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Feds Overstate Software Piracy's Link To Terrorism
Lucas123 writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey claims that terrorists sell pirated software as a way to finance their operations, without presenting a shred of evidence for his case. He's doing it to push through a controversial piece of intellectual property legislation that would increase IP penalties, increase police power, set up a new agency to investigate IP theft, and more. 'Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities,' Mukasey told a crowd at the Tech Museum of Innovation last week."
When has the government ever presented a shred of evidence for any of their radical claims and crusades?
Normally I am very reserved when it comes to political commentary. However, this time I simply cannot help but note that the show has certainly reached a new low, and we should all be ashamed of ourselves.
It is absolutely despicable that we've become so fat and complacent, that we allow our government to pull these sorts of stunts. Looking at the proposed legislation, one should note that IP infringement might be punished more severely than rape, if these laws are to become real. Actually, we should see the whole thing as a rape... the rape of our Constitution, and every value that made our society ever so slightly better than the regimes we like to fight so much.
Everything that's illegal and/or generally not approved of by the US government "supports the terrorists".
Smoke locally grown pot (as most pot in the US is): you're supporting the terrorists!
Download your music through a peer to peer network: you're supporting the terrorists!
Pirate your software: you're supporting the terrorists!
It's the red scare all over again, but with a different enemy, isn't it? "Don't forget to go spend all your money on things you don't need and can't afford. If you don't spend more than you make and support our corporate buddies, you clearly want the terrorists to win."
what's that now?
I would like to thank the millions of people who voted for Bush twice (in no more than two elections), and for Congressional Republicans for something like seven or more times, for making our country both safer and freer, and operated with more integrity, just like y'all said it would be.
But I can't, because that would be a lie.
--
make install -not war
It really is quite shameful, I've seen software pirates. They are the dudes on the side streets of Shanghai selling "Genuine Windows Vista" DVD's for a dollar (about 7 RMB). They most certainly are not terrorists.
And to answer your question, next the government will claim terrorists are raising funds through an elaborate cheese laundering operation. First stealing US Gov. Cheese, then selling it on the black market at fantastic profit margins. Everyone, please turn in your local Dairy Farmer (he's undoubtedly in on the operation)!
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Wow, the Bush Administration has picked some real winners for that ol' Attorney General position. I really hoped they would replace Gonzales with someone who has a little more integrity. Unfortunately for the nation, it seems they're more interested in lapdogs who will parrot the Administration's version of reality, no matter the cost.
Moving on to Mukasey specifically, this little fib isn't the only time he's tried to distort reality. Just a few days ago, he stated there had been "a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."
The interesting thing about this comment is that it's impossible to know whether it's true. This supposed call was not referred to after 9/11, nor during the 9/11 Commission hearings, nor at any other time until last Thursday.
However, even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, his arguments that draw on this statement are lies. This is because he made this comment in support of increased surveillance, and also to support the despicable circumvention of the justice system with regard to telecom companies.
The lie is that "we knew about this call but we weren't able to do anything because only with this new, super-powered law can we do that". The surveillance laws at the time he says this call took place absolutely allowed the government to listen in on it. They didn't even need a warrant, as even under the older FISA law, warrants were not needed for calls that comes into the US from outside it.
He lied again when he voiced support for putting telecom companies above the law. Even though Mukasey was a federal judge, he claimed that the telco lawsuits would let the whole world know how our intelligence organizations operate.
Fellow Slashdotters, I hope you join me in saying: what the fuck?! We can't continue to let these clowns get away with shit like this. I admit I've been as lazy as most "concerned citizens" in the US seem to be lately, but seriously, I cannot allow my democracy to be flushed down the toilet by a bunch of arrogant fucks who think they can get away with whatever they want.
Like I said above, I protested against Clinton's military adventures. But none of the things you describe amount to the pervasive expansion of federal police power under the Republicans - from the creation of a "Department of Homeland Security" (my God, what an Orwellian phrase) to the defense of torture, extraordinary renditions, no-fly lists, etc. By creating institutions like DHS, these changes are built into the government, rather than being rogue operations of otherwise reasonable organizations.
This isn't even really a left/right thing (well, the right as an actual cultural force, if not as the political expression of conservatism, is closer to the cultural of nationalist values and bellicosity, but..) It's what the Republicans have chosen to exploit for political capital. I attribute it to Rove's neo-conservatism, not to the historical Republican party. But them's still the facts on the ground. (And Rove, Rumsfeld, etc all share origins in the Nixon administration's realignment of the Republican party.)
I have been looking at the evidence over the years and it seems that terrorists are more likely to get funding from making and selling illegal drugs than from marginal activities like copying software.
The total spend on illegal drugs in the US alone is over $1 trillion!. This money goes to organized crime, gangsters, crooked police and politicians, and to terrorists.
Have a look at Afghanistan, which is currently supplying a large percentage of the world's heroin trade. The funds are then used to fight the US, NATO and other allies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Just another cost of the "war on drugs". Current US drug policies, which are also forced on the rest of the world, are widely recognized to be counter-productive. And why? The side-effects of heroin are constipation and the risk of overdose. Overdose is a problem caused by erratic potencies, which is a result of illegality.
However certain people make a lot of money from the war on drugs. Thus the policy does not change.
This looks to me, to be a move by the current head of the fbi to either attack the internet, or control it.
First we saw wikileaks get shut down by the courts, something completely unheard of, but it happened.
Then we see the story of the illegal hyperlinks and fbi stings.
Now we have the story of the fbi claiming that the terrorists are also software pirates.
I'm waiting for them to say the terrorists run linux and post on Slashdot. Also combine this with the battle over network neutrality.
Can someone piece together the big picture? Am I seeing a conspiracy where there is no conspiracy? Is this just about the fbi trying to increase it's power? Is this part of a strategy to attack the net? What exactly is going on?
I think you have to look why many principled conservatives are now supporting Obama: people like Andrew Bacevich, Lew Rockwell, and Douglas Kmiec. I really believe that only a neo-conservative administration - and except for Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller, all the neocons are Republican and the majority of Republicans are neo-con - would have gotten us into Iraq.
Douglas Kmiec's basis for supporting Obama is an interesting one, as well, because it seems he is one of the few people who actually has been listening to what Obama has been saying and watching what he has been doing. Obama is a Democrat who tells the underclass to stop relying on the state, being particularly critical of the culture of dependence that has harmed the African American poor over the past several decades. This doesn't make Obama a conservative. He's not. But then, who is? Certainly not McCain.