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It's "1984" in Europe, What About Your Country?
An anonymous reader asks: "A few hours ago, the European parliament accepted a proposal '...on the retention of data processed in connection with the provision of public electronic communication services...'. Summarized: any data (internet connections, traffic, email, file sharing, SMS, phone calls) of 450 million people of Europe has to be collected by telcos, to be used by governments in their fight against 'crime and terrorism' ... oh, and child porn, of course. In Germany, over-the-sea reports are limited and usually do not include the latest developments in law and order, but since Slashdot has readers all over the world, I would like to ask: how is the status of YOUR country in terms of anti-terrorism-laws, observations and such? Any recommendations where one can still live free and unobserved in a non-nanny state?"
It is a relatively modern Idea that Freedom is equal to Privacy. While the truth they are rather disjunct concepts. You still have the right of free speech you can still say whatever you want and just as long as it doesn't cause direct harm, (Like yelling Fire in a crowded room) you have the right to say it.
But just recently the right of privacy seems to be implicit to your freedom of speech. With freedom of speech (At least the American ideal) you should be able to state your views without getting arrested for it. But it doesn't state that you can say it without anyone knowing that you said it.
I am not saying you shouldn't fight to keep your privacy, but it is not taking away a right, it is taking away a luxury, that we enjoy. In many ways I want to keep privacy, because then we are able to say our views that can shake things up without breaking social norms of living in the real world. But on the down side as with any luxury, if we over use it we get comfortable and abuse it. Saying things that should not say and shake things up that if a person had a chance to think twice about it wouldn't shake up. Pushing society too fast is as dangerous as letting it become stagnate, and Luxuries like privacy should be treated well or could be forced to be removed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Last I checked there were only 6 billion people on earth - so 450 billion people in europe in the last month would be a intrest feat.
(On a related note - why do they have a "mail us if you see something wrong" when it doesnt do anything to email them)
snowulf.com
Any recommendations where one can still live free and unobserved in a non-nanny state?"
The answer is directly proportional to how much money you have and how willing you are to spread it around.
Funny? Yes. True? Sadly yes as well in most of the world.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I agree the concepts are distinct, but most people who value freedom are wary of "big brother" style governments that perform far too much surveillance on their own citizens, because that puts them in a dangerously powerful position to later use that information to restrict freedoms.
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So who has the storage space necessary to pull this off?
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But just recently the right of privacy seems to be implicit to your freedom of speech. With freedom of speech (At least the American ideal) you should be able to state your views without getting arrested for it. But it doesn't state that you can say it without anyone knowing that you said it.
If I call my friend up to chat about the old college days I absolutely have a right to privacy. What I talk to an old friend is ABSOLUTELY none of the governments business.
I'm astonished at how some people in the United States act. NYC recently implemented random bag searches in the subway- only they can only search your bags and only before you get on the subway- if you don't want to be searched you can walk away (exactly what kind of terrorist this is supposed to catch is beyond me and a subject for another debate). What astounds me about this, however, is just how many people go out of their way to be searched. If the cops don't call you over to be searched you don't have to stop- I've walked past every time without being stopped. Some people, however, walk over to the cops, open their bags and show them the contents without being asked. I have no idea what society I am living in but I would love to find some place in this world where people actually have self respect and care about their rights.
-sirket
It has been shown that slick monitoring of information does not protect citizens from terrorism. Monitoring the general public is such a large undertaking that funds spent doing that have far better places to be spent. If given the chance, the general public would not elect to do such a wasteful activity. It is ineffective, just as the current rules regarding airline screenings do not work. Knives and "weapons" still make it on the airline, etc. By monitoring the general airwaves, terrorists will use encryption. What then? Force all communications over non encrypted channels? What about bank transactions, etc? You can not protect the public from its self. Safety is relative, and its been proven that consumers do not want that level of "safety" for that price.
I'll just summarize my fears like this: If you lack privacy, tyrants can go unchecked in power.
/need/ privacy in order to sustain a democracy.
And of course, without privacy, everything the citizen does is clear to the government, but the government can act without the same level of transparency.
The government stops working under the whims of the people, and the people start working under the control of the government.
We
http://mediagoblin.org/
You obviously never studied this issue seriously. The absence of privacy forces people to modify their behavior. The less privacy, the less freedom of behavior. It is not just illegal behavior that is suppressed, but any behavior that is outside the accepted norms.
Lack of privacy is the single greatest threat to freedom we now face.
Utter tosh!
Privacy allows one the right to think what one wants without a coersive government locking one up.
When a government monitors emails, and builds networks of who knows whom, I find it extremely intrusive.
Europe has history. If any of the evil governments that existed in it's past existed today, they would need about fifteen minutes to get a long list of everyone they did not like, (and those that communicated with them) and lock them up or worse.
The "luxury" you speak of was in existance previous to the information age when governments could not track your thoughts, personal networks, banking information, health information and all the other info that they keep in large databases. Today, fridges and toasters are networked and will betray you, not simply a disgruntled family member or the neibour's kid. Did you know they keep track of what food you buy via your safeway card? That is "total information awareness" and it is not to protect you, but to protect your government from you. What did Echelon do to prevent Sept 11? Nothing. Terrorists used countermeasures and will continue to do so. They may be deranged fanatics but they're not stupid.
Look at Iraq. They have government goon squads that execute thousands a month. (Morgues are filled.) Thanks to the information age, not are actions considered treasonous but thoughts also. An email. A phone call. It's OK until it's your ass. (Or knee cap or skull.) Your slashdot posting of 2002 may seal your fate.
Don't be so foolish to assume that all future governments will be benign.
In the mean time it is our responsiblity to build networks resistant to these policies.
-b
I live in one of those places and in some ways it's worse than a data rich urban area. If I go to the store they know me and will mention that they saw my wife in there this am, she had the pot roast for lunch and said she was going to her hair appointment.
Sooner or later you have to go to the co-op for something. After that someone will know you. The mail carrier knows where you live and what magazines you subscribe to. The police don't need to pry into your business because everyone already knows.
It's really not any different, just lower tech.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You can say any right is a luxury. People define what are rights.
I suggest you read about Griswold v. Connecticut for more information about the U.S. Supreme Court's take on the right to privacy.
Considering the way people freak out unless you speak "politically correctly" about darn near everything, we hit that part of "1984" a long time ago. It's the "thought police" straight out of the book.
A great example of this are so-called "hate crimes". I mean, holy crap, crimes against anyone are "hate crimes". Are the "thought police" going to divine what's in someone's brain when they commit these crimes? It's that way today.
Having to "not offend" someone by not using the politically correct term for something they might say is another example of this. I'm not talking about using derogatory terms against someone...that IS offensive.
There are many more examples. "1984" didn't happen in 1984, but it happened shortly afterwards. It's a shame that more people haven't realized this already.
How do you capture this information.... do you try it at an application layer? You'd probably capture it at IP as you don't want to ignore TCP/UDP/other layer4 protocols. Do they expect telcos to SPAN all the traffic inbound AND outbound to some monster sniffer(s). You'd want to filter out the control (bgp,ospf etc..) traffic, but a 10Gb pipe (20Gb/s if you think about full duplex). If we used marketingmath whereby a 10Gb ~ 1GB...
The largest EMC DMX (DMX-3) can handle approximately 251TB of storage. You'd fill up the array in ~70hrs (3days!) using ONLY a single 10Gb/s link. Remember that large disk arrays out there have interfaces that are 2Gb/s FibreChannel. So you'd need atleast 5 interfaces (in a perfect world once again), that were capable of 2Gb/s. So you can forget about SATA arrays, as those couldn't dream of this bandwidth.
Oh yeah... how do you back this thing up... Fastest tape drives out there run 150MB/s (LTO-3) application throughput with compression.
Good Luck...
Your local SAN Administrator.
...Somalia. They've been without a central government for 15 years. Some say it's anarchy, some it's the libertarian dream. But it's not a police state for sure.
please excuse my apathy
"What I talk to an old friend is ABSOLUTELY none of the governments business."
Not even if you two are seriouly planning on flying planes into buildings or releasing sarin gas in a subway?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"Chilling effect" Is one of those words meant to spark emotional response of negative feeling about a topic, without us having us think about it.
It is much like how the Bush administration made the general US population believe there were WMD in Iraq when they used the term "A Slam Dunk" or in a commercial when they say choosing their products is a "No Brainer", it is a way of proving a point to a person emotionally and allowing them to bypass rational thinking.
Congratulations you have been scammed by using pop-culture wording. I was just listing to NPR this morning about it. Insightful is being able to see past these pop words meant to make us feel in the way the author wants us to.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Looks like the Federalists were right.The argument that privacy is not a right is based on the fallacious idea that our rights are limited to those listed in the Bill of Rights. The 9th Amendment is pretty straightforward: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (Emphasis mine).
There are only two possible rational interpretations: First, that all actions are rights unless that action is explicitly prohibited, or Second, that there is a mystical list of "other rights" floating around somewhere that nobody knows about, except obviously you, and maybe some other people in government.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Well, sir, if privacy is just a luxury we can do without, would you mind sharing with use your real name, date of birth, full address, phone number, SSN (or whatever ID is used in the country of your residence), bank account numbers, a few choice passwords, etc.?
No?
Hmmm. How about the name, address, phone number and an accurate physical description of your current "significant other" and, while you're at it, please tell us how he or she is in bed, in as much elaborate detail as you can recall.
Also no?
Fine, Just take some digital pictures of your adorable children (or other pre-teen family members) in the shower and put them on a publicly accessible web page along with their names and the address of the school they go to.
Still no?
You know what, forget it. I'll just contact the establishments that have your personal info and ask them for it. Maybe install a tap on your phone line and a key logger on your computer as well and, just to be thorough, ask your cell phone company for some triangulation data.
What? I can't?
Bummer.
Hey, not a problem. There's this individual, Joe something-or-other, who's desperate to get a date with my cousin. She says he's not very bright but still sort of fun to see him go out of his way to impress her. Lately he's been telling her about his job in some law enforcement agency and how they're tracking suspected terrorists and that they can do all those things I talked about without needing a warrant or "probable cause" or anything because, let's face it, those pesky accountability issues just made their job harder so they got a couple of laws passed to get rid of them.
Anyway, I spoke to cuz and she believes Joe will do it if she's nice to him and pretends to be really interested in his boring stories. So you see, chum, not a problem!
And if you have probable cause then get a warrant and tap the line. But keeping a record of every call and communication that everybody makes on the off chance that a terrorist may have made a call? No way.
-sirket
You know, really, I think the government reactions to terrorism have and will hurt this country more than the destruction of two sky scrapers and the loss of thousands of lives. A good quote someone here on /. I think has in their sig, says something like "Terrorists can attack our freedom, but only Congress can destroy it." Isn't that the truth.
The more and more we limit people's freedoms, the more similar we become to the sick visions of people like Osama bin Laden. They want a world in which people have few if any freedoms, and where no one may dare diagree with Islam. We are moving in the direction of the first, and if you replace 'Islam' with 'our government', we might be headed towards that one as well.
What I'm saying is that, while terrorist attacks are horrible and despicable, having a "few" people die from terrorist attacks is far better IMHO than giving in to those terrorists who love to murder innocent civilians in cold blood and volunteering to give away our freedoms. Granted, this may be easy for me to say, as I have not been directly, personally affected(no one I know has been killed/injured/involved) by terrorism, but I would really like to think that I would still believe this even if I had been directly affected. I'm sure that probably wouldn't be the case though.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
more people die by car crashes, diseases, normal crime, etc etc.
Where are the billions spend to fight those?
I own firearms and support the 2nd Amendment however statements like "I don't believe in gun control" seem broad, I mean if Timmy is a Meth-head who won't go to jail for Meth now that theres no Drug Laws, can he go buy a full auto M-4 with an M-203 underslung? Thats the issue I have with the Libertarian Party's platform, it's mighty scarce on details and refinement.
Sounds like by "refinement" you mean "special ways to stick it to people I don't like."
Under the Libertarian system, Timmy the Meth Head has every right to arm and protect himself -- as you mentioned he hasn't commited a felony deserving of having his rights stripped. So in the event of a National Emergency, Timmy the Meth Head could defend himself as well as any of the rest of us.
That's about the only situation Timmy could USE such a weapon though. The guns you named aren't hunting weapons, so that's out. They're a little overkill for private defense, so Timmy *might* (IANAL) be liable in certain cituations there, but he gets a fair day in court like anyone else. As for the homicide that you're implying Timmy the Meth Head would commit with that weapon -- that is already illegal, and already carries some of the harshest penalties we still allow in our society. Also, any accidental killings that occured while he was under the influence would face stricter penalties and in many cases be treated as pre-meditated (willingly took the chemicals, willingly operated the device impaired). That is also, already a regular part of law.
The trouble with true freedom is that you have to give it to people you don't like.
~Rebecca
In many ways privacy does protect that, and in a sense that's one of america's founding principals, that citizens reserve the right to become "terrorists" if the government gets out of hand. To the British, the american "rebels" were terrorists. This is the thing that scares me most about terrorism, it's persicuting an "idea" not a crime. The people who crashed a plane into the towers were MURDERERS -- who cares what their motivation is. It's like "hate crimes" - is it any worse to kill a random stranger than it is to kill someone because they're a certain race that you hate?
Also, if the government had just cause to think that those two friends were plotting to crash a plane into a building, then they should go to a court, state for the record what they think, and why, and with a judge's permission tap the phone for a certain amount of time. If it turns out they were wrong, they should tell the person and destroy all evidence. They shouldn't be able to get a secret warrant and never disclose what/why the did to anyone.
The whole idea is that there's supposed to be a balance. The balance is getting out of whack.
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
Quite so. What this all boils down to is a single question that our societies must answer: 'is freedom worth dying for?'
We certainly used to believe that the answer was 'yes'. Many of our ancestors died fighting various oppressors, be they warlike dictators or exploitative bosses or selfish aristocrats or slavers... They believed in freedom, and fought for it, and often died for it. Millions and millions of them.
Now, however, we're cowards. We aren't prepared to die for freedom. We're prepared to give up every last precious liberty in order to slightly reduce the risk of a few hundred or thousand people getting blown up every few years.
This is pathetic, and a horrible betrayal of what was fought for in the past. We're no longer prepared to die for freedom; we're prepared to give it all up to marginally reduce an already minor risk to our own precious lives. We suck.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Of course I'd want my family to live.
But lets change this situation to something closer to reality:
Let's imagine that the FBI comes to you one fine day and says: "Sir, we suspect that a terrorist attack will destroy a flight at some point. Incidentally, your entire family is going to be flying on a plane at some point. In order to possibly try to prevent it we need to stomp on the freedom and the rights of everybody in this country, including you and your family. Also it is almost a given that your family will be directly negatively affected by this - your daughters ex-boyfriend has made a call to the terrorist burning hotline in a fit of jealous rage, so she'll be vanishing soon. We'd like you to decide whether we should give you the illusion of security. And make it quick, you never know when they could strike again"
Even if you give up every right you ever have and become a slave to your government, you will not have made terrorism impossible, it will still be able to happen, and the side effect is that you will be living in fear like you wouldn't believe every damned day of your life, because that guy you just cut up? Might call the 'Witch / Terrorist buring hotline' with your license plate. You run a sucessful business? Your competitor can get the competative edge, whilst you are in solitary for planning to blow up a turnpike.
You need to ask yourself, IF these actions are taken will it solve the problem? Could you think of a way of doing it anyway? The answer is almost invariably NO, it wouldn't solve anything, but it would harm you. Remember the old saw: Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
How would ANY new laws bring back your dead loved ones? How would fewer rights bring them back either? How would living in a constant state of fear honor their memory? And most importantly, how would surrendering everything stop it happening again? Sure you can stop / make much harder a particular attack vector, but there are always new ways to do something... If you are alive, you are at risk, the only way to be safe is to die.
One last thing, how would you like to know that your innocent wife was locked up on death row about to die as an innocent casualty of the war on terror. That your new laws to protect your wife actually killed her? Because all this 'so some innocents will be caught in the net, its worth it to protect the rest of us' is fine, until you or those you love are the innocents lost for the cause....
Let's say you knew ahead of time that a drunk driver will kill your family. Would you outlaw alcohol? Would you outlaw cars? We accept risky devices and behaviors that we know will kill people. It's part of being free.
This example is much better than yours, seeing as how drunk drivers kill about 20,000 Americans every year. Terrorists in the US killed about 3,000 people 4 years ago. Where is the $21B "War on Drunk Driving"?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
> just in case you haven't noticed, Slashdot != the federal government. Why exactly
> would the OP be obligated to release any details of his personal life to a private
> entity such as yourself?
Just in case you haven't noticed, that was exactly the point of my post, specifically the last part.
However, I'll try to state it in more clear terms:
Governments (federal and otherwise) are comprised of people. the same goes for law enforcement, intelligence, "secret service" and other governmental agencies.
Individual people, in general, have their own agendas. They can be dishonest, deceitful, jealous, vengeful, prone to criminal activity or just under pressure to perform wrongful acts.
Therefore implicitly trusting a group of individuals that you have never met is not a very good idea.
And the logical conclusion is that implicitly trusting a government or its agencies is not a very good idea.
The question that you need to ask yourself is: is there a chance that my private information will be abused?
Most of the SlashDot tinfoil-hat crowd fear governmental abuse but I believe that abuse by individuals is at least as likely.
Now, I can live with some loss of privacy, provided I trust the safeguards against abuse but, unfortunately, given the incidents of policemen planting evidence and getting off with "a note in their permanent record", I do not have this trust.
If the constitution (or the equivalent) of a country said something to the effect of "any person in a position of power or authority who is found guilty of abusing their power or authority shall have their genitals publicly mauled by a pack of rabid rats" and there were significant safeguards implemented to ensure that a large number of violators are caught, convicted, and punished accordingly, then I would be satisfied that the risk of abuse is low enough for me to trust a government.
The motto of the Spider-man movie was "with great power comes great responsibility". I believe in a different motto "with great power there should come a great fear". Because responsibility is just an empty word, easily brushed aside unless backed by a real fear of the consequences of abusing this responsibility.
Until that day comes, I don't want their prying hands anywhere near my information.
Any private information that has the potential of being misused must remain private unless there is a *really* good cause for the government to peek at it, and then there should be a rigorous process of examining the cause, approving the *limited* invasion of privacy and safeguarding the data, with lots of people involved and each one *accountable* for their decisions and actions.
Freedom is not when the people fear the government, it's the other way around.