Slashdot Mirror
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."
America, eventually everything is our fault. What's next? Are we going to get blamed for fast food? The Olsen twins? NBC 'Must See' TV?
Can you believe that the story features alarming reactions to Iran being able to spy on its citizens, without worrying that the US is doing the same thing. There is an implication with this /. post that the technology wasn't dangerous until it fell into Iran's hands. The US isn't guilty of enabling Iran. The US is guilty of intrusive policy.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
It's not that we don't trust our government
You would be wrong.
"It's not that we don't trust our government"
That's wrong. I don't trust any government with that kind of power. It will be abused, and I'll do everything in my power (what little I have) to prevent them from getting such a power.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The title is very misleading ... it should read "Iranian Gov Uses Telecom Backdoors Required By US Gov"
This is the biggest reason why we fight against greater wiretap rules in the U.S.
Ummm... no. The biggest reason we fight wiretaps is because they are wrong.
Letting the tech get into the hands of other governments is a far, far secondary reason. Maybe tertiary...quaternary... hexadenary... it's way down the list, anyway.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I'm Iranian and I'm very pissed off about the regime abusing the the technology, however, I can't put all the blame on the US government. A lot of the tracking/wiretapping tech (well, virtually any technology) have dual uses. For example, if a family member of mine gets kidnapped I'd like the police to be able to locate him/her easily by tracking a cellphone. Or if a bunch of suspects are doing something against the law and there's justified need to tap their phones and/or internet I'd like the police to be able to obtain a warrant and have access to the technology to do their job. So it's not funding the development of technology or requiring it's inclusion in the products that is the problem.
Now, if the US had the ability to prevent the regime from accessing the tech and they didn't do anything about it, well, that's not really nice.
It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
One man's misleading headline is another man's truth. Interesting, that.
Living With a Nerd
A very interesting story. I wasn't aware of this CALEA law until I just read about it in a previous story in Slashdot, and it's very disturbing that the increasingly tyrannical rule (albeit a mostly soft tyranny for the time being) of the US Federal government and it's concomitant level of imperial arrogance has supposedly endowed an even more evil regime to further terrorize the world. If the US made Ahmadinejad's (YM"SH) life easier, government officials should be prosecuted and punished under the anti-treason provisions of the Constitution, but then again that can be said about many aspects of the US's ruling elite.
We must strenuously oppose any more encroachments on liberty and privacy, including the latest attempts by the Barack Hussein Obama regime to mandate backdoors in nearly all communication devices. This is a far more severe threat to our lives than ACTA. I can live without secular entertainment, but I don't want to live in a perpetual police state. We have to be mindful of the possibility that multi-national tyrannical forces are coordinating their efforts to bring a form of superlative form of international fascism (think 1984) in which all of humanity is shackled and enslaved.
Call me an alarmist if you wish - I am very alarmed.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
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
Here on Slashdot there tends to exist the mindset of "blame the shooter not the gun" and the corollary "and certainly don't blame the maker of the gun". For most civil libertarians, those are axioms: that tools are value-neutral, and you criminalize their improper use, not their mere existence or the act of manufacture. Good so far. Lifetime NRA member here. Gun-totin' agnostic clinging to the Constitution.
In this case, though, we are blaming the tool AND the user AND the manufacturer. Why is it different to blame tools collectively (governmental) compared to individually? I have my own thoughts on this, and I believe it IS different. However, it takes a couple of layers of abstraction to reach that difference (specifically, that collective actions are almost always restrictive in nature while individual actions are almost always permissive in nature, and that freedom requires that permissiveness wins over restriction in all but the most severe cases).
I'd like to believe that the reactions against the existence of CALEA are reasoned rather than reactive. When you ask someone whether they favor or oppose something, if the answer you get is a frothing hind-brain reaction, that person's opinion is instantly valueless. And if that person was on the "correct" side (strictly by chance, it would seem), it becomes that much easier to dismiss ALL people with that opinion. "Yeah, you're a jingoistic , just like all the rest. I'm not even going to listen to you."
The good guys have to be the adults.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
To further refine your point: At the core of this lies the implication that, because of such policies, there is very little to separate us from authoritarian regimes. It's a quantum distance, to be sure, in the sense that although it's very small it would require something fundamental to change. But the distance between where we are today and a digital version of the Alien and Sedition Acts is short enough to make many people uncomfortable.
One point that irks me, though, is the contention that we're only now seeing this link. That, frankly, is bullshit.
The head of GCHQ (Britain's SigInt agency) under Tony Blair wrote an entire book on the topic last year. I myself wrote a series of three columns on the topic, all of them dealing with the diminishing gap between authoritarian policies and those of more democratic nations. Forgive me while I quote at some length...
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Ummm... no. The biggest reason we fight wiretaps is because they are wrong.
I, sir, see your "ummm...no" and raise you another "ummm...no".
Wiretaps, used with proper judicial oversight, for legitimate law-enforcement purposes, are not wrong. 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 problem exists when a government -- any government -- uses wiretaps for illegitimate purposes. For example, to spy on the population in general (for example, the NSA wiretapping), to maintain a party in power against the populace's wishes (Iran), or without receiving the proper warrants to listen in on private conversations (NSL's).
While I think O.P. might be going a bit far to say, "It's not that we don't trust our government..." because I don't trust any government with unchecked power. However, you come off sounding like either a complete wacko or a naive 12-year old when you make a blanket statement like that. There is precious little in the world that's *THAT* black and white.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I'd say it's one authoritarian regime, sharing with another authoritarian regime. No real difference, both governments are using it to illicitly spy on you.
You've got it backwards. The US is prevented by law from using it's spying technologies to spy on it's own citizens. However, it is perfectly legal to use it to spy on British citizens, while the British government uses similar technology to spy on American citizens, and then they just trade information. Voila -- perfectly legal!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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".
I work in the 'comms' (networking) field in the bay area. I can't interview for a job that doesn't seem to *include* some form of DPI or calea side to it.
if you are using any kind of networking gear that is rackmount and more than a month's rent, chances are it has calea wiretapping 'modes' to it. or, its purchasable if you are the right kind of entity, so to speak.
there are also networking boxes that intercept the SSL transport and give users a false sense of security (ignore the mitm, that cert looks very real, doesn't it?).
I don't directly 'do' calea but if you do software or hardware and are in the networking field, you'll run into it eventually.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You want evidence that Obama is not using the FISA court? How about evidence that he is? Feel free to find something newer than this:
http://utdocuments.blogspot.com/2008/07/obamas-new-statement-on-fisa.html
Obama's statement only addressed the objections to the telecom immunity provisions of the bill, while ignoring the objections to the (at least) equally pernicious new warrantless eavesdropping powers the bill authorizes.
The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
if the 'bad guy' can't be caught using above-board means, maybe you need to try harder?
So you want to live in a society run by organized crime and corrupt corporations? How do you prove bribery without wiretaps or other similar methods? You allow a power vacuum and someone will fill it in, the government is usually the lesser of many evils.
Well, the Einstein one maybe not, but RIAA aiding opressive regiemes seems to be the general consensus around here.
Let's take your "whole picture" one step farther, then. Is surveillance (i.e., tailing you, watching you from a stake-out) okay? What happens if a cop just happens to be there when you commit a crime?
/.'er in the U.K. (IIRC) pointed out the other day, in other parts of the world, only the S.W.A.T./C.E.R.T./whatever-it-was-he-called-them units are armed. In either case, there is a branch of LEOs that is equipped and authorized to use deadly force. Do you propose to disarm the police forces? Okay, what about the military? Or are you arguing that wiretaps are evil, but deadly force is okay?
Let's go another direction. You say wiretapping is unethical. Is it unethical to kill someone? Then, what about having armed police officers? In the U.S., your average cop is armed. As another
"The end justifies the means" is an argument for doing something unethical for the "Greater Good." Your argument presupposes that wiretaps are unethical. I disagree. Rather, I think it is a compromise that recognizes the fact that there are grey areas. That compromise is necessary because the alternative is anarchy. And if you think that's a viable option ("heh, heh...no one tellin' *me* what to do!"), you might want to look at what's been happening in places like Uganda for the last thirty years.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
You forgot about the illegal wiretaps already ?
relevance ? 'best' means the top place in a group. and in the group of 250 or so countries (or whatever) on earth, america doesnt have that title. but it is touted.
if you think everywhere else you'd 'even' consider has more tradeoffs than you'd like, it means you either dont know shit about countries other than your own, or a zealot, brainwashed rightwinger that has been conditioned to hate various things, so that you wont wake up.
Read radical news here
The Gov can watch me in my house if they want.
BUT ONLY as long as I also get to watch and record whoever in Government I want and at anytime I want - that includes top political leaders, and other big shots in the government, police force etc.
If they can legally record me in public, then I should legally be able to record them in public.
If they can legally record me in private, then I should legally be able to do so too.
Golden rule and all that.
If they think it's wrong or unsafe for me to watch them like that, then it is wrong and unsafe for them to watch me like that.
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.
Young Communist league USA, New Black Panther Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, the International Socialist Organization, the War Resisters League, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, La Raza, and the American Muslim Association of North America,
Just the kind of people I'd trust to ensure freedom and justice.
Me too. Those are exactly who I'd expect to try to ensure freedom and justice.
Or would you expect the Tea party and the Republicans to do it? Dream on.
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Republicans!?!? You gotta be joking. They're part of the problem. As are the Democrats.
As far as the TEA Party, whose basic platform is;
# Fiscal Responsibility
# Constitutionally Limited Government
# Free Markets
Yeah, those are some dangerous ideas right there. You can barely distinguish them from the Taliban with those kind of radical principles.
[rolls eyes]
Not at all like the so-very-inclusive, non-violent, centrist, "You want freedom, you gonna haveta kill some crackers! You gonna have to kill they' babies!" New Black Panther Party.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBhzJnJIilI&feature=related
Tell us, what color is the sky on *your* planet?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.