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Community Choice Award "Most Likely to be Shut Down By Govt"

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the make-your-sarcastic-vote-heard dept.

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.

29 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Most likely to be shut down by the government? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slashdot of course!

  2. So I'm guessing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    TrueCrypt has already changed it's name to TueCrypt to avoid pursuit.

  3. The Most Likely Choice... by Fragholio · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...has got to be WikiLeaks.

    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
    1. Re:The Most Likely Choice... by Wandering+Wombat · · Score: 4, Funny

      The Truth Is Out Th-*WHACK*

      WikiLeaks domain sold to the Urinary Tract Infection Society Of America.

      --
      I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
    2. Re:The Most Likely Choice... by UnderCoverPenguin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Depends on your definition of shutdown. More likely, I see the service being manipulated by social engineering.

      --
      Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
    3. Re:The Most Likely Choice... by moderatorrater · · Score: 5, Informative

      Copyright infringement, people posting things they're legally/contractually obligated not to post, etc.

    4. Re:The Most Likely Choice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Copyright infringement is a maybe (depends heavily on how good your lawyer is...), but under US law Wikileaks can't be held responsible for displaying things that other people weren't supposed to be sharing. Wikileaks can't very well violate an NDA that they never signed onto and all that. Of course, this is also almost entirely irrelevant, since Wikileaks is based in Sweden, which is also noted for a rather laid back stance on the whole copyright infringement bit (of course, that doesn't mean that individual contributors can't get in trouble in their home countries, especially since many of them are Chinese, but Wikileaks itself isn't terribly vulnerable). So, um, yeah... What exactly is illegal here?

    5. Re:The Most Likely Choice... by packeteer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes and it wont be shut down again in the same way. They learned a lot from that shutdown. They are pretty paranoid about hosting in different jurisdictions and coming up with technical ways to get around any shutdown.

      --
      unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
    6. Re:The Most Likely Choice... by tirerim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nothing illegal about it... yet. The point is that WikiLeaks is the most likely to expose information that the government doesn't want the public to know about. That could be anything from treatment of political prisoners to uses of surveillance. Anyone in power who is abusing it (i.e. most of them) will want to avoid having that come to light. Okay, yes, I'm kind of paranoid. The U.S., at least, still has some protections on freedom of speech and press, as do some other countries, and those may actually protect WikiLeaks. But given some of the efforts that governments have been taking to reduce those rights, I'm not certain.

  4. Missing option by phsdv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Missing Option: All of the above...

  5. Any Serious Chance It'll Happen???!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Think about it, what exactly has been shut down by the government lately? Freenet or Truecrypt anyone???!!

    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.

    1. Re:Any Serious Chance It'll Happen???!!! by Steauengeglase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wouldn't call this scaremongering. Just having a little fun.

      There is something about geeks that leads them to be more suspicious of authority. Perhaps it is being ostracized at a young age or the fact that there are simply a lot of really dumb people out there who have somehow manage to get a little power.

    2. Re:Any Serious Chance It'll Happen???!!! by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I wouldn't call this scaremongering. Just having a little fun.

      There is something about geeks that leads them to be more suspicious of authority. Perhaps it is being ostracized at a young age or the fact that there are simply a lot of really dumb people out there who have somehow manage to get a little power. I think it's that geeks tend to know a lot about controlling information and how much power that gives a person -- so they tend to see situations that politicians might abuse to gain power that other folk might miss or dismiss.
    3. Re:Any Serious Chance It'll Happen???!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And Truecrypt is legal in the U.K., but you must turn over your keys when asked to. It's not illegal, but pretty much useless.
      That's not true. You just have to know how to use TrueCrypt. The trick that most people don't seem to understand is to use both keys regularly.

      The indication they look for that you're trying to spoof them is that the last modified file dates are all months old in your "cover" partition. So don't leave that kind of a signature. Think of one as the "low security" partition and the other as the "high security" partition. I put work stuff on the low security partition and my own stuff on the high security partition and I use them both all the time. In fact, the stuff in the work partition probably has newer timestamps than the stuff in my personal partition right now.

      There really is no way to tell that I've got another partition, and a dozen files (or more) in the partition I'll reveal have last modified timestamps as of today or yesterday. Also, I'll put up a serious squawk about needing to protect confidential information for my clients, then give them the key. Then when they actually see the confidential information of my clients...

      The best lie is not to lie at all.
  6. **AA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  7. YouTube? by RobBebop · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!!!
    1. Re:YouTube? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      The low signal-to-noise ratio keeps YouTube from being considered in my mind. Too much crap, not enough diamonds.

      People are too busy watching their favorite new hip-hop dance or replays of clips from American Idol or whatever the kids are into these days to find the interesting, insightful, and thought-provoking pieces.

      When YouTube hit, I thought it was the perfect place for documentaries and culture works, but apparently it's a place for pop culture trash and soft-core pornography. Never underestimate the reptilian brain of your average Joe Sixpack.

  8. Likely? by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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"?

  9. Re:Links please? by x_MeRLiN_x · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.truecrypt.org/
    http://w2.eff.org/patent/
    http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
    http://www.wikileaks.org/
    http://www.cryptome.org/
    http://www.torproject.org/
    http://freenetproject.org/

  10. Re:Links please? by AutopsyReport · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please link me to this Google website you speak of, thanks.

    --

    For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.

  11. Vote None! by mveloso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The government doesn't shut down websites. They can't, legally, unless there's something criminal going on.

    1. Re:Vote None! by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Until they figure on some exigent circumstances. "pedophile terrorist communists use freenet!" use of freenet is then banned.

      Someone posts to wikileaks about how the govt made up the charges about freenet, and then freenet gets taken down over "state secrets" or something.

      Notions of law and justice are really somewhat quaint these days.

    2. Re:Vote None! by Z34107 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just because some of our 535 crazies committed to Congress this session want to shut it down, doesn't mean it'll happen.

      A bill was introduced in 1955 to ban Rock and Roll music, for the same "protect the children" reasons used as excuses to ban anything. Of course, that didn't happen - what would've happened to "Guitar Hero?"

      Congress wants to look like it's doing something - actually doing it is hard. Watch them ban Wikileaks, make a press release, and then do nothing within their (limited) power to actually shut the site down. They get their press time, everyone's happy.

      But, in some ways, that's a good thing. An ineffectual government is better than one with "quaint" notions of law and justice.

      --
      DATABASE WOW WOW
  12. Not a suggestion by petes_PoV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  13. Re:what? by MonsterTrimble · · Score: 5, Funny

    Was I the only one who punched in http://www.cowboyneal.com/ and got blocked because it's a porn site?

    --
    I call it 'The Aristocrats'
  14. Truecrypt can live underground. Wikileaks can't. by scaryjohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  15. EFF Patent Busting?? by OldSoldier · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  16. Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're the only one who reported back and got modded Interesting.

  17. Excellent question! by spazdor · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!