If you do not believe that there IS, and ALWAYS HAVE been, some sort of programs monitoring everyones activities on the Internet you must not have been paying attention to your History lessones.
When the Cold War was at it's highest, computers were already being used by militaries around the world. Do you think that J. Edgar Hoover didn't implement plans. What about the CIA, or NSA. If you can not imagine any of them do it what about the KGB or MI6.
All of these are the people that hide infomatioin from themselves and thier governments for "Security" or any of a handfull of reasons that they only have to justify to themselves.
As any Network Admin can tell you if you can tap into the data stream you can see everything that goes past that point. When you are talking about globle commuications there are only a few places that the data can come into or out of each country. An easy example would be the telephone backbone that connects both North America and Eurpoe.
The US government, i.e. the Military, can without breaking any existing laws tap all those points that come into or out of the US, just by deciding that it is a "Threat to the Security of the United State...". This is without letting anyone know they are doing it.
Even with current encryption, which is trully impressive. They can if they choose, put not only one but as many Super Computers as they wish to breaking it. With the current speeds of PC's and such projects as openMosix and Beowulf eveyone should have one who wants one. I only have 16 nodes and can crack passwords at 20 a day, of course that is only DES64 passwords, but I'm doing it with computers that are too slow to be usefull as desktops.
If We the people of the United States want to have any sort of privacy we need to ensure it for ourself just as our fore fathers wanted us too. If everyone used encrypted connections and encrypted thier email. Along with AIM and such clients allowing for establishing encrypted connections. We would not need to worry about it as much.
When our fore fathers wrote the constitution all we needed to ensure our privacy was a gun. Now we need a Gun and PGP with VPN and encrypted file systems.
I think that the government needs to be able to do what ever it needs to do, as long as the results do not harm my way of life. I know that they are spying. I also know that no matter what they say or what we try to do, they cannot take the risk of not doing it.
The problem comes when they let any of that information become anything less than a State Seceret. When that information is only used for the "Safty of the Nation" it should not have an effect on any crime commited inside the US or any other Country. Your local drug dealers or mp3 downloader will not be slowed or stopped.
If you want to have privacy on the net, then install and setup encrypted servers and clients. Tell your friends to do the same, if the refuse then refuse any connections or emails from them. With all the current apps out there you can set most of it up in the background and you never have to do anything more than except new keys. Once you get someone using it they will never stop.
As far as freedom of speech, if you are posting something that is likly to get the attention of Big Brother to the point where they will come after you, then you were stupid it do it from somewhere they can trace you to, it's your own damn fault.
If Osama uses a computer and post to public fourms and he gets caught doing it, go U.S.. If the U.S. doesn't find him but finds 10 other cell leaders because the don't have the resources to hide better, who cares.
I don't do anything that would call the attention of the government to me, the MPAA maybe. It's not the government that I worry about it's the private companies with lawers that worry me.
They are the ones who want these laws, they are the ones who are spending the money to make these laws
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If you do not believe that there IS, and ALWAYS HAVE been, some sort of programs monitoring everyones activities on the Internet you must not have been paying attention to your History lessones.
When the Cold War was at it's highest, computers were already being used by militaries around the world. Do you think that J. Edgar Hoover didn't implement plans. What about the CIA, or NSA. If you can not imagine any of them do it what about the KGB or MI6.
All of these are the people that hide infomatioin from themselves and thier governments for "Security" or any of a handfull of reasons that they only have to justify to themselves.
As any Network Admin can tell you if you can tap into the data stream you can see everything that goes past that point. When you are talking about globle commuications there are only a few places that the data can come into or out of each country. An easy example would be the telephone backbone that connects both North America and Eurpoe.
The US government, i.e. the Military, can without breaking any existing laws tap all those points that come into or out of the US, just by deciding that it is a "Threat to the Security of the United State...". This is without letting anyone know they are doing it.
Even with current encryption, which is trully impressive. They can if they choose, put not only one but as many Super Computers as they wish to breaking it. With the current speeds of PC's and such projects as openMosix and Beowulf eveyone should have one who wants one. I only have 16 nodes and can crack passwords at 20 a day, of course that is only DES64 passwords, but I'm doing it with computers that are too slow to be usefull as desktops.
If We the people of the United States want to have any sort of privacy we need to ensure it for ourself just as our fore fathers wanted us too. If everyone used encrypted connections and encrypted thier email. Along with AIM and such clients allowing for establishing encrypted connections. We would not need to worry about it as much.
When our fore fathers wrote the constitution all we needed to ensure our privacy was a gun. Now we need a Gun and PGP with VPN and encrypted file systems.
I think that the government needs to be able to do what ever it needs to do, as long as the results do not harm my way of life. I know that they are spying. I also know that no matter what they say or what we try to do, they cannot take the risk of not doing it.
The problem comes when they let any of that information become anything less than a State Seceret. When that information is only used for the "Safty of the Nation" it should not have an effect on any crime commited inside the US or any other Country. Your local drug dealers or mp3 downloader will not be slowed or stopped.
If you want to have privacy on the net, then install and setup encrypted servers and clients. Tell your friends to do the same, if the refuse then refuse any connections or emails from them. With all the current apps out there you can set most of it up in the background and you never have to do anything more than except new keys. Once you get someone using it they will never stop.
As far as freedom of speech, if you are posting something that is likly to get the attention of Big Brother to the point where they will come after you, then you were stupid it do it from somewhere they can trace you to, it's your own damn fault.
If Osama uses a computer and post to public fourms and he gets caught doing it, go U.S.. If the U.S. doesn't find him but finds 10 other cell leaders because the don't have the resources to hide better, who cares.
I don't do anything that would call the attention of the government to me, the MPAA maybe. It's not the government that I worry about it's the private companies with lawers that worry me.
They are the ones who want these laws, they are the ones who are spending the money to make these laws