* Suppress enemy air defenses (always step 1 of an air campaign)
* Destroy Taliban military forces near Kabul from the air (hard, they're dug in)
* Assist Northern Alliance to capture Kabul (they're stuck about 30km away)
* Declare victory.
Declare victory ?! You've got to be kidding.
I think from there it would go something like this from there:
Capture and secure a military base outside of Kabul
Use that base to launch close range reconaissance and special operations rapid strike capability throughout Afghanistan
Systematically secure every enemy cave, bunker, training camp, meeting place etc...
Eliminate all Taliban methods of mass-communication (radio, news, etc...) and begin massive Psy-Ops campaign
Step up humanitarian relief campaign, encouraging refugees to move back into central Afghan territory
Develop a robust Afghani human intelligence network to ID Taliban and Al Qaeda members
Use seek and destroy Special Ops strikes against all Taliban leaders, centers of resistance, Al Qaueda strongholds, etc...
Have the Afghani King return, and draft a Constitution based on a broad based democratic government
Schedule elections and implement a "Marshall Plan for Afghanistan".
Bin Laden may get killed in one of the Special Ops raids or he might flee the country. In any event, he'll be the CEO of a much smaller operation at this point.
Even this is not the end, though. At this point, we'll turn to other terrorist groups and probably pick a fight with Iraq.
More to the point, I don't see what we expect to achieve with airstrikes. Bomb them back to the stone age? What's that going to take? Like five bombs? OK, now what? Drop smart bombs that can distinguish Taliban from Afghan civilians? Or send in troops armed with a handy "Who to shoot" guide?
I take the government officials and military commentators at face value. The air strikes are designed to eliminate air defenses, giving us unfettered control of the skies. They are not an end in themselves, but merely a means of securing an advantage in battles to come.
I suspect that the Special Operations war is the "real" war. The bombing campaign today is just a visible aspect of this. By all accounts, the Spec Ops forces have already been at work invisibly. I highly doubt that its just recon, either.
In order for the Spec Ops to strike at our real targets, they need to be able to deploy rapidly, which means repeling from helicopters and/or jumping out of low-flying planes. Those are both dangerous if your opponent has anti-aircraft capabilities, so you take those out first. It's really standard practice to do this kind of thing. We saw it on a much larger scale in Iraq, and we also saw it in Kosovo.
Cruise missles at the terrorist camps is probably also a routine strike. We know they aren't stupid enough to be there, but now they have to base their operations from their current bunkers and caves. There are only so many places they can operate from, and destroying these camps simply locks them down where they are. Our goal will be to make it so that they have an ever shrinking number of places to be without being detected. When winter comes, they'll be locked down tight and we'll simply go "cave to cave" with Special Ops attacks.
If the Al Qaeda leaders are dumb enough to intermingle with Afghani civilians, then our intelligence will discover that very quickly. Remember we have the Northern Alliance and the Pakistanis helping us with intelligence.
Apparently you are not very up to date on contemporary guerilla warfare. If you want to see what a small number of psychotic troops fighting for their homeland can do, take a look at the ass-beating the USA took in Vietnam.
The US kill-to-loss ratio in Vietnam was something like 9 to 1. Assuming that this ratio maintains itself, it would cost the US 5000 military causualties to kill all 45000 Taliban troups.
If anything, we will do much better than we did in Vietnam or the Soviets did in Afghanistan because
We have virtually uncontested air superiority
We are not facing an enemy who can replentish their arms from a rival superpower
Our night-vision technology is a disruptive technology in guerilla warfare, and
The US public supports, in fact demands, victory at any cost
22 years of civl war and 4 years of draught leave our enemy weak and weary
Precision munitions are a disruptive battlefield technolgy.
Our military force is 100% volunteer, whereas our enemy conscripts 12 year olds
The war on terrorism is going to be the same way. We'll wipe bin Laden's organization out. But for every terrorist we kill, ten will rise to take their place.
The problem with the 'escalating cycle of violence' argument is that it's a pyramid scheme. They don't have infinite supplies of terrorists in waiting. All that we have to do is kill them faster than they recruit.
Oh, for gods' sakes. This is exactly the kind of 'rhetoric ' that attracts such hatred towards you Americans - you seem to have this unerring feeling that your position is absolutely correct.
That's correct. The murder of 6000 civilians is absolutely evil, and military action to punish and prevent such action is absolutely correct. This is not an 'unerring feeling', but an unerring fact. As for hatred, if hatred comes from evil people as the result for doing good, then it is good to be hated.
The United States has looked for no solution whatsoe'er - demands on a non-negotiable billet do not come close to being an action of looking for a solution.
We offered a simple deal: comply or be destroyed. Frankly, I thought that was overly generous.
As a friend of mine put it, they call it 'collateral damage' because 'dead innocent civilians' doesn't have the same ring to it - and collateral damage is going to occur, to both sides, to a great extent, because the 'mission' is not clearly definied, but only a misguided and vague effort supported by dodgy morals and an apparent committment to aid which doesn't really fit with the action being taken.
The only 'dodgy morals' here are your tolerance for terrorism. The mission here is very clear: destroy Al Qauda, topple the Taliban from power, and have fun mocking pacifists like you while doing it.
Collateral damage means unintended secondary damage involved with hitting the primary target. As we normally do, we will minimize collateral damage to Afghan civilians to the extent possible without sacrificing the mission. 'Dead innocent civilians' describes their primary, not secondary target, so I don't think we'll suffer any collateral damage.
They want to kill civilians, we don't. Frankly, by being a pacifist, YOU advocate the course of action that will maximize their effectiveness and maximize number of dead innocent civilians.
Personally, I find it very sad that a country full of such a great many people who could contribute so much to the world at large are generally not only conceited, arrogant and selfish, but somewhat stupid (by this I mean their actions as a mob, rather than individually, for at least most of them).
I'm glad it infuriates you, frankly. I just wish that Bin Laden's barbs were as ineffectual as yours.
The blob was found to be a cluster of stars 13.6 billion light years away, seen when the age of the universe was less than a billion years old.
How is this possible? When the universe was less than a billion years old, then any two particles in it would have to be within two billion light years of each other, assuming the "big bang" model is true. It could not take light from one of them 13.6 billion years to reach the other.
Online petitions are actually worse than useless, because they give the illusion to people that they are actually doing something, when they might otherwise have written a letter.
That is just plain wrong.
The real purpose of a petition is educational. It is a form of advertising aimed get more people to participate in opposing the law.
The target audience that a petition has the maximum impact on is the group of people one or two rings out from the die hards in the inner circle that do write letters on real paper with real stamps. The newbies probably don't know a whole lot about the issue, but if they see a well written petition with a lot of signatures they may pay more attention next time.
A petition is a recruiting and PR tool. People who are die hards absolutely should sign petitions, not because they are deluded into thinking this affects Congress, but because they want to create a vehicle to spread the word. They should forward them to others and use them to expand public awareness. I did exactly this with the anti-DMCA petition and convinced several of my friends who had never heard of the DMCA to sign it. You seem to think this makes them less likely to write a letter to Congress, but it actually makes them more likely to do it.
Why is the U.S. such a big believer in precedents? No other country determines case outcomes based on precedent as strongly as the U.S. If we can get over our precedents maybe we wouldn't have to worry so much about the future. Things can be decided on a case-by-case basis.
First of all, other countries do rely on precedent, and in fact, many even rely on US precedent.
But the real answer is that because judges aren't elected, the Court room is not the place to battle back and forth on controversial issues. The Courts are supposed to provide stability and predictability in the law. The idea of judges essentially changing the law on a "case by case" basis is much more frightening. Legislatures "overturn" judicial decisions all the time by passing new legislation, and this is the prefered method in a democracy to change disliked precedent.
Finally, you shouldn't overstate the value of precedent. It only binds courts directly under the jurisdiction of the decision. The Federal Circuit courts often do disagree. In fact, the Supreme Court often won't take a case unless conflict exists in the Circuits. In fact, sometimes even this isn't enough. Currently, there is conflict among the circuits on the Constitutionality of race based university admissions policies, but the Supreme Court still denied to hear the latest case.
some kind of karma system for letters to congressmen
I think every time there is an EFF alert it should be a story here. If that alert calls for letters and (gasp) phone calls to Congress, then people should post their letters or a summary of their call. They should do this AFTER they have sent the letter or made the call.
We also need to make a "tech report card" and try to establish, using open source techniques, someone to monitor the decisions and responses of Congressmen. We need to translate our views into something we can articulate to voters and campaign contributors and volunteers. We need to do that in a partisan agnostic way, too.
It appears to me that the US government didn't have the capability to react to unencrypted, even overt acts by these terrorists. After all, they entered the country using their real names (mostly), rented apartments, used credit cards, made airline reservations, and took flight lessons. In some cases they did all this while they were on a "watch list". I suspect that the encryption reaction is a knee-jerk diversion to focus attention away from truly pathetic intelligence processing.
I've seen reports that they sent email unencrypted, and used information hiding, but I haven't seen anything besides speculation that they actually used encryption.
Have you seen any specific evidence that indicates these terrorists actually did use PGP (or any other encryption, for that matter)?
Here are the talking points against this abominations:
1. It's a total waste of time unless you have a plan to force the terrorists to use weak encryption.
2. Centralized key escrow creates a single point of failure for our national cybersecurity infrastructure.
3. Strong crypto can be defeated and has been defeated in the real world. You use existing wiretap laws to implement keyboard sniffers and the like to grab cleartext.
4. You have to be prepared to use keyboard sniffers ANYWAY, because the terrorists aren't going to comply with your law.
5. The bill violates the free speech rights of ordinary citizens and businesses. Conversion from already deployed strong crypto to crippled crypto is an effort comparable to Y2K.
6. Stop using this as an excuse for the intelligence failure. It's bogus. These terrorists made credit card purchases, airline reservations, flight school training, apartment leases using real names sometimes even on our "watch list".
7. Are we really willing to punish otherwise law abiding citizens who fail to register their crypto key? Who needs terrorists when the governement will destroy your rights for you?
8. Security cannot be achieved by weakening security. What is security if not the protection of citizen's rights?
9. The law cannot be enforced, and it's violation isn't even detectable. If you find an encrypted message, how will you know it wasn't made before the ban?
Er, how does Joe User ensure that his message doesn't leave the US while it's in transit, or that it isn't intercepted while it's bouncing off of satellites or rattling around a Canadian mail server?
Well, this isn't in his control, so it isn't his responsibility. If the final destination is outside, escrow is required, if not, then not.
Coming to the US on a visa is a priviledge not a right. With suitable restrictions, perhaps a narrow restriction on strong crypto would fly.
What would be wrong with a narrow law that said that if you are in the US on a visa that you cannot send encrypted messages across US borders without key escrow.
I'm very worried that a hard line stance on this will fail. A narrowed alternative may be something we have to propose.
In the recent mafia case, PGP was defeated by using keyboard capture methods. I believe the people who answered this poll probably include this kind of "back door" in their yes response. I do. We need to emphasize these methods instead of the futile idea of having everybody change to new weak forms of crypto.
Key escrow is studid, but we need an alternative. There is no right to secretly plot to blow up buildings. The governement should gather probable cause and get wiretapping permission with a court order to target an individual. I think Ashcroft's idea to target people instead of devices makes sense, but I don't want weaker standards of judicial oversight.
Encryption absolutely can be defeated if, by physical or cyber processes, keyboard capture and screen capture are used. Since the bad guys aren't going to change their crypto, we have to do this anyway. It's been proven effective and it should be the focus of national efforts to defeat encryption.
What the hell do you think you are securing with "security" if not freedom?
What amount of freedom are you willing to give up to feel safe?
None!!! The key is simply to be more diligent in areas that are outside of the scope of individual rights.
If you supply probable cause, expect to be targeted for monitoring. That's hardly new. We just need to monitor those people harder and with more fluidity. If you travel through an airport, expect have no privacy. Old hat, there. Just expect more technology and human attention to be pointed in your direction. If you want to come to the US on a visa, expect to have a background search. It's always been considered a priviledge for non-citizens to come, so I don't see anything wrong with greater diligence there. If you are from a nation that harbors or even contains known terrorists, expect the priviledge of entry to come at a high price.
These things do not infringe freedom, they simply represent greater scrutiny in areas where it was already reasonable to scruitinze.
The encryption key escrow stuff is NOT in this category. Stripping people who have given no probable cause of their privacy not only violates their freedom, but it harms the interests of security.
I do believe that you are basically asserting that there is no reasoning with 'those people.' I agree. No reasoning with blacks, Jews, gays, feminists, or Muslims. They don't understand anything but a show of force, right? They're bent on exterminating our way of life! We have to stop them at all costs!
I reason with blacks, Jews, gays, feminists, and Muslims on a daily basis. The US is a great nation precisely because diverse people can live side by side and cooperate for mutal benefit in a climate of respect.
These enemy here is more like the Nazis. They do not have a value system that is capable of peaceful coexistence.
Osama Bin Laden and his followers want to kill you. Please repeat this back so that I can verify that you understand it.
The unwillingness of you and people like you to recognize that the US has foreign policy, let alone that our foreign policy may not always be in the best interests of the American people... THAT sickens me.
What are you talking about!? Yes the US has a foreign policy. And yes, in any complex endeavor, sometimes the wrong move is made. We clearly should have been more agressive in trying to foster democracy in Islamic nations. But the major things that make the US hated by militant islam (support for Israel, defeating Iraq, relationships and presense in Saudi Arabi) are all good policy.
The major error in my view was that we failed to recognize the extent of the hatred against the US and the willingness to turn that into evil acts. When someone declares Holy War on you, you should aggressively defend yourself earlier rather than later.
>>which it appears DO includes many/most of the Afghani people will declare "holy war"
You are wrong here. The majority of Afghans do not support the Taliban. The Taliban controls Afghanistan primarily because the people had tired of war and the existing power/political structure had been destroyed by the war.
Well, I said "many/most" because I wasn't sure whether the Taliban actually held a majority of supporters (since half are oppressed women, probably not). They clearly have "many" supporters. The ones that don't should take up arms immediately and try to overthrow them, like the the Norther Alliance is doing.
You either support or you oppose. There is no middle ground. If you aquiesce for personal safety, then you support.
So, please, vomit somewhere else. If I'm a boo-hoo apologist because OUR FOREIGN POLICY IS %100 TO BLAME for all of this mess, so be it.
Bullshit. These freaks can't deal with differing opinions. That have free will and they have embraced an evil world-view. Trying to blame this on a few western radio broadcasts is exactly the kind of limp wristed boo-hoo apologizing that sickens me.
If I don't want to start, or fight in, World War III, and that makes me an apologist, so be it.
It's not up to you. Jihad against your country and culture has already been declared and claimed 5500 American civilian victims.
You need to come to terms with the FACT that a goal of militant Islam is to personally kill you because you are an infidel. Maybe you don't want to fight, but that won't stop you from participating in the violence.
If I don't want to kill several thousand Muslim people just 'cuz their Muslims (or Sikhs), and that makes me an apologist, so be it.
What the hell are you talking about!? Nobody is proposing killing "several thousand" people because just because they happen to be Muslim.
I think I specifically said: (1) Militant Islam does not represent all of Islam . In fact, embracing and empowering the moderate Islamic majority is the key to success here. The true Islam is a religion of peace, which explains why moderate muslims can peacefully coexist with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs in the US.
By the way "several thousand" is off by orders of magnitude as to what it will take.
And Sikhs such as in India are actively helping the US because they lost several hundred people in the WTC. India has offered ground troop staging support. They'd probably join an invasion force if Pakistan didn't condition their help on this not happening.
I suppose this is a mock attempt to argue against airport security:
I'm a former terrorist. Reformed by...
Why should I accept the judgment of a computer when God promises more mercy?
I don't give a crap if you accept it. I'm not proposing airport biometric identification with your interest or opinion in mind. As a former terrorist, you voluntarily abandonded your own rights.
As a former terrorist, I urge you all to consider what the meaning of forgiveness is.
Forgiveness means that I leave it to God to judge your soul after you leave this earth.
People should forgive people who repent on earth only when you accept responsibility and atonement for your past acts and are prepared to make reparations.
If you want to qualify for my forgiveness, then stay the hell out of airports.
Re:Tracking encrypted communications
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 2
You don't have to break the crypto to get information.
Amen. If A is talking to B and A is a known terrorist, then all we have to do is get a wire tapping permit, and essentially bug A's communications. He has to type into a keyboard to write, and the video has to go to the graphics card to be read on the screen. This allows us to identify if B is a terrorist, in which case we target him for the same level of spying.
I'm willing to guess these people aren't the best systems administrators, so it may even be possible to do some of these things remotely without special devices.
The one proposal that I can't think of anything wrong with is Ashcroft's proposal to change wire-tap laws to focus on individuals instead of wires. The standard of proof and scope of spying should be kept the same, but if you have reason to think the guy is a bad guy, why not?
Bin Laden is primarely upset that we dared set foot on Saudi Arabia, "Holy Land". Ironically as the poster said, it was to his own countries benefit, if not his own fanatical leanings.
Look, people need to deal with the fact that the radical flavor of militant islamic fundamentalism does not accept peaceful coexistence with others. Their goal is exactly the same as Hitler's: they want cultural, ethnic, and religious purity even if it requires slaughter of innocent civilians to achieve this.
It's important for us to realize several things: (1) Militant Islam does not represent all of Islam, (2) militant Islam hates and seeks to destroy anything non-muslim and (3) we must destroy Militant Islam before it destroys us.
I'm starting to get sick of all these boo-hoo apologists trying to say we need to focus only on the "cells" and crap like that. Bullshit. Bush was right: we cannot distinguish between the terrorists themselves and the countries that harbor them. If it requires land occupation of Afghanistan by 500,000 troops and 50,000 US causalties over four years to crush the culture of terrorism there, then we should do it. I hope it doesn't take 50,000 US casualties in a biological attack on Houston or Los Angeles or Chicago for us to realize that these people want to eradicate us.
Militant Islamic people cheered the WTC bombins in the streets. Killing a few terrorists will not do anything because the engine that creates them is pumping. When Japan bombed pearl harbor, we didn't try to arrest the pilots. We beat the culture that produced them into total submission.
In the Iraq war, I could honestly say that my grievance wasn't with the Iraqi people. Videos of them surrendering to journalists proves this. One can be muslim and not believe that "the infidels must die", but the followers of militant islam, which it appears DO includes many/most of the Afghani people will declare "holy war" on us if we use military force to bust through their shield for terrorism. I think we should give it to them.
Slashdot Mirror
* Destroy Taliban military forces near Kabul from the air (hard, they're dug in)
* Assist Northern Alliance to capture Kabul (they're stuck about 30km away)
* Declare victory.
Declare victory ?! You've got to be kidding.
I think from there it would go something like this from there:
Bin Laden may get killed in one of the Special Ops raids or he might flee the country. In any event, he'll be the CEO of a much smaller operation at this point.
Even this is not the end, though. At this point, we'll turn to other terrorist groups and probably pick a fight with Iraq.
More to the point, I don't see what we expect to achieve with airstrikes. Bomb them back to the stone age? What's that going to take? Like five bombs? OK, now what? Drop smart bombs that can distinguish Taliban from Afghan civilians? Or send in troops armed with a handy "Who to shoot" guide?
I take the government officials and military commentators at face value. The air strikes are designed to eliminate air defenses, giving us unfettered control of the skies. They are not an end in themselves, but merely a means of securing an advantage in battles to come.
I suspect that the Special Operations war is the "real" war. The bombing campaign today is just a visible aspect of this. By all accounts, the Spec Ops forces have already been at work invisibly. I highly doubt that its just recon, either.
In order for the Spec Ops to strike at our real targets, they need to be able to deploy rapidly, which means repeling from helicopters and/or jumping out of low-flying planes. Those are both dangerous if your opponent has anti-aircraft capabilities, so you take those out first. It's really standard practice to do this kind of thing. We saw it on a much larger scale in Iraq, and we also saw it in Kosovo.
Cruise missles at the terrorist camps is probably also a routine strike. We know they aren't stupid enough to be there, but now they have to base their operations from their current bunkers and caves. There are only so many places they can operate from, and destroying these camps simply locks them down where they are. Our goal will be to make it so that they have an ever shrinking number of places to be without being detected. When winter comes, they'll be locked down tight and we'll simply go "cave to cave" with Special Ops attacks.
If the Al Qaeda leaders are dumb enough to intermingle with Afghani civilians, then our intelligence will discover that very quickly. Remember we have the Northern Alliance and the Pakistanis helping us with intelligence.
The US kill-to-loss ratio in Vietnam was something like 9 to 1. Assuming that this ratio maintains itself, it would cost the US 5000 military causualties to kill all 45000 Taliban troups.
If anything, we will do much better than we did in Vietnam or the Soviets did in Afghanistan because
The war on terrorism is going to be the same way. We'll wipe bin Laden's organization out. But for every terrorist we kill, ten will rise to take their place.
The problem with the 'escalating cycle of violence' argument is that it's a pyramid scheme. They don't have infinite supplies of terrorists in waiting. All that we have to do is kill them faster than they recruit.
Oh, for gods' sakes. This is exactly the kind of 'rhetoric ' that attracts such hatred towards you Americans - you seem to have this unerring feeling that your position is absolutely correct.
That's correct. The murder of 6000 civilians is absolutely evil, and military action to punish and prevent such action is absolutely correct. This is not an 'unerring feeling', but an unerring fact. As for hatred, if hatred comes from evil people as the result for doing good, then it is good to be hated.
The United States has looked for no solution whatsoe'er - demands on a non-negotiable billet do not come close to being an action of looking for a solution.
We offered a simple deal: comply or be destroyed. Frankly, I thought that was overly generous.
As a friend of mine put it, they call it 'collateral damage' because 'dead innocent civilians' doesn't have the same ring to it - and collateral damage is going to occur, to both sides, to a great extent, because the 'mission' is not clearly definied, but only a misguided and vague effort supported by dodgy morals and an apparent committment to aid which doesn't really fit with the action being taken.
The only 'dodgy morals' here are your tolerance for terrorism. The mission here is very clear: destroy Al Qauda, topple the Taliban from power, and have fun mocking pacifists like you while doing it.
Collateral damage means unintended secondary damage involved with hitting the primary target. As we normally do, we will minimize collateral damage to Afghan civilians to the extent possible without sacrificing the mission. 'Dead innocent civilians' describes their primary, not secondary target, so I don't think we'll suffer any collateral damage.
They want to kill civilians, we don't. Frankly, by being a pacifist, YOU advocate the course of action that will maximize their effectiveness and maximize number of dead innocent civilians.
Personally, I find it very sad that a country full of such a great many people who could contribute so much to the world at large are generally not only conceited, arrogant and selfish, but somewhat stupid (by this I mean their actions as a mob, rather than individually, for at least most of them).
I'm glad it infuriates you, frankly. I just wish that Bin Laden's barbs were as ineffectual as yours.
The blob was found to be a cluster of stars 13.6 billion light years away, seen when the age of the universe was less than a billion years old.
How is this possible? When the universe was less than a billion years old, then any two particles in it would have to be within two billion light years of each other, assuming the "big bang" model is true. It could not take light from one of them 13.6 billion years to reach the other.
What's wrong with my reasoning?
Online petitions are actually worse than useless, because they give the illusion to people that they are actually doing something, when they might otherwise have written a letter.
That is just plain wrong.
The real purpose of a petition is educational. It is a form of advertising aimed get more people to participate in opposing the law.
The target audience that a petition has the maximum impact on is the group of people one or two rings out from the die hards in the inner circle that do write letters on real paper with real stamps. The newbies probably don't know a whole lot about the issue, but if they see a well written petition with a lot of signatures they may pay more attention next time.
A petition is a recruiting and PR tool. People who are die hards absolutely should sign petitions, not because they are deluded into thinking this affects Congress, but because they want to create a vehicle to spread the word. They should forward them to others and use them to expand public awareness. I did exactly this with the anti-DMCA petition and convinced several of my friends who had never heard of the DMCA to sign it. You seem to think this makes them less likely to write a letter to Congress, but it actually makes them more likely to do it.
http://www.petitiononline.com/nixdmca/petition.htm l is another.
Why is the U.S. such a big believer in precedents? No other country determines case outcomes based on precedent as strongly as the U.S. If we can get over our precedents maybe we wouldn't have to worry so much about the future. Things can be decided on a case-by-case basis.
First of all, other countries do rely on precedent, and in fact, many even rely on US precedent.
But the real answer is that because judges aren't elected, the Court room is not the place to battle back and forth on controversial issues. The Courts are supposed to provide stability and predictability in the law. The idea of judges essentially changing the law on a "case by case" basis is much more frightening. Legislatures "overturn" judicial decisions all the time by passing new legislation, and this is the prefered method in a democracy to change disliked precedent.
Finally, you shouldn't overstate the value of precedent. It only binds courts directly under the jurisdiction of the decision. The Federal Circuit courts often do disagree. In fact, the Supreme Court often won't take a case unless conflict exists in the Circuits. In fact, sometimes even this isn't enough. Currently, there is conflict among the circuits on the Constitutionality of race based university admissions policies, but the Supreme Court still denied to hear the latest case.
Sign the Petition to Abolish the DMCA.
Forward it on to people you know who oppose the DMCA.
some kind of karma system for letters to congressmen
I think every time there is an EFF alert it should be a story here. If that alert calls for letters and (gasp) phone calls to Congress, then people should post their letters or a summary of their call. They should do this AFTER they have sent the letter or made the call.
We also need to make a "tech report card" and try to establish, using open source techniques, someone to monitor the decisions and responses of Congressmen. We need to translate our views into something we can articulate to voters and campaign contributors and volunteers. We need to do that in a partisan agnostic way, too.
It appears to me that the US government didn't have the capability to react to unencrypted, even overt acts by these terrorists. After all, they entered the country using their real names (mostly), rented apartments, used credit cards, made airline reservations, and took flight lessons. In some cases they did all this while they were on a "watch list". I suspect that the encryption reaction is a knee-jerk diversion to focus attention away from truly pathetic intelligence processing.
I've seen reports that they sent email unencrypted, and used information hiding, but I haven't seen anything besides speculation that they actually used encryption.
Have you seen any specific evidence that indicates these terrorists actually did use PGP (or any other encryption, for that matter)?
I saw it last night and I HIGHLY recommend this!
This is truly courageous journalism. I hope the woman who made it wins the Pulitzer.
Here are the talking points against this abominations:
1. It's a total waste of time unless you have a plan to force the terrorists to use weak encryption.
2. Centralized key escrow creates a single point of failure for our national cybersecurity infrastructure.
3. Strong crypto can be defeated and has been defeated in the real world. You use existing wiretap laws to implement keyboard sniffers and the like to grab cleartext.
4. You have to be prepared to use keyboard sniffers ANYWAY, because the terrorists aren't going to comply with your law.
5. The bill violates the free speech rights of ordinary citizens and businesses. Conversion from already deployed strong crypto to crippled crypto is an effort comparable to Y2K.
6. Stop using this as an excuse for the intelligence failure. It's bogus. These terrorists made credit card purchases, airline reservations, flight school training, apartment leases using real names sometimes even on our "watch list".
7. Are we really willing to punish otherwise law abiding citizens who fail to register their crypto key? Who needs terrorists when the governement will destroy your rights for you?
8. Security cannot be achieved by weakening security. What is security if not the protection of citizen's rights?
9. The law cannot be enforced, and it's violation isn't even detectable. If you find an encrypted message, how will you know it wasn't made before the ban?
Er, how does Joe User ensure that his message doesn't leave the US while it's in transit, or that it isn't intercepted while it's bouncing off of satellites or rattling around a Canadian mail server?
Well, this isn't in his control, so it isn't his responsibility. If the final destination is outside, escrow is required, if not, then not.
It seems that many of the terrorists didn't even encrypt their messages according to this article.
Coming to the US on a visa is a priviledge not a right. With suitable restrictions, perhaps a narrow restriction on strong crypto would fly.
What would be wrong with a narrow law that said that if you are in the US on a visa that you cannot send encrypted messages across US borders without key escrow.
I'm very worried that a hard line stance on this will fail. A narrowed alternative may be something we have to propose.
In the recent mafia case, PGP was defeated by using keyboard capture methods. I believe the people who answered this poll probably include this kind of "back door" in their yes response. I do. We need to emphasize these methods instead of the futile idea of having everybody change to new weak forms of crypto.
Key escrow is studid, but we need an alternative. There is no right to secretly plot to blow up buildings. The governement should gather probable cause and get wiretapping permission with a court order to target an individual. I think Ashcroft's idea to target people instead of devices makes sense, but I don't want weaker standards of judicial oversight.
Encryption absolutely can be defeated if, by physical or cyber processes, keyboard capture and screen capture are used. Since the bad guys aren't going to change their crypto, we have to do this anyway. It's been proven effective and it should be the focus of national efforts to defeat encryption.
Security and freedom are inversely related.
What the hell do you think you are securing with "security" if not freedom?
What amount of freedom are you willing to give up to feel safe?
None!!! The key is simply to be more diligent in areas that are outside of the scope of individual rights.
If you supply probable cause, expect to be targeted for monitoring. That's hardly new. We just need to monitor those people harder and with more fluidity. If you travel through an airport, expect have no privacy. Old hat, there. Just expect more technology and human attention to be pointed in your direction. If you want to come to the US on a visa, expect to have a background search. It's always been considered a priviledge for non-citizens to come, so I don't see anything wrong with greater diligence there. If you are from a nation that harbors or even contains known terrorists, expect the priviledge of entry to come at a high price.
These things do not infringe freedom, they simply represent greater scrutiny in areas where it was already reasonable to scruitinze.
The encryption key escrow stuff is NOT in this category. Stripping people who have given no probable cause of their privacy not only violates their freedom, but it harms the interests of security.
I do believe that you are basically asserting that there is no reasoning with 'those people.' I agree. No reasoning with blacks, Jews, gays, feminists, or Muslims. They don't understand anything but a show of force, right? They're bent on exterminating our way of life! We have to stop them at all costs!
I reason with blacks, Jews, gays, feminists, and Muslims on a daily basis. The US is a great nation precisely because diverse people can live side by side and cooperate for mutal benefit in a climate of respect.
These enemy here is more like the Nazis. They do not have a value system that is capable of peaceful coexistence.
Osama Bin Laden and his followers want to kill you. Please repeat this back so that I can verify that you understand it.
The unwillingness of you and people like you to recognize that the US has foreign policy, let alone that our foreign policy may not always be in the best interests of the American people... THAT sickens me.
What are you talking about!? Yes the US has a foreign policy. And yes, in any complex endeavor, sometimes the wrong move is made. We clearly should have been more agressive in trying to foster democracy in Islamic nations. But the major things that make the US hated by militant islam (support for Israel, defeating Iraq, relationships and presense in Saudi Arabi) are all good policy.
The major error in my view was that we failed to recognize the extent of the hatred against the US and the willingness to turn that into evil acts. When someone declares Holy War on you, you should aggressively defend yourself earlier rather than later.
>>which it appears DO includes many/most of the Afghani people will declare "holy war"
You are wrong here. The majority of Afghans do not support the Taliban. The Taliban controls Afghanistan primarily because the people had tired of war and the existing power/political structure had been destroyed by the war.
Well, I said "many/most" because I wasn't sure whether the Taliban actually held a majority of supporters (since half are oppressed women, probably not). They clearly have "many" supporters. The ones that don't should take up arms immediately and try to overthrow them, like the the Norther Alliance is doing.
You either support or you oppose. There is no middle ground. If you aquiesce for personal safety, then you support.
So, please, vomit somewhere else. If I'm a boo-hoo apologist because OUR FOREIGN POLICY IS %100 TO BLAME for all of this mess, so be it.
Bullshit. These freaks can't deal with differing opinions. That have free will and they have embraced an evil world-view. Trying to blame this on a few western radio broadcasts is exactly the kind of limp wristed boo-hoo apologizing that sickens me.
If I don't want to start, or fight in, World War III, and that makes me an apologist, so be it.
It's not up to you. Jihad against your country and culture has already been declared and claimed 5500 American civilian victims.
You need to come to terms with the FACT that a goal of militant Islam is to personally kill you because you are an infidel. Maybe you don't want to fight, but that won't stop you from participating in the violence.
If I don't want to kill several thousand Muslim people just 'cuz their Muslims (or Sikhs), and that makes me an apologist, so be it.
What the hell are you talking about!? Nobody is proposing killing "several thousand" people because just because they happen to be Muslim.
I think I specifically said: (1) Militant Islam does not represent all of Islam . In fact, embracing and empowering the moderate Islamic majority is the key to success here. The true Islam is a religion of peace, which explains why moderate muslims can peacefully coexist with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs in the US.
By the way "several thousand" is off by orders of magnitude as to what it will take.
And Sikhs such as in India are actively helping the US because they lost several hundred people in the WTC. India has offered ground troop staging support. They'd probably join an invasion force if Pakistan didn't condition their help on this not happening.
I suppose this is a mock attempt to argue against airport security: ...
I'm a former terrorist. Reformed by
Why should I accept the judgment of a computer when God promises more mercy?
I don't give a crap if you accept it. I'm not proposing airport biometric identification with your interest or opinion in mind. As a former terrorist, you voluntarily abandonded your own rights.
As a former terrorist, I urge you all to consider what the meaning of forgiveness is.
Forgiveness means that I leave it to God to judge your soul after you leave this earth.
People should forgive people who repent on earth only when you accept responsibility and atonement for your past acts and are prepared to make reparations.
If you want to qualify for my forgiveness, then stay the hell out of airports.
You don't have to break the crypto to get information.
Amen. If A is talking to B and A is a known terrorist, then all we have to do is get a wire tapping permit, and essentially bug A's communications. He has to type into a keyboard to write, and the video has to go to the graphics card to be read on the screen. This allows us to identify if B is a terrorist, in which case we target him for the same level of spying.
I'm willing to guess these people aren't the best systems administrators, so it may even be possible to do some of these things remotely without special devices.
The one proposal that I can't think of anything wrong with is Ashcroft's proposal to change wire-tap laws to focus on individuals instead of wires. The standard of proof and scope of spying should be kept the same, but if you have reason to think the guy is a bad guy, why not?
Bin Laden is primarely upset that we dared set foot on Saudi Arabia, "Holy Land". Ironically as the poster said, it was to his own countries benefit, if not his own fanatical leanings.
Look, people need to deal with the fact that the radical flavor of militant islamic fundamentalism does not accept peaceful coexistence with others. Their goal is exactly the same as Hitler's: they want cultural, ethnic, and religious purity even if it requires slaughter of innocent civilians to achieve this.
It's important for us to realize several things: (1) Militant Islam does not represent all of Islam, (2) militant Islam hates and seeks to destroy anything non-muslim and (3) we must destroy Militant Islam before it destroys us.
I'm starting to get sick of all these boo-hoo apologists trying to say we need to focus only on the "cells" and crap like that. Bullshit. Bush was right: we cannot distinguish between the terrorists themselves and the countries that harbor them. If it requires land occupation of Afghanistan by 500,000 troops and 50,000 US causalties over four years to crush the culture of terrorism there, then we should do it. I hope it doesn't take 50,000 US casualties in a biological attack on Houston or Los Angeles or Chicago for us to realize that these people want to eradicate us.
Militant Islamic people cheered the WTC bombins in the streets. Killing a few terrorists will not do anything because the engine that creates them is pumping. When Japan bombed pearl harbor, we didn't try to arrest the pilots. We beat the culture that produced them into total submission.
In the Iraq war, I could honestly say that my grievance wasn't with the Iraqi people. Videos of them surrendering to journalists proves this. One can be muslim and not believe that "the infidels must die", but the followers of militant islam, which it appears DO includes many/most of the Afghani people will declare "holy war" on us if we use military force to bust through their shield for terrorism. I think we should give it to them.