"Lawful Spying" Price Lists Leaked

ogaraf writes "Wired has a story about how the site Cryptome.org leaked the price lists for 'lawful spying' activities of Yahoo and other companies, and subsequently received a DMCA takedown notice from Yahoo. The documents, however, are still posted online, and in them you can learn, for instance, that IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."

Comments

You've got to be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the part where Yahoo complains that the leaking of the document could "shock" its users and damage its reputation. Shoulda thought of that earlier, huh?

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Dreadneck]

I like the part where Yahoo complains that the leaking of the document could "shock" its users and damage its reputation.

I AM shocked!

Only $30 per? Really?? Violating my privacy is bad enough, but the insult to my dignity is despicable!

Come on, guys! You're billing the government! Add some zeroes for fuck's sake - it's not like you're billing Medicare!

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Shakrai]

Add some zeroes for fuck's sake - it's not like you're billing Medicare!

All of the sudden I've got this image in my mind of an elderly Jewish guy, "You don't think they actually spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[jpmorgan]

They have a document describing search warrant compliance, and here you have /. misrepresenting it as 'we sell your private information to the lowest bidder!'

Seems like a rational fear to me.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Dreadneck]

"You don't think they actually spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

That depends on how heavily invested the committee chairman is in the hammer and toilet seat industries.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[bill_mcgonigle]

I hate corporations. I hate them with every fiber of my being.
Although I still like them better than government

Corporations are legal fictions created by governments, so no need to feel conflicted. It's what makes regulatory capture so poisonous, and kills the negative feedback required for a balance of power.

But, hey, what's destroying a system of government or two when there's a Rockefeller empire to be made in oil?

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Dreadneck]

True, but in my defense I was more focused on getting a +5 Funny .

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[negRo_slim]

Some of us have brains and skills to not need corporations.

Never mind the multitude of corporations responsible for the manufacturing of your computer... Or the ones running your network connection... Nope, don't need corporations at all. Build everything with my own two hands from scratch!

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[HangingChad]

Did you actually read the document (especially the part about narrowly-crafted subpoenas and court orders)?

I'm not clear who you're accusing of not reading. Because there's nothing about warrants in the article and this was in the comments.

Sprint/Nextel is being picked on here ofr its automated web portal that allows agencies to extract all manner of data without FISA court warrants or any other oversight Part of the issue here is they're selling this data to law enforcement in the absence of any warrant or court orders narrow or otherwise. Collecting data on people without a warrant is spying and these companies are making money off of it.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Smallpond]

Good point. Maybe you should have linked to regulatory capture so the mods would have a clue what you were talking about. We know the telecoms and government are in each others pockets, but Yahoo?

If we allow corporations as legal persons they should be subject to dissolution for certain abuses. That should satisfy both pro-civil rights liberals and pro-death penalty conservatives.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Sulphur]

You can't handle the truth.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[PopeRatzo]

If we allow corporations as legal persons they should be subject to dissolution for certain abuses.

This is an extremely important point, especially in the US right now. Our Supreme Court is arguing whether a corporation can give unlimited amounts of money to a political candidate. The argument is that if a corporation is considered to be a person, and holds all the rights of a person, then that should include the right of free speech, and money equals speech, so therefore they should be allowed to give unlimited funds to a candidate. Forget for a moment the amount of logical acrobatics required to accept that argument, what it comes down to is that the corporations have the money, thus they must be allowed to have all the power. Any chance of separating corporate wealth from political power hinges on this decision by the Supreme Court. If it finds for the corporations, there will never be another official elected on a national level that does not hold the interests of one or more corporations above the interests of the people or the Nation.

Unfortunately, the broad range of civil rights granted to corporations-as-persons does not come with the same responsibilities, both moral and legal, that are required of the flesh-and-blood type of persons. For example, we are brought up in the US to believe there is great shame in declaring bankruptcy, and that anyone who walks away from a mortgage that is "upside-down" or "under water" should be branded with the sign of shame. Yet, in the corporate world, bankruptcy and default are common, an accepted part of doing business. It is not only acceptable for a corporation whose liabilities outweigh its assets to default on its obligations, but it is considered "the right thing to do" to preserve capital. No shame, no harm, no foul. A company that has defaulted can "reorganize" and come back as if nothing has happened. But if someone who owes half a million dollars on a house that's worth $200k and drops the keys in the mailbox and walks away must be shunned and receive no help, lest it create a "moral hazard" (yes, that's the term the actually use).

The fiction that a corporation deserves all the rights as a person, or should even be considered a person in any legal sense at all, is one that will continue to damage the future of the US, perhaps permanently. The problem is, the only people who could possibly stop this insanity, are funded primarily by corporate dollars. It appears to be an intractable, maybe fatal flaw in our system.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[Smallpond]

Good point. Maybe you should have linked to regulatory capture so the mods would have a clue what you were talking about.

heh, yeah, the Rockefeller mods are out in force today. I suppose it is too much to expect a basic knowledge about the history of Standard Oil.

Rockefeller n. - See Robber Baron.

We know the telecoms and government are in each others pockets, but Yahoo?

Once a corporation goes public and is involved in significant M&A they're at the government's mercy. The TARP scandal has brought out just how strongly the screws get put on.

If we allow corporations as legal persons they should be subject to dissolution for certain abuses. That should satisfy both pro-civil rights liberals and pro-death penalty conservatives.

Sure, any corporate charter can be suspended or revoked. It just never happens, except very minimally at the local levels.

SEC could be the poster boys for regulatory capture given the way bad management has plundered shareholder's money. Look at what happened with all those companies and who went to jail? Martha Stewart. Give me a break.

Re:You've got to be kidding me

[inviolet]

Never mind the multitude of corporations responsible for the manufacturing of your computer... Or the ones running your network connection... Nope, don't need corporations at all. Build everything with my own two hands from scratch!

We need division of labor in order to have a decent quality of life. We do not, however, need incorporation to confer the benefits of personhood (e.g. free speech, bankruptcy) without the responsibilities of personhood (e.g. criminal culpability).

That you so completely failed to miss this obvious point, suggests that you are either dishonest or a fool.

Get what you pay for

[oldhack]

Time for paid services with explicit privacy protection. There is a good business case for this, I think, but will require thoughtful way to market to the masses. Any ideas?

Re:Get what you pay for

[countertrolling]

Yeah. Forget about it. It's impossible to verify. That doesn't make impossible to sell to the nearest sucker though.

Re:Get what you pay for

[Nutria]

Yes: you're an idiot to think that even the most expensive "explicit privacy protection" paid services won't comply with warrants.

Re:Get what you pay for

[shentino]

Here's a few good reasons that "nothing to hide" is a crock of crap:

1. The government is run by humans, which almost by the definition of the word are inherently fallible.
2. The government, also by definition, has the power to disrupt your life/put you in jail/confiscate your goods,
3. The above two combine to form a chilling effect upon your rights being exercised as you see fit.
4. Just as with quantum mechanics, the government cannot snoop without causing side effects in what they're snooping on.

So plenty of people have a darn good reason to not want government nosiness even IF they are not breaking the law.

Re:Get what you pay for

[colourmyeyes]

"Nothing to hide" is not an argument at all. Based on your response, you'd probably find this interesting reading:

'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy -- Daniel J. Solove

Cheers

Re:Get what you pay for

[ColdWetDog]

Nice find. Thanks. For those of you who haven't followed the link, think of this:

Just what is privacy?

Tempest in a tea cup

[jpmorgan]

If you actually read the documents (I know, that's too hard), you'll see that this is a list of information Yahoo! can provide in compliance of subpoenas, search warrants and court orders.

Oooh, if the cops get a search warrant, they can look at your Yahoo! friends list. It's the end of liberty as we know it!

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[el_jake]

But this "search warrant" give you a lot more than just Mr. John Doe at some street.. It gives you all the Doe's at a specific month who visited some URL. That is freaking privacy intrusion. Goodbye Yahoo.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[jpmorgan]

If you don't like judicial powers, take it up with your representative and senators.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[Anonymous Coward]

The privacy intrusion does not start with the search. It starts with retaining the information.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[Anonymous Coward]

You are allowed to charge to comply with a search warrant?

If you fall under 18 U.S.C. 2706, yes.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[jimicus]

But this "search warrant" give you a lot more than just Mr. John Doe at some street.. It gives you all the Doe's at a specific month who visited some URL. That is freaking privacy intrusion. Goodbye Yahoo.

Who exactly were you planning on using for email or IM that will ignore a subpoena from law enforcement? What good will it do you unless everyone you communicate with also uses such a provider? What about your connection to that provider?

If you become interesting to law enforcement, you're living in another world if you think they won't consider it worthy of further investigation that so many connections from your ISP are to an email provider (or, if paranoid a VPN endpoint) in another country known to be un-cooperative with your local law enforcement.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[Grygus]

Yes.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[sjames]

Nothing compels Yahoo to keep logs for as long as they do. That's what bothers people. That and that Yahoo wanted to keep it a secret from their users.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[Antique Geekmeister]

Now go re-read them, especially this clause:

> Requests for Airfone call record information via Subpoenas, Search Warrants,
Court Orders, Summons, and National Security Letters

Do you see that "National Security Letters" part? That's for the Patriot Act, which requires no court order whatsoeve and for which revealing to anyone that you've received such a notice is illegal. There is, so far, no required judicial oversight for such orders: it's an amazing loophole for unscrupulous federal agencies, including those which have no business in domestic investigations such as the NSA, to use. And since companies such as AT&T have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to cooperate with law enforcement in secret, warrant-free wiretaps with their whistleblower exposed secret fiber-optic taps on core network trunks, rest assured that you have _no_ way of assuring that these monitoring tools haven't been misued.

It's nice to see the pricelist, though, so we have an idea of just how cheap and easy and wholesale such orders are.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[jschottm]

It gives you all the Doe's at a specific month who visited some URL.

If the government suspects that a URL is being used to do illicit communications, how else do you expect them to figure out who was trying to get the message? Particularly if they're clever enough that rather than having an URL of someserver.com/alqaida/people_we_will_kill.html, they've used steganography to embed the information in an otherwise harmless looking file?

The question is not whether such search warrants have been granted, it's whether it has been done so in an abusive manner. And that's not covered in this document.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[lawpoop]

How would you know that a supposed National Security letter you got was real?

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[dkleinsc]

The really interesting part about National Security Letters is that they're fairly obviously unconsitutional, but were designed in such a way that the judiciary would never rule on their constitutionality. By making it a crime to reveal that you've received an NSL, you make it impossible for anyone to demonstrate that it existed in the first place, and thus prevent anyone who was targeted by them to establish standing to sue. So if someone tries to challenge it, the executive branch can argue correctly "You can't prove an NSL existed, therefor you can't prove you were harmed by NSLs, therefor you have no reason to sue".

I just wish more of the Senate had understood what was really at stake and followed Sen Russ Feingold's (D-WI) lead. Because what was actually going on was that the executive succeeded in shutting out the judiciary from the judicial process.

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[dmartin]

The really interesting part about National Security Letters is that they're fairly obviously unconsitutional, but were designed in such a way that the judiciary would never rule on their constitutionality. By making it a crime to reveal that you've received an NSL, you make it impossible for anyone to demonstrate that it existed in the first place, and thus prevent anyone who was targeted by them to establish standing to sue. So if someone tries to challenge it, the executive branch can argue correctly "You can't prove an NSL existed, therefor you can't prove you were harmed by NSLs, therefor you have no reason to sue".

It seems really easy to sidestep this. Take the NSL to a judge, or use it as evidence to sue. If they come after you for revealing the existence of an NSL there is your proof that it has impacted you and you have standing. If the courts rule that states secrets are justified, and that your action was indeed illegal then you are basically in trouble -- you have admitted blatantly violating the law and will probably be imprisoned. But if you should win and you can have it ruled the law was unconstitutional then the law you violated has no power anyway (the constitution in the US granting the government limited powers). So challenging it is risky, and would take someone with very strong principles (and a strong stomach) to see it through, but it is not the Catch-22 you make it out to be.

Takedown demand contradiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a document be both confidential and copyrighted?

"Lawyer claims intellectual property rights on method to suck and blow at same time."

Re:Takedown demand contradiction?

[DoofusOfDeath]

How can a document be both confidential and copyrighted?

According to the U.S. Constitution (I got this from wikipedia), the purpose of copyright is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The problem seems to be that the actual legislation covers creative works that were never intended to be shared with the public. Such documents, like the ones in question, are within the scope of copyright law but not the spirit.

But as far as I know, courts have been unwilling to strike down current copyright laws just because they're less than perfectly efficient in achieving the Constitution's justification for them.

Re:Takedown demand contradiction?

[corbettw]

A confidential internal memo detailing plans for building a new type of engine could "promote the Progress of Science"; ergo, it deserves copyright protection. It also details trade secrets that could damage the company it belongs to; ergo, it deserves to be treated as confidential. Using this example, I'm having a hard time understanding your complaint.

Re:Takedown demand contradiction?

[eclectro]

like the ones in question, are within the scope of copyright law but not the spirit.

No. This is a list if facts, and as such not copyrightable. Things like phone book numbers, lists of addresses, dates, and price lists (as this is) are not copyrightable. But it also should be remembered that we have the most pro-corporation government in history, and this could change if there was enough congressional interest - as both the Copyright Term Extension Act and the DMCA shows even though there is little or no public benefit in doing so.

The Yahoo list isn't much of anything.

[rdunnell]

If you read it, you'll see that it's basically an explanation of what information they do and do not have, how their various properties work and what information they store, and how much it will cost an agency to have certain information requests addressed. It doesn't represent some sort of sinister pipeline of information directly from their users' keyboards to the "evil government." If anything it's useful to everyone because it shows exactly what they do and don't save, and it might act as a deterrent for the casual or clueless investigator who watches too much CSI and thinks sending a request off will instantly pinpoint the bad guy by backtracking his DNS through the GPS IP address of his netbook's MAC module or whatever.

Re:The Yahoo list isn't much of anything.

[timeOday]

What makes it sinister isn't so much what it says, but that it's supposed to be secret in the first place, and the takedown notice now that it has been divulged. I prefer to know what my rights are in the first place, thankyouverymuch. There's this idea that we can't let people know the rules of the game, since bad guys would then exploit them. Admittedly there is some truth to this; look at how corporations freeload by playing games with the tax codes. But what is the alternative? A lawless state where everybody lives with the vague threat of "stay in line or something bad might happen."

Wikileaks

[yamamushi]

It's a good thing it's already been archived on WikiLeaks http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Yahoo_compliance_guide_for_law_enforcement%2C_23_Dec_2008

Since there is no copyright notice...

[Anonymous Coward]

... or other confidential markings in this document, I don't feel there is any reason not to public disclose this document all or in part. In fact, I will do that just now...

For email:
"Yahoo! retains a user’s incoming mail as long as the user chooses to store such messages in their mail folders and
the user’s email account remains active. Yahoo! retains a user’s sent mail only if the user sets their email account
options to save sent mail and has not subsequently deleted specific messages."

For messenger:
"For Yahoo! Chat and all forms of Messenger, Yahoo! has log information regarding the use of the services. Yahoo!
maintains a “Friends List” for users of Yahoo! Messenger and can determine from its logs the time and date that a
user logged into Messenger or Chat (in the prior 45-60 days) and the IP address used. Yahoo! also can retrieve
from its Chat and Messenger logs the names of the chat rooms that the user accessed and the Yahoo! IDs of the
other people with whom a user communicated through Messenger during the prior 45-60 days. In order to search
these logs, a Yahoo! ID and a specific time frame, preferably no more than three days, must be provided."

For flickr:
"If provided with a Yahoo! ID, Flickr URL, or Flickr NSID, Yahoo! has the ability to produce subscriber information for
the account-holder. As long as the Flickr account is active, Yahoo! has the ability to produce content in the account
– with associated upload IP addresses and date and time – as well as the email and Groups information for the
account."

For groups:
"Yahoo! maintains information about Group moderators, as well as an activity log for each Group. The Group activity
log is a transactional log that indicates when members have subscribed or unsubscribed from the Group, posted or
deleted files or polls, or other similar events. Not all Group activities are logged, however. For example, the reading
of messages or downloading of files or photos is not logged.
Although the Group Message archive maintains messages sent to Group members, the message archive does not
contain any attachments to the messages. Yahoo! does not maintain those attachments in any form.
For current Groups, Yahoo! retains information relating to the moderator, members, and the active contents of the
Files, Photos, and Messages sections. If a Group has been deactivated or deleted, information about the Group
may be preserved for approximately 30 days, after which the information may be deleted."

For geocities and other premium web services:
"For web-hosting
and domains, Yahoo! will have basic Yahoo! registration information about the user who posted the page. Yahoo!
also will have the active files that the user has uploaded to the website, including the date on which the files were
uploaded, and the domain-based email that is available to the user. Deleted email is not available."

And here is how much it costs:
" Basic subscriber records: approx. $20 for the first ID, $10 per ID thereafter
    Basic Group Information (including information about moderators): approx. $20 for a group with a
    single moderator
    Contents of subscriber accounts, including email: approx. $30-$40 per user
    Contents of Groups: approx. $40 - $80 per group"

Re:Pricing makes it creepy

[abigsmurf]

If you get 1000 requests a month from various law enforcement agencies across the country, that's an awful lot of man hours to dedicate to these requests. If you have a fee in place to cover costs in the first place, it ensures that a surge in requests doesn't drain the budget of the department in charge of sorting them out.

Re:We

[bill_mcgonigle]

We the people is a law enforcement agency.

We the People ought to be enforcing the Common Law, but ... hey, who's on Idol tonight?

Re:We

[lwsimon]

In the US, the people are the final authority on what is right and wrong, Constitutional or not.

In my opinion, Marbury v. Madison was a terrible ruling, and the beginning of the American decline. Without that ruling, it would have been up to the people to police Congress, and the level of apathy we see today would have never been attained.

cause nobody *EVER* abuses the DMCA takedowns

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from the numerous instances documented in older Slashdot stories, the EFF has a nice list http://www.eff.org/wp/unsafe-harbors-abusive-dmca-subpoenas-and-takedown-demands of examples where a corporation's lawyers sent DMCA takedown letters alleging infringement by content they later admitted they do not own.

At this point only a District Attorney would prima facie "be fairly confident [the subject of a DMCA takedown letter from Yahoo] is a Yahoo document."

Shame

[sjames]

Yahoo wrote in its objection letter that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

It's hard to shame someone who doesn't already feel that they have something to be ashamed of. I guess we know Yahoo understands it's behavior to be shameful but continues to do it.

Re:Why are people boycotting yahoo?

[ctmurray]

This link has been deleted.....

Subpoena != search warrant

[LandruBek]

Right, and ooh, a subpoena is SO hard to issue! No judge need be involved; prosecutors get to write them themselves -- motivated, perhaps, by nothing more than a hunch.

There's a huge difference between a warrant and a subpoena.

Re:This is outrageous.

[Pyrus.mg]

This just shows why you should always go with the car analogy.

A copyright notice is optional ...

[Skapare]

If a copyright notice is optional, then some means to know whether the document is genuinely copyrighted PRIOR to its dissemination would be needed for others to know that it is in fact copyrighted. It could be that copyrighting the document was overlooked, and has only been corrected after the fact. If they did copyright it prior to dissemination, then there has to be at least something to show this.

Michael Gershberg appears to be claiming, if Cryptome's copy of the letter is accurate, that the document is in fact copyrighted. So how is it that he knows this to be the case? Does he see some instrumental proof that the document is copyrighted? Was he just personally told that the document is copyrighted? He should support his claim by providing a notarized copy of the instrumental proof, or swear out a claim citing who told him that it was copyrighted, in order to be convincing. Otherwise, he is not very convincing at all.

The lack of a copyright notice always gives the APPEARANCE of not being copyrighted. How can anyone know otherwise unless there is some alternative proof. WHERE'S THE PROOF?

Cost reimbursement: it's the law

[Gracenotes]

It's the law, apparently, at least if you're not a common carrier. From Yahoo's compliance guide,

Federal law (See 18 U.S.C. 2706) requires law enforcement to reimburse providers like Yahoo! for costs incurred responding to subpoena requests, court orders, or search warrants. Yahoo! generally requests reimbursement when responding to legal process, except that Yahoo! maintains an exception to this policy for cases involving the abduction or exploitation of children.

The law is available here. It's a requirement for law enforcement requesting information, not the organizations providing it (except that the amount is "mutually agreed by the governmental entity and the person or entity providing the information").

A governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information under section 2702, 2703, or 2704 of this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information. Such reimbursable costs shall include any costs due to necessary disruption of normal operations of any electronic communication service or remote computing service in which such information may be stored.

So, the guide is a means for law enforcement to interact with Yahoo (and the law) in a standard, easier way. Does it make it more likely that investigators would ask Yahoo for documents if Yahoo makes it easy, as opposed to cooperating as little as possible? Probably. But Yahoo has no reason not to cooperate.

Re:Pricing makes it creepy

[Nefarious Wheel]

It's not that Yahoo occasionally complies with the authorities. It is that they have a pricing scheme for it.

Think that one through. If there were no price list posted for the information, then any fool in a bureaucracy can request it and get it. However, government bureaus being what they are, if you put so much as a $50 price tag on the information, you may be requiring said bureaucrat to jump through many hoops and have their actions questioned and tracked. This tiny fee will likely annoy them and stop a very large proportion of inquiries.

A friend of mine (a army colonel in Logistics) said that in government, it's often easier to spend a billion dollars than it is to spend fifty.

I salute Yahoo's putting at least a speed-bump in the way. It's something.

Re:Pricing makes it creepy

[Skapare]

It also assures that some LEA can't carry out a vendetta by flooding them with 1000000 requests a day.

I do wonder how a surge of requests would be handled by a department that has a fixed staff. Would there be a backlog and delay? Could they have an "expedite" fee?

Wheres my cut?

[9mm Censor]

If I copyright all my emails shouldn't I get a taste when the spooks read my email?

Dynamic IPs

[Orion Blastar]

most people use Dynamic IPs, so they can subpoena the IPs but they will get a lot of "false positives" to track down the owner of those Yahoo IDs. Most people do not have the same ISP they had in 1999 due to the great dial-up to broadband rush after the Dotcom bubble burst. You'll have grandmothers and teenagers be accused of stuff that some random stranger that shared a dynamic IP address with them did.

Thanks to the Patriot Act, the police, NSA, FBI etc can get the information without a search warrant. The Democrats lead by Obama had promised to remove the Patriot Act as soon as they took office, but why it is still a law, I'll never know. But then many of them voted to pass it when Bush was President anyway. Both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt in that way.

By the way Yahoo uses web beacons to track web site usage and most users don't know how to opt out of that. I've opted out of it several times already.

Nice one

[Steeltoe]

It appears to be an intractable, maybe fatal flaw in our system.

That's because you see it as a system, rather than choice, what we choose to do, what we collectively decide society should be. All power is lost at that moment we accept that as truth, and people become passive victims of the sharks that know how to exploit any system.

It's not sustainable for the longer term though. Either your country goes bankrupt, or faces similar fates in the hand of the criminal lyers that have held you in chains for so long, and you again realize you can choose. Or you decide to start believing in change and support those who have integrity and wish the best for the nation (ie. a true president with the best intentions, rather than just corporate and religious-fundamental interests).

Well put post btw. But things are not that hopeless as you put it!