Frankly I'm not sure we should be letting them pass laws at all. They've already proven they can't be trusted with such power. I think it's about time they were punished by only allowing them to repeal laws. After a decade maybe we can give them another chance to not act like a bunch of corrupt mentally retarded fascist fucks. If they abuse their law passing privileges again we make them only repeal laws for 2 decades the next time. If they abuse them again then their job titles will be permanently changed from law passers to law repealers.
I think we have way too many laws. Enough laws to make each and every one of us criminals. That is why I don't want the criminalization of the web. But I also recognize the FBI exists for a reason, why not direct them against terrorism?
But the casualties in each event were growing. From hundreds in bombings at one time to 911 which was around 3000 people.Are you going to wait for a football stadium to blow up during the superbowl?
And the casualties will continue to grow because the technology keeps making it easier.
No, you are underinformed. They create the plots. The FBI has not foiled a single terrorist plot that would have existed without the FBI.
No, you are underinformed. They create the plots. The FBI has not foiled a single terrorist plot that would have existed without the FBI.
I understand your concern but that's not really true. The FBI does foil some plots. It's just sometimes they rely on complete scumbag informants who will basically do anything and say anything to get a crime committed. If you let informants practically trick people into it then sure it can happen. The informants could lie and say it's legal and then when they do it they find out that it wasn't.
Do you realize that every single domestic terror plot foiled by the FBI was created by the FBI?
I don't think "created" is accurate. The plots the foil are because they intervene in time to stop an attack. Sometimes they don't act in time and people are killed. Is that what you would prefer?
Unless I'm on the jury I cannot decide one way or another. I'm not against using these sorts of sting tactics provided the FBI isn't coercing suspects into saying and doing stuff. It all depends on how it is handled.
In many cases it's apparent that the FBI while they might have put on a ruse, the individuals involved did have the intent even if they didn't have the tools and plans. In this case they are still a threat and should be arrested because they went along with the plan without backing out, questioning it, basically they put the bombs on the bridge so they are a terrorist conspiracy now.
The FBI does the right thing when it stops terrorism at the conspiracy level. That is the best time to stop it. I do understand the FBI could brainwash and coerce individuals who have nothing to do with terrorism into saying stuff or doing stuff against their will. This is why there should be a jury and a review process and why an informants word should be taken with a grain of salt. We should let the jury decide but we should also consider that the FBI can set up a scenario on their own to frame someone and consider that too.
End result is I think most terrorist suspects arrested in these sorts of conspiracy stings are actual terrorists. I think in some instances they aren't actual terrorists such as that instance where the muslim informant was going to mosques trying to radicalize them into violence and they reported the informant to the FBI. That situation was very diferent.
Also the situation with Sabu and LulzSec, I don't really know what happened in that situation. That could have been a situation where the snitch actually framed some people because looking at some of what was said about Sabu he went to people who were staying out of involvement and practically begged and guilt tripped them into getting involved specifically so he could entrap them. Sabu is a scumbag if that is the truth and no I don't think informants should try to trick or coerce people into committing crimes for them with "you owe me a favor" type guilt trips or making up lies about their sick family member needing surgery, but you know sometimes this happens and the jury ought to know how the informant convinced the suspect into committing the crime.
Only the bridge issue has any chance of being defeated by these means, and only because it's hard to build explosives capable of knocking out a bridge without buying detectable items.
The other two are close to impossible to stop.
Personally, I'd rather live with the risk than oppress everyone in a vain effort to eliminate that risk.
The problem is the increased centralization and reliance on technology will result in a maximization of casualties. It's not so much that you just have to worry about bridges blowing up, you have to worry about biological weapons such as weaponized flu, you have to worry about radiation, you have to worry about chemicals, from both domestic and foreign sources. So no it's not impossible to minimize casualties even if its impossible to stop all acts.
As far as I'm concerned we should catch as many terrorists as we can. All of our technological resources should be directed toward this effort. Maybe protect the environment also, as this is a priority.
Yes you have a right to fear the government, but you should fear the most immediate threat. The are enough militias, hate groups, religious groups, and nuts in this country to require a focus on preventing violence. If we don't make it a priority the result is inevitable civil war between groups with massive casualties.
I'm not afraid of terrorists. The chances of me being hurt by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to any other cause of death. The right thing to do is ignore them.
So if a terrorist poisons the food and or water supply what then? What if a league of snipers shoot random people? Or if you're driving over the bridge and it just explodes?
I can't tell if you are serious or just trolling. You are positing extremely low probability events that even in the worst case would have relatively low death tolls compared to, say, car accidents. No one is seriously suggesting that a determined terrorist can't kill people, just that it is so rare that someone dies that way that it is not worth worrying about on a large scale.
That depends on how successful the attack is. Also it depends on who is targeted. Just because you assume it wont be you, it doesn't mean it wont be someone you know.
You also aren't considering the technological and cultural trends which favor lone wolf terrorism.
You can "what if" all day long if you like. That doesn't change the fact that the actual threat of terrorism is infinitesimal.
Besides, how exactly is giving a maladjusted loner some fake C4 going to protect against that?
That's because you don't know the vulnerabilities. Just about everything in our infrastructure is vulnerable and because everything is so centralized maximum damage and maximum casualties.
Terrorism might not be something that you worry about but I know it can reach me.
How do you catch the next abortion clinic bombing terrorist if you don't do a sting? If you have a better way of doing stings then why not suggest some better ways? But the fact is we cannot as a society allow extremist domestic terrorism and that includes the KKK, the Nazi's, the Militias, anyone who wants to be violent.
Let's not be coy, by the word 'sting' you mean 'solicitation' or 'entrapment'. This is not how you investigate, this is how you manufacture criminal behavior.
You wanted a suggestion, how about police investigations. In other words, FBI detectives should be detecting...
Yes, crime detection is harder than just creating a criminal act, but it is actually locating and stopping a criminal, rather than duping some nut into it. Sting... what a cute colloquialism for fraud.
The only way to catch a terrorist is by being a terrorist. You can't catch a terrorist if you're not a terrorist and you can't get intelligence from terrorist organizations if you're not a terrorist.The FBI uses false flag operations, they become Al Qaeda and they contact the new recruits and train them in a mock terrorist training camp and bring them up to the point of launching an attack and then arrest.
I understand your concerns, this activity should be overseen and somehow regulated by someone other than the FBI itself or perhaps the jury can decide if its entrapment or not. The point is in some situations there is no other way.
How do you catch a spy? You use a false flag operation. The FBI pretends to be the foreign spy agency and recruits activists to spy for Iran. The activists agree and think they are spying for Iran when actually they are working for the FBI. When they aren't useful to the FBI anymore the FBI can just arrest them.
You are still under the delusion that all this Secret Police infrastructure is about stopping terrorism? You poor, gullible person, I'm sorry for you. The threat of terrorism is just the excuse used to justify building an enormous security apparatus, not the real reason. The people building out the giant security control machine don't care about protecting you from terrorists, they care about protecting themselves (the elite) from you (the unwashed masses).
Who did you think I meant when I said "terrorists"?
The fact is I want to restrict the terrorist list to only include certain threats while others like the types you mention want to include everyone on the terrorist list by calling it "crime" and "illegal activities".
This isn't just about them not reading laws they vote on -- they get shamed by the press and the public and during election campaigning for being "soft" on terrorism if they so much as question whether the PATRIOT act goes too far.
And so the solution is to be hard and stupid rather than be smart but look soft? Those same people are the type of people who voted for Bush.
I'm not afraid of terrorists. The chances of me being hurt by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to any other cause of death. The right thing to do is ignore them.
So if a terrorist poisons the food and or water supply what then? What if a league of snipers shoot random people? Or if you're driving over the bridge and it just explodes?
Even if they did make the wording very narrow all it takes is a law later down the line that redefines drug trafficking as terrorism. I can see it being debated already: Insane Politician: "We need to use our SpyFest 3000 to crack down on drugs. Let's pass this law that extends it to cover drug traffickers." Reasonable Politician: "Uhm, no. SpyFest 3000 was an overreach when there was real, immediate, huge potential harm out there. Drug traffickers are better stopped by actual human intelligence instead of backdoor spying on everyone." IP: "Ah, I see. You're soft on drugs and terrorism because you're opposing the STOP Terrorism On Planes bill." RP: "What the fuck? I don't see how your bill, which gives the police free access to phone tap any citizen living within 100 miles of the US border, has anything to do with planes!" IP: "That's because you hate America. We need the STOP bill passed now to protect us from dangerous terrorism." Rest of Congress: "Agreed." President: "Only if I can indefinitely detain suspects arrested on STOP charges." Congress: "I guess." President: "Signed."
Yes which is why we shouldn't let them pass laws without reading them and approving of them.
But if someone is trying to talk you into bombing innocent people and you don't have a conscience about that or any reservations about loss of life then you're still a threat to society
I thought we were talking about the FBI, not republicans.
In all seriousness though, if you are trying to talk an innocent person into bombing people and you don't have a conscience about that, then you're a threat to society.
You still haven't answered the question. How do you catch a terrorist without pretending to be one?
lol, ok, lets set up this huge system of spying to fight the terrorists......and lets say there aren't many terrorist out there so there's not much to do with the system......what does any self serving bureaucracy do?..
Labels things that were not considered terrorism as terrorism. Use encryption? Terrorist!, Don't pay your child support? Terrorist!. Visit a protest? Terrorist! Child porn is Terrorism! Drug users are Terrorists! The list never ends.
That is why the language has to be very specific. The language should identify exactly what terrorism is or isn't and what this surveillance can be used for. Otherwise I'm not going to support it. This trend of greatly trying to expand police powers and using extremely vague language in bills like "illegal activities" and "crime" is horrible for communities as anyone can be a criminal but most people aren't ever a terrorist.
When it comes to fighting terrorism I'm for the FBI.
Do you realize that every single domestic terror plot foiled by the FBI was created by the FBI?
I'm aware. But if someone is trying to talk you into bombing innocent people and you don't have a conscience about that or any reservations about loss of life then you're still a threat to society. I do understand that the FBI could trick people into saying stuff and every case is different, but I also recognize that there are real terrorists out there and this is the only way to catch them.
How do you catch the next abortion clinic bombing terrorist if you don't do a sting? If you have a better way of doing stings then why not suggest some better ways? But the fact is we cannot as a society allow extremist domestic terrorism and that includes the KKK, the Nazi's, the Militias, anyone who wants to be violent.
If the FBI was actually able to hire the best and the brightest, then there would be no no need for a "wiretap-friendly" software. Social networking sites are the easiest. VoIP, IM, and E-mail is just a matter of Wireshark and the proper filters applied.
Maybe they need to put up some job advertisements on/.
They want to save money. It's not a matter of them being able to hire the best and brightest, they want to do it for free.
Other than gathering data on connection times and destinations, frequencies, and statistical correlation techniques, I'd long assumed traditional wiretap is dead.
Am I incorrect?
If terrorists talk over Skype and it's important enough there are ways to decrypt or decode the conversations. At this point in time it;s expensive to do and the FBI wants to empower itself so it can do surveillance on the massive scale.
But there hasn't been a serious terrorist attack since 9/11. It's just not worth it to most of us to do this because there just aren't that many terrorists. It's the unintended consequences that people are concerned about, letting law enforcement use drones is bad enough and now they want us to strip naked to get on airplanes and check our harddrives too? Where does it end?
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
Do not accept any bill which contains overly broad or vague language. Be watchful of FBI objectives which claim to focus on "illegal activities" and "crime". Also be careful of emotional keywords like "kiddie porn" and "pedophiles".
When it comes to fighting terrorism I'm for the FBI. When it comes to fighting pedophiles I'm for the FBI. When it comes to fighting "illegal activities" and "crime" I'm not for the FBI because that isn't specific enough to give them broad powers. Since everyone is a criminal, if we empower them to fight "illegal activities" we are giving them the power to abuse entire communities in the name of combating "illegal activities" and "crime". The purpose of the FBI should be to protect communities, and we universally agree that terrorists and pedophiles are the bad guys regardless of our political stance on other issues.
We need bills which remove the political issues such as piracy, "illegal activities" and crime and focus more on terrorism and violence. If someone is a serial killer the FBI should be able to do a wiretap, but don't want to see the day when the FBI sees everything we do online and starts arresting people on piracy and other trivial offenses. Yes some people are going to say these offenses are economic crimes, but these offenses aren't good enough to put backdoors in every website.
They always say they need this or that then want to pass the bill to the industry and consumer.
Second why do they need this? If it's to fight terrorism then I'm all for it but if it's to fight "drugs" and "crime" then I'm totally against it.
The FBI bill should be completely restricted to terrorism investigations only and not "crime" or "law enforcement" or "drugs", and no they shouldn't be allowed to use the "child porn" language to sneak "crime" and "drugs" in. The main reason the internet doesn't trust the FBI and law enforcement is because while they talk about wanting to use their new powers to fight terrorists and pedophiles when we look at the bill we always find copyright infringement, piracy, drugs, and "crime" in there that we politically don't want in there.
I wonder if he assumed that any encryption software would be jiggered by the US or Israelis and somehow compromise his security more.
Encryption that you didn't write on a computer you didn't design probably will be worthless to you unless you know enough to read the code it's written in, compile it yourself and understand the hardware design and all that. There is no way Bin Laden or anyone other than a specialist would know that.
Encryption prevents viewing the data only for the amount of time it takes to torture the passphrase out of you. Since you need the key to view your encrypted data, it's almost assured that the key will be near the data in some form, minimally protected. Encryption therefore provides little (if any) security in that scenario. In fact, it could cause more harm than good; It may lull you into a sense of false security.
You're exactly right. Encryption offers in many cases less than no security. For instance side channel attacks can often decrypt content. It's very unlikely that the majority who use encryption even know what a side channel attack is or how to defend against it. Then you have torture as you mention, where using encryption only gives them the excuse to torture.
People over estimate encryption. Just because you encrypt your files it doesn't mean you'd do so in the correct way. There are many side channel attacks.
It revictimizes that person having such a horrible perverted picture of them out there - they are hurt everytime it is reproduced..
Here is for a less emotionally charged example: If one's SSN got on the Internet, each time one more person got a hold of it it (potentally) would result in further harm.
It revictimizes that person having such a horrible perverted picture of them out there - they are hurt everytime it is reproduced..
Here is for a less emotionally charged example: If one's SSN got on the Internet, each time one more person got a hold of it it (potentally) would result in further harm.
That may be the case and perhaps distribution should be a crime but distribution is not the same as possession.
Also I don't think a picture is the same as a SSN. You have a slight argument but only in the case of someone putting those pictures on a website or on a P2P service and distributing them. You also have the 4chan problem where people upload anything to and people who just stumble upon it will pick it up.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly I'm not sure we should be letting them pass laws at all. They've already proven they can't be trusted with such power. I think it's about time they were punished by only allowing them to repeal laws. After a decade maybe we can give them another chance to not act like a bunch of corrupt mentally retarded fascist fucks. If they abuse their law passing privileges again we make them only repeal laws for 2 decades the next time. If they abuse them again then their job titles will be permanently changed from law passers to law repealers.
I think we have way too many laws. Enough laws to make each and every one of us criminals. That is why I don't want the criminalization of the web. But I also recognize the FBI exists for a reason, why not direct them against terrorism?
But the casualties in each event were growing. From hundreds in bombings at one time to 911 which was around 3000 people.Are you going to wait for a football stadium to blow up during the superbowl?
And the casualties will continue to grow because the technology keeps making it easier.
No, you are underinformed. They create the plots. The FBI has not foiled a single terrorist plot that would have existed without the FBI.
No, you are underinformed. They create the plots. The FBI has not foiled a single terrorist plot that would have existed without the FBI.
I understand your concern but that's not really true. The FBI does foil some plots. It's just sometimes they rely on complete scumbag informants who will basically do anything and say anything to get a crime committed. If you let informants practically trick people into it then sure it can happen. The informants could lie and say it's legal and then when they do it they find out that it wasn't.
Do you realize that every single domestic terror plot foiled by the FBI was created by the FBI?
I don't think "created" is accurate. The plots the foil are because they intervene in time to stop an attack. Sometimes they don't act in time and people are killed. Is that what you would prefer?
Unless I'm on the jury I cannot decide one way or another. I'm not against using these sorts of sting tactics provided the FBI isn't coercing suspects into saying and doing stuff. It all depends on how it is handled.
In many cases it's apparent that the FBI while they might have put on a ruse, the individuals involved did have the intent even if they didn't have the tools and plans. In this case they are still a threat and should be arrested because they went along with the plan without backing out, questioning it, basically they put the bombs on the bridge so they are a terrorist conspiracy now.
The FBI does the right thing when it stops terrorism at the conspiracy level. That is the best time to stop it. I do understand the FBI could brainwash and coerce individuals who have nothing to do with terrorism into saying stuff or doing stuff against their will. This is why there should be a jury and a review process and why an informants word should be taken with a grain of salt. We should let the jury decide but we should also consider that the FBI can set up a scenario on their own to frame someone and consider that too.
End result is I think most terrorist suspects arrested in these sorts of conspiracy stings are actual terrorists. I think in some instances they aren't actual terrorists such as that instance where the muslim informant was going to mosques trying to radicalize them into violence and they reported the informant to the FBI. That situation was very diferent.
Also the situation with Sabu and LulzSec, I don't really know what happened in that situation. That could have been a situation where the snitch actually framed some people because looking at some of what was said about Sabu he went to people who were staying out of involvement and practically begged and guilt tripped them into getting involved specifically so he could entrap them. Sabu is a scumbag if that is the truth and no I don't think informants should try to trick or coerce people into committing crimes for them with "you owe me a favor" type guilt trips or making up lies about their sick family member needing surgery, but you know sometimes this happens and the jury ought to know how the informant convinced the suspect into committing the crime.
Only the bridge issue has any chance of being defeated by these means, and only because it's hard to build explosives capable of knocking out a bridge without buying detectable items.
The other two are close to impossible to stop.
Personally, I'd rather live with the risk than oppress everyone in a vain effort to eliminate that risk.
The problem is the increased centralization and reliance on technology will result in a maximization of casualties. It's not so much that you just have to worry about bridges blowing up, you have to worry about biological weapons such as weaponized flu, you have to worry about radiation, you have to worry about chemicals, from both domestic and foreign sources. So no it's not impossible to minimize casualties even if its impossible to stop all acts.
As far as I'm concerned we should catch as many terrorists as we can. All of our technological resources should be directed toward this effort. Maybe protect the environment also, as this is a priority.
Yes you have a right to fear the government, but you should fear the most immediate threat. The are enough militias, hate groups, religious groups, and nuts in this country to require a focus on preventing violence. If we don't make it a priority the result is inevitable civil war between groups with massive casualties.
I'm not afraid of terrorists. The chances of me being hurt by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to any other cause of death. The right thing to do is ignore them.
So if a terrorist poisons the food and or water supply what then? What if a league of snipers shoot random people? Or if you're driving over the bridge and it just explodes?
I can't tell if you are serious or just trolling. You are positing extremely low probability events that even in the worst case would have relatively low death tolls compared to, say, car accidents. No one is seriously suggesting that a determined terrorist can't kill people, just that it is so rare that someone dies that way that it is not worth worrying about on a large scale.
That depends on how successful the attack is. Also it depends on who is targeted. Just because you assume it wont be you, it doesn't mean it wont be someone you know.
You also aren't considering the technological and cultural trends which favor lone wolf terrorism.
You can "what if" all day long if you like. That doesn't change the fact that the actual threat of terrorism is infinitesimal.
Besides, how exactly is giving a maladjusted loner some fake C4 going to protect against that?
That's because you don't know the vulnerabilities. Just about everything in our infrastructure is vulnerable and because everything is so centralized maximum damage and maximum casualties.
Terrorism might not be something that you worry about but I know it can reach me.
How do you catch the next abortion clinic bombing terrorist if you don't do a sting? If you have a better way of doing stings then why not suggest some better ways? But the fact is we cannot as a society allow extremist domestic terrorism and that includes the KKK, the Nazi's, the Militias, anyone who wants to be violent.
Let's not be coy, by the word 'sting' you mean 'solicitation' or 'entrapment'. This is not how you investigate, this is how you manufacture criminal behavior.
You wanted a suggestion, how about police investigations. In other words, FBI detectives should be detecting...
Yes, crime detection is harder than just creating a criminal act, but it is actually locating and stopping a criminal, rather than duping some nut into it. Sting... what a cute colloquialism for fraud.
The only way to catch a terrorist is by being a terrorist. You can't catch a terrorist if you're not a terrorist and you can't get intelligence from terrorist organizations if you're not a terrorist.The FBI uses false flag operations, they become Al Qaeda and they contact the new recruits and train them in a mock terrorist training camp and bring them up to the point of launching an attack and then arrest.
I understand your concerns, this activity should be overseen and somehow regulated by someone other than the FBI itself or perhaps the jury can decide if its entrapment or not. The point is in some situations there is no other way.
How do you catch a spy? You use a false flag operation. The FBI pretends to be the foreign spy agency and recruits activists to spy for Iran. The activists agree and think they are spying for Iran when actually they are working for the FBI. When they aren't useful to the FBI anymore the FBI can just arrest them.
You are still under the delusion that all this Secret Police infrastructure is about stopping terrorism? You poor, gullible person, I'm sorry for you. The threat of terrorism is just the excuse used to justify building an enormous security apparatus, not the real reason. The people building out the giant security control machine don't care about protecting you from terrorists, they care about protecting themselves (the elite) from you (the unwashed masses).
Who did you think I meant when I said "terrorists"?
The fact is I want to restrict the terrorist list to only include certain threats while others like the types you mention want to include everyone on the terrorist list by calling it "crime" and "illegal activities".
This isn't just about them not reading laws they vote on -- they get shamed by the press and the public and during election campaigning for being "soft" on terrorism if they so much as question whether the PATRIOT act goes too far.
And so the solution is to be hard and stupid rather than be smart but look soft?
Those same people are the type of people who voted for Bush.
I'm not afraid of terrorists. The chances of me being hurt by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to any other cause of death. The right thing to do is ignore them.
So if a terrorist poisons the food and or water supply what then? What if a league of snipers shoot random people? Or if you're driving over the bridge and it just explodes?
Even if they did make the wording very narrow all it takes is a law later down the line that redefines drug trafficking as terrorism. I can see it being debated already:
Insane Politician: "We need to use our SpyFest 3000 to crack down on drugs. Let's pass this law that extends it to cover drug traffickers."
Reasonable Politician: "Uhm, no. SpyFest 3000 was an overreach when there was real, immediate, huge potential harm out there. Drug traffickers are better stopped by actual human intelligence instead of backdoor spying on everyone."
IP: "Ah, I see. You're soft on drugs and terrorism because you're opposing the STOP Terrorism On Planes bill."
RP: "What the fuck? I don't see how your bill, which gives the police free access to phone tap any citizen living within 100 miles of the US border, has anything to do with planes!"
IP: "That's because you hate America. We need the STOP bill passed now to protect us from dangerous terrorism."
Rest of Congress: "Agreed."
President: "Only if I can indefinitely detain suspects arrested on STOP charges."
Congress: "I guess."
President: "Signed."
Yes which is why we shouldn't let them pass laws without reading them and approving of them.
But if someone is trying to talk you into bombing innocent people and you don't have a conscience about that or any reservations about loss of life then you're still a threat to society
I thought we were talking about the FBI, not republicans.
In all seriousness though, if you are trying to talk an innocent person into bombing people and you don't have a conscience about that, then you're a threat to society.
You still haven't answered the question. How do you catch a terrorist without pretending to be one?
lol, ok, lets set up this huge system of spying to fight the terrorists... ...and lets say there aren't many terrorist out there so there's not much to do with the system... ...what does any self serving bureaucracy do?..
Labels things that were not considered terrorism as terrorism. Use encryption? Terrorist!, Don't pay your child support? Terrorist!. Visit a protest? Terrorist! Child porn is Terrorism! Drug users are Terrorists! The list never ends.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/02/ter%C2%B7ror%C2%B7ist-noun-anyone-who-disagrees-with-the-government-2.html
That is why the language has to be very specific. The language should identify exactly what terrorism is or isn't and what this surveillance can be used for. Otherwise I'm not going to support it. This trend of greatly trying to expand police powers and using extremely vague language in bills like "illegal activities" and "crime" is horrible for communities as anyone can be a criminal but most people aren't ever a terrorist.
When it comes to fighting terrorism I'm for the FBI.
Do you realize that every single domestic terror plot foiled by the FBI was created by the FBI?
I'm aware. But if someone is trying to talk you into bombing innocent people and you don't have a conscience about that or any reservations about loss of life then you're still a threat to society. I do understand that the FBI could trick people into saying stuff and every case is different, but I also recognize that there are real terrorists out there and this is the only way to catch them.
How do you catch the next abortion clinic bombing terrorist if you don't do a sting? If you have a better way of doing stings then why not suggest some better ways? But the fact is we cannot as a society allow extremist domestic terrorism and that includes the KKK, the Nazi's, the Militias, anyone who wants to be violent.
If the FBI was actually able to hire the best and the brightest, then there would be no no need for a "wiretap-friendly" software. Social networking sites are the easiest. VoIP, IM, and E-mail is just a matter of Wireshark and the proper filters applied.
Maybe they need to put up some job advertisements on /.
They want to save money. It's not a matter of them being able to hire the best and brightest, they want to do it for free.
How does Skype deal with this anyway?
Other than gathering data on connection times and destinations, frequencies, and statistical correlation techniques, I'd long assumed traditional wiretap is dead.
Am I incorrect?
If terrorists talk over Skype and it's important enough there are ways to decrypt or decode the conversations. At this point in time it;s expensive to do and the FBI wants to empower itself so it can do surveillance on the massive scale.
But there hasn't been a serious terrorist attack since 9/11. It's just not worth it to most of us to do this because there just aren't that many terrorists. It's the unintended consequences that people are concerned about, letting law enforcement use drones is bad enough and now they want us to strip naked to get on airplanes and check our harddrives too? Where does it end?
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
Do not accept any bill which contains overly broad or vague language. Be watchful of FBI objectives which claim to focus on "illegal activities" and "crime". Also be careful of emotional keywords like "kiddie porn" and "pedophiles".
When it comes to fighting terrorism I'm for the FBI. When it comes to fighting pedophiles I'm for the FBI. When it comes to fighting "illegal activities" and "crime" I'm not for the FBI because that isn't specific enough to give them broad powers. Since everyone is a criminal, if we empower them to fight "illegal activities" we are giving them the power to abuse entire communities in the name of combating "illegal activities" and "crime". The purpose of the FBI should be to protect communities, and we universally agree that terrorists and pedophiles are the bad guys regardless of our political stance on other issues.
We need bills which remove the political issues such as piracy, "illegal activities" and crime and focus more on terrorism and violence. If someone is a serial killer the FBI should be able to do a wiretap, but don't want to see the day when the FBI sees everything we do online and starts arresting people on piracy and other trivial offenses. Yes some people are going to say these offenses are economic crimes, but these offenses aren't good enough to put backdoors in every website.
They always say they need this or that then want to pass the bill to the industry and consumer.
Second why do they need this? If it's to fight terrorism then I'm all for it but if it's to fight "drugs" and "crime" then I'm totally against it.
The FBI bill should be completely restricted to terrorism investigations only and not "crime" or "law enforcement" or "drugs", and no they shouldn't be allowed to use the "child porn" language to sneak "crime" and "drugs" in. The main reason the internet doesn't trust the FBI and law enforcement is because while they talk about wanting to use their new powers to fight terrorists and pedophiles when we look at the bill we always find copyright infringement, piracy, drugs, and "crime" in there that we politically don't want in there.
Governments prefer to have subjects with low IQ and blind faith who treat the government as God.
I wonder if he assumed that any encryption software would be jiggered by the US or Israelis and somehow compromise his security more.
Encryption that you didn't write on a computer you didn't design probably will be worthless to you unless you know enough to read the code it's written in, compile it yourself and understand the hardware design and all that. There is no way Bin Laden or anyone other than a specialist would know that.
...especially when the side-channel attack is to reconstruct radio waves emanating from the neural networks of the brain.
Side channel attacks against the CPU are just as effective.
Lesson 1, Page 1, in covert operations:
Anonymity deflects more bullets than body armor.
Encryption prevents viewing the data only for the amount of time it takes to torture the passphrase out of you. Since you need the key to view your encrypted data, it's almost assured that the key will be near the data in some form, minimally protected. Encryption therefore provides little (if any) security in that scenario. In fact, it could cause more harm than good; It may lull you into a sense of false security.
You're exactly right. Encryption offers in many cases less than no security. For instance side channel attacks can often decrypt content. It's very unlikely that the majority who use encryption even know what a side channel attack is or how to defend against it. Then you have torture as you mention, where using encryption only gives them the excuse to torture.
People over estimate encryption. Just because you encrypt your files it doesn't mean you'd do so in the correct way. There are many side channel attacks.
It revictimizes that person having such a horrible perverted picture of them out there - they are hurt everytime it is reproduced..
Here is for a less emotionally charged example: If one's SSN got on the Internet, each time one more person got a hold of it it (potentally) would result in further harm.
It revictimizes that person having such a horrible perverted picture of them out there - they are hurt everytime it is reproduced..
Here is for a less emotionally charged example: If one's SSN got on the Internet, each time one more person got a hold of it it (potentally) would result in further harm.
That may be the case and perhaps distribution should be a crime but distribution is not the same as possession.
Also I don't think a picture is the same as a SSN. You have a slight argument but only in the case of someone putting those pictures on a website or on a P2P service and distributing them. You also have the 4chan problem where people upload anything to and people who just stumble upon it will pick it up.
How far can you take censorship?