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Congress Ixnays FIDNET; Prez Finds Money
Signal 11 writes "Congress has shot down the Fidnet project - to read about more details on Fidnet, go the original story about the project. In related news a national jam echelon day is coming up. Unfamiliar with Echelon? It is best to educate oneself. " Well, the sequence of events for FIDNET goes something like this: Clinton proposes computer security group, liberties groups hate it, Congress shoots it down for funding, Clinton attachs it to another bill. So, we won and lost - for more details, check out our recent YRO Story.
Why is it that no one cares that they are videotaped in malls
The people pushing this legislation are high-placed career bureaucrat/thugs in the FBI, NSA, CIA, and who-knows-where-else. If Clinton leaves office without FIDNET or something like it getting funding, they'll just twist the next guy's thumbs.
I bet the FBI has really juicy info on Clinton (which makes the Lewinsky scandal look tame) and is making him jump through their hoops. Or maybe Clinton is a fascist - wouldn't surprise me, most American 'liberals' are.
In any case this stuff is not going to go away when Clinton's ass is finally kicked out of office.
The site must be down already.
There is no other information than this
Jam Echelon Day
October 21st,1999
hosted by
Wiretapped.net
To me it looks like they were afraid of getting jammed after being posted on slashdot.
see subject
I see /. is performing to its usual standards again. Click on "to educate
yourself" and [stalled]... forever... Sigh. Never mind.
On a Sunday morning, no less.
One wonders how long Andover will continue to pay for this kind of
"performance"?
"Democracy is indispensable to Socialism." Vladimir Lenin "Democracy is the sure road to Socialism." Karl Marx "The goal of Socialism is Communism." Vladimir Lenin "Socialism leads to Communism." Karl Marx "Peace is the elimination of all opposition to Socialism" Lenin/Marx Bill Clinton is a Socialist
Liberalism does exactly the opposite of what its intended to do. See facts don't matter with liberals, they will just make up lies and point to polls with biased questions. With the media being almost entirely liberal its hard for the truth to come out.
Thats how. Stroke of the pen, law of the land. He doesn't need the approval of congress when he signs them. Executive orders are part of the war powers act left over from WW2. In fact have you known that the US has been in a state of emergency since WW2? They just keep renewing it every 6 months. Same thing as executive orders, make a law without approval from congress. Heres a link for executive orders info: http://www.warroom.com/exec_orders.htm This part should be interesting "10995: Seizure of all communications media in the United States." The internet is communications media, right?
Well, since Echelon doesn't exist ;), the government should have no problem with this. How would the government know the contents of your email... ?
We live in a represenatitive republic, not a democracy.
The only problem I have with participating in this event is that I may get labeled as a subversive. Clearly anyone who has tons of "sensitive" keywords in their mail/slashposts on that day and that day only is trying to subvert Echelon - which no right-thinking red-blooded patriotic American would do, right?
ps. Wackenhut Inslaw covert assassination COINTELPRO.
http://thedustbin.com/echelon/
> for wise brains etc. Elections are such a
> bullshit now.
Reminds me of a passage in the Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson) book, _Interface_:
I liked it so much I marked up my book so I could find it again. :)
Nobody (well, at least the majority of voters) seems to care about ideas and ideals anymore. They don't look at what a candidate actually *did* previously in his political career, they just react to how he presents himself on TV. When is the last time you actually heard a candidate have a real discussion about the workings of the government, issues, and how things should change? Instead of presenting their views, they hit the hot buttons of taxes, abortion, and anything with the key word 'children', without really saying a word.
Geez, what a rant...
Anyways, as far as Echelon goes, the idea scares me (the invasion of privacy almost as much as the thought that any government agency can actually coordinate something so far-reaching without screwing it up). However, as has been said elsewhere in this article, the chances of them keeping track of even a small percentage of the 'net, given it's size, is pretty slim without the active participation of a large majority of the Internet's infrastructure. The truly evil thing is that it is even being attempted.
Admittedly, unless you encrypt your mail and such, "privacy" on the Internet is just a gentleman's agreement, considering the nature of a network. The real issue is that it's a symptom of the larger problem of a seeming decline in common decency in general, not just on the Internet. Perhapse it's just a perceived decline, but to me, the oil that keeps our social machine going is losing it's viscosity. :)
(Score: 0.5, Mostly Offtopic)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
>The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of >tyrants and patriots alike. It is its natural manure. -- Thomas >Jefferson
Does anyone else find quoting a slave owner (Jefferson) about liberty to really,really ironic?
Since project Echelon rises above the USA's (official) territory (by definition), why not make it a World Jam Echelon Day? That would really screw their system over.
:(
As a start, you can prepare yourself by extracting the naughty comment found in the (source of) the National Jam Echelon Day page, and on the day itself, put it up in your webpages, attach a conveniently small subset of it to your signature and anything else you can think of (have your browser/squid report itself as something naughty, and every HTTP request may be tagged). Anything you can think of.
Let's hope I won't forget that day myself. I'm notorious in forgetting long-term stuff
- da Lawn
't used to be LawnMOWER, really...
Overestimating the threat means that people who find it hard work to catch real crooks will be attracted to getting paid for catching minor-league crackers. We should not give in to this distraction, nor should we let law-enforcement people engage in sandbagging by this means. If we let this happen, it means considerably less freedom for everyone, in addition to being a waste of resources. On top of which, there are real world criminals who will go unpunished just because the cops are trying out their new computer toys.
There is real crime that happens on the Web. If you ask ransom for not bringing down an e-commerce site, you are just as bad as a thug who asks for protection money from a night club. Just think in terms of what a reasonable real-world cop would bother to go after and you will see that a) real crime in cyperspace is less frequent than the scare stories say, and b) law enforcement people who find elaborate real-world frauds tedious to prosecute are equally deterred by the complexities of computer crime. However, giving in to the current wish list of intrusive and largely useless measures is not the answer.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I hope that someday the current police surveillance culture will seem just as intolerable as slavery seems to use.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I'd give Jefferson's good friend (and semi-protoge) Madison more credit for the Constitution. At the time the Constitution was being drafted, Jefferson was in France. He did establish a lot of the basic ideas though, and single-handedly wrote the Declaration of Independence (Franklin and Adams kind of foisted a lot of it on to him ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
According to an article on this subject in Wired (which, btw, I submitted last week to /. pout pout) the guys running Jam Echelon may have identified it as a threat to our freedom, but that doesn't prevent them from also being kind of kooky. Read the linked article.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Anyway, what happened to the concept of democracy in this country? Isn't it supposed to be congress that approves budgets and bills? While I have some issues with the system in general, all my textbooks say this is the way it's "supposed" to work.
Have we given the executive branch too much power? Maybe somebody with a background in political sci can give me some more details? I've only taken 1 class on it. :)
--
Yeah...I know. but at 7:00am when you're sick, have strep, and your code hasn't compiled cleanly in days.. I think I can get away with alittle inaccuracy.
Note to self: bubble-sorting is slow on large arrays.. and what's worse.. it's *REALLY* slow. Must.. find.. better.. way...
--
Well, a distributed-processing form of this to increase the 'noise level' to such an extent that the monitoring is rendered useless is a good idea - but these hacktivists seem to want to organize their 30 seconds of fame, and then end the project, rather than excerting the effort required for a long-term viable political movement.
--
Democracy, n: Election of the corrupt few by the ignorant many.
--
--
"Obviously, being picked up both other major information dissemination channels will increase the effectiveness."
s/both/by/
"What preview button?" ;-)
"Anyway, I think most of my non-geek acquaintances would find it rather strange with all those spooky words at the end of every mail. :-)"
Exactly! That gives you the opportunity to educate them on the issues. That is the whole point after all, is it not?
"I'm suprised that no one has mentioned M-x spook in Emacs yet."
Actually, "someone" did. HereThese days, any form of activism involves events intended to disseminate your message to as broad a base of listeners as is possible. Whether we like it or not, this generally includes specifically-crafted "media events" targetted toward being picked up by mass-market information disseminators, such as the news media.
Like it or not, at this point in time, the general populus still is either unaware or unconcerned about the steady erosions of their online (and offline) privacies and the increasing trend of Orwellian monitoring of even the most simple interchanges by Three Letter Agencies and others.
A one-day action certainly isn't going to overwhelm the NSA's filesystems, and I am certain no one actually believes that it would. But it does have merit nonetheless. In a sense, it enables "the little guy" to feel a sense of empowerment by making an (admittedly token) gesture, somewhat akin to making obscene gestures at surreptitious surveillance cameras. Obviously this doesn't directly change the underlying problem, except in the small measure that the individual is that much more likely to take a slightly larger "rebellious" action the next time. Don't forget that so-called resistive actions are frequently the precursors to more active (and effective) attempts to effect change of the undesirable situation. (Think, "baby steps.")
More importantly, these events bring the subject to the forefront of conversation. How many water cooler conversations might happen in offices thoughout the land, somewhat like this, the day after a similar event gets national coverage on the ubiquitous evening news?
- "Hey, you're into computers; did you see that thing on the news last night about how we can prevent the government from spying on us by jamming their computers?"
- "Well, actually, it's more like this...."
At this point, an accurate explanation (in nontechnical terms if needed) can be made of the various issues, such as how to actually effect change via contacting representative government.This also provides the opportunity to educate those with recently-awakened awareness of the issues to the importance of routine use of strong cryptography, since it is one of the most effective means of ensuring privacy against such Orwellian systems. Providing a link to GNU Privacy Guard (or even its less-free predecessor you mentioned) as well as an offer of assistance in setting it up, or acting as a mentor, will go a long way toward acheiving the goal of widespread use of cryptography being the norm, rather than the exception.
Oddly enough, your post here on Slashdot is indication that the "Jam Echelon Day" event succeeded, at least from my perspective. The story is covered here, and will generate discussion, hence awareness of the underlying issues is being increased, with opportunity for followup discussion. Obviously, being picked up both other major information dissemination channels will increase the effectiveness.
Emacsen's Mx-spook and its ilk may not directly affect the NSA, but indirect effects via increased public awareness are likely. An idealist would say that Echelon can be ended through the process of representative government. A realist may doubt that, and feel Echelon can be ended only by making it no longer cost-effective, due to the routine use of strong cryptography. Either way, the first step is to bring the issue to the eyes of the populus, as often as possible.
Of course, in Athens only non-slave men could vote. Obviously I'm not saying that women voting is what's wrong modern democracy, just that Athens wasn't as great for some as for others (and thus wasn't really a democracy in the most literate sense of the word).
The big problem is campaign finance reform, but underlying that is a much more complicated quetion of how people get their information about candidates and use it to make their choices about who to vote for.
I'm suprised that no one has mentioned M-x spook in Emacs yet. It's pretty funny, it generates a random set of 'spook words' automatically from a great big list it has... :)
It makes for entertaining reading sometimes when you're very bored
Calmacil
I can't seem to face up to the facts, I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax... --Talking Heads
Democracy, n: An order of things when all decisions are taken by the chief democrate.
Agreed.
Elections probably worked in acient Athens where people knew each others and hence the men they vote for. Things like this.
How can it work now?
People are voting for handsome faces more than for wise brains etc. Elections are such a bullshit now.
If I were paying tax money to the American government, I would be rather upset about the whole doubling of efforts here. I mean: On the one hand they have echelon, which they deny is going on, but which all know beyond reasonable doubt is there, and is monitoring our communications networks (private and state) already.
But, just to so they can keep denying Echelon, they have to invest another 39 million in a monitoring network they admit exists. I bet that money is actually going for corruption, while FIDnet will just be a public front for the already in place Echelon.
Anyways, as far as I am concerned they can go ahead and monitor all they want. The Internet is a public network, sending packets over it IS like sending postcards. However, I do want to it to be a fair playing field. That is:
Yes, mr Sam, you may go ahead and evesdrop on me as much as you want, but don't think for a fucking second that you can try to keep me from using language you can't understand when I don't want you to know what I'm saying.
Crypto IS a human right.
-
... but there's one opinion here that's not being represented, that I would like to see some discussion on. So here goes (donning asbestos underwear).
Okay. I understand, and believe in, the concept of a "right to privacy", and agree that the government has more important things to worry about than monitoring everyone's communications in the hopes of thwarting some terrorist attack or stopping drug deals or whatever. However... I believe that there ARE legitimate reasons for someone to be "policing the 'net" so to speak. And although I'm sure that there are some people or groups who are doing some amount of behind-the-scenes work in this regard, I don't think it's having much effect. I hear some of you saying "what the heck is this guy talking about?" Okay, some examples are probably in order. People who spend time cracking web sites & servers, and subsequently posting graffiti, just to prove it can be done. Sites that illegally host commercial software, or registration codes or cracks. "Script kiddies" who spend their time trying to crash IRC servers, flood ISP's, or do other stupid and offensive things. All of the other forms of what I would call "cyberterrorism", which in a nutshell is any activity that makes me wary of my time online.
I'm glad that some folks are at least taking the time to help educate people who are considering DSL or cable modems, to explain why it's a good idea to set up a firewall to protect themselves from the nosey and/or dangerous folks out there, but I think it's kind of sad that when confronted with a "crime is on the rise" scenario, most people think in terms of a bigger/better deadbolt & security system, rather than attempting a neighborhood watch or working with law enforcement authorities to put the crooks behind bars. There's probably a place for both types of crime prevention, but I'm getting off topic here.
The point I was trying to make is, almost all of the preceding messages I've seen on this thread are "government intrusion is bad, stop it stop it stop it stop it", but no one seems to want to consider that perhaps some policing of the 'net could reduce the amount of annoying activity out there which we all seem to accept as part of the price we pay for a 'free network'.
Okay, my rant is over now. We'll see if it gets moderated down to 'flame bait', but I hope not, I have faith that there are at least a few Slashdot readers out there who feel the same as I do about "network freedom".
Thanks,
- Mike
======
"Cyberspace scared me so bad I downloaded in my pants." --- Buddy Jellison
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Heh, yea, it allways struck me that the most interesting thing about these events is how much the NSA (and #include 'other_spooks.h')must be laughing at them. I mean, if they were to monitor (allmost) all the backbones in the world, there should have been at ONE where the info was leaked to the press by now. And, I figure all the terrorists with brains allready have PGP...
:-)
Anyway, I think most of my non-geek acquaintances would find it rather strange with all those spooky words at the end of every mail.
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
That sort of depends on where you live. AFAIC, you've got the third article of the day.. Well, second or third depending on whether or not you consider day to be as in "I see sunlight" or "hey, look, it's past midnight".. Then again, since the story before it was posted in the same hour, yours would still be the second story of the day. ;)
I will note, however, that it is interesting indeed to see a post marked as #1 that is actually intelligent commentary rather than "AW YEA 1ST POST I ROOLZ UZ BITCHEZ, DOODZ!!" =P
~ Kish
I think we probably agree that an effective program of making mass surveillance much more difficult is a good idea, and that the "hacktivists" behind "jam Echelon day" aren't accomplishing that. It wouldn't be very hard to cobble together dictionaries dealing with sensitive topics and use markov techniques to generate texts (say, a CGI-enabled web page running on SSL) that would give context analysis tools a run for their money. But something like that would even follow the principles of an effective online action instead of STOP THE MODEM-TAX!!!!-style of half-baked announcements, which the "hacktivists" seem to prefer.
These "hacktivists" seem to think that peppering their email with naughty words is a new idea. It isn't: "spook fodder" is at least ten years old (take a look at Tim May's 1992 Cypherno micon). The idea that they can "jam" Echelon is incredibly naive; if they're really concerned, they'd do better to encourage people to understand these surveillance systems and to use PGP - spreading misinformation about surveillance and encouraging one-day actions is counterproductive. Some of the hacktivist organizers have been told again and again (for example, by the foounders of Hack-Tic/xs4all) that their methods are misguided and useless, but they never listen. Hacking is about, among other things, understanding technical systems: if you promote misunderstanding, you've got no business calling yourself a "hack"-anything.