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CALEA update
The article is actually an AP article, and this is a temporary URL but will probably remain available throughout today. If it's not available, just search your favorite news site which carries an AP feed.
Background: In 1994, the FBI, complaining about pedophiles and terrorists on the internet, got Congress to pass a law requiring all telecommunications providers to make their networks easily tappable. One example of the necessity for such which is still trotted out by the FBI is solving kidnappings - "What if your child was kidnapped?". However, try as I might, I can't think of any situation in which a wiretap (which has to be placed on a known entity) would help locate a missing child. If you know who's got the kid...go get him.
The primary stated reason for the law was that the telcoms were upgrading to digital from analog, and therefore the men in black couldn't just hook up an alligator clip to the wires anymore... the law was explicitly stated to NOT expand law-enforcement access to communications but simply make sure that they could access digital phone lines. The telecommunications companies fought the law until Congress added $500,000,000 in government subsidies for them, when they promptly shut up.
Unfortunately (but expectedly), the FBI has interpreted the law as granting them free rein to tap anything at any time. The FCC is granted the power to implement CALEA - and the current FCC commissioners would make Big Brother proud. So the FBI has sought and received, as of August 30, substantial additional tapping powers - they will now receive the current location of cell-phone users during the tap, the ability to listen in on conference calls even if the tapped party has left the conversation, and a couple of other minor enhancements which slowly yet steadily erode your privacy.
More important, the FBI has also sought the ability to tap packet-switched communications - by which I mean, of course, the big bad Internet. This authority, never enacted in law, has nevertheless been granted by the FCC, to be implemented by the telcoms no later than September 2001.
Recently there have been stories about companies in Russia having to provide the ability for police to tap internet communications. U.S. folks laughed at those poor bastards, living in a surveillance state. The only difference between Russia and the U.S. is: the Russians are more upfront about their surveillance.
See EPIC's wiretap page for more. -- michael
AP Text (which you better not link to, as I've probably breached copyright).
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI reached a first-of-its-kind agreement
enabling telecommunications companies to use computer software made by
Nortel Networks to assist law enforcement agencies in conducting lawfully
authorized wiretapping.
The agreement calls for Nortel, a major supplier of telecommunications
equipment, to provide certain software to its carrier customers. Nortel will
waive the license fees.
The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act authorized
$500 million for the purpose of reimbursing the telecommunications industry for
its costs in cooperating with law enforcement agencies in wiretapping.
``Carriers can now begin taking steps to correct technological impediments
within their networks that currently prevent law enforcement from being able to
carry out court-ordered electronic surveillance directed at suspected
criminals and terrorists,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said in a statement.
The telecommunication carrier Ameritech also is a party to the agreement. FBI
Director Louis Freeh said the bureau is working toward finalizing similar
reimbursement agreements with other carriers and manufacturers.
Even if the FBI could intercept any data that is out there, it would be completely useless to them if it is encrypted data. So long as the FBI is not granted a magic key by either consensus among crypto companies or by government regulation, privacy over the internet can and will exist.
As far as tapping digital lines... It should be allowed, but only with a court order. Just like it is with analog lines. Sometimes, there is a justifiable reason for a line to be tapped. Think suspected drug dealer here. The problem is not with the FBI tapping lines, it is with thee frequencey of which lines are tapped. Court orders for line tapping are given out too frequently and with too broad of a spectrum of reasons. Call your representatives in Congress and express your concern with this issue, they will listen (on occassion).
--
Matt Singerman
Matt Singerman
http://matt.vegan.net/
What worries me about making networks easily tappable is not so much the feds nosey actions, but the easy time other non-feds will have tapping networks. This is very scary. It not only compromises the privacy of those exchanging information via the network but also compromises the security of the network itself. Now that's a problem.
-- Moondog
I'm interested in any legal or technical experts who might care to comment on how this type of law affects people who run proxy (or other IP routing) services?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Specifically...remember back in the "good old days" that penet.fi was one of the first host to allow some degree of anonymous access? After someone successfully sued in Finish court for the identity of one of the anonymous e-mailers, the service was shut down to prevent other people from having the same breach in privacy.
What if I ran a proxy service that would allow people to surf the web or other TCP/IP services anonymously?
Since I'm not a telecommunications provider receiving some federal funding...does that mean if I throw out my DHCP/DNS/IP logs every night I'm free and clear? Is there any part of this law that says I NEED to keep a backlog of this information so when the FBI comes knocking I can point out the TRUE identity of someone using my service?
I know there are several proxies out there right now but I do not know if any of them keep or toss information like this and I'm very curious to know if there's anything to mandate logging.
Personally...if I do run a proxy service...I'll probably play dumb and if some federal government want to pay for some training classes well then maybe I'll consider learning how to use the logging features of my proxy software.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
That's not really an issue for the FBI, which does not wish to be bothered with quaint notions of only surveilling a small number of specific individuals after legitimate cause has been established for each (as evidenced by their lobbying for "roving wiretap" powers).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
A couple of points.
/. last week?
1) Wire tapping has been of great service to law enforcemnt in the past, providing much needed evidence or information leading to much needed evidence. Say there's this kidnapper, and you don't know where he is. So you tap his girlfriend. The kidnapper, learning nothing from "Cop Shows 101" calls said girlfriend. Trace the call, find the kidnapper. Case solved.
2) Encryption Encryption Encryption. Wasn't there an arguement about 4096 bit on
3) Why are you worried? are you a criminal? Do you associate with criminals? Do you have something to hide? Then why should they tap you?
It's this last point that is the real worry. It's not the ability to tap everything, it's the abuse of the ability that is the problem. So the question really is not, "hey, to tap or not to tap?" but rather "is the FBI mature enough to use their new power appropriately?"
Honestly, they could be sitting in plumbers van accross the street from you right now. Buy they're not, are they? They're probably parked at my house.
And isn't there some law about not being able to use information against you that was discovered while looking for something else?
Praise for the man that invented the preveiw button.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
FreeS/WAN. The FBI can bite my shiny metal ass.
a lot of people respond to threats against privacy with this "if you're afraid of this, you must have something to hide" claim. it's a garbage argument, though. maybe today the feds don't have the technology or the will to listen to every fone conversation and prosecute every crime for which they gather evidence in this way, but if you look 10 or 20 years into the future, who's to say what the government will be capable of doing? why is it so unlikely that voice recognition and transcribing software and computer power won't have progressed to a point where "listening" to every call is possible? why are you assuming that after 20 more years of eroding our freedom and privacy, the government won't think this is a good idea?
in new york city, they arrest people for jaywalking because the mayor says it improves the "quality of life". lots of people agree with him. what if citizens in the future feel that complete monitoring of their lives increases their safety? what if the government just decides it's in our best interests to be monitored?
any legislation or policy which makes it easier for the government to invade the lives of the public is BAD. b-a-d bad.
All the more reason we should all routinely encrypt everything that goes over the network. What is needed is more seamless encryption tools, e.g. if all e-mails are routinely encrypted/de-crypted using public key cryptography without intervention from the user, most people would probably do so.
If internet communications are routinely strongly encrypted all this Big Brother business would become moot. To be sure there are legitimate reasons for the feds to snoop on people, but such a power will be abused (either officialy or by "rouge" agents)
Also this is fundamentaly different from tapping phone conversations in that more and more transactions now take place over the net. Net surveilance would not only include person-to-person communication, but also financial transactions, purchasing habits, reading habits etc etc.
It seems to me that the feds don't really have a compelling reason for this otherwise they would be able to come up with a better reason than the tired old Terrorists/Pedophiles/"Think of the Children" justification.
Have you actualy ever seen any terrorists --Brazil
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
This may soon become the national motto in the very near future. Let it now be known (to any who may have had doubts before) that we live in the Orwellian age. If this is the way it is to be I would rather be dead.
WAR IS PEACE (American forces killing to keep the peace)
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY (What we thought was free speech is now a trap to catch people who say what they think, and think THE WRONG THINGS)
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (What is called education is actually programming intended to make us moronic consumers, keeping the economy strong)
Not only is BIG BROTHER watching, he is waiting too.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
<rant>
And most importantly, don't forget. A lot of people feel ignored online because a paper letter still counts more than an email to a politician. That's because the pol expects the emailer to have forgotten about this by Election Day -- not so easy to do if you're so steamed you can write a letter, lick a stamp and send it. (Or so the theory goes.)
The FCC is appointed by the President -- tell him (or, better yet, the party he's from) that they won't get your vote as long as shenanigans like these persist. And do it, too. Don't buy that "you'll throw your vote away" crap -- if 89% of this country didn't vote for the Democrats or Republicans, how much of a waste is that? IMO, you're probably wasting your vote if you do vote for the two major parties, since both of them probably represent many, many views you find repellant, no matter who you are.
A candidate that forms his opinions based on an overriding philosophy that you agree with may still come down on the wrong side, but with less frequency, and probably not nearly as wholeheartedly as a politician who just checks the party scoresheet -- most of which was probably written by the biggest contributors this week.
I hate to sound so vitriolic, but the ineffectiveness in American politics is the result of the apathy of its citizens -- fostered by those currently in power that characterize our system as "imperfect, but the best we can do."
Well, half-truths are half-right -- it's certainly imperfect, but the two parties that are exactly as different as Coke and Pepsi that is, as different as they need to be to convince you there is any difference at all. Small voter turnouts only help them engineer the elections better -- turn out in force, and vote for the candidate you feel most comfortable with, even if you think he'll only get ten votes.
Treat politicians like employees, or better yet, like vendors -- there's plenty of vendors. If we do, maybe we'll get some customer service. phil
</rant>
Did ya see the news about the Canadian cell phone company having to kowtow to the FBI for the very same wire tapping reasons? Friends, it's a lost cause. Within 5 years I expect to be able to use encrypted voice over IP and the FBI won't be able to learn jack about it. Even the destination will be hidden by anonymouse recallers(?) just as anonymous remailers hide email destinations.
Not eveyrone will use it of course, especially ordinary punters. But I sure will, and lots of you will, and definitely those who have something to hide and the brains to survive.
What a waste of $500M.
--
Infuriate left and right
Yeah, and if the DEA kicks your door down, there's a really good chance you're a drug dealer right? Too bad for the old man who had a heart attack cause they got the wrong address, so sad.
I get so tired of people who haven't ever been a member of a disapproved minority thinking that everything is wonderful in America. This is how America oppresses people -- by making sure that 80% of the citizens never see it or experience it. It works wonderfully well too, especially when combined with TV brainwashing, the whitewashed Amercian history taught in schools, and the puff pieces that pass for journalism these days.
Occasionally, the mask is torn -- Vietnam, Watergate, S&L scandal, Rodney King, etc. But folks just go right back to sleep after the media circus like good little sheep. Gaahhh!
Suppose a legal but unscrupulous adult web site redirects you to an illegal child porn site? (Just to build up their ad counts). It's happened to me, and I got out as quickly as I could. But if the FBI has the broad powers, they can identify you as a patron of the site and launch a further investigation. How are they supposed to know you were tricked? How can you prove you didn't go there intentionally? And this whole thing about Kidnappers is total crap, exploiting our deepest most primal fears just to get their way.
Seeing as so much traffic from anywhere moves within the states, how does this bode for Canadians and others who are unfortunate enough to get shadowed by the usa's laws and lack of morals?
This almost leads to an ask.slashdot question: What tools (whether legal or not) are available for the following:
--Telephone encryption
--Cell phone encryption
--Anonymous web movement
--Email encryption (pgp/gpg obviously)
--Cell phone location hiding
--etc. etc.
Obviously, which are "uncrackable" (I don't consider 40-bit anything to be uncrackable with the kind of computing power a governments budget can come up with)
I think what's needed (perhaps as part of Your Rights Online) is a large discussion forum in the style of the old BBS's with message bases so that we can have a solid on-line location to find answers to questions such as these!
Securityportal.net, hackernews.com, etc. etc. are great, but it's *so* hard to go around the web and find any real solutions to invasions of our privacy... A central discussion place would be nice.
Anyways, just a handful of thoughts.
Personally, I'd rather be innocent of a crime, but thrown in jail for protecting my privacy, than living "free" but being watched by some "authority".
mindslip
Secondly, there are those who are maliciously accused of crimes-with-victims, who are actually innocent but are just assumed to be guiltydue to Satanic Panic, the belief that "women/children never lie about being abused," or some combination thereof. A close friend of mine's father was accused of sexual abuse by my friend's psychotic alcoholic mother, and damn near had his life ruined even though he hadn't done anything and my friend steadfastly maintained that he hadn't done anything of the sort to her. This has actually become a depressingly common tactic in custody battles. Imagine, if you will, being a non-custodial father and having every communication between yourself and your children "supervised" or tapped and having some very misguided "experts" misinterpret perfectly innocent statements as signs that you are a child molestor. DON'T LAUGH. It happens more often than you think. And it is a *major* problem.
Then, there are folks like me, who are dead if there is ever another McCarthy-type situation in the USA. Like I've said before, the FBI's probably got a file on me, but it hasn't ruined my life yet. I'm probably in their "harmless anarchist" bin right now.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
2 Things:
1. The FBI wants to tape the first 10 seconds of every call, and store it in an archive.
They want these tapes "just in case" they need to monitor conversations that happened in the past.
They can do this very easily because CALEA allows the feds to log into a switch and electronically listen to any conversation they want to, since the information will be sent straight from the switch to the FBI office over a high speed fiber connection.
Previously the Feds had to attach something physically to the wire to listen in, now they just telnet to the switch and have complete access!
2. It's not just Nortel that's providing the software. Lucent, Ericsson, and every other telephone switch provider in America is required to have this functionality by December 1999.
If they do not comply, they will be heavily fined by the government.
Lucent switches, the core of the Bell network, will have this functionality by October 1999.
That's next month!
We have to do something about this now!
-- Rose Kennedy (A former telecom switch programmer)
Am I the only person who is starting to view these words as red flags?
At the height of the War on Drugs, it seemed that the fastest way to get something passed was to say that it was designed to thwart drug dealers. Now that the American public has grown a little more skeptical of this rhetoric, we've moved on to terrorists. Terrorists are the new boogeymen -- we must do whatever it takes to stop them. You, the citizen, need to forget the Constitution for a while because we, your leaders, are trying to fight terrorists.
We did this with McCarthy (sp?), too. The Reds had to be stopped -- First Amendment be damned. Haven't we learned? What is the next boogeyman? Will it be those porn-downloading, foul-mouthed Anonymous Cowards on the internet?
And then there's legislation for "the children". Long after we've come to our senses with "Commies", "Drug Dealers", and "Terrorists", we'll still be passing stupid laws to "protect the children". It's too dangerous politically to oppose anything cloaked in a "protect the children" argument. It inspires a nice emotional knee-jerk response in the voters and shuts down the higher reasoning and skepticism functions of their brains.
I'm not denying the presence of drug dealers or terrorists in our world today, but I'm tired of leaders who can't come up with better ways to protect me than to force me to give up freedoms and privacy. It has the characteristics of a power-grab disguised as "protection". That is not "protection", it is "manipulation".
If this the only protection they can offer, I prefer to watch out for myself, thanks.
Sorry for the essay. I'll go back to work now.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
How on earth are they supposed to be able to track who you are on a network?
Piece of cake, ducky...
Using a few little tools, you change the MAC address of your card.
And that helps you how? If you dial in, your MAC address is irrelevant, and if you have something like a cable modem, the cable model suddenly stops recognizing your NIC and you are cut off from the net until you change your MAC back.
You can use those freebie introductory access CDs from the front of any magazine to contact almost anywhere. The IP address will never be the same, especially if you use different ISP's to connect all the time.
The IP address may change, but that IP address points to an ISP. That ISP has logs, in particular, logs of which phone number was assigned a certain dynamic IP at which time. So unless you dial in from pay phones (doable, but a huge pain in the ass), it's not a big deal for law enforcement to link your posts/rants/site visits to your home phone number.
Being anonymous on the net is generally hard. Either you have to use a public terminal (Internet cafes, dial-in from payphones, etc.), or you need a hacked machine as a gateway.
Companies like ZKS (Zero Knowledge Systems) may provide a solution. When they finally come out with their system, we'll see how good it actually is.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
However, try as I might, I can't think of any situation in which a wiretap (which has to be placed on a known entity) would help locate a missing child. If you know who's got the kid...go get him.
So when you go bust down the guy's door and it turns out he moved the kidnapped child to an abandoned warehouse down the street, and the child is killed because you violated their first demand ("No cops."), what then?
Wiretaps are just like any other evidence-gathering tool.
If your child was kidnapped, and you had a list of 2 people you think did it, wouldn't you want the cops to be able to tap phone lines to be able to tell for sure? With a wiretap they can collect information about the group's movements, plans, and *locations*.
Just ask that question to any legitimate political or social movement that has been subject to FBI or DoJ harassment. Here's a few examples:
Wobblies, Communists, Socialists, Labor Unions, Students for a Democratic Society, MOVE, Branch Davidians, militias, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, American Indian Movement, Black Panthers, Yellow Panthers, Central American Solidarity Movement, Arab Americans, etc etc.
Now, some members of these *may* have advocated violent means to achieve their ends, but the majority (and certainly the overwhelming majority of the followers) never advocated violence and were merely exercising their Consitutional rights guaranteed to the them. The FBI will use whatever means they have to spy on its citizens and do its best to destroy what they perceive to be threats to "the American Way of Life". Go read a book on COINTELPRO, Watergate, or Echelon to see how government spies on its own citizens and then feel free to freely criticize the power structure. Go take a look at the ever growing number of authorized wiretaps granted over the last decade and the amount of requests denied and you might be surprised.
It's not just terrorists or child pornographers that will end up being spied upon. It will be anybody *suspected* of commiting a crime whether it be nuking Washington, smoking marijuana, violating parole, speeding, or not paying their taxes. Since nearly the entire population has broken some law you can go to jail anytime. The government just has to justify the expense. With cheap, reliable and easy means of surveillence, you're a fool to think the FBI and others wouldn't expand their domestic surveillence against ALL people SUSPECTED of crime.
Such roads lead to selective enforcement of the law and that does not guarantee my safety, but does limit or even ignore my rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
"I would like to see the ACTUAL statistics that say the DEA kicks down more wrong doors than
right."
No one would claim that they make mistakes very often. But when they do -- you should be afraid. You'll be frightened out of your wits, have all your property seized, and get lots of unwanted publicity that will never be properly corrected when the truth finally comes out.
"I am sorry there even 'are' disapproved minorities, but I don't think that is the issue here. Citizens ARE sheep, and I'm willing to bet they aren't all members of the majority either... But this isn't what I'm discussing here."
You asked -- "what are you so damn afraid of?" My answer is that unless you are in a group that is being actively targeted by the government -- not much. Otherwise, a lot. Some of us see that the government's willingness to abuse the rights of some citizens imply they'd be equally willing to abuse ours, given altered circumstances. This is cause for worry.
"You mention Watergate, Rodney King... sounds like what you are looking for is accountability.
Exactly out of what thin air would you like the law enforcement agencies to get the information, or proof as you will, to bring these things to a head?"
Are you suggesting that increased wire tapping would be applied against government abuses? Forgive me for doubting. Note that the Nixon tapes were obtained thru due process, by the courts. No wiretapping required. Note also that the whole scandal was set off by an illegal wiretapping act by our president -- yet more evidence that the government cannot be trusted with easily abused surveillance powers.
On Vietnam, remember the "Pentagon Papers?" What that led to was more illegal wiretapping (at NYT) and breaking and entering to obtain Ellsberg's psychiatric records in an attempt to discredit the truth that leak revealed.
The Rodney King case did not lack for evidence, just willingness to put white cops in jail for abuse of power. While it wasn't our government that failed here (they even brought a civil rights case to make up for the failed criminal trial), they're still responsible for spreading the false idea that cops are the only thing standing between "regular citizens" and the nasty have-nots and radicals who want to take everything away.
I too was once sure that the government was on my side. My turning point came in the early seventies when I was clubbed returning to my dorm room after peacefully attending a scheduled town hall meeting on the Vietnam war. It was probably the most educational experience I had in college.
What's more is that a single communications may not even flow through the same cable. It can be packetized and take 1000 routes and reassemble at the other end
At the moment I believe the FBI are restricted to tapping lines belonging to specific suspicious individuals. Could this property of packet comms be used as justification for tapping *all* lines?
As an employee of a comms equipment manufacturer in the UK, this is a matter of concern to me. How are we supposed to sell into US markets? Is this protectionism in disguise?
How does one go about giving the World Trade Organisation a heads-up about this? Does the WTO in fact cover this issue?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
The warrant is supposed to state what property can be searched, and for what. Now, what if the cops find something else? IIRC, they can use it, so long as they were conducting a legitimate search as per the search warrant.
For an example, imagine a felon has a bag of drugs in his sock drawer. If the cops come in with a search warrant for a handgun, they are justified in going through the man's sock drawer (you can hide handguns in sock drawers), and can then bust the guy on drug charges and use the evidence legally in court. If the warrant is for, say, stolen washing machines, cops have no right to go through his sock drawer: he cannot possibly hide a washing machine in a sock drawer. If they do, and find the drugs, they cannot use that as court evidence, arrest the guy for it, or bring that to a judge to get a warrant for searching for drugs.
Of course, in the latter case, they may use legal surveillance methods to see if they can get some legal evidence for an arrest...
--The basis of all love is respect
...but not by any of this legislation.
It honestly sounds like most of you people would prefer that law enforcement have *no* ability to collect evidence. No wire-taps, no search warrants, no security cameras.
I don't think I have *ever* read a Slashdot article with this number of posts and NOT A SINGLE FACT OR STATISTIC backing ANY of your objections up. No numbers, no statistical trend showing the number of illegal or unnecessary wiretaps, nothing. You are all simply feeding on each other's fears and magnifying them to a horrible frenzy.
Do you people really wish to live in a place where the privacy of every person is held in the highest regard -- untouchable even in the most extreme of circumstances? I take COMFORT in the fact that my law enforcement bodies are able, through a court approval, to discretely and confidentially monitor communications -- in any form. Like most of you, I have no statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if wiretaps aided in a significant number of prosecutions that would have been impossible without them. People -- we do have checks and balances in our governments. Statistics on wiretaps are collected and analyzed. If a group of people are requesting an ungodly number of wiretaps while producing few prosecutions, this will be noticed.
I am also extremely displeased by the high degree of bias in these "Your Rights Online" pieces. The "author" bringing the stories to us also brings his editorial along, complete with conspiracy theories and the invariable "Big Brother" tie-in. To privacy activists, this is pure adrenalin, hence the high number of very vocal anti-government and anti-law-enforcement posts.
Now, before you folks unleash your fury on my "naive" and "ignorant" ass, let me just say that I obviously don't want to see these types of things abused, but we DO already have oversight in place to see that this doesn't happen. If you feel that judges are being "tricked" into allowing wiretaps, or that these judges are "in" on the conspiracy with the cops to violate your personal privacy for their own kicks, THIS is what you should be working to fight.
Don't hinder law enforcement's abilities to conduct investigations in a LAWFUL and DISCRETE manner just because there exists the POSSIBILITY that these abilities will be misused.
Do you folks think that people in charges of these law enforcement organizations and the people appointed to act as judge are all complete IDIOTS? I'm perfectly willing to concede the fact that a small number of these people are, in fact, stupid people, but that does *not* mean that these organizations are collectively out to ruin your lives and your privacy for their own kicks. These people are fully aware that there are privacy activists out there that would have a field day if they fuck up, with a result of them being out of a job.
PLEASE don't read and take things at face value. THINK FOR YOURSELF and don't just jump on the frightened privacy bandwagon until you make an informed decision on your own. The government is NOT OUT TO GET YOU. If you don't like how your local law enforcement is behaving, you have two options: 1) Write a letter to your local government and media and express your concerns; 2) MOVE OUT. If you don't like how your national law enforcement is behaving, you have two options: 1) Write a letter to your congressmen and media and express your concerns; 2) MOVE OUT.
You people need to be working *WITH* your government to address your concerns, not *AGAINST* them.
Condemning a piece of legislation because it allows law enforcement to function with all but the 1% of people smart enough to evade them is absurd. The significant majority of people law enforcement will be wiretapping have neither the knowledge nor technology to evade as you describe. That leaves a significant number of people left over that will doubtless be prosecuted successfully from the information obtained.
how does this bode for Canadians and others who are unfortunate enough to get shadowed by the usa's laws and lack of morals?
As an extreme option, you could simply choose not to do business with US companies. Express these privacy and confidentiality fears and concerns with these businesses. They will in turn complain to their government and things will change.
Though I suspect the number of people that will actually do this will be far too small to make any appreciable impact.
Telephone companies have a "common carrier" status, which takes away many of their abilities to manage their lines and customers as if they were a truly private company and places a tremendous number of government regulations and protections on them.
Internet providers, however, have not been given this "common carrier" status. Thus, legally, your ISP can read your e-mail, monitor the web sites you browse, newsgroups you read, posts you make, whatever they want. They don't do that, of course, but they could probably get away with it legally (though they would probably go out of business as a result).
The only thing you need to bypass Government wiretaps is Internet telephony. While the FBI may be pushing for eavesdropping on so called packet switched media. The reality is that this is beyond mere technical difficulty, and well in to the realm of technical impossibility. Think about this for a second.
To tap a phone line law enforcement only has to lean on one, possible a few parties. Namely your telephone company. Since telephone companies are cowardly, heavily regulated monopolies this has not proved very difficult. After all, they only balked at the *cost* of CALEA.
However think about what it would take just to tap an IP stream. First, because of the very nature of packet switching, you need taps everywhere. Since there is no analog for the central office on the Internet. So just to start with you need to lean on a lot more parties, every ISP basically. While many, most, ISP's are cowardly corporations, not all are. There are lots of community and non-for-profit providers who do have some spine. Not to mention that clandestine "gray"-nets would immediately spring up, should such regulations be imposed (look at what's happening in China if you do not believe me). So, even if extremely intrusive, almost certainly unconstitutional laws where passed, wily individuals would still get around them.
Furthermore we have not even addressed the problem of making something meaningful out of a raw IP stream. For that the eavesdropper would need, not only all the packets sent and received, but would also need to know what program you are using. A raw stream of UDP packets does not provide very much info. and programs could easily be written to obfuscate their purpose.
Let's face it packet switched communications is taking over from circuit switched. Packet switched is technically extremely difficult to tap without having monolithic control of the entire network. Given the current political climate I find it impossible to believe that after decades of decentralized authority the Internet would revert to the sort of central control authority required to make the DOJ's dreams possible.
So, basically, fight CALEA like hell, but promote Internet telephony even more.
If I had a Pilot in my pocket, would they strip search me?
It would probably be a bit difficult to hide an appreciable amount of explosives in a device the size of a Pilot.
They *don't* have to show you any regulations, any more than if they stopped you at the door and said, "Sorry, you're not allowed to bring guns in here." or if a cop stops you on the street and says, "Sorry, you're not allowed to park next to a fire hydrant."
It is interesting (perhaps news-worthy) that the number of security precautions at airports have increased, but it's hardly a thing to shout "privacy invasion!" over. Try visiting an airport in any foreign country.
Since you and I are an active part of our own governments (since we vote and write letters to our congressmen to ask questions or suggest courses of action), we work "with" our government "for" ourselves.
Perhaps this is just a fundamental difference in the way people like myself view our place in the government versus people like you... *shrug* (I don't mean that in a derogatory way).
Ever hear the phrase, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"?
1: Supposed Enemy of the State This allows the Feds to keep track of people who, while not criminal, still piss off the Fed. If the government is going environmental, it can track loggers this way. If the government is leaning in the loggers' favor, it can track down troublesome environmentalists. Think how much the Fed would love to put surveillance on somebody like Ross Perot? Big Brother is watching you, even if you are above board.
2: Bad Cop, No Donut If you allow a federal law enforcement agency to see something, you are allowing multitudes of individual federal officers to see it. And since some people are corrupt, it stands to reason that some federal agents with access are corrupt.
3: Point of Attack This follows from the above, and is frankly what scares me the most. A Federal back door into security systems becomes an incredible prize for a cracker, and you simply cannot protect it like Fort Knox. With a good cracker (or a bad cop; see above), that back door gets posted to the cracker BBSs. And if everybody is required by law to have this back door in their systems, this means that the entire nation becomes instantly vulnerable. This is not like a security bug that you can patch a fix to.
BTW, this issue is close to my heart. Part of my job is making sure that financial data gets from hither to yon without getting intercepted by criminals. If the Fed required me to install a back door to the software I use, I would be literally unable to do my job.
--The basis of all love is respect
I think you present some good points, a few faulty ones, and was actually about to write up a nice response, right up until I read this line:
You call yourself informed? Moron.
I can't wait for the day that people can have an intelligent argument without resorting to name-calling.
I do. It's like high school. Selective listening.
Remember: You elected the people that are listening to your letters.
Cheers...
Of course you probably watched the search for his son's plane too, like a good American.
Not particularly. I was no more interested in that search than I am of any "missing private plane" search. Perhaps if the Kennedy family had made some personal impact in my life I would feel different, but that's not the case.
I merely quoted that statement because it sums up my thoughts on our government perfectly. It's not my fault if you don't vote or never write letters to your representatives and senators. It's not my fault that you elect people into office that constantly do things you don't like.
It may be my *problem*, since I, too, have to live with poor leaders, but fortunately it's a problem I can correct, rather than whining on Slashdot day after day.
Hey, you're the one that elected those people into their offices of power...
You lack imagination.
If I were a fed, and I had a pretty good idea who the kidnappers were, I'd be tapping the phones of their known associates and immediate family and any cellular phones they might own.
Tapping the phone of the victim is obvious.
What you don't acknowledge is that when wiretapping, along with the *conversation*, the *phone number* of the other party is collected, which of course immediately gives you an address...
EXCEPT if it's a cellular phone. This CALEA thing supposedly allows law enforcement to get the location of cellphone users via wiretap orders. Is this really such a bad thing?
Bald Wookie dun said:
To tie a minor thread on this...oddly, the three legal drugs (caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol) are known to not only have as many bad health effects as many of your illegal drugs, but in some cases are every bit as addictive or moreso.
To give an example--nicotine, which is legal to the point of being an OTC drug, is now known to be as addictive as, and probably more addictive than, opiate narcotics and probably is equivalent to or even slightly more addictive than cocaine on "liking indexes" (measures of physical addiction that show how hard it is to "kick the habit") and by biochemistry. Some scientists studying the mechanisms of addiction have stated that nicotine may be the most addictive substance known...smoking is well known to cause health problems (just read a cigarette packet, already), cigarette manufacturers are known to "dope" cigarettes with nicotine (this came out publically in the tobacco hearings in the US, and has been common knowledge for years if you live anywhere near a cigarette plant or know employees--there's vats that if you so much as touch they HAVE to send you to hospital because those vats are full of nicotine and have nicotine residue on the outside to the extent it will give you nicotine poisoning, and nicotine poisoning is NOT fun--much the same effects as strychnine poisoning).
Alcohol, too, has known health effects if taken in excess, is poisonous in quantities only slightly above that necessary to get one bombed, slows reflexes enough that one becomes dangerous if one tries to drive, and is known to cause physical dependence. In fact, a fair number of liver transplants in adults have to be done because of cirrhosis of the liver--basically the liver gets burnt out by long-term attempts to detoxify ethyl alcohol once one gets physically addicted to it.
If we want to talk prescription medications, some opiates are actually available over the counter (Cheracol and, in some states, paregoric) and most are schedule IV or III (addictive potential, but you've got to take a fair amount) drugs...benzodiazepine tranquilisers are KNOWN to be physically addictive (most responsible doctors will NOT give you more than a week's supply of Valium or Xanax for that reason)--are every bit as physically addictive as morphine in fact, taking them with alcohol or driving whilst taking them is a good way to get one's self dead, and yet they're only Schedule IV.
Marijuana is not known to be physically addictive (the only indications of physical addiction are in rats given obscenely huge doses) and doesn't necessarily have to be smoked (some of the bad effects of smoking are from the smoke itself; ANY smoke will give off carcinogens if you burn organic material). Psychological addiction is probably another story, but people can get psychologically addicted to everything from sex to Quake to reading Slashdot (you could seriously argue that autistic kids are psychologically addicted to "self-stimming" [rocking back and forth, or smacking one's self...the kinds of "stereotypical" actions you see in a lot of autistic kids; they do this to calm themselves down after being overstimulated--the major problem in autism is that they essentially can't filter out stimulus and/or are oversensitive to it--rainfall might sound like millions of hammers on tin, and in the worst cases sight and sound and smell might blend all into each other not unlike how one's senses get scrambled on LSD; a good way of thinking of how severely autistic folks have to deal is they are undergoing a perpetual bad acid trip] because it's relaxing :), and the mechanisms for psychological addiction have more to do with probable imbalances in body chemistry to begin with rather than body chemistry being altered by a drug itself. The worst effects that have ever been proven for long-term marijuana use are maybe problems with memory; the jury is still out on whether pot reduces initiative [for that matter, so does alcohol; so does Valium--both of these are quite legal]. Marijuana has several beneficial uses, not the least among them being as a mild tranquiliser and possible antidepressant, and the only known treatment for AIDS Wasting Syndrome and wasting syndromes of cancer.
However, pot is still illegal--Schedule I. Oddly, pure THC is Schedule II (same as morphine) and legally sold as dronabinol, though it's not been proven to have the same bad health effects as morphine or amphetamine. I've heard that this is largely due to lobbying by alcohol companies after Prohibition (they didn't want pot cutting into profits--especially since they were having to recover from the LAST War on Drugs, folks finding out there were better drugs and better drugs FOR you could well have caused serious hurt to the spirits industry in the US).
Now, to steer this back on topic--I think that giving anyone in power to tap into someone's convo IF THERE IS NOT EXISTING PROOF THAT THE PARTY IS DOING A BAD THING is just plain Wrong and WILL ultimately be abused. Period. Look at COINTELPRO or records of the CIA's investigation of Catholic refugee support groups if one needs examples...or the list of groups listed as Officially Subversive (which includes--and I am not making this up--the SCA, the Jihad Against Barney the Dinosaur [must have been that "jihad" word ;)], the NAACP, Amnesty International [because AI has reported on how the US commits human rights violations and supports groups that violate human rights in other countries], Human Rights Watch [same thing], most people who have protested major military actions, and probably by this date the EFF and Slashdot's entire membership :). It is entirely possible that we could get Bad Folks in government and this info could be used against one.
For instance, I happen to think fundamentalist "Christianity" sucks arse (largely because I grew up in a family of raving fundies, and I've seen enough of the bad side of the Religious Reich to REALLY make yer hair curl--folks drooling over any possibility that nuclear war might break out and bring the Rapture early is damned scary, and I'm just now realising just HOW wacko some of what goes on in there was). As a result, I do support groups fighting the influence of the Religious Reich as well as groups speaking out against religious abuse in general.
I also happen to know that more than a few fundies, including people from the very church I left, are...to put it mildly...extremely active in politics from school boards on up [this is what likely happened with the Kansas school board, btw; it's been a position plank of the UnChristian Coalition and a number of groups even FARTHER to the right to take over the school boards and move up from there to infiltrate political parties]. (Some of you in Kentucky might recognise Frankie Simon's name...for those who don't, let's just say he's trying his best to outdo Fred "godhatesfags.com" Phelps, and also happens to be the head of most of the fundy and pro-censorship groups in Kentucky. And happens to be a deacon at aforementioned fundy pit, and most of the rest of the "deep in" members of the church are as rabid as he is...nasty place.)
If--God and Goddess forbid--one of these fundy groups were to get a candidate in who could appoint heads of the FBI or a state equivalent, I can GUARANTEE you that everyone in the US or in that state who is a member of the ACLU, People for the American Way, a member of an anti-censorship group, anyone who's ever supported or has run a Fairness campaign so people can't be fired just for being gay, anyone who has ever talked publically about being a walkaway from a Bible-based coercive group or who operates a walkaway group for folks escaping from Bible-based coercive groups, and a fairly long list of others WILL end up on a shitlist somewhere...and they will probably abuse the "secret wiretaps" so they can hope to find something to bust these folks on. (An example I can think of off the top of my head--a walkaway or gay-teens support group talks to a kid who is having real doubts about fundamentalism because he's discovered he might be gay...and the state just passed a law against kids getting any counseling at all without parental consent...except the kid CAN'T get parental consent because if he stated he had doubts about fundamentalism and/or he was gay he'd be putting himself at severe risk for physical abuse and/or basically being psychologically tortured by the church members trying to "exorcise" the "demons of rebellion" or the "demons of homosexuality" out...and yes, people have died in these before, and many more have ended up in mental hospitals).
What if the Scientologists were somehow to persuade the FBI to investigate everyone who posts on alt.religion.scientology so they can get more info to harass them? What if they do it JUST to harass them (yes, they've pulled stuff like that before)?
There's just too much potential for abuse in this...I'm beginning to wonder if there's hope to fix this other than setting up either a PAC for Internet users (one is being worked on called USORS) or starting a third party expressly for the Internet-connected...and I've been giving really serious thought to the latter recently... :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
The question is not whether it might be useful to law enforcement, the question is whether it is a good idea to give that much power to _anybody_.
See, what I'm trying to say, though, is that law enforcement has already *had* these powers for quite some time, when dealing with analog communications. With the acceptance of digital, law enforcement has started *losing* the ability to determine a call's geographic origin and, to more recent points, the contents of those communications entirely. It's not like they're being encrypted or anything, they simply lack the means today to even try to intercept the messages, AS ALLOWED BY THE COURT ORDER.
The CALEA, from what I can tell, simply puts digital communications on par with existing analog by allowing law enforcement to get the same amount of information from a conventional wiretap order. This is perfectly fine in my book. By opposing this, it will effectively obsolete law enforcement's ability to perform wiretaps at all as analog communications disappear.
How does the restoration of geographic location abilities to digital communication services translate in any way to me asking people to justify their freedoms?
Please elaborate on the point you were trying to make and I'll do my best to answer you. If you're confused about something I've said, please just ask.
If the FBI were actually planning on doing the things you say, I would happily agree with you -- an expansion to wiretapping powers allowing them to monitor communications *without* a court order would most certainly be a very bad thing.
What I *don't* understand is where you're getting that. I've scoured dozens of news sites and I cannot find a single mention of the FBI considering what you're describing.
The CALEA only requires telecommunications providers to assist (and be compensated by) law enforcement in their efforts to carry out court-ordered wiretaps.
The *technology* to do what you describe has been here for years (though only with analog networks). It is, however, ILLEGAL, with or without the CALEA. The court order requirement is still in place. I guess I just don't know where it is you're getting the whole "tape/store/index" thing. Maybe I missed an earlier article or a URL or something. I simply can't imagine anything remotely like that ever being made legal. It's technologically within the FBI's capabilities to come to your home, break down your door and search your house mercilessly without getting a search warrant. That doesn't mean we should stop issuing search warrants, though.
No doubt that cops are in a very unenviable position. They serve an essential function for very little thanks. I suspect they wouldn't turn to other rewards like petty power and corruption nearly as often if they got more respect and thanks.
More, their life is on the line every time they do so much as stop someone for speeding, so making quick decisions as to how much danger they are in is important to their survival. If some overgeneralize I have to say it's easy to understand why. Strangely, unfounded prejudices probably do not serve their interests either -- it's safer to distrust everyone rather than cretinize some based on a stereotype. You can also be civil and suspicious simultaneously.
Still, I will never fully trust cops (or a government), even though I may understand why they are as they are.