engaging in vandalism or assault then there is a basis for law enforcement action. If they are engaged in peaceful protest, even unlicensed peaceful protest, democratic governments should leave them alone unless they aspire to be the totalitarian governments they rail against so often.
Third, You have multiple nations and law enforcement agencies uniting to seize someone's property, and to suppress free speech, in this case internet sites who are very much about free speech. There was no basis to seize these photos to begin with since those agents were in public, but to deny people their free speech rights in the process is not something you expect from democratic governments. The fact that all these governments so easily united to do this across multiple international boundries and without laying any charges against IndyMedia suggests there is an international cabal that can shut down pretty much any Internet site on the flimsiest of evidence, and threaten free speech and dissent in the process. These are tactics very much designed to intimidate IndyMedia and to encourage them to be quiet.
@de_machina
I couldn't agree more - in fact every time this quote is trotted out (happens a lot here on /.) I feel compelled to remind the user that what Ben Franklin felt were essential liberties was probably quite a bit different than what the poster thinks they are, or should be.
Frequently the example of airline travel restrictions comes up in the same general vicinity, as if Ben Franklin could ever have concieved of a 300-passenger jet-liner being used as a weapon by death-seeking psychotics.
Perhaps I'm alone, but to me, the fact that I'm free to travel about the country, and that the existence of air travel allows me to be anywhere within 5 or so hours, is my essential liberty. The extra hassle at the airport is not of concern to me and if it was, there are multitudes of more anonymous modes of travel.
If you don't like the scene at airports, don't fly, you're welcome to take the very anonymous horse-drawn carriage to get where you want to be - thats how ol' Ben would've had to do it!
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
They have laws against hate speech, and in the meanwhile you've got obscenity laws (like those middle eastern countries you mentioned), USAPATRIOT and the DMCA. Every country has restrictions on speech.
Also, China is not strictly communist. They have a rapidly growing capitalist economy based out of the cities where the worker has far less protections than the US (or, especially, western Europe). It has more in common with a fascist dictatorship. A better example would have been North Korea.
Hands in my pocket
Let's say you have a bank vault for a front door with 6 locks manufactured by different companies.., Yada Yada
I would break though your wall. Ditto for aircraft security. What's to stop 6 guys with AK 47's driving onto the runway and then boarding an aircraft? Given 3 years to prepare and 20k of supplies I could probably nock down 60% of the eastern seaboards power grid for 24 hours and not get discovered. Granted I feel no need to do so but you gain security though redundancy not giving up freedoms. AKA nothing you do will 100% secure the us power grid but if each home and office had backup power for 2 day's taking down the grid would be meaningless.
If you recall the DC area sniper incident you will recall he was discovered not through detective work but rather a lucky break in finding people sleeping in their car. Now what if you had 200 people doing this once each year on some random day until there demands are met. How many freedoms would you have to give up to find them? They stopped talking to each other years ago and they're just watching the news waiting for you to release some prisoner. Let's say you find a guy well the ballistics will not match his gun for 99.5% of the crimes. And even if you where to bust 50 of them their attacks are still going to continue so what do you do? You live with it or give in that's your only options. What are you going to search every home in the us looking to see if they have a gun in there flower bed's?
I am always amazed at people's grasp of the abstract; that they can imagine something not present, and realize that object's or idea's value and significance. You don't what you've missed until it is gone.
Hold this thought...
By not challenging an arbitrary label or definition, you perpetuate a way of thinking with an inherent bias. Read: IngSoc.
There is no conspiracy theory. This is not some Robert Ludlam airport read.
I just went to a book reading for Chuck Palahniuk's latest book. Incidentally, he he had some very interesting things to say about censorship.
The point: in the Q&A, when it was suggested that his writing is negative and dark, he chuckled and said something to the effect that "I just read the newspaper ".
Look around. Read the goddamn paper. Watch the news, and factor out that bias.
You will still plainly see the loss of civil liberties that we, as Americans, are experiencing, and it is frightening.
OK, back to the original thought: a personal testimony. These ideas mean nothing to most people until they effect them personally.
You don't know what you've missed until you've lost it. I am a small business owner. I am a contractor for the Government. My business line is tapped. My Internet connection is tapped.
Deep breath. My home line is tapped. Another f&^*& deep breath. Personal conversations with family, friends, girlfriends, BUSINESS is made more or less public knowledge to non-secuity Government workers whom I serve in the building I work at.
It sounds whacky, but it is the fucked and messed up truth. I get significant chunks of conversation repeated back to me, paraphrased. Some people let things slip. Privledged information that was discussed privately comes up in discussions often.
What can I do? For one, I gave notice on my contract, and am getting the hell out of the building as soon as I can.
Imgaine this for two seconds, folks. Who in their right mind wants this kind of attention? Who want's their personal lives made public business? And for no pay!!!
Disclaimer: I'm not any meds nor do I need to be on any. I don't do drugs and I don't drink near often as I want because I work a bunch and don't have the time.
I'm not sure what I else I can say.
For all their whining, Indymedia has not even shown that they owned the property that was seized
yes. its indymedias property. what a silly assertion to make. And if it was returned early, its only because of an international effort to get it back , including some assistance from an international team of lawyers and a UK MP.
If it was just a nutty little website with two writers and ten readers, it'd probably be lost to oblivion. Thankfully IMC doesnt take shit from governments and has the muscle to back it up.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
As long as servers stay on land belonging to a government
Looks like Havenco is still around...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)