The public needs to understand and accept the fact that neither telecos nor governments are trustworthy.
And neither — to judge from the article — is the EFF... And here is why.
Privacy is up to end users and they are free to secure their own traffic by wrapping it in real crypto. GPG, OpenSSL and OpenVPN are just a few free open-source toolkits available to provide secure ways to communicate without having to worry about the trustworthiness of the pipe between here and there.
Cindy Cohn talks about "wholesale surveillance" of "millions of Internet users". What she is not saying — and this is why your proposed defense is both unnecessary and useless (in this case) — is that the surveillance is not on any particular communication, but on the volumes themselves. Indeed, with the traffic dominated by connections where one of the ends is a dynamic IP, identifying an individual is very difficult.
And, anyway, the volume is what's often even more important than the content. Sudden spikes in the number of connections — encrypted or not — to a particular site or two may indicate, a new bin Laden's video being readied, for example. Visiting such a site is not illegal — and nobody is prosecuted for doing so. But monitoring the traffic could be quite illuminating.
In other words, NSA neither knows, nor cares to know, what M Williamson (however subversive or critical of Bush you may be) said to his friends. What may arouse their interest, is that certain sites get more visitors or certain e-mail servers — more messages, before (or after) certain events take place...
And before you ask, although the government still does not want the details of it to become public, such monitoring would not be illegal — it was ruled long ago in the pre-Internet postal era (when "mail" did not have the "e-" prefix), that what's written on the envelope is not secret and can be observed by police and subsequently used as evidence.
Oh, let's say you're a member of group X. Which is more likely to stop you from being a member of group X:
A fellow group member being killed with lethal injection, after he had time to make final statements and so on.
A fellow group member being slowly tortured for months then killed in a horribly painful manner without him having any chance to contact anyone.
Me? I'd say about equally... An average would-be terrorist? No idea — they may actually think, waterboarding (not being painful or disfiguring) is something, they can get through...
On average the history of law enforcement shows, that the viciousness of the punishment does not deter crimes — in middle ages people were routinely killed for fairly minor offenses and wheeled/quartered for more serious stuff. So small a fraction of criminals were ever caught, the fear of punishment prevented no crimes...
It is the inevitability of the punishment, that is a deterrent. In other words, "what we'll do to you" does not suppress bad guys — "we will get you does".
So no, they waterboarded those, whom they suspected of withholding useful information — not just to scare the rest of the assholes crapless...
You're possibly the only post here on slashdot to ever get me actually angry. You must be a moron.
Do deal with your anger issues and learn to debate politely... Not dismissing other people due to their backgrounds (such as "rednecks") would help you too.
USA has (had) the money and the know-how to extract more accurate info from suspects instead of torturing them.
Actually, those chemicals are, likely, far more dangerous to the body, than the waterboarding — which even the CIA agents themselves undergo as part of their training.
My opinion is that somebody wants to spread terror instead of prevent it.
This theory would only make sense, if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed faced any prospect of ever being released... As things stand, "spreading terror" through him is completely pointless.
I think I will go with 1) what engineers say and 2) what the pilot log books say. Those logs include some pretty scary things, including a laptop that was proven to cause an airliner to bank.
That would mean a severely broken airliner to begin with. On every flight there are 5-15 cellular phones, which their owners forget to turn off. Somehow, the sky has not fallen yet... Nor has it fallen over the United Emirates, whose primary airline officially allows cell-phone use (see this article's write-up).
These kinds of "dilemma's" are nothing but intellectual masturbation. I'll tell you right now: in a real world situation, that man or that dog would be a greasy spot if it was only thought that their death would save 100,000 people.
And yet the US government is being rather harshly criticized for — not killing — merely waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorism suspects.
Although a practical argument questions the accuracy of information provided by a tortured person, most of the objections come from the moral/ethical viewpoint. The criticism was so high, in fact, the Administration decided to stop doing it — lives be damned, we can not torture anyone, period. Not even if the torture is purely mental (such as waterboarding), rather than permanently disfiguring...
Well, if it is, in fact, a majority, or even a substantial minority, who wish to be able to use their phones, but can not due to the undisputed lie, then the slashdotters' celebration of the lie is even worse...
That the "freedom-loving" slashdotters are all — posters and moderators — claiming to be happy, that the big lie of "cell phones may interfere with safety equipment on board" is being used to stop their fellow passengers from using their cell phones on the planes.
Evidently, the ends justify the means... Lying to millions of travelers to prevent a tiny minority of them from being inconsiderate, while at the same time offering them an option to pay $6/minute for the same sort of inconsideration...
Look at the brouhaha in California currently over medicinal marijuana -- the voters of that state want it legal, but federal authorities have raided companies doing medicinal marijuana business within state borders. That, to me, seems to fall straight in line with your definition -- calculated use of violence against civilians to attain a political goal.
No, not a political, but a law-enforcement one. Enforcing a law (including "bad" laws) is not a "political" goal, otherwise, every arrest would be an act of terror.
Even before 2001, the documented cases of FBI surveillance on non-violent protest groups are many and easy to find.
And? Surveillance is not violence. You can be there — I can film you. Just ask any paparazzi.
ample evidence that Bush administration is using the threat of violence against U.S. civilians to instill fear in the public, as a means to accomplish political goals that go back LONG before 9-11... By your own definition that would make them terrorists, no?
Uhm, no, the violence (or threat thereof) in the definition has to be applied (or threatened) by the same people, who try to achieve their goals.
For example, a stock-trader profiting from a price-hike (or drop) of something due to somebody else's act of terror, is not a terrorist.
So, unless you are stating, that Bush administration has performed (or threatened to perfrom) such acts against U.S. civilians, the definition would not apply.
It is not "my own definition" either, BTW. It comes from the WordNet program... A great tool.
Alternately, you could say we live in a time where the government is the most effective terrorist.
No, you can't. The definition of "terrorist" does not apply:
The noun terrorism has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act -- (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)
Note, that the results of an act don't matter to the determination of whether it was terrorism or not, the goals do. And the goals of the SWAT teams are apprehending suspects in a (serious) crime — not political, religious, or ideological.
(Take your "US is the number one terrorist" agenda and shove it.)
Transporting tobacco illegally over state lines is a nasty federal crime that has a 7 year statute of limitations that they can nail him with.
A few packs is not only not enough for a common sense prosecution, it would not be enough for a "letter of the law" kind. I'm pretty sure, the amount of transported tobacco has to be fairly large for the law to apply — and the prosecution would have to prove the intent to distribute or something...
That's why all of you voted to have way too many laws to make sure the government has something to charge you with when they need it.
In this case, it specifically excludes all citizens who are not connected to the Internet
These people ought to vote for someone else in the first place. Australia — like most countries and unlike US — votes for parties, rather than particular candidates based on districting.
or are aware of a current vote, from participating.
That's fine — most issues are decided upon without the majority of electorate ever knowing about them anyway. We've been outsourcing the voting to professional politicians for very long time. Partially because consulting the electorate was impractical before the Internet's wide spread; and partially because of the sorry examples of earlier direct Democracies.
Today's — and near future's — wide reach of the Internet connectivity solves the first problem. The re-vote requirement I suggested would cut down of the on-a-whim decisions influenced by demagoguery (not that professional politicians are completely immune to these today even with otherwise best intentions).
They are broadly spying on anyone and everyone, without any warrant, outside of the bonds of the US' constitution.
No. I don't know, where you are getting this accusation, but the recent scandal involved NSA listening on phone conversations, where one of the parties was outside of the US.
That's the point — it will not be different from today. But today's politicians don't promise to obey the electorate's wishes literally, they all use their own judgement (for better or worse) — nothing to enforce here.
These new guys in Australia, however, promise to hold no position of their own and to vote purely as the electorate wants them to.
There is no way to legally hold them to that specific promise. For example, their voters will not be able to access their web-servers' logs in real-time... There may also be a situation of "Yes, our voters wanted A, but B was obviously superiour, so we voted for B anyway."
I agree with you. People often forget, that the Democracy — in its original, direct-governing fashion — is what condemned Socrates to death.
However, it is possible, that the described system can be perfected. For example, to cut out the "on-the-whim" decisions influenced by inebriation, etc., a voter may be required to reaffirm their decision again — a few days later.
In the famous game of Civilization (at least, in the "Call To Power" version of it), there is a government called "Virtual Democracy", which seems to be similar to what is described here. The role of the elected law-makers may be reduced to that of the Electoral College delegates of today — mostly ceremonial.
You are right, that the populists, alarmists, and other demagogues will still thrive, but they thrive today too — as you also point out. The only real hope against them is the activity of other like them on the other side(s) of every issue.
It may be an interesting experiment the Australians got... I'm just wondering, how they are going to enforce the promise — I don't think, the party's senators will be legally bound to obey the voters' wishes.
Yes, and free as in schools, police, and fire departments. I get a third taken out of my paycheck, and it is annoying, but I make far more than enough to sustain myself, and I do believe that a country having a high standard of living is better for all of us.
There was no federal income tax until 1913, but the US had a rather high standard of living (compared to others) already... Heck, it was already mandated about then, that buildings have hot water — something, many European countries did not have until well after the second world war. US also had the reasonably-priced car by then.
Schools, police, and fire departments aren't paid for by the federal government (which takes by far the biggest chunk off your paycheck) anyway...
All taxes (federal, state, city) combined amount to just about 50% in NYC. In earlier times people used to revolt over 10%...
You are seriously wrong, if you think, taxes are required for "high standard of living". In fact, they are more likely to be an impediment.
They are selling your confidential information without your permission. Easy enough?
No. First, it is not really confidential — cellular calls aren't encrypted. I doubt, it would be illegal to build and use a device, which would collect information about the calls from all phones within range — and to sell the information. Therefore, I don't think, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy anyway.
Eavesdropping on the contents of the calls would be illegal, but the fact of the call is not a secret.
We went through this in the previous era, when the information on the envelopes was found admissible by courts, even if obtained without a warrant... Police can't look inside without the warrant, but they can look at it, weight it, etc.
You mean how they can use unlimited information on all phone calls made by US citizens, because that is what they have.
... an all phone calls made by US citizens to suspected terrorists abroad...
There, fixed that for you... Surely, a malignant government can declare anyone to be a terrorist, but to also place them abroad and cause them to call into US and talk of anything "interesting" is far more difficult.
Some of the more interesting uses are against perfectly legal opponents of the current government and it's policies.
Of course. But that's not what is even alleged to has happened in the "Phone companies helping NSA" scandal, so let's not go off tangent, shall we?..
[...] by building contact lists of who calls who. This is precisely what they want to do in the name of fighting terror, but they get the same lists of people in various political parties, with ties to groups that expose various embarassing things about political leaders, have viewpoints that differ from their own or those in power
They could abuse that, indeed, if they were monitoring the calls within the US — something that is, indeed, illegal, and that is not even being alleged to has happened.
Monitoring calls where only one of the parties is in the US might be illegal too, but is far harder to abuse because most of the political life of USA happens inside the country. I mean, they could have found some calls between Clintons and Chinese Army or Kerry and Chinese Army, but that's about it...
has. And I can guarantee you that an administration that implemented NSA spying - AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA - 7 months BEFORE 9/11 - would be more than happy to misuse that information.
This sort of accusations needs links to respectable sources. 7 month before 9/11 (February 11, 2001), this administration was in its first month of governing (the President having just delivered the first "State of the Union" address; the kitchen staff still washing the dishes from the inaugural banquet) and merely preparing for the fight on tax cuts and the "No Child Left Behind" legislation projects. To imply, they have already implemented a new spying program as well is to give their efficiency way too much credit...
I think, the blogger, whom you copy-pasted here, got confused and confused you...
They have done more that is contrary to the Constitution and have by many Constitutional scholar's violated more than any other administration in history.
Slashdot Mirror
And neither — to judge from the article — is the EFF... And here is why.
Cindy Cohn talks about "wholesale surveillance" of "millions of Internet users". What she is not saying — and this is why your proposed defense is both unnecessary and useless (in this case) — is that the surveillance is not on any particular communication, but on the volumes themselves. Indeed, with the traffic dominated by connections where one of the ends is a dynamic IP, identifying an individual is very difficult.
And, anyway, the volume is what's often even more important than the content. Sudden spikes in the number of connections — encrypted or not — to a particular site or two may indicate, a new bin Laden's video being readied, for example. Visiting such a site is not illegal — and nobody is prosecuted for doing so. But monitoring the traffic could be quite illuminating.
In other words, NSA neither knows, nor cares to know, what M Williamson (however subversive or critical of Bush you may be) said to his friends. What may arouse their interest, is that certain sites get more visitors or certain e-mail servers — more messages, before (or after) certain events take place...
And before you ask, although the government still does not want the details of it to become public, such monitoring would not be illegal — it was ruled long ago in the pre-Internet postal era (when "mail" did not have the "e-" prefix), that what's written on the envelope is not secret and can be observed by police and subsequently used as evidence.
Me? I'd say about equally... An average would-be terrorist? No idea — they may actually think, waterboarding (not being painful or disfiguring) is something, they can get through...
On average the history of law enforcement shows, that the viciousness of the punishment does not deter crimes — in middle ages people were routinely killed for fairly minor offenses and wheeled/quartered for more serious stuff. So small a fraction of criminals were ever caught, the fear of punishment prevented no crimes...
It is the inevitability of the punishment, that is a deterrent. In other words, "what we'll do to you" does not suppress bad guys — "we will get you does".
So no, they waterboarded those, whom they suspected of withholding useful information — not just to scare the rest of the assholes crapless...
Do deal with your anger issues and learn to debate politely... Not dismissing other people due to their backgrounds (such as "rednecks") would help you too.
Well, the presumption was, the extracted information would save lives. The presumption itself is not being discussed here.
But even those, who accept it, seem to find the waterboarding unacceptable — contrary to the post, to which I was replying.
Actually, those chemicals are, likely, far more dangerous to the body, than the waterboarding — which even the CIA agents themselves undergo as part of their training.
This theory would only make sense, if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed faced any prospect of ever being released... As things stand, "spreading terror" through him is completely pointless.
That would mean a severely broken airliner to begin with. On every flight there are 5-15 cellular phones, which their owners forget to turn off. Somehow, the sky has not fallen yet... Nor has it fallen over the United Emirates, whose primary airline officially allows cell-phone use (see this article's write-up).
And yet the US government is being rather harshly criticized for — not killing — merely waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorism suspects.
Although a practical argument questions the accuracy of information provided by a tortured person, most of the objections come from the moral/ethical viewpoint. The criticism was so high, in fact, the Administration decided to stop doing it — lives be damned, we can not torture anyone, period. Not even if the torture is purely mental (such as waterboarding), rather than permanently disfiguring...
Well, if it is, in fact, a majority, or even a substantial minority, who wish to be able to use their phones, but can not due to the undisputed lie, then the slashdotters' celebration of the lie is even worse...
That the "freedom-loving" slashdotters are all — posters and moderators — claiming to be happy, that the big lie of "cell phones may interfere with safety equipment on board" is being used to stop their fellow passengers from using their cell phones on the planes.
Evidently, the ends justify the means... Lying to millions of travelers to prevent a tiny minority of them from being inconsiderate, while at the same time offering them an option to pay $6/minute for the same sort of inconsideration...
TV is for suckers, period. I would not have said it, if you had not asked, though...
The violence, that Bush's administration may be accused of "trading on" is not threatened by the Bush administration.
"Do this or we blow you up" is different from "Do that or they blow you up."
Bush may be accused of "trading on" the latter, but he is innocent of the former. And only the former qualifies as terrorism. By definition...
A prison in Iraq.
I call them "CIA prisons in third-world countries".
That may well be true, but not in terrorism — not to my knowledge anyway. If you have evidence to the contrary — post it.
Don't change the subject — Jose Padilla's prosecution (justified or not) was not an act of terror either.
No, not a political, but a law-enforcement one. Enforcing a law (including "bad" laws) is not a "political" goal, otherwise, every arrest would be an act of terror.
And? Surveillance is not violence. You can be there — I can film you. Just ask any paparazzi.
Uhm, no, the violence (or threat thereof) in the definition has to be applied (or threatened) by the same people, who try to achieve their goals.
For example, a stock-trader profiting from a price-hike (or drop) of something due to somebody else's act of terror, is not a terrorist.
So, unless you are stating, that Bush administration has performed (or threatened to perfrom) such acts against U.S. civilians, the definition would not apply.
It is not "my own definition" either, BTW. It comes from the WordNet program... A great tool.
No, you can't. The definition of "terrorist" does not apply:
Note, that the results of an act don't matter to the determination of whether it was terrorism or not, the goals do. And the goals of the SWAT teams are apprehending suspects in a (serious) crime — not political, religious, or ideological.
(Take your "US is the number one terrorist" agenda and shove it.)
So the states, where he used the tobacco, might send him a tax bill. The original GGP posting alleged a federal crime has taken place... It has not.
A few packs is not only not enough for a common sense prosecution, it would not be enough for a "letter of the law" kind. I'm pretty sure, the amount of transported tobacco has to be fairly large for the law to apply — and the prosecution would have to prove the intent to distribute or something...
Yep...
These people ought to vote for someone else in the first place. Australia — like most countries and unlike US — votes for parties, rather than particular candidates based on districting.
That's fine — most issues are decided upon without the majority of electorate ever knowing about them anyway. We've been outsourcing the voting to professional politicians for very long time. Partially because consulting the electorate was impractical before the Internet's wide spread; and partially because of the sorry examples of earlier direct Democracies.
Today's — and near future's — wide reach of the Internet connectivity solves the first problem. The re-vote requirement I suggested would cut down of the on-a-whim decisions influenced by demagoguery (not that professional politicians are completely immune to these today even with otherwise best intentions).
No. I don't know, where you are getting this accusation, but the recent scandal involved NSA listening on phone conversations, where one of the parties was outside of the US.
That's the point — it will not be different from today. But today's politicians don't promise to obey the electorate's wishes literally, they all use their own judgement (for better or worse) — nothing to enforce here.
These new guys in Australia, however, promise to hold no position of their own and to vote purely as the electorate wants them to.
There is no way to legally hold them to that specific promise. For example, their voters will not be able to access their web-servers' logs in real-time... There may also be a situation of "Yes, our voters wanted A, but B was obviously superiour, so we voted for B anyway."
I agree with you. People often forget, that the Democracy — in its original, direct-governing fashion — is what condemned Socrates to death.
However, it is possible, that the described system can be perfected. For example, to cut out the "on-the-whim" decisions influenced by inebriation, etc., a voter may be required to reaffirm their decision again — a few days later.
In the famous game of Civilization (at least, in the "Call To Power" version of it), there is a government called "Virtual Democracy", which seems to be similar to what is described here. The role of the elected law-makers may be reduced to that of the Electoral College delegates of today — mostly ceremonial.
You are right, that the populists, alarmists, and other demagogues will still thrive, but they thrive today too — as you also point out. The only real hope against them is the activity of other like them on the other side(s) of every issue.
It may be an interesting experiment the Australians got... I'm just wondering, how they are going to enforce the promise — I don't think, the party's senators will be legally bound to obey the voters' wishes.
You are seriously wrong, if you think, taxes are required for "high standard of living". In fact, they are more likely to be an impediment.
No. First, it is not really confidential — cellular calls aren't encrypted. I doubt, it would be illegal to build and use a device, which would collect information about the calls from all phones within range — and to sell the information. Therefore, I don't think, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy anyway.
Eavesdropping on the contents of the calls would be illegal, but the fact of the call is not a secret.
We went through this in the previous era, when the information on the envelopes was found admissible by courts, even if obtained without a warrant... Police can't look inside without the warrant, but they can look at it, weight it, etc.
... an all phone calls made by US citizens to suspected terrorists abroad ...
There, fixed that for you... Surely, a malignant government can declare anyone to be a terrorist, but to also place them abroad and cause them to call into US and talk of anything "interesting" is far more difficult.
Of course. But that's not what is even alleged to has happened in the "Phone companies helping NSA" scandal, so let's not go off tangent, shall we?..
They could abuse that, indeed, if they were monitoring the calls within the US — something that is, indeed, illegal, and that is not even being alleged to has happened.
Monitoring calls where only one of the parties is in the US might be illegal too, but is far harder to abuse because most of the political life of USA happens inside the country. I mean, they could have found some calls between Clintons and Chinese Army or Kerry and Chinese Army, but that's about it...
This sort of accusations needs links to respectable sources. 7 month before 9/11 (February 11, 2001), this administration was in its first month of governing (the President having just delivered the first "State of the Union" address; the kitchen staff still washing the dishes from the inaugural banquet) and merely preparing for the fight on tax cuts and the "No Child Left Behind" legislation projects. To imply, they have already implemented a new spying program as well is to give their efficiency way too much credit...
I think, the blogger, whom you copy-pasted here, got confused and confused you...
Worse even than Nixon's?.. Wow...