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US Policy Would Allow Government Access to Any Email
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."
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.
I guess we'll just have to do this the old-fashioned way. Now accepting (paper) applications for the next Paul Revere.
When the White House produces their missing emails, we'll produce ours
That should sufficiently prevent this from becoming law!
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This article is entirely speculation. The only source it links to is an article that was not printed, and the link points to a 404 page.
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....
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....
Tell the highest levels of the intelligence community what you think about this idea by picking up a phone and calling any number.
I know, it's not original.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
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
Seriously. There are already libraries such as FLTK and QT for the graphic front end. For the back end, you could use XySSL, OpenSSL, or even GNU GPG.
I'm about 20 hours into an encryption client, and I've already got people using it. I initially wanted to use GPG, but realized that most technophobes won't go for a command line application. So I pulled out FLUID (the FLTK design utility) and had a prototype working within hours.
Today, there's no excuse for not encrypting your email. I realize that you may think you have Constitutional rights in this regard, but GW & Co. have the guns, the taxpayer financing, and even the (unsolicited!) cooperation of the major network carriers. It doesn't matter what you think the Constitution says if you can't even get a trial. You're on your own from here on out.
So why encrypt, even if you've nothing to hide? Well, simple, really. Why let the government violate the 4th ammendment with impunity? If you encrypt your email, the government can't perform secret, mass surveillance. Sure, they can pound on your door, and even demand the key. You might even have to give it to them. But in them doing so, you've achieved three key goals:
Encryption is highly Constitutional (TM) software. It keeps terrorists from eavesdropping on our conversations, knowing our whereabouts, and stealing our valuable intellectual property. If the government can't read my email, neither can the terrorists.
Be patriotic. Support the Constitution. Encrypt everything.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The main obstacle to mass encryption these days is Microsoft. I expect to be skating over Hell's frozen wasteland before Microsoft adopts encryption in Outlook/Hotmail.
I've been encrypting and signing mail in Outlook Express and Outlook for years. The certificates are installed via XENROLL.DLL or CERTENROLL.DLL. Windows actually has a really good encrytion API.
If you go here you can get a free e-mail certificate. Once you install it to the cryptography store you can sign and encrypt mail in any Microsoft email program. If you use the Windows Live Mail application you can encrypt messages in Hotmail too.
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
Defense...
"I don't recall"