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US Wants Upper Hand In Battling High-Tech Bad Guys
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Justice this week said it was looking to boost the research and development of technology that could significantly bolster new forensic tools for digital evidence gathering. The DoJ's research and development arm, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) said it was particularly interested in tools targeting forensics for mobile cellular devices; cloud computing environments; VoIP communication and vehicle computer systems."
>There's a fundamental reason why tax cuts are good: starve the beast.
It would be likely, that starving the beast would first shed such excess fat as health care and social security and other things that would benefit the poor.
This would lead to an even wider gap, which would lead to more crime, which in turn would justify an even stronger police state.
So, even if one would agree with your anti-statism, tax cuts are not necessarily pragmatic.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
You say that it is the "crappy criminals" that get busted. The vast majority of criminals (not terrorists) are stupid. The clever ones have worked out that crime doesn't pay. If you are clever enough to do all the things you say, which avoid you getting caught, you are also clever enough to make as much money legally as you would illegally, and you don't have the risk of prison. I am sure a lot of big business leaders would make great criminals. But why bother. Some criminals of course do succeed in avoiding the law for a long time - every bell curve has its tails. But overwhelmingly, criminals get caught because they are not clever enough.
And this is not coincidental. We buy enough law enforcement to make it not worth while clever people being criminals, while accepting that the stupid will be with us always.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
If the "Justice" departments really wanted to battle "bad guys" in high tech crime, they would be targeting the highest crime rate domains with the biggest losses already. That is phishing and spam/virus networks that already take over $BILLIONS in IT personal property, using it to rob its owners and amass it into bot networks to attack others. Those crimes are committed largely by a relatively small group of crime gangs, largely concentrated in Asia (including Russia) which are also connected to large non-virtual crime in smuggling dangerous drugs, stealing property, counterfeiting brands, slavery, weapons trading (including WMD components), kidnapping, blackmail. The phishing/spam/botnet networks are probably the least bad of their crimes, and the greatest exposure to the public where they could be caught, with most of their traffic passing through the US even if the endpoints are all foreign. They're the obvious place for US law enforcement. Existing law allows US law enforcement to spy on them and catch them, while only small technology innovations might be necessary to do so - even without the PATRIOT Acts and other violations of the US Constitution.
What is required is that US law enforcement actually want to catch "bad guys". Then they'd have the means and opportunity to do everything they say they want.
But evidently they lack the motive. Their motive is to gain ever more power to spy on everyone, regardless of evidence or crimes. They've already been spying on telephone and email comms of every American they can fit on a hard drive, for years. What they want now is just bigger budgets for hard drives, for more secret police, and more laws that violate the Constitution and our rights so they can do so with impunity.
These secret police are the "bad guys".
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make install -not war
You can't "starve the beast" if the beast can simply print more money (thus making your money worth less, in effect starving YOU)...
Ken
Crime does pay, handsomely. Both white collar crimes and your normal kinds like theft etc. To just brush the enormous amounts of people doing crimes off as idiots is to vastly oversimplify for oneself and shift the blame away from society.
One of the times crimes pays best is when you dont have anything to lose and not any viable options to get something you even can lose. Those are the people who mostly get cought. For many of them a life in prison isnt much worse than life on the streets.
Educated and smart criminals can go on for many years without even getting near a police. They have something to lose and are not very interested in getting in jail. Those people wont brag about their crimes on the phone or plan something on facebook.
HTTP/1.1 400
Then it needs to stop treating IT, CompSci, and It security like the plumber and building manager and PAY FOR IT.
Sorry but it's fact. You want to have a crack IT team that keeps all the bad guys out and the company's data secure? Then you have to pay 6 figures each for Highly skilled and experienced IT staff instead of low 5 figures for the Freshly tested MCSE churnouts from University OF Pheonix. You have to have IT managers that have at LEAST 10 years experience in the IT field and IT security field, not some moron with a BSA degree that knows the CEO's daughter.
The US will forever lag behind the world in IT and IT security if you don't start paying for highly skilled and experienced professionals, and TREAT THEM AS SUCH!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Seriously, why must every attempt to increase security be viewed as the the end of all democracy & privacy?
Because, at least in the model of how the US is supposed to work, the response to a government calling for more power should not be "why not?" but rather "why?"
In this case, that's a very good question to ask. See they [the various three-letter organizations] already have vast powers of surveillance. They have all sorts of legal privileges allowing them to intercept foreign and criminal communications with ease, all contingent on the provision of a warrant (and thus probable cause). Hell, thanks to the last regime, they don't even need that much of the time, especially not to spy on a common citizen like you or I.
So in light of that, the response to a call for even better tools and even more leeway to spy on US citizens should be "Why?" Why do we need these tools? Why are the existing ones inadequate? Can you demonstrate that? What crimes do propose new tools will help you solve -- cite specific examples please, not just "it may us catch some bad guys".
And if the government can't come up with a damn good answer to "Why?", then our answer should be "No."
The real litigious bastards...