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Feature: US Govt & Invasion of Privacy
Maybe you are not concerned about this because you never expect to come under investigation. I don't either. I've never engaged in any network activity that is even on the fringes of legality. But I probably have and will correspond with people who are possible investigation targets. And the proposed legislation allows the government to sneak into _my_ home and sabotage _my_ encryption programs if the person I'm corresponding with is too hard to get to.
But that's not really the main point. The main point is that there are people in the US government who are worried about the fact that Americans are learning how to better protect their privacy using computer technology. They want to make sure they (the government) always have the ability, with a court order of course, to find out what you are up to. Is this such a bad thing? Shouldn't the government have broad investigative powers to help fight crime?
Yes. I think they should. I'm not a privacy nut or an anarchist. I'm not generally opposed to law enforcement or to legal searches or wire taps. I'm even toward the conservative side on some issues. For example I think court decisions that prevent the prosecution from presenting evidence against dangerous criminals just because of the way it was obtained are heinous. But, I'm completely opposed to any laws that limit the right of people to seek privacy in any way they want.
Let me ask what you think of the following scenarios: A lock company invents a new non-pickable lock. If you lose the key, the only way to get through the door is by removing the lock. The federal justice department is concerned that drug dealers and child molesters will use these locks to prevent law enforcement from sneaking in and bugging their homes. So they get Congress to pass a law that if you use one of these new locks, you have to keep a key on file at your local police station, to be used by court order whenever the government needs to sneak into your home.
Not chilling enough? How about a law that requires you to keep video cameras constantly running in your home with a feed to the local police station. The police are only allowed to monitor the camera with a court order. Maybe they want to find out if you are smoking funny-looking cigarettes or if you are reading _The Anarchist's Cookbook_ (which, by the way, isn't very good) or if you are planning anti-abortion demonstrations.
Is that outrageous? But that is essentially what the justice department wants to do with encryption. They want to make sure that they can read anyone's email without that person's knowledge, by requiring all strong encryption to come with a special key that is kept in the possession of a law enforcement agency. Anything you tell someone else in private, encrypted email could be used against you in court. Don't tell Grandma "I had to spank Johnie today because he won't quit biting his little sister" because someone may arrest you for child abuse.
The government tells us this is to stop "drug dealers" and "child molesters". What they don't mention is that it can also be used against drug users (who may themselves be more victim than criminal), harmless collectors of erotica (you don't always know what you are getting until it is downloaded, and even if you delete it immediately, you will never be able to prove that), tax protesters (the US government has a long and sordid history of violating the civil rights of tax protesters), drug legalization advocates (who are often also drug users), second amendment advocates (who might own illegal stuff), and anyone else who is involved activities the government wants to stamp out.
You think it's OK for the government to go after those people with whatever means possible? Congratulations, you are a part of the majority. People in the solid majority don't have to worry too much about government persecution. Are you sure it will always be that way? Fifteen years ago, cigarette smokers never dreamed that one day they would be social pariahs, that their suppliers would be under massive attack and that they would be forced to constantly struggle with legal barriers to engage in their habit. Are you a drinker? You think that prohibition could never make a come-back in this country? Are you religious? You think the constitution will protect you from the growing anti-religious sentiment in this country? It didn't protect blacks in the early part of this century, and it doesn't protect gun owners and tax protesters today. Do you like to drive fast? Have you heard the growing noises about "road rage" and noticed that all these new police being funded by the federal government to "fight crime" are out in patrol cars with radar guns? You never know when the majority will suddenly turn into rabid haters of _you_ and the government will suddenly be after _you_.
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller (1945)
Again (or is it still), we find ourselves in a society which demonizes unpopular segments of the population. Law enforcement demands the tools to deal with these demons, because they claim we won't be safe unless they can do whatever they want to fight "for our safety". If we give them what they ask for, and they are successful at wiping out the demons, they will pick a new group to be demons, maybe even a group you are a part of.
Law Enforcement is supposed to be there to serve and protect. By supplying them with the right to spy and invade, they will feel they have the obligation to, and no longer serve or protect. This has been true throughout history, I see no sign that this is any different. They need to be limited.
He who surrenders liberty for security deserves
neither.
-- Ben Franklin
[Note, both quotes are found in many different forms, there is no authoritative version, please don't bother correcting me because the quote I gave doesn't match the way you heard it]
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Open mind, insert foot.
The Constitution only affords sufficient protection of individual rights when the insitutional framework it established operates as intended. When the courts and legislature are corrupt, as they are now, it falls upon the citizenry to resist government infringements on their rights individually and peacefully, then and only then, by the use of defensive force, if need be. Many Americans are already resisting by refusing to file federal income tax forms and/or caching "illegal" firearms (which are arbitrarily selected for prohibition based on their appearance or ammo capacity). Whether or not things escelate beyond that is up to the folks who gassed and burned the children in Waco, Texas. We kicked an empire square in the arse over taxes once before, we can do it again, if we have to.
I still hope for peaceful change from the bottom up, and I think the Internet is playing a role in that change, that's why the government and their media machine fear it. I'd guess that they fear the Internet more than our firearms--it's difficult for them to get away with their shenanigans in the light of day. I just hope the Timothy McVeighs don't muck things up and start a war that no one can win.
FWIW, what I find interesting is that the federales are using the same arguments against encryption that they've been using against the right to own and carry weapons since the Kennedy assasination--that all must suffer a diminution of their rights because of the infractions of a few. The same argument, that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns, holds true for encryption, just as it does for all proscriptive laws. When a law prohibits a certain behavior, outlaws (who are by definition, law breakers) will continue the behavior while those who wish to abide by the law won't.
slashdot broke my sig
A nice, reasonable response. Thanks.
There's no doubt things seem to be a little "calmer" up north. I don't imagine I'd be too worried about the bad guys if I lived in Canada. However, I live in a country where the cops are hamstrung by courts that routinely give murderers a slap on the wrist but slam people found guilty of the latest high-profile political crime de jur. Instead of going after dangerous criminals, our police departments spend their time going after easy money, like speeding tickets. People caught abusing weapons, like children taking guns to school or armed robbers, are rarely prosecuted to the full extent of the law, while the BATF stage no-knock raids on harmless weapons collectors and confiscate their weapons, often ruining them financially as a result and netting no improvement in public safety.
What am I to do if I come face to face with an armed criminal who wants to harm me or my family and steal our property? Call the police so they can clean up my childrens' remains and take pictures? No, thanks. Blame whomever or whatever you want for the problem, but until things change, my little Glock 19 is going to stay right where I can use when need be, ready to rock n roll.
There is an arms war, but it is not citizen against citizen. It is the citizen against those who should by all rights no longer enjoy the status of "citizen"--criminals, who should be imprisoned, yet are allowed to continue to enjoy the rights they take from others with impunity.
slashdot broke my sig
There are many organizations that want to save us from the epidemic of drugs, non-whites, or responsibility (yes it cuts both ways). I personally see these organizations as an epidemic that I sincerely wish to save others from. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
They're not so much anti-religion as anti-theist. Taoism is totally non-theistic, being little more than a nature-oriented metaphysics. Buddhism is only quasi-theistic in that it does not worship Buddha, pays homage to several historical (as well as mystical) Buddhas, and believes any can attain Buddha status (Buddha is a title meaning "enlightened one"). This doesn't quite apply to the Therevada branch which is a bit closer to its Hindu origins, but that's going even further off-track...
Atheism and Buddhism are quite compatible. But yes, there's also the poseurs who just like to be into something "eastern" because it's exotic and isn't so "western" (this division being a distinctly "western" view of the world, ironically enough).
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> I can certainly envision a future where every packet you send must first be routed through the Fed's computer system before it's sent off to it's destination.
Actually this was mandated years ago by a voice vote called the Digital Telephony Act. Requires phone companies to install enough ports for the FBI to tap from a central location as many phones as they want. Currently they want enough capacity to tap one home on every single residental block in America.
Got any more fears I can assuage by showing you how they already happened?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
You'd be neither the first nor last pro-choice advocate (assuming you are) who believes Roe.v.Wade was decided on a rather shaky interpretation of privacy rather than a firmer grounding in equal protection under the law. This is relevant to the privacy issue here, as it's the basis of civil rights cases against "profiling". The dragnet process of gathering evidence against a certain class of criminal (terrorists, drug dealers, etc) wherein suspicion (and thus monitoring) of every single contact is its own sort of profiling. Witness how open-ended investigations tend to creep (can we say "Monica Lewinsky"?)
The 21st century will be marked by the word "privacy" entering the lexicon of newspeak, joining the ranks of "family values".
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
...Yes, governments worldwide are scared of the web, and cracking down. But it's like nailing jelly: the tighter you try to grip it, the more of it will slip through your fingers.
Their desire to keep the vast syrupy organism of government alive will only hasten its demise. Yes, many of us will be hurt in the process; many martyrs will be created. But in the end, the net will win and government will die, irrelevant, unneeded, and unloved. Give it ten years.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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Man, this is really off-topic, but this kind of slippery rhetoric really irks me.
By your logic, all science, not simply evolutionary theory, is "atheistic".
That contradicts the fact that you attribute the success of science on it's Christian influence.
Science makes no assumption the existence of the supernatural, but it does assume is that the laws of the universe do not change. It does not make any claims against the existence of God, but it does assume that God does not fiddle with the universe. Otherwise, no scientific measurement or observation could be trusted because there would be no way of determining if the result was affected by "outside" influence.
A theory that suggests things that contradict your religion is not itself a religion. Otherwise, most all of science is a religion, because I'm sure there are elements in every religion that contradict some well established theory of science.
Now, are you suggesting we stop teaching science completely? You can't pick and choose which theories fit your worldview which ones don't. The fundamental principle of science is that nothing is assumed with 100% certainty. That means you can't entirely discount theories with little evidence, but you'd be downright foolish to ignore those with compelling evidence, even if you have reasons to disagree with them. For this reason it is disingenuous to deny children knowledge of evolutionary theory because it inadvertently steps on the toes of a few religions.
If this regulation was not in place, there would often be police officers, driven by the need to get the felon in prison, willing to "take a fall" and get a fine slapped on them for illegal evidence-gathering for the sake of getting a conviction. Making illegal evidence gathering put the conviction itself in jeopardy gives cops good reason to follow the letter of the law themselves.
--The basis of all love is respect
1600's Calvinist totalitarians (Pilgrims on a journey my ass) escape the wrath of Catholic totalitarians
Salem. Nuff said.
1770's Unpopular Declaration of Independence discussed behind closed doors. All who wanted to be in had to sign. This meant if they were found or the war lost they would be shot.
Big debate on women voting too.
'Course it wasn't too long before we pulled a Columbus on Indians, Mexico.
So don't be surprised. We need a more direct response to this.
When Germany ordered Jews to wear yellow markers, all of Denmark wore them without even thinking twice. It was obvious what they had to do.
So start encrypting long repetitititions of "Mom, I'm at the store. I'll bring my commie friends home tonight."
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They're trying to reinvent the Earth and conquer it before people get their rightful share. If you really don't want to see pedophiles on the net, your best bet is to claim some part of the net and get over your fears. Otherwise we're guaranteed to see the net auctioned off to superpowers and rampant with crime. There's too much power in it for the assholes to pass up.
Go see Senate on the net and House on th net
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Why do you feel it necessary to be an AC? I will say right here, with identity and email address easily traceable back to me IRL, that the American "democracy" has gone so far from any ideals of such a system that the more I learn about it the more it scares me.
Like what, a quarter of you bother to vote at all? You have two political parties, always using the same rhetoric against one another, never arguing any real issues (the US is a one party state - one politic, two policies), and in the end people vote for the guy with the most air time and the biggest bullshit smile. The real power to do anything falls in the hands of professional lobbyists, lawyers, and a fantastically ingenious system of institutionalized corruption (campaign contributions etc).
You have leaders who will sit above you and say straight out that because cryptography is the ONLY way you have a chance gain true privacy, they will fight it at any cost. You have a press and a people willing to advocate in infringement on the most basic freedoms as long as it is under the guise of "save our children".
You don't need a revolution. You need a fucking nihilism. You need to tear the whole thing down and start right from the beginning. Democracy may have served the braindead masses of the Industrial age - but only one kind of state can hold the networks of the information age. The individual is all.
wow... I feel better now
Unfortunately, excluding evidence illegally obtained often has the effect of punishing society rather than the perpetraters. Perhaps what is needed is some form of direct punishment for officials who overstep the bounds of their authority and infringe the rights of people -- while not excluding the evidence in cases where the violation didn't directly lead to the discovery of the evidence.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Even without deliberate tampering, there's no way to create a culturally unbiased test - there's already enough of a problem with the SATs.
It may be true that there are people too stupid to be allowed to particpate in government. The problem is, who gets to make that determination? As soon as you let the government decide who can vote and who can't, you've given them too much power to perpetuate their own rule.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If the government wants the ability to break into my box, why aren't they giving me the ability to break into their boxes? Are they all criminals?
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Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.