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Limited Email Surveillance Approved
MrNougat writes "CNet reports that some surveillance of your email has been permitted by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, D.C., without first requiring any evidence of wrongdoing. Curiously: 'instead of asking to eavesdrop on the contents of the e-mail messages, which would require some evidence of wrongdoing, prosecutors [of the US Justice Dept.] instead requested the identities of the correspondents. Also included in the request was header information like date and time and Internet address--but not subject lines.'"
Hey, you're still kind of free. Well, free-ish. I'm sure your government is doing this for your own good. There couldn't possibly be any other reason.
In my opinion, if you're not already assuming that the contents of your unencrypted email are public to the world, you're fooling yourself. If you want it to be unreadable, encrypt it.
I think the only permission anybody ought to need in order to eavesdrop on a communication is the owner of the wire. If you're contracting with the owner of the wire for services, and privacy is important to you, make that part of the contract. Or save yourself some effort and money and simply encrypt your communications. It's nearly effortless. It won't cost you anything (money wise) for the software.
Also, I take exception with the summary that "some surveillance of your email has been permitted." The article says, "the Justice Department asked a federal magistrate judge to approve monitoring of an unnamed person's e-mail correspondents." I sincerely doubt that I am that person or one of his correspondents, unless he is a spammer. I recognize this could affect me in the future because a precedent has been set ... but again, that's easily handled with encryption now, isn't it?
Complaining about this is tantamount to making love to your wife in your open front doorway and then demanding a law be passed to protect your privacy from your neighbor or the police car driving by. For crying out loud! Isn't some burden on you to secure your own privacy? This is not so far from the DMCA requiring legal protection against breaking "protection mechanisms" that are not effective in the slightest. Why in the world would you trust the government enough to expect them to take responsibility for securing your privacy?
People seem to be looking for an expensive legislative solution to a technological problem that already has an inexpensive technical solution.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
We have the same law proposed here. It stranded due to the politicians lack of technical knowledge. They think that the To: From: and CC: field actually tells you who sent the email and to whom. It's extremely difficult to tell a non-tech savvy person that these header fields are purely cosmetic.
Welcome to the land of the 'free' and the home of the surveilled.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Thanks to boring people, world is moving towards a total lack of privacy. The governments want to be in on every piece of human interaction. Not only that, they wish to record it too.
..worldwide .. no place to run style .. if it hasn't already for muslims .. where one can no longer can you be silly on the phone. No longer can you make racially biased or culturally insensitive jokes even among non-racist friends. I hope our body is well toned, for it'll be on camera .. you don't want your friendly monitors laughing at you. You have to worry about everything you say on the phone. You can't ask about the weather even because you'll have to worry about whether it'll be interpreted as meaning something else ("why would you care about weather in some other country"). No longer can you raise your voice to your own child. No longer can you tell little white lies to hold on to some image. On the "bright" side .. you won't be able to cheat on your girlfriend.
.. Sorry but I only give to Caesar what belongs to him.
Soon a day will come
They already want to be in on every financial interaction (sales/income tax). I rather pay a flat amount every year for "my share" of defense costs and be done with it. Are they going to ta happiness too soon? "You exchanged happiness, we want out fair share cause you wouldnt have been able to exchange happiness was it not for us"
I value my privacy, and I believe that the fourth amendment makes America a strong nation. The founding fathers of the USA understood that the right to privacy is one of those inalienable human rights endowed by our creator. (if you read the first amendment you will see that that it's a right "ot to be violated", rather than a gift from government. I believe the right to privacy is what keeps a nation free from oppression, tyranny, and pathological dictators. Fuck all the fake patriots who'll sell us otherwise.
whats next? you have to store your files where the government can look at them whenever? you have to live in a plastic box with bars over it and camera survelance on you? concentration camps? thought monitoring? so you can be scrutinized and analyzed and your everythought crossreferenced with everything else to determine if you one day might think of doing something criminal? its going to be like the movie minority report, only worse.
we are losing our liberties faster than we can blink, life under a microscope is not freedom
This is definitely not "it". The surveillance of every single out-of-country phone call might have been "it". Some of the dozens of things the government has/hasn't gotten in trouble for doing illegally might have been "it". But this is, seriously, nothing.
..." It's only at the end of the process that you wake up, look around, and ask, "Where did freedom go?"
You make an important point, but probably not the way you intended.
There is no "it." There is no one big, dramatic thing the government does that says, "This is the point where we're no longer free." France did not tumble overnight into the Reign of Terror. Russia did not go in a day from Revolution to purges and gulags. Germany did not start building death camps as soon as the swastika flew over the Reichstag. Cuba was as free as any country on Earth the day Castro took power.
Etc. Tyranny doesn't happen in an instant. It happens steadily, insidiously, and at every point there are people saying, "Oh, this isn't so bad, and it's for our own good
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Or what? Seriously, what would you do? Sadly, I think you overestimate your ability to protect yourself.
http://outcampaign.org/
Don't you think they'll just adapt by sipping the data from the nearest point to you? What good is driving furtively, turning a random direction every three blocks if they saw you get in your car?
You are aware that Haliburton recently landed a 347 million dollar contract to build new "emergency detention" facilities in the continental U.S.? They're building prison camps for tens or hundreds of thousands of people. The reason given is "immigration emergencies", or disaster housing.
I don't know exactly how to pound the point home any harder, but they are preparing for national upheaval. They are building concentration camps, my friend, and if anyone tries rebellion they are going to become permanent residents. You're presenting a false choice, letting rebels live or killing them. They've plans to lock them up en masse. Bush already has defacto power to strip citizenship and human rights away at will; locking protestors or armed rebels into Kellogg Root and Brown maintained mass prison camps wouldn't stonker them at all. In case ya'll haven't noticed, crossing SS designated boundaries around public events (I interpret this as leaving the "1st Amendment Zone") is now a federal felony subjecting the criminal to arrest -- by the Secret Service. As a terrorist, essentially.
This isn't a new plan, either. Reagan's people had a contingency plan set up to mass arrest and imprison dissenters back in '84. Our boy Oliver North had a huge hand in the plan. It's amazing how the same names keep popping up.
they have taken on vast unconstitutional powers to capture terrorists. Now, the next step is to redefine "terrorist". They've already designated PETA a terrorist organisation. Peace groups have been infiltrated and monitored since 2001 -- as terrorists, of course. Bush has linked criticism and terrorism already. His posse obviously is following a plan which ends with their party enabled to imprison dissenters without trial, subject to torture at will, or even death. Didja hear Guantanamo has a execution station now?
You can't get near the President anymore unless you sign a loyalty oath and are vetted by the SS for Republicanism. Show up with a sign or a T-Shirt with something to say and you are out, or under arrest. And despite what you might think,the cops are all on board with the President. I saw what happened in Chicago back in 2003. The cops are hard-core Republicans. Same with the military brass (not so much the rank and file). Someone once refered to the Army as the armed forces of the Republican party.
In other news, hunger strikes have nearly disappeared at Guantanamo Bay after they've strapped the hunger strike non-people into "feeding chairs", forced food down tubes, and physically prevented the tortured from throwing up the food. Afterwards they locked them into "cold cells" for punishment. I can only assume they're using the cold water hoses in the 50 degree concrete cells again, to get those prisoners nice and hypothermic and quiet.
I don't feel very ironic anymore. This is very dangerous. they are totally out of control, and there is no mass media that anyone trusts anymore, since news was turned into a "business" instead of a loss leader to keep a broadcast license, to tell us what's happening. We have to read overseas press to find out what's going on in our own country.