Government Wants to do Massive Internet Monitoring

jht writes "Taking the Clinton Administration's electronic paranoia to new heights, this NY Times article details plans to have the FBI establish an infrastructure (called FIDNET) capable of monitoring all non-military public networks. And you were wondering why they're so down on encryption... The NSA is reviewing it now, with final rules expected in September. " Uh,oh. This is potentially a Very Bad Thing. You may want to e-mail your Congressional Representative about it. (Free NYT online subscription required to read the article.)

Comments

Stickin' it to the man...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't as big a deal as people are about to start freaking out about - although it's definately worth a letter or two to your wonderfully representative *ha* elected officials.

The open-source and linux communities have the power to make these plans effectively useless through the implmentation of transparent public key encryption schemes - Fuck ITAR, this is an international community. A good implementation followed by a new "secure" linux distribution - perhaps Trinix - or maybe RedHat, but they're less likely to take on "the Man", IPO and all.

So let them monitor your SSH sessions, let them monitor encrypted web communitications. The key is to make it automatic and transparent, so that the end user doesn't have to do anything.

I'm sick of this bullshit from the US Government - I'm not a US Citizen, but being north of the border in Canada means this crap will diffuse up sooner or later - Our spineless prime minister does what the US wants.

So rather than bitch and moan and cry and whine, we've got the tools to make this system effectively useless. Run with it.

AC (with damn good reason).

The classic quote

[Kaa]

"When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn?t deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn?t own a gun. Now they?ve taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it."

It might interest people to know where this came from. The original quote belongs to Pastor Martin Niemoller who had the misfortune to live in Nazi Germany in the 30s:

"First, they came for the labor unions but I wasn't a labor unionist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Communists but I wasn't a Communist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Jews; but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Catholics, but I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak up."

You might want to keep this in mind.

Kaa