No, I don't, and neither do you -- there is no oversight. For all I (or anyone) know, there may be more crime perpetrated by cops/FBI/informants/... in an attempt to convict a small number of criminals than by criminals who end up getting caught.
You've been watching too many movies. I know people who have been prosecuted by the Federal government. I know people who work in law enforcement at both the local/state and Federal level. There are bad cops out there. About a year ago there was a story in the local papers about LAPD and Long Beach PD officers who were robbing drug dealers in fake drug stings and then reselling the drugs. Those things do happen but they are rare. You say that there isn't any oversight but for the most part, there is. There has to be. Just about everything comes out during the trial. There is a reason that the witness protection program exists. People have to come out and lay their cards on the table. The fairy tale of bad cops cheating the system is over rated. My current room mate used to be in the LAPD. He isn't anymore because internal affairs busted his partner for being involved in selling drugs. They didn't believe that he didn't know about it, so he lost his job too. More often than not, the bad apples eventually get rooted out.
Voicemail? Really? It would be easier to swap codes by carrier pigeons than by voicemail.
I shouldn't, but I'll take the bait. Back in the day when "good" internet access was a $1000+ US Robotics 14.4 courier modem connected to a SLIP connection, most of the fraud was still taking place closer to the real world. A voicemail system with a national 800 number was the best way to anonymously swap codes. Even after ANI became wide spread, people just moved to payphones and kept going.
So just to have a satisfaction of "nabbing" a couple of guys it's OK to dedicate public resources to defrauding thousands of innocent people with no recourse to those victims? I am sure, you will be happy to know that if was FBI and not criminals who spread your ID/cards/bank account information through such a system when you'll end up broke, unemployed and with a couple of outstanding warrants for your arrest in states where you never been.
The FBI isn't spreading the information around. They are doing the equivalent of a Man in the Middle attack against the information flow. They are putting a tap into the data stream. I don't have the details of their operation, but I would HIGHLY DOUBT that they put out virgin codes on their own site. More than likely, they just ran the site and monitored the transactions.
Your comment about ending up broke, unemployed and wanted is complete hyperbolic drivel. I've been a victim of fraud three times. Once on my checking account when someone stole a check out of my car. Once due to an online transaction at a shady site. And once via a compromised credit card (probably POS related but it was never determined where the breach occured). All three times my total out of pocket expense was $0. My credit rating is in the high 700s. I have access to close to $50,000 of unsecured credit. Fraud hasn't ruined me. It is so common and prevalent that financial institutions have procedures in place to deal with it. The only person who gets screwed by the fraud is the merchant who loses the goods. More often than not, even they have insurance to cover those losses.
It's one thing when undercover cops join robbers to arrest them after a bank robbery. It still kinda make sense when cops get involved in multiple crimes and end up destroying massive criminal organizations, though considering how widespread is organized crime I am not convinced that it actually works that well. But when they run some continuing "operation" for months and years, with not even slightest hope to stop any noticeable percentage of criminals involved (most are unidentifiable or foreign), end up throwing a book at few skr1pt kiddies and fraudsters, leaving the rest alone, how does it balance with
Are you serious, or are you just arguing for the sake of doing so? Do you have any idea how the criminal justice system works in this country? Do you have any idea how investigations take place?
If the FBI just took the site down the carders would move else where. Back before the internet was big, I used to know people who swapped codes over voicemail systems. What do you think happened when a compromised system got shut down? Everyone just jumped to another one.
Collecting enough evidence to prosecute involves long term investigation. I doubt that the admins of the carding sites are keeping detailed transaction logs for the Feds to pour through. Therefore the Feds have to setup their own site to get enough evidence to tie the codes to the person providing them.
Since you've suggested that the Feds should just take down the sites themselves, please tell me how that would achieve anything more than a temporary disruption in the system? How would that lead to prosecutions?
Because life isn't perfect and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. It's one thing to pretend to be a bad guy, and to engage in other bad activities to catch and prosecute bad guys. It is another thing entirely to be given a free pass to trespass. Do you want to give up your legal protections that protect your personal computer, so that the FBI can go hack into someone else who may or may not be guilty of a crime? That is where your argument is leading.
Maybe it has something to do with computer trespass laws? I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand, the law enforcement community has to follow the rules. Often times those rules hamper them. Expensive defense lawyers are often focused on the procedures followed when their clients are arrested or investigated. Any anomolies in the procedure could be a get out of jail free card.
For example, I know a guy who got out of a DUI ticket after being stopped at a DUI checkpoint. The court order/warrant/whatever that was approved for the checkpoint specifically stated that the officers were only allowed to stop one out of every three cars, or something like that. The defendant's lawyer was able to prove that the police officers did not operate within the limitations of their authority as defined by the order to establish the checkpoint. Therefore despite the guy being drunk as a skunk and definitely guilty of DUI, the charges against him were dismissed.
Given that unlawful access to a computer is a Federal crime, I don't think that the Feds are allowed to go breaking into computers. However, they can certainly setup a honey-pot and wait for stupid criminals to hang themselves. One might consider an article that was just posted here, the one about authorities in the UK being given expanded powers to access personal computers.
The reality seems to be that the "job experience" gained as a member of a organized criminal enterprise doesn't look very good on a resume. You're right that the money is better, unless you're selling cocaine. In that case, the risk/reward equation is seriously out of wack, especially on a long enough time line.
The article is a work of fiction because the actual details weren't available. The author states at the beginning that the details were recreated from court documents. Given that Poulsen himself is a hacker, it is pretty safe to assume that he guessed pretty closely on the details. There are only so many ways to bust into a web server, and SQL injection along with compromised passwords seems likely enough. As for what he did after he had access, what is so fictional about that? He dumped the data and dropped all of the tables. Ooooo, big stretch of imagination there. We're talking about a serious blend of fantasy and sci-fi right there.
If the real problem involves electric vehicles, then they could... wait for it... increase taxes on electricity!! There you go. Problem solved. No need for intrusive GPS tracking. If the problem involves the batteries in hybrid cars, then they can pay some mathmeticians to calculate the cost savings of the batteries, and then tax the production or sale of the cars to offset the revenue lost. Once again, no tracking necessary.
Of course the REAL issue isn't completely related to the loss of revenues from the fuel tax. The real issue is that the government feels like they own us. They believe that they can go crazy with tracking us like merchandise. That is my big, fat, off-topic gripe for this thread. Our government has devolved from our fellow citizens serving their communities, to our fellow citizens trying to dictate our lives to us.
At this point in the life of the Metal Gear series, most of the people who are playing the game for the story. They are playing for those long, drawn out cut scenes. They aren't buying a video game, so much as they are buying a movie that they get to control a part of.
Grand Theft Auto is very similar. They seem to have focused primarily on the story. I'm really disappointed with the lack of challenge/difficulty in GTA IV. They have either made the game much easier, or it's just much easier since I stopped smoking pot. It's probably a combination of the two. From a storyline point of view though, GTA IV is really good. On the PS3 the game world is absolutely amazing. The weather, the lighting, the sound, the physics, everything. The game is so detailed that if you are listening to the radio when your cell phone rings, it makes that buzzing sound a second before it rings.. just like if you have your real cell phone too close unshielded PC speaker wires.
I've been really impressed with GTA IV. I have been playing the GTA series since the original, and in fact it was the game that pushed me to get a 3dfx card. Ahhh, memories. Anyway, one of the features that I like about the most recent iteration of the game is the ability to quickly replay a failed mission. After failing a mission, you are presented with the option of trying it again. Exercising that option automatically takes you back to beginning of the mission. In the past, you had to waste time travelling across the city to start all over again.
I have to wonder if a trend is forming. Maybe game designers are catering to the older crowd? They realize our time is limited and we aren't going to play games if we have to waste huge amounts of time.
I feel your pain. I really liked the Microsoft Natural but did not like the one they replaced it with. The special keys were in the wrong places. They also had that stupid 2 by 3 grouping of Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn instead of the more standard 3 by 2. And they did that annoying diamond with the arrow keys instead of the standard inverted T. My only gripe with the Natural was that they didn't last very long. I went through three in about as many years.
I miss my model M. I took all of the keys covers off of it so that it was completely blank. The only issue I initially had was with the extended characters above the numbers. I eventually memorized all of those and was good to go. Looking back on it, removing the caps served two purposes. One, it looked damn cool. Two, it was completely anti-social and prevented anybody but another geek from using the computer.
Lets go ahead and open source the absolute worst groupware platform out there. That should convince people that Open Source Software rules!! I'd rather use Groupwise than Notes.
Of course LARGE companies are toying with the idea. They can afford to setup test environments and kick the tires. There's a difference between keeping up on the latest tech developments and making whole sale infrastructure changes. Let me know when a large company decides, "Gee, we really don't need to run Office." I would like to see. I'm tired of maintaining a Microsoft infrastructure. However until the rest of the world catches up on the application side of things, we're stuck with MS for the foreseeable future.
It wouldn't surprise me if most of Microsoft's patents are centered on the Office suite and things like "Automatically spell checking a document." Or, "The mechanism to save a file attachment from an email to a storage device." Those are the kind of patents that are going to stay in a locked drawer somewhere until a serious competitor comes along.
Thanks for responding and covering the points that I was going to cover. My initial response was to the GGP and his assertion that Linux is getting to the point where Joe Sixpack can use it. I was agreeing, if the assumption is that Joe Sixpack just needs a web browser and some basic word processing software. As you pointed out, it may be a while before we see an enterprise Linux desktop. That wait is due to Windows applications. It wouldn't suprise me if in the interim we see shops that already have Windows licenses taking those licenses and recycling them into VMs that are running on top of Linux. That way they can leverage the security and stability of Linux, and sandbox their legacy Windows apps.
because Linux is becoming a viable alternative even for Joe Six-pack.
Linux is becoming viable for people who just want to surf the web or write term papers. Microsoft is sufficiently entrenched in the enterprise and SMB market, and will continue to do just fine. Linux might be good enough for stand alone home desktops, but it lacks polished tools to ease enterprise deployment. I understand that they are there, but they aren't mature. Linux needs a Group Policy equivalent that is as polished and easy to use as Group Policy. Linux needs an Exchange server equivalent that integrates with an LDAP directory. Once those two are up and running, then maybe people can start talking about Microsoft coming tumbling down.
What you are talking about already happens. If you try to buy certain chemicals, the DEA cares. If you try to purchase a bunch of fertilizer the BATF cares. If you move around certain amounts of money, the IRS cares.
We live in a country with a justice system. Just because you might be investigated for something does not mean that you're going to jail. If you have a legit reason to be in possession of something then you don't have anything to worry about. If you're a professional chemist, you can get precursor chemicals. If you're a farmer you can buy large quantities of fertilizer.
Look at what happened with the Maryland PD when they engaged in illegal intelligence gathering. It came out. It made national headlines and they had to knock it off.
If you want to live a paranoid dellusion feel free. I spent a lot of my life in the same place. I was freaked out about my privacy. I was using PGP back in 1992. I did lots of Federally illegal things. Once I grew up and started acting lawfully, I really stopped caring about what law enforcement was up to. Once I had some in depth conversations with both Feds and local cops, I realized what their intentions really are. They simply don't care about what you and I are up to. Unless you're plotting violent insurrection or engaging in large scale drug distribution operations, they don't care. You can whine and cry about how much the country sucks and they will respect your right to do so.
I realize I am going to sound like someone who "doesn't" have anything to hide, but I don't. That's not to say that I support whole sale eavesdropping and privacy violations because I don't. However, I'm not planning on engaging in any crimes or activities that will draw attention. I know felons, both state and Federal, for crimes ranging from computer crimes, to serious drug cases. In all the cases, those people have deserved what they got and knew what they were doing was illegal.
Of all the people in law enforcement who I know, they are all focused on protecting society and locking up people who want to cause harm to others. I know that there seems to be a popular perception of political persecution. Our country certainly is corrupt. Our officials are just better at hiding it than their counterparts in places like Mexico. But just based on the experience I've had with the law enforcement community, trampling on our civil rights are the last thing they want to do. They have real problems to focus on, like drug gangs and other violent enterprises.
Bad guy A drives a car to target B and leaves his finger prints all over the place. Target B gets destroyed but the biometric evidence is left behind. Law enforcement collects the biometric data from Bad Guy A and runs it through the big data warehouse in the sky. They then presumably know all that there is to know about him. At the very least, they know where he came into the country, where he has been living and from there, perhaps who has been associating with.
I know a guy who works with the Secret Service and very well might be one of the primary agents protecting Obama once he gets into the White House. We've had long conversations about what the government does and what their capabilities are with regards to intelligence gathering. Despite all of the rhetoric about big brother and loss of privacy, I'm quite comfortable knowing that unless I'm actively trying to destablize the government, they don't care about what I am up to.
They also didn't have big fat data warehouses and NLP programs to sort through them. By the time the law enforcement community is actively capturing data on you, they have a really good idea of who you are. They are tagging the data correctly and probably doing so with the intention of bringing a court case against you. Even if the case never comes, as might be the case when they are observing "persons of interest", they are still applying the same processes as if they were going to eventually prosecute the subject of the surveillance.
The technology wasn't in place decades ago. The technology is here now, and so it is happening. The internet grew out of a military communications network. It was initially used between RESEARCH institutes. The entire foundation of the network has this kind of thing built into its DNA. Hell, when the system was first built you could "finger" pretty much any box out there and see who is logged in and doing what. That was a big fat privacy invasion right there.
I found that it started out as being a self centered practice but has since branched out. The meditation and tai chi produce a clear state of mind. That clear state of mind helps me in all aspects of life. It helps me to relate to other people because I can pay attention to them and truly listen and understanding what they are talking about. It helps me to stay on task at work, and it gives me the focus and concentration to solve complex problems.
I went from working as an IT consultant to an in house DBA/head network administrator position. I took a pay cut, but I enjoy a better quality of life. Instead of driving all over southern California and flying across the country on a regular basis, I now take the train to work. Instead of working random schedules whenever I was needed and putting in a lot of overtime, I work 35 hours a week and some times even less. I spend the mornings and evenings training martial arts, and spend the weekends and Wednesday nights with my girlfriend.
Life isn't all roses though. I'm working for a non-profit that has been all over the papers (Los Angeles and New York Times) because of serious fiscal mismanagement on the part of the board of directors and senior staff. I could very well lose my job due to the mistakes of others.
What you really need to do is to take a long hard look at how hard you want to work, and what you want out of life. I decided that I could live without a Porsche and a nice big house. I simply wasn't willing to put in the hours it took to make the big bucks. Some people are driven by those rewards. I'm not. I value tranquility and simplicity. I don't deal well working with the ladder climbing, self centered prick types who seem to end up at the "top" of the material world. I'd rather have free time to meditate, and practice tai chi, and read, and cook, and do other things that don't have me sitting in front of a computer, or sitting in meetings and thinking about work all the time.
If your meta question is, "Can I make the big IT dollars and work part time?" I think the answer is a big NO. People make a lot of money with IT skills because, a lot of IT skills require a serious time commitment. Being successful in IT requires constantly upgrading your skills and staying abreast of the trends. In the two years I've been working where I'm working, I've missed the shift to virtualization. If I had stayed with my previous employer, I'd have VMware ESX skills right now. Since I didn't, I don't. I make ~$68k a year which is on the low side of what IT people make, and in southern California it isn't much at all. I'm happy though. I'm not going to starve any time soon.
Slashdot Mirror
You've been watching too many movies. I know people who have been prosecuted by the Federal government. I know people who work in law enforcement at both the local/state and Federal level. There are bad cops out there. About a year ago there was a story in the local papers about LAPD and Long Beach PD officers who were robbing drug dealers in fake drug stings and then reselling the drugs. Those things do happen but they are rare. You say that there isn't any oversight but for the most part, there is. There has to be. Just about everything comes out during the trial. There is a reason that the witness protection program exists. People have to come out and lay their cards on the table. The fairy tale of bad cops cheating the system is over rated. My current room mate used to be in the LAPD. He isn't anymore because internal affairs busted his partner for being involved in selling drugs. They didn't believe that he didn't know about it, so he lost his job too. More often than not, the bad apples eventually get rooted out.
Voicemail? Really? It would be easier to swap codes by carrier pigeons than by voicemail.
I shouldn't, but I'll take the bait. Back in the day when "good" internet access was a $1000+ US Robotics 14.4 courier modem connected to a SLIP connection, most of the fraud was still taking place closer to the real world. A voicemail system with a national 800 number was the best way to anonymously swap codes. Even after ANI became wide spread, people just moved to payphones and kept going.
So just to have a satisfaction of "nabbing" a couple of guys it's OK to dedicate public resources to defrauding thousands of innocent people with no recourse to those victims? I am sure, you will be happy to know that if was FBI and not criminals who spread your ID/cards/bank account information through such a system when you'll end up broke, unemployed and with a couple of outstanding warrants for your arrest in states where you never been.
The FBI isn't spreading the information around. They are doing the equivalent of a Man in the Middle attack against the information flow. They are putting a tap into the data stream. I don't have the details of their operation, but I would HIGHLY DOUBT that they put out virgin codes on their own site. More than likely, they just ran the site and monitored the transactions.
Your comment about ending up broke, unemployed and wanted is complete hyperbolic drivel. I've been a victim of fraud three times. Once on my checking account when someone stole a check out of my car. Once due to an online transaction at a shady site. And once via a compromised credit card (probably POS related but it was never determined where the breach occured). All three times my total out of pocket expense was $0. My credit rating is in the high 700s. I have access to close to $50,000 of unsecured credit. Fraud hasn't ruined me. It is so common and prevalent that financial institutions have procedures in place to deal with it. The only person who gets screwed by the fraud is the merchant who loses the goods. More often than not, even they have insurance to cover those losses.
It's one thing when undercover cops join robbers to arrest them after a bank robbery. It still kinda make sense when cops get involved in multiple crimes and end up destroying massive criminal organizations, though considering how widespread is organized crime I am not convinced that it actually works that well. But when they run some continuing "operation" for months and years, with not even slightest hope to stop any noticeable percentage of criminals involved (most are unidentifiable or foreign), end up throwing a book at few skr1pt kiddies and fraudsters, leaving the rest alone, how does it balance with
Are you serious, or are you just arguing for the sake of doing so? Do you have any idea how the criminal justice system works in this country? Do you have any idea how investigations take place?
If the FBI just took the site down the carders would move else where. Back before the internet was big, I used to know people who swapped codes over voicemail systems. What do you think happened when a compromised system got shut down? Everyone just jumped to another one.
Collecting enough evidence to prosecute involves long term investigation. I doubt that the admins of the carding sites are keeping detailed transaction logs for the Feds to pour through. Therefore the Feds have to setup their own site to get enough evidence to tie the codes to the person providing them.
Since you've suggested that the Feds should just take down the sites themselves, please tell me how that would achieve anything more than a temporary disruption in the system? How would that lead to prosecutions?
Because life isn't perfect and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. It's one thing to pretend to be a bad guy, and to engage in other bad activities to catch and prosecute bad guys. It is another thing entirely to be given a free pass to trespass. Do you want to give up your legal protections that protect your personal computer, so that the FBI can go hack into someone else who may or may not be guilty of a crime? That is where your argument is leading.
Maybe it has something to do with computer trespass laws? I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand, the law enforcement community has to follow the rules. Often times those rules hamper them. Expensive defense lawyers are often focused on the procedures followed when their clients are arrested or investigated. Any anomolies in the procedure could be a get out of jail free card.
For example, I know a guy who got out of a DUI ticket after being stopped at a DUI checkpoint. The court order/warrant/whatever that was approved for the checkpoint specifically stated that the officers were only allowed to stop one out of every three cars, or something like that. The defendant's lawyer was able to prove that the police officers did not operate within the limitations of their authority as defined by the order to establish the checkpoint. Therefore despite the guy being drunk as a skunk and definitely guilty of DUI, the charges against him were dismissed.
Given that unlawful access to a computer is a Federal crime, I don't think that the Feds are allowed to go breaking into computers. However, they can certainly setup a honey-pot and wait for stupid criminals to hang themselves. One might consider an article that was just posted here, the one about authorities in the UK being given expanded powers to access personal computers.
The reality seems to be that the "job experience" gained as a member of a organized criminal enterprise doesn't look very good on a resume. You're right that the money is better, unless you're selling cocaine. In that case, the risk/reward equation is seriously out of wack, especially on a long enough time line.
The article is a work of fiction because the actual details weren't available. The author states at the beginning that the details were recreated from court documents. Given that Poulsen himself is a hacker, it is pretty safe to assume that he guessed pretty closely on the details. There are only so many ways to bust into a web server, and SQL injection along with compromised passwords seems likely enough. As for what he did after he had access, what is so fictional about that? He dumped the data and dropped all of the tables. Ooooo, big stretch of imagination there. We're talking about a serious blend of fantasy and sci-fi right there.
If the real problem involves electric vehicles, then they could... wait for it... increase taxes on electricity!! There you go. Problem solved. No need for intrusive GPS tracking. If the problem involves the batteries in hybrid cars, then they can pay some mathmeticians to calculate the cost savings of the batteries, and then tax the production or sale of the cars to offset the revenue lost. Once again, no tracking necessary.
Of course the REAL issue isn't completely related to the loss of revenues from the fuel tax. The real issue is that the government feels like they own us. They believe that they can go crazy with tracking us like merchandise. That is my big, fat, off-topic gripe for this thread. Our government has devolved from our fellow citizens serving their communities, to our fellow citizens trying to dictate our lives to us.
At this point in the life of the Metal Gear series, most of the people who are playing the game for the story. They are playing for those long, drawn out cut scenes. They aren't buying a video game, so much as they are buying a movie that they get to control a part of. Grand Theft Auto is very similar. They seem to have focused primarily on the story. I'm really disappointed with the lack of challenge/difficulty in GTA IV. They have either made the game much easier, or it's just much easier since I stopped smoking pot. It's probably a combination of the two. From a storyline point of view though, GTA IV is really good. On the PS3 the game world is absolutely amazing. The weather, the lighting, the sound, the physics, everything. The game is so detailed that if you are listening to the radio when your cell phone rings, it makes that buzzing sound a second before it rings.. just like if you have your real cell phone too close unshielded PC speaker wires.
I've been really impressed with GTA IV. I have been playing the GTA series since the original, and in fact it was the game that pushed me to get a 3dfx card. Ahhh, memories. Anyway, one of the features that I like about the most recent iteration of the game is the ability to quickly replay a failed mission. After failing a mission, you are presented with the option of trying it again. Exercising that option automatically takes you back to beginning of the mission. In the past, you had to waste time travelling across the city to start all over again.
I have to wonder if a trend is forming. Maybe game designers are catering to the older crowd? They realize our time is limited and we aren't going to play games if we have to waste huge amounts of time.
I feel your pain. I really liked the Microsoft Natural but did not like the one they replaced it with. The special keys were in the wrong places. They also had that stupid 2 by 3 grouping of Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn instead of the more standard 3 by 2. And they did that annoying diamond with the arrow keys instead of the standard inverted T. My only gripe with the Natural was that they didn't last very long. I went through three in about as many years.
I miss my model M. I took all of the keys covers off of it so that it was completely blank. The only issue I initially had was with the extended characters above the numbers. I eventually memorized all of those and was good to go. Looking back on it, removing the caps served two purposes. One, it looked damn cool. Two, it was completely anti-social and prevented anybody but another geek from using the computer.
Lets go ahead and open source the absolute worst groupware platform out there. That should convince people that Open Source Software rules!! I'd rather use Groupwise than Notes.
Of course LARGE companies are toying with the idea. They can afford to setup test environments and kick the tires. There's a difference between keeping up on the latest tech developments and making whole sale infrastructure changes. Let me know when a large company decides, "Gee, we really don't need to run Office." I would like to see. I'm tired of maintaining a Microsoft infrastructure. However until the rest of the world catches up on the application side of things, we're stuck with MS for the foreseeable future.
It wouldn't surprise me if most of Microsoft's patents are centered on the Office suite and things like "Automatically spell checking a document." Or, "The mechanism to save a file attachment from an email to a storage device." Those are the kind of patents that are going to stay in a locked drawer somewhere until a serious competitor comes along.
Thanks for responding and covering the points that I was going to cover. My initial response was to the GGP and his assertion that Linux is getting to the point where Joe Sixpack can use it. I was agreeing, if the assumption is that Joe Sixpack just needs a web browser and some basic word processing software. As you pointed out, it may be a while before we see an enterprise Linux desktop. That wait is due to Windows applications. It wouldn't suprise me if in the interim we see shops that already have Windows licenses taking those licenses and recycling them into VMs that are running on top of Linux. That way they can leverage the security and stability of Linux, and sandbox their legacy Windows apps.
Linux is becoming viable for people who just want to surf the web or write term papers. Microsoft is sufficiently entrenched in the enterprise and SMB market, and will continue to do just fine. Linux might be good enough for stand alone home desktops, but it lacks polished tools to ease enterprise deployment. I understand that they are there, but they aren't mature. Linux needs a Group Policy equivalent that is as polished and easy to use as Group Policy. Linux needs an Exchange server equivalent that integrates with an LDAP directory. Once those two are up and running, then maybe people can start talking about Microsoft coming tumbling down.
What you are talking about already happens. If you try to buy certain chemicals, the DEA cares. If you try to purchase a bunch of fertilizer the BATF cares. If you move around certain amounts of money, the IRS cares.
We live in a country with a justice system. Just because you might be investigated for something does not mean that you're going to jail. If you have a legit reason to be in possession of something then you don't have anything to worry about. If you're a professional chemist, you can get precursor chemicals. If you're a farmer you can buy large quantities of fertilizer.
Look at what happened with the Maryland PD when they engaged in illegal intelligence gathering. It came out. It made national headlines and they had to knock it off.
If you want to live a paranoid dellusion feel free. I spent a lot of my life in the same place. I was freaked out about my privacy. I was using PGP back in 1992. I did lots of Federally illegal things. Once I grew up and started acting lawfully, I really stopped caring about what law enforcement was up to. Once I had some in depth conversations with both Feds and local cops, I realized what their intentions really are. They simply don't care about what you and I are up to. Unless you're plotting violent insurrection or engaging in large scale drug distribution operations, they don't care. You can whine and cry about how much the country sucks and they will respect your right to do so.
I realize I am going to sound like someone who "doesn't" have anything to hide, but I don't. That's not to say that I support whole sale eavesdropping and privacy violations because I don't. However, I'm not planning on engaging in any crimes or activities that will draw attention. I know felons, both state and Federal, for crimes ranging from computer crimes, to serious drug cases. In all the cases, those people have deserved what they got and knew what they were doing was illegal.
Of all the people in law enforcement who I know, they are all focused on protecting society and locking up people who want to cause harm to others. I know that there seems to be a popular perception of political persecution. Our country certainly is corrupt. Our officials are just better at hiding it than their counterparts in places like Mexico. But just based on the experience I've had with the law enforcement community, trampling on our civil rights are the last thing they want to do. They have real problems to focus on, like drug gangs and other violent enterprises.
Bad guy A drives a car to target B and leaves his finger prints all over the place. Target B gets destroyed but the biometric evidence is left behind. Law enforcement collects the biometric data from Bad Guy A and runs it through the big data warehouse in the sky. They then presumably know all that there is to know about him. At the very least, they know where he came into the country, where he has been living and from there, perhaps who has been associating with.
I know a guy who works with the Secret Service and very well might be one of the primary agents protecting Obama once he gets into the White House. We've had long conversations about what the government does and what their capabilities are with regards to intelligence gathering. Despite all of the rhetoric about big brother and loss of privacy, I'm quite comfortable knowing that unless I'm actively trying to destablize the government, they don't care about what I am up to.
They also didn't have big fat data warehouses and NLP programs to sort through them. By the time the law enforcement community is actively capturing data on you, they have a really good idea of who you are. They are tagging the data correctly and probably doing so with the intention of bringing a court case against you. Even if the case never comes, as might be the case when they are observing "persons of interest", they are still applying the same processes as if they were going to eventually prosecute the subject of the surveillance.
The technology wasn't in place decades ago. The technology is here now, and so it is happening. The internet grew out of a military communications network. It was initially used between RESEARCH institutes. The entire foundation of the network has this kind of thing built into its DNA. Hell, when the system was first built you could "finger" pretty much any box out there and see who is logged in and doing what. That was a big fat privacy invasion right there.
The title says it all.
I found that it started out as being a self centered practice but has since branched out. The meditation and tai chi produce a clear state of mind. That clear state of mind helps me in all aspects of life. It helps me to relate to other people because I can pay attention to them and truly listen and understanding what they are talking about. It helps me to stay on task at work, and it gives me the focus and concentration to solve complex problems.
The City of Long Beach just installed a long series of LED street lights. They don't flicker at all.
I went from working as an IT consultant to an in house DBA/head network administrator position. I took a pay cut, but I enjoy a better quality of life. Instead of driving all over southern California and flying across the country on a regular basis, I now take the train to work. Instead of working random schedules whenever I was needed and putting in a lot of overtime, I work 35 hours a week and some times even less. I spend the mornings and evenings training martial arts, and spend the weekends and Wednesday nights with my girlfriend.
Life isn't all roses though. I'm working for a non-profit that has been all over the papers (Los Angeles and New York Times) because of serious fiscal mismanagement on the part of the board of directors and senior staff. I could very well lose my job due to the mistakes of others.
What you really need to do is to take a long hard look at how hard you want to work, and what you want out of life. I decided that I could live without a Porsche and a nice big house. I simply wasn't willing to put in the hours it took to make the big bucks. Some people are driven by those rewards. I'm not. I value tranquility and simplicity. I don't deal well working with the ladder climbing, self centered prick types who seem to end up at the "top" of the material world. I'd rather have free time to meditate, and practice tai chi, and read, and cook, and do other things that don't have me sitting in front of a computer, or sitting in meetings and thinking about work all the time.
If your meta question is, "Can I make the big IT dollars and work part time?" I think the answer is a big NO. People make a lot of money with IT skills because, a lot of IT skills require a serious time commitment. Being successful in IT requires constantly upgrading your skills and staying abreast of the trends. In the two years I've been working where I'm working, I've missed the shift to virtualization. If I had stayed with my previous employer, I'd have VMware ESX skills right now. Since I didn't, I don't. I make ~$68k a year which is on the low side of what IT people make, and in southern California it isn't much at all. I'm happy though. I'm not going to starve any time soon.
To each their own. A buddy of mine goes to the barber shop three times a week to get his shave. Go figure.