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US Policy Would Allow Government Access to Any Email

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the what's-the-date-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is currently helping to draft a new Cyber-Security Policy that could make the debate over warrantless wiretaps seem like a petty squabble. The new policy would allow the government to access to the content of any email, file transfer, or web search."

24 of 516 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And what is it going to do about my encryption keys?

    Not that I support this, but I sure as hell don't intend to make it easy for people to invade my privacy when I'm not doing anything illegal.

    1. Re:Really? by ashridah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Taking your comment on face value, this only really works if you're communicating with a peer whom you already know, *and* whom you already have exchanged public keys with, in a trusted manner (no, a key on a public key chain isn't trusted, if you don't know why, then you fail at cryptography).

      This doesn't work for public discussion lists, or even private ones, unless they're very strictly controlled.
      It also doesn't help for p2p traffic, as those are between two essentially anonymous parties, and thus, have no way to prevent a man in the middle attack, even if they DO use encryption (unless the tracker mediates, which, for most implementations that I've seen, it doesn't, even if it's using SSL)

      The simple fact of the matter is that encryption is the wrong mechanism to solve this problem. Removing power from your government is the right mechanism, ideally.

    2. Re:Really? by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd just go with the 5th ammendment defense - I don't have to tell you things that could incriminate me.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    3. Re:Really? by WaltBusterkeys · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In contrast, I'm posting not as AC and taking the risk.

      That said, there are NO sources for this statement. The PDF link gives a 404 and they don't explain what they meant other than using broad terms. It sounds like a lot of FUD without a source to back it up. Does anybody have the PDF? If not then I'd like to see more sources than just an un-signed editorial on Raw Story.

    4. Re:Really? by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "I'd just go with the 5th ammendment defense - I don't have to tell you things that could incriminate me."

      So, how exactly is revealing a password any more incriminating than say, allowing police into your home -which is "standard practice"?

      -Don't tell us that you killed her -which would be incriminating, just tell us your password -which is something absolutly neutral.

    5. Re:Really? by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You don't have to 'let' them into your home - they need a search warrant for that. Enough evidence and they can even drill the lock and such - you don't have to tell them where your key is.

      Still, as long as the constitution holds out, they can ask you your password and you can plead the fifth.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    6. Re:Really? by iminplaya · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...as long as the constitution holds out...

      C'mon. You should know by now that the constitution went belly up back in 1798. Well, the bill of rights anyway. The parliamentary stuff in the main body is still holding up.

      --
      What?
    7. Re:Really? by ecitizen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." In this case, the Supreme Court ruled years ago that privacy is a freedom. If you look at what the FBI did to Martin Luther King years ago in their attempts to discredit him, you'll see what happens when you lose your privacy. If you give government power, eventually, they will abuse it. --E-Citizen

    8. Re:Really? by berzerke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't feel comfortable taking such a narrow interpretation of the bill of rights that only things that are literally and directly incriminating are protected.

      Sadly, it doesn't matter what you feel comfortable with. It's what a judge feels comfortable with. And lately they seem to be quite comfortable with broad, in some cases overreaching IMHO, interpretations of the bill of rights.

    9. Re:Really? by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      What is dangerous about this is, it is not about just email, it is about all you Internet communications. Searching, file download, web sites visited (you download html), so the can create a full, in their interpretation psychological profile of you ie. we think you are guilty hence you are. Want to be a free thinking democratic voter under a republican government, based upon failing a range of pre established filters and data relations, they can ensure you are excluded from society as much as possible, no access to any public transport, no access to any government employment, no access to any 'secure' contracted to government private employment, random destructive searches of your person and property as well as all the members of your family resident at that address.

      Want to try to deny you disagree against government policy, or that you wont vote to keep them in power, or that you don't 100% agree with a corporation that supports the current government and your life and the future of your family will be systemically targeted. Unless you publicly support them and their chosen evangelical religion of power and control, you will become the enemy, and will be accused and judged by the 21st century Internet inquisition and potentially targeted for harsh interogation techniques.

      Don't fit their current preferred 'mold' of what they define to be a good, white, evangelical, american and honestly how well will you and your family fare under the 21st century Internet inquisition. Conspire to be free and believe in democracy and justice and you will learn how easily conspiracy laws can be abused.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. The Constitution... by zulater · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...is sadly dying. But it's ok because if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide right?

    1. Re:The Constitution... by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well except that there is no proof that this is true. That story is kinda short on any proof at all.
      email? Does anybody think that email is private? It is sent in clear text so I would say that it is as private as a postcard.
      There is an election coming soon. So for those that really fear this find out where the candidates stand on it.
      Then vote.
      BTW don't focus so much on the President BTW take a hard look at your congressional reps.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    2. Re:The Constitution... by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      why must we have to justify privacy? it's obvious to anyone that if a letter isn't addressed to you then it's an invasion of privacy regardless of the measures we take to stop you.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    3. Re:The Constitution... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      email? Does anybody think that email is private? It is sent in clear text so I would say that it is as private as a postcard.

      As I say in every discussion of this nature, "private" in the sense of "can a police officer legally look at this and use it as evidence?" is completely different than in the sense of "could a malicious person who wanted to snoop on what I was saying possibly look at this, the law be damned?"

      E-mail is about as physically private as a letter. They are fairly trivial to read but it does require you take take deliberate action to do so. As opposed to a post card which could literally fall out of the postman's hand text-up and be read by accident, other people's emails don't just randomly show up on your screen even if you are an email server sysadmin.

      And thanks to recent precedent email is becoming -legally- as private as a letter. Which to repeat, is a different standard, and regardless of the fact that letters are easy to read, they are still considered private. So while a malicious mail man could read your mail whenever they chose, a cop who wanted their evidence to stand up at trial could not without a warrant.

      We need to remember both of these. First if you want real privacy even from malicious people, you need to encrypt your email. Second, we still need to keep unencrypted email to be legally private, since otherwise the idea is that if the police -can- read your encrypted emails then they don't count as private and thus no warrant is needed.

      There is an election coming soon. So for those that really fear this find out where the candidates stand on it.
      Then vote.
      BTW don't focus so much on the President BTW take a hard look at your congressional reps.

      True that. Sadly enough it's hard enough to get specific answers on what the Presidential candidates' stances are on the subject, much less all the representatives.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    4. Re:The Constitution... by pilgrim23 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A new product is all the rage in the District these days:
          Bill of Rights Toilet Paper (tm)
      It comes with all 10 printed on each sheet. Congress Critters find it to be heavy duty absorbent. Somehow though, that stuff you water the Tree of Liberty with seems to slip through anyway, just a little, but it slips through....

      --
      - Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
  3. He's just stretching the constraints by blair1q · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so he can get through something we would consider "less onerous" but is still an affront to the Constitution.

  4. They found a way to make encryption mainstream! by Drake42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because you can be damn sure that if they pass this law people will finally make sure to heavily encrypt what they say on the internet.

    Then again, it's almost certain that they're already reading all the e-mail. This law is probably just to prevent them from getting sued about it later. Ug

  5. I got an idea.... by bherman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When the White House produces their missing emails, we'll produce ours
    That should sufficiently prevent this from becoming law!

    --
    Error: Sig not found.
    1. Re:I got an idea.... by EriDay · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Ass Hats running our government have it backward. We're supposed to be able to read their communications, and they aren't supposed to be able to read ours.

  6. You can't let the terrorists win by MosesJones · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You need to have this sort of thing because you can't let the terrorists win, so what if you have to give up basic fundamental rights like privacy at least the terrorists won't have won.....

    Oh hang on we were fighting for freedom and liberty weren't we? So you need to give up all your freedoms to protect your freedom? You'd almost thought that the government was a repressive regime that wanted to subjugate people.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  7. Who cares? by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Regardless of the laws, we've already seen that the telecoms will grant the government whatever access it wants. If they get busted, they'll go cry to Congress for retroactive protection. Same results with or without legal protection of your privacy.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
  8. Re:Diminishing returns by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think you miss the point. The data will be mined after the fact or to build a case against someone the gov't doesn't like.

    Let's say you do something to piss some mucky-muck off and you get on the monitor list. It's only a matter of time before you mention in passing that you copied a DVD or any other heinous crime and bingo! The FBI/Federal marshals/etc are at your door.

    Paranoid? I grew up in a communist state. I hate to think I've escaped to one, too....

  9. Re:Diminishing returns by KublaiKhan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's really the only way it could be useful at all; as a method of detection, there's no real way that one could find anything useful with that sort of shotgun approach at all.

    But if the government really wants your hide, then they'll have it whether they have any real evidence or not--witness Cardinal Richelieu's words: "Give me four lines written by the most innocent of men, and in them I will find something to hang him." That was just as true then as now.

    --
    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure dome decree
  10. No sources by WaltBusterkeys · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems the above comment focuses on "will probably" without sources, much like the Raw Story unsigned editorial.

    Has anybody actually SEEN the draft so that we can comment on it intelligently without relying on "I think the US government is bad, so I'm going to assume they're doing horrible things"? The PDF link in the Rawstory unsigned editorial doesn't work, so it's awfully hard to evaluate their claims. The homepage of Rawstory makes their bias pretty clear, so I'm inclined to not just take their word.