FCC Giving Veto Power to FBI Over VoIP?

An anonymous reader writes "In this article, the FCC reveals that if you're using VoIP products at your own behest then you may have personal legal requirements to provide the FBI with access to information they might want to intercept. Or to put it another way, using encryption with VoIP can prevent the FBI from implementing wire taps."

Comments

Loop

[JS_RIDDLER]

10 Read aticle
20 Read the existing slashdot comments here
      http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/28/19 30221&tid=158&tid=215
30 Repost Comments here // previous /. links the same Cnet article

Re:Loop

[fireduck]

10 Read aticle
20 Read the existing slashdot comments here
            http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/28/19 30221&tid=158&tid=215
30 Repost Comments here // previous /. links the same Cnet article

excellent! a dupe trifecta. There's something quite wrong, when you have 3 dupes in a row... and the duped articles are at most a day old...

Re:Loop

[Leiterfluid]

Dangit. And I was actually kind of surprised and excited that a YRO article indeed affect my rights online.

Thanks for stealing my thunder. Do you pop kids' balloons, too?

Re:Loop

[Netochka]

You know I'll never understand the thing all slashdot readers have with dupes. Think of a normal newspaper for a minute, and think about how stories are posted. If a story is interesting it'll usually be discussed for days on end by multiple reporters, editors, etc. and there'll be tons of repeating of information. Now, I know slashdot isn't exactly like this, but there are some similarities that can be drawn. Also, I'm not sure as to the number of stories submitted that the editors have to go through, but I'm sure it's quite a large number, and did you ever think that maybe the reason the editors are posting it again is because they've been receiving it a couple times and so obviously not everyone saw it the first time? I dunno, I'm sure this has been discussed endlessly too, but that's just my opinion.

Re:Loop

[JS_RIDDLER]

In some cases when there is a new article or something new to look at i think Dups are ok. But when there is nothing new, it contains the same article, and it was just the day before, then I see little benifit.

In other words

[Boap]

Encryption is bad for people who want to spy on you

welcome to

[fredistheking]

the people's republic of united states.

Re:welcome to

[stupidfoo]

because we have a long history of being able to make untapable phone calls!

erhhh... wait

Re:welcome to

[macdaddy357]

No, it's Jesusland!

Re:welcome to

[cyberentomologist]

Actually, the USA is already a republic.

Re:welcome to

[fredistheking]

It was a joke. I just copied the FP from the previous thread as the OP suggested.

Re:welcome to

[StarvingSE]

This is modded funny, but the sad thing is that its not a joke...

no comment

[rd4tech]

According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that characterizes today's Internet, "consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement."

Re:no comment

[DavidTC]

Likewise, prisoners are free to leave prison at any time of their choosing, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

Old Joke

[glomph]

When Encryption is outlawed, only outlaws #$%TYHNFBGNHGFDCVFBGHFHkjhskjdghs346df/

Re:Old Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

TYHNFBGNHGFDCVFBGHFH

We'll we know know you're using QWERTY encription.

Re:Old Joke

[Kjella]

When Encryption is outlawed, only outlaws #$%TYHNFBGNHGFDCVFBGHFHkjhskjdghs346df/

I think you'd better switch to strong encryption, I understood the last part even though it was encrypted...

Why stop there?

[redog]

They should require all ventrillio/team-speak server admins to empower them to tap in as well. all your communications are belong to us!

Woot!

[temojen]

3 consecutive dupes!

Re:Woot!

[gcnaddict]

"3 consecutive dupes!"

Are you sure this is a dupe? I cant find a previous version of this article anywhere. Want to post a link?

Until then, I guess we can say that "this post of yours is a dupe", right? I mean, you posted the wrong link :P

Re:Woot!

[ixache]

Yes, he is right. 3 dupes in a row. Congrats, Cowboy Neal!

See this one with the exact same article.

Another great day for Slashdot!

Re:Woot!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

3 consecutive dupes!

Those aren't dupes, they are all a steganographic-encoded message.

FCC 05-151

[TripMaster Monkey]

Since the 'obscure policy document' mentioned in TFA is in PDF format, here is the text of that document, formatted and stripped of the numerous bibliographical references:

POLICY STATEMENT
Adopted: August 5, 2005 Released: September 23, 2005
By the Commission:

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The availability of the Internet has had a profound impact on American life. This network of
   networks has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. It has increased the speed of
   communication, the range of communicating devices and the variety of platforms over which we can send
   and receive information. As Congress has noted, "[t]he rapidly developing array of Internet . . . services
   available to individual Americans represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational
   and informational resources to our citizens." The Internet also represents "a forum for a true diversity of
   political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual
   activity." In addition, the Internet plays an important role in the economy, as an engine for productivity
   growth and cost savings.
2. In section 230(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Communications Act or Act),
   Congress describes its national Internet policy. Specifically, Congress states that it is the policy of the
   United States "to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet"6
   and "to promote the continued development of the Internet."7 In section 706(a) of the Act, Congress
   charges the Commission with "encourag[ing] the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of
   advanced telecommunications capability" - broadband - "to all Americans."
3. In this Policy Statement, the Commission offers guidance and insight into its approach to the
   Internet and broadband that is consistent with these Congressional directives.
   
   II. DISCUSSION
4. The Communications Act charges the Commission with "regulating interstate and foreign
   commerce in communication by wire and radio."9 The Communications Act regulates
   telecommunications carriers, as common carriers, under Title II.10 Information service providers, "by
   contrast, are not subject to mandatory common-carrier regulation under Title II."11 The Commission,
   however, "has jurisdiction to impose additional regulatory obligations under its Title I ancillary
   jurisdiction to regulate interstate and foreign communications." As a result, the Commission has
   jurisdiction necessary to ensure that providers of telecommunications for Internet access or Internet
   Protocol-enabled (IP-enabled) services are operated in a neutral manner. Moreover, to ensure that
   broadband networks are widely deployed, open, affordable, and accessible to all consumers, the
   Commission adopts the following principles:
   
   To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
   nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of
   their choice.
   
   To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
   nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their
   choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
   
   To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
   nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that
   do not harm the network.
   
   To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
   nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers,
   application and service providers, and content providers.
   
   III. CONCLUSION
5. The Commission has a duty to preserve and promote the vibrant and open character of the
   I

Re:FCC 05-151

[captnbmoore]

To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network. SO can we get Windows banned from the internet based on this one paragraph.

Re:FCC 05-151

[budgenator]

thanks I tried to get the doc and the FCC said "The document you are trying to retrieve is temporarily unavailable. Please try again in 5 minutes. If the problems persist, please e-mail EdocsHelp for assistance." looks like the FCC got slashdoted.

Amazing what happens when the government says the cops can decide what progams my computer can run.

Re:FCC 05-151

[Achromatic1978]

If this is insightful, why doesn't it mention computer operating systems. I don't see it mentioning Linux.

Oh, wait, you mean that Windows harms the network when compromised? Ahh, I see, because everyone knows at people only r00t Unix boxes for the hell of it, not for malicious activities.

Re:FCC 05-151

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of
their choice.

Isn't it stunning how liars, sorry, lawyers for the government make it sound like they're doing you a favor even as they slike a yule-log sized cock up your ass?

If the government enforced absolutely nothing about content on the Internet, legal or otherwise, broadband development would continue to happen at the extremely rapid pace it has been going. Any government mucking about would slow this down.

This reminds me of the scene in the beginning of "Beaches", where the bitchy main character, as a little girl, just walks up to a kid building a magnificent sand castle all by himself and says, "I'll be back to check on your work later."

Forkers, all of 'em.

Re:FCC 05-151

[Anonymous Coward]

To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

Does that mean ISPs aren't allowed to block specific ports, as that limits consumers' ability to access lawful Internet content of their choice?

The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privacy.

[elucido]

You see, our FBI and federal government has the right to tap all our phones, wiretap everything, spy on us, use satelites to watch our every move, and to control our thoughts and remove our freedom of speech. The FBI owns you, you do not own the FBI.

So just let them search your house and tap your phone, its not like you can stop them and its not like anyone cares about the constitution anymore or privacy. For all the talk I hear on slashdot, none of you actually care about privacy or the constitution. If you do, then prove it and defend the constitution.

See for yourself how you can defend the constitution if you actually care about it. Save the constitution

oh noez! V2.0.3

[Rs_Conqueror]

Dammit, it seems the tin foil hats worked TOO well!

Great...

[OxygenPenguin]

Yet another tool underneath the vast governmental race towards 1984 esque society.
Let's all applaud Big Brother Bush for him stopping both the unique pr0n industry and now people from ::gasp:: talking over the internet without eavesdropping.

Re:Great...

[KillShill]

yes the race to 1984.

the only downside is, is that the US and UK passed 1984 about 50 years ago.

to assume we're approaching it is to assume that MS will one day soon use their monopoly power to do illegal things.

Re:Great...

[tez_h]

1984 esque society.

The word is 'Orwellian'.

-Tez

Re:Great...

[InvalidError]

If I was planning something big, I would not be using off-the-shelf services... putting together a simple and secure point-to-point protocol is not horribly difficult. I guess the FBI's next step will be to ask for permission to arrest, interrogate and search people who used unknown protocols. (Sort of like the guy who got arrested because someone thought 'lynx' was a hacking tool... guess I should not use elinks too often.)

Re:Great...

[KylePflug]

That would be twenty-one years, actually.

With or Without a Warrant?

[nurb432]

If its *with* a warrant, nothing new here..

If its *without* then we have a privacy/rights problem that needs to be taken to the supreme court.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[Tackhead]

> If its *with* a warrant, nothing new here..
> If its *without* then we have a privacy/rights problem that needs to be taken to the supreme court.

SING IT!

She's my FBI!
Tappin my phone, FCC's surprised,
FCC make the VOIP lines die,
Sweet FBI!

But seriously, what do 80s hair metal bands have to do with it?

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true.

There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes the government to compell a person to testify against themselves. That includes providing encyption keys.

If the a policeman can prove to a judge that a search is needed, they can search. There is nothing in our Constitution that says that search must be successful, and much that says individuals have the absolute right to deny success by denying information.

Yet another reason our government is a cancer on the Constitution.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[Blindman]

The problem is that the backdoor will exists whether the FBI is using it or not. Even if the FBI can only use it when it has a valid wiretap warrant, every user of the system is more vulnerable then they need to be so that occasionally some users can be spied on. That's the real problem.

Basically, the FBI is saying that it can't hack the encryption (or at least shouldn't have to). Basically, I don't think that we should have to trust that the government will use this power only for good. There is always an inherent risk with any 3rd party software. Since you didn't write it, you can't be sure that there aren't any backdoors. Presumably, this is mitigated by independent verification and open source. In this case, we will know for a fact that there is at least one backdoor, but we would have no way of knowing if it secure.

I propose as a solution that there should be a little red light (or pop-up) that indicates when a wiretap is in progress.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[ScrewMaster]

Of course, the irony of all this is that even if you don't encrypt your conversations electronically, you don't have to speak in the clear. I mean, suppose a terrorist leader wanted to tell one of his subordinates to do something that they would rather nobody else knew about. A few simple prearranged signals are all they would need:

Habib: Hello? Hello? This is Mr. Smith.

Achmed: Good evening, Mr. Smith. This is Mr. Jones. The finger is in the apple pie, and the panties are blue. Again, the panties are blue.

Habib: Ok. {click}

Will all this extra surveillance power catch a bunch of terrorists and keep us safe at night? Probably not. But there's no question in my mind that a whole bunch more of us ordinary U.S. citizens are going to get reamed. {sigh} Given how much this is costing us you'd think the least the Feds could do is hand out free tubes of KY. 'Cause sure as Hell's a mantrap we're gonna need it.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Do you mean that supreme court that has a new chief justice just sworn in today?

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG!!! U learnededed TEH difference BETWEEN ENCRYPTION AND ENCODING!!!11!!!ONEONEELEVEN!!!

Fucktard.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[hesiod]

> individuals have the absolute right to deny success by denying information

Can someone not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice in their own case? (I do realize you were talking about the Constitution..)

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about fingerprints? DNA? Blood samples? These are effectively 'testifying against yourself', yet they are allowed.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[Dhaos]

You're asking me? I plead the Fifth.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[hesiod]

Duh, I'm an idjit. Very well said, though.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[ScrewMaster]

Ah ... an anonymous coward nitpicker! I guess the lameness filter really doesn't work.

Regardless, the Feds are using the looming threat of terrorism to frighten us into accepting further erosion of our civil liberties and allowing unlimited wiretapping. Actually, it's pretty much just being rammed down our collective throats. What I was trying to point out was that simply listening to a conversation doesn't implicitly grant understanding, and that one would expect these people to take steps to avoid detection. Furthermore, like most of the security measures put in place since 9/11, I believe that this will be just as ineffective at catching terrorists. Put it this way: the odds are that there are a lot of bad people (Al Quaeda or otherwise) in this country right now, and after all the billions spent after 9/11 ... how many of them are in jail? How many honest citizens have been screwed over? How much more must we spend, how many more civil liberties must be lost, before we admit that it's largely an exercise in pork-barrel futility?

Anyway, the next time you reply to a comment, try to shoot your wad of criticism where it might do some good.

Fuckwit.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[wowbagger]

Actually, your example would be the worst possible way to do things, as the words and phrases are unusual enough to alert anybody listening that something is up.

A far better way is to pick normal sounding expressions:

Terrorist A: Hello?
Terrorist B: Hey Joe! Me and the guys were going to go to the movies tonight?
(translation: our terrorist cell has been activated - had the intent been to arrange a movie night the phrase "go to a show" would have been used)
Terrorist A: OK, what and when?
Terrorist B: That new Wallace and Grommit flick, at, say 7 oclock?
(translation: target #2, 07:00 UTC)
Terrorist A: Sure - meet you there!

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[GileadGreene]

Interestingly enough, this kind of thing is apparently exactly what the 9/11 group used. And, as the OP quote correctly pointed out, it's the sort of thing that works regardless of encryption.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[iphayd]

Mr Smith,

The burrito has left the liquor store.

--
- Jones

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[iphayd]

Damn, that was supposed to be posted as an AC.

Marilyn Manson is in the church.

I repeat,

Marilyn Manson is in the church.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[andreyw]

Ahmed? Habib? Nice stereotyping there buddy.

That said, your example is probably one that would set off alarms as it doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a *conversation*.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[DavidTC]

You can't be required to give DNA or blood samples off yourself without a warrant.

Of course, it's legal for the police to take DNA and blood from a place they know you were, or something you throw away, if they have a warrant for that place or it's public. And if those match DNA or blood at the crime scene, hey, they've good grounds for a warrant to see if they are yours.

Fingerprints are different, as nothing is taken from you. You can be required to provide those at any time, although in many places it's not legal for the police to keep them unless you're actually convicted of a crime.

However, yes, none of those are subject to the 5th, which even warrants can't override. This is because it is not 'you' testifiying, it is merely evidence that you are walking around with.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[ConceptJunkie]

how many of them are in jail? How many honest citizens have been screwed over?

Those are good questions. You seem to imply that the answer to the first is small and the answer to the second is large. If that's true then you have a point, but I don't take that as given.

Now I'm not arguing for the increased powers or against our liberties, but you seem to take it as given that it's failing. But do you know of any proof? I don't know about you, but there haven't been too many terrorist attacks lately. That doesn't mean there won't be one tomorrow, but how do you know they haven't caught a lot of terrorist operatives in the U.S. Do you think they are going to advertise that?

How many honest citizens have been screwed over? Well, there were a couple people detained in Guantanamo who were apparently citizens, although they were captured overseas. Have there been more people "screwed over"? I haven't heard about them? Have you? If so, then please enlighten me.

Of course you need to ask, "How many honest citizens could be screwed over?" I think that's an important question too. But I think the previous one deserves a definitive answer.

In other words, you can't blame them for screwing up if they haven't screwed up, just because they might. I'm as concerned about the Patriot Act I, II, 3-D, and Son of as much as the rest of the crowd around here. But it's been around for years. Where are the horror stories?

Like I said, just because it's a bad idea doesn't mean it's the end of the world. Has it really been the bad idea we (me too!) have made it out to be? Or are there enough checks and balances in the system to protect the innocent?

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[finkployd]

Well, Islamic terrorists tend to have Islamic sounding names, do they not?

Or are we not supposed to allude to the fact that they are Islamic? Perhaps we should search some more old white ladies at the airport to make it fair again.

Finkployd

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[syukton]

whole bunch more of us ordinary U.S. citizens are going to get reamed. {sigh}

You mean: blacks, mexicans, asians, indians, the poor, the children.

The "ordinary" (read: white. middle-class.) people usually get left alone.

I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just saying that's how it is.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[ScrewMaster]

"All Arabs aren't terrorists ... but all terrorists are Arabs."

How's that for a stereotype? I have nothing against people of Middle Eastern descent: except for that significant number that has stereotyped me as someone deserving of death because I don't believe as they do (or for any other equally stupid reason). Deal with it.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[blueskies]

Where are the horror stories?

They will come out when they become declassified in 20 years.

Re:With or Without a Warrant?

[ScrewMaster]

Well ... historically, they have screwed up, every time they've overreached, and they are overreaching now (which is why we're having this discussion). Personally, I have no doubts that they will screw it up, again. Possibly you don't remember the FBI under Hoover: it got bad enough that Congress had to rein them in. In fact, restraints were placed upon Federal law enforcement at that time because they had seriously abused the power given to them. Some of our elected officials recalled that situation in the period immediately after 9/11, and it was one rather good argument against the Patriot Act. As a general principle, you will find that whenever a group of powerful people is infected with the disease of unaccountability, people get hurt unnecessarily. This is true anywhere in the world, any time in history.

Expecting ... nay hoping that it will be any different this time is naive at best. It's already happening. Take the Transport Safety Administration (if you need a current example of an abusive Patriot Act-inspired organization) and they way it has behaved since its inception: lying to us, lying to Congress, and breaking numerous laws with apparent impunity. I have no confidence that such marked disrespect for the citizenship, our elected leaders, and our laws is not duplicated elsewhere in the Department of Fathe^H^H^H^H^Homeland Security.

At this point in time, we should all maintain a healthy distrust of Federal law enforcement, its methods, and its goals. Congress granted the FBI and its sister oorganizations more power than they have ever had in the history of this country. Since the law is no longer on our side, we can only trust that the unelected officials in charge of these organs of government are, well ... trustworthy.

Put it this way: I can see the train wreck coming. By your own admission so can you, and so can a lot of other people. So do we wait around until the train hits something and does some serious damage, or do we try and switch it onto another track now while there's still time?

What rights on-line?

[denissmith]

I wonder how long the rule will survive the courts, since you could probably argue that a built in backdoor to communications was a violation of the fourth amendment. It is a blanket warrantless search on everyone, whether they execute an actual search or not. Yet courts have allowed roadblocks to test for drunk driving ( which is the conceptually the same ) and they allow random bag searches it the Port Authority and the airports. All of these are really fourth amendment violations. Some day a court will probably swing the other way and forbid them ( would that make them liberal or conservative ? Bonus points for the correct answer! ), but for now the paranoids rule. I suppose the key question is what will they do to police the situation, If A sends B an encrypted packet, and A and B are using a well known port ( 22, say) and the packet crosses D's network, is D responsible for insuring that the packet is compliant? How is D to know? As long as A and B have access to an encryption software that has no backdoor I don't see how it matters whether Skype has a backdoor or not. Or is this a case where, as recently was reported, even owning encryption software of this type will be 'evidence of intent'?

Re:What rights on-line?

[MightyMartian]

Pah, the Founding Fathers were a bunch of terrorist Commies. Good Americans do what they're told. Heck, Thomas Jefferson slept with a black woman. What kind of good American would do that? Guys like Maddison weren't even Christians. Americans should set out immediately to burn that heathen, anti-God Constitution and replace it with "God Wants You To Bow Down To The FBI".

Re:What rights on-line?

[budgenator]

even owning encryption software of this type will be 'evidence of intent'
sounds worse than that.

... consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their
choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

sounds like they are heading in a direction where using a program across state lines could be illegal. I'm conservative enought that I'm usualy considered a Nazi on /. and this seems like seriously spooky shit to me.

Re:What rights on-line?

[smchris]

I wonder how long the rule will survive the courts

Last week's Court or next week's Court?

To phrase it in succinct Neocon: "Where does the Constitution talk about VoIP?"

In our new conservatism, we don't want an "activist court" that writes in freedoms to technology the founding fathers wouldn't have envisoned, now do we? So in all such things, I assume we are now so screwed.

Re:What rights on-line?

[DavidTC]

While we're going all 'no freedoms not in our constitution', how about we get rid of any of the concept that corporations have 'rights'?

Because, you know, I'm not seeing that one.

Two Things

[Stanistani]

1) Is FBI over VOIP a new protocol?

2) Very apropos quote at bottom of the page:
"Increased knowledge will help you now. Have mate's phone bugged."

3) I have trouble with limits.

Re:Two Things

[fbjon]

1) Is FBI over VOIP a new protocol?

Yes, it runs on Veto Power(tm).

No what they should do is just search our houses.

[elucido]

Instead of just tapping our phones, why not just do house to house searches? Face it, we can't fight this, so I'm going to just welcome them in, offer them a beer, and let them do whatever the hell they want. It's their house now.

This is a good thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Fed spying on you can call 911 for you, cuz you sure as hell can't!

Re:This is a good thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking moron
who modded this "insightful"?

Some links to get you started

[temojen]

OpenH323 (for private VOIP systems)
IPSec Howto (for transparently encrypted VPNs to secure your private VOIP system)

If you didn't vote Libertarian

[Anonymous Coward]

you ASKED for this!
_________________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian Candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.

One-time pads save the day in two steps

[Anonymous Coward]

1) XOR your encrypted sensitive phone call with an unencrypted benign conversation of the same length.

2) When asked for the key to the encrypted sensitive phone call, insist that you use one-time pads, the only unbreakable form of encryption. Give the XOR that you computed in step (1).

Re:One-time pads save the day in two steps

[MultisSanguinisFluit]

I think you mean "give the source encrypted sensitive phone call." They already have the result of the XOR.

Re:One-time pads save the day in two steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn a bit about how to talk about cryptographic protocols. What's "source encrypted"? For clarity please just say "encrypted" or "decrypted".

Re:One-time pads save the day in two steps

[lachlan76]

2) When asked for the key to the encrypted sensitive phone call, insist that you use one-time pads, the only unbreakable form of encryption. Give the XOR that you computed in step (1).

Why give them anything? Just say you've used OTP and you don't have the key anymore!

How Come This Only Applies To Voice?

[TastyWheat]

As far as I know I can use any encryption methods I want for web pages, email, bit torrent etc...

Why is VOIP different than other kinds of data? It is sent over the same medium.

Re:How Come This Only Applies To Voice?

[afaik_ianal]

My understanding is that US law treats "telephone systems" differently to computer systems.

I used to be involved with a company that made VOIP desk-phones (which plugged into IP-enabled telephone switches), and although these were technically connected to a computer network, we were limited as to what kind of encryption we could put on them when selling in the US.

At the time (this is going back a few years), we did not have such a problem with the software-on-pc type voip product, as this was treated as a computer system.

It looks to me they want to reinterpret definition of a "telephone system".

Re:How Come This Only Applies To Voice?

[michael_cain]

My understanding is that US law treats "telephone systems" differently to computer systems.

Indeed, in the US, telephone service and data service are regulated very differently. At the present time, the FCC appears to me to be making its distinctions based on some basic attributes of the service that is being sold: if the service uses numbers from the North American numbering plan for telephone service (eg, 303.555.1212) or some other country's telephone numbering plan, and interconnects with the public telephone network, they regard it as a telephone service and consider it subject to the requirements of that service: E911 emergency capability, wiretap capability, etc. There are public interest reasons for taking such a position. The 911 number has been drilled into kids' heads; there are dozens of cases annually where the little kid dials 911 and tells the operator "My mommy is sick", and saves her life. Wiretap has a long and successful history; every year there are convictions of criminals where information gained by legal wiretap is pivotal.

As someone who was writing prototype audio-over-IP applications more than 12 years ago in order to help the telcos evaluate the competitive threat the technology posed (my answer: along about 2002 this stuff becomes a significant threat to your basic business), I say that the authorities are fighting a long-term losing battle, at least on the wiretap front. Writing such an application and including strong encryption is not a hard problem. Attempting to regulate every application that includes two-way audio is just nuts. Are you going to make Counterstrike servers include a wiretap capability? If I were a bad guy, my colleagues and I would talk using an independently-developed audio-over-IP application that did not use either SIP or H.323, and that did include strong encryption. There are, of course, additional techniques that could be used to make things even harder to track.

Re:How Come This Only Applies To Voice?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of precedent for authorities wiretapping phone conversations. By analogy, they'll convince Congress to grant the same powers over VOIP conversations. Once they're successful, then they will present the revelation that VOIP data is the same as other data; at this point, they will gain (through courts or Congress) the power to spy on all data of any type with the same lack of oversight.

They know very well that VOIP traffic is standard network data. They're just playing dumb as part of a long-term strategy.

Re:How Come This Only Applies To Voice?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, if you use encrypted VoIP or anything they can't wiretap, you are proven guilty even if you are only the suspect.
It was inevitable to happen, because authorities don't want to accept that unencrypted "tappable" communication is thing of past.

It makes sense

[kwiqsilver]

If the FBI can't spy on every single US resident 24/7, how can they be sure we're not all terrorists?
:o

Did they have the FBI PR guy give the "if you haven't done anything wrong, then you should have nothing to hide" defense yet?

Re:It makes sense

[Not_Wiggins]

If the FBI can't spy on every single US resident 24/7, how can they be sure we're not all terrorists?

Well, this is generally the extreme view on the whole privacy issue, which (unfortunately) makes your point impotent.

If given the option would the FBI monitor all calls made by everyone in the US? That's absurd. There isn't enough man-power to do that. Even if you have computers monitoring calls, there'd still be enough data from that digested version to drown-out any effort.

People's reaction to this sort of thing is often knee-jerk. What is the FBI really trying to accomplish? If they suspect someone is a "baddie," they want to be able to get evidence against that "baddie."

With that access, can abuses occur?

Yup.

So instead of just wailing that "all access is bad access," wouldn't it be better to be focused on rules around "when and how that access can be obtained?" I'm all for allowing access to encrypted communications IF there are enough regulations around how that access can be granted. I want someone out there trying hard to stop people looking to destroy my way of life.

If one doesn't have enough trust in the system that grants that access, then why stop there in your paranoia? What stops the FBI from doing it without asking for permission?

Or, better still, why allow any sort of government regulation of law? Anarchy vs Police State. Given that people are inherently greedy about their own rights, I'd rather take my chances with a Police State... at least there I can hope that politicians won't give up their rights to privacy that I want to maintain for myself.

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

If they keep this bull shit up then maybe we just might become terrorists.

Re:It makes sense

[kwiqsilver]

So instead of just wailing that "all access is bad access," wouldn't it be better to be focused on rules around "when and how that access can be obtained?"

No. Without even getting into the fact that the FBI spends almost none of its time dealing with the three crimes the US government is Constitutionally allowed to investigate (counterfeiting, piracy, and treason), I would rather that they have to break encryption to listen in on phone calls. One of the "rules" they now have about wiretaps is that if they suspect somebody of "terrorism" (which is so loosely defined that it now applies to meth dealers and doctors who work in third world countries) they can get a tap on the authority of the US Attorney's office, without a judge's approval! No government agency has ever been accused of exercising restraint when given broad powers, so it is only a matter of time until terrorism includes doing something the government doesn't like.

I'm all for allowing access to encrypted communications IF there are enough regulations around how that access can be granted. I want someone out there trying hard to stop people looking to destroy my way of life.

I want someone out there too. The problem is the FBI is one of those organizations looking to destroy the American way of life. Since it's creation it has worked to increase its power over us and its ability to invade our lives.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
The FBI is asking you to give up your liberties (on their word that they won't violate them) for the illusion of security. They've been more successful recently, because they have the terrorism boogeyman to scare us with, even though more Americans die drowning in bathtubs than in terrorist acts every year (including 2001).

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

If given the option would the FBI monitor all calls made by everyone in the US? That's absurd. There isn't enough man-power to do that. Even if you have computers monitoring calls, there'd still be enough data from that digested version to drown-out any effort.

If computer resources become cheap enough that they can monitor everything and gain useful information, then of course they would. The NSA already monitors all international calls (see ECHELON).

What is the FBI really trying to accomplish? If they suspect someone is a "baddie," they want to be able to get evidence against that "baddie."

The FBI's hardest problem is determining who out of 300 million people to suspect of being a criminal. Mass surveillance coupled with data mining allows them to pick out suspicious patterns of behavior in large datasets. They can then focus manpower on those suspicious individuals. Deriding those who criticize that strategy as paranoid for mentioning it doesn't change that fact of its existence.

I'm all for allowing access to encrypted communications

How would you allow government access to encrypted communications without regulating software that implements cryptography? Remember that software has been ruled to be protected speech under the First Amendment.

Given that people are inherently greedy about their own rights, I'd rather take my chances with a Police State

I think you need to read up on consent of the governed, human rights, and limited powers. If you don't agree with those concepts, then hopefully you do support the rule of law and realize that totalitarianism is legally incompatible with the US Constitution.

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Your reasoning is weak, G-Man. Do you sincerely think that state security agencies like the FBI are constrained by "rules" and "guidelines?" No, I smell a troll. Experience proves that the exact opposite is true. The government and the agencies that defend it, being dominated by sociopaths and alienated control freaks like yourself, do not respect civilized rules of conduct, yet they live by and enforce their own unwritten code of naked power, which takes the form of crimes like COINTEL and the Japanese-American concentration camps. Since the courts are an arm of the government, nobody is ever prosecuted for these assaults upon the people.

So fuck you and your false dillemma argument. Our only choices are Mad Max and the Soviet Union? Please. Why then do societies take so many forms other than those two. I guess people are more imaginative than you believe them to be. A lot of them resent tyrants, too. Now go collect your government paycheck and start developing a personality.

Re:It makes sense

[Alien Being]

"If the FBI can't spy on every single US resident 24/7, how can they be sure we're not all terrorists?"

OMG, the calls are coming from inside the White House.

Re:It makes sense

[DavidTC]

Like the FBI would ever resort to spying on people it doesn't like. I'm sure it's never done that!

Hold on a minute, I think I just heard Martin Luther King Jr. spinning in his grave.

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, maybe the Department of Homeland Security should mandate the installation of surveilance cameras in all bathrooms to avert this deadly threat to Americans.

Re:It makes sense

[VitalyChernobyl]

Except you're completely wrong about on of the three crimes. Counterfeiting is investigated by the Secret Service, which is part of the Dept of the Treasury.

Re:It makes sense

[kwiqsilver]

Perhaps you should review your civics text book, and reread my post. I said " the crimes the US government is Constitutionally allowed to investigate". As far as I know the Secret Service (which was part of the Treasury Department, but has been part of DHS since 2003) is still part of the US government.
I did not say the Constitution authorized the FBI to investigate counterfeiting. The Constitution only authorizes Congress "To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States." How they use this power is up to Congress (and the presidential veto power).

The times, they ain't a changing

[M00NIE]

I have *exactly* the same comment to this article I had to one quite some time ago when they compromised our ability to go to libraries and read whatever we liked without monitoring.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44261&cid= 4602410

Oh the times, they ain't a channnnginnng

Re:The times, they ain't a changing

[TommydCat]

...are you trying to dupe yourself? *scratches head*

What the fuck?

[RLiegh]

What is it going to take to get people to be so pissed off they're motivated to make the changes necessary to get our rights back?

Re:What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

> What is it going to take to get people to be so pissed off they're motivated to make the changes necessary to get our rights back?

The ability of the electorate to form an electable alternative to the Demopublican Party without getting disappeared. Too late now :)

Re:What the fuck?

[MightyMartian]

What is it going to take to get people to be so pissed off they're motivated to make the changes necessary to get our rights back?

Nothing. People are, by and large, subservient cowards who will stand by and let fellow citizens be abused, allow themselves to be frightened by power-hungry governments, and well, just bloody well do what they're told. The American Revolution was a long time ago, and nobody particular remembers or cares to remember what got those guys so up in arms. Nearly half of Americans are so unfit that they don't even bother showing up at the polls, and a good chunk of those that do are simply motivated by fear broadcast to them by the spin doctors who know just how intellectually and emotionally incompetent most people are.

Re:What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Historically speaking, a large tax on tea.

Re:What the fuck?

[macdaddy357]

So, what you are basically asking is when the next social upheaval on par with the French Revolution will be? Short of that, nothing will change. You have only the rights the state (Nation state, not a division thereof) chooses to extend you nomatter what a piece of parchment says. Even after a revolution, it would be meet the new boss, same as the old boss within 20 years.

Re:What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Historically speaking, a large tax on tea.

Yesterday's tea is today's overpaid professional sports and reality TV programs.

Something about opiates ... and masses.

Re:What the fuck?

[hesiod]

> What is it going to take to get people to be so pissed off

Paying attention and recognizing bullshit/corruption. And they need to quit thinking the enemy is "the other party," instead of the people in their own party that are taking advantage of them.

Re:What the fuck?

[Hosiah]

changes necessary to get our rights back?

How? Vote for Clown A or Clown B in the next election? Print up flyers? Preach on soapboxes? Write our Congressmen? Telephone our Representative? Show up on the steps of the White House and protest?

We've all been doing that for decades. Here's a sad truth: We do not have the Government for our adversary. We have for our adversary the 51% who cruise along in their cushy lives in blissful ignorance of anything wrong.

Re:What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you see the recent Washington D.C. demonstration against the Iraq war? Over 100,000 people, I believe. Amazing what happens when politicians keep sending people's kids off to die in a senseless war against a nation that is no threat to us. It's the same thing that was largely responsible for the peace and civil rights movement in the 60s.

Re:What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing:

Random body cavity searches.

"If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?"

Oh, I dunno, maybe that 6'5" 300 pound linebacker with a white glove and a smile?

Re:What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you, but you can't use low turn out on elections as an argument. Here we have 10 parties in parliament, if the two biggest were left over and it did not matter wether people voted or not for the distribution of seats, then we also would have a 50% turn out. Your system is rotten too.

Re:What the fuck?

[falconwolf]

What is it going to take to get people to be so pissed off they're motivated to make the changes necessary to get our rights back?

Unfortuantely too many people are really sheeple and won't try to do anything until it's too late.

"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist - so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat - so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew - so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me."
By Martin Niemöller

Falcon

Re:What the fuck?

[RLiegh]

Close. Not 'when will it be', but rather 'what is it going to take to get there'. I'm afraid one of the other posters nailed the answer: as long as there's 'something' on TV (cops, survivor, rasslin'; whatever), things will remain just as they are.

Re:What the fuck?

[Jim_Callahan]

And others of us paid attention to our mothers when they told us never to say anything to someone you would regret the whole world finding out, so we could give a damn about wether the FBI, CIA, al Quaeda, Bush, Bush senior, Christina Aguilera, Christopher Walken, George Lucas, or Richard Nixon is listening in.

Seriously. If you're going to communicate information, expect people to recieve it, even if they aren't the ones you were making eye contact with at the moment. That's why our language is aerially or electromagnetically transmitted, and not composed of a pattern of wrist-squeezes. I guess there's an exception in the case of intellectual property/constructive conspiracy, but most people around here don't want those around either.

Re:What the fuck?

[Achromatic1978]

February 16, 2003: 500,000 people walk against war in Sydney Australia... many more unable to get into the city due to lack of sufficient public transportation. Government statistics found false.

500,000 people. Of a city of 4.5 million. But hey, our government charged on in, Coalition Of The Willing my ass.

Re:What the fuck?

[macdaddy357]

Probably the only thing that would make people that angry would be property seizure. If taking people's homes through emimnent domain just to sell the land to developers became routine, there would be an armed revolution. Short of that, most people will never care. The Supreme Court has opened the door for that, ruling that public use means whatever some kleptocratic local government says it is.

Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Russia the federal police owns you!

Oh, wait...

Dup city

[jesup]

I'm a slashdot subscriber. I saw this article before it went "live" and reported it as a dup to the editor on duty. Apparently the editor is asleep, adn has been asleep all day.

(I was the Original Poster of the article that this is a dup of.)

Re:Dup city

[Anonymous Coward]

And your point is . . . ?

Re:Dup city

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I don't pay, I see no dupes.

Thanks for paying to edit for me though.

FB, who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in an Australian University. Recently a web server managed (using the term loosely) by a member of academic staff got pwned. The crackers put up copies of a couple of banking sites and a paypal site. First we heard was a cease and desist from paypal which contained a whole lot of helpful information on what evidence we were obliged to retain for the FBI. Sorry, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but in Australia the FBI got business with my business!

Re:FB, who?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, you're wrong. US authority has no bounds. And if you think otherwise, well there's a nice little vacation suite waiting for you in Guantanamo Bay.

Re:FB, who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, countries tend to support investigations by countries they're friendly with. PayPal is US-based, so they'd go to the FBI first (and they might not have noticed your physical location at the time anyway.) Plus, who knows where the attackers where? No one until they check out your system logs. It may have been a cracker in the US.

"Subject to the needs of law enforcement"

[Stephen Samuel]

That's duckspeak for "citizens are not entitled to run the applications and services of their choice."

Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: ...spokesman on Monday, who asked not to be identified by name...

We have the right to know everything... We have the obligation to reveal Nothing.

It's for your own good!

(Your name is being added to a List)

Don't worry about it....

Since I'm bored

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends on the way you are using liberal and conservative. People throw the terms around a lot and generally aren't using them in a well defined way.

If you are using them to describe a situation of social permissivness, then it would be liberal. Liberal social laws would be ones where people have the most freedoms possible, whereas conservative ones would be the least freedoms possible.

If you are suing them to describe legal changes, then conservative. A liberal view would be a progressive one, that laws should be changed from their current form, a conservative one would be a neutral or regressive one that laws should be left alone, or reverted to an earlier state.

So for political labels, who knows? What a "liberal" is and what a "conservative" is seems to vary with whoever says it.

Re:Since I'm bored

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberal social laws would be ones where people have the most freedoms possible,

Even liberal social laws that outlaw so-called "hate speech" that hurts minorities' feelings?

Re:Since I'm bored

[Anonymous Coward]

"Conservative, n. A politician enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Re:Since I'm bored

[Sycraft-fu]

Those are not liberal social policies. You are confusing causes that people like to term "liberal" (meaning Democrat generally) and "conservative" (meaning Republican generally) with actual definitions on policy stances. A liberal one is the giving of lots of rights, a conservative one is the giving of few. There is, of course, a continium between the two. An extremely liberal social view would be essentially an anarchist view, that there should be no restricitions on behvaiour whatsoever (anarchists are also extremely economically liberal, in that there should be no regulation whatsowever).

Also hate speech laws would be liberal in that they would be different. As I said, I liberal agenda with regard to legal change is one that our laws should change, a conservative one is to keep what we have or step back to what we used to have.

Politics is more complex than a black and white, liberal vs conservative view. There are many things onw can be liberal or conservative on, and many ways in whcih one can be liberal or conservative.

For example to go to just two factors: Social policy and economic policy. Stereotypical Republicans are socially conservative, economically liberal. That means they believe the government should be fairly restrictive of behaviour, but fairly permissive of economic freedom. Stereotypical Democrats are socially liberal, economically conservative. They believe the government should heavily regulate the economy, but people should be allowed to do as they please.

However it's not as cut and dry as that, neither are totally permissive or restrictive in their given area, different people in those groups have a different amount of liberal or conservative tendencies, and those aren't the only two factors.

Re:Since I'm bored

[Anonymous Coward]

That's libertarian, not liberal.

Yeah, right. We are not in China here.

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI up my ass. We are not in China here and as long we live in a democratic country(we do, right?) you can encrypt anything you want. Period.

It's a pity eBay bought Skype

[Timbotronic]

When Skype was a European company, they could have just ignored this nonsense. Not any more. The problem is, Skype really needs encryption as it's peer-peer. It'll be interesting to see how eBay deal with it.

Re:It's a pity eBay bought Skype

[mboverload]

Skype uses 256-bit AES encryption already

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype#Security

Re:It's a pity eBay bought Skype

[Timbotronic]

Yes, I should have been clearer. Because Skype already has AES encryption, I'd expect to see eBay get some heat from the US Govt to either remove it completely, replace it with something much weaker or impose some form of key escrow. If Skype wasn't owned by a US company, they'd effectively be able to ignore this.

Re:It's a pity eBay bought Skype

[petermgreen]

if my understanding of how skype works is correct i'd imagine it would be pretty trivial for them to mod the login server to mitm your calls.

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[anothy]

let's hear it for broad, sweeping generalizations! yay!

please. i know or have known lots of cops, and not one fits your mold. most cops would rather lock up criminals and leave the innocents alone. they've got a genuinely difficult job to do, and are competing with ever-increasingly advanced criminals. i think the wiretapping laws in the states are significantly more onerous than they should be, but painting cops as a bunch of fascists does absolutely nothing to help that problem, and in fact makes having an intelligent conversation about the issues more difficult. this certainly doesn't qualify as "Insightful".

Re:Land of the Free?

[MightyMartian]

Oh say can you see, by the books burning bright,
What so proudly we hailed at human rights last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and and bright stars, will burn in the night,
O'er ramparts unwatched, were so tragically leaking?

Um... waitaminute...

[rongage]

Can someone please explain to me exactly WHEN the FCC became a law-creation body?

I can't honestly believe that Congress would outsource THAT

Re:Um... waitaminute...

[slughead]

Can someone please explain to me exactly WHEN the FCC became a law-creation body?

When the supreme court and congress started abusing the interstate commerce clause.

Re:Um... waitaminute...

[Valarauk]

Can someone please explain to me exactly WHEN the FCC became a law-creation body?

That would have been when it was established by the Communications Act of 1934.

Here's a some reading material for you over the weekend: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/. I hear the section on Homeland Security is especially exciting.

Re:Um... waitaminute...

[ahodgson]

Can someone please explain to me exactly WHEN the FCC became a law-creation body?

1934. FDR outsourced a lot of Congress's job.

Re:Um... waitaminute...

[usurper_ii]

And he did so illegally, as the Constitution states clearly that only Congress can create a law. They get around this by calling things rules and regulations, but guess what, these "regulations" have the force of a law.

Here is something I wrote a while back:

The Constitution (Article I, Section 1) states that only congress has the power to make laws. The executive branch and the judicial branch have no legislative powers, whatsoever. And Congress does not have the constitutional authority to delegate its legislative power to institutions that are beyond electoral accountability to the American people.

So why is there never a word said about the fourth branch of the federal government: the unconstitutional and entirely illegal regulatory branch?

What are the alphabet agencies -- FDA, EPA, OSHA, and so on -- doing when they pass laws? And, while these laws are called regulations, so as not to upset anyone who might actually read the Constitution, the Webster's dictionary defines regulation as a rule, ordinance or law.

The Constitution states that citizens accused of a crime are entitled to a trial by jury and are considered innocent until proven guilty.

Somewhere down the line the IRS must have overlooked the Constitution when it was setting up its "tax courts." And, while the income tax may be constitutional, the IRS does not have the constitutional authority to override such basics as due process of the law or the rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, paper, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. Nor does it have the constitutional authority to become a legislative body unto itself.

The IRS is far from being the only government agency that has thrown the Constitution to the wind.

Another good example would be the woman who found out her children were doing drugs. She thought she was doing the proper thing by telling her children to leave and notifying the authorities.

After monitoring her house for a couple of weeks, the DEA seized her house for participating in the drug business. She was never charged with a crime, nor convicted of a crime. It was left entirely up to her redress to attempt to reclaim her property.

This is not uncommon. The ability to document unconstitutional actions by the federal government is limited only by the amount of space given to write. Unfortunately, there is not much newspaper ink being used on the subject. And this is a shame because this is a problem that is not a partisan issue. Bringing an end to unconstitutional government stands to benefit many diverse segments of our population, including both the rich and poor and regardless of party affiliation.

If America is ever to return to its constitutionally limited government, these illegal federal agencies must be abolished. If laws are needed in certain areas they must be passed by Congress. If laws are unpopular, the citizens should be able to vote out the lawmakers that enacted them. This is not possible in the regulatory branch of the government, the majority of whom are not elected nor held accountable to the people.

Bad apples

[rufey]

Part of the issue is that there are people who do bad things out there. And when bad things happen (Oklahoma City, 9/11, murder, kidnapping) people begin to ask why law enforcement wasn't able to stop the bad people before the bad thing happened.

I think that many of the laws that are put in place because of this are really overreaching, but on the other hand, if you were doing something illegal and found out that, starting the next day your phone was going to be tapped, you were going to be followed, and your every move was going to be scrutinized because law enforcement *thought* that you were doing someting illegal, you would most likely, overnight, come up with a game plan to make it look like you were just an ordinary law abiding citizen.

Sure there are people who abuse their power, and that is where the problem lies - it isn't necessarily with the law itself, its with the people who enforce the law thats the problem.

We in the US battle over whether its constitutional to have "under god" in the pledge of allegiance and whether "free speach" really means free speach.

Another analogy - corporations will (well, okay, they should) put a lot of time and effort into network security because it only takes one person on the inside, who has inside knowledge, to steal company data (whether it be customer data such as SSNs and credit card info or other confidential data). If everyone were trustworthy, there would be no need for network monitoring for threats. Likewise, if everyone were trustworthy and always obeyed the law and never did anything illegal, we wouldn't have all of these laws that dictate basically that we have no privacy anymore.

The problem is, how do you know before something bad happens who the bad people are?

Re:Bad apples

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, how do you know before something bad happens who the bad people are?

You can't. So the tendency is to treat everybody like they are bad people. Which means innocent people get abused. And the bad guys cover their tracks so they don't get caught. So they ask for more powers to find the bad guys. Ad infinitum. Just as Ben Franklin said so long ago.

Re:Bad apples

[Anonymous Coward]

You are essentially arguing from the fear mongering perspective. Yes, it is true that there are some "bad" people out there. Unfortunately, they are really very rare in comparison to other dangers. Most people do not die from "bad" people killing them, they die from car accidents or from being fat, or just from growing old. People have things stolen from them, but many, many more people just waste their money on stupid things they don't really need, or just gamble it away. Statistically, you're much more likely to kill or hurt yourself than to have someone else do it.

In light of that, shouldn't the government be doing more to, say, increase our intelligence with genetic modification or something? Anything that helps the majority of people live their lives easier reduces crime, because there's less incentive to take hard earned stuff from other people, or to get revenge on them for some stress induced comment or whatever. There's always the ever present risk of the government actually hurting more innocent people than it protects, which is currently kind of on the edge with all the people in jail for smoking pot. The "government", or law enforcement in particular is just another subset of the general population with its own percentage of "bad" people. The less power those bad people have over normal people, the better. Clearly, a balance is needed, and this is why it's never correct to say "Well, anything that can stop crime must be better!" Nuking the earth would stop crime. Life is not about crime, find something else to spend your energy on.

Re:Bad apples

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, how do you know before something bad happens who the bad people are?

Easy, you just arrest all the brown people and the niggers.

Re:No what they should do is just search our house

[SpaceLifeForm]

It's easier than that. They should just pass a law that says that before you do anything illegal, you need to call the proper law enforcement agency and let them know before you do it.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[einhverfr]

There are a few things not covered in this ruling. The main one is end-to-end VOIP w/encryption. For example, how about VOIP via something like H.323 over an IPSec tunnel (point to point). So to say we have no right to privacy is misguided.

The idea seems to be that the courts should be able to authorize wiretapping of any media regardless of whether it is a traditional phone system or a VOIP connection over a public network.

Or how about someone using VOIP on a corporate intranet via a VPN? I would assume that these are explitly not covered? Especially if we are talking IPSec/GRE tunnels with traffic running through them. All law enforcement would know by tapping your broadband provider is that you are logged into the corporate VPN and that there is traffic going back and forth. You would not even know where the call was going or even that it was a call.

The second question is far more tricky.... Imagine that someone sets up some VOIP termination servers in a non-extradition country like Belize. These require IPSec/GRE tunnels and have a client that will set things up for you. The goal is to have a free worldwide and secure system. It seems to me that this would be well beyond the FCC's juristiction. But this might well be the way that things develop.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[kerrle]

Looking at your link, I must say I'm somewhat disappointed to see it only hit the religious right. Certainly, you can lay some of the threat there - but they're not alone.

Plenty of people who would define themselves as moderates or liberals seem to be willing to give up much of their freedom if the request is phrased the right way.

Very few people seem to be concerned with losing their freedoms - though most don't realize what's possible just under current law.

And if you bring the subject up in public, it's automatically assumed you're just some crazy conspiracy theorist...

Re:No what they should do is just search our house

[MightyMartian]

Instead of just tapping our phones, why not just do house to house searches? Face it, we can't fight this, so I'm going to just welcome them in, offer them a beer, and let them do whatever the hell they want. It's their house now.

I agree completely. Hand 'em over the computer, tell them you once had consensual anal sex with your wife, that you actually taped the Janet Jackson nipple reveal, that you smoked a joint in college, that you actually said something less than flattering about the President, that you wondered if maybe America did something to bring on the terrorist attacks, that you're not too comfortable with how the US treats foreign prisoners seized in an undeclared war. No more secrets, I say. Tell 'em how your neighbor secretly tapes Mexican porn or that he has CDs of music downloaded from Gnutella. Tell 'em how your brother is thinking of becoming a Muslim.

It's all for your own good. If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide. Right?

great!

[anothy]

so the FBI can contact me and demand i provide them the ability to tap my VoIP communications. well, cool! sure, FBI, just let me know when you'd like to start listening and i'll open up the tap point, then close it when you're done. and wait 'till after to have all the interesting conversations.

(yes, i know that's not really what it's about, but it's how all the summaries read)

And in news to hand ...

[ignavus]

And in news to hand, the FBI wants to ban talking over backyard fences with the neighbors.

"We cannot bug all the backyard fences in America, so we'll just have to outlaw talking to the neighbors that way. Only authorised communication over interceptable devices can be permitted in a free society."

Fortunately, sociologists have confirmed that the universal failure of American couples to communicate, or even talk, during sex means that procreative activity will not have to be banned as well. The CIA confirmed that terrorists do their murderous acts because they are prevented from looking at wholesome bikini-clad girls - those secretive burqas hiding the female form are the true cause of extremism. "This is why our army in Iraq was trying to show the captured Iraqis that nakedness is good. I guess they just took it the wrong way", suggested an Army spokesperson.

"Only a terrorist would want free speech", added an FBI agent. "Encrypted VOIP is like wearing a burqa to hide a bomb."

And that's all the news (you're allowed to hear) from the Land of the Free.

Re:And in news to hand ...

[xwin]

Unfortunately with the new war on porn, recently announced by FBI, we soon too will be prevented from looking and wholesome bikini-clad girs. Will we also become a terrorists at that time? What a sad state of affairs.

Re:And in news to hand ...

[Yenin]

You have a fence around your yard?

What exactly are you trying to hide?

What about POTS encryption?

[CrackHappy]

What is their take on POTS encryption? What if you are using an encrypted phone on both ends - is that illegal?

Does anyone know off the top of their heads?

Re:What about POTS encryption?

[CodeBuster]

The United States Government used the STU-III Secure Telephone System for unclassified but sensitive diplomatic communications with their embassies overseas during the 1980s. Bruce Schneier mentions this system in his book, "Applied Cryptography". The system involved special hardware at both ends (ie each person needed an STU-III phone w/a special key dongle) and was never generally available to the public. The key distribution was supposedly managed by the NSA.

Finally, the war on terror is won!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Scene: A cave in Pakistan.)

(Al Zawahri walks briskly into the cave where Osama Bin Laden is playing solitaire. Al is holding a printout from a CNet web page.)

Al: Osama! Look what the infidels have done! We cannot encrypt the holy warrior communication as planned. We must allow the cursed FBI to listen to our blessed instructions. What shall we do??

Osama: You make me sad this day. Allah has chosen to test us. Since we cannot possibly violate FCC regulation, we have no choice but to resort to manual couriers to communicate jihad instructions to our soldiers of freedom. Praise Allah, we will get our messages through.

Al: But do you not remember our cost estimates? We can't find enough holy warriors to handle all of our communication. We used the money to install air conditioning in the cave. We are doomed.

Osama: (After thinking). We have no choice but to shut down our operations once and for all. Curse the FBI and their unholy ways! Our jihad is over. (Raises fist in the air). Curse you George Bush! Curse you!

(Osama and Al pull off their robes and fake beards and put on business suits. Osama holds up a stuffed elephant and holds it up.)

Osama: They may have won the War On Terror with their infernal FCC regulations, but they will lose the War on Cheap Toy Imports! In America, big business is never regulated!

Al: Allah has shown us the way!

Pinch me - I'm dreaming!!!

[Linker3000]

Slashdot EeziPost (TM) MK 1.0.001 (beta) TRIFECTA SOUVENIR EDITION

#NB: For obvious reasons, the first option is ENABLED by default - remember to turn off if you are NOT responding to a dupe

[X] Another: [X] Dupe [ ] Slashvertisment [X] WTF [X] $editor is a dork [X] dupe trifecta is now in operation

[ ] Frist psot [ ] $link_to_GNAA [ ] $link_to_goatse [ ] $random_drivel

[ ] I Haven't RTFA, but... $random_opinionated_comment

[ ] Slashdotted already!. I bet their server runs on $topic_item too

[ ] Soul_sucking registration required

[ ] Mod Parent [ ] up [ ] Down

[ ] Fsck: [ ] SCO [ ] Micro$oft [ ] DMCA [ ] DRM [ ] MPAA [ ] RIAA [ ] Google [ ] Bush [ ] You all

[ ] I for one welcome our new $topic_item overlords

[ ] Imagine a beowulf cluster of those

[ ] In Soviet Russia, $topic_item owns you!

[X] Meh!

[ ] You must be new here!

[ ] Netcraft confirms $topic_item is: [ ] dead [ ] dying

[ ] But have the inventors thought of what will happen if $random_amateur_insight

[ ] Once again the USA is clamping down on my [ ] Amendment rights.

[ ] You insensitive clod

[ ] But people who download music from P2P networks are more likely to buy the
album

[ ] Cue DVD Jon-type crack in 3..2..1

[ ] Torrent, anyone?

[ ] Here's a link to a patch: $random_linux_distro_url

[ ] "Yeah, but does it run Linux?"; if($summary has 'linux') add "Oh, wait..."

[ ] Profit!!

[ ] Tinfoil hat at the ready

[ ] Still no cure for cancer

[ ] "()*%£^" No Carrier

Re:Pinch me - I'm dreaming!!!

[Hosiah]

LOL - OK, you're Scott Adams in disguise, right?

Usable, but clumsy. Now, a PHP app that auto-generates a Slashdot reply to cut-n-paste would go well here. The unselected options in this form would clutter up the post.

Re:Pinch me - I'm dreaming!!!

[flynns]

You forgot a few for this article:

[X] Tinfoil hat at the ready
[X] "()*%£^" No Carrier

Re:Pinch me - I'm dreaming!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind an ez post, but you really phoned this one in. Maybe you should have clicked these as well.

[ ] I for one welcome our new $topic_item overlords
[ ] Tinfoil hat at the ready
[ ] Once again the USA is clamping down on my [ ] Amendment rights.

pry my pgp from my dead hands

[Ankou]

I'll say it again, there already exists a backdoor, its called a warrant. Issue me one, and I'll be happy to let them listen. Until then you aint getting my keys. What happened to my presumed innocence?

Re:pry my pgp from my dead hands

[Pichu0102]

Well, nowadays, people consider you guilty until you die in a prison awaiting a trial.

Re:pry my pgp from my dead hands

[Anonymous Coward]

Per fucking zactly. If you want to listen, ask. Don't go sneaking around and then release my name to the fucking New York Times.

We don't need no encryption

[Lost Penguin]

"trusted computing" will put a keystroke logger in every BIOS!

Really, they can go in your house when you are not at home and leave no sign they were there, without any reason or warrant ("Patriot" Act)
Do you really think they will not leave a key stroke logger?

Sooo....

[qyiet]

What does this mean for VoIP traffic that starts and ends outside the US, but is routed through the US on the way from A to B?

-Qyiet

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard from some anonymous person claiming to be an insider, that people have more power than they believe that they do. I submit the idea that you are not as weak and at the mercy of the system as you may think. Just because they decided that they can, doesn't mean that they can. Everyone has to roll over and give their power away freely. They can say anything they want, but you are still free to direct your will and take appropriate action. I think if the tools are out in the wild, that people will use them.

Re:Land of the Free?

[Skybyte]

No that's New Zealand

Who Needs Encryption?

[MightyMait]

Who needs encryption? Just speak in Elvish.

Re:Who Needs Encryption?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which variant? Eragon, Artemis Fowl, ...

Re:Who Needs Encryption?

[MightyMait]

Either should be fine. I doubt the Feds have anybody who can speak Elvish (wheras *everybody* on /. does, right (or is that Klingon)?).

Re:Who Needs Encryption?

[DavidTC]

Hell, the government doesn't even have enough people who speak Farsi and Aramaic.

Forget Elvish, you could probably throw them by speaking in French or Australian.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

Well its a subject for heated debate whether the constitution does assure you a right to privacy and what the bounds of that right are. When telephones came in to common use in the early twentieth century it was routine for the police to listen in on suspected criminals or maybe anyone they wanted to find some dirt on.

The first Supreme Court case tested wire taps in 1928 in fact found in favor of wire tapping, because ... wait for it ... the police were not entering the persons home so they were not invading the privacy of their home. Here is a good link on the history of the right to privacy.

Here is a particularly important part on wire tapping. Justice Louis D. Brandeis was writing in the dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928). His view would ultimately prevail years later and is now in grievous danger of being overturned again by a rising tide of Fascism in the U.S. :

"Whenever a telephone line is tapped, the privacy of the persons at both ends of the line is invaded, and all conversations between them on any subject, and although proper, confidential, and privileged, may be overheard. . . .
The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure, and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the one most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment."

Its important to read this stuff these days. The right to privacy was the cornerstone of the confirmation hearing of our new Chief Justice Roberts, names like Olmstead and Griswold. There is a suspicion Judge Roberts appointment is designed to overturn all the cases affirming right to privacy, a right to not have your phone tapped, a right to abortions, a right to access birth control.

Religious fundamentalists banned birth control in Connecticut in the 19th century. When this law was challenged in 1965 in Griswold .vs. Connecticut it laid the foundation for much of our modern right to privacy, in this case it was an individuals right to practice birth control without state intervention. This evolved in to the right to an abortion in Roe v Wade.

J. Edgar Hoover used wire taps and his control of the FBI to accumulate vast amounts of dirt on anyone and everyone, and insured he held an iron grip on the helm of the FBI and in fact the U.S. in general for decades. No one would challenge him because he had dirt on everyone. He was the ultimate defiler of the right to privacy. With modern techology and the collapse of our right to privacy thanks to fear mongering politicians the potential is great for the rise of new J. Edgars who are even more powerful and more dangerous. A leading candidate is George W's new National Intelligen Director, John Negroponte. He doesn't control the FBI he controls the CIA, the NSA and every spying resource the U.S. has now. Negroponte was infamous for supporting right wing death squads in Central America that did Fascism proud.

Ok, here is my private key FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCKU

I use xor based Windows encryption along with double ROT13

To much to try and track... so...

[3seas]

they are focusing in on encrypted stuff... as encryption must mean terrorist... to those who have done so many others wrong...and expect revenge...

You have wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you are half right... when a country puts two or more words like that (people's, republic) in their name, you know its a fucked up country. Take the "People's Republic of China", and the "Democratic Republic of the Congo"... but if you really want it, you have to add another word to make it three, like the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Not to be out done, why not four?

I propose: "The People's Unified Democratic Republican Co-Prosperity Realm of America"

Re:You have wrong...

[DavidTC]

How about 'United'? I think that definately goes on the list as meaning the opposite of what it normally does.

Re:You have wrong...

[daddymac]

The People's Unified Democratic Republican Co-Prosperity Realm of America? I thought this was the Popular Unified Democratic Republican Co-Prosperity Realm of America.

Splitter.

This can only lead to one thing...

[GhaleonStrife]

This is the beginning of The Salem Witch Trials 2: Electric Boogaloo.

China as a role model

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the current Bush government taking China as a role model of spying on its citizens? Shame on them. Besides, the FCC does not even have the regulatory powers claimed in that insane proposal. Sorry, but I won't pay a cent more for my VoIP phone because of the hundreds of millions it costs to implement backdoors for the government to spy on its citizens. Where is all the "freedom" and "democracy"? How disgusting!

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[Anonymous Coward]

but painting cops as a bunch of fascists does absolutely nothing to help that problem

I'll agree the cops probably aren't... however, I don't want a set of laws created that allow a bunch of fascists walk in and take over ;o).

Tinfoil hat....

[Coldglow]

No more tinfoil hats... Only paper hats, it is for national security!!!!!!!!!

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only a debate if you don't know how to read.

Next overrated troll.

consider the source

[idlake]

If you have followed him, you'll see that to Declan McCullagh, anything the government does is wrong; that's just his view of the world.

So far, there is not even the slightest indication that the FCC either has the authority or the ability of regulating what you do on your PC. So, while the FCC may really intend something stupid with this rule, it probably doesn't matter; they might as well try to make and enforce FCC regulations against radio emissions from the sun.

Re:consider the source

[ke4roh]

Exactly. The FCC cannot overrule the fifth amendment of the Constitution which states, in part:

"No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...."

Yes, they're proposing (and presently seeking comment) requiring VOIP providers with links to POTS lines to permit tapping of calls just as the landline folks do, but they're using the POTS interface as a separator between "big companies" and "little guys" and the little guys won't be required to comply. (At least that's what I got from skimming TFNotice.)

Re:consider the source

[Halvy]

they might as well try to make and enforce FCC regulations against radio emissions from the sun.

SHHHH!!

(lets not give them any ideas, hot rod!!)

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[Ablar]

> please. i know or have known lots of cops, and not one fits your mold.

I don't believe anyone here is saying that most or even many cops would abuse this. The problem is that we're also enabling those few who _will_ be abusing this power.

But what if you don't obey?

[R3d M3rcury]

Okay, so here's what I'm wondering.

Suppose I'm an evil person intent on doing evil things and I decide to communicate with my evil minions around the country using some sort of encrypted VOIP-type of thing that I had one of my evil minions put together.

Suppose further that the US Government gets wind of one of my nefarious schemes, goes to the appropriate judge, and gets a warrant to tap my Internet connection. They then discover that I'm using this encrypted VOIP thing.

What are they gonna do? Arrest me? On what charge? Using a service which is not "subject to the needs of law enforcement"? What's the penalty for that?

Are they going to drop me a note saying, "Hey, we can't understand what you're sending. Stop doing that."? Do they have the ISPs shut off the ports? What if I'm using port 80? Does the ISP drop me as a customer? Will there be some sort of federal "Do not let this guy use the Internet" list that ISPs have to check? What about "public" places, like Internet Cafes?

This is what I don't understand. What is "subject to the needs of law enforcement"? Can the Government decide that I don't need to use a service? If so, how do they block it? Again, if I assemble it myself, how will the government block it unless they stumble across it during an investigation? And if they block it afterwards, don't they think I'll suspect something?

This sounds like the FCC is trying to play both sides of the street. Yes, you can use whatever service you like, unless the cops don't like it. If they don't like it, something may or may not happen to you.

Re:But what if you don't obey?

[surprise_audit]

There are plenty of covert channels left - blogs, eBay ads, etc. Instead of calling an accomplice to say, "bomb the mall tonight", just make a journal entry with prearranged keywords - "party at my place tomorrow".

Re:But what if you don't obey?

[Phisbut]

This sounds like the FCC is trying to play both sides of the street. Yes, you can use whatever service you like, unless the cops don't like it. If they don't like it, something may or may not happen to you.

Makes me think of the Chinese constitution that has been cited quite a few times here...

Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

Article 41. Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary; but fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited. In case of complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens, the state organ concerned must deal with them in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposures, or retaliate against the citizens making them. Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civil rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.

Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

Article 52. It is the duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to safeguard the unity of the country and the unity of all its nationalities.

Basically, "you can do whatever you want as long as we approve of it". And you really think the USA is a free country, right?

No Taxation without--er, sort of

[cnerd2025]

Remember when they teach you that "we hold these truths to be self-evident" and that "endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."? They often seem to neglect the part about dissolving political bonds in favor of new ones or the fact that the ruler derives his or her power from the consent of the governed. I'm all against "terrorists", but how about we take some real action against them instead of stupid shit, like keeping VoIP from using encryption. Us law-abiding citizens will have to and terrorists will go on encrypting it. Who the hell would ever know? They would likely use an encryption scheme above the NSA threshold, so it would look more like garbage data than a meaningful phone conversation. Obviously DC has taken the name "Washington" and tarnished it by throwing it in the mud. It was a mistake to name the capital city after him; almost everything the government does is in direct opposition to what George Washington personally and politically believed in. Balance of powers has become blurred (the FCC and other executive bureaus can arbitrarily impose jurisdiction without Congressional consent.) I think everything that America stands for is being torn down and propaganda is making it happen. The government is engaging in terror just as much as radical islamists and other terrorists. All of this shit about "protecting America" is ineffective and futile. You can't preemptively stop terror. You can only deter it or freeze it. Foreignly the US has done an excellent job at this: Saudi is cooperating with us, Libya is growing balls, Iran now knows we have a backbone, Lebanon and Syria are finally coming to some resolution. What the government is doing internally is destroying America. These acts such as PATRIOT Act and the Wire Tap act are tantamount to the Alien and Sedition acts.

Re:No Taxation without--er, sort of

[bwcbwc]

Have to remember our country was founded by terrorists. More rational than radical Islamic, Israeli, Shining Path, Red Brigade or IRA terrorists, but they were still terrorists when it came to handling crown loyalists. Look up what the Sons of Liberty were really up to some time.

Re:No Taxation without--er, sort of

[cnerd2025]

Well, yeah, that's my whole point--sort of. One man's liberator is another man's terrorist. Of course if we take "terrorist" to mean someone who uses "terror" to influence politics. The Sons of Liberty were very much a terrorist organization, but if you look at the results, the Sons really didn't have too much political influence other than things like the Boston Massacre or the Boston Tea Party. Paine had influence. Jefferson had influence. The acts that the King enforced had influence. Actually, if you look at the history books, John Adams, the second US president, defended the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre to their acquital. The Sons of Liberty in many ways wasn't a terrorist organization, but rather a group of organized thugs who history has come to glorify. They didn't scare people into action. The government is both a terrorist organization and scared of terrorism. Look at the Patriot Act. Not only did the government show it was afraid of terrorism by passing it, they also scare the citizens into not criticizing the government. So, there's my 2 cents. Probably about what it's worth, too. :-)

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the problem is the minority of cops who are willing to exercise their power for their own ends, not to "lock up the criminals" (by the way, isn't it the court's job to decide who's a criminal, not the cops?)

The minority I'm thinking of, and I'm sure there is at least one cop who fits this description (Oh, I donno, J Edgar Hoover comes to mind for some reason) will take any action they wish to. If the action is illegal, at least we can kick them in the ass when we find out. If there's no limit on what can be snooped, then there's nothing to do when abuses occur.

The whole point of our system of government is that the people are superior to the government. Not that the police have whatever power they want to have, and everyone they come in contact with must bow down to them.

It doesn't matter if 99% of the cops are good. The other 1% will spoil it for them.

I think it's the bad cops you should be pissed at, not the people who don't want to give the government power over us which can be so easily abused. I'm glad you know a lot of cops, but you don't know them all.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

"There's only a debate if you don't know how to read."

How about this for a deal, I'll learn to read if you learn to write.

This statement is best described as ambiguous. You might be saying if I knew how to read I would understand that there is no right to privacy, or you might be saying if I could read I would know there is an indisputable right to privacy.

If you read the link I provided or you watched the confirmation hearing for Chief Justice Roberts on CSPAN, you would understand there is a huge debate over whether there is a right to privacy and what its bounds are. The Supreme Court has decided both ways on whether wire tapping violates our Constitution or our right to privacy, ergo there IS a debate.

Me personally I hope there is such a right and our courts will uphold it and slap down all the politicians, law enforcement officers and bureaucrats who want to usurp it using fear mongering. Unfortunately we live in a complex society. There are no inalienable rights that we can take as a given. The only rights we have are the ones we successfully fight to preserve. If we let a group of people seize control of the White House and Congress who have no regard for the rights of individuals and who are power mad, they can stack the courts to their liking and they can do whatever they feel like with our rights.

"Next overrated troll."

Next anonymous coward who can't make a coherent argument and who resorts to ad hominem attacks instead. Why don't you try making a coherent argument next time.

WHY SO COMPLICATED?

[hurfy]

If my kids string two cans together do they have to provide a third for any FBI agents nearby?

Perhaps i should get an extra baby monitor for the FBI office, he seems to be sending me coded messages :)

If they really need a tap can't they just break in and put a bug in the handset or something? It wouldn't seem to matter what protocol it uses then. Don't they have like a 99+% chance of approval for a warrent if they ask? Of course i guess it would be much easier to have someone else do the legwork and listen to the tape at their convenience.

Why would the REALLY bad guys care if their comm program is approved? Make this a capital offense maybe so they would rather be busted for bombmaking?

The boys in DC bored this week or what?

Can you say: Power Trip?

Re:WHY SO COMPLICATED?

[Halvy]

Sounds like you have a real 'terror' in that crib ;)

Seriously tho, you almost had your #'s right.. the feds have about 99% conviction rate because they prosecute almost all innocent people whom they 'threaten' with basically life-in-prison unless they 'confess'-- then they 'plea' bargan with the poor soul for less time.

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[Pig Hogger]

Here is yet another cop wet-dream.

Don't ever forget that the pigs would gladly jail everyone, "for our own good"... So, for them, listening to all conversation is small potatoes.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Thing 1]

The idea seems to be that the courts should be able to authorize wiretapping of any media regardless of whether it is a traditional phone system or a VOIP connection over a public network.

That's asinine (not you, their idea).

I believe I've heard it compared to the old law, "every horse-less carriage must be preceded by a person on foot holding a lantern to light the way." Yes, it worked in its time and aided society and our growth as a country. But if we tried to enforce that law today (if it's even still on the books), it would grind commerce to a halt.

Wiretaps seem to be about the same: it was trivially easy to add them to the POTS telephone network, but it is very difficult to securely add this "feature" to an end-to-end encrypted session.

I like your Belize solution and will invest in it. ;-)

Doesn't anybody see...

[Kjella]

...that there is real legitimate problem here if the police after recieving the proper warrants, can't understand anything because it's all encrypted?

What can you do:
1) Completely prevent the police from listening in on communication, which would probably have severe consequences for law enforcement?
2) Demand that users hand over their own encryption keys, thus informing them that they are under surveilance?
3) Demand that software adds a backdoor for police, with all the problems of jurisdiction and possiblities of abuse?
4) Demand that software adds a backdoor for themselves, so they can hand it over to the police? Even bigger possibilities for abuse.
5) Some sort of two-part system where session keys are kept in escrow. For example the police has the decryption key, the company the encrypted keys. Requires some for for central server to hodl the keys.
6) Outlaw encryption. Read: Impossible.

3), 4) and 5) don't work with OSS solutions. 5) doesn't work with a completely decentralized structure, maybe something like Skype can use it negotiating keys but not with software connecting peers directly. Also, this isn't new to VoIP, they have just a big problem finding out if someone trades kiddie porn over SFTP as they do with someone talking to their drug dealer using VoIP.

Kjella

Re:Doesn't anybody see...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

7) The police actually have to do their job, which may involve installing bugs.

Re:Doesn't anybody see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a problem. Show me where in the Constitution the FBI gets the power to demand citizen (not consumer) cooperation in establishing an infrastructure for electronic mass surveillance. All your "solutions" are impossible considering free software can be distributed from anywhere in the world no matter how many countries "harmonize" with US surveillance laws. Corporations wouldn't stand for a cryptography ban, and we all know how much influence they have on Congress. Steganography would defeat such a ban anyway.

Re:Doesn't anybody see...

[calyptos]

Take your warrant to the service provider, have them tap you in.

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[poopdeville]

It's pretty easy to show that most cops, on average, are sons of bitches. There was a recent UK study showing that black people are eight times more likely to be searched than white people. Similar studies exist for communities in the US, showing that, depending on the community, black people are between 2 and 10 times more likely to be searched than white people. Now, for the sake of argument, suppose that in a particular community, black people are z times more likely to be searched. Suppose the police force has n members. Then, if m of them act like racist children, they are responsible for zn/m times as many illegitimate searches as the good cops. Notice that this blows up as m decreases. If m were a small minority, they would be responsible for orders of magnitude more descrimination than the rest. One must ask why they haven't been fired.

A more likely scenario is that most cops are pricks to varying degrees.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[jcr]

You see, our FBI and federal government has the right to tap all our phones, wiretap everything, spy on us, use satelites to watch our every move, and to control our thoughts and remove our freedom of speech. The FBI owns you, you do not own the FBI.

Not the right, the power. It's an important distinction to make.

At any rate, legally speaking, policies of the FCC and the FBI do not trump the constitution. Encrypt your VOIP conversations all you want (and if you're using Skype, you're already doing so), and let them try to beat you in court for doing it.

-jcr

Say goodbye to US Based VOIP software

[Hamfist]

Just like any other encryption, if you make it illegal in the states, then it will just get produced somewhere else. At on point during the PGP debacle, Scott McNealy said something along the lines of 'Oh we don't buy encryption products from the US, we buy them from Russia as Russian encryption is much better. After all, these are trade secrets we're talking about'

Unless the US implements a 'great firewall', this will never work for catching people that really don't want to be caught.

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[arkanes]

I know lots of cops too and they're mostly nice enough people. They tend to be a bit rednecky.

Thats not generally a flaw in most people, but the prejudices involved do affect they way they do thier job.

However, the real question is, do you know or have known lots of cops *in a professional capacity"? Because let me tell you, the way cops act when they're "on the job" is totally different from what they'll do hanging out at a bar. Especially when they think you're a criminal. Cops tend to trust thier gut feeling about this sort of thing, which is notoriously unreliable, and since oversight of police is pretty much non existant except in major cases, people just let stuff like illegal or unfounded stops or searches go. Insisting on your rights to a cop who stops you, by the way, is a great way to spend a night in jail. I don't think cops are neccesarily bad people, but they are human, and the circumstances of the job lend themselves to that sort of petty powermongering, just like DMV clerks. Which is why we need extensive oversight, more money and support, including therapy, for officers, and systemic work to try to break up the club atmosphere that forms that "blue wall". The military has exactly the same problem, but it doesn't affect citizens as much because the military isn't used as a policing force very often. Of course, if current trends continue, that may change. And can I take an aside to point out how ridiculous that someone calling themselves a conservative is even *thinking* about having the military take a larger roll in civilian affairs?

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Jonathan the Nerd]

See for yourself how you can defend the constitution if you actually care about it. Save the constitution

Interesting link. Here's another group that's trying to restore government according to the Constitution. Maybe the two groups should join forces...?

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Synn]

The first Supreme Court case tested wire taps in 1928 in fact found in favor of wire tapping, because ... wait for it ... the police were not entering the persons home so they were not invading the privacy of their home

I don't see how that deserves a "wait for it". I really don't see how a person owns the eletrons on a line once it leaves his or her property. And frankly, given today's access to encryption, that sort of ruling makes a lot more sense today than it did back then.

It's like communication on the internet. If you don't encrypt it, don't expect it to be private. Because once it leaves your network everyone pretty much owns it and can read it.

Now forcing backdoors in encryption is another matter entirely. It's my data and if I want to put CIA levels of encryption on it that's my right. If the FBI wants access to the data they can warrant me for the pass phrase or feel free to try and break it.

Yeah right

[zappepcs]

And Carnivore did something good for the goverment? If it did, it taught them that using buckets to stop the tide from coming in was not a good idea.... let them listen, tin-foil-hats be damned. I dare them to analyze all my phone conversations! Go ahead, listen, analyze, process the bits of data that are my conversations with my wife! FOOOLS!!!

I will damn any government representative that wants to spend my tax dollars building super-clusters to monitor my voice conversations... Besides that, they don't have the resources to do so... so I say, I dare you, do it... we will burn you at every turn, we will ignore you, and elect people that fire you... go ahead, try it...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I dare you to even try to find the DBA that wants to deal with your Sagan-bytes database ROFL

The government agencies can't even cooperate on providing aid to disaster victims, who in the world expects them to spy on 500 million vioce calls per day... ROFLMAO

yeah, right, they'll manage.... LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Which is from the totalitarian regime?

[paiute]

"The exercise by citizens ... of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state"

"consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement"

How about

[Synn]

7> Paint a laser on the office window of the person you want to bug, and listen to their voice before it ever hits the hardware.

Of course you're still screwed if the people involved are talking Klingon or Tolkenese or something :)

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you try making a coherent argument next time.

I think we both know the answer to that.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Qzukk]

I really don't see how a person owns the eletrons on a line once it leaves his or her property.

Do I stop owning the atoms in a piece of paper when the mail carrier picks it up? Does ownership have any bearing on the expected privacy of the content? Why should my message be any different whether I pay a mail carrier to pick it up and carry it to its destination, or a phone company, or an ISP?

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[Mr. Underbridge]

they've got a genuinely difficult job to do, and are competing with ever-increasingly advanced criminals

Yeah, and it doesn't help that they're generally dumb as a chair.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Evro]

The right to privacy is afforded by the 10th Amendment:

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

I don't recall anything in the Constitution specifically giving the Federal government the right to spy on its citizens, and considering that the Constitution was written by people with a Hobbesian view of man's state of nature, who revolted against a tyrannical government, and were basically distrustful of government in general, I think it's reasonable to assume that they wouldn't have wanted the government to intrude in the daily lives of its citizens to the extent that it currently does. In fact, if they were around today we'd probably already have had another Revolution. The status quo is quite depressing and nauseating.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[falconwolf]

Here's another group [constitutionparty.com] that's trying to restore government according to the Constitution.

The supposedly "Constitution Party" looses it when as part of their beliefs they include "restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations." Sticking religion into politics is a deal breaker. I much prefer the Libertarian Party who leaves religion up to each individual. If people want religion in politics they should try saying "In Buddha We Trust" or "In Goddess We Trust". Maybe "In the Flying Spaghetti Monster We Trust.

Falcon

Pssst.. Heh, weirdo FBI guy.. over here..heh..look

[Halvy]

LOL!!

No.. over here ------------------->

CYPHER THIS-- B I T C H !!!

#%^%^R$@#$^%^*&$%%!@!!!

"Uses encryption" == empty words

[Sloppy]

The phrase "uses 256-bit AES encryption" means nothing, without description of how the session key is agreed upon. According to that wiki link, it's done using RSA. But Skype's use of RSA to establish the session key, is likewise meaningless, without description of how it verifies the other guy's public key. And here's the answer: there's no way it can.

This is why I think any system that doesn't use OpenPGP is bullshit. (Well, ssl with x.509 certs is ok if both parties personally trust the CA(s).) It always comes down to trusting some faceless corporation who never tells you what their policies are, or gives you the power to verify that those policies are always enforced. In the case of Skype, we don't know jack shit about how it's done, who does it, or why we should trust them.

Re:What's interesting...

[symbolic]

...is that it's immediately apparent that these words represent something other than what they are. They really don't even have to go that far - they can just agree on some very common-sounding sentences beforehand, that sound completely innocuous. By the way...did I ever tell you about that shade tree outside my window? It's awesome.

It's an American Attitude...

[sasha328]

I think you're asking a very pertinent question. Although I am no expert on Americans or your politics, I have one thing to say (from distant observations).
I was reading an opinion piece on the BBC website last week or so (sorry, can't find the link) It was about the response to the hurricane contrasting how the people responded generously and quickly, while the governments didn't (or were too slow).
The author mentioned a very poignant remark and it goes like this:
Americans don't expect much from their government, and so when the government doesn't deliver, well,... nothing happens. The government stays.
It is this lack of expectation that makes people complacent. Not just in disasters, but also in privacy issues: You don't expect the government to respect your privacy, so when they don't you're neither surprised, not willing to do much about it.

Note: I know I am generalising, but on a topic like this, I'm not sure how to not generalise or stereotype.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[elucido]

And they will. Who do you think picks all the judges?

Honest to $DEITY

[andreyw]

I use, for example, GPG when I email people. The purpose of this is twofold -
   a) Keep potentially sensitive information away from prying eyes of Joe Average. Haven't actually needed this yet, and probably won't.
   b) Provide a mechanism by which others can verify whether an email came from me. This is my primary use of GPG (signature).

Call me a cynic, but it's painfully obvious that the FBI, CIA, NSA or another $AGENCY have the technology and the science to break my encryption. I guess I don't really care. I use it to CYA against the occasional moron with a packet sniffer or someone with an axe to grind (and an email server to exploit). I wear neither a tinfoil hat nor have any need to hide anything from spooks. If they want to waste their precious time reading up on my boring life, more power to them.

So, getting back to VoIP. $AGENCY requesting for taps in a $COMMUNICATION_MEDIUM is nothing new. We have CALEA for PSTN. Regular mail is probably reviewed through about a 1000 different sensors too. If  you're getting the exclusive scrutiny of $AGENCY on your life, you have more problems than being phone tapped.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[einhverfr]

Wiretaps seem to be about the same: it was trivially easy to add them to the POTS telephone network, but it is very difficult to securely add this "feature" to an end-to-end encrypted session.

I should have said a public voip network. The implication is that the voip traffic is not encrypted end to end.

As I am thinking about it, I have a better idea. What about an LDAP server with public keys associated with users? The client application can then look up the public key and use it to initiate encryption and if the keys are generated on the client, wiretapping should be close to impossible. Or better yet, you can have all the wiretapping you want, but all you get is an ecrypted stream. However, law enforcement could still get a warrant for CDRs and the like to indicate who called who when. They just don't know what was said in those conversations (yes, they could tap a IP to PSTN call because encryption would not be avaialble for that type of call).

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Mancat]

Please stop stepping on insects, as they have a right to live.

Yes, I am equating a fetus to an insect. Both are meaningless. Yes, the fetus has a potential to develop into an individual human life. Again, until it does, it is meaningless.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[jcr]

Who do you think picks all the judges?

Not the FBI, much to J. Edgar Hoover's chagrin.

-jcr

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[DavidTC]

No.

What you say is exactly true, if for 'criminals', you say 'bad people'. Cops don't want to put normal people away.

However, it's who they think are 'bad people'. Chinamen. Hippies. The Irish. Unionists. Blacks. Mormons. Homosexuals.

I've deliberately listed people that the cops used to go after, instead of modern people. But rest assured they still do the same thing.

Luckily, given enough laws, everyone is breaking the law, and cops can choose to go after 'bad people', secure in the knowledge those people are criminals. This is what is called a 'police state'.

The 'good' people will get ignored, maybe get a warning every so often, and of course the laws will be rigged so the laws they like to break are not that bad (1), or can be twisted into not being that bad by the police, as long as they don't interfere with the ability of the police to come down on 'bad people'.

I'm not saying this POV is actually a bad thing. There are plenty of cops where 'bad people'=='people who hurt other people', and those people make good cops. There also, however, plenty whose idea of 'bad people' is a bit more...iffy.

1) This works really well when there is a cultural gap between 'good people' and 'bad people'. For example, using different kinds of drugs, or in different ways. Or, as Anatole France put it, the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Re:No what they should do is just search our house

[DavidTC]

I've always figured out the way to end the drug laws in this country is for the estimated 25 million people who've smoked pot to turn themselves in on the same day, with full confessions, and demand a jury for their sentencing.

Have fun sorting that mess out.

Re:No what they should do is just search our house

[DavidTC]

That's idiotic.

What if you're going to break the law that says you have to call it in? Those people will probably fail to call in. Thus breaking another law, etc, etc., retroactively breaking laws backwards to the beginning of time.

And I don't know what court system you're in, but that actually won't fly. Post ex facto and all that.

No, what we need to do is to require them to call in, each day, if they aren't going to break the law.

Am I reading this correctly?

[PorchPuppy]

In Appendix C titled Regulatory Flexibility Analyses, Paragraph 38, I interpret this to mean that if my VOIP provider is not connected to the PSTN, then the CALEA rule does not apply. Are there any of them dar lawyers out dar? Here is the text... "... As a result, certain VoIP service providers are not subject to CALEA obligations imposed in today's Order. Specifically, today's Order does not apply to those entities not fully interconnected with the PSTN. Because interconnecting with the PSTN can impose substantial costs, we anticipate that many of the entities that elect not to interconnect with the PSTN, and which therefore are not subject to the rules adopted in today's Order, are small entities. Small entities that provide VoIP services therefore also have some control over whether they will be have to be CALEA compliant. Small businesses may still offer VoIP service without being subject to the rules adopted in today's Order by electing not to provide an interconnected VoIP service..."

Oh, the horror!

[timothy]

"[U]sing encryption with VoIP can prevent the FBI from implementing wire taps."

So ... what's the downside?

Oh, right: the elusive hope of catching the very stupidest of criminals. That's clearly worth subverting personal privacy and autonomy for -- especially since the world of communication possibilities has been successfully finished, and no more room for experimentation or change exists.

timothy

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[DavidTC]

The Constitutional Party manages to misrepresent not only the Constitution, but also the Bible. And I don't mean in the traditional way of misrepresenting the Bible, they've invented new and exciting things it must mean.

Who knows what 'Biblical common-law foundations' they've invented. Common law foundations came from the Roman Empire and England, with maybe a little Athens. There's not even such thing as a jury trial in the Bible.

It's the really screwed up thinking of 'Being a Christian is patriotic' and 'God wants you to support the US', the most convolted mixing of religion and politics you'll ever see. They are the party the Republicans are pretending to be to religious people.

They tend to attract the sort of people who think that if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for the rest of the world, and who will press a Bible in your hand and tell you to read it, and can quote a hundred verses, but can't actually explain any of the context or any of the meaning. (Quick test: Ask them who a 'Samaritan' is in the Bible. See if they understand one of the most important stories.)

Death To women's Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Death To women's Rights

Re:What's interesting...

[DavidTC]

If you feel that shade tree is blocking your view, feel free to cut it down at your leisure.

We've decided that what our house needs is a nice picket fence. A nice blue picket fence. We should have it up by Tuesday.

I just talk funny

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I make phone calls and read a list of numbers that represent an encrypted document, which is protected by freedom of speech, how is this any different than a computer doing the same thing with my voice?

I fail to see how this could ever withstand any logical level of scrutiny. At some point voice synthesis will be so good as to sound identical to the human voice and I can just transfer my documents by having the computer read the numbers.

As far as I'm concerned, the FBI can tap encrypted VoiP as long as they accept that they are listening only to the encrypted data.

Time for the NRA analogy...

[bwcbwc]

When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption.

Implied Consent

[ZachPruckowski]

The airport/drunk driving legal concept you are refering to is "implied consent", as I remember it from high school Driver's Education. The concept is that since it's the government's road, and the government's skyways and the government's waterways, they have the right to check you. The same logic doesn't apply with VOIP, as these aren't the government's broadband cables.

That's not to say that the government can have a new rationale, just that the old one holds less water in this case.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[agibbs]

His view would ultimately prevail years later and is now in grievous danger of being overturned again by a rising tide of Fascism in the U.S.

I'm just curious, how are you defining "Fascism?" A lot of people seem to use that to refer to any government they don't really like. However, even scholars of Fascism can't really agree on how Fascism should be defined. So what is your working definition here?

Elvish...

[bwcbwc]

... ish shtill the king!

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the way the current administration is going, I would guess his definition would be "Where the government considers itself more important than the people".

In fact...

[Hurricane78]

You - literally - own the FBI!

They are your employees by the simpe fact that your nation chose an pay some poeple to do administrative tasks, and those poeple decided to pay other poeple to do this for investigations (FBI).

Now they messed it up damn hard.

And what happens in a company when you as an admin mess everything up driving your own boss (in this case the poeple of the usa) mad?
You get fired with a kick in the ass!

Now you voted them again. So you obviously thought they did the best work and ther couldn't be anyone better.

In this case: DON'T COMPLAIN!

But if you did not vote them you still have two (similar) choices:

1. leave and found your own country. If you don't hurt anyone nobody will stop you. You could even only do a half-government like some little european countries smaller than luxemburg. (those countries did not have their own money, but still have mostly their own laws.)

2. trow out those poeple that you complain about, and let them found their own country of they want.

Seriously. I think a peaceful split would be the best that could happen to the usa. Mad neo-conservatives on the one side, and real americans on the other side.

Guess who will have the most poeple and weapons after the split? *ggg*

Re:In fact...

[elucido]

Votes don't get people elected, voting machines, hackers, money, and influence gets people elected. Look, do you think anyone actually voted for Saddam? Do you really think Saddam had the popular vote?

When you are under a one party system, voting no longer matters, the law can be changed to so that the current president is president forever once Mr. Roberts gets on the court.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[agibbs]

That's sort of what I was getting at with my question. Definitely that describes a bad government, but not (necesarially) a Fascist one. Especially not if you use a capital "F," but then that's really splitting hairs.

Hey, no problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it appears to say: "then you may have personal legal requirements to provide the FBI with access to information they might want to intercept."

Thats no problem for me, it's EASY for me to turn off my encrypted communications, just as soon as they inform me that they want to listen in to what I'm saying.

After-all, thats what a true patriot does, blindly cooperates, right?

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[flynns]

You're still (-1, Flamebait) fodder.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

"I'm just curious, how are you defining "Fascism?""

Authoritarian capitalism, police state, no due process, dominated by one party which suffocates all opposition. It maintains a facade of capitalism which differentiates it from Communism and authoritarian socialism. However rather than free markets the government and the party dominates all aspects of economic life that matter, and in particular intervene in economic affairs whenever it benefits and enriches favored party members.

A penchant for militarism and aggressive warfare to gain its objectives. Massive investment in armaments and the willingness to use them to dominate its allies and enemies alike.

Fear mongering to make the population pliant to manipulation and control by the party. It was a classic technique perfected in Nazi Germany. The Nazi's version of 9/11 was the Reichstag fire. Its likely the Nazi's burned it but they framed a naked, mentally ill communist for it, and used it as justification for seizing power in face of an imminent "threat" form the Communists and the Jews.

Fascist states are defined by being rabidly anticommunist, which has defined the U.S. for the last century. In the 1930's many Americans were very supportive of Nazi Germany because both Germany and the U.S. were staunchly anti Soviet. George W.'s grandfather Prescott was the U.S. banker for the Thyssen family, one of Germany's richest which helped bankroll Hitlers rise to power. His Union Banking assets were seized for trading with the enemy when the U.S. declared war. Most of the 3rd world dictators we suppored in the twentieth century were Fascist regimes too, they were people we installed who were willing to kill socialist and communists indiscriminately. This gets back to Negropontes role in building right wing death squads in Central America as the U.S. waged a secret war against Socialism in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

The U.S. is a somewhat benign form of Fascism, it does maintain a pretense of free elections but they are looking less free every iteration. If the Republican's retain their grip on power in 2006 and certainly by 2008 by suckering the electorate, exploiting a crisis(real or fabricated), rigging elections I don't think there will be much doubt this will be a Fascist state for a long time. One can only hope that Americans are becoming sufficiently disgusted with one party rule that they throw the Republicans out of a branch or two. If they don't basic liberties in this country are in real peril. I don't want the Democrats to have power either, since they are barely distinguishable for Republicans these days, a nice grid lock is desirable at present when both options are horrendously bad. The Republicans have engaged in such an effective and savage propaganda campaign against the Dems I'm not sure the Dems will gain control of anything. If the Republicans have a few more years to pack the courts that will finish the process of seizing power.

Nice unverifiable electronic voting will be a great tool for maintaining the pretense of free elections when they are in fact rigged.

The U.S. does still have due process most of the time but Little George has managed to set precedent for completely eviscerating it with Jose Padilla among others. If you don't have due process all the time for all citizens you don't really have it at all. Right now we only have it when its convenient for the White House and until they fabricate a terrorism charge against you which they apparently never have to prove in court.

The U.S. is building an all powerful combined police force, domestic, and foreign spying capacity that would be the envy of the Gestapo or KGB, under John Negroponte, a right wing Machiavellian if ever there was one. Imagine if the Gestapo only had computers and spy satellites.

The U.S. is, through the rendition program, seizing people at will anywhere on the globe, and sending them in to torture chambers around the globe. Sure sounds a lot like the Gestapo to me, except t

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

Any right you think you have and you think the Constitution affords you is history the day the Supreme Court votes 5-4 and says you don't.

Unfortunately the Constitution and the Republic, while ingenious in many respects, was known by the founding fathers to be highly fallible. In particular the one thing you couldn't prevent in a representative Democracy, is that the majority of voters would devolve in to ignorance, and be blinded by fear mongering and propaganda so they do stupid things and vote for bad people. Those bad people in turn pass bad laws and pack the courts with bad people who can then shred every thing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights stood for, and with ease too.

Me using encrypted VoIP?

[dascandy]

No, that's just a cat /dev/random | aes -k XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX >/dev/socket/145.76.99.44. Honestly...

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

The essence of Roe v Wade and why the right to privacy decided it is that until the baby is born it is the mother's, and to a lesser extent the father's, right to choose the fate of their genetic material, NOT YOU. I'm certainly willing to concede that late term abortions are an undesirable thing, but its completely insane to attribute living being status to a fertilized egg. It is genetic material, there is plenty more where that came from. There is no shortage of babies on this planet, many of whom can't be fed, why not worry about them instead of the ones who aren't born yet. Mandating birth follow from every act of sex was perhaps acceptable a few hundred years ago when the planet was empty. With todays' overpopulation its suicidal or maybe the better word is genocidal to compell population explosion based on religious zealotry.

To me the beauty of the right to privacy and Roe V. Wade is that is says YOU get to decide the fate of YOUR genetic material. If you consider a fertilized egg as life then its your prerogative to not abort the product of your loins. This means, for example, the government can't force you to abort a child or have only one child as China did. But it also means YOU can't inflict your religious views on someone else and tell them they have to carry every fertilized egg to birth, or that they can't use birth control. Its none of your business if someone else doesn't want to bring a child in to this overcrowded world. Children should be born in to families that want them.

You should try reading Freakonimics. It draws a strong correlation between unwanted pregnancies, the legalization of abortion and the current plunging crime rate in the U.S. Many criminals are products of homes where they were either unwanted or where their parents lacked the means to raise them properly. Abortion led to a dramatic drop in unwanted kids who couldn't be raised properly, and it may be why the crime rate is dropping now.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

I think you need to recognize there is internal inconsistency in what you are saying. You seem to think you have a right to privacy in your communication to other people only if you have the technical prowess to defeat anyone trying to eavesdrop on it. What if you use that prowess to blow the whistle on wrong doing by someone like John Negroponte. Mr. Negroponte uses all the resource of his NSA to intercept and crack your encryption, read your message, takes umbrage and sends a rendition team to make you disappear. Did you have a right to privacy and to not have Mr. Negroponte read your mail, or are you to blame for not using sufficiently powerful encryption to defend yourself. You see you have no clue what the NSA can crack and what they can't. Me I would prefer governments are disallowed from eavesdropping at all, by law, instead of having to engage in a crypto arms race with them to defend my privacy,

I would also prefer to not be placed under suspicion of wrong doing by the mere act of using strong encryption to defend my privacy, and that is the other edge of this sword.

I'm of the school of thought that governments shouldn't be eavesdropping on its citizens communications at all. It may mean a criminal or a terrorist gets away but that is a small price to pay to prevent abuse of power by government.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

Something I find odd about all these news stories about putting back doors and wire tap capabilities in all the new IP communications channels is it seems like exactly the wrong approach if you really want to catch criminals and terrorists.

A basic tenant of eavesdropping and code breaking is you want the people you are spying on to think their communication channel is secure so they will share juicy secrets with you. If they read these stories about how the FBI has a backdoor in VoIP it just ensures they wont say anything sensitive over a VoIP channel or if they do there will be a second layer of obfuscation or encryption at play.

I can see the FBI wanting the backdoor but you would think they wouldn't want to advertise it. The only thing they accomplish with this approach is they catch people who are dumb enough to use a known insecure comm channel, or you are denying criminals and terrorist VoIP as a comm channel or at least if they use it they have to add a second layer of encryption. The only other thing they accomplish is they scare and intimidate the general public which they seem to be doing quite well. Maybe its just another tool to train everyone to be good sheep and keep their mouths shut at all times.

If I were the NSA or FBI what I would do is design a crypto package, let's call it PGP for example, that had a very subtle and very hard to spot back door in it. I would then get some people to release it to the world as a supposedly secure way to defeat NSA eavesdropping. I would persecute the people who release it just enough to make it look like I was unhappy about it and unable to break it, but I'd make sure it was widely distributed and used, and in particular used by people who need to communicate things they want to hide from the NSA. I would then sit back and rake in all these nuggets from all the people who thought that if they just encrypted their secrets they would be private.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[giorgiofr]

I'd like to comment on this:

"You seem to think you have a right to privacy in your communication to other people only if you have the technical prowess to defeat anyone trying to eavesdrop on it. [...] Mr. Negroponte uses all the resource of his NSA to intercept and crack your encryption. [..] Did you have a right to privacy and to not have Mr. Negroponte read your mail, or are you to blame for not using sufficiently powerful encryption to defend yourself. [...] Me I would prefer governments are disallowed from eavesdropping at all, by law, instead of having to engage in a crypto arms race with them to defend my privacy"

Well I would prefer that too, but we have to think about reality and stop believing in fairy tales. Life is hard, too bad, tough luck. So, to answer your implicit questions: no, you don't have a right to privacy, freedom, to anything at all unless you're able to defend it/enforce it by yourself. You see, you have a right to life but only as long as you're able to stop that guy from killing you. A right to property, as long as you can stop that thief. A right to free speech, as long as you devise ways to "speak". You think you have all of these rigths? Well, what about the police forces? Aren't they made of people? Then I guess they have their rights too. Like the right to wiretap you, beat you, whatever. And you can do the same to them. See? We're all free now. Welcome to the new world order. You want to call it anarchy? Because that's what it is. That's the small price to pay. I'm willing to pay. You?

Digital restrictions are not everyone's problem

[ami-in-hamburg]

I liked the comment "What's it gonna take.....". If I read correctly, only about 23 percent of internet users in the US use broadband connections. (Census bureau)

Since VOIP isn't feasable over a "lowband" connection, I would have to conclude that the population effected by the possibility of a government agency tapping your connection is a relatively low number, compared to all internet users in the US.

If this is actually the case, the other 70-80 percent of internet users either don't care or don't know about the legislation. Even if they do know and do care, it won't effect them anyway, so to them it's no big deal.

People get pissed off and get laws changed when a law, or the lack of one, effects the MAJORITY or you get a MEDIA BLITZ (i.e. Amber Alerts) to get people's attention.

One constant in the US is the attitude that people just don't care about anything until it effects them directly. Sad but true!

Case: Mr. Freedom vs. Government

[Elixon]

Your government know that so it will force the companies to include the espionage appliances directly in your refrigerator, calculator, hair brush...

It looks like the DELL is the pioneer:
http://ivlad.unixgods.net/lj/keylog/klog.htm

Re:Case: Mr. Freedom vs. Government

[Elixon]

I hope that the DELL info is a hoax (the source of this information cannot be verified and I'm not an owner of the DELL)

Keep on censoring the USA???

[Anonymous Coward]

MTV Ads censored in US

Re:Keep on censoring the USA???

[Anonymous Coward]

url= http://geeknet.nl/

Encryption and The 5th Ammendment

[Anonymous Coward]

What are they gonna do? Arrest me? On what charge? Using a service which is not "subject to the needs of law enforcement"? What's the penalty for that?

Yours is the key question.

I think the following is a valid metaphor:

You are whispering to someone in a public square. The constable sees you whispering and runs over to demand, "What were you just saying?!" Are you compelled, in the US, to answer? The answer: NO! In the general case the answer is no, but what if you really were saying things that would implicate you in a crime? Well, the 5th Ammendment addresses that question rather thoroughly - you aren't required to testify to things which would tend to incriminate you.

Extend the whispering in a public square metaphor to speaking to an acquaintance over public networks using encryption. I'm not willing to fight wire tapping, but I am willing to fight the notion that I can be compelled to turn over my key for my encrypted speech. I've got a 5th ammendment right to keep that key to myself.

The response you should expect to the little problem of the existence of the 5th Ammendment to the Constitution is an attempt to ban all but breakable encryption in the US.

Re:Encryption and The 5th Ammendment

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

More than that, a free people have the right to freedom of speech, and that includes talking in encrypted ways, with the purpose of the encryption being to guarantee the government cannot spy on you.

I speak this way so you, the government, cannot understand me. I reserve this right, and do not grant the government any power over it.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[BVis]

I was going to change my .sig but you've convinced me not to. (Apologies for the gratuitous 'me too' post.)

What happens if...

[el_womble]

You use a scrambler over POTS?

What do the feds do then?

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Anonymous Coward]

Well its a subject for heated debate whether the constitution does assure you a right to privacy

What's NOT a subject for debate is that the bill of rights guarantees that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. This is not some insignificant detail that can be overlooked; this is one of the fundamental principles of a free society. Wiretapping, monitoring, roadblocks, cameras, survaillance of any type -- that is the principle of guilty before proven innocent, and it stands in direct opposition to the values this country was founded on.

Nothing is going to change...

[RecycledElectrons]

Nothing is going to change until we shoot the bastards!

Some say it's not time to shoot them yet, but it's getting really fricking close to time to shoot the bastards. They say we need to wait a few more days.

I think they are off by a few days.

If this does not bring the assasination of FBI and FCC officials, we all deserve to live in slavery.

Andy Out!

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[jesup]

Right....

That's only as safe as the LDAP server is. (yes, your app may notice the change in key if someone subverts the server - if it had talked to the 'real' other end of the conversation before, and it remembered the key.)

To do this, you need a PKI (which is what you're basically proposing without realizing it) - and it needs to be trusted, or it's subject to the attacks mentioned.

So far, user-level PKI is a bust. If we had it, encrypted/signed email would be common too.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[jesup]

Note: the CALEA ruling requires that the service provider make it easy and quick to do taps. If that means no encryption, then they can't use encryption (or they have to have a way to recover the keys or MITM the call).

Working with that is the text from the policy statement that users can run whatever devices and programs they want, "subject to the needs of law enforcement". What a difference 7 words make.

They do exempt (from CALEA, not the policy statement) private networks. However, I don't think they consider a VPN over the open internet to be "private". They mean private switches and routers.

The FBI/NSA tried to force backdoors into encryption products before (see Clipper Chip). Those 7 words imply they'd like to do that again, but applied to software running on your PC (which can now encrypt at reasonable levels of security and speed). Which means control of software on you PC, or at least control over streams in/out of your PC - an encrypted stream might be considered evidence of running a "banned" application. Google "Police State".

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Mark Bainter]

It's a nice post, but really kind of irrelevant to the real issue under discussion here. The question is valid, but simply not worth arguing here. The real issue here is whether the government can compel you to do anything and everything in the open where they can observe you.

Should it be illegal for you to hold meetings in a room away from others? Should whispered conversatiosn be legal? Should you be allowed to send mail in a tamper-proof envelope? What about https? Will that now have to have the ability for others to sniff the stream?

The issue here, as I see it, is whether or not you have to make it easy for law enforcement to snoop you and your life, and I fail to see any constitutional warrant for them requiring that of us.

Incidentally, I wonder if the FCC considered lan2lan. If my corporation goes to VoIP, does the government have to be able to sniff inter-office calls?

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[EzInKy]

What about the baby's right to life?


Nobody has ever suggested killing babies is okay. Rowe-v-Wade only says the state can't force women to incubate them.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[EzInKy]

What's NOT a subject for debate is that the bill of rights guarantees that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. This is not some insignificant detail that can be overlooked; this is one of the fundamental principles of a free society. Wiretapping, monitoring, roadblocks, cameras, survaillance of any type -- that is the principle of guilty before proven innocent, and it stands in direct opposition to the values this country was founded on.

The government's answer to that would be that they need to wiretap and monitor seperate the innocent from the guilty.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[EzInKy]

The preamble for their platform:

"The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.


Excerpts from the Saudi Constitution.


Article 1
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion; God's Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet, God's prayers and peace be upon him, are its constitution, Arabic is its language and Riyadh is its capital. ...

Chapter 5 Rights and Duties

Article 23 [Islam]
The state protects Islam; it implements its Shari'ah; it orders people to do right and shun evil; it fulfills the duty regarding God's call.


Ummm...thanks, but no thanks.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I don't see how that deserves a "wait for it". I really don't see how a person owns the eletrons on a line once it leaves his or her property.

"Wait for it...", as in the "it'd be a funny joke if it wasn't true sort of way", i.e. the desire of the government to violate the spirit of private conversations for its own purposes.

It's like communication on the internet. If you don't encrypt it, don't expect it to be private. Because once it leaves your network everyone pretty much owns it and can read it.

However, we also assume that anyone doing this is up to sinister activities. Sure, some may not be, but most are. This applies doubly to the government itself

So the question you've gotta ask yourself is, "Do we want the government to do this willy-nilly?" In other words, just because someone can tap into passing traffic, does that mean we want to allow the government to do so legally?

A few years back, the court decided government couldn't tap into infrared emissions from a house (without some wiretappy sort of permission) even though these "left the property". Reason? Modern technology allowed the government to violate the assumption of privacy in ways the Founding Fathers could not have envisioned, so this ruling maintained that in the spirit of the intention of the Constitution.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well I would prefer that too, but we have to think about reality and stop believing in fairy tales. Life is hard, too bad, tough luck. So, to answer your implicit questions: no, you don't have a right to privacy, freedom, to anything at all unless you're able to defend it/enforce it by yourself. You see, you have a right to life but only as long as you're able to stop that guy from killing you.

No, you still have that right; it's just being violated. That is the meaning of "inalienable rights". You have them regardless of whether someone else recognizes those rights or not, including the Constitution itself.

This is the philosophical difference between the US Constitution and many other free countries. We start with this presumption, then grant the government powers (over our rights) to get things done. We do not start out with the assumption we are to be downtrodden by nature, and that there will exist naturally some group of people who will call themselves "government", and who will lord over us and grant us "rights".

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, the definition I learned was that Fascism was a system where production was nominally privately owned, but with a large measure of control by the government, and involved a great deal of nationalism.

As opposed to Communism, which was largely the same except that things were "publically" owned.

Of course, an Ayn Randian analysis demonstrating the intrusion of "statism" into privacy (including private property ownership) is the real root of evil will fall on deaf ears as Republicans learn it means you can't ban pornography, and Democrats learn it means you can't Robin Hood money. [Robotic voice=on]Therefore it is bad.[/Robotic voice]

Nothing to see here, move along, move along, we now return you (generic you) to your poverty of critical thinking and your emotional investments in your political arguments...

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

What's NOT a subject for debate is that the bill of rights guarantees that an individual is innocent until proven guilty.

Which reminds me: The government thinks it can just declare a crime has been committed, seize property, and never bother even arresting anyone, much less trying someone, much less convicting someone.

There was a situation about 10 years ago where a Cops-like TV show showed an officer pulling over a Mexican family, finding $8000 in cash in a tire in the trunk, took it because "obviously" it was drug money, then let the family go.

Some politicians blustered about how the cop should be arrested for theft, and then that was the last I had heard about it. Anyone know an update as to status (of this case, or in general on the government seizing stuff claiming it criminal contraband, without even arresting anybody?)

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Not the right, the power. It's an important distinction to make.

Exactly. It should be in Politics 101. Only people have rights. Governments only have powers that the people grant them over those rights; powers the people can revoke at will subject to their own created rules for doing so.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

There's not even such thing as a jury trial in the Bible.

However, ownership of slaves is A-OK with Yaweh. Just don't go killin' 'em indiscriminately.

And, go look it up if you don't believe me, Yaweh is of such high moral character, he once sicced bears on 42 children, killing them, because they made fun of some bald guy's head

Nice, moral guy, this Yaweh. (Note: Every time you see THE LORD in tiny print in the Bible, that's refering to "YHWH" in the original text, said translators being afraid to translate the actual name of God, presumably because of some ancient superstitious notion about invoking someone's "true name" giving you some inappropriate power over them.)

white. middle-class

[nurb432]

No, we get screwed too. Plus we get to foot the bill via higher taxes.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

"What's NOT a subject for debate is that the bill of rights guarantees that an individual is innocent until proven guilty."

Well obviously it IS a subject for debate because the Bush administration has held Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, in a Navy brig in South Carolina, for something like 3 years, in communicado, no charges filed, no lawyer, no court hearing, no access to family. The Supreme court refused to hear the case the first time on a technicality so it had to wind through the court for another year. They rebuked the Bush administration for it the second time though amazingly it didn't change a thing. The government says they have a case against him for plotting a "dirty bomb" attack but to my knowledge they've never proven a thing.

There was also a prominent DOJ terrorism case against two Muslim men in Detriot. The lynchpins of the DOJ case were:

- Testimony of a known conman who implicated them in exchange for reduced charges in his own case

- A typical tourist video of Disneyland which the DOJ insisted they were using to plot a terrorist attack on Disneyland and only cleverly disguised it to look exactly like about a 100 million other tourist videos of Disneyland.

The men were convicted and it was only later the conman made a jailhouse confession that he lied to get his sentence reduced which led to the conviction being overturned after they'd endured a couple years of hell. The were blatantly framed by a DOJ desperate for terrorism convictions which have been few and far between since 9/11. The few there have been have been on REALLY shaky ground.

So it is clearly open to debate if you have a right to due process and to be innocent in this country especially since 9/11 and since the U.S. decided to turn to Fascism wholesale.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[demachina]

Big talk on Slashdot. First time a team of cops really knocks down your door and halls you away to prison indefinitely, or worse a Rendition teams throws you on a plane to a torture chamber in a 3rd world shit hole I think you would be wishing that civilized society had insured that your right to due process had been preserved. Governments are a product of society, they are what we make them and what we let them be.

You see you as an individual have virtually no power to defend yourself from the massive power and resources of government. The only real power you have to protect yourself is you band together with a bunch of other individuals who want their home to be their castle and to be safe in both body and thoughts, and you don't elect assholes to government, nor do you let power mad assholes seize power against the will of the people as happened in 2000.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[DavidTC]

And whle you can take the women of your conquered enemy as 'wives', if you decided to get rid of them, you're not allowed to kill them. You have to let them go.

OTOH, if you choose not to enslave them and rape them, erm, I mean, 'marry' them, you are free to kill them.

Re:Yet another wet-dream...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your points are right on.. I have christmas dinner with a couple of cops every year and have friends who are cops. Nice folks. But on the job, they're completely different. I've known cops to lie about simple traffic stuff and it is sad to see. After a while, it really eats many of them up inside and they don't know where the truth ends and lies begin.

I think the point is tapping and backdoors.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I think the effect of the ruling might be to give law enforcement the power to:
  - demand tapping of your pipes at your ISP
  - demand backdoors be included in publicly distributed VoIP software and the firmware in hardware products.

How will they prevent people from removing backdoors from SOURCE-destributed products, or finding ways to defeat mandated ISP-level block-VoIP-if-backdoor-disabled? We'll have to wait and see what they come up with. (But I expect it will be obtrusive, draconian, and ultimately futile.)

There's not much they can do against those who build their own software from scratch. But such software has considerablely reduced utility, since it must be built and distributed to ALL the users of the new network.

This rasies the bar for the amount of organization and funding/manpower necessary to use it - from "download a free application" or "buy a common, cheap, commercial product" to "develop your own and distribute it to your minions". The software itself becomes contraband, and can be used as evidence of wrongdoing. The distribution network for the software provides an additional opportunity to discover the clandestine organization. The software, once identified, will also almost certainly have an identifiable signature, which can be used to identify the users (silently, by internet surveilence) and do traffic analysis on their communication even before the software itself is cracked or captured and analyzed.

All this is enabled by the FCC adding "subject to the needs of law enforcement" to a document that, otherwise, would have been a bill of rights for ISP customers.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[einhverfr]

It is interesting. It might be possible for the FBI to securely wiretap this sort of an infrastructure. However one could guard against wiretapping in the following way:

That's only as safe as the LDAP server is. (yes, your app may notice the change in key if someone subverts the server - if it had talked to the 'real' other end of the conversation before, and it remembered the key.)

First, I would assume that most of the interesting calls for wiretapping would be when there was already prior contact between the two parties, so having a client-side warning if the key was changed might make some sense. It is not the end-all and be-all solution to the problem but it is helpful.

In the end, I think it is possible but extremely difficult. I would have to work something out on paper.

Re:What's interesting...

[symbolic]

Great. I will remove any obstacles beforehand which might get in your way. The lawnchair might be difficult.

Re:What's interesting...

[DavidTC]

The lawnchair is useful to me at the present time, at least until the fence is up, so if you can leave it until later, I would be happy. I was just going to get rid of it while putting up the fence.

However, I would not presume to dicate your job to you, and removal of the shade tree is entirely your call. So if removal of the lawnchair is needed to clear your path to the shade tree, feel free. It will not affect the fence timetable.

And do not hesitate to remove the garden gnomes. They would have to go anyway, and the sooner they are removed, the less both of our equipment will get tangled in them. I suggest you just put them in the trash. As they are, indeed, your gnomes, you should probably be the one to remove them.

Re:What's interesting...

[symbolic]

The garden gnomes will be handled according to your suggestion. I will make sure they are disposed of within the next day or two. Don't worry about killing the grass, as much of it is dead already. Certain restrictions have forced us to carefully watch our use of resources. The last thing we need is a heavy fine at a time we can least afford it.

If you feel so inclined, I will leave some cookies and soda for you on the back porch. I'm sure they will make your task more enjoyable.

Re:What's interesting...

[DavidTC]

I forget. What does 'cookies and soda' mean again? Is that explosives? Or is that 'milk and cookies'?

Re:What's interesting...

[symbolic]

I'm not certain how anyone could derive such a far-fetched meaning from such a simple statement. Perhaps a jug of cold water would be more appropriate.

Re:The FBI now owns us. We have no right to privac

[aminorex]

Or at least remove them once they kill their first hundred thousand.