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FBI Considers CALEA II: Mandatory Wiretapping On Every Device
Techmeology writes "In response to declining utility of CALEA mandated wiretapping backdoors due to more widespread use of cryptography, the FBI is considering a revamped version that would mandate wiretapping facilities in end users' computers and software. Critics have argued that this would be bad for security (PDF), as such systems must be more complex and thus harder to secure. CALEA has also enabled criminals to wiretap conversations by hacking the infrastructure used by the authorities. I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS."
Given how well the intelligence agencies have 'protected' us these last two decades...
Isn't it time to get rid of these assholes? Or at least save some money on our fake no help agencies?
You could cut half of the people at the FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS, FEMA, TSA, DOD, And several others i can't think of...
And we wouldn't notice any difference at all. None..
This is where a true police state begins. An ear and eye in every device. Wake up before it's too late.
Never allow laziness of police forces to erode your civil liberties and freedoms.
I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS.
The same way anything is implemented in FOSS. It'll be written into the source. Lots of people will modify the code to disable the backdoors. People will post versions of the software with the backdoors missing, many of which actually still have them or have different backdoors installed. Governments may lead an automated search for software without the backdoors, or may simply ignore it uniless they have a reason to target the individual using it.
In other words, what a fucking mess.
We had this argument years ago when they were talking about putting encryption engines in everybody's phones, but they'd have back door keys and NOBODY WANTED ONE. They still won't. All this will do if passed is prevent anybody from buying a new phone until they have a method in hand to turn off or change the back-door codes so nobody can hack them.
Why do critics need to argue anything? A simple no, get lost, should suffice. You don't need reasons to refuse law enforcement access to your communications, they need reasons to access them in the first place.
This is such a wildly inappropriate idea that if it gets any legs at all the reasonable powers that be will jump on it and squash it good.
I cannot allow myself to believe we as a country are willing to seriously consider implementation of anything like this.
Otherwise I have to oppose the idea entirely.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I think having these wiretap backdoors is a worth the tradeoff of my liberty in favor of a better and safer world.
And Thomas Jefferson continues to spin aces in his grave.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
And what about the scammers that will be using this back door to control you phone and run up your bills. Is this the cost you are willing to pay, literally? How about just having the evildoers put in jail with less strict requirements on what the evidence needs to be ... like maybe catching them in the act.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'm really saddened and angered by the continuous erosion of our civil liberties. I've seen this decline for a while 9/11, but it keeps getting worse & worse. And sadly, it really seems to be independent of the party in power. Total government overreach.
Or quite the troll.
Nice back door on your device there, shame if someone put something on there that would incriminate you for something you didn't do. Oh but you feel safer right?
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
The problem is once you start mapping drug dealers, terrorists, pedophile and assorted evildoers some strange stuff starts happening.
The real evil people go dark understanding they have to change methods quickly, tipped of by tame experts and corrupt officers.
Support for 'freedom fighters' by the CIA becomes tricky.
Local courts are flooded with telco intercept cases and slowly most people of interest work out a phone, VoIP, computer, nav system is not so healthy to have around.
Thats why the GCHQ and NSA hate press like this. Now the FBI sees good PR, fame, new budgets and all the new hardware to roll out.
Easy cases at first with tracking, recoding via a remote turned on phone, key loggers in any consumer OS.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Why is the parent comment rated -1? You might not agree with it but that is not a valid reason for moderating it down. It is on topic opinion, not flamebait or troll.
This is censorship, plain and simple. I see how how moderation is used to enforce the groupthink here. Shame, for shame.
Here is news for you: "evildoers" will basically not be affected, as they will just work around these devices. It is ordinary citizens that are the target, as they do not have this opportunity. "Evildoers" will just experience a slight increase in the effort needed to do business. ON the other hand, this will create a nice set of possibilities to extort said normal citizens (sheep as yourself).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As non-American I am also very much in favour - this should be huge boost for IT sector everywhere outside US.
No, but I guess any development team with non-US members will have a strong problem with that. Or to put it more simply: how should this whole thing even be enforced? Non-US developers do not have to comply with US law and will not contribute to this surveillance - the only option is to make using such software illegal in the US (something else that cannot really be enforced). Additionally, this will push people away from software written in the US as it would violate the requirements of any company not willing to expose their entire internal information to the US economic espionage.
dear FBI,
a certain portion of your managament are stupid douchebags.
while there are agents risking their lives to stop criminals, you are sitting around jerking off on a whiteboard about pie in the sky bullshit that nobody with two nickels worth of brains would find useful or even interesting
fuck you, fuck your mother, and fuck everything you stand for.
No, it's in the realm of those who launder their dirty money through campaign 'contributions'. All policy originates from them.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
you mean the CIA and the Catholic Church?
I think having these wiretap backdoors is a worth the tradeoff of my liberty in favor of a better and safer world
I think that most of us would also gladly trade your liberty for a better and safer world, since that would kill two birds with one stome. :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
The most you can hope for is a civil suit. The process and any penalties will be paid by tax dollars to the reporters.
Its over. The entire justification for when we STOLE the states from the king of England was that we were going to live system where the people govern themselves.
But thats over now:
1. The ratio of citizen to congress critter has risen steadily so that they can walk or run away from their constituents
2. The function of the Senate has drastically changed and more decisions are made there, further eroding the power of popular vote. 2 per state/6yr terms
3. The things we used to laugh at the Russian people for: Corrupt press, Corrupt travel restrictions, Reading Mail, Wiretapping, corrupt law enforcement are all S.O.P for our government now.
4. We used to laugh at the Russians for electing their leaders. Both candidates came from the same party and there was no real choice. Which is what we have here now.
5., We used to laugh at the Russians for infiltrating and subverting democracy groups. Thats what we do here now.
6. We used to laugh at the fact that no one there "owned" anything. With the value of everything here based on an arbitrary currency, it essentially the same thing.
7 There is a defacto get-out-of jail free card for every president in office or after term.
I have worked with the people who "watch over us". They are relentlessly dishonest and always convinced they are right. And they have only one lens to view anything: us vs them. And once you are 'them", they have no morality at all.
Try to enjoy your life. Try not to have kids.
I don't think this is a good thing where drug dealers, terrorists, pedophile and assorted evildoers can commit their nefarious activities without impunity.
Would you prefer that they commit their nefarious activities with impunity?
It is disgusting. Yes indeed, however the US of A have been doing it to other nations for quite a while. Karma...
Do you see widespread use of cellphones and tablets running on FOSS? I don't so no worries there, the feds won't have much problem.
But Android is FOSS!. Hear you buddy, dream on. Even if you have the skills to compile Android from scratch, don't need any closed drivers and can manage to install it on your cellphone... even then you're just a few in a billion users market. For all practical purposes there is no FOSS getting in between the feds/govt and your privacy.
none
There are polls that have asked in several ways questions about privacy and rights versus giving up some more of that for what is claimed to be more security and safety. The results from the past few show that an increasing number of U.S. citizens want less intrusion into their lives. That is, they do not accept blanket promises if it means less privacy and even more erosion of the basic rights spelled out in their constitution, most especially in the Bill of Rights.
That's to the good.
However, in reality, as we've seen in the past twenty or thirty years, what has happened is that the majority of Americans, whatever their responses to the polls, have almost always elected to office those who are of the totalitarian persuasion who invariably operate under the guise of law and order.
Years back there was a survey done of a large number of scientists from various disciplines asking them for suggestions for use of current and future tech. A (to me) shocking number proposed things along the lines of implanting everyone from an early age with a chip that would include everything from medical records to criminal records, and postulating the eventual inclusion of sensors for brain-wave, endocrine, and other physiological monitoring. The latter could of course alert medicos to strokes and other life-threatening or serious problems; it would also, as we learned better how, lead to what would amount to thought monitoring à la an "intent-o-meter" to detect lawless thinking so's the cops could arrest people before they committed a crime.
We live in interesting times. Some here have stated that CALEA II will never be taken seriously. Given recent events, actions, and laws, I am not so sanguine about that. Some apparently think we are at a cusp, that we have a chance to stop something before it gets out of hand. I tend to think we are already behind the eight-ball. I also tend to think that trying to undo what's already done is akin to a verloren hoop. I hope to be wrong.
I wouldn't put too much trust in Congress for any accountability.
Remember the TARP bailout? The one that gave the Federal Reserve unlimited power in giving out money to banks foreign and domestic?
That bill was only a few pages long, and some congress members didn't even read it before they signed it
You can install CyanogenMod in most android phones and restrict yourself to use only open source apps too. Or try Mer based ones (i.e. Sailfish), Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, or Firefox OS
How about a "Privacy-Reqiurement In Principle Act", mandating that all devices should be secured to protect the user's privacy so that EVEN Law enforcement cannot ever get access. Backdooring should be a criminal offense, as should excess logging, and facilitating wiretapping. Product safety laws should be updated to treat software vulnerabilities the same way as toxic components.
Then instead of going around with the fantasy that law enforcement can fix problems, politicians might devote some more energy to fixing the underlying causes (such as foreign policies that cause "blowback" and the war on drugs). It will also make the country much safer against "cyber war".
Watergate whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg:
“Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal.
http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/ellsberg-all-nixons-crimes-against-me-now-legal.html
How many PC's ya got at home? 2 will do.
* Keep one offline at all limes; no ethernet cable or wifi or whatever
* Encrypt/decrypt your messages on that one
* Copy encrypted message to USB stick
* Move USB stick to your "regular" online computer
* Send message via regular online computer
* Recipient copies encrypted message to a USB stick
* Moves USB stick to their offline computer and decrypts there
Net result; internet-connected computers never see the unencrypted message. Yes, Joe Blow cheating on his wife might not bother, but you can rest assured that mobsters and terrorists will take that extra step. How could the FBI be so braindead as to not think of this?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
FTA:
Many of todayâ(TM)s communication tools are open source, and there is no way to hide a capability within an open source code base
Which, sadly, is all the justification they'll need to make open software illegal - or if not, equivalent to having "terrorist materials" on your computer.
And why, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, would the accused have hacking tools (read: Linux) on his computer if he *didn't* intend to hide his activies from the government?
If they can't make OS illegal outright, they'll make it a secondary offense, for example, obstruction of justice, or similar. The only ones using it would be those who could make a good case in front of a jury that it was *necessary* - i.e. engineers, sys admins, etc...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.