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FCC Makes Wiretapping Easier for Cops
"The FCC order will require telecommunications companies to provide six of nine new surveillance capabilities that have been on the 'wish list' of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation," according to a story in this morning's Washington Post. Telcos have until next June 30 to implement the new E-Z-Wiretap(tm) rules, which do not yet cover data packets (and therefore Internet telephony) but the FCC is now working on how to tap into them, too. This is the long-dreaded implementation of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Read it and weep, m'friends.
They don't want to give us wireless bandwidth for data, they never have been willing to "open up the air waves" (or any other communications tool) very much. But they seem VERY willing to allow themselves back into OUR data.
I guess it's time to teach my non-tech parents about using that little PGP icon in the tray. As much as I dread explaining and using tech to some of my "e-mail pals" (Well, who would consider e-mail a serious communication tool!?!?) I think it's time.
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Don Rude - AKA - RudeDude
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
Have you ever been in a situation where your words or actions were misconstrued and used against you? Perhaps they were totally innocent actions, but for some reason, you ended up punished becuase of it. Think about some of the news stories you've heard - The government can lock you up for breathing if they were so inclined(exaggeration effect there - sorry:), the less they can get to POTENTIALLY use againts me(if they were so inclined), the better. Plus, it never hurts to keep my information out of the public view in the event that I should decide to do something illegal in the future(Perhaps defending a rightous cause...). H.
There are many problems with ignoring privacy. Here's another:
If a stupid law gets passed, I'm going to ignore it, and I don't want it to be easy for the feds to find out and procecute.
An example of a law that I consider stupid is fireworks being illegal in Massachussetts. If I want to risk burning my hand to be able to see pretty fire and here the bottle rocket go *pop*, then that's what I'm going to do. I don't want the local cops to be able to see the E-mail to my uncle in california that says "Hey, can you send me a gross of bottle rockets by UPS?".
And if your response is "You shouldn't just ignore stupid laws, you should try to do petition your legislator or something" then my answer is "been there, tried that, I want my damn fireworks now, not in 2060!"
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
One of the oldest principles of law is that the law must be written down, and made public. This serves two purposes: it prevents authority figures from making up arbitrary laws as they go along, and allows citizens to know what the law is.
Are current laws are so amazingly complex (though almost always unnecessary) and so full of legalese, that what the law means basically depends on whatever the authority figure says it is at the time they wish to apply it -- thus, by having enough laws, and interpreting those laws as they see fit, our legal system currently violates this oldest and most important of legal principles.
Another important element of English common law, the legal system that is arguably the best that has ever existed, is that the common man generally does a pretty good job of deciding issues of law. This is at the root of the idea of trial by jury. This concept is also suffering erosion at present. See the Fully Informed Jury Association.
Alan R. Light
Rarely has anyone so poorly read what I have written. (Or again, is this a deliberate atempt to bait?) If you printed this in a paper, I would consider suing for libel, since the racist attitudes you attribute to me are not at all like the things I have actually advocated (utter legal equality, personal freedom transcending and independent of race or sex, etc), but to a reader who saw only this response, your calumny would go unanswered.
You wrote:
Maybe you think so. I don't. But I do think that government is responsible for propogating at least as much active racism (like public buildings with drinking fountain apartheid up until the 1960s in some places and Jim Crow laws, right up to race-specific employment and housing laws of Right Now) as it has ever helped to dissolve. Please stop putting (racist) words in my mouth.
I am withdrawing from this line of argument, because I've had enough of your vitriol. I stand by my previous posts on the topics of the FCC, the mutability of class standing and how best to deal with racism. Since I have not posted them anonymously, anyone who cares to is free to read them and decide whether that is true. Since you do post anonynously, they'll have to just take your word for it that you wrote or didn't write any particular post.
Have a nice day.
timothy
p.s. I never attacked your grammar; thanks for extending me the same courtesy.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Actually I'm against government and law enforcement.. oh, and churches or any social group that "forces" their "morals" onto other people. We just don't need authority but it is so entrenched into each of us that you really do have to understand the issues and analyse society to see why it came about and why it is not necessary.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Of course governments are more dangerous than the criminals around us. They are, to begin with, usually better armed, and more unfeeling and callous.
The simple fact of the matter is that governments in this century alone have been responsible for the murders of over a hundred million innocent civilians -- a number that the "criminals" could not even hope to compete with, if the "criminals" are even anxious for the dubious honour.
In the United States, billions of dollars are stolen from citizens every year, BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, without any trial, in the name of preventing "crimes" which are explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, making these human rights "criminal" has become the leading cause of *real* crime, where one person harms another.
No wonder people are paranoid. Sometimes they really are out to get you.
There are many good people working in government, and quite a few bad ones as well. In all cases, they are only human -- even the good ones make plenty of mistakes. How much better if the U.S. government were to observe the Constitution which they pretend to respect? How much better if government were limited (as originally designed) so that abuses and mistakes were less likely to happen, and have less scope when they do happen? What a great idea! Why didn't Madison think of it?
Alan R. Light
According to a story a year or so ago in the Washington Post (any reference I might have had is long gone, unfortunately), all the wiretaps in the world are useless for hunting down the local drug dealers.
Problem is that they use a combination of cellphones, pagers, pay telephones, and constantly shifting slang that's so confusing and fragmented that the cops never know what they're hearing.
This was true even with analog cellphones, which can be eavesdropped without a warrant. All you need is a scanner. You probably couldn't use the warantless eavesdropping as evidence, but you could us it to be in the right place at the right time. With digital cellphones, you just need a fancier scanner. Near as I can tell, the only cellphone technology that's really encrypted is GSM, and it is being phased out in the US. (Note -- "spread spectrum" is not encryption, despite press releases from cellphone companies.)
So what's their *real* target? Given the LE abuses of the past, I would say political dissent. Gotta make sure that anybody who gets elected is solidly pro-FBI!
Amazingly, while people in Slashdot are bitching and moaning about how their privacy is being washed down the drain by the FBI's ability to wiretap their phones, millions of Americans are actually welcoming such privacy-removing efforts. The Slashdot contention that most Americans don't know what the FBI is capable of is actually quite a bit of exaggeration. Most Americans actually choose to diminish their privacy for security in the way of home security systems (which are presided over 24/7). Even ISPs keep information on their customers, yet no one seems to mind. In fact, if you called an ISP expecting them to have logs of the time period during which malicious activity occurred to you and they didn't, I bet you'd be furious. I know I would. How is that any different? Most likely, the customer doesn't know all his data is being tracked.
People need to get used to a different kind of privacy. The world is watching everything you do. It's not just the government. Private companies, the mob, anyone with just a little bit of money and access to the resources can do a bit of tracing. Where the citizen needs to keep a watchful eye is at the usage level. FBI wiretaps should not be used in illegal manners. That's simply it. If some FBI clerk wants to tape my conversations with my girlfriend in which I spout off against the President, the NSA, and then start talking dirty. So be it. My neighbor in the room next door can hear it, too. Just don't expect to try to bend the laws to make me into a criminal for doing it. And that rests in the hands of the court.
But how many of you get on the phone each day and say "I'm goin to go assassinate the president at 6:30 tonight. Good Bye."
My point is, how many of you that are complaining about this actually get on the phone and discuss illegal things that Big Brother would actually care about?
Albeit, it is a large invasion of privacy and is against our constitutional rights in one way or another. So don't bother replying with the usual "Hey dumbass, its against our rights! Freedom of speech, d00d!"
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"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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But what if the people who are holding that "Confidential" data such as you walking around your house naked suddenly decide that people wh walk around the house naked consitute a threat to national security. They then query their database(remember now, it's still confidential) for all people who walk around their house naked. One of those names on the list is yours.
Now you get a knock at your door and are asked to pack for a very long stay by two enforcment agency people - and all things being confidential and such- you won't even know which bad habit of your fits their profile....
Does that shed some light as to how dangerous this data can be if colelcted on EVERY individual?
Forget about the implications of political powers use of this data......
Suppose a new tax comes down the line - all people who walk around their house naked will be taxed 20% more per year.... Hmmmm...
H.
But my greatest hope is that this action will help reduce the amount of paranoia that people have towards the government. Once people observe the (always nice) police enforce the (always just) laws of our (never self-serving) government, maybe they won't be so suspicious, and will come to realize that everything the government does is in the best interest if the people. And if they don't realize it, then maybe the wiretaps will help the government find them so that they can give them the psychiatric help that they so obviously need.
-- $SIGNATURE
Yeah, but think of the advantages:
:-D
:-) the preceeding was tounge in cheek. flame to /dev/null cuz it's a JOKE!
a) a health care system (this alone is SO tounge in cheek that i could die)
b) you can legally possess kiddy porn!
c) you get to stick your nose up at 'Merikans and travel in Europe happilly with a big maple leaf on your backpack
d) your national anthem is easier to remember
e) even if you don't know d) you aren't considered unpatriotic
Ok, I'm done now.
Let's apply some rationality to this. The total number of digital messages is expanding at such a rate that it is not even remotely possible for law enforcement, as we know it in America, to perform wiretaps on anyone but the most serious criminals. This doesn't even take into account the time and effort that is required from the State to obtain legal authorization to do this.
The other thing everyone should think about is the reponse of the FDIC to the so-called "Know Your Customer" Rule, that was killed due to unprecedented public opposition. If you really think that law enforcement should not be able to perform any one of the things that CALEA calls for, then the FCC should be slashdotted until they give up on that provision.
I can't get that upset about the privacy implications of new digital wiretapping rules, if they simply make law enforcement capable of performing surveillance to the same degree as they can with POTS technology. That's because I use all of the communications media, and I prefer to think that the law is being applied consistantly.
However, it would make me really upset if I found out that a person in the act of committing a crime could avoid prosecution, simply by choosing to communicate via digital technology.
-- Dave Aiello
nice sig :)
-funcused
Now they have more ways to invade our personal lives... but I think maybe some people might want to ease up a bit. Its not like the police and FBI really want to listen to your "Top Secret" phone conversation with your mother or something. Or to read your spam mail or anything like that.
So unless your a mobster (or someone else with a nefarious purpose in life) you don't really have to worry about anything.
This is it. As I write this, I'm downloading:
* freeS/WAN
* CIPE
* GnuPG
From now on, my drives will be encrypted (so much for the FBI's plan to put backdoors in everyone's machines), my email will be signed and encrypted, and all my network traffic to school and to work will be done over a SKIP tunnel.
I hadn't been doing these things because they're a bit of a pain, but now it seems I have no choice if I want to preserve my privacy.
"America the land of the free? Ha! Suckers, they don't me you when they say that...."
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties advocacy group, said it is outraged by the FCC's decision. "The FCC basically sided with the FBI, putting aside any privacy concerns," said James X. Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the center. He said the center is considering appealing to the courts.
The FCC doesn't seem to be much on the side of the common citizen, the American citizens as a whole.
Something is wrong when a government has to be extremely paranoid and keep watch over everything. If America was such a perfect and free society, the worries would be less...except possible concern over the actions of a group of "bad" countries. Our military budget is still by far the greatest of any nation, much larger than China's even...yet they always make it seem like we're on the verge of attack from crazy terrorists who will take over the world, or China, or some guy in Iraq who doesn't want to share his oil with US/western corporations.
It's quite amazing how accurate George Orwell's predictions were. I'm sure people were quite frightened when 1984 was first released and they probably thought "Wow, that's like the Soviet Union!" Nowadays public knowledge of the invasion of privacy is practically zero so they have no idea this is going on. Why doesn't the so-called fair and unbiased mainstream media ever cover things like this? Because it's mentioned in non-headline areas of a few newspapers, somehow this shows there is no bias?
Let's see, we have echelon, everything the NSA does, the CIA meddling in the governments and militaries of other countries, the FBI watching over people and keeping a really close eye on humanitarian, civil rights, anarchist, and socialist organizations and people...I barely remember this fact, but on the FBI watch list they have something like 20 (or even 2) right wing groups, while they have several hundred more "left" type groups. Left referring anything from human rights groups, animal rights, earth protectionists, and political type groups such as state socialists, anarchists, etc. I forgot where I read this, and wish I had taken better note of it...it was pretty outrageous.
What is the government REALLY afraid of? Is it really this BIG terrorist threat or some evil nation that changes every year? Or is it the spreading of the awareness of the shit the US and it's corporations do to the common masses, creating a larger movement of people calling for major changes to this? Keep your eye on Seattle at the end of November of this year.
For those unfamaliar with political/social movements and such...very few people are anarcho-primitivists, while it's made to look like any person with concern over such things the US does or corporations...is a dumb idiot who wants everyone to live in the jungle again. More people want things to progress as they are now, possibly even faster as there would be MUCH less middle men and service people, and more people actually doing productive work. The changes have more to do with the way things are set up, how decisions are made, who gets all of the money, etc. I don't want to start a debate over political ideologies, I just want to make it clear very few people are actually primitivists.
This is a serious pain in the ass.
;)
I work for a wireless provider. Hence we have a measurable amount of amateur pharamsuticals, and personal entertainers using our services. This is just a fact.
We've been debating back and forth for about a year and half now with the feds on who's going to buy what equipment.
They're _extremely_ specific on what they want accomplished, and how it should be done.
Heh. Atleast this way, I know if they're monitoring me.
A political animal's primary motivation is survival -- remaining in office. They will explain that only they know how to save the country (and the children!), so re-election is a matter of national security.
Have you heard of political dirty-tricks squads? They're really not too uncommon, many political candidates have tolerated them as deniably over-enthusiastic supporters. Some, like Nixon, actively helped them in illegal ways.
If that's too much of a stretch for you, you do know that nearly ALL political candidates hire investigators to dig up dirt on their opponents, don't you? Think how valuable government surveillance would be for those efforts.
Now, the question is, who gets an advantage in political intelligence for dirty political campaigns if the government has widespread surveillance? The honest grass-roots challenger, or the corrupt incumbent?
Still think you don't have an interest in keeping the playing field between citizens watching government and government watching citizens level?
Jim
I'm not afraid of anything I say over the phone or internet being intercepted and used against me, I don't say those things over the phone or internet. However, I'm scared sh*tless by any law that takes freedom out of the hands of the American populace, and places it into our caretakers.
Perhaps it would be better explained in the hypothetical. Let's say that I'm of a certain religious denomination that says that it is immoral to use any form of birth control. Then, lets say that the government mandated that all males should have some form of subcutaneous(sp) birth control implanted in them, because of population pressures. What is the result of this? Either my religious beliefs are swayed, or I break the law. Let's say that I break the law, but have no more children, obeying the spirit of the law, if not the letter.
How does this relate? How is enforced birth control similar to federal wiretapping? Because they both take the rights out of my hands, and put them into the hands of the government. In both cases, I would be forced to break the law. I will not stand for wire tapping without a search warrant, and I will(would) not stand for enforced birth control.
. when in danger or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout --Robert Heinlein
Case in point: Big Brother from 1984; it stopped crime, sure, but at what cost? The right to privacy for millions outweighs the right of hundreds to snoop around, even if that snooping could save lives.
Big Brother only stopped the suffering for those who were already dead on the inside and therefore incapable of human feeling. The only true humans of the book, the Proles, Winston Smith, and Julia faced excrutiating suffering. The proles live in poverty and were a form of slave labor; Winston and Julia were found breaking nothing that we would call a law (All that was happening was 2 single people were sleeping together) and tortured until their personalities, their humanity was completely destroyed. So among other things, we would have to be complete conformists for Big Brother to approve and then we could go about our mundane lives. Otherwise, prepare yourself to join the dead.
On another note, how many people are really familiar with 1984? Was O'Brien really a member of the Brotherhood, or was it merely a ploy to catch Winston?
-- Terry
How about if your not a mobster but a political activist for a cause they don't like? You think they would miss even a wink of sleep over the fact that they used some completely unrelated fact or evidence about you to gather data on the group(s) you work with? ..or maybe they find some way to justify wiretapping you (afterall at the same time they make wiretapping easier...they also have tried to expand the allowable uses of it) then use it to steal industrial secrets or even future plans of your company. Remember one of the main reasons we NEED limits to what law enforcment is allowed to do is that they are human. (remember...power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely). They make mistakes, they have personal agendas, they have feelings, they have curiosity...they can be corrupt.
Remember the IRS employees reading supposedly-confidential files? Nah, it just couldn't happen with the FBI!
Is your name Mr Rogers? Cuz you sure seem to live in the land of make believe to me.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
spelling has two "l"s... hope it's a typo. if it is, perhaps the same can be said for herka.
http://www.jetico.sci.fi/
Bestcrypt on the fly transparent harddrive encryption. Currently availible for Dos/WinX but a public beta version for Linux will be availible in Sept. (As far as I've been told so for).
I dont doubt the date so much as I'm currently testing/using the beta software right now and it works pretty awesome. (couple of minor bugs so far but I've reported them back so hopefully those will be gone soon).
"The total number of digital messages is expanding at such a rate that it is not even remotely possible for law enforcement, as we know it in America, to perform wiretaps on anyone but the most serious criminals."
How about their most serious political enemies? Does it bother you that politicians could perform wiretaps on them? This gives corrupt politicians great power, while honest ones wouldn't use it.
Jim
One half ass search will not get a search warrant signed from any judge in the country. Do you people even listen to the other side? Conservatives spend half their time bitching about how hard it is to get a search warrant. The constitution, search and seizure wise, is the strongest it has ever been.
Another important element of English common law, the legal system that is arguably the best that has ever existed, is that the common man generally does a pretty good job of deciding issues of law. This is at the root of the idea of trial by jury. This concept is also suffering erosion at present. See the Fully Informed Jury Association.
I disagree with this theory, because juries have a tendancy to judge a case on the basis of their emotions, their set of morals, and which side of the case has the neatest looking props - as opposed to actualy judging the case on the basis of the laws relevent to the case. The fact that the jury can't possibly have any clue as to what these laws actualy are contributes to this problem.
What you said in the first two paragraphs I agree with entirely. It is exactly what I've been trying to say in my last couple of posts. You put it cleanly - thanks, I'll be borrowing that wording now =)
I propose that the only way to make it possible for everyone to know what laws affect them, is for the total number and complexity of the body of law affecting them to be as minimal and simple as possible. If the law isn't absolutely nessisary to the survival of the society, I say ditch it. The KISS principal applies to legal systems too.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The cops screwed up big time there. That has no relevance to this however. This law will not make it any easier for screwups like that to happend, nor will it make them any worse if they do. This will not affect seizure in any way. Also, this is one isolated case. One screw up like this happens, and its remembered for years. This disregards the thousands of legitamite search warrants issued and served every year. Mistakes do happen. Amputating law enforcements ability to do their job will not alleviate the problem, it will only make it easier for real criminals to break the law. The answer to incidents like Steve Jackson Games is to fire, or perhaps even prosecute the people involved.
Yeah, I hear that, but I guess what I'm getting at is even though they think they have probable cause, and perhaps do obtain a warrant, how do I know that a warrant for everyone in the united states doesent exist? Ok, it's a silly question, but if there is no mechanism for finding out, then why should I feel safe? How do I know that my privacy is NOT being interrupted by a warrant that I don't even know about?
I mean, yeah, it would be counterintuitive to post a list of all the people who have a warrant against them enableing the use of wiretaps, but on the other hand, doesent it seem like that is required to protect our freedom?
I've heard this attitude before and its truly a dissapointment to hear so much of it. The privacy issue is a question of right and wrong. The fact that our privacy has been invaded in many ways already does not mean the government should have the freedom to invade it. It's truly sickening that our representatives in congress are acting on behalf on the justice department instead of on behalf of their constituents. This country is truly going down the tubes. Things are going to get far worse I can promise you. Gone are the days of government by the people for the people. I just don't know what to do about it. The cause is the average person's lack of concern for what goes on. People don't take any responsibility for what the government does, they don't stand up and say "NO!" when things like this happen, and so the thugs in the FBI get the ability to tap your phones. Don't kid yourself that they are only going to tap the phones of the bad guys. No instead they will harrass ordinary people like you and me who have opinions they don't like. The FBI had a bigger file on Martin Luther King Jr. than on anyone else at the time. What does that say about them? All government is stained by evil. The only real question is how much. We could have a country where the government was accountable to the people and truly acted on their behalf. But the only way that is ever going to happen is if we ourselves make it happen.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Do you really think someone (or a family, for that matter) that is barely making end's meat is going to have _time_ to watch the news? :\
For that matter, I would venture a guess that the more education you have, the more likely you are to watch the news.
It's difficult to seperate these variables because they're all intercorrelated.
I'll see you your alleged "high standards" and raise you Steve Jackson games.
I call.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
it's been awhile since i read the book, too, but i seem to recall comming tto the conclusion that the brotherhood never really existed, and that it was used to identify troublemakers. o'brien wasn't a member because the organization didn't really exist, and if it did, he certainly didn't share in its purported ideals. i need to read it again.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
Case in point: Big Brother from 1984
i don't think a work of fiction (no matter how insightful it may be) can legitimately be used as evidence of something non-fictional.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
First, I'd like to thank the guys who posted links to privacy software. I was preparing to write my own symmetric encryption software for my hard drive before learning that someone's already started.
It seems to me that people who want others to be at ease with the liberties of govenment investigative agencies are being purposely dismissive of the danger of abuse --- and its inevitability. It would however be appropriate for us all to accept the govenment's right to wiretap, as long as we still have the right to encrypt (at the very least using our own hand-written software) our data transmissions with arbitrarily high security, as in 1024-bit RSA, 360-bit eliptic curve public key implementations. But this guy's post should be dismissed because taking control of your online identity is as fundamentally important to responsible citenzenry as taking control of your finances, etc.
Sorry, but this emperor's naked.
If you guys watched "Enemy of the State" (1999) with Will smith and Gene Hackman, you'd be pretty nervous about this bill. The film brings into question the exact same issue and its repercussions in law enforcement and personal privacy. IMO it would be the end of the world when law enforcement or NSA would have the same kind of power it had in the movie where they could tap into commercial surveillance cameras or control cams from anywhere in the city. How would we be able to privately change our clothes or such in private without being broadcast on someone's screen?
-----
Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
of a sick society.. when people perform acts of terrorism (or steal bread) it is a sign that something is wrong.
How we know is more important than what we know.
well, i agree with your general argument, so it's obvious that we interpreted the reference to 1984 differently
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
People have been pleasantly surpized lately by the fact that the FCC is being less aggressive than they formerly hinted at re. low-power radio stations. Wow, thanks, FCC!
...)
Point is, the FCC (in its control, through licensure) of US airwaves relies on a wrong-headed view of airwave resources, declaring not just that airwaves are finite but they the FCC has the right and the vision to divide the pie. The premise is that if the radio spectrum was simply seen as an arena of voluntary human interaction, either anarchy or monopoly would prevail. I say this is patently false, and extending the analogy that the FCC relies on to justify itself to other fields makes elaboration here pointless.
The bigger picture, though, is that in the US (and everywhere), there are acronymical organizations (bureaucracies with a capital B) designed to 'regulate' and --unbelievably!-- 'stimulate' certain aspects of your interaction with other people by printing hefty volumes of their Wise and Considered rules. And the longer these organizations are around, the harder it is to realize clearheadedly that all such bodies are artificial -- as in, 'artifice' -- rather than remnants of the Dreamtime. Radio spectra could be split, used, sold, shared in any number of possible combinations; it takes the shortsightedness of appointed officials and their sack of good intentions to declare all visions other than their own illusory.
There probably are some individual rules passed by some of these Departments of Abbreviation that you agree with; I've had people tell me what a bad person I am if I don't like the EPA because they 'protect the environment,' for instance. (Sort of like being against ALF bombings and being berated as 'an animal hater.') I like clean water and clean air; government regulations no matter how extensive have little to do with either in any way which an unfettered market could not deliver, faster and better.
Like I said, in the bigger picture, there are simply too many laws and too many bodies given authority to pass them. "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state." And boy, are our laws numerous! FCC, NHSTA, DEA, FDA, FTC, DOE, EPA, DOA, BATF, and those are just the biggies. When the body of law is in practical terms unavailable to most people, and every industry is subject to regulation, licensure and sanction, the result is not capitalism, but rather a form of mercantilism (in which favored producers are de facto appointed by the ruling authority, and produce at it's discretion) which is only a few jumps, winks and nudges from fascism. (As a political system -- quite apart from the societal control that it requires and which can have the results we've seen in films about concentration and death camps of WWII.)
Rather than you simply making your choice among available goods, the philosophy is that the range of goods and their qualities oiught first be inspected and approved by the Higher Ups, and their availability only possible if their producers have jumped through the right hoops.
And those higher ups, having been appointed by congress (or appointed by such appointees, etc etc) are arrogant in their power. They seize things they don't like (computers, radio equipment, houses, boats, cars) and know that even if the owners get it back, they've been screwed but good. Fair? Ask Steve Jackson.
Just be grateful it hasn't quite reached software yet. (Please correct me if there is in fact already some busybody agency regulating software
OK, this rant has gone too long.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
* On stocks, it wouldn't surprise me if a LOT of people held at least some -- especially given the availability of employee stock purchase plans.
Most people don't play a whole lot, nor do they have vast investments, but they may hold a couple.
People who have cable TV might have a slightly higher average income than those that don't...
* The poor have less to spend, and most likely what they do spend on, will be necessities and products w/ low profit margins (high competition). While an executive might get an Audi or BMW and not really care that much about getting the best deal, you can't say as much for groceries. Generally, the former will have enough of a margin for a heavy shotgun-style ad budget...
...Hades, sometimes ads seem to be bought just for the *station* and not because of the program. I'm not sure how many people still watching old "ST:TNG" re-runs care that much about designer clothing or cosmetics... but when margins are high, a shotgun approach is affordable.
And that's why advertising aims towards the rich. You nailed it: money.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Er, if you think you might be, don't ask. It brings to mind the fool who called his local police, asking whether there were any warrants for his arrest (There were. They got used, pretty darn quick.).
I doubt that they'd let you know, since it'd imperil their investigation. Afterwards, they *might* have to let you know if you were tapped at some point (or at least, find out what they found out), but...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
IANAL.
but:
* It might be considered interstate commerce.
* It might be considered 'necessary and proper'.
* The Feds pretty much always overstep their jurisdictional boundaries, even when it's blatantly absurd.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
... "Every" phone conversation? Do you realize the kind of resources it would take to police EVERY SINGLE phone conversation on the planet? There isn't enough people or equipment in the entire NSA/CIA/FBI/whatever to listen to every single phone conversation. That being said, the phone system isn't secure enough for truly private conversations.
And the NSA and the CIA can only listen in on foreign phone conversations, they can't spy on ordinary citizens..
My journal has hot
What, you WANT to be monitored? Fine, let me tap your phone. Let me watch you 24/7. Let me use that information anyway I want to.
;) Inquiring minds want to know...
Let me tell you a little story, one without "criminals" and without "bad people" which lead to the same two being convicted in Indiana of "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor". Bare with me on all the details, becuase I'm recalling this from memory.
Simple story. A couple were ingaged in sexual activity and had failed to close their curtains completely. Hardly a crime, when one is caught up in the heat of the moment, one can lose track of things like this. (OK, at least I have...)
A neighboring couple saw glimpses of what was going on, so one of them took a video camera and went across the way to tape them through the opening in the window. This was all do to their "outrage" that someone would be doing such, allowing others to see, though noone else had. (Part of their testimony in the trial.)
Some time later, the taper's young child found the video tape and watched it. Caught in the act, the two voyeur parents brought the whole thing to the attention of the authorities, who then arrested the love-making couple on the above criminal charges.
They were convicted, in spite of the fact that in many ways their privacy had been invaded, due to an oversight on their part and snooping on another's.
Did they do anything wrong? They were a couple in love, who were acting out nature's way of intimacy. But because one couple with a child refused to take personal responsibility for their own actions, an innocent (IMHO) couple was convicted of a crime.
So, let's expound on this for a moment.
You are someone who enjoys fellatio. Your girlfriend doesn't mind, actually enjoys giving such pleasure. The state you are in (and check your laws, because in many states this behavior is considered sodomy and is illegal. There's even one state, of which I can't remember for sure at the moment but think is Tennessee, where the only legal way of intercourse, inside marraige {illegal outside under any circumstances), is the "Missionary Position". Everything else is illegal...) So, you've been picked out by authorities as a deviant in society, because you believe in saving the whales. You think that these creatures are being hunted mercilessly and being driven to extinction.
The authorities start to monitor your activity, put fiber-op cameras in your house (what, they wouldn't do that? They did that to David Koresh and folks in Waco) and finally catch you and your girlfriend on tape ingaged in fellatio: illegal in your state. They arrest the two of you.
Would you feel comprimised that such a personal activity was being monitored by the government? Would you feel victimized by the fact that a particular form of human expression had been ruled illegal in your state? Would you feel as if you had been trapped somehow, just because you had a frame of mind contrary to the government's concerns? When you found out that the whole reason you were being monitored was because you believed that the human race was hurting whales, what would you feel?
You have no fucking idea how things work.
Let me clue you in on a basic principal of government: give them an inch, they will take 10 miles.
Government doesn't care about you. They don't care if you do anything at all, unless you've pissed them off some way. Then, they'll do everything they can to discredit you, to ruin your life. Hell, they don't even need to spy on you. Why bother? All they have to do is storm in, on an anonymous tip that you are dealing drugs, plant evidence and then use the RICO statuates to perform civil-forfeiture and take everything you own. All of your money, all of your property, everything: gone - taken away leaving you to post a $10,000 bond (money you now don't have) just to have the priviledge to argue that your property did not commit a crime.
You are a damn fool, who has no idea how much un-constitutional power the government has managed to grab. Ignorant people like you, let it go on, saying, "It's all for the good of the country."
I dare you to read "1984". I dare you to read the last 10 years of legistlation out of congress. Compare them. Now, compare that to what happpened in what became Nazi Germany...
"Mommy, can I trust the government?"
"Of course, dear. Just ask any Native American."
- Xiombarg, (still can't remember the password.)
P.S. Ah, Rob? Someone? How do I validate that I am what I am?
Scott Ostrander
Scotto@cs.indiana.edu
The concern over this puzzles me. They still need a warrant to do any of this. Are you concerned that the FBI may burst through your door at any moment and search your belongings? If that is a possibility for you, then this concerns you. The standard of probable cause is still applicable. Anyone who knows a little about the criminal justice system knows that this is a pretty high standard. This is simply high tech wiretapping. This is not a further invasion into our private lives, it is simply the law enforcement community trying to keep up with progressing technology. Even if they do get the capability to tap internet phone calls, so what? Again, they still need a warrant, and this is still just a technology driven update of what is already legal and accepted, that being wiretapping of standard phones.
You'll also notice many ads for white specific products, while NONE for blacks and the lower class (like hair care, make up, expensive vehicles, etc.)
Hold on a minute. I can think of a very few products that are functionally 'white-specific' (or race-specific in any sense) and they're mostly cosmetic, like creams to lighten or darken the skin of those who find their own too dark or too light respectively, and chemicals to curl or uncurl hair with the same sort of division
Just a little questionaire from a race seminar I attended:
1) Can you find Band-Aids for your skin tone?
2) When you act to speak to a supervisor, do you think they will be of your own race?
3) When buying cosmetics (female oriented question) can you easily find a base to match your skin tone?
Those are the only three I can remember, but there were like 20 questions total. If you answered YES, you took a step forward, if you had no opinion, you stood still, or if you answered NO, you took a step back. Every non-white person was at LEAST 5 steps behind the last white person. Just made me think how lucky white people have it, and take it for granted. Racism does exist, just because you're not on the recieving end doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Unpopular? I agree, if someone really wanted to construct a positive case for orders of magnitude more surveillence, let them have at it. But "obviously wrongheaded" is something else. The top of this thread is the lamest among several lame comments that encourage people to blindly trust government authority when the evidence in today's headlines fairly screams the opposite. There is, at least, some need to cite a reason.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Actually, a fairly high number of Americans own stock. In fat, according to the online edition of the Seattle Times, the number of Americans who stock is over 100 million. This is more than a third of the population, I think, and far more than a third of the adult population. People own stock because it's part of their compensation package, because they save for retirement with a mutual fund, because they sent in an application to Yahoo or other Internet company offering free stock as incentive at their startup, because day trading seems to have replaced tattoos for those born between 1976 and 82, or for any of several other reasons. Not everyone's a big investor (I have only a few shares, and a lot of people are in that boat) but if you own even three shares of Microsoft, you'd be interested if it dove or jumped, wouldn't you?
Stockownership is one of the great levelers that capitalist public ownership has which is so totally absent from feudal or totally-statist economies, because you can own a small piece of Compaq or GE just by paying the price of a share (or a few).
Now on to the serious stuff.
Hold on a minute. I can think of a very few products that are functionally 'white-specific' (or race-specific in any sense) and they're mostly cosmetic, like creams to lighten or darken the skin of those who find their own too dark or too light respectively, and chemicals to curl or uncurl hair with the same sort of division. Marketing is another matter, important but different. Products are marketed to the overlap of the interested and the eligible, and this results in a different *marketing* strategy for different products, but does not make them race-specific any more than advertising salsa in Texas means people in Minnesota can't have any.
And are you really lumping together "blacks and the lower class"?! It's my favorite question, but is this inflammatory, racist flamebait? In America, there are no heriditary titles as they still are in Brittain and in other monarchal / semi-monarchal countries, and lower-class is (despite the best efforts of the Welfarists) still an adjective rather than a noun. Are some people born in poverty poor when they die? Sure. Are people 'trapped' in one place or economic state because they were born into it? Ask Thomas Sowell and Mario Puzo about that. Heck, ask Bill once he and the intern come out of his closed office.
Again, the reference to products 'made for their race' is either flamebait or ought to be. Would Advertising for SPF 30 sunscreen, jerrycurls and makeup built for the skin of specific Asian people be enough to pay for the evening news? Are expensive cars not "made for their [whose?] race"? What are you saying?! An observation of any large city will prove within minutes that plenty of non-whites own expensive cars (where I live, there is a large low-rider culture, and many of those are aesthetic knockouts) and that plenty of whites drive shitboxes. Sounds like you are willfully confusing race and culture, and maybe even race with species.
Am I going crazy here or what?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Most people seem concerned about two scenarios: 1984 and "Good government caring for its citizens"
Frankly there are reasons for wiretapping. There are also reasons to be concerned for 1984. However let me tell you one thing. It is a losen battle. This wiretapping stuff will bring only more confusion and nothing else. 5 years from now we may not only face 1984 and good government scenarios but also a lot of "ooops", "its not a bug its a feature" and such.
Sincerly right now wiretapping, will hardly stop terrorists, criminals and states. And this can be inferred even at much lower levels. Let's take a typical user environment at a University or commercial company. Most security on such environments have already take a level where wiretapping is presumed to exist, at least potentially. And it is presumed that any user can wiretap lines. Does this sounds fantastic? Three years ago yes. Today when Linux distributions carry tcpdump and anyone can download similar programs for Windows no.
This story can be seen interpreted in two ways. Either someone is just keeping pace with the new world, in a relatively bad way. Or someone is making the biggest stupidity, one ever could dream of.
Consider that someone taps you. You write, speak, spell: "Daisen aek veon aksavan dion sat". Can anyone arrest you for this?
If the soul of the present laws remain the same no. No one can arrest you for communicating in a foreign language. No one can accuse you of anything before clearly translate the meaning of these words. And if someone taps you "for free" he can get some serious trouble in the future. In several ways and at several levels.
Five years from now, someone in the FBI will have to explain a loooot of a mess they may have made with this...
Nope. You need a bit of electronic equipment to do wiretaps. You are supposed to also have a judge's order -- but when I see a few Feds who dispensed with that part spending 5-10 years at the Crossbar Hotel as Bubba's boytoy, then I might be inclined to take your argument seriously.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Why should we only talk about this statute? I see a broad spectrum of privacy invasions being proposed by our government of which this is just the latest example. Do we need to defeat each law in detail, or can't we look at the implications of the entire set of proposals?
You seem to believe that if the President wants a wiretap on an enemy of his, it will be impossible to find a judge to sign the warrant. Granted, most judges are honorable, but all it takes is one bad apple to make warrants too easy to obtain. The Executive appoints federal judges, so how hard is it to create some friendly judges? You think the FBI and cops don't keep lists of warrant "friendly" judges?
Yes, it is difficult to wiretap your enemies covertly, Watergate was a real screwup that proves that point. How many didn't get caught is the only question in my mind. It also shows that some politicians are interested in collecting political intelligence even when it *IS* illegal. I don't want to make it possible for corrupt politicians to increase their power without even going outside the law.
Maybe it's terrorists and criminals that screw up your daily life. The government does a far better job of it for me.
Jim
If Joe Blow cannot readily understand the laws that may apply to him, how can any reasonable person expect him to abide by them?
If, in fact, one can devote one's professional life to a specific area of law, and still needs to do research and look up laws, how can Joe Blow even know if some law applies to his current situation (other than by hiring a full time lawyer to follow him around 24/7)?"
This is especially true when some laws are so bizarre that only a lawyer (from experiance) would even guess that it exists at all.
There are even cases where two current laws are in perfect opposition: to obey one, the other must be broken. Any system that allows that condition to exist is IMHO broken.
I do agree that most judges and lawyers aren't the problem. That's why the jack booted thugs in congress have to pass manditory minimum sentences to force them to toe the line. The problem is, by the time Joe Blow appears in court on trial for a law he had never heard of, it's too late. He has already been deprived of a simple freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After all, how can you have those if you feel a need to consult an attourney before doing anything?
I think I'm going to go do that too, but it isn't enough.
We all have to get together and remind everyone of some basic points:
If the USA doesn't clean up it's damn act, I'm moving north 500 Miles as soon as I finish college (7 years from now for a bachlor's degree, arghh!)
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
So all you need to do is read the chapter.
bomb allah president marx encryption revolution Newt Gingrich unabomber occult
>I'm moving north 500 Miles
:)
Well, Canada will welcome you, just don't:
a) try to make mix tapes or mix CD's, 'cuz we'll tax your ass
b) try to get a tech job, since they're all moving to the US anyway
c) try anything illegal, cuz the RCMP will pepper-spray your eyes out
d) move to Ontario, cuz you won't be able to afford an apartment (thanks, Mike!)
e) am I missing anything?
pope, tongue perfectly in cheek
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
occult has two "c"'s
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
As I like to say, "If you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind this anal probe."
Since criminality is decided by the same people (that is, an entrenched, poorly-responsive government) as would like to watch your movements, listen to your phone calls for dirty thoughts, etc, the idea that "this should only worry you if you are a criminal" is nonsensical.
If you do something they don't like, you'll soon find that you're a criminal.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
1984 is not being used as evidence of something that is going on right now. However, sometime in the future our world may become like the world of 1984. It does not happen often, but sometimes a piece of written work is a fair description of something that is not known at the time. For example, the book The Titan and the ship The Titanic. As long as we can understand Winston Smith and believe he was in the right, Big Brother does not exist and we still have our individual rights to freedom of thought.
-- Terry
No, it does not fall under illegal search and seizure. Illegal search and seizure is search and seizure (or wiretapping) without probable cause, i.e. a warrant. The courts have ruled this again and again.
With this law enforcement is not trying to create a utopia, or even stay miles ahead of crime, they are simply trying to keep up with it.
Richard Nixon
-- Terry
The entire point of a wiretap is that you don't know. And no, they cannot, legally tap everyone in america. I hate to scream this again, but "probable cause" and warrant. This words have meanings, and I suggest you look them up before the paranoia reaches fever pitch.
It was made clear in the book that O'Brien was running a sting (he personally oversaw the breaking of Winston Smith, had recordings of their seditious conversation, etc).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
There is a big difference between having to go to an exchange or a wiring cabinet to attach a recording device and having someone's conversations delivered at the push of a button. I think we need to limit this stuff to methods where it takes a lot of reources, so it will only be used when it is really needed. This is a much more practical, self-enforcing limit to abuse than a bunch of poor schleps trying to sue to get their lives back when some dope bureaucrat screws them up. And it does happen rather more than "once a century." There are some recent news stories about whether burning a bunch of women and children was as good an idea as it seemed to be at the time. All kinds of laws, regs, rules, procedures, not to mention that doormat we call the Constitution got shredded to fuel the fire. Fat lot of good any current lawsuit is going to do for those people. I would be amazed if anyone actually does time for Waco.
I'm not saying cops are jackbooted thugs. I am saying that a couple of jackbooted thugs, combined with sloppy procedure, scared whistleblowers, CYA careerists, cops with bad training, and some corruption, are a greater danger to the average joe than terrorists or drug runners.
The kind of retail level crime most people actually fear is little affected by this stuff. Guiliani proved in NYC that stopping muggings and break-ins makes a lot more difference to quality of life than the kinds of rare and sometimes entirely theoretical threats high tech surveillence is effective against.
Anyone care to defend the FCC in light of examples of real abuses?
I wrote parts of this stuff
IIRC the law in question requires provisions for more wire taps than there CAN be warrents for. That is based on all judges doing nothing but signing their names 24/7. If there can't be that many warrants, one must wonder why there should be capacity for that many wire taps?
The government doesn't own the digital communications infrastructure. Therefore, it would be tough to get into commercial points of presence like digital phone switches, NAPs, and wireless communications cells for an illegal, covert operation.
Let me know if I am missing an obvious dimension of this.
-- Dave Aiello
Both would use images from "1984", with subtext saying things like "The Government wants to tap your phone line without a warrent", "The Government wants to control your speech on the Internet", etc etc. It should then briefly tell people how to 'fight' it, by either writing their representatives, or even better, vote the ones that voted these bills in out.
The problem is with laws and regulations like this is that 99% of the general public either doesn't know about it or doesn't care. Only until their rights are completely gone will they wish they paid attention. And unfortunately, the media seems to be avoiding these issues, as well as the fact that with 2000 being an election year in the US, none of the candidates have even mentioned the Internet or privacy or freedom of speech issues. Without knowledges, the 99% will continue to live happily as their rights are abolished.
However, if we push an ad campaign *NOW*, gettings ads out during the Nov-Dec-Jan months, and make enough of an issue about it, it might force the candidates to bring it up themselves, and that itself might help us (those that care about our rights) to vote wisely. It would also make the press take notice, *HOPEFULLY*.
Now, unfortunately, none of the major players for fighting these types of regulars have the money. But I'd being willing to send in a small donation to help produce and push the ads into the mainstream. As I'm sure a lot of others do to.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Er, you people do realize they still need a judge's order to do wiretaps, right?
Then why does the law require capacity for more wiretaps than all of the judges in the US could possably sign warrants for in a year?
Rising out of poverty through effort is just "bullshit"? Gotta disagree with you there, based both on some people I've never met (like the ones I mentioned in the first post, but with a few minute's though I'm sure you can think of dozens more) and many more people who I have. I'm sorry if you believe that people are basically doomed to stay where they're born. In that case, I hope you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth! ;) I know people who are lazy and poor, lazy and rich, hardworking and poor, hardworking and rich, and many many combinations between these.
... so?
..." you know why CEOs can earn a lot of money for sitting in an office.
And actually, I didn't mention a "survey;" the factoid on stock ownership was part of a page that the Seattle Times had listing various tidbits about US stock exchanges, historical events relating to the US's 8 largest exchanges, etc. I bumped into it after reading the post to which mine was responding, who said that only a small percentage of Americans owned stock. I don't know how they gathered their information, but it's a good question, and I will devote some small amount of my mental energy to seeing what other sources say about this. It does jibe with other claims I've heard about this over the years. But to clarify, because you seem not to have read or understood what I wrote, the statistic I named did not "leave out" the groups you mention any more than citing the number of people with Ford autos "leaves out" the people who don't have them. Sure it does, but that claim is meaningless -- it leaves them out by definition, since it's counting something else. Just like the number of kids with cats "leaves out" all those kids without cats
Whether a company offers stock as part of its compensation to employees is up to the company, not me. Maybe you should have picked the "30-plus common jobs" you applied for with this in mind if that is something you value. Also, *applying* by itself won't get you very far; you probably have to get the job. At many places, employees are also offered discounts on stock as an incentive, whether or not they are given it outright. The company I work for does not have stock because it is privately held. YMMV. The ability to *purchase* stock is open to anyone with a hundred dollars or so. Do some brokers have account minimums? Yes. Are there other ways to invest? Yes -- you might want to look at dripcentral.com, a site devoted to investment through Dividend Reinvestment Programs.
What I meant by calling stock ownership a "leveler" is that the possibility for private citizens of any class besides hand-to-mouth poverty to own some shares in companies provides the chance for someone who lives in (say) the trailer park I live in to benefit from the success of Dell Computer, or AT&T, or any other publically traded stock.
If you don't like how much the CEO makes, don't invest in the company, or maybe *do* invest and help vote in someone else. (Or on the other hand, climb a mountain and howl about the unfairness of it all. Not as effective but I hear it's very cleansing.) Some CEOs are probably far overpaid, but some aren't. I hope the ones that are overpaid work for a company I don't have an investment in. Gedanksexperiment: Could the average floor worker at, say, Intel switch bodies with Andy Grove for a few years without the stockholders noticing? If you know the joke that goes "I want you to punch my hand as hard as you can when I count to three
I'm not a worshipper of capitalism per se; I'm in favor of freedom though, and that makes the coercion of non-capitalist societies unattractive. (That includes the coercion which is slowly poisoning the US, where I live.) Capitalism is like physics - practical enough that it really doesn't need worshippers.
You don't sound "outrageous," in fact what you're saying I think is the common, resentful view which state-run and -funded schools, invasive government and trendy cynicism breed.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Who knows? What I do know is that having only a select few people who can understand the law, and having it so that a judge can interpret the law hoever he damn well pleases is a violation of one of the few rights I think that people should have... the right to know what the laws are so as to allow them to attempt to not violate those laws.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Let's move already.
freenet.on.openprojects.net
www.biocomputing.org
www.ompages.com
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
This is unconstitutional. It falls under "illegal search and seizure."
Look, I don't doubt that the people who originally created this law had good intentions. They want to stop terrorists and criminals. But they're deluded. They think they can stop crime and create a utopia.
The simple fact is, you cannot eradicate suffering, no matter how hard you try, because the only sure-fire means of stopping the suffering of a few will instead cause the suffering of billions. Case in point: Big Brother from 1984; it stopped crime, sure, but at what cost? The right to privacy for millions outweighs the right of hundreds to snoop around, even if that snooping could save lives. And yes, that statement sounds heartless, and yes, it isn't fair, but it's the way of the universe. The best a person can do is live his or her life, alleviate suffering as much as possible knowing that it can't be completely stopped, and try not to cause any more.
That's the problem: if law enforcement is to dispense true justice, it can never win completely. It can gain a huge lead, and maintain it indefinitely, but it can't ever totally win the war. It's sad, but I really wish law enforcement would realize this. There's a reason it's called "utopia," after all; translate it from the original Greek word and it means nowhere.
According to the former head of the FBI's Computer Crime division, as told at the USENIX '99 Security Symposium, the reason for CALEA was to allow Law Enforcement the capability to tap calls on the digital side of the phone switch, since some RBOCs would not even allow them into the Central Offices. The FBI asserted that they needed the capability to perform something like 4000 simultaneous wiretaps when there are roughly only 1500 per year under both Title III and FISA. Someone is exaggerating, but why?
Andrew G. Feinberg
Does anyone know of some law(perhaps freedom of information act?) that would let me know if I am subject to an investigation, and a potential target for being tapped?
If there is'nt, then legally, everyone in the states can be tapped without even knowing, shilded by some obscure law that prevents the tappee from knowing they are being tapped...
Anyone?
It strikes me as being the pinnacle of complacency to believe that the Government will only use surveillance on those it genuinely suspects of committing serious crime.
Here in the UK, there are many cases of people being monitored for heinous crimes such, say, attending a demonstration, or, to pick out a particularly grim case, complaining about British Airways. They have ended up being followed, harrassed by the Police, put on credit blacklists, and what-have-you.
I rather suspect the US Powers That Be (to slip into X-Files phoney paranoia mode) will also use wiretapping powers to go after just about anybody they don't like.
--
There is racism and other cultural divides in the US and other places, and plenty of them! Some people simply won't associate with others based on external and historical factors. Shame on them, and their loss. (Try visiting Korea as a Japanese tourist, or Japan as a Korea. Try pledging a US fraternity of the 'wrong' race.*)
... it isn't innoculable.
... finally amended by what, the 14th Amendment?) and after that allow people to follow their consciences so long as they do not initiate violence on another person. I think that is the approach which most values human freedom. If someone is a racist, Fine. Bring on the segregated lunch counters, as long as they are not government owned. Let them suffer for it by being denied the custom of those who they don't like, and anyone else who doesn't want to swell their coffers. Can you think of any big companies likely to institute such a policy? A nice thing about capitalism is that it has built-in incentives to treat potential customers nicely even if you don't like them otherwise. Sort of a neat trick, with an automatic feedback mechanism that sounds like "ka-CHING!"
However, what conclusions should one draw from that fact that racism and its cousins all exist?
Some people think we should counteract racism by officializing it -- with timetables, quotas, 'preferences,' etc to carefully track numbers by skin tone, sex, etc, in the effort of making sure that the 'right' number of each defined class is going to 4-year colleges, working in the Department of Bureaucracy, etc. Some people think it will go away if we stand very very still and don't make eye contact.
I've seen no evidence that it is, so I don't think that racism (which I will use from now on as a shorthand for all the other things that people lump with it, like religious discrimination and sexual discrimination) is a curable disease at all, at least not like scurvy -- there is no magic cure, like eating limes. Racism etc. springs up in all sorts of contexts. Serb / Croat, among Liberian tribes, in N. Ireland
So what to do about it? Declare all people equal (which the US Constitution did, even while many people were enslaved
timothy
* This is sheerly hypothetical. I am not urging anyone to join a fraternity unless they are good and sure they want to. And even then.
p.s. And no, band-aids don't come in milky blue, so they look pinky-brown on my sun-deprived Euromutt self.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The FBI (unlike the NSA and CIA) still operates under the legal system of the united states. And that means all those pesky rights on that old parchment still apply.
oh yes, killing people and things is allowed under the us's legal system (see black panthers and many other cases).
Obedience to "the system" is not what the Founders advocated, and for good reason. Germans passed laws which allowed Hitler to legally become the most powerful German politician. Would you have said to any who griped at this within Germany,
Cheap shot? Sure, but the point is to consider the consequences of the Permissionism you're advocating.
More reasonably, there is a huge body of law which is passed by no one you / we / I have elected, whether or not there is some link to elected officials at some point. When it comes to the FCC, which "we" are you referring to? How many links in the political chain does it take before it's a grey mass, and not the friendly politician who shook your hand and promised to "represent" you? Are you not concerned in the least that there are too many laws and agencies clinging to us like leeches?
And actually, yes, "they" really do pass laws because you are doing something they don't like -- case in point, producing alcoholic beverages. It's one of those things which seem absurd, even amusing, except they really happened. Unless you're a big fan of Prohibition, I'm guessing you'll agree that prohibition is not such a hot thing, and that it violated personal freedoms as it lowered respect for the law. How'd you like your opposition to an existing law or one being devised to be on record with the Nice Folks Protecting You as reference material when you're tried for disobeying such a law?
Well ok,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
A vigilant defendant will be wary of the "ferreting effect." It's arbitary enforcement with punitive standards. It builds a fear of the enforcer because all the lawful law breakers are made examples.
The American just system is written to be accusatorial. This is where the government can only allege and accuse. The standard of proof for physical and testimonial evidence in criminal cases is 'guild beyond a reasonable doubt.'
The European system of justice is inquisitorial in nature. In the inquisitorial system one is guilty before proven innocent.
"The inquisitorial system rests on values of efficiency and accuracy, and it is based on trust of authority."
"The accusatorial system rests on a distrust of government and trust of the common man to make fact finding decisions. It is also based on checks and balances. It exhalts the rights of the individual instead of the rights of the government." (Judge Tochterman, McGeorge School of Law, Aug. 1999).
Which system do you prefer? If you prefer the inquisitorial system, which is efficient and accurate, but rests on trust of authority, perhaps you would favor a complete re-vamping of the Constitution?
I don't agree overmuch with Rush Limbaugh (though he makes good points on occasion), nor do I agree with you, evidently, though we've obviously considered a lot of the same ideas.
But the key point I see in what you wrote is that there are distinctions to be made among capitalism, psuedo-capitalism, and anti-capitalism. For instance, don't blame capitalism for government babysitters called public schools, or for ROTC at these institutions, but do note that these are part of the 'psuedo capitalism' you mention in passing. (Check out sepschool.org.) And no, private school grads are probably no more likely to be ultracapitalist, at least not because they went to private schools. Having been to both at different points, that's my impression at least. Government funding and curricula have lowered standards all over the place, so private schools aren't as much better as would be nice.
Distinctions ought also be made between the people who write and report the news (who tend to be leftish) and those who own the papers (who tend to be rightish, at least in those areas convenient to business owners). Of course, Establishmentarianism is a stronger force that either capitalism or anti-capitalism, at least in the US.
Within a free(ish) society, people are free to educate or to de-educate themselves. 3-5 headlines, or reading for hours in a library (whether its state-funded or voluntarily funded), or renouncing worldly things and living as a mendicant monk, all up to you.
I will try to spend a reasonably portion of my life reading, eating lobster, writing, and hopefully meeting a wonderful woman, not watching much business television. We've all got different paths.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Most judges and lawyers aren't the craven, self-serving jack-booted thugs people always seem to think they are. There are far more who are genuinely out to protect people's rights than the other way around. Of course, there are people on both sides of the USA political fence who essentially want to crush your rights. Conservatives do it for morality, liberals do it for "greater good". Same shit, different name, IMO.
Disclaimer: only a 3d year law student, don't rely on my statements as gospel. Especially if you haven't paid my fee!
The NSA is already listening in on every phone conversation on the freaking planet, why doesn't the FBI just go to them and ask them to provide the necessary information?
No no no. See the NSA can't spy on US citizens... That would be illegal. Of course they can let thier buddies in the UK spy on us citizens, and vice versa. I'm sure they share notes from time to time...
The FBI (unlike the NSA and CIA) still operates under the legal system of the united states. And that means all those pesky rights on that old parchment still apply.
Well, until some burocrat says otherwise.
Gotta love that fourth branch of government we have now. None of that damn 'representitive government' hassle.
And so then if you ever did anything "Suspicious" they could find a place where you broke the law but they decided it was unimportant and throw you in the slammer.
I'll keep my privacy, thanks.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.