Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Right. In two short years, Hillary will be taking her turn with all of the expanded executive powers that Dubya is indulging in. Then it'll be your turn to stammer, "Uh, hey, wait a minute, guys, this executive-dictatorship thing isn't so cool."
The worm will turn. It always does.
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?
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.
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...