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FCC Demands Universities Comply With Wiretap Law
tabdelgawad writes "The New York Times reports that the FCC is requiring universities to upgrade their online systems to comply with the 1994 wiretap law, which would make it easier for law enforcement to monitor communications online. The universities are not objecting on civil rights grounds (the law requires a court order before monitoring), but on cost grounds (upgrades may cost $7 billion). But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'"
So they have to pay lots of money and reduce their civil rights completly (I don't think any privacy laws are legally binding anymore...) It's got to stop. Unless the court order remains and is completly open, which isn't going to happen, this is just not acceptable. At least I live in Britain, which hasn't got all these civil rights reducing measures...quite yet.
Any grammatical or spelling errors above are for comic effect, and do not signify imperfection in the writer.
When I first read that headline I thought it said FCC Demands Universe Comply With Wiretap Law... Oddly, it didn't seem at all surprising.
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I'm not sure objecting to possible future law changes is valid. While the government has been known to make those proposed law changes, they still actually have to change the law. The problem with some laws, and the ones we usually complain about here, is that they don't need to be changed to be abusive. Court supervision is our society's check on the power of investigating bodies. According to the summary - the law qualifies.
ZKTime flies like an arrow Fruit flies like a banana
But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'
Every time a stroy likes this gets posted we don't complain about the facts we get cought up in "what if's"
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Seven billion dollars?! What a universal pain in the ass!
Be relentless!
Where's the fourth horseman? There are supposed to be four!
The federal government wants to make it more difficult for "criminals, terrorists and spies" by opening more backdoors in the system? Isn't that exactly the sort of thing that would make it easier for criminals, terrorists, and spies to get the info they need?
The ______ Agenda
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Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems
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By SAM DILLON and STEPHEN LABATON
Published: October 23, 2005
The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.
Related Site: Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (fcc.gov)
The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues.
The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers.
It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access networks.
So far, however, universities have been most vocal in their opposition.
The 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, requires telephone carriers to engineer their switching systems at their own cost so that federal agents can obtain easy surveillance access.
Recognizing the growth of Internet-based telephone and other communications, the order requires that organizations like universities providing Internet access also comply with the law by spring 2007.
The Justice Department requested the order last year, saying that new technologies like telephone service over the Internet were endangering law enforcement's ability to conduct wiretaps "in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies."
Justice Department officials, who declined to comment for this article, said in their written comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission that the new requirements were necessary to keep the 1994 law "viable in the face of the monumental shift of the telecommunications industry" and to enable law enforcement to "accomplish its mission in the face of rapidly advancing technology."
The F.C.C. says it is considering whether to exempt educational institutions from some of the law's provisions, but it has not granted an extension for compliance.
Lawyers for the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of universities and colleges, are preparing to appeal the order before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president of the council, said Friday.
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit civil liberties group, has enlisted plaintiffs for a separate legal challenge, focusing on objections to government control over how organizations, including hundreds of private technology companies, design Internet systems, James X. Dempsey, the center's executive director, said Friday.
The universities do not question the government's right to use wiretaps to monitor terrorism or criminal suspects on college campuses, Mr. Hartle said, only the order's rapid timetable for compliance and extraordinary cost.
Technology experts retained by the schools estimated that it could cost universities at least $7 billion just to buy the Internet switches and routers necessary for compliance. That figure does not include installation or the costs of hiring and training staff to oversee the sophis
I remember techs who used to tap into the phones at work and listen to personal calls. It was easy to do, but they needed physical access to the telco closet.
What are the limitations of the technology that is being deployed?
Can someone "tap" a connection remotely?
Wouldn't this easily be defeated by using encrypted connections all the time?
Will you please just screw the real technical implications of this and please think of the children?!!!!!
Wiretap orders are ex-parte. That is, only one party is present, and the judge, normally neutral, is expected to suddenly become a more active participant in the search for justice (like judges in civil/Napoleonic code type jurisdictions are), asking hard questions in place of the absent other party. Needless to say, a judge who normally acts in one paradigm (and indeed has no training in the other) isn't likely to suddenly change his stripes. Further, the police know full well which judges are likely to ask a question or two and which are likely to issue an order without question, so judge shopping inevitably occurs.
What percentage of search warrants and wiretap requests are denied? I challenge you to even find statistics about such things.
Parte on, dudes.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
I already know that my university network isn't secure from fellow students, so basically what this does is allow law enforcement to sit on their asses from work and see what us kiddos are doing...when all they needed to do was walk their laptop over here and plug into the wall and they can do the same.
The solution is simple, and I do it myself. I SSH Tunnel all of my traffic out of my university to my off-site server so that I don't have to worry about an insecure network. I don't have any control over their policies and sniffing is very simple, even on a switched network.
When your ISP (the university) doesn't have your security in mind, then why should I trust them? And I have even more reason to now.
And I am not forgetting that the off-site server will soon have a similar back door made by my ISP. And when that happens, I might as well look for a server in NL.
_ _ _ _ _ _
Got Teeth?
http://www.doctorgallagher.com/
I'm on your side in this one, but honestly, how could you possibly think that "Well, they might decide to fuck us later" is a valid argument?
If it were, you wouldn't be allowed to do anything. Well, if I pay you for my groceries, you might just take the money and run, so I don't have to pay. But officer, if you arrest me, you might beat a confession out of me, so you're not allowed to arrest me.
No, congress isn't supposed to be allowed to fuck me over things I 'might' do, and the inverse applies too.
errrr.... never mind...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
As technology facilitates eavesdropping and spying on each other, one may well assume that the only reasonable thing to do is to adopt a position of total openness of information for all, with nobody having any secrets to hide. The real question here is...If we were all wiretapped. How many of us would have things to hide?
Perhaps the US government in their infinite wisdom could devise some plan whereas they go about renetworking the entire internet through the FBI? After all, the US does own the world. Don't we?
Let's face it, an inefficient law-enforcement apparatus is the only reason we still have certain freedoms at all. The closer the government can get to truly universal surveillance (total tapping capability, cameras everywhere, biometrics and data-mining methods to handle the firehose of data), the closer we come to a police state that cannot be resisted. That's why the feds are leaning on Skype and other VOIP providers; currently, Skype can't be tapped.
The most dangerous weapon a criminal can carry is a badge.
Consider the phone system. Not so long ago, you tapping a phone was hard. You had to make a physical connection to the specific phone line. ("Hey Bugsy! What's that clicking sound!?") But it was a lot harder for a pre-Patriot Act FBI agent to get permission to push that button than it was for his 1960s counterpart to get permission to plant a tape recorder in your basement.
The real threat to civil liberties is not the enabling technology. It's legal and political policies that authorize such threats.
the FCC is requiring universities to upgrade their online systems Why doesnt the FCC downgrade their online systems? That way everybody will be nice and compatible again, and I can continue my download of The 40 Year Old Virgin torrent. Maybe a little pr0n too while I'm at it...
I know it's not fair to editorialize in a story submission, though I'd probably do it again in this case.
The problem with your analogies is that Congress has a history of ignoring privacy rights when it suits them. Consider how fast the Patriot Act passed Congress. And consider the 'turbo' subpoenas of the DMCA.
I think it's good to have both technological and legal barriers to invasions of privacy. I don't want to live in a world where the government has the technological capability, if not the legal right, to monitor everyone's life at will.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Why doesn't the FCC pay for it? I bet that will get them to have some common sense. I of course realise this means that the cost will still be the same or more. What it will also do is raise more congressional concern as the FCC will have to request that amount.
I waited three years for the C++ classes to become available at the local community college since the school didn't have the money to renew the Microsoft site license. (Java and Linux was taught during the meantime; not bad but job market for C++ programmers is a tad bit larger.) Now the Feds want the schools to upgrade the network infrastructure to find the next Neo in the Matrix. Oh, my gosh. I wonder which budget that little hardware upgrade is going to come from. Guess I'll be learning more Java at Starbucks when I graduate.
Because it has been seen over and over and over again that once invasive infrastructure is allowed to exist, it WILL be abused. Creeping featurism.
For example, the law in Virginia requiring seat belt use is obviously a violation of civil liberties. What right does the government have to try and protect me from myself? None. The interested parties knew it wouldn't pass.... so to get it passed, it was worded that "we will never use it as a primary way to issue citations. We will never pull anyone over for not wearing a seatbelt". So people reluctantly approved it.
Fast forward several years and... SURPRISE! Now that people are used to giving up their rights it was much easier to pass the original intent of the law. So now the law was revised and the police *CAN* pull you over and ticket you for not wearing a seatbelt... even for no other reason. I would never get in a car without wearning a seatbelt, regardless of any laws... but that is not the point.
Same thing with cameras- they get pushed in place for one reason, with assurances they will "never be used for any other purpose" and then several years later... SURPRISE! They are now used for other purposes. And for each example you can think of where we KNOW the abuses, there are probably a dozen more in which the public doesn't even know there are abuses.
Then there is the effect of losing civil liberties slowly, over generations... each generation is willing to give up a little more freedom in the name of safety. Cumulatively, over many generations, the amount of freedom lost is quite staggering.
This is the "slippery slope". It is not paranoia, it is human nature.
Think about that when the governments start to collect fingerprints and DNA of non-criminals, in the name of safety and security... "but it will never be used for any other purpose". Once you give the information out, it can never be undone.
Universities are well known for harboring dissidents and terrorists.
It's all that edumakashun. We should get rid of that, too.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
University Professor Endorses Jihad
Jihad at San Francisco State
CU prof's essay sparks dispute - Prof Ward Churchill says 9/11 victims were not innocent people
USF Professor Sami Al-Arian calls for "Death of Israel" and "Damn America"
University of New Mexico Professor Richard Berthold addressed the terrorist attacks in his morning class on Western Civilization, remarking, "Anyone who can bomb the Pentagon has my vote
US Universities have been especially anti-American since the '60s.
Of course, they don't mind that the government helps to pay their salaries.
The feds have had CALEA ready to spring on ISPs for a long time, this would pretty much kill smaller ISPs and probably result in rate hikes for the big guys. Title 3 warrants right now require a judge and very specific procedures (3 teams to handle raw, intermediate, final - kinda like a clean room reverse engineering job), CALEA requires none of this - requires no intervention or knowledge by the operators of the system to activate - the cops can go fishing and obtain a warrant later. I personally don't believe that it is technologically and economically possible to fully comply with CALEA, but who knows.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Why not focus on security problems within the goverment before legislating new ways to make their life easier, http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5906643.html .
Fast forward several years and... SURPRISE! Now that people are used to giving up their rights it was much easier to pass the original intent of the law. So now the law was revised and the police *CAN* pull you over and ticket you for not wearing a seatbelt... even for no other reason. I would never get in a car without wearning a seatbelt, regardless of any laws... but that is not the point.
... they pulled that here in Illinois too. The hue-and-cry over the original seat-belt law was deafening, but years later, when they finally decided to make it a primary offense ... hardly anyone seemed to notice. Incrementalism at work, I guess.
Yah
Say, has anyone seen my saucepan? You know, the one with the frog in it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'"
--
"What happens if (insert bogey-man phrase/villain of the moment here) happens?"
What happens in the case of change is chage. Your question can be applied to anything, that makes the question a worthless waste of time.
The article very clearly states the issue is time for compliance, not application of a law THIRTEEN YEARS after it was created. Oh, whoa for the schools, they sat on their butts for eleven years. Boo hoo. My heart aches for them. How much money from the government did they chose NOT to take over that time period? The procrastinated and now they're complaining about a situation they allowed happen. Boo hoo.
what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?
... Executive branches of government, prone to playing straw-man mop-up roles.
By the time Congress and the courts have anything to say about it, the guys who get things done have already done it. This is an old story which plays out again and again with emerging technologies.
See, for example, COINTELPRO , although Watergate, Iran-Contra etc. demonstrate the same principle: Congress and the courts are less
-kgj
-kgj
What's to stop some would-be terrorist from simply encrypting his communications? He and his cohorts could probably use a one time pad so that even if older transmissions were tapped and the alleged terrorist captured, he'd be unable to disclose the old passwords to decode his old conversations.
Further, I imagine that it's possible to multiplex your voice signal with some other innocuous sound-transmission so that it would be impossible to tell if you were on actually on the line or not. Would-be wiretappers would hear nothing but slightly distorted Liza Minelli showtunes. Or am I wrong?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
In 2004, court-ordered wiretaps increased by 19%. This number doesn't even include terror-related wiretaps (which number an unheard of 1,754). It also doesn't include so-called "secret" wiretaps, allowed by Patriot.
The only groups these wiretaps hurt are the law-abiding citizens. The smart (read: dangerous) criminals have it all figured out-- Prepaid cell phones.
Pre-paid cell phones are literally disposable, one-use toys to the bad guys. You don't even need a fake ID, just cash, and not all that much at that. How can they tap your phone when you use a different phone for each call? The best they could do is tap all the pre-paid phones and listen to every conversation out there -- good luck with that! (wanna bet the NSA is big into voice recognition?)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'
Ummmm... what's to stop congress from passing a law that says all gays should be stoned to death in a public ceremony?
Answer: You! It amazes me that people are complaining about the way congress and the Bush Admin are "slowly" taking away their rights, selling out to corporations bla de bla bla...
Hey American Joe... you voted them into power!!! Twice!!! There's a reason everyone has the right to vote. Unfortunately that includes the uninformed and the easily mislead.
/Rant
using System.Awesome;
Is is simply a case of looking for one's lost keys under the streetlight across the street, where you've not been, instead of down through the sewer grate you're standing over, just 'cause the light is better over there?
If they really want to start locally, I think they'd have more success bugging the phones and routers of the Congress and Executive branch, and posting the results on the web to further the cause of transparency and honesty in government. Nothing more would be required -- no investigations, no prosecutions, because we live in a nation with a free press and the freedom to vote our feeble minds.
Yes, let's bug every nook and cranny in the Capitol -- I believe we would root out a great many "criminals, terrorists and spies". It would not greatly surprise me to find Osama bin Laden living the good life in some Georgetown penthouse apartment.
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." -- Mark Twain
Before the Supreme Court decided Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 309 (1967), law enforcement officers could not obtain search warrants to search for and seize "mere evidence" of crime. Warrants were permitted only to seize contraband, instrumentalities, or fruits of crime. See Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886).
She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen, with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide to avoid arrest. 'And a good job too,' said Julia, 'otherwise they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed.' Since then there had been various others. Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you couId. She seemed to think it just as natural that 'they' should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine. He noticed that she never used Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into everyday use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and refused to believe in its existence. Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog. -- George Orwell "1984"
Season Three If you can't get taps on the burners, just sell the crooks pre-tapped phones.
The Carlyle Group: Are they buying your cable TV company (Insight, Casema, ...)?
That's why I use carrier pigeons and the bad guys use pen&paper with bicyle couriers. Back in the first Gulf War after we destroyed just about all of Iraq's communication systems they used guys on bikes/mopeds/horses/donkeys to send messages. There are dozens of places a message can be hidden on a person, paper sewn into clothing, rolled paper in a pen tube, paper in a pack of smokes. Wait, it's 2005 now, forget carrying paper, flash memory cards are a lot smaller than a couple pieces of folded paper. How about a zippo with a false a room for a mini SD card with encrypted files. There's a reason Osama stopped using his satellite phone. There are too many ways to avoid these wire taps, coded messages on foreigh hosted sites posted from public terninals left open, maybe someone forgot to logout of a library PC. What next, people can be stopped and searched on the street because they might me a courier for the mob or the terrorists or the ACLU or the Democratic party? How long until the RIAA is sueing the Feds for access to sue "file sharers"?
What about the schools that just finished their many-million dollar upgrades? They have to do it all over. We're going to have to pay for this through more entries in your term bill and taxes for the state funded schools.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
I think you'll find handgun bans actually reduce crime...
I doubt it.
I think crime has more to do with the society its self than what is used in the crime.
Lets be honest, it must be ridiculously easy to smuggle guns into Canada from the US (very long border, hiding a few in a nook in the engine compartment of a car would be easy), but you dont see Canadian gangbangers having pitched gunbattles in the streets of Toronto.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Um. The problem with your counter argument is that citizens have a history of breaking laws and doing nasty, bad things to each other and organizations. What then, your point? Do you want to live in a world where the average joe has the technological capability, if not the legal right, to break whatever law/mores they choose? The coin has two sides.
If we encrypt *everything* it will make the task of tapping too daunting.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is only one way to stop the wholesale destruction of our rights by governmental bodies.
Revolution. Nothing short of this will make a bit of difference.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Free speech includes talking in English, Pig Latin, AES, or private, as desired.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
...and say "no, my conversations are none of your business"?
This is the latest in the government's attempt to gain back some amount of control over human communication. They are quickly hounding ISP's to give the government access to voice over IP traffic. It is not a surprise that they are now targeting universities, because historically that is where most "insurgent" speach comes from.
Very soon, government will realize that you simply can't control communication anymore. For example: what if I choose to run all my calls over an encrypted VoIP channel from my home machine? Am I required by law to wire-tap myself?
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Add California to the list of seatbelt laws.
They were originally passed as "the state winds up having to pay for them..."
My opinion on seatbelt (and helmet) laws is this: Feel free not to wear a seatbelt of a helmet. If you're not wearing one, and you're injured, you won't get a cent in aid from the state, so your insurance better be paid up.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Any wiretap provisions or any particular wiretap, for that matter, will have to pass muster under the Fourth Amendment.
Two words: PATRIOT Act
Terrorism (and/or Child Porn) is the root password to the Constitution.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The reason for this, is that even without CALEA, you have to assume that other peoples' networks (i.e. your university's network, your employer's network, and for fuck's sake, The Internet itself) are insecure. CALEA merely creates known and documented security holes (which supposedly only the government can exploit, if you're naive enough to believe that). But it doesn't create the possibility of a hole, because that possibility already existed. Whatever "chilling effect" this has .. well .. you should have already been freezing your nuts off. ;-)
But if The Man wants to codify this risk, to shove it into everyone's faces just so they can't possibly claim, "Oh, I'm so stupid, I didn't know the network had holes," then I can't help but feel a little bit grateful. Maybe this is what's going to push people over the edge into taking end-to-end encryption seriously? (Probably not, but I can dream.) I only wish we weren't all being compelled to pay extra for the creation of these "official" security holes. I guess you can just look at it as another tax...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If the government wants to spy on college students so badly, then let them pay for the equipment and the upgrades. If the universities are required to foot the bill, then it will probably be reflected as tuition increases against the students.
I'm getting kind of anooyed with all of the "rights" posts recently. No, its not that I don't care about civil liberties, in fact I'm a very stuanch advocate of personal liberty, its how they are phrased.
FTFA:
"But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'"
Um, the same thing that happens if Congress just relaxes the laws, its not like University networks are secure in any way shape or form, and I'm sure law enforcement could have their way with it. Does anyone out there consider this a valid arguement? And if so, why bother posting, because maybe in the future the governement will grab slashdot's servers and take your IP for posting against them? The point is you can argue all you want that "x sets up y, which sets up z, and then we're all screwed," or you realize that in the end, we can all be screed anyways and tell me how my rights are being violated right now.
And lets look at the article. Are Universities opposed to this because of the massive threat it is to our liberty? No, they're opposed because of the cost. Now, either Universities are exceptionally greedy, so much so that one of the biggest concentrations of rights activists (college campuses) care more about the money then how we'll be screwed over, or this isn't as dangerous as you're making it out to be.
As a side note, the Patriot Act allows for secret wiretaps anyways, so why care if you're in compliance when it'll happen behind your back anyways?
As for the cost, ok, $7 billion is a big number, but so what? "Studies" show that just Div-1 sports will spend over $4 billion this year, that's the athletics department's alone. Since athletics is just a part of the budget, surely an extra $3 billion could spring up from all the other non-div 1 schools? But, they'd rather keep it for their budgets and athletics.
Its claimed in the article that this would raise cost by a horrendous $450 per year... who cares? Yea, I go out of state thanks to a wonderful scholarship, but had I not gotten it, I'd be working my way through in state, as that's the only way I could afford it. And this 'huge increase' is nothing, its a drop in the bucket. Compared to the $28,000 I already pay (just for tuition) this is a trivial cost. Scholarships will easily cover this, and its not hard to find $500 scholarships.
Now, I think a better reason to be opposed to this (seeing as the F.B.I. even said they'd never had problems serving wiretaps before, and already do 'em, this just makes it so they don't have to go to campus), is the work, and the stupidity. Every communication going through ONE network center, then out? I don't know about your home/business/college, but MINE never stays up 24/7. Especially the college network, someone always does something stupid (two dhcp routers on the same internal network I heard just two days ago) and this just screams "I'm gonna break". Why doesn't law enforecement just accept going out to wherever the tap is and do it on site is my biggest question?
All in all, I'd like to see less sensationalist (yes, I realize the governement pulls it too) "we're gonna be watched like 1984" stories and more "Hmm.. here's an interesting idea, do you think it'll work" stories. Just my 2.30979956 yen
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
So now the law was revised and the police *CAN* pull you over and ticket you for not wearing a seatbelt
Funny story: One chap in the town where I used to live was known as a bit of a rebel. The very first time I saw him, he was wearing an old brown duster with matching hat, and pedaling a yellow unicycle down main street just as fast as he could go.
The provincial government passed a law stating that you were required to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle. So he proceeded to get an old motorcycle (for just this purpose), and rode it around town with a helmet strapped to his knee!
He got a ticket, of course, and took it to court, and beat the charges.
After that, the government amended the law.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
You've probably spent much more time in engineering/sciences than in the humanities. Five minutes with the students and faculty in the Philosphy, Sociology, Anthropology, or History departments and you'll find out how deep the Anti-Americanism runs.
I'm not an american but I am a university student, and I'll take a solid semester of humanities brainwashing over 5 minutes of business/marketing bullcrap. I took a CS/Admin class (CS270-Information Systems Management--It's a prerequisite for CS271-COBOL) and I swear it dropped my IQ by like 2 points alone. Five minutes with the students and faculty in Marketing or Administration will make you wish you were instead surrounded by pot smoking hippie communist liberals.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Regarding the specifics of the situation of this university, it seems to be a real stretch that a school should be required to comply with CALEA. Organizations that provide a telecommunications service to the public for fee are required to abide by CALEA, as well as organizations "engaged in providing wire or electronic communication switching or transmission service to the extent that the Commission finds that such service is a replacement for a substantial portion of the local telephone exchange service"[1]. I don't know how one could reasonably interpret that to include a school. They don't provide telecommunications to the public at large, but only to selected students and employees. It's also unreasonable to view their own internal networks, as large as they may be for big universities, as being substantial replacements for telephone services.
[1] DOJ's Joint Petition for Expedited Rulemaking, March 2004
I hate to break it to you, but just because 60% or 90% or even 99% of people don't want to own an Atomic Bomb doesn't mean banning Atomic Bombs for the 1% that do isn't a violation of a civil liberty. The US mentality and laws about guns is dominated by sheer stupidity. Banning guns and bombs has nothing to do with civil liberties, but with having a society where people don't kill each other as easily, either by mistake or by intent. If you need a handgun for shooting at a club or because you're a hunter, apply for it.
While I am sure there are dissenting viewpoints here and probably even people who support these sorts of abuses of power and the general incremental march towards fascism and tow the US Govt line, I think in general /. has a lot of really intelligent and insightful people who don't think that these things are right.
So I ask this question to those who do feel that what is/has been happening in the US in regard to abuse of power, using propaganda and political trickery via machiavellian machinations to control "public opinion" and taking away civil liberties in the name of "safety" or the "neverending-always-justified-war-on-terror" is totally insane and beyond the pale:
At what point do you say enough is enough? What has to happen? And what do we do then?
(...maybe something other than "vote all incumbents out." I think that goes without saying but unfortunately in many cases I think that the system is so broken by what I consider institutionalized corruption built into the process (I.E. things are are cosindered legal but which completely undermine the democratic process) not to mention the totally illegal stuff that we all know goes on sometimes)
Who wants these taps? Why the MPAA of course!
Universities are hotbeds of illegal file swapping.
Trouble, a mistake or fun, your choice
For example, the law in Virginia requiring seat belt use is obviously a violation of civil liberties.
Nonsense. You get in a car accident, don't wear a seat belt and get hurt. This forces other people (the other insurers with your policy holder) to pay for your dumb ass, violating their civil liberties.
> Skype can't be tapped
you meant to say "skype, the telco now owned by ebay, does not have any known back doors"
Remember how lotus notes's export encryption system used to include half the secret key in part of the transmission, so the nsa/fbi could pick it up, leaving only a, what, 64 bit key to break? In closed source code, putting in back doors for the government(s) is not only technically easy, it's the kind of thing that management think is a good idea.
Oh I see, you are going to try the lame insurance argument. So, you can force your sensibilities on everyone else because it might affect your insurance rates.
Inotherwords... noboby should be allowed to:
1) Eat meat.
2) Eat junk food.
3) Drink alcohol.
4) Use any types of drugs.
5) Use any type of tobacco.
6) Drink anything with caffeine.
7) Ride a motorcycle.
8) Skydive.
9) Own a gun.
10) Ski.
11) Swim.
12) Marry someone that might be abusive.
13) Live anywhere there might be a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake.
14) Have children if you or your parents have any hint of a genetic disease.
15) Cross the street without wearing a helmet.
Or any of 100,000,000 other activities.
Everyone should live a life as YOU see fit- nice and safe. So, instead of freedom, you believe in fascism. Inotherwords, you are perfect, have all the answers, and if everyone just did what you thought was right everything would be fine in the world.
Life is dangerous. Live is about making choices and experiencing them. To most people, living obessed with safety and controlling other people's choices isn't living life at all.
Who are they going to pay to sift through all the traffic to which they will have
enhanced access? What software are they going to use to red-flag suspicious phrases in e-mails and transferred files, visits to dubious websites, etc.? It may seem crass that universities are protesting this on the basis of poor cost-benefit ratio rather than civil rights, but the cost issue is real.
Have fun, drive the FBI crazy, convince them telepathy works, them let them try to figure out how they are going to wire tap that.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Seems your language skills are limited to swearing and breezing over postings without comprehending any of them... my original posting clearly states that I would never get into a car without wearing a seatbelt. Besides, if someone else causes an accident, it is their problem, not mine. If I cause it, *MY* insurance pays for it... and I have an excellent driving record, so no insurance company is losing any money on ME.
Just because I don't drink alcohol doesn't mean I should impose MY values on other people and try to make it illegal to drink. And just because I wear my seatbelt doesn't mean I should force others to do the same. It is their body, their car, and their space... and they will have to deal with the consequences. That is what freedom is about.
Do us all a favor and crawl back under the facist rock from which you came. Either that, or please leave and go start your own country where you can force your narrow views on anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to live there.
Seems your language skills are limited to swearing and breezing
As a self-centered grandstander, that's all you deserve.
without comprehending any of them.
Small-mindedness is easy to understand, it just needs to be ignored.
Besides, if someone else causes an accident, it is their problem, not mine. If I cause it, *MY* insurance pays for it... and I have an excellent driving record, so no insurance company is losing any money on ME.
Ha. Either you have never dealt with an insurance company, or were lucky when you did so. Here's clue 101: insurance companies are in business to take premiums and deny claims. This means when you get in an accident, your insurance company will fight with your health insurer, the insurer of the other driver, and if all else fails, you. To list a couple of examples, my aunt was broadsided by a pickup truck than ran a red light. The truck drivers insurance company fought it out for over a year, basically on the grounds that if my aunt hadn't been driving through the intersection at the time (nevermind that the light was green), their driver wasn't 100% at fault and so they refused to cover 100% of the damages. My sister was in an accident and had some of her teeth knocked out...despite having dental insurance in addition to supposedly full coverage, Blue Cross fought coverage on the grounds that it was "cosmetic surgery".
Either that, or please leave and go start your own country where you can force your narrow views on anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to live there.
No, better yet, either realize that driving is a priveledge and not a right, or move your ass to Afganistan where every man can be an island.
Um, right.
c le/2005/10/23/AR2005102301352.html
Perhaps you should read this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti