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Community Choice Award "Most Likely to be Shut Down By Govt"
Last week we took nominations for a Slashdot category at the SourceForge Community Choice awards. Our category was 'Most Likely to be Shut Down By Government Agency'. Your nominations were tallied, and we arbitrarily selected a few that we think are the best. Today is the day where you can at long last determine the winner, using the incredibly scientifically accurate Slashdot Poll. Our nominees are
Truecrypt,
EFF Patent Busting,
GNU Software Radio,
WikiLeaks,
Cryptome.org,
Tor,
Freenet,
and CowboyNeal.
Slashdot of course!
TrueCrypt has already changed it's name to TueCrypt to avoid pursuit.
Wait? What is CowboyNeal.org? Or you meant he /. editor?
Oh, your talking about that young boys thing?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Hmmmm... any government agency? Based on the earlier story, it seems the U5 governments should be on the list, being shutdown by some Chinese Government agency ...
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
Among the nominees, it's the biggest threat to the governments themselves. And make no mistake, the governments will deal with threats to itself before others.
412077696e6e657220697320796f7521da
It offers them an easy chance to sniff traffic people consider private.
Missing Option: All of the above...
I challenge anyone to even find one credible attempt by anyone in government to shut down one of the nominees.
This story is just hysterical scaremongering.
I see a typo.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I've lost track. Is the **AA is counted as a government agency, or is the government counted as an **AA agency? Can anyone clarify?
I hate to whine-- well all right, in point of fact I love to whine-- but this poll is going to be a little difficult to do without links to the projects. I know, I know, Google and all that, but the whole point of the Web in general, and a blog in particular, is linking. Some of us might not be familiar with one or more of these projects, and/or might want to get at them before they are, in fact, shut down by the government.
So, uh, please?
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
The current Slashdot Poll is about utensils. The Article Poll seems more relevant.
CowboyNeal as the project we'd most like for govt to shutdown?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I read the earlier story, but it only now just occurred to me that another prime candidate for this is YouTube. The freedom to "Broadcast Yourself" is scary in a lot of general contexts that have already led to a number of government agency censorships around the world.
Also, giving Google the ability to self-censor the content posted (currently, I believe objectionable violence and pornography is banned by the TOS) provides for a bias on the site.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
What difference does it make if something is "likely" to get shut down by a government agency?
It matters if something is actually shut down. The answers on this "likely" poll are just a measure of the prejudice (in the dictionary sense of the word prejudice) of the people answering the question.
Where's the answer for "none of them should be shut down, but I prefer to keep an open mind and deal with reality rather than wallow in my own preconceptions about things that haven't happened yet"?
I don't get it, why would the government want to shut down a sci-fi/fantasy publisher?
Unless... I knew it! That whole wheel of time thing really WAS a government conspiracy designed to cause me to fail out of junior high/high school/college! I thought it was a little fishy when RJ supposedly passed away just before finishing the final installment.
confuse and throw the gov. off the Wikileaks trail.
It's got to be WikiLeaks. It's one of the only sites to post that completely crazy garbage that Scientology calls the "OT" levels. And who can forget that draft version of ACTA that got mention here?
Wikileaks has a legal team and the balls to use them to keep running, but that likely won't stop the insensitive clods in the government.
The government doesn't shut down websites. They can't, legally, unless there's something criminal going on.
Those buffoons in the government could not shut do a wex!#2 4
Given that most governments now consider George Orwell's classic: 1984 more as an instruction manual than a warning, someone should make it clear to the govt. that we are not asking them to close these sites down.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Lets see, you can encode or decode any signal... hdtv, gps. Create ad hoc networks. Communicate directly to others using unknown protocols over an essentially analog medium that cannot be recorded exactly. And you aren't plugged into the grid... there's no account numbers and monthly fees so the man doesn't even know you are doing any of this.
Some people say 'wikileaks' because the man doesn't want you knowing, but imo worse than that is the man not knowing. The man being any of the govt, riaa, mpaa, cable, bells, etc.
This is the 2000's. The government won't shut down anything. They'll just get their corporate buddies to sic their lawyers on the companies until the money runs out, then the sites will shut themselves down.
As a last resort, I guess the corporations will need to "ask" the government to "step in" to protect some trade secret or stop some piracy, but the government won't just march in and take the servers.
That's what the RIAA is for.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
As much as I think TPTB would like to kill off truecrypt (assuming it's on their radar), it can live on with underground distribution since it's a software project. Development might grind to a halt, since no one could easily validate the source for various underground successor projects. But checksums for the last known, good version would be as easy to find elsewhere as a bootleged disc of code.
The whole point of Wikileaks is to make things public, so driving leaked documents repositories underground would make them indistinguishable from conspiracy theorists and the lunatic fringe.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
I agree. The Community Choice Award is the most likely to be shut down by the government.
--- What?
Well.. if the government "shuts EFF Patent Busting down" by fixing the patent system, then that would be a Good Thing.
Seriously, even the patent office is complaining about the backlog of patents. I think they want a solution as much as the rest of us.
What a relief.
I guess we're all safe, just as long as there aren't any laws or regulations that these websites might be violating. I'm sure the authors of Freenet double-check their regulatory compliance every week. After all, the index volume for the Code of Federal Regulations is only 1100 pages, and the other 50 volumes can't be too much bigger. And why even bother reading the US Code? You barely have to skim the thing to determine that there could never be anything illegal about providing assistance to third parties who want to covertly transmit large amounts of unspecified data.
Thank you Slashdot readers. Your research has been a great help. We will get right on this.
Sincerely,
U.S. Govt.
Damn, I clicked before I saw all the nominations. I'd have voted hot grits too had I seen it.
Wait, I still don't see it? Cowboy Neal must have eaten 'em. Somebody put a lasso 'round that boy and tie him to a chair before he eats TOR and wikileaks!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I went with Mr. Neal because all the other options are products of our society. You can try to suppress society, but it will only rise up against you. You can however take someone out of society and effectively martyr them. Their voice may remain, but their influence diminished. Everything else will reappear in a different form possibly greater than its predecessor. Even taking someone out of society may have little effect on their cause if their cause is strong enough.
I must have been busy with something really really important or I would have nominated
. . . . . the Sirius and XM satellite radio merger
. . . . . the United States Patent Office
. . . . . the border between the United States and Mexico
. . . . . Amtrak
either Truecrypt or Tor since they can easily be labeled to the public as terrorist tools. Thinkofthegovt! Panic!!
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Even though it would be delicious irony for them to shutdown TOR - after all, the US Navy created it - I would say TrueCrypt.
TOR (and Freenet) is too easy to co-opt. Anyone can locally modify their copy of the software and deploy "spyware enhanced" entry and exit nodes. Traffic between the exit node and final destination is not (TOR) encrypted. Also, even if otherwise encrypted, traffic analysis is useful due to the fact that entry and exit traffic can be correlated.
TrueCrypt, however, represents a real problem. While it would be easy enough to foist a back-doored version on to most potential TrueCrypt users, the people who are really serious about keeping their private information private, would build from source and be extremely careful about where they got the source from.
On the other hand, truly shutting down an open source project is likely impossible. Also, it is virtually certain that the software has been extensively analyzed for implementation weaknesses, so it might be decided to allow users to think they are secure.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Better than ANY /. poll before, this one's giving me an aneurysm trying to decide which to vote for. In keeping with the political theme, I guess I'll have to vote early, vote often, but keep changing my selection! I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist (well, once in a while), but I think all of these have a high chance of being hit. Well, except for Cowboy Neal. He's too powerful; he's immune!
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
2600
For those of you to whom the number "2600" has no meaning, the courts stopped 2600.org from posting and even linking to DeCSS or the source code (which the last I saw was seven lines of code and still shrinking). It is the website of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. Amazing that anyone at slashdot hasn't heard of it.
The courts held that source code isn't speech, pissing off a LOT of programmers who only know a few languages, all of which are computer languages.
</script>
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
wikileaks is the only one that deals directly with money. all the other are toys.
I mean seriously, the government already illegaly tried to shut them down...
It's hosted in the US, right? Known people run it, right? (I think those are both true, I can't be bothered to spend two minutes googling to find out).
So people are posting trade secrets, things that they probably signed contracts not to distribute when they were hired by these companies, and somehow they think it's legal? I think the only whistleblowers that are protected are the ones that report those internal secrets directly to the government. No other outlet is technically legal, right? Freedom of speech, right to protest, yeah, yeah. It may or may not matter because most of us signed contracts when we were hired by these powerful companies to keep their secrets secret, as well as a non-compete clause. You can fight those contracts in the courts, but you are bound by their rules unless a judge determines otherwise.
I certainly wouldn't publish something that I thought would destroy my company on the internet. If I came across something like that that I felt morally or ethically violated some rules so badly that I couldn't sleep at night I would be taking it to the government in one way or another. I would never expect/hope that someone I've never met is going to protect my anonymity enough that I could get away with releasing it to the public regardless of how much better it might make me feel to know that the government and the public know about something vs often just the government (who has no obligation to followup).
The DMCA provides legal precedent for outlawing software radio.
Here's the pattern:
powerful people don't like X
X is inconvenient
software makes X convenient
government outlaws software that does X
Case 1
content producers don't want DRM to be broken
breaking DRM needs specialized hardware and expertise
software makes it easy for anyone to break DRM
DMCA outlaws software that breaks DRM
Case 2
<interests> don't want people to have free access to the airwaves
access to the airwaves needs specialized hardware
software radio gives free access to the airwaves to anyone with a commodity computer
The Digital Millennium BROADCAST Act outlaws software radio
And if that's a problem just use P2P and/or an anonymous overlay network.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
If TrueCrypt were hosted on FreeNet development need not grind to a halt.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
TrueCrypt is a mainstream encryption utility used by federal and state agencies, as well as Fortune 100 corporations, to protect data when it must be transported. How does this make it vulnerable to shut down by those same entities?
Software radio, as a concept, has been illegal for a long time. DMCA arguments are neither necessary nor relevant.
Transmission is really not an issue. The F.C.C. has neither difficulty nor qualms about finding and seizing unlicensed transmitters.
Serious question BTW. In the age of the Patriot Act do we really want to call more attention to those technologies that may help future freedom fighters? On the down low is the way to go IMO. Isn't this article and it responses sort of the anti grapevine?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Yes, Slashdot. Tell us. What projects *are* most likely to be shut down by government?
Listening attentively,
-US Gov't
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
The Pirate Bay, you insensitive clod!
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Leaks and are something a politician understands. The rest they rely on their lackeys to explain to them. I'm sure if someone were to take aside some of the more religious conservative elected officials in Washington and show them what a few choice words and mouse clicks can dredge up in the way of pr0n - no age 13 nonsense blocking the way - I'm sure the internet would be shut down in less than a week.
But leaks they definitely understand and posting leaked info online is simply poking the Happy Fun Ball repeatedly with a sharp stick.
They've already imposed a internet radio tax. If there's something out there that can get around it, that would be a lot easier to shut down than something that is technically not illegal but they don't want around ie. Wikileaks
-SaNo
I vote for Tor since it would be the easiest to shut down on a practical level. All that would be needed is to make the operators of exit nodes liable for any information passing through their machines. This would mean any of them could be jailed if someone on the system did anything illegal.
LIVE, Love, die
Learn to spell.
While Wikileaks may be subject to many DMCA take downs, it will be difficult for the Government to shut it down completely because the site falls very straightforwardly under a First Amendment umbrella. So the Government will have to take more subtle actions against it than plain censorship. On the other hand, GNU Radio is a potential threat to many big industries: cell phone providers, HDTV content producers, digital radio and, of course, the military. Furthermore, it is very easy for the Government to ban it (via FCC) due to technical issues rather than the more controversial political issues. If GNU Radio ever works on hardware easy to build by anyone out of cheap components, it will be banned the next day. Imagine being able to build your own cell phone with all the features you actually want... This cannot be allowed to happen.
Does a bankruptcy court count as a government agency? Bandwidth is expensive.
Is it me, or the poll is giving me the finger?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The Office of Naval Research paid for some of the early iterations of TOR. I think they pulled the funding, making it already "shut down by an agency."Now, it's entirely possible that it was shut down for normal bureaucratic reasons like the funding manager wanted to spend the money somewhere else. But it's sort of past tense. The programmers have been funded by others, but money always runs out. So it might be "shut down" yet again.
Its not about which site has the most illegal activity, its which site steps on the most toes. Governments don't care about illegal activity unless it a)cost them money, b)cost them publicity c)cost them re-election.
So which one gets politicians angry enough to counteract their innate fear of actual activity: Wikileaks, hands down.
Now, whether they will be able to make it stick, or we will all have to change our shortcuts to WikiSecrets is another discussion entirely.
Hot grits and Natalie Portman...guess which one I'd rather eat?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...CowboyNeal *was* a government agency
Been on Freenet lately? Ever? It's a haven for the illegal as well as the irrelevant. All it would take is for someone to find a freesite with plans, discussions or anything 'supportive' of terrorism and the Freenet devs would be arrested faster than you can say "first amendment."
I want my Cowboyneal
You need to research how Freenet works, its a completely different architecture and doesn't have entry or exit nodes, so its not vulnerable the attack you describe.
ask the pirate bay.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Wikileaks HAS been shut down by the U.S. Federal Courts over supposed "copyright violations".
Most of the other things on the list are technologies, like Freenet or Tor. "The government" has no functional way of "shutting down" these technologies.
In the case of Freenet, I don't even know how you'd begin to go about doing this. Sure you can make Freenet illegal, but the people using it are probably using it to to lots of far more serious illegal stuff and are using Freenet to cover it up. Do you really think a possible fine or jail time for using Freenet would deter them, especially if they face life in prison (or death) for NOT using Freenet?
recently http://www.tvduck.com also got a C&D, waiting to see from who.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Hi fellow troll! Oh wait, I'm not and neither are you. Who gave mod points to the six year old?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
More likely the hardware than the software, but I think it will come.