Slashdot Mirror
Security Threat In the New Wiretapping Law
The NSA wants automatic surveillance capabilities in telephone switches. But once such capabilities are built in, others could use them to intercept communications. Within 10 years this could render the US vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups across the globe, as well as from the military establishments of other nations. "Such threats are not theoretical: In April 2004, phones belonging to members of the Greek government, including the prime minister, were spied on with wiretapping software that was misused."
Only Communist China and North Korea have such interests in implementing technology like this. Hell Bejing already is monitored 24x7.
I remember a quote from Reagan: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
My oh my has that come true. Sadly from the leader of his own party. Something needs to be done?
http://saveie6.com/
If you're arguing that mandatory wiretapping ports are a bad idea because they make the system vulnerable to attack, are you then saying that you would not be opposed to such ports if there were no security threat posed by them?
When you muddy the waters to fight only the battle right in front of you, you risk losing sight of the bigger goals and make yourself vulnerable to counterattacks.
This is not good. What happens when people know that other people can listen to their conversations is that they watch what they say, which makes democracy (if that is your thing) loose its value. Democracy can only exist as long as there is free speech. When free speech disappears, so does democracy. In addition I believe that this will have negative consequences for gays, political activists, people with illnesses etc. No one but you and the people you tell something, have any right to know what that something is. There will be leaks, you can not prevent that without taking extreme measures.
I'm afraid of laws turning from legal to illegal what used to be normal pastime and normal behaviour. Germany just recently outlawed "hacking tools", most of which are perfectly fine tools to monitor and audit the security of your own box. Copyright laws becoming more and more intrusive, to the point where copyright holders want to control the tools you use to play their content.
I'm not breaking the law. But I'm quite afraid of me not changing my behaviour and yet still being a criminal over night, without even noticing. Even under different circumstances, the chance that a law gets passed that outlaws what used to be normal practice is nonzero. Under these circumstances, it's even likely.
So that's what I'm afraid of when I'm giving up privacy. That for some reason what I do might be considered illegal in the forseeable future. And, well, ya know, when he's been doing it while it was legal, will he continue when it's illegal? Even if I cease to do it, I'll be watched with suspicion and should I be tried, whether justified or innocent, my past actions (back when they were legal) will be used against me, with the allegation that I might have continued to do so when it was outlawed. It's also a convenient pretense when a warrant is necessary against me.
Yes, I do not trust the government of my country. Why the hell should I? They don't trust me neither.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From a logical point of view, it's more reasonable to support child predators whan total surveillance. The former only threatens a part of society, the latter the whole.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Didn't Hollywood teach you about the consequences of speaking about secret things over the phone?
Sure, with the electronic surveillance systems phone spying may be easier to accomplish en masse, bringing us one step closer to Old Bro (which requires not only monitoring to be -possible-, but to be efficient enough to be performed, analyzed, and acted upon on a regular basis...
But the truth still remains that phone networks were never, ever, EVER secure to begin with, and it would be naive to think that we were living in a safe and secure communications era until today.
It has been a long standing tenet in communications security, from CIA-level to your local small business, that there is no such thing as a secure (physical) comms. line, and the only way to ensure security is to use encryption (at which case your security is as good as it's weakest link, be it the key strength, random gen. quality, social factor, or w/e). Well newsflash: that doesn't work in the analog phone system, and never has.
If you need things kept secure, send them digitally encrypted. If you need things even more secure, don't transmit them at all. The public phone system has never been secure, nor will it ever be, whether against government interceptors or a teen phreaker. Live with it.
If they have nothing to hide, why isn't every communication between lobbyists and politicians recorded and publicly declared.
If they have nothing to hide, why is not the activity of every law enforcement officer recorded whilst they are on duty, rather than a taser to torture why not a video camera to record.
If they have nothing to hide, why secret no fly lists.
Let's all of us give up our secrets and privacy at the same time or maybe lets start with the people who are in such a hurry to take our privacy whilst keeping their own dirty secrets, which will be the most interesting, our little white lies, or the massive whoppers of the corrupt corporate executives, the typical lying politician, the abusive power freak law enforcement officer, and of course the biggest liars of all lobbyists.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
When your weapons are used against you, you have to wonder if you really needed that weapon in the first place. And people should question why we let you have that weapon. Of course this all assumes that people have an influence on the government, which seems like we haven't for quite a long time, if ever. But I digress, this can all be summed up by a child in a cartoon:
Calvin and Hobbes
Clearly, this isn't a partisan issue. The bill that just passed did so with the approval of the democratic controlled congress. People are playing partisan games over this because, unfortunately, it makes political sense to do so. Politics don't help anyone make rational decisions, though, so let's get them out of the way.
Clearly, there is a security case to be made for listening to phone calls without warrants. If a known member of al-Qaeda makes a call into the united states, there isn't time to ask a judge to approve a wiretap. Even more clearly, the power to tap phones could very easily be abused. This is slashdot; we're all paranoid here. Having phones with built in mechanisms for wiretapping is just asking for all kinds of trouble.
I think the most rational response to this is to recognize the usefulness of such a program, and then attempt to design one that is as impervious to manipulation as possible. General rules that have proven useful for this sort of thing in the past:
Ultimately, though, it's not our laws that keep us safe. It's not the Constitution that protects our liberties. We are free because we have a culture that values freedom above almost all else. Personally, I think it's a culture worth aggressively defending. Will we sacrifice some freedom in the defense of freedom? Of course. From a historical perspective, all American wars have resulted in the citizenry being less free. Lincoln and Wilson both threw detractors in jail. Nobody is proposing that here. The loss of freedom is extremely mild from an historical perspective. When the struggle is over, the freedoms will return like they always have in the past, as long as we demand them, which we will. If you think the struggle is never going to be over; you're absolutely right. Until we get everybody in the country as committed to destroying al-qaeda as they are to protecting moslems from being offended and suspected terrorist's phone calls from being interpreted, nothing is going to get accomplished.
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