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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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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?
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
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?
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
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?
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
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
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