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"Dark Alleys" on the Internet
nokilli writes "Sounding the alarmist tone many of us became used to in the early days of the web, The New York Times has a story that talks about "national security" concerns over the myriad ways in which two people (i.e., terrorists) can communicate using the Internet today [NYT=Kneel before Zod]. They're talking about monitoring chat rooms, email servers, etc. I'd like to see how they plan on monitoring my mage as it talks to your cleric in some obscure, nearly impossible to reach (unless you're level 50) corner of our favorite MUD."
Just force the game provider to hand over all logs ? :)
they can monitor everything they want, but it will be in vein. There are so many avenues for communcation they can't monitor everything..
I'd like to see how they plan on monitoring my mage as it talks to your cleric in some obscure, nearly impossible to reach (unless you're level 50) corner of our favorite MUD."
It's called sniffing.
Either on the wire, or if the MUD software encrypts traffic, on your end (via trojan) or the server end (via court-order).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Anyone writing on technological matters in a popular publication should be required to have a modicum of a clue.
Call me old fashioned.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
It would make a lot more sense to focus on effectively handling the data available than simply adding to the flood of data already at hand.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
when communication was considered a good thing.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
If you don't have anything to hide than what do you have to fear?
Oh yeah, I suppose since in a few years it will be rights infringment to use a copyrighted name in a negative sentence that there is plenty to fear. Call me Rossi The Prophet if someone ever attempts to pass such a law =)
But maybe they would use monitoring for something less evil? How about unknown public opinion polls? "57% of AIM users said they were displeased with last nights bombing of Iraq, a poll of all AIM conversations has found. More on this at 11."
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
To try and tap every conversation throughout the many internet communications outlets is as futile as trying to tap the hundreds of phone lines and overhearing conversations on streets (nevermind needing court orders). Big Brother is big but the populace is bigger. There is no way to create a large enough agency to not only collect but also analyze the data that would be collected.
It's a concern but not a very legitamate one.
-Teiresias
What worries me is not government monitoring of the internet. We already know that this goes on to some extent and if we really want to communicate privately, using an unencrpyted email or an IRC chat room isnt the way to go about it. The majority of us are knowledgable enough to communicate with some degree of security.
My main concern is their definition of a 'terrorist'. I have no problems with law enforcement agencies going after real, or suspected terrorists, but I do disagree with the slow creep of the word to include people who have different opinions then the government.
Then again, I'm more paranoid than most. Probably nothing to worry about. Probably...
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
Precisely -- hiding a message in spam also has the advantage of defeating traffic analysis (there's no way to tell which of the millions of recipients knows that the exact percentage on the "mortgage offer", or whatever, is a code).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
S'already working, since there are no terrorists other than those the government deliberately allowed to act. The 'terrorism' bugaboo is just a way to trick people into being heavily controlled. But you know that already.
You're not paranoid. It's simply that you're not stupid.
The question is, do you know why reality is shifting in that direction?
-FL
So to catch terrorists and drug dealers we just sit on our asses behind a computer screen?
What if they use a pencil, a paper and fold that paper and conceal it anywhere in the REAL WORLD like most terrorists do and all of our lazy ass new generation of investigators still think that "if it is not on the Net, then it doesn't exist".
How do you think the IRA functioned all these years? With faxes? Making a deal with an ISP?
No, by meeting face to face... you know, physicaly meeting. You remember that practice?
I tell you, the real modern intelligence is today on the field more than ever, while the non 1/3 world countries are too busy expecting it to be on TCP/IP.
It's articles like that that confirms those rogue nations that we are a bunch of incompetent fat idiots that should be taken out for gross incompetence. Elmer Fudd style.
Ever been shocked by things like "Our anti-missile systems could not catch that 50's era type of soviet made missile because it wasn't smart enough to get confused by our counter measures."
Well that was in 1991 already. We are still getting ready for a WWIII with an ultra modern theoretical ennemy when in fact a simple under developped country can bring us to a standstill.
Wanna block a telephone system for a nation? Bomb the main offices! Don't waste time reading Phrack for years.
Wanna really have fun? Go after the power grid and see those IT and NSA guys look stupid.
No guys, we really need to set our priorities.
I think that the message here is much more ominous than what the surface story tells. The young man simply stated his great dislike for the United States government that is in place. He also made a flip comment about himself being a pilot of one 9/11 planes that crashed into the towers. I only see a crime here if he actually did the task. What are we becoming here in the US? It scares me to think that if I say that I hate GWBush with a passion that I will have the FBI crashing down my door. This smacks to me of totalitarianism (or however you spell that). Don't even THINK of hating us or we will take you down! It seems to me that this will go a long long way down the road of stopping anyone from questioning this government if they happen to think they are doing something wrong. Is the strong suggestion that your opinion of someones elses actions is wrong so wrong itself? I fear for the future of a people that are suppressed in this way. The scary part is that most of the people don't see it happening around them. They truely think this is a 'defensive' measure to secure 'their' lifestyle. What did this kid do to hurt anyone? NOTHING! He though something, spoke some words and went about his life as normal. There should not be a penalty for not agreeing with someone else and trying to change their position with words. Isn't that what the US is supposed to stand for?
This is best done when fear is in place. --You don't have to be aware of accurate information on everybody. You just need instant access to accurate information on everybody. That way, you can make your quotas of public beatings and arrests without hassle. This, by itself, provides the impetus for the good sheep to stay good sheep.
Harvesting begins shortly. Please stand by.
-FL
This whole "war on terror" is misguided. Finding existing terrorists and listening to them talk online WILL NOT STOP TERRORISM.
You can't fight terror with force because as much as you may disagree with the terrorists' goals, to them and their followers they are freedom fighters. If you were a freedom fighter rebelling against what you thought was an unjust foreign force, would them invading your half of the world make you give up? No, you'd fight harder than ever and this time you'd recruit your friends. Would knowing that your communications might be intercepted stop you? No, you'd just find new ways to communicate.
I wonder what percentage of our "defense" budget goes toward lobbying politicians to try to make policies that don't piss off half the world. That'd do more against terrorism, and for our defense, than any war.
$8.95/mo web hosting
You must not have heard of a search function. Besides, AI can do some of the reading as well.
The US government should switch its efforts to why all these 'terrorists' are targetting it. There's gotta be a reason, and the reason isn't because the US "is a shining beacon of freedom." (why aren't they targetting Holland? Sweden? Finland?).
Catching these terrorists isn't gonna solve the problem: more will popup immediately to take their place. But if the US started to address (and fix) why they're being targetted (their utter arrogance towards other nations), most of this will go away.
We should foil all their plots by going back to pre-80's technology levels.
Aye, pre-1880 levels. Let them try hijacking horse-pulled buggies and drive them into buildings!
Back then, terrorists were different. They won, and then they wrote the history books.
See: History of the United States (1776-1789)
I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have thought of the Internet?
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Ok, sure, I'm a conspiracy theorist, but let's assume that the government's motives are pure, and look at this logically. It just doesn't make much sense.
Let's assume for the purposes of this discussion that the government's motives are 100% pure. It spends billions of dollars annually attempting to log/decrypt/analyze all communications data in real-time to weed out terrorists and make the world a safe happy place. A noble attempt, but hardly efficient.
The obvious solution, of course, is to have less terrorists in the first place. The government needs to work harder at fixing the core issues, and not just their symptoms. This issue cannot be fixed with technology, any more than spam can be fixed with technology. (My apologies to geeks everywhere.)
It is a socio-political problem. If even a small portion of this energy/money/thought was used for foreign policy adjustments, research into terrorist motivations, etc, etc, we'd be better off.
So, to sum up:
1. Less terrorists.
2. Less waste of technology resources.
3. Profit!
Even simpler, go to a random internet caffe every day, use a random chat cleint on a random server using passphrase convenied in advance.
But the government already knows that the 9/11 hijackers used cybercafes, libraries, and Kinkos sites to get net access for email and possibly other means of communication. Any guesses where the Dept of Internal Security is focusing its electronic eyes?
(And they busted a guy for installing keyloggers in NYC Kinkos and ripping off bank and credit card account numbers and passwords. Expect non-antiterrorist law enforcement to be peeping, too.)
Using the workstations there for anything you don't want the authorities to know is nuts, since they just might be logging keystrokes or otherwise tapping the machine's guts. And if they're e-watching, hooking up your laptop with the firewall screwed down tight and shipping out encrypted traffic is a great way to see if the acres of supercomputers at NSA are up to busting your crypto or the guys there have a remote exploit you don't know about.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Notice that when people put phrases like "making bombs" and "weapons-grade plutonium" in their posts, they feel the need to explicitly add that they aren't terrorists. Because in the back of our minds we all know or at least suspect that everything we post on the web is being monitored, filtered and scrutinized for suspicious content, and we don't want any trouble, right? We claim to be free to speak our minds, but still we can't resist tipping our white hats to an unseen big brother who might not like what we said. There's a difference between freedom of speech and being sure not to say any of the wrong things.
Actually, the most secure way of communicating is to simply appear normal. If you try to hide your communications, it sticks out in the normal flotsam and jetsam of data. But if your traffic looks more or less like Joe Sixpack's traffic, it's hard to tell.
E.g., consider two coffeeshops across the street from one another. One guy sits in one and has a cup of coffee, reads the paper, etc. The other sits in the other and does the same. If they see each other every day, no attack. If one is absent, *boom*. Given the way people work, it's a regular, repeatable event, and can be used to communicate data (albeit slowly) - perhaps the paper is folded slightly differently, or carried away vs. left on the table.
The real trick to hiding is to make it look like you have nothing to hide. And that is what makes it difficult.
>> You know, it's stuff like this that the terrorists want. They want us to lose our freedoms to overzealous anti-terrorism laws,
... Sad thing is, these people probably don't even know it themselves, and would deny it if the thought ever occured to them. What, Pres. Bush and advisors doing it the communist way?! How's that for a statement?
>> they want us to live in fear. Suggestions like this article must make Bin Laden smile.
What scares me is when it becomes normal for people to include "national security" in their vocabulary, especially people in government. To think that this is happening so few years after the wall finally broke down (you know, that concrete thingy that used to be somewhere in Europe)
What we really need is so basic: Freedom of speech, human rights, and free movement of people and goods. Not the opposite - we know what happens when you restrict any of that; history has taught us that lesson over and over again.
If you could just hear the Chinese Students here at the university trying to speak english, you would know that speech recognition will never get you any intelligence. Talk about a speech recongition system nightmare!!
The most troubling part of this to me is it comes from the angle that there is an expectation that all communications from "bad guys" can be monitored. If we operate under the expectation that all communications can intercepted we're just setting ourselves up for failure.
The simple act of sending a postcard, or a flag flown on a balcony at a specific time, or a stalled car at a specific point on the road with it's left turn signal on or...
Doesn't our own government use covert means of communication that they think can't be intercepted? If we have them, others do too. Focusing on high tech ways to monitor people who'll use low tech, or no tech, is another example of the arrogance of technology. We need to have many, many layers of security because none of them will work all the time. We can't check all the shipping containers, but we can control communications??
[insert sig file here]
It was revealed today that some terrorists had conversations in a private home, highlighting the near impossibility of monitoring everyone's communications at all times.
George Tenet could just as easily have noted how we do not yet know everything that everyone is thinking and we have not figured out how to prevent crimes by monitoring individual's brain waves for possible "dangerous" ideas. If we had this equipment we could eliminate all crime and free thought. Think of how secure we would be then.
Certainly in a free country having free unmonitored conversations isn't such a terrible thing. It isn't fair to just say the magic word "terrorists" and use that as an excuse to remove all privacy and freedoms.
Coding Blog
Ok so you are deferentiating between the written word and the spoken word. I still don't see the difference. So he wrote some web site stuff. If it was malicious code that attacked other machines, I would have to back off. But putting your words in writing on a web site is tantamount to speaking them aloud in my eyes. Where is the harm? I might not agree with them, I might not like them, but they are still just words. Since when is writing words for a web page synonymous with 'offering aid to'. That's a stretch in my eyes. A website cannot go out and prostelatize. A web site requires people to go to it. Because my palm pilot can run a personal web server, and I write my docs in HTML for compatability, and I write "I hate bush", am I now a 'enemy combatant' because I 'ran a hostile website'. Don't you see what is happening? The picture is being painted to make a simple act look heinous and overtly hostile when it is nothing more than a simple protest to show his oblique opposition to the current administrations actions. I too am diametrically opposed to many of this administration's actions, if I speak out about it, or write it up in a blog, what will happen to me? There should not even be a question as to that answer. It should be nothing. This article shows that the is clearly not the case.
All of this talk about how the US is "messing with their oil wells" is ridiculous. People forget in this equation that America is the largest customer of mideast oil and I frankly think we could get better service than having a bunch of muk-muks slam planes into our buildings, drive bomb loaded busses into our buildings, push our citizens in wheelchairs off of boats, and of course blow up our planes.
If Arab terrorists wanted freedom, they would have signed the Oslo deal and gotten a Palestinian state. There would be freedom of speech in arabic places. The hardliners in Iran wouldn't be overturning Democratic reforms.
The fact of the matter is that Arab terrorists believe that Democracy is evil and freedom is literally a sin because it goes against fundamentalist islamic law. I actually asked a mullah on the American islamic web site why there was no separation of church and state and his response was that islam is a practical religion that serves all needs, therefor, there is no need for other religions.
Nope, terrorists do not want freedom. What they want is absolute power. They want to destroy western civilization, as they have been trying to do since the first muk-muks invaded France in the 700s (and were stopped at Tours). Pretending otherwise is ignorant.
I take Bin Laden's statements as the bs that they are. You on the other hand have proved yourself a fool. Hitler used to say all the time that he did not want war, if only we would meet his demands. You argue for appeasement, just like Chamberlin did in 1938 when he carved up Czechoslovakia to avoid a war.
This is my sig.