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US Gov't Assisted Iranian Gov't Mobile Wiretaps
bdsesq sent in a story on Ars Technica highlighting how the US government's drive for security back doors has enabled the Iranian government to spy on its citizens.
"For instance, TKTK was lambasted last year for selling telecom equipment to Iran that included the ability to wiretap mobile phones at will. Lost in that uproar was the fact that sophisticated wiretapping capabilities became standard issue for technology thanks to the US government's CALEA rules that require all phone systems, and now broadband systems, to include these capabilities."
One man's misleading headline is another man's truth. Interesting, that.
Living With a Nerd
This is the biggest reason why we fight against greater wiretap rules in the U.S. It's not that we don't trust our government
Uh, no, I'm pretty sure it's actually because the 4th amendment makes what the government has been doing illegal. A side-effect of that is that other governments also don't get to use the loopholes our government would like, but I'm not fighting for their rights, I'm fighting for mine.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Oh, awesome. So I guess any day now I should see an article titled "Albert Einstein assisted North Korea in acquiring Nuclear Weapons", or "Movie Industry instrumental in helping Oppressive Regimes conduct surveillance of dissidents".
If a wiretap provides the proof that a violent criminal actually committed the crime for which they are being charged, then that is a good thing
The fact that if you were to shoot into a crowd of people, occasionally you might hit a murderer, doesn't make shooting into crowds of people a good thing.
Wiretaps are bad because their costs to society today far outweigh their benefits. That didn't use to be the case; when phone service was analog, wiretapping didn't require modifying the infrastructure, but it did require a significant effort to perform. But today, it requires destroying our communications infrastructure and gives governments (and likely others) potentially unlimited access to communications with no oversight.