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Big Brother Wants Into VoIP At Any Cost
wallaby fly-half writes "An amendment to the CALEA law would make it easier for the government to monitor calls made over VoIP and even temporarily store some packet traffic. Ars Technica reports that the 'bill will put the technology in place to buffer packet streams, and places the job of filtering those streams under government control. We know from the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that the government is not limiting itself to access to under court orders, and the CALEA bill must be considered in light of the capacity it generates.'"
Raise your hand if you thought VoIP was a really neat idea when it first came out.
Now raise your hand if you still think it is.
Granted it's not really too different from recording Voice, but now you could expect yourself to be extraordinarily rendered if you choose to encrypt your converstations because you have the gall to actually believe the government has no right to recording and storing your conversations, Dub's dirty tricks or not.
Hell, they'll probably outlaw encrypting your own phone calls, next, because (the flag waving) it's (an eagle poses rampant) in (strains of The Star Bangled Banner) the (In God We Trust) best(the blue angels fly overhead) interests (cascading images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.) of (Betsy Ross adds another star to her handicraft) America (fanfare of fife and drum) and everybody knows the real patriots don't question any of this.
"sir, you served potential enemies of uh-merika with strong encryption" and we can't be having that.
Ebay constantly in hot water would probably love to score some points with Washington, they're probably already serving tea and crumpets with the NSA right now, along with a side order of Skype backdoors.
dangerous times call for dangerous laws
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Haven't we learned any lessons from the hideous Bolsheviks?*
____________________
* Peter Holquist, "'Information Is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work': Bolshevik Surveillance in Its Pan-European Context," Journal of Modern History, 69: 3 (September 1997), pp. 415-450.
From the FCC Mandate: From Phil's site: The stupid part of this is that we shouldn't have to do this
You are innocent. You have done nothing to give the government the right to investigate you or collect your phone records with the intent to prosecute you. If you're an American, take a few hours to protect what so many people have fought and died for: your rights to privacy and being innocent until proven guilty.
What next? Is the King of England going to be able to listen in on my VoIP calls?
My work here is dung.
Oh, what's the use anymore?
I assume VOIP can be encrypted just like anything else. So once again this will do nothing towards preventing terrorism, but everything to alienate The People.
Argh.
I realize you only posted this comment 4 seconds ago, but I find it strange on Slashdot that you're not modded to +9 SuperGenius yet.
You don't get witty anti-Dubya sarcasm like this just anywhere:
Hell, they'll probably outlaw encrypting your own phone calls, next, because (the flag waving) it's (an eagle poses rampant) in (strains of The Star Bangled Banner) the (In God We Trust) best(the blue angels fly overhead) interests (cascading images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.) of (Betsy Ross adds another star to her handicraft) America (fanfare of fife and drum) and everybody knows the real patriots don't question any of this.
That's quality stuff! And your clever use of condescending nicknames for George Bush...
Dub's dirty tricks or not
Magnificient! Yes, I'm sure it's only a matter of picoseconds before you'll be at +9 or greater. Congratulations.
The biggest downside is that in just two short years, George Bush will no longer be president and we won't get to hear such cerebral commentaries any longer.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Besides, VOIP is not that radically different from the way that modern digital telephone networks operate anyhow; the underlying network layer is different, but conceptually the general idea is pretty similar. Thus, digital encryption of voice telephony is already possible (and available). If (when) VOIP matures, all the same technologies will be possible; and many which are currently technically infeasible will become common, even trivial. The biggest impact VOIP will have is that there will no longer be a unique wire associated with your telephone's network address (erm, telephone number); rather, it'll be a MAC address (I don't recall if VOIP relies on TCP or UDP primarily, but MAC or IPv6 will almost certainly end up as the layer of choice, I think).
It's a lot more likely that millions of people will encrypt our VoIP streams than that we will all scramble our POTS conversations.
Where's our Java applet with SIP over SSL?
--
make install -not war
Remember Clipper chip? Yeah ole Sammy wanted in then too but they changed their tactics by using patent law when that initiative failed.
/. geeks, create a solution.
For those who don't know, the DES patent is owned by N.S.A. so when you see that Verizon's latest gadget that is triple DES encrypted don't be impressed, Uncle Sammy can get right in.
Seems like what we need at this point is OSS encryption that can't be so easily cracked by N.S.A. It's just a matter of time before Skype/Vonage, etc are required to change their encryption to DES or something that the government can read.
It used to be that the government had better technology always, not so true anymore. So
It's good to be Russian. We have it so good compared to you
Goddamn Republican government has pureed the baby with the bathwater, so now we can't even wiretap actual criminals and terrorists because we're hanging ourselves from the same rope. Every attack on our rights in the name of their Terror War is another victory for the terrorists. Why do they hate America?
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make install -not war
...George Gregan reads Slashdot?
Big brother is already into my credit card records, phone call records, credit and purchase history and library records. Why would anyone think VOIP would get a break?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
More punishment for Americans who obey the law. As if a criminal would be stupid enough to not use private encryption or alternate communication channels that the government didn't have a listening ear to. Why don't they go all the way and pass an amendment to the constitution that prevents citizens from protecting themselves from government monitoring? Isn't that what they really want?
I am suprised they aren't mandating backdoors in every piece of costumer electronics.
If it hasn't happened already, you can bet it will soon. Just let them find one "terra-ist" with an iPod using it to hide their activities, and you'll see some serious heavy hands coming down on the industry.
So wouldn't the logical thing to do be encrypt everything? If they had to try and decrypt every packet in the "buffer" I think the point of even trying to unencrypt anything would be worthless. If I had a VoIP system I would want it setup in such a way that I control how the conversation is encrypted so I could use whatever algorithm and passcodes I damn well want. I am sure the government will try to make this type of setup illegal or demand a backdoor though.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
I could be wrong, but I am not aware of any vulnerabilities in SpeakFreely - http://www.speakfreely.org./ So, if you are worried about people intercepting your calls .. there are solutions. And, yes, it does run on Linux, or, if not, the source is there ...
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
then I will be setting up a script to make VOIP calls into Saudi Arabia and Iraq at 4am every morning, and have a text-to-speech program start reading off an Arabic or Farsi translation of Dr. Seuss. Let the NSA have fun with that one, 'cause I know I will.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Yeah, then the US government who routinely break their own laws could call it "Trusted Computing" or something. Think of all the benefits!
First off, the patent is owned by the NSA because they developed it.
They developed it because they're the most qualified to come up with encryption and guarantee its security for government use.
Despite a decade plus of DES being in wide use, brute-force attacks remain the most practical means of "breaking" DES encryption. This is despite FOUR DECADES of close inspection of the algorithm (DES was published in 1976.)
If enough calls, emails, and IMs are encrypted with even moderately sophisticated encryption, the NSA doesn't have a prayer no matter how much hardware they have. It's been known for years they're swamped with unencrypted stuff...
Please help metamoderate.
I wish the government could leave the costumers out of this! I have enough trouble getting costumes the right size without the government mandating backdoors in my costumer electronics.
Here are the steps to defeating unwanted surveillance.
1. Use a modem to connect your computer to the Internet.
2. Install a microphone on your computer.
3. Install software to encrypt your digitized voice with a 128-bit key.
4. Arrange for the other party in the telephone conversation to do what you are doing.
Even if the government stores your packets, no one would know what you are saying unless he has the 128-bit key, which only the parties in the telephone conversation have.
These surveillance laws are really intended to intrude on privacy of middle-class Americans. These laws have no effect whatsoever on hardened criminals or terrorists. Hardened criminals or terrorists already know what to do to evade most forms of surveillance.
Most of the CALEA documentation does not include FISA intercepts. It is not uncommon for one FISA court order to contain several hundred phone numbers, and be intercepted by non-CALEA means. The Drug reference is accurate in regards to cellular telephone wiretapping that is done under the CALEA law.
You got modded flamebait, and I think rightly so, but I think you deserved a real reply anyway.
First, dumping Israel will not protect us from terrorists. You must remember that al-Qaeda attacked Saudi Arabia, even though Saudi Arabis is the guardian of the Islamic holy cities. But they weren't idealogically pure enough, they crossed one of al-Qaeda's lines, and they got hit anyway. So if we were to totally stop supporting Israel, would that buy us protection from terrorist attacks? No. There would be some other issue - we were still selling products to Israel, or buying from them, or something. Are you prepared to write a blank check of concessions to every set of idiots that are willing to use violence to accomplish their goals?
Second: Israeli terrorism??? Hello?
Imagine that the Mexicans, instead of just flooding across our borders in insane numbers, were firing homemade rockets into downtown San Diego and El Paso. Imagine that this had been going on for two years. And imagine that the people doing this (the Zapatistas, say) won the next Mexican presidential election. Now they're the Mexican government. Then they fire some more rockets. Since they're the government, that's now an act of war.
So we go after them. After all, enough is enough. And, though we try to avoid it, there are inevitably civilian casualties. Does that make us terrorists? Or are the terrorists the people who were firing rockets into our cities for two years, deliberately targeting civilians?
Third: Enabling Israel to keep going after the people who are targeting their civilians is a good thing. There cannot be peace while Hezbollah and Hamas continue firing missiles into Israel, and neither of them seem willing to stop, ever. So they have to be stopped. That means that Israel is doing the right thing. But sometimes doing the right thing - or helping someone else to do the right thing - upsets people who are doing the wrong thing. We should help them do the right thing anyway.
Windows and Mac already have the backdoors. Linux, BSD and all other open source OS's will be outlawed by 2010.
Do you think I'm suddenly going to freak out on VOIP because the US government might start listening in on my calls? I'm actually suprised that they're not already (they seem twitchy about that stuff right now), though this may be a political version of "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission". Fundamentally, I don't care how my voice gets from point A to point B, but I'm in favor of doing it as cheap as possible. I like the idea of a world where they run one cable (or no cables, woohoo) to my house and all the information flows over it. The tinfoil hat wearers can roll their own VOIP for talking to whomever they want to talk to and encrypt it out the wazoo. If they're paranoid enough, they can get multiple wired and wireless connections, split up the packets across them all, and have a grand time of it. As best I can tell, VOIP was never about avoiding the government, it was about talking on the cheap using resources already available.
Now, if they come for my encryption, they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead connection
- Tash
Vrrooommm...
I'd be more surprised if they didn't already have one.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
ok, well maybe not the devil, but someone reinstated my legendary noob status.
then they had me look at a old 1 and a $5 and a $20. sorry.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Yes, I think they can't break AES256. But I also think they can break the PK that is used to transfer the AES session key. Why? Because Skype is not intended to be secure for the users. Skype uses Skype as the trusted introducer for the PK negotiation. If the FBI tells Skype to implement a MitM attack, then Skype can do it.
The proper way to implement VoIP or any other internet communcation, is to let people be their own PK introducers/certifiers. And let them use OTPs in situations where it is feasible, which just happens to be pretty common (e.g. your phone and your wife's phone probably spend several hours in the same room together, every night).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Pretty much everybody without his/her head up his/her ass knows that "fighting terrorism" has very little to do with this.
But then, spying on and harrassing political opponents a la Nixon may not be the main motivation behind it, either.
The BIG concern within the Bush Administration is the threat from people inside of it. They need their own people to know that if they divulge any embarrassing or incriminating information, even anonymously, that they will be tracked down and punished. The war is against potential whistleblowers.
Ever wonder why you never hear interviews with anybody who knew Dubya back in his wild days before he became governor of Texas? Every college friend of every other president had stories to tell, some positive and some not, but not so with George II. Why is this? Well, pretty much everybody with an embarrassing story to tell about cocaine or girls or his desertion from the National Guard now has a cushy high-level job in the government or the energy industry. Better jobs with more power than they'd ever dreamed they'd have, and jobs they're not going to jeopardize by telling stories.
That's how you go from being a horse show official to being head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with zero experience. Anybody who works in Washington knows there's hundreds - maybe thousands - of 'em.
Without the extensive eavesdropping powers Bush claims, these people would be free to contact reporters or blog information anonymously. By advertising these "powers" via carefully planned "leaks", Karl Rove is letting insiders know that they're taking a big risk if they spill any beans.
And you can bet they'll know who I am as soon as I hit the "Submit" button...
Remember the adage - If privicy is outlawed only outlaws will have privicy.
George Micheal^W Bush:
"I want your VOIP" from the album "Faith"
There's things that you guess
And things that you know
There's boys you can trust
And girls that you don't
There's little things you hide
And little things that you show
Sometimes you think you're gonna get it
But you don't and that's just the way it goes
I swear i won't tease you
Won't tell you no lies
I don't need no bible
Just look in my eyes
I've waited so long baby
Now that we're friends
Every man's got his patience
And here's where mine ends
I want your VOIP
I want you
I want your VOIP
(hmm.. I originally thought about this based just on the title.. looking up the lyrics, the first paragraph is just uncanny!)
The reason our phones are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks, is that we view phone service as .. um .. well, I just used the word: service. You use a "service provider's" network. I'm not talking about your ISP.
But with IP, you don't need to use a "phone service provider" except to interface with POTS. Have your phone contact my jabber server to start a conversation, and we'll use PGP on top of that. Now there isn't any "provider" to regulate and force to implement MitM attacks. They would have no choice but to regulate the users themselves, and we've seen how great that works with the War on Drugs. I guess it'll be another excuse to throw people in jail, and another way to make good people live in fear of their government, but one thing you can be sure of: it won't work for anything else. It won't prevent the behavior that they're trying to suppress.
Death to "service providers." We just need open phone hardware (that we can install our own application on) and a network connection.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The trouble is that Israel doesn't actually try to avoid civillian casualties. Observe their deliberate targeting of civillian infrastructure and housing districts (not to mention UN outposts). An even clearer example is their longstanding policy of collective punishment in Palestine. That can legitimately be labelled government-sponsored terrorism.
NSA wants to filter packets they think suspicious. OK, fine. But, what about international "calls", the ones that just uses US as a link to the target (i.e: brazil to japan)? I mean, will they be respectful enough to just "ignore" international traffic, which they aren't supposed to track? Now, the question: *who* is NSA to filter *me*, a brazilian guy that have nothing to do with US? Don't get me wrong... I'm not a privacy paranoid (you can track all my calls, if you want... i don't really care), but I just think its not fair to apply the same "patriotic" (paranoid) rules to everyone, where "everyone" means even people that doesn't pay your taxes, doesn't votes in your politicians and don't have the same laws.
ilex paraguariensis for all
You fucking piece of garbage.
You need to die.
Now.
The smart people were 1st to think and the brave 1st to talk.
Bush bashing is a no brainer at this point (except for the proud or stupid.)
After bush is gone (should they choose to let him) and the next powerless puppet takes over, listen to those people who were ahead of the curve.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030710
with black box voting, all your choices are belong to the bilderburgers and globalist folk of their ilk. You aren't really naieve enough to think your vote really matters past some local elections are you? All the bigshots (anything above county level) get hand picked in advance. If it looks like "their boy" won't get in, they screw with the numbers and use their media assets to make it seem like their boy won. It's that simple, and obvious to see that is what is going on. That's why you saw skull and bones kerry just shutup and run away as fast as his milionaire loafers could carry him in the face of all the ohio election fraud evidence-he's in on it, the fix is in and has been in for a long time now. The president gets chosen for you by the transnational big money boys. He's their official public spokesman, that's it.
The only thing that might fix this system at this time frame is to physically throw ALL the D and R bums out, into prison might be a good choice. If you think something is viable and has a D or R next to their name..well...it hasn't worked so far, so we need some proof, show some proof that the next time you would get any different results than what we have seen for the past three generations.
There's two choices for national leadership people-nationalists or globalists. We have lived under globalists since JFK got killed and the perps walked on it. They got away with offing him, with starting the nam war, with starting a lot of other wars, with being complicit in the 9-11 attacks, etc. And if you think that is extreme, google for the northwoods documents and realise the ENTIRE chief of staff signed off on it, JFK rejected it(because it's hideous), a few months later he got whacked. Run occam's razor by that one to see who the perps were.
Every step of the way this fascist globalism controller crap has been supported by the D and R party at the leadership levels, with their grassroots being willing useless idiots. Sorry, but it is true. Brainwashed worker drones.
We used to be controlled by a congress of all majority Ds and a president who was a D-it sucked then too! Again, back right after JFK got the lead injections. It was freakin terrible! Destroyed the economy so bad they had to run the printing presses, and that hasn't stopped to this day. Wiped out a generation of young american males and no telling how many foreigners so that the globalists could make some more blood profits in another contrived scam war. Later rinse repeat, every election cycle the same old back and forth crap between criminal gang D or R, like it makes a bit of difference. Now they are *terrified* of having ANY third party candidate on the stage with them at the so called "national debates", so they just don't bother, and the lapdog media still goes along with it-because those lapdogs are owned by less than one dozen humans! Orders fall downstream. Occam's razor part two on that scene.
There's no practical difference, so a real "viable" alternative is anyone BUT a globalist D or R for every position out there, handpicked crony judges included,so chuck the whole lot of 'em OUT! They have proven they can't "clean up" their own "partys" so why keep trusting them liars? How many generations worth of years of evidence does it take for this to sink in?
Otherwise you will just get the same old boning without the courtesy of a reach around.
Ok, this has seriously gotten out of control. Everybody has been talking about how they're slowly taking our rights away. Well, now they have. Sorry but that's the last straw for me. Having the ability to monitor VOIP phone calls without a warrent? I don't know about you, but I am seriously considering moving out of the country, at least until we get a better president. I don't know what else to do.
You are clearly buying all that's being sold to you by the mainstream media. I won't get into arguments with you, but rather urge you to read the following piece: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vie wArticle&code=COO20060720&articleId=2767
If this does not mitigate your feelings, then you're as blind as the Israeli consul general in New York who said last week that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing".
Res publica non dominetur
Given the shortage of translators, it only makes sense that we should ban the use of foreign languages in telecommunications. If you've got nothing to hide, you should be willing to say it in English. You shouldn't be speaking any "devil" languages anyway.
Think the above (made up quote) is an impossible scenario? Read the recent Esquire article about John Walker Lindh who gets sent to solitary every time he responds to an "Assalamu Alaikum."
I'm just waiting for the "English only" amendment to CALEA to be suggested by some Congressdude. Then I'll laugh and laugh (or is it cry) for having been right.
OBL will be caught for sure! I'm sick of all this spying on Americans for three reasons: 1. It obviously doesn't work. (If it did why haven't we caught some real terrorists in the USA or caught OBL?) 2. It obviously violates the constitution. (Yes, I know they've *always* been doing it but before they had oversite. It hasn't always been this way.) 3. It's wasting valuable resources and time. Worst leadership ever.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Leave it to the government to try every single way it can to fuck us over.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
The Bush Administration is the most corrupt federal government the U.S. has had: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
A more explicit link to the sig above: Retired CIA Official Says Bush Is A War Criminal.
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Are you happy with the way your money is spent?
I used to think of Canadians as kinder/gentler versions of us Americans. Never did I think something like this would come out of Canada...read this I guess this isn't as obtrusive as Big Brother, let's call it Middle Brother... -ed xia
Hello?
Can you please tell me more about this firing of rockets into cities for two years?
I guess I was either asleep during the time or I was still catching up on the sixty years of bombings and bulldozing of cities and refugee camps.
I for one, welcome #($#&%$&# NO CARRIER
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Be prepared to throw one away. If you're not prepared, you'll still have to, but it will take longer to realize it, and you'll be more surprised.
Horribly paraphrased from `"The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering" by Frederick P. Brooks.
So, are we prepared to apply good software design methods to countries and governments? Is it time for agile development?
We already have a nice balance: government agencies can intercept voice communications at the endpoints, where they are (by necessity) analog. It has about the right amount of overhead: you need to physically bug the place or the phone.
The problem with trying to break encrypted messages is that it just can't be done: the government never knows whether they got it, and, on the other hand, such laws are likely primarily going to be used for harrassing people.
Israel? It has long been al Qaeda's prime goal to retake Spain! Why not give it to them? It's barely even attached to Europe?
The main lesson from all this - getting back to topic - is that civilization's worth defending. And civilization isn't whatever crazy belief set some group of people manages to share among them. Civilization is specifically an allegiance to bedrock values of science, individual freedoms, environmental preservation, and a flourishing of aesthetics that we cannot succeed or survive in any worthwhile way without. Fundamentalists and fascists and those who'd trash the Earth in the long term for a little short-term profit are arrayed against civilization.
Defeating these fascistic incursions on our basic liberties of communication is part of the front line defense of civilization's future. Defeating Hizbollah and the like is also part of the front-line defense - even if the currently fundamentalist, anti-science-leaning US government is necessarily the source of arms for Israel to do so. Heck, we got the Internet from the US government. Civilization takes raw materials where it finds them, and turns them to better use.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
As the Network Administrator for an ISP that has customers who use VoIP, I have had to read, understand and plan for CALEA. I can tell you: if the men in black show up without a warrant, they will not get access to customer data. If they come bearing a warrant, I will tap a single stream of data from a single customer, so no other customer data will be included. There is no need to fear conspiracy from responsible ISPs. There's no 'Carnivore' sitting in our data centers, you simply record all the in-out data for that specific site. It's very easy to do and very easy to ensure cleanliness of the output. As long as the 'onus' isn't on us, the ISP, to 'decode' VoIP or VPN data, I don't mind at all. But a warrant will be required.
How come when 90% of the population is against something they still can't do anything about it. This NSA thing with ATT is bad enough now they want to ruin VOIP. This is no longer the land of the free because the top 10% control everything and make all the decisions regardless of how the rest of the population feels about the matter.
The Saudi govt just says that to keep the public happy. 'al-qaeda' attacked the Saudi govt because they are complicit with the US administration. al-qaeda or any other islamic group would protect the holy cities to the end.
So if we were to totally stop supporting Israel, would that buy us protection from terrorist attacks?
There are dozens of other non-muslim countries. Why do you think only the US was attacked?
Israeli terrorism??? Hello?
You've got to be kidding, or I can't believe your ignorance. Do you have any idea how the Israelis treat arabs or even Indians for that matter?
And occupiers and settlers by definition are not civilians. You make the israelis sound like innocents in all this. Don't forget they didn't hesitate to destroy the USS Liberty
its a sad day when your average citazens biggest threat is its own government
Actually, your metaphor is flawed. The one more close to reality would be something like your "native americans" fighting to preserve their homes. Now, your government signs a treaty, saying that the "natives" can have some piece of land they previously owned, but they have to surrender the rest. Next your settlers come and make their houses just in that piece of land and call the troops to fend off the natives. So the natives sign another treaty, giving you a bit of their land to have some peace. You agree to remove your troops, but keep patrolling the roads and searching the homes of natives. After nth reitaration of the process there are no natives and you are finally able to sleep peacefully, knowing that what you have done was right, because the God is with you.
I enjoy the fact that Bush's antics have gotten so severely anti-American that people like you don't even bother to try and defend them anymore
People like me? You've obviously assumed that I'm some sort of partisan Republican blindly supporting Bush. I am not, and my comment said nothing to that effect. I am however sick of hearing the same unfunny, unclever, lame commentary on George Bush that obviously attempts to come across as clever. It's not clever, and I'm sick of hearing it. Similarly, I was sick of hearing incessant Clinton bashing in the 90s. It's just stupid.
In fact, all politicians are stupid. Anyone who thinks their side is brilliant while the other side are a bunch of cro-magnons really just has their eyes closed. Both sides use such people and make you a pawn in their political game.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Your analogy is weak, but you can improve it. A more apt analogy would be if native indians in the US on their reserves started to attack amaerican cities with homemade rockets.
Of course then we could all be shocked and wonder why anyone would do such a terrible thing after we afforded them so much free land on their reserves. We'd all look at each other in complete bewilderment and be aghast at their terrorism.
Then we would drive into their reserves with tanks, blow up all their houses and destroy their water and electricity infrastructure. Then we would all pat ourselves on the back about how well we handled that situation and how it was the right thing to do.
uh, its not the same, israel (govt) stole the land. oh, that's right... so did the USA. my bad. i guess it *is* the same.
i guess colonialism has its downsides, but they aren't all equal.
There cannot be peace while Hezbollah and Hamas continue firing missiles into Israel, and neither of them seem willing to stop, ever. So they have to be stopped. That means that Israel is doing the right thing. But sometimes doing the right thing - or helping someone else to do the right thing - upsets people who are doing the wrong thing. We should help them do the right thing anyway.
So what you are saying is that we can exact any old injustice on anyone at all, and as long as their not willing to concede defeat then it is the right thing to stop them (where stop is a euphamism for kill). I'm glad you have such a clear view on what is right and wrong.
In the meantime maybe you should read about the Balfour declaration wherein Britian promised the Zionists a piece of land called Palastine. It was thoughtful of one nation to promise to another nation the country of a third. Rational peace-loving folks might bristle at such a notion, but not Britian. Afterall, Palastine was a useless territory of the Ottoman empire; and the Ottomon empire had to be defeated if England was to be victorious during World War I, which also happens to be the reason the Brits reached out to the Zionists in the first place! Then you can read about how Palastinian land was 94% arab before WWI but already 32% Jewish by the end of WWII.
so... why not make your own custom voip protocol with strong encryption...
apply the idea of p2p darknets to voip...
let the govt sift through all that custom munged traffic.
sure it's security through obscurity (and hard encryption), but why open yourself up to snooping by using standards...
it's like waste vs napster... use waste, go off the beaten track... (or whatever private darknet is popular these days).
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
It isn't circular logic, it's feedback.
KFG
costumer electronics
You mean like the oscillating light on my Cylon outfit?
Do you know the difference?
As long as the key material is really random, not just generated-by-a-computer pseudo-random, one-time pad encryption is perfectly secure if applied correctly. No re-using pads, in other words (cf. Venona et al).
The definition of "perfectly secure" is a precise one: no attack by an enemy cryptanalyst can determine the correct plaintext with any greater probability than any other putative plaintext. I still like the idea of recording a CD full of static, or timing geiger counter hits, or some other random phenomenon, and using it to send secret email to my Mom.
Of course, if you use codes, you can say anything you like and nobody will know if "I'm buying groceries tomorrow" means you're actually going to the supermarket, or if the bomb is armed and ready go to off when you press the button...
...laura
> Second: Israeli terrorism??? Hello?
Israel is not the shining beacon of freedom and democracy you think it is.
To get a true idea of where Israel stands, consider the following:
1.) Israel had military cooperation with the Apartheid South African regime. The same White-Supremacist regime that is known to have been researching bioweopons that would selectively kill Black people. It is alleged that they helped S.A. build their first atomic weapons, in exchange for fissile material.
2.) Far worse, Israel helped arm the Guatemalan regime during its civil war, where at least 150,000 Indegenous people were exterminated in a widely-recognized genocide. Israel also helped train Guatemalan forces, many of who are suspected of death squad activities.
In my view, you only need to support *one* genocide in order to make bankrupt all claims of moral superiority.
Israel, Israelis, and their supporters should acknowledge and repudiate Israel's participation in the above two facts.
What next... a backdoor in Windows. MacOSX, Linux?
;)
You don't need a back door if the front door is wiiiiiiide open.
Victory or awesome!
Isreal are terrorists.
Isreal has a right to exist, the but to what extent should they be allowed to destroy Lebonon?
I think they've overstepped their bounds already. Consider the sensitive nature of that region of the world....
Isreal will appear as terrorists when they throw their power around as they are.
Isreal is certainly a victom of terrorism... that we all know, but that does not give them immunity, and the right to slaughter innocent people.
>And imagine that the people doing this (the Zapatistas, say) won the next Mexican presidential >election. Now they're the Mexican government. Then they fire some more rockets. Since they're the >government, that's now an act of war.
l
I believe the problem at the root of all this is that Israel is occupying Palestine (the place that was there before Israel was created). Of course the people who were there before, and got ejected from their land..don't like it, and want their land back..
So the above example would be like if the US took over all of Mexico and kicked out most of the mexicans who are now living there who are now refuged in Guatamala, firing rockets once in a while, so they can get their land back..
That is the situation really.
The bias in the news doesn't help much either..
ie. when Israelis bomb an arab residential area full of families & kids it reads
"Army today destroyed a terrorist outpost in Gaza killing 3 militants"
while when the arabs do the same thing to Israel, it reads
"terrorists attack residential area, 5 families and 6 children killed"
And, when the Israeli's do a 'kidnapping' of someone from the arab side, it reads
"Arab militants were detained and are being held today after a raid into a militant stronghold" (actually, indefinately, there are like 1000 arabs or more "kidnapped" and in Israeli jails)
And we worry about Iran "supporting" Hezbolla... and who is supporting Israel, and giving them their whole army for free, and all their bombs for free, and paying a very big hunk of their national budget so they can just go and terrorize everyone living around them? We are..the USA, with our tax dollars... shheeeh... no wonder we got 9/11... wake up people, and stop believing the stuff you see on CNN..
Go see
http://www.aljazeera.net/ (see what non pro-Israeli news bias looks like..this is the arab CNN,
press 'English' for English)
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.htm
All the 9/11, "war on terror".., crazy NSA and domestic spying stuff now happening in the is a direct result of *this* issue...so best to learn what is at the root of it all... its the above..
Really?
Israel believes their enemy has taken base in civilian locations. Perhaps Israel should just toss in the towel? "We'd like to bomb our enemies but, crap, they're living in grandma's basement. Guess we concede." Instead, they seem to be making an effort to tell civilians to get the hell out of dodge because the bombs will soon be dropping.
Yeah, it sure sucks for the families in Lebanon who likely don't really have anywhere else to go. Innocents are dying on both sides of the border and it's terrible. But it's pretty bold -- and, from what I've seen at least, wrong -- to say that Israel "doesn't actually try to avoid civilian casualties."
The same as befor but with even more hype?
Just some facts for you.
As an Israeli, I'm more than a little surprised to read that on Slashdot, I thought the people here were more slightly savvy, even we Israelis, we do not believe the propaganda so completely. Am I against the invasion? No, of course not, this is the only home we have and if Israel is to survive we need to increase our size - yet I clearly recognize the reason for the invasion.
In Israel, it is well known that this war was planned for over one year already!
Seriously though, thank you. Without the USA, Israel would be in the real trouble so you sorts of people a very useful to us. You may wish to install the Megaphone application from http://www.giyus.org/ - this tool will alert you to polls and articles so you can skew the results in Israel's favour.
Seriously though, thank you. Without the USA, Israel would be in the real trouble so you sorts of people a very useful to us.
Time to get an http://www.philzimmermann.com/>add-on encryption package if your VOIP unit doesn't do end-to-end encryption. That will put an end to most non-Government monitoring. The Government can always seize your computer and/or do a black bag job to plant monitoring devices if they deem it necessary. One can only hope there are checks and balances to keep unwarrented Government wiretaps at bay.
saved the country from having to do a nationwide recount. With the election results within about 1% do you really think no recount would have occured if the Electoral College didn't exist and you used a simple majority count?
If you thought recounting Florida was bad imagine the fun of recounting the WHOLE country. And that (or a revote of the "top two" with the potential for a recount there) is what would have been required if there was no Electoral College (look at the proposals to eliminate it). Even Senator Hillary Clinton who announced that she would introduce a bill to eliminate the Electoral College as her number one priority when she returned to session has been strangely quiet on the whole affair. No, the Electoral College is not the enemy and saved our bacon by limiting the damage.
Curiously, if Gore had let Bush had his way on what was recounted in Florida then Gore would have won. Even stranger is that Bush won because Gore got his original way (his camp kept changing what they wanted recounted as the numbers reflected negatively for their position) on what was recounted. The Supreme Court was forced to decide what was allowed to be recounted and essentially accepted the original Gore position.
...am glad to turn over all our packets that comply with RFC3514. That makes filtering on the ISP side so easy! What scares me is that the next Intelligence Appropriation bill could mandate compliance with this, and make it a national secret that we are now requiring the use of "evil filtering".
As the other reply has observed, the NSA's job is to spy on communications outside the U.S., which includes monitoring your phone calls. Think about the legality here: whatever privacy or communications monitoring laws might exist in Brazil or Japan certainly don't apply to the NSA. They can do whatever they want if they can do it remotely, i.e. without having illegal monitoring stations in the target country, but instead relying on radio and satellite interception, etc.
This logic underlies the UKUSA alliance and the Echelon signals intelligence monitoring program: a group of countries who cooperate can each collect information on each other's citizens without violating their own laws. Exchanging that information isn't illegal, as long as none of the governments collects information on their own citizens. Isn't it fun to see governments working around the limits of their own laws?
Israel is targeting housing districts? Not at all. They are targeting Hezzbollah rockets and Hezzbollah weapon caches and Hezzbollah offices and Hezzbollah militants.
And guess what? Shock of shocks, Hezzbollah places those things in... housing districts.
You seriously expect Israel to sit still while a barrage of military rockets are fired across the border and into its cities? Is there ANY NATION ON EARTH that would NOT consider that entirely justified grounds for war?
It is impossible to have a one-sided cease fire. If some angry rogue individual or gang on either side starts tossing bombs across international borders and killing people, then *a* government must step in to enforce a peace. That must either be done as a nice clean local police action by the government responsible for one side of the border, or it must be done as a messy external military action by the government on the other side of the border.
It is impossible to have a one-sided cease fire. Israel simply wants the Lebanese government to take responsibility for its own territory and its own borders. Israel wants the Lebonese army to move south and secure and police their own border. If the Lebanese government is unwilling or unable to secure their own border, if the Lebanese government is unwilling or unable to police their own population to enforce a peace, then there is no possible alternative than for Israel to deal with it.
It certainly sucks when innocent bystanders get killed. But when there is is a legitimate target - if for example a police officer legitimately aims at a murderer and accidentally shoots and kills a bystander pregnant woman, well that police officer is still the Good Guy. The difference between "Good Guy who unfortunately hit a bystander" and "Terrorist" is in the intent to target a combatant vs the indiscriminant intent to kill civilians at random.
Hezzbollah simply and indisciminantly wants to kill. Hezzbollah not only doesn't attempt to avoid civilian causualties and housing districts, they absolutely REVEL in it. When someone hits a supermarket and celebrates that they killed a bunch of mothers for the sake of killing a bunch of mothers, that puts them pretty solidly in the "Bad Guy" catagory.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yeah, and that's working so well. Next you'll be telling me the hundreds of Lebanese civillians killed by Israeli airstrikes were killed because of their own stupidity.
Israel's modus operandi is to (a) tell the press that they always try to avoid casualties, (b) go ahead and bomb a housing district flat, and (c) when dozens or hundreds of innocent bystanders are killed, including children, tell the press that they didn't know that people were living in the housing districts and/or that militants were killed so the ends justified the means. They've been doing this stuff in Palestine for years.
Voice communication (and really anything that is important, but something you just need to hear or read once) can be encrypted - make it a really strong key if you like. Decrypt and listen on your end, and then destroy the key such that it could never be retrieved. Then you have nothing to reveal, because it simply does not exist. They can threaten you, or whatever, but leverage goes both ways - their threats are essentially just blackmail to get something out of you. Unless they're being vindictive assholes or you've broken some law by transmitting encrypted data and killing the key, it likely won't go past that point.
As for suspects being required to turn over keys, fuck that. At least for the time being in my country anyway, I'm innocent until proven guilty - and I sure as hell don't have to contribute anything which might fuel their case (not that I am guilty of anything, but I sure wouldn't help them learn any information that could be twisted).
Lawyer: "Your honor, we have this encrypted data that was sent from that guy to XYZ-Group, clearly he's guilty of something."
Judge: "Have you decrypted the data, recovered the key, or do you have any idea what is even there?"
Lawyer: "Well, no, not really. But,..."
Judge: "Sir, what did you send them?"
Defendant: "My grocery list. Cabbage, mung bean sprouts, and some corned beef. That sort of thing."
Judge: "Evidence not valid, it doesn't prove shit."
Proof is just that - actual proof. Encryption is as strong as the algorithm and key strength used, as well as protection of the key itself. If you pick some insanely strong algorithm and a key that would take hundreds of years to break, option two is really the weak point. Either protect the key so well nobody will ever get it, or destroy the key since it's likely outlived its usefulness at this point anyway. Keep it on a CD and burn it to ash, or whatever you have to do.