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."
So is any mean of communication. Ever heard of the right to be left alone?
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?"
I can hear the criminals conspiring. They are everywhere. They are conspiring in games of scrabble. They are even using mind rays to talk, and I can hear them. The only thing that makes them stop is the foil hat and the power of crystals.
soon it'll be hard to an anonymous coward
That cause me to consider bringing email back home. I switched to gmail several years ago because running a mail server was just too much of a pain in the neck. Then again, maybe running my own smtp/pop server would make it easier to be eavesdropped on by the FBI and their ilk.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
The FBI has also learned that talking face to face us being used in nearly every criminal activity of two or more people (gangs). Henceforth all conversations must be recorded on your official government recorder, which will relay all conversations in real time.
Until you receive your recorder, refrain from I monitored conversations except in the designated monitored talking booths.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
You can have all the power in the world, but I am forced to strive to encrypt more precisely because of this approach. Honor the forth amendment, its words AND intent. Give me the paperwork, get the data. Demand to get the data without a piece of paper, I will blatantly act to encrypt. Pretend you have magic papers that cannot be argued against? Expect to find /no/ data.
Your paper is secret? So are my IM's/E-Mails/Twittered cock shots to my constituents.
One of those falls in to the legitimate realm of non warranted data access. Guess which one? This is not a hard problem if you don't have to contort yourself to answer it.
I AM NOT TERRIFIED.
Just like *some* FBI/CIA/DHS/and other 3 letter acronym agents are criminals.
With that thought process, we should have 24 hour, open, video and audio recordings of every second of every government agent's life open to the public for the "good of the people" since if even ONE agent is a criminal, then they must all be criminals, isn't that the kindergarten mentality the FBI is using for this stunt?
FBI agents - go to the courts with your "suspicions" get yourself a fucking warrant, then go ask google and others to give you access.
Until then, keep the fuck out of our privacy. It's expected, and protected by the constitution of the United States - you know, that pesky little document you swore to uphold and defend, not mutilate and destroy.
Any FBI (CIA or other agency) agent that doesn't go along with this is a constitutional terrorist and should be sent to Gitmo with no chance of parole.
Fuck That Shit
I hope the FBI figures out that the various trolls in online chats are actually terrorist speaking in code.
Be seeing you...
So are regular telephones, and cell phones, and Jitsi, and ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger, and AIM, and Jabber, and Google Talk, and Facetime, and Twitter, and even talking face to face. And let's not forget the U.S. Mail.
And the most frightening (or maybe depressing? disgusting? angering?) things about it are how quickly it's happening in a little backlash there is from the general public.
The thing is, any modernized country in the world has the same access to this type of technology and could be proposing similarly oppressive actions ... and yet most of them are not.
What is so chronically wrong with Americans that the ones in charge pull shit like this and everyone else puts up with it?
Rest assured- the NSA is already slurping unthinkable amounts of Internet traffic, and storing the results on various shadow-Google installations (massive database and search engine facilities using Google's hardware and software designs). What is happening here is that the FBI (and other public facing enforcement agencies) want to use such data openly in court. To do this, they have to pretend the intelligence gathering is not already happening (and has been for more than a decade), and will be implemented in the near future- 'legal' and above board.
Most of how the ordinary citizen is tracked is a national secret. For instance, almost no-one knows the extent to which motor vehicles are monitored by reading the RFID tags present in the rubber of the tires. Instead, the government works hard to make you think most tracking is done by (very visible) camera networks. The under-road RFID reading strips are 'invisible', and vastly more reliable and cheaper than the cameras. The cameras are mostly used to associate a license plate and/or vehicle image with the RFID 'fingerprint'.
The more data the state can grab about the sheeple, the more data it wants to grab. In the early part of the 20th century, there was a reluctance to create or properly fund 'intelligence' agencies, because it was found such agencies always grew like a cancer, and never recognised lines they would not cross. After WW2, with the rise of the cold war, all sides threw caution to the wind, and began this '1984' style nightmare. Before the age of the microprocessor, tech limitations prevented the 'tumors' from growing beyond a certain size. Now the amoral psychopaths these agencies employ desire all of us be placed under 24 hour surveillance.
Only new societal rules can now save us. An addition to the constitution, or a new Commandment. "Thou shall not pre-emptively spy upon a citizen for any reason or cause."
You will be told (by the monsters) that if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear, or a (massive) loss of privacy is a small price to pay for (maybe) improved law enforcement. Ordinary people (especially after schooling) are easily fooled by such arguments. The same ordinary people only finally appreciate the danger when everything goes wrong (you end up in a nation ruled by the Soviets or Nazis, for instance). People in ex-Nazi ruled, and then ex-Soviet ruled nations love to vote in freedom loving, privacy respecting governments- at least until they forget again (see Holland for a sad example of this phenomenon).
Mail encrypting should be a top priority to world population. "Those communications are being intercepted by criminal government agencies,' we say.
> 'Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,' he said."
"Boy, I'll say," said the Founding Fathers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...are going on in washington
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]
Americans at least should be outraged by this, as well as all of the other wiretapping bullshit that has gone on since the Patriot act. While I would guess that most Americans have no idea what 'mens rea' is, they should all understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
There is no reason for all of these Government agencies to have unlimited access to your personal life without a warrant. None what so ever. If you believe the propaganda and rhetoric, shame on you for being ignorant. Just think, in 7 months the new NSA super computers will be cracking away at your encryption as well, so even that won't be safe.
Combine the FBI, CIA, DHS, ATF, and FEMA resources and you have an army big enough to take on the US Military and more intelligence for a domestic war. Speaking of which, the DHS this year purchased 1.2 billion hollow point bullets (add in other Government agencies and you have over 2 billion rounds of killing bullets, not target bullets). Hmmm, still you find nothing odd with them snooping into _everything_ you do? How about the 1,300 armored vehicles they purchased last year by DHS? Still nothing? Anyone remember the 2011 defense spending bill with the clauses allowing indefinite detention of US citizens without warrant, trial, etc...? How about NSA, DHS, FBI, and CIA drone programs operating domestically? How about the lack of transparency in all of these agencies we were promised over 4 years ago by the then candidate now President, and before that by GWB? Anyone else know about why FEMA has been building dozens of "Relocation Camps" in the US? There is footage of one at least, but of course all of them are denied.
Look at all of that shit, then combine with the fact that the main stream media has become pure propaganda. Suddeny those conspiracy theories really don't seem so whacky do they? It's well passed the time when we should be waking up the neighbors, protesting for change, and voting in new leadership based on Socrates' principles and not politicians!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You overestimate the American public.
The majority of people would respond: "Well, if they say it'll make us safer, then that's what we have to do. We all have to do our part and sacrifice just a little bit if we want to be safe from terrorists".
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...
Unless your letter contains a big monetary donation as well, it's likely to be /dev/null-ed, unread.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Maybe the FBI should just require we record every form of communication 24/7.
If I remember correctly from the book 1984, home TVs were used to monitor behavior. And if they were turned off for too long, it immediately flag you as suspicious. I think its time to just implement this.
If you can't see my rabid sarcasm in this post, you probably wouldn't object to my proposals anyways.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
And that too needs to be changed. Campaign finance reform, and donation reforms. There needs to be serious caps and the populace must learn platforms through research, not misleading commercials. All this would not happen if the populace was not complacent. This has to actively be stopped, especially the Coke/Pepsi presidencies.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
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.