I had this same question. My assumption is that should the gov't provide a torrent, the MPAA/RIAA/etc would get all up in arms that the administration is supporting copyright infringement. It's completely incorrect, but when has that ever stopped the MPAA/RIAA/etc from complaining?
So instead of "sharing the load" between servers, they just put the data on a server and said, "Good luck. We're all counting on you."
I'm sure some slashdotter somewhere has torrented it though. Too bad I'm at work and my company considers torrents "hacking."
People who grew up with using Windows at work want to be able to use it at home. They don't want to learn something new. This is the same reason why office computers use Windows. Most of their employees are used to using Windows. Instead of spending money on training, they slap windows on a machine and call it a day.
It's a catch-22.
But iOS has actually become such a popular OS that I can see this shifting. People want the ease of the iPhone and want their computer to "just work". Granted, OS X and Macs provide a lot of the framework to do just that, but again, why buy a Mac and then have to learn something new?
It doesn't make it right. It just makes it popular.
Or even worse, they won't bring the drug to unfriendly markets, making it so that only the people who can afford to go out of the country to receive treatment.
The problem is that retaining a lawyer can be expensive whereas reporting a crime to a police officer is relatively free.
The article doesn't make it clear whether he went to his computer to perform some task and then found pr0n or if he was performing some task and was then inundated with pr0n. If he was trying download music from an sketchy source (e.g. bobsultrasuperlegalandfreemp3s.com) verses amazon.com or itunes, he was probably out to pirate music and those sites are usually filled with viruses. Did he deserve to get pwned? No, but that's besides the point.
It's disparaging that a man who hasn't even been charged is basically being treated like a criminal. I guess when it comes to kids, it's guilty until proven innocent to everyone's satisfaction.
A source link in TFA goes to the actual warrant. The way it reads, a Maryland detective in addition to a DHS task force "officer", have a warrant to retrieve property, in this case "the Internet domain name bodog.com".
I haven't read my TOS when I registered my domain, but I believe that the domains belong to me and don't belong to the registrar. The warrant makes it sound like the domain belongs to Verisign. I am not a lawyer and I'm probably reading this incorrectly.
I have many questions regarding this, namely WTF is a local detective involved in this case. What was his role? Was there some sort of crime in Maryland (specifically Anne Arundel County) that started this investigation?
I was thinking about this and I think parts of your argument are true, but some not so.
In your example, Juniper residents had a direct democracy. This is not the case. The fault of The Internet Blueprint (and the folks that code it) is that their mechanism for churning out the bills is a "direct democracy" (quotes since it's not a form of government). Minorities still have recourse (as minimial as it may be) through their congressman and senators.
I think the Internet Blueprint is a novel idea. But it really won't get much traction until politicians stop worrying about re-election.
I would imagine that they have considered it, seeing most of the "geniuses" are probably behind six proxies.
So far, the people who have been DDoS'd have a fairly large public face so if they were go after someone who was directly linked, there would be massive repercussions. I assume this is why Julian Assange is still alive. There would be too many fingers that point to the US. I'm sure when the political fallout is low enough, he will be quietly dispatched.
OTOH, if a gang or mafia had a website and Anonymous DDoS'd them, I'm sure there would be a string of hits since their version of the justice system doesn't have the same burden of proof.
But yes, this is the point of scientific journals. You publish your results and then people, regardless of their orientation, either confirm or bash it in. Hell, the Coal industry probably has a couple of labs in it's pocket. I'm sure it could get one of them to cook up some results that refute the study. But then they have to do the same thing: publish.
WikiLeaks should only publish this if the journal feels that it cannot due to liability, risk, etc. But then the journal not having the stones to publish a peer-reviewed study will probably be worse than publishing it.
A lot of post have dealt with the technical aspects of overcoming the firewall. While this may help in the short term, it doesn't help your friends or future students. If you're willing, you may want to consider taking this up with provost/president/ombudsman/et al.
The easiest place to start is a local editorial. Your campus newspaper, local newspaper, local TV news. Tying your campus as against net neutrality should get enough people to pay attention.
Next, consider famous alumni. There was a policy that was in the process of becoming a rule at the university when I was a student. When I graduated, I told them that I wouldn't pay alumni dues until this policy was scrapped. Of course, one alumni not paying dues is not really an issue. But when I started posting on the alumni message boards about the issue and more alumni got involved (some far more famous than me), the school quickly reversed the policy. Money, unfortunately, speaks louder than words.
Another avenue is to speak at school board meetings. These meetings are often public but not well advertised. You may have to do some hunting to get this information.
Finally, form a campus group. Get students involved. Raise awareness, have a fun run, etc.
You want to make the cost to maintain the firewall unacceptably high. This might be a hard hurdle since they are probably weighing the cost to maintain the firewall and the cost of a free-for-all internet connection.
In fact I'd argue the combination or key to a safe does exactly the same thing and the court rulings that allow the government to compel cooperation in opening safes also violates the spirit of the 5th.
You can thank the courts and politicians from moving away from "founder's intentions" and toward "a living, breathing document." Both sides of the political spectrum is guilty of this.
I'll admit that I'm more on the side of "founder's intentions" but this is simply not reality.
The only thing a honey pot would prove is that your computer accessed child porn. Proving you viewed it is different.
There was a case (specifics escape me) where some guy hacked a wi-fi network and made it look like his neighbor was viewing child porn and making threats to political officials. The police originally had the same mentality: your computer, and therefore you, view child porn. Only after his company conducted their own investigation did they prove that he didn't. Note that I said company, not the police.
With Trojans, worms, and other malware, I would think this is an area that needs legal work: proving that an actual person accessed something illegal and not just a computer attached to an IP address.
There are two problems with this analogy: Doors can be picked and destroyed. Picking a lock or destroying a door would not destroy the evidence/property that the door was protecting.
A better -- but still not perfect -- analogy is a safe (as another user pointed out earlier). Assume a perfectly unbreakable safe, the government would need you to provide the combination to the safe in order to gain access to the documents. IANAL, but telling the government a combination is generally not something that they can use against you. The government would have to prove that the safe belonged to you and only you through some other method.
An encryption key is slightly different as the passphrase could be "I have a ponzi scheme and the contents of this safe prove it". I would assume that the government could not use this phrase against you. But they sure can use the contents of the decrypted files.
All cynicism aside, we as a People need to find a way to allow the government to prosecute real criminals but also protect John Q. Citizen. I think the compromise that the police know that the drive contains specific information (e.g. they saw a specific kiddy porn picture) and then forcing the suspect to provide the decryption key is a good one. However, requiring a decryption key as a condition of me flying, driving, or doing anything else would be an intrusion.
As any lawyer would say, "Knowing something and proving something are two entirely different things."
Evidence is needed to proceed to trial. Evidence is gathered through warrants, testimony, etc. Even if the police know you have incriminating data, they would need access to it to show it as evidence of the crime.
Let's be clear: ADVERTISING -- not tracking -- is the underpinning of the web. Much like ads in the newspaper, it paid for the content you are reading, but newspapers don't track me. (Aside: Maybe this is why newspapers are slowly dying. I don't know. But I do know is that this is one area that newspapers has over websites.)
Personalized ads is a specialty. Is it required? No. Sure, it helps your bottom line, but ultimately, you can get by without it.
I will concede this point. I'd rather have a corporation agree, even if it's begrudgingly, to not track me if I say I don't want to be tracked.
I'd still wish Firefox would ask the user if they want to be tracked...or at the very least, inform the user of their current privacy settings every once in a while.
Yes, I read this blog and there are a lot of good points...
The average Joe Six-pack has no idea that he's being tracked. Furthermore, average Joe Six-pack has no idea how use browser outside of typing in a URL and doing some clicking. I can see someone making the argument that Joe Six-pack probably won't install Firefox because, hell, does he even know what Firefox is?
Most people install Firefox because they hate Internet Explorer, presumably because they know Firefox to be more secure that the default browser. Most people, even technical users such as myself, trust Firefox to make certain decision for me. (Be honest: when was the last time you inspected the code, top to bottom?)
I will concede that the desire to not be tracked is an individual choice; however, by NOT making the choice default, Mozilla has effectively made the choice for the user. If Mozilla offered, upon installation, "Do you wish to be tracked?", then I'd agree with their stance. Mozilla already does this when it checks to see if it's the preferred browser.
But since the DNT setting is within the preferences (albeit easy to get to), the average user would have to know about it to set it. Best analogy: you wouldn't know that In-And-Out burger had animal fries unless you knew about it.
Mozilla, as a corporate entity, may not enable DNT by default from a corporate policy standpoint. Other comments have mentioned that to do this by default would be biting the hand that feeds them. I'll be honest and say that I haven't checked all other browsers based on the Mozilla code to see if this is enabled by default.
This doesn't negate my opinion that DNT should be enabled by default, regardless of how pointless Mozilla thinks it would be (their opinion).
On Firefox, the "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" is not enabled by default. I don't understand why this is not the default action.
The option should be "Tell websites I'm okay with being tracked" and should be ticked off by default.
I know when the feature was announced and then released, it was talked about for a few days and then went by the wayside. This was primarily due to the fact that Google, et al, had NO obligation to actually abide by this setting.
With the White House (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46495868/ns/technology_and_science-security/) announcing a new privacy plan, it will be interesting to see if the companies decide to self-regulate or if it will take the force of law to make them regulate.
I'm not an academic but my understanding of tenure is to allow the professor to publish topics that may be controversial. That way, the school can't dump the professor for publishing something that goes against the grain.
Of course, professors are still human and many of them abuse tenure but I'm sure there are professors that actually use the protection that tenure provides them to do extraordinary work that otherwise might have gotten them fired for not toeing the university line. (The easiest examples that comes to mind is global warming, creationism, etc.)
VERY important distinction. From what I understand, the US government cannot deny a citizen entry once the citizen has provided bona fides. The government may hold the citizen for questioning, but is afforded all rights and privileges provided by the constitution.
I like to say that I literally 'LOL'ed at this. I've said the same thing a number of times about things that are so easy either on a Mac or on Linux that is impossible to do natively on Windows.
Will Windows 8 have virtual desktops? Seriously...this needs to native to Windows.
I agree. "National security" is like the Ace in the hole that the government like to use. There are legitimate uses, but I fear that it may be overused.
The meetings may be classified, but should never be off-the-record. The recordings, like all classified materials, should be made public when they no longer pose a threat.
Slashdot Mirror
I had this same question. My assumption is that should the gov't provide a torrent, the MPAA/RIAA/etc would get all up in arms that the administration is supporting copyright infringement. It's completely incorrect, but when has that ever stopped the MPAA/RIAA/etc from complaining?
So instead of "sharing the load" between servers, they just put the data on a server and said, "Good luck. We're all counting on you."
I'm sure some slashdotter somewhere has torrented it though. Too bad I'm at work and my company considers torrents "hacking."
People who grew up with using Windows at work want to be able to use it at home. They don't want to learn something new. This is the same reason why office computers use Windows. Most of their employees are used to using Windows. Instead of spending money on training, they slap windows on a machine and call it a day.
It's a catch-22.
But iOS has actually become such a popular OS that I can see this shifting. People want the ease of the iPhone and want their computer to "just work". Granted, OS X and Macs provide a lot of the framework to do just that, but again, why buy a Mac and then have to learn something new?
It doesn't make it right. It just makes it popular.
Or even worse, they won't bring the drug to unfriendly markets, making it so that only the people who can afford to go out of the country to receive treatment.
It's not bad karma. It's bad business.
The problem is that retaining a lawyer can be expensive whereas reporting a crime to a police officer is relatively free.
The article doesn't make it clear whether he went to his computer to perform some task and then found pr0n or if he was performing some task and was then inundated with pr0n. If he was trying download music from an sketchy source (e.g. bobsultrasuperlegalandfreemp3s.com) verses amazon.com or itunes, he was probably out to pirate music and those sites are usually filled with viruses. Did he deserve to get pwned? No, but that's besides the point.
It's disparaging that a man who hasn't even been charged is basically being treated like a criminal. I guess when it comes to kids, it's guilty until proven innocent to everyone's satisfaction.
There are a number of these: ting.com, speakout, and a couple of others. A large majority of these are based on the Sprint network.
I guess Sprint is bleeding customers so bad that they have begun leasing their bandwidth to other companies to resell.
A source link in TFA goes to the actual warrant. The way it reads, a Maryland detective in addition to a DHS task force "officer", have a warrant to retrieve property, in this case "the Internet domain name bodog.com".
I haven't read my TOS when I registered my domain, but I believe that the domains belong to me and don't belong to the registrar. The warrant makes it sound like the domain belongs to Verisign. I am not a lawyer and I'm probably reading this incorrectly.
I have many questions regarding this, namely WTF is a local detective involved in this case. What was his role? Was there some sort of crime in Maryland (specifically Anne Arundel County) that started this investigation?
I was thinking about this and I think parts of your argument are true, but some not so.
In your example, Juniper residents had a direct democracy. This is not the case. The fault of The Internet Blueprint (and the folks that code it) is that their mechanism for churning out the bills is a "direct democracy" (quotes since it's not a form of government). Minorities still have recourse (as minimial as it may be) through their congressman and senators.
I think the Internet Blueprint is a novel idea. But it really won't get much traction until politicians stop worrying about re-election.
I would imagine that they have considered it, seeing most of the "geniuses" are probably behind six proxies.
So far, the people who have been DDoS'd have a fairly large public face so if they were go after someone who was directly linked, there would be massive repercussions. I assume this is why Julian Assange is still alive. There would be too many fingers that point to the US. I'm sure when the political fallout is low enough, he will be quietly dispatched.
OTOH, if a gang or mafia had a website and Anonymous DDoS'd them, I'm sure there would be a string of hits since their version of the justice system doesn't have the same burden of proof.
I would so mod you up if I had the points.
But yes, this is the point of scientific journals. You publish your results and then people, regardless of their orientation, either confirm or bash it in. Hell, the Coal industry probably has a couple of labs in it's pocket. I'm sure it could get one of them to cook up some results that refute the study. But then they have to do the same thing: publish.
WikiLeaks should only publish this if the journal feels that it cannot due to liability, risk, etc. But then the journal not having the stones to publish a peer-reviewed study will probably be worse than publishing it.
A lot of post have dealt with the technical aspects of overcoming the firewall. While this may help in the short term, it doesn't help your friends or future students. If you're willing, you may want to consider taking this up with provost/president/ombudsman/et al.
The easiest place to start is a local editorial. Your campus newspaper, local newspaper, local TV news. Tying your campus as against net neutrality should get enough people to pay attention.
Next, consider famous alumni. There was a policy that was in the process of becoming a rule at the university when I was a student. When I graduated, I told them that I wouldn't pay alumni dues until this policy was scrapped. Of course, one alumni not paying dues is not really an issue. But when I started posting on the alumni message boards about the issue and more alumni got involved (some far more famous than me), the school quickly reversed the policy. Money, unfortunately, speaks louder than words.
Another avenue is to speak at school board meetings. These meetings are often public but not well advertised. You may have to do some hunting to get this information.
Finally, form a campus group. Get students involved. Raise awareness, have a fun run, etc.
You want to make the cost to maintain the firewall unacceptably high. This might be a hard hurdle since they are probably weighing the cost to maintain the firewall and the cost of a free-for-all internet connection.
You can thank the courts and politicians from moving away from "founder's intentions" and toward "a living, breathing document." Both sides of the political spectrum is guilty of this.
I'll admit that I'm more on the side of "founder's intentions" but this is simply not reality.
The only thing a honey pot would prove is that your computer accessed child porn. Proving you viewed it is different.
There was a case (specifics escape me) where some guy hacked a wi-fi network and made it look like his neighbor was viewing child porn and making threats to political officials. The police originally had the same mentality: your computer, and therefore you, view child porn. Only after his company conducted their own investigation did they prove that he didn't. Note that I said company, not the police.
With Trojans, worms, and other malware, I would think this is an area that needs legal work: proving that an actual person accessed something illegal and not just a computer attached to an IP address.
There are two problems with this analogy: Doors can be picked and destroyed. Picking a lock or destroying a door would not destroy the evidence/property that the door was protecting.
A better -- but still not perfect -- analogy is a safe (as another user pointed out earlier). Assume a perfectly unbreakable safe, the government would need you to provide the combination to the safe in order to gain access to the documents. IANAL, but telling the government a combination is generally not something that they can use against you. The government would have to prove that the safe belonged to you and only you through some other method.
An encryption key is slightly different as the passphrase could be "I have a ponzi scheme and the contents of this safe prove it". I would assume that the government could not use this phrase against you. But they sure can use the contents of the decrypted files.
All cynicism aside, we as a People need to find a way to allow the government to prosecute real criminals but also protect John Q. Citizen. I think the compromise that the police know that the drive contains specific information (e.g. they saw a specific kiddy porn picture) and then forcing the suspect to provide the decryption key is a good one. However, requiring a decryption key as a condition of me flying, driving, or doing anything else would be an intrusion.
As any lawyer would say, "Knowing something and proving something are two entirely different things."
Evidence is needed to proceed to trial. Evidence is gathered through warrants, testimony, etc. Even if the police know you have incriminating data, they would need access to it to show it as evidence of the crime.
Is why the women needed the Nigerians in the first place. She was doing the legwork. Little the Nigerians could do to find her.
Then again, the smart criminal is a rare breed.
Let's be clear: ADVERTISING -- not tracking -- is the underpinning of the web. Much like ads in the newspaper, it paid for the content you are reading, but newspapers don't track me. (Aside: Maybe this is why newspapers are slowly dying. I don't know. But I do know is that this is one area that newspapers has over websites.)
Personalized ads is a specialty. Is it required? No. Sure, it helps your bottom line, but ultimately, you can get by without it.
I will concede this point. I'd rather have a corporation agree, even if it's begrudgingly, to not track me if I say I don't want to be tracked.
I'd still wish Firefox would ask the user if they want to be tracked...or at the very least, inform the user of their current privacy settings every once in a while.
Yes, I read this blog and there are a lot of good points...
The average Joe Six-pack has no idea that he's being tracked. Furthermore, average Joe Six-pack has no idea how use browser outside of typing in a URL and doing some clicking. I can see someone making the argument that Joe Six-pack probably won't install Firefox because, hell, does he even know what Firefox is?
Most people install Firefox because they hate Internet Explorer, presumably because they know Firefox to be more secure that the default browser. Most people, even technical users such as myself, trust Firefox to make certain decision for me. (Be honest: when was the last time you inspected the code, top to bottom?)
I will concede that the desire to not be tracked is an individual choice; however, by NOT making the choice default, Mozilla has effectively made the choice for the user. If Mozilla offered, upon installation, "Do you wish to be tracked?", then I'd agree with their stance. Mozilla already does this when it checks to see if it's the preferred browser.
But since the DNT setting is within the preferences (albeit easy to get to), the average user would have to know about it to set it. Best analogy: you wouldn't know that In-And-Out burger had animal fries unless you knew about it.
Mozilla, as a corporate entity, may not enable DNT by default from a corporate policy standpoint. Other comments have mentioned that to do this by default would be biting the hand that feeds them. I'll be honest and say that I haven't checked all other browsers based on the Mozilla code to see if this is enabled by default.
This doesn't negate my opinion that DNT should be enabled by default, regardless of how pointless Mozilla thinks it would be (their opinion).
On Firefox, the "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" is not enabled by default. I don't understand why this is not the default action.
The option should be "Tell websites I'm okay with being tracked" and should be ticked off by default.
I know when the feature was announced and then released, it was talked about for a few days and then went by the wayside. This was primarily due to the fact that Google, et al, had NO obligation to actually abide by this setting.
With the White House (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46495868/ns/technology_and_science-security/) announcing a new privacy plan, it will be interesting to see if the companies decide to self-regulate or if it will take the force of law to make them regulate.
I'm not an academic but my understanding of tenure is to allow the professor to publish topics that may be controversial. That way, the school can't dump the professor for publishing something that goes against the grain.
Of course, professors are still human and many of them abuse tenure but I'm sure there are professors that actually use the protection that tenure provides them to do extraordinary work that otherwise might have gotten them fired for not toeing the university line. (The easiest examples that comes to mind is global warming, creationism, etc.)
VERY important distinction. From what I understand, the US government cannot deny a citizen entry once the citizen has provided bona fides. The government may hold the citizen for questioning, but is afforded all rights and privileges provided by the constitution.
IANAL...of course, we don't live in "Shouldland".
Isn't this a good thing though? "The People should not fear its government. The government to should fear its the People."
I guess the only thing missing is the revolution to actually throw the government out of the country.
I like to say that I literally 'LOL'ed at this. I've said the same thing a number of times about things that are so easy either on a Mac or on Linux that is impossible to do natively on Windows.
Will Windows 8 have virtual desktops? Seriously...this needs to native to Windows.
People are willing to give up their privacy if it saves them 10% at Petco.
What's to stop you from taking their money and only using Chrome to visit a few websites?
I agree. "National security" is like the Ace in the hole that the government like to use. There are legitimate uses, but I fear that it may be overused.
The meetings may be classified, but should never be off-the-record. The recordings, like all classified materials, should be made public when they no longer pose a threat.