Slashdot Mirror
Real-Time Gmail Spying a 'Top Priority' For FBI This Year
Fnord666 sends this quote from an article at Slate:
"Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a 'top priority' this year. ... a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn't cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games ('the chat feature in Scrabble') to Gmail and Google Voice. 'Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,' he said."
Seems we could write a simple gTalk/gMail client that just sent random chatter back and forth. Get enough of them going and it would be near impossible to filter out the noise.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
You forgot the means of communication designed specifically to legally exchange criminal conversations and items - the diplomatic mail.
I thought the first paragraph was interesting. Then I thought the second paragraph sounded foilhatty. Then I googled "rfid tires" and the first article is almost a decade old:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269
And more recently:
http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/dunlop-rfid-tires-moto2-moto3/
Anyway, it still feels a bit on the hatter side to think the government is currently monitoring who has what tires, but it is definitely something I could see it becoming interested in and something that could actually be done.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
It's hardly surprising that Skype isn't mentioned. It's widely believed that there are already backdoors in Skype. Skype has "declined to confirm" that there are no backdoors.
From the Wikipedia Skype Security article
Security researchers Biondi and Desclaux have speculated that Skype may have a back door, since Skype sends traffic even when it is turned off and because Skype has taken extreme measures to obfuscate their traffic and functioning of their program.[26] Several media sources have reported that at a meeting about the "Lawful interception of IP based services" held on 25 June 2008, high-ranking but not named officials at the Austrian interior ministry said that they could listen in on Skype conversations without problems. Austrian public broadcasting service ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, have reported that "the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections".[27][28] Skype declined to comment on the reports.[29]
This is Slashdot which has a deep user base of highly skilled technical talent, hates what's happening to the Internet (etc.) via the U.S. Government (etc.), and collectively has the ability to do something about it.
:)
Personally, I often find myself reading articles like this, and becoming very frustrated about it to say the least. The older I get, the more I have seen the encroaching government rules/laws/lack thereof which basically invalidates some of the most important parts of the Constitution. It's gone waaaaayyyy too far at this point, don't you think?
All of this has to be somewhat obvious and common in terms of how you feel when you read this. I don't think I am in the minority here, but I might be crazy.
With the long-winded intro above... there must be something we can do as a collective. There are a lot of great minds here, and a lot of talent which can out-think, and out-perform anything the government can come up with without breaking laws.
What we're lacking is organization, and a plan to do something about it. That could be anything from making sure the world knows what's happening, to creating secure means of communication, to outing politicians, and getting the media involved, to a lot of things we haven't thought of.
I'm ready for the neigh-Sayers, and the "it won't happen because...", but doing something is a lot better than watching this all happen and feeling helpless.
How do we organize? How can Slashdot come together to do something positive which stops this atrocious behavior by our governments?
Before we hear about how silly this idea is or how it won't ever work, who has actually tried on a somewhat large scale in terms of people?
I may be alone, but I am so tired of hearing about all the incredibly ridiculous things our government is doing to the people who pay for them to be there.
Well, it was worth a try... I'm ready to be shot down, but if I didn't say something, I'd just be a lemming like a good percentage of the clueless constituency.
Rant over...
Third-world countries could do a good business by awarding folks diplomatic courier status... for a fee. Any communications between two of them would be out. of. bounds.