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Human Rights and Echelon 78

Posted by michael from the listening-in dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Proposals for a new definition of human rights now before the European Parliament, writes Duncan Campbell in Telepolis, would ban ECHELON and update data protection rules to latest developments in telecommunications technology." Compare and contrast to the United States, where the only legislative proposals before Congress are to increase government spying on the citizenry. Hey, the FBI says "If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI." What more is there to say?
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Human Rights and Echelon More

Human Rights and Echelon

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  • "If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI."

    Would this be the same FBI that wanted Systems & Network Admins to download a binary from their site and run it? :-)


  • It'll never happen. This is America.

    We're too busy lying to ourselves about our supposed "freedoms" to get up off our fat asses and establish any.

    If the Bill of Rights came up in Congress today, it would not pass. Everybody to the right of the Green Party would lobby against it night and day.

    Forget it. Don't even waste your time talking about it.

  • Re:I'm sick of the US (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm *from* the US and agree wholeheartedly with everything you say!!!
  • encryption of communications is unlawful in France because it represents communication in a language other than French, the language of Balzac. The French are becoming very sensitive to the real danger of barbarian cultures and languages coming in and taking over, and replacing the French culture. This is why English-language music is forbidden from being broadcast in France.

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • Capitalism creates societies that are disorganized and inactive and passive. That is it's nature.
  • Cute, *President* of Canada. I'll bite, it's that guy that draw Doonesbury, Trudeau. But if I'm wrong then don't worry. Our next American President George W. Bush knows all the names of the leaders of all of them third world countries.
  • If you want a federal privacy guarantee, then (as your subject sugests) get an amendement passed that protects it instead of whining about supreme court justices applying the law as written instead of what they wish the law said.

    The 9th and 10th amendments taken together tell us that people MAY have a right to privacy (enumeration "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others [rights]"), but one could argue that powers which are contrary to privacy may be among those "reserved to the States", allowing the states the choice of whether to make privacy a fundamental right or not.

  • Not at all. I've never been harassed by a criminal, but by police a number of times while conducting myself in a safe, civil, respectable manner. Their heads get too big when they think of themselves as simply "general police". It is important to maintain strict guidelines dictating what they can and cannot do. And once these guidelines are in place (such as the Bill of Rights), they need to be strictly enforced, not ignored like the Fourth Ammendment is so frequently ignored (can we say wire-taps, crypto law, Echelon, etc).
  • You know what the term, "Ugly American" means? Look in the mirror. The US has some freedom, but socially we are very fascist. We have this very ugly puritan core, that could erupt into an bloody conflict between theocrats and secularist. I had an elderly African man say that the Americans consider him a savage, but it is the americans who are the savages. He said of his people, "We have a history, we have a culture. All you have is money." He was right. We have no real national identity, we have German Americans, African American Irish Americans. Deep inside we know that we stole this land from the Indians, we know that we built this land on the back of the African slaves, and indentured servants. We speak of jesus, but it is money and power that we worship. Look at the cult of Bill Gates worshippers. He's a criminal, but he is revered for his great wealth. Rather shallow.
  • Well the US started on the idea of Liberty. After all, they liberated themselves from rule they didn't agree with. They didn't do much to maintain that Liberty though. People aren't known for correcting their mistakes. While it probably made sense to just put a line in the Constitution saying 'Collect arms in case you need to do what we did,' today it's worthless.

    Today, noone wants a gun to protect themselves from the government, they want one to protect themselves from the other idiots who have guns to protect themselves from the other idiots who have guns to.. Well, some people do have guns in case the Gov't goes bad, but they live in compounds in Montana, waiting for the day their conspiracy theories unfold.

    Today, taking away peoples guns won't make a damn difference. Even if they were allowed to keep guns, would it make a difference the day Freedom of Association was ironed over 'for the children' or 'to stop drugs?' Oh wait, that happened, only it was 'for capitalism to stop the Red Scare.' Well what's next in line.. Speech? Well don't worry, as long as people think you're only after pornography and bomb-making instructions, you'll even get them to actively agree with you. Oh right, that's happened too. And did anyone owning a gun make a fscking difference? Food for thought.
  • I have my doubts. If a government is one thing, it's slow. Not neccessarily calculated and precise, but slow. Change comes slowly. You think the government will just one day pass a law that forces you to turn all your guns in? Lord no. As far as things go now, it's taken 70 years of Big Government to get where we are, and people are only just noticing now. And probably because of the advent of the Internet.

    I say this very seriously. Your rights are slipping away, but at such a slow rate that it is mere erosion. More importantly, it is not only the government who is after your rights, corporations are as well.

    You talk about 'figuring it out' but people have historically shown themselves to be idiots and morons. The status quo. You don't risk throwing your way of life away just to grasp at Rights that have slipped away so slowly that noone knows what they are. Reactionary changes (things getting 'messy') only happen during times of drastic change. And that's just not happening.
  • How can a post like that ever get a score of 1?!?

    My 2 euro's....
    --
    * Hey! I made a post. Damn ubehageligt...
  • I'm sorry, but I just HAVE to reply to this. First of all, I don't agree with the one who started the thread, but some of the things you are saying isn't quite so.

    Well, guess what. I'm sick of the British way of spelling things, and then trying to claim it's the US that spells it wrong. They're two different dialects, and within themselves, they're both right. Deal with it.

    Now, this is the typical response from a country which once was another country's colony. When they become independant, they quickly screw up the language so that it dosen't look like the original too much. Why? Well, maybe same reason Microsoft uses EEE....

    Regarding the free right of speech, even though the American Constitution says you are garanteed this, are you really free to speak about anything you want in America? Hell no, not if you happend to be a minority of some kind. The freedom of speech only counts if what you are saying is strictly mainstream.

    Other countries, even though they are granted the right of free speech from their government, are more free on this topic. E.g. Even if you are a Nazi, you are free to speak out your message. Now I'm not, and I don't like extreamist groups, but still if you want to have free speech, it just HAS to include everyone, not just the ones that follow the current political agenda.

    Finally, let me just add a little anti-slashdot message, I'll bet this message dosen't get moderated up, simply because most of the messages getting modetated up contains a hell of alot of bull, and this one don't. "I don't like the way this group is turning, better leadership might help".

    PS: Thanks for posting all the askslashdot's I've sent over the years... NOT! But then again, they were actual technical questions that deserved a discussion, and no bullshit. Maybe thats the American side of Slashdot, not being able to accept critisism....

    --
    * Thats all folks.
  • You expect the bad guys to id themselves so everyone knows where they stand? Everyone always tries to sound like they're on the side of truth and justice, so it's interesting when someone slips and blurts out a little of the reality. This story was definitely that.

    Your trust in the government is quite touching, and is unfortunately shared by many that have never run afoul of one. It seems most have forgotten Hoover's FBI and the excesses of the 50's-70's rather quickly, even with reminders like Waco. (Note that the FBI also did some good things for civil rights in that time period, nothing is ever simple.)

    How long has organized crime, one of the major responsibilities of the FBI, been with us now? They have reduced their power I'm sure, but it's an equlibrium at a cost, like the RICO and zero tolerance laws. If you expect them to eliminate terrorism in the US, you are expecting too much. We are talking about trading freedom for some extremely small absolute increase in safety. It's important to estimate the amounts on both sides, even if you believe in such tradeoffs.

    There has been nothing to stop terrorists and criminals from using one-time pads properly for many years, yet somehow the FBI has struggled on thru techniques like infiltration. These work just as well against digital keys I would think.

    The FBI isn't evil, but its part of our job as citizens to keep it's power limited, because all truth and justice loving organizations want to grow and tend to perceive the world in black and white. Trust is nice, but verification never hurts, right? When the FBI talks of expanding powers we need to let them know when the cost is too high, that's all. If the country is still worth saving, they work for us.
  • "There are worse things in your life than not having an absolute right to privacy. You can be murdered. You can be raped,"

    That is what it comes down to, balancing privacy concerns and security concerns.
    The general population isn't very scared of a loss of privacy, but they are terrified of being victims of crime.

    People need to learn that privacy is an important thing, until then the government will have popular support to decrease personal privacy.
  • >heh, it seems that you are the one that doesnt >know what you are talking about :)
    >canada is a monarchy

    He didn't say it wasn't. He said the Charter of Rights stated things a certain way, and he's right. The Charter is roughly analogous to the US Bill of Rights, but as he pointed out it has that arrogant descended-from-monarchy thing about granting us poor Canucks whatever rights we think we have.

    I may not be American, but I certainly admire the principles the US was built upon. Of course 70 years of Big Government have mostly destroyed those principles, but you still have some options left. Once they finish taking away your guns, you won't, but hey, 230 years will have been a pretty good run for Liberty ...
  • Thanx tsunake. I forgot the <...target=new> gets mucked up on posts.
    Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com [dedserius.com]
  • Tell this to the people during the fifties brought before the House Unamerican Activities Commission, many had been members or knew members of communism/socialism well before it was considered something to arouse suspicion etc.

    Using the FBI in this kind of witch-hunt is possible, however the current laws restrict it to a limited amount. Thus we should be vigilant about any further erosion of privacy rights, but realize that there should be a limit, such as when there is probable cause to believe someone is conducting illegal activity, then the FBI can get a warrant. If you allow investigation wholesale, you run the risk of the information being used not to procecute illegal acts, but persecute associations and legal actions which you might prefer everyone didn't know.
  • How about:

    A. EU support of eschelon is cut, but the rest of the network remains, no pollitical [sic] change in the US.

    The NSA will always continue to monitor communications regardless of whatever political compromise is struck. SIGINT is part of NSA's very reason for existance. From NSA's FAQ: [nsa.gov]

    "We collect, process, and disseminate intelligence information from foreign electronic signals for national foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support military operations. The requirements driving NSA's collection are set at the highest levels of the U.S. Government. NSA also is tasked with preventing foreign adversaries from gaining access to classified national security information."

    As long as there is the NSA, there will be SIGINT. You just won't know about it. We're all kept in the dark as a matter of "National Security".

    If you read the Telopolis article, you'll note that: "According to the five page proposal, all future interceptions must "have a legal basis, be in the public interest and be strictly limited to the achievement of the intended objective". My guess is that we'll agree to this, and continue monitoring under the the protection of 'public interest' and 'national security'. Result? Status quo.

    And, as an aside - I've formerly held security clearances - it is amazing all of the mundane stuff that is labeled 'classified'... Don't want that embarassing fact to slip? Well, classify it!

    -jerdenn

  • Try telling the whole story instead of just one line of it

    I agree that /. is infamous for taking out of context quotes, but at least they link to the full story - the slashdotteri are free to read the original story and make an educated evaluation themselves (unlike many other forms of conventional media). Unfortunately, the TTL for a slashdot story seems falling - there is usually no more interesting posts to a story more than a few hours after it is released. Everyone here is usually in a rush to fit their opinion into this 'window' - they skim the article and then hurry to post.

    -jerdenn

  • prime minister. fucko.
    --
    DeCSS source code! [metastudios.com]
  • Here's a quote that I think shows up the FBI's mindset.

    "There are worse things in your life than not having an absolute right to privacy. You can be murdered. You can be raped," he said.
    To me rape is just a violent invasion of privacy. I feel raped everytime I hear about the government wanting to watch it's own citizens. Fear the government that fears it's citezens. I want governments to investigate crimes not treat their citizens like they've already commited one.

  • Hmmm.... I know that saying the government can't take away the right to free speach is good, but it has problems. It still lets corporations take away your right to free speach, although I haven't read the amendment in question (not being an American). Also, I believe hearing some people talking about repealing the sections of the constitution about possession of weapons as the "right" method of gun control. Couldn't the government just repeal the sections saying they can't restrict your freedoms of speach?

    I'm not meaning to be offensive, I'm just trying to clear up something I don't quite understand...


    -RickHunter
  • Here, it depends on your point of view. In one way, the US is actually right in this regard. Read the laws of most nations. To give you one example, take the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 10. It says all people have the right to free speech. The Canadian Charter on is another example, and says, again, that Canadian citizens have the right to free speech. Look, though, at the US Constitution. It doesn't say this. Rather, it says that the government is forbidden to take away the right to free speech. The difference is extremely important; a law can be repealed, thus revoking the right to free speech, but if the government's forbidden to take away free speech then there's nothing it can do. That's the difference; other governments grant freedoms; the US Constitution guarantees them. And there is a school of thought, one with which I happen to agree, that freedom which is not guaranteed is not freedom at all.

    You took Article 10 and presented it out of context of the whole document. Specifically you forget mentioning Article 17 and 18, which state that the expressed rights can only be restricted as far as allowed in the declaration itself.

    So, yes some of those freedoms expressed in the declaration may be restricted up to a certain extent, but only as stated in the whole declaration. Same applies for the US constitution.

    (The European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamenal Freedoms can be found here [www.coe.fr].)

  • You Brits just can't fucking spell, face it. You and your goddamn "colour" -- what the fuck is that?! Come on! "Torpour"? "Land Rovour"? If I evour again see you fuckers spell eithour of thouse fucking wourds wroung a-fucking-gain I'm gounna snap and start fucking SHOOTING.

    I believe you made a typo-- didn't you mean to type "shouting" instead of "shooting"? But don't be too hard on the Brits-- they don't even know the proper day to celebrate Thanksgiving-- one of them told me that they celebrate it on the 4th of July in Merrie England.

  • Bohr was danish
    I can know that being dutch :-)
  • You can extend that thought further to include your employer. Most of the time, he is your ISP.

  • heh, it seems that you are the one that doesnt know what you are talking about :)
    canada is a monarchy

    monarchies dont have presidents they have kings and queens, offcourse in most of the today modern monarchies they dont have any real power. power is in parliement or govermants hands.
  • I can see that everyone is worried about privacy and a "Big Brother" coming to get you, but if you aren't doing anything to arouse suspicion, you shouldn't worry. Why should I care if the FBI reads my e-mail to my friends, if all I am saying is "hi"? I care a lot more that the e-mail of terrorists is being read at my small sacrifice than I care that the FBI sees that my friend and I are talking about burritos or whatever. If you have no reason for the FBI to pay attention to you, they won't.

  • Naturally the US would be hard pressed to recruit soldiers to defend an unjust cause, the US would inevitably loose the war...

    Snort... Giggle... yeah...

    yep, I can just see it. European troops are massing in Canada, giving us a deadline before invasion... the call goes out for soldiers to defend our borders. No one responds! Interviews in a small kentucky town yield young men and women who say "well, my gran'dad fought for us in WWII... my dad lost a leg in Vietnam and came home to protests. I always said I would be proud for my reserve troop to be called up, but with the NSA wanting to filter people's email transmissions for possible warnings of terrorism, I just can't stand in the europeans' way." Navy and Airforce pilots refuse to go into the air to prevent bombing runs over new york, boston and LA. "They're just right," they say shaking their heads. "The US is in the wrong on this one, and if they want the bombings stopped, they should just surrender and do what the EU wants. We can't stand in the way of a just war. Americans' rights to a level of computer privacy that most of them don't care about is just more important than a few thousand lives and the destruction of our cultural heritage." The US surrenders in fear and cheering crowds emerge from the bombed out ruins to greet the EU troops who have brought them freedom.

    I really hope that was meant to be funny.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Interesting point - but not an argument to grab our ankles and take what's coming. A few years ago there was a study in which more than half of those polled identified "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as part of the Bill of Rights, and half of the real BoR as part of either Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto.

    Still, are you willing to accept the lowest common denominator as politically inevitable?

    Like Adlai Stevenson said - "In a democracy, people tend to get the government they deserve."

    Or P.T. Barnum - "No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the average American."
  • This is great - the EU saying that collection of communications *without a particular goal* is naughty. Who doubts for a minute that the French could come up with a suitable goal for every message they intercept? This is just boilerplate EU doubletalk. French antenna envy!

    Also: remember EU's vaunted personal privacy regulations do not apply to governments - only corporations. So not withstanding the blather in the European parliment, Big Brother is alive and well in the continent that gave us the modern police state
  • No.. It's probably money.

    http://www.newsroom.co.nz/Story.asp?S=17556

  • Quoth the poster: (emphasis added)
    t'll never happen. This is America. We're too busy lying to ourselves about our supposed "freedoms" to get up off our fat asses and establish any. If the Bill of Rights came up in Congress today, it would not pass. Everybody to the right of the Green Party would lobby against it night and day. Forget it.
    Don't even waste your time talking about it.
    And so the system persists and drifts toward disaster, because people aren't willing to expend an effort to save it...

    I agree that, more likely than not, we will lose some -- maybe almost all -- the battles despite our best efforts. But without our efforts, we still lost them by default. As quixotic as it may be, I still believe the modern democracies are capable of self-government and that we can correct these anti-freedom tendencies. But it won't happen if the truly thinking people voluntarily remove themselves from the debate.

    In the end, it's not the winning that matters. It's the fighting of the good fight that matters.

  • What Paul George, the FBI guy, was saying is that everyone knows the FBI could be the Big Brother which is why they're regulated so tightly to prevent something like that from ever happening. He was making a point about how the FBI is being suffocated, prevented by law from being able to do its job, which is monitoring criminal activity, effectively because people are so paranoid that it could be them being monitored. You may not trust your government, but I trust mine, and frankly, I'm happy that someone out there is doing this because it's too damn easy for people to wreak havoc in this world.

    The last time I checked the VAST MAJORITY of the havoc is being wrecked by governments (particulary the US government which is the world's dominant power) not by the people the FBI is going after. For instance the government that you "trust" has killed about a half a million children in Iraq over the last 8 years through sanctions which are not supported by the democractic opposition in Iraq (see the Unicef Report). It has blown up a medicine factory in Sudan, launched cruise missiles into Afganistan, invaded Yugoslavia, blown up the Chinesse embassy in Belgrade, etc... and this is just in the last couple of years. Why you want to give more power to these people is way beyond me

  • Rather, it says that the government is forbidden to take away the right to free speech. The difference is extremely important; a law can be repealed, thus revoking the right to free speech, but if the government's forbidden to take away free speech then there's nothing it can do.

    There is no difference. Saying "We don't take away freedom" and "We grant you freedom" means essentially the same.

    The question is only how easily the document granting the freedom can be (de iure or de facto) abolished. The US Constitution is no different here than others, it just uses a wording typical for older and Common Law texts.
    The European Convention of Human Rights [www.coe.fr] is IMO more safe: It features a Court of Human Rights, which is extraterritorial for 40 of the 41 member states of the Council of Europe [www.coe.fr] (and could move).

  • Not exactly.

    Saying, "We grant you freedom" implies that the grantees are bereft of freedoms in their natural condition, and that some authority must give them their freedoms, a choice that the authority could someday revoke.

    Not really. The essence of both is exactly the same: "You have the freedom and we won't take it away." You can't have one without the other.
    Actually, I was inexact above: The other human rights documents don't say "we grant" but "they have".

    The difference between "everyone has" and "we don't take away" is only that the first one tells us the result the government must achieve whereas the other just tells us what the government must not do to achieve the very same result (which is not even named explicitly).

    The only reason I can see fot this difference is that the US Constitution is older and thus uses a more outdated understanding that focused on procedures.

  • Hey, don't you guys remember this type of trolling? Sentences beginning with lowercase letters and the pointless America-praising. I like this guy anyway, his trolling is art. And it is nice to observe "'peans" overreacting his trolls. By the way: Dear citizens of the EU, did you know that Europe actually lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountain Range? While talking about Europe you very oftenly miss this point. Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest are European cities as well, with flourishing, European-style hacker culture.
  • WTF are you talking about? This guy - a pretty educated and witty one - is trolling us. His knowledge shines through irony, while our (European) comments put us in bad shape (being so proud of our European heritage).
    To your information:
    Hans Bethe was German
    Leo Szilard was Hungarian (and was really sick of Europe as a whole)
    Enrico Fermi was Italian
    Niels Borh was Dutch
    Sometimes I feel ashamed of our close-minded anti-Americanism. There's no paradise on Earth, neither in America, nor in Europe. Every culture has its bright and dark sides. And chauvinism is a Bad Thing (tm) wherever it shows up.
  • Sure, you trust the government. Does that mean you trust incompetent sleazebag Joe Schmoe who reviewed your 'echelon' calls while you said 'Im going to bomb on this exam today' and you promptly get labeled potential terrorist? Think you could get that struck from your record? After all, you're just another terrorist, you know. Most people trust the government in abstraction, in a democracy, but any government is full of Joe Shmoes who do their 9 to 5 day and couldnt care less if they mislabel one out of a thousand calls. Should the power to label people terrorists really be in such hands? Does catching a few less than smart blabbering criminals justify screwing some innocent people over royally and ruining their lives? Not to mention the purely personal abuse it opens up for?
  • I don't trust my government. How can anyone trust something so large and ambiguous like the government?

    I trust the people that are close to me. I trust my parents and my little brother. When I have kids I want my kids to trust me; I don't need the government to raise my kid for me, nor do I need the television either.

    The problem I have with the current trend is that it takes away power from the individual to manage his/her life as well as the lives of their children. We don't need laws to "protect" children from "offensive" material on the Internet. We need parents to get off their fat ass and be a friend to their children.

  • No argument with you about the issue of free speech... What worries me right now about the EU is not the constitutions and checks&balances of the single countries it consists of, but the almost complete lack thereof regarding the centralist EU institutions themselves. The EU is administered by unelected bureaucrats and the political parties currently in power in each single country are only trying to serve their own agenda on the European level. Just look what the French block within the EU is currently doing to Austria, which is a peaceful, democratic member, just because Paris would rather have a different government installed in Vienna. What they do is completely illegal, whether one distastes the Austrian coalition, or not. A small country like Denmark could be next, and there goes your right of free speech, let alone vote...
  • The flip side of the right to not have information collected about you, is access to information collected by public entities. Your privacy and security are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as is the freedom to express yourself, but there is nothing in the UDHR that guarantees that people have a right to access information collected by their governments and others. This is so key to the spread of collective knowledge as well as accountability and transparency of government and big business. This has implications on patent law as well as the many so-called "state secrets" kept in the name of "national security".

    Just think... the boys in the Pentagon, Capital Hill, CIA HQ, and in so many smoke filled corporate boardrooms would have to think twice about some their more heinous acts if the public had the guaranteed right to know what was going on (and not just 25 years after the fact.)

  • This Does Not Look Good... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    =( This situation can play out in any one of the following ways:

    A. EU support of eschelon is cut, but the rest of the network remains, no pollitical change in the US.

    B. A happens but then the EU goes on to presure the US to cease such activities. The US eventually gives in...

    C. B happens but then the US does not quit its dirty ways and a new cold war develops between countries who value their citizens' rights and authoritarian countries... (we would be on China's side. =\ )

    D. C would happen but then after a few years the EU decides to shut down Eschelon via military force. Naturally the US would be hard pressed to recruit soldiers to defend an unjust cause, the US would inevitably loose the war (which would last no less than 10 years...) and the federal government would be abolished and the states would join the UN as independants... The most hopefull outcome would be some really cool tech... but if it goes nuclear then we would be hunting for our food again... =(((

    On the other hand this initiative could fail, probably due to US diplomatic influence, and then we'll be back to hacking on freenet and 128 bit encryption... =((((

    mailto:alangrimes@starpower.net

  • Well, let me clue you in honey, PP and all the other abortion providers sell their mailing lists, and it goes on your medical records, anyway.

    First of all, even if they do sell your name, they are not allowed to divulge any information on the procedures you've undergone. That's part of your medical record, which they aren't allowed to give out or sell.

    When you sign a job application, you're giving permission to get your credit and medical history.

    Not sure about anyone else, but I've never signed anything for any company I've worked for that would allow them to have access to my medical record or credit history. The most I've agreed to is a drug test. (except when applying for a government security clearance, which allows the government to root through my credit history and pretty much anything else they like, but they have this capability anyway)

  • Oh right, that's happened too. And did anyone owning a gun make a fscking difference?

    People aren't going to go out and try to overthrow the government over censorship. It's going to take something much more grievous than that. The vast majority of people don't just start shooting because the government pissed them off. They have to really feel threatened. This has only happened a few times when the government has confronted some of these groups living in "compounds in Montana", and we've seen how those usually end.

    One day the government will likely go too far. People might not even realize it at first, but we won't be happy, and we'll eventually figure out why. That's when things could get messy.

  • Being in a country that suffered intensely from anglo-saxon domination for almost a quarter of a millenium now made me interested in anglo-saxon history, and having studied it more than averagely, I wonder that given the facts that:

    • Anglo-saxons have a complete distrust of everything coming from the State, bordering on the collective neurosis (i.e. the immensely popular "government conspiracies" movie plots);
    • Anglo-saxons believe that the goal in life is to accummulate as much wealth/power as possible, even if it is at the expense of others (just look at the current Merger Madness that sacrifice thousands of jobs to boost share prices);
    • They can legitimately expect that others will act in the same way; that is, they cannot really trust others (look at the lawyerama all over the place);
    • Even then, they will rather rely heavily on the elite's opinion, elite that is only accountable to themselves (i.e. blindly trust big media).

    So, given all this, then can somebody explain why in thell it is mostly in anglo-saxon countries (USA & U.K.) that you find the most blatant attempts (both by the State and by [big] private companies) to squash individual freedom, liberties and privacy????


    --

  • ...take the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 10. It says all people have the right to free speech. The Canadian Charter on is another example, and says, again, that Canadian citizens have the right to free speech. Look, though, at the US Constitution. It doesn't say this. Rather, it says that the government is forbidden to take away the right to free speech. The difference is extremely important; a law can be repealed, thus revoking the right to free speech, but if the government's forbidden to take away free speech then there's nothing it can do. That's the difference; ...

    This is total OXDUNG. Your half-witty piece of paper only applies to the State. Nothing prevents any private concern from taking away your free-speech rights, unlike the european and canadian charters, which apply to everyone, even big companies.

    This is the PROBLEM with the U.S.: the big companies have all the power they want over individuals. Just like lords had in feudal France.


    --

  • How about:

    E. The EU mandates the use of strong encryption on all communication links that terminate in EU member countries. Other countries follow the EU's example. After several years, Echelon is shut down due to its ineffectiveness.

  • "If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI." What more is there to say?
    Much as the ideal of 'Big Brother' seems to be a menace, it shouldn't be the real concern, it should be little brother. Not a global spy, but a local spy, I think you all should be concerned about your local ISP spying on you, not necessarily the government. After all, in a big picture, you might be noise, but locally you are the signal...
  • There are two basic rights that are requered for a democracy: The right to free speach, and the right to private speach. Without those, a democracy is just a hidden dictatorchip worshipping democracy.

    Why is encryption regulated as atomic weapons?

    Why is encryption of communications unlawfull in france?
    --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
  • I think the intelligent half of Slashdotters could put together a better system than the FBI is today

    Oh, really. I doubt it, severely.

    Whatever the problems in the FBI, and there are a slew and a half of them, they have one thing that is in short supply among the intelligent half of Slashdot.

    That commodity is real experience with law enforcement and the criminal element.

    We don't even have more theory than the FBI does, and theory is always subordinate to real-world experience.

    The FBI does a lot of things wrong, but they do a lot more things right; it's only the former that we notice. The FBI's main job is interstate law enforcement, and they do a much better job of that than a bunch of Slashdot geeks would.

    Because of our different perspective on things global, we could teach them a lot. But that doesn't mean that we could replace them.

  • Especially when it comes to privacy, the problem isn't the government as an abstract entity. The problem is, for me to trust the government with private data, I really have to trust a whole bunch of individuals with that data.

    If the FBI has a file on me with private information, my problem isn't that the FBI might want to screw me over. My problem is that there are ten thousand FBI officers with the magic passwords, and if one of them is crooked, he's going to want to screw me over.

    I can trust the FBI. I can't trust 10,000 of its officers, when it only takes one.

  • That's an interesting idea you give, and it would explain much. But do you have any defense of it, or can you at least point me to same? It's not particularly a statement I can believe on its own.
  • The FBI says that the choice is between getting raped and murdered and losing "a little privacy"

    This is a variant on the "Washington Monument Scam".

    The term refers to the hardball tactic of making budget cuts calculated to cause the maximum possible PITA (e.g. closing the Washington Monument to tourists) when the politicians deadlock or when the citizens refuse to vote for all the taxes/loans the politicians want to spend. Effectively, the most visible and desired services are held hostage to protect the pork and fat.

    Similarly, some elements of law enforcement (typically the upper bureaucrats, not the street cops or field agents) want to hold basic citizen security hostage to protect the ability to snoop on political dissidents.
    /.

  • It is the judgement call of every individual based on their experiences and logic to decide how much loss of privacy balances how much gain of security.

    Certainly, and the government has no business overruling my chosen balance in the matter (absent a specific reason to suspect me of a particular crime, supported by warrant or affirmation). I'm glad that we're in complete agreement.
    /.

  • You know, I would be perfectly happy if every internet connection was ECHELONed, as long as it could not interfere with packets, and strong crypto were legal. That way, law-enforcement can get the information they want, but I can still make it hard for them, if I want.
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • That link didn't work for me, I think you meant this [zdnet.com].

    tsunake

  • That the FBI would actually say something like that indicates that they don't give a rip about their poblic image. Either that or they don't think much of the American public's literary consciousness. Of course, it's hard to underestimate the American public.
  • OK, I'm sorry. I screwed up by saying it was a small sacrifice to have the FBI reading your e-mail to catch terrorists. Having read the other comments, I have changed my mind. "Not doing something to arouse suspision, so don't worry" is a bad saying, and I regret having used it. The arguments of my fellow Slashdotters have swayed me.

    Thanks, Guys

  • People need to learn that privacy is an important thing, until then the government will have popular support to decrease personal privacy.

    You were doing so well until here. Why do "people need to learn"? What makes you think they have anything to learn? Have you ever thought that another person could be just as well informed as you, thought just as much about it, be just as intelligent, and yet come to a different conclusion than you have? Guess what, it happens a lot on all sorts of different topics.

    There are worse things than losing a little "privacy". (I put privacy in quotes due to a /. tendency to claim privacy rights to the particular way they are observed in explicitly public places.) It is the judgement call of every individual based on their experiences and logic to decide how much loss of privacy balances how much gain of security. It is the conservative composite of those judgements which will guide our society's responses to law enforcement.

    On the main subject, I can't help but think that we're looking at a culture that still allows genital mutilation of infants, and their next big step in human rights is gonna be protecting the obsolute privacy of your email? Lets hope there's a bit more to this proposal.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • bakunin was right! (Score:3)

    by cthonious ( 5222 ) on Sunday April 09, 2000 @04:33AM (#1143685)
    full text here [pitzer.edu]

    Jungle Law Governs Interrelations of States.

    Every State, whether it is of a federative or a non-federative character, must seek, under the penalty of utter ruin, to become the most powerful of States. It has to devour others in order not to be devoured in turn, to conquer in order not to be conquered, to enslave in order not to be enslaved - for two similar and at the same time alien powers, cannot co-exist without destroying each other.

    The Universal Solidarity of Humanity Disrupted by the State.

    The state then is the most flagrant negation, the most cynical and complete negation of humanity. It rends apart the universal solidarity of all men upon earth, and it unites some of them only in order to destroy, conquer, and enslave all the rest. It takes under its protection only its own citizens, and it recognizes human right, humanity, and civilization only within the confines of its own boundaries. And since it does not recognize any right outside of its own confines, it quite logically arrogated to itself the right to treat with the most ferocious inhumanity all the foreign populations whom it can pillage, exterminate, or subordinate to its will. If it displays generosity or humanity toward them, it does it in no case out of any sense of duty: and that is because it has no duty but to itself, and toward those of its members who formed it by an act of free agreement, who continue constituting it on the same free bases, or, as it happens in the long run, have become its subjects.

    Since international law does not exist, and since it never can exist in a serious and real manner without undermining the very foundations of the principle of absolute State sovereignty, the State cannot have any duties toward foreign populations. If then it treats humanely a conquered people, if it does not go to the full length in pillaging and exterminating it, and does not reduce it to the last degree of slavery, it does so perhaps because of considerations of political expediency and prudence, or even because of pure magnanimity, but never because of duty - for it has an absolute right to dispose of them in any way it deems fit.

    Patriotism Runs Counter to Ordinary Human Morality.

    This flagrant negation of humanity, which constitutes the very essence of the State, is from the point of view of the latter the supreme duty and the greatest virtue: it is called patriotism and it constitutes the transcendent morality of the State. We call it the transcendent morality because ordinarily it transcends the level of human morality and justice, whether private or common, and thereby it often sets itself in shared contradiction to them. Thus, for instance, to offend, oppress, rob, plunder, assassinate, or enslave one's fellow man is, to the ordinary morality of man, to commit a serious crime.

    In public life, on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism, when it is done for the greater glory of the State in order to conserve or to enlarge its power, all that becomes a duty and a virtue. And this duty, this virtue, are obligatory upon every patriotic citizen. Everyone is expected to discharge those duties not only in respect to strangers but in respect to his fellow citizens, members and subjects of the same State, whenever the welfare of the State demands it from him.

    The Supreme Law of the State.

    The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle - a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak - and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States - it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.


  • The *REAL* reason EU want's to ban Echelon (Score:3)

    by Skinka ( 15767 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @12:13PM (#1143686)
    It doesn't control it. It doesn't benefit from it. If Echolon was lets say Germany-UK-France-Italy alliance, EU would keep it's mouth shut. EU want's to monitor it citisens just like the US does. A lot of new laws which decrease privacy have been introduced or proposed in various countries. Here in Finland, wiretapping by police was banned until 10 or so years ago. Currently police needs a court order to wiretap someone, but law that allows the police to decide when to wiretap is in the making.

  • Re:What a bunch of dorks (Score:3)

    by jellicle ( 29746 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @09:25PM (#1143687) Homepage
    First of all, even if they do sell your name, they are not allowed to divulge any information on the procedures you've undergone. That's part of your medical record, which they aren't allowed to give out or sell.

    This is wrong. People typically believe that certain "common sense" privacy measures actually exist - but they don't. There's no law that says your doctor, employer or HMO can't sell every bit of information they know about you, from your cancer status to your counselling for depression to the abortion you had when you were 14. There's no law. Not in the U.S. Show me otherwise if you think I'm wrong. You can't.

    Most people believe that there are some sort of minimum privacy standards protecting medical records and the like. But there aren't.
    --
    Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

  • Time for a privacy const. amendment. (Score:3)

    by jjsaul ( 125822 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @11:31AM (#1143688)
    Many (far from all) of the states have privacy protection built into their contitutions. The federal government does not. Every federal right to privacy has been judicially inferred from other rights (4th, 5th, 1st A.s in that order), and the current S.Ct. is ruled by conservatives who fundamentally disagree with that inference. In Novemebr we will pick the president who will choose the next 3 S.Ct. justices. If it is George Bush, your right to privacy will be revoked as "liberal judicial activism." If it is Gore, his administration will likely be just as intrusive, but the S.Ct. will be returned to the center and may provide some protection.

    The only long term solution that would protect privacy from renewed attacks every four years, is a constitutional amendment.

    Oh yea, and the Crypt ;-)

  • The FBI Reading Room (Score:3)

    by Yardley ( 135408 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @12:16PM (#1143689) Homepage
    The FBI keeps a nice library of its doings at its Freedom of Information Act [fbi.gov] homepage. They also explain why [fbi.gov], and what they've left out. They even had a file on Lucille Ball [fbi.gov] ("I Love Lucy") at the request of the house Un-American Activities Committee. Here's an alphabetical listing [fbi.gov] of what they'll show, which is much less than what they've got.

  • Is that our only choices? (Score:3)

    by Glowing Fish ( 155236 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @11:21AM (#1143690) Homepage

    The FBI says that the choice is between getting raped and murdered and losing "a little privacy"...well, do they have any evidence that losing privacy leads to me being safer? If they do, "Bring it out and show it".

    Am I the only person who is harassed by police, etc. more often them I am harassed by criminals?

  • What more is there to say? (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @11:23AM (#1143691) Homepage
    "If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI."

    What's more is that when you only print one line from any source without the surrounding quote, you completely take the quote out of context and nine times out of ten misquote the person. This is what in the news world is called "bad journalism" and it has become a hallmark of YRO reporting on Slashdot (that's right, hallmark, like the standard identifying trait, like the one thing that discredits YRO more than anything else, including the paranoid posters).

    What Paul George, the FBI guy, was saying is that everyone knows the FBI could be the Big Brother which is why they're regulated so tightly to prevent something like that from ever happening. He was making a point about how the FBI is being suffocated, prevented by law from being able to do its job, which is monitoring criminal activity, effectively because people are so paranoid that it could be them being monitored. You may not trust your government, but I trust mine, and frankly, I'm happy that someone out there is doing this because it's too damn easy for people to wreak havoc in this world. Trust me, the FBI can do it a lot better than a group put together by Slashdot ever could.

    So what more is there to say? Try telling the whole story instead of just one line of it. Then maybe people can make informed, rational decisions instead of the irrational paranoia we see in YRO every other day.

  • I'm not so sure it's a misquote... (Score:4)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @01:14PM (#1143692)
    Here's what another article [excite.com] had to say about that same quote. It looks to me as though George himself wasn't the one who talked about the privacy rules. Looks more to me like he was advocating Big Brother. He says "information needs to be collected... if justified," never mind that the FBI would like to justify any "information gathering" it can get away with, as evidenced by many of its recent technology-related actiona and proposals. Recently, to give one example, it tried to persuade Congress to give it the ability to wiretap anyone, at will, without a warrant to do so.

    And yeah, the CIA can't legally spy on US citizens. So what? The US government and the various pieces thereof do illegal things every day. I very much doubt the CIA is any different; they're just better at hiding it.

  • Re:I'm sick of the US (Score:4)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @01:11PM (#1143693)
    I'm no patriot. There are a lot of things the US has done that I don't approve of. Hell, in recent years I don't approve opf most of the stuff the US government has done.

    But every once in a while a truly insipid diatribe comes out, blindly attacking the US without knowing a damn thing. This is one of them.

    I'm sick of them trying to make macho posturings about their military on the world stage, whilst not commiting a single soldier in Kosovo.

    Strange; I see more than a few soldiers there.

    I'm sick of their "moral" centre, whilst at the same time their Red Cross "missionaries" disrupt the lifestyles of villages across SE Asia which had been happy for hundreds of years.

    Um... the Red Cross doesn't do that. It isn't even a religious organization; it's a medical one. You're thinking of that other kind of cross. I'm sick of those myself, but at least I have some idea of what I'm talking about.

    I'm sick of the US and it's stupid lawsuits - the latest being the woman suing Nike for tripping over her shoelaces.

    I haven't heard about this one yet. But I have to agree; the frivolous lawsuits here are way out of control.

    I'm sick of the US way of spelling things, and then trying to claim that it's England that are spelling it wrong.

    Well, guess what. I'm sick of the British way of spelling things, and then trying to claim it's the US that spells it wrong. They're two different dialects, and within themselves, they're both right. Deal with it.

    I'm sick of the US claiming it is the greatest nation on Earth, when any number of other countries could in reality nuke the fuck out of it.

    Do you really think a nation's greatness can be measured by its nuclear arsenal? I should add that any arsenal large enough to "nuke the fuck out of the US" would very likely destroy the rest of the world in the process. What, pray tell, is so great about that?

    And I'm fucking sick of the US proclaiming that they are the only nation who are "free", when they know nothing about any other country in the world, and precious little about their own.

    Here, it depends on your point of view. In one way, the US is actually right in this regard. Read the laws of most nations. To give you one example, take the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 10. It says all people have the right to free speech. The Canadian Charter on is another example, and says, again, that Canadian citizens have the right to free speech. Look, though, at the US Constitution. It doesn't say this. Rather, it says that the government is forbidden to take away the right to free speech. The difference is extremely important; a law can be repealed, thus revoking the right to free speech, but if the government's forbidden to take away free speech then there's nothing it can do. That's the difference; other governments grant freedoms; the US Constitution guarantees them. And there is a school of thought, one with which I happen to agree, that freedom which is not guaranteed is not freedom at all.

    And yes, I know the government has been ignoring a good deal of the Constitution in recent years. Eventually that will catch up to it; even the US government can't run from responsibility forever. I don't know how it'll happen, but eventially it will. I certainly hope it comes in the form of something as peaceful as a major legal smackdown from the Supreme Court (the only US court whose job is to actually do justice, rather than simply interpret existing law), simply because that way causes the least suffering for people.

  • Re:If you are legit, you have no worries (Score:4)

    by jerdenn ( 86993 ) <jerdenn@dennany.org> on Saturday April 08, 2000 @12:19PM (#1143694)
    I can see that everyone is worried about privacy and a "Big Brother" coming to get you, but if you aren't doing anything to arouse suspicion, you shouldn't worry...

    And what defines 'arouse suspicion'? Whose definitions are we going by? Do your political views warrant monitoring? The FBI thought that Albert Einstein's did...

    Albert Eienstein's FBI files, recently released under the FOIA [fbi.gov]

    If you have no reason for the FBI to pay attention to you, they won't.

    This is similar to the arguement that "You wouldn't use encryption unless you had something to hide..."

    Just because I have nothing to hide doesn't mean that I enjoy being watched...

    -jerdenn

  • Privacy is too easy to take for granted... (Score:4)

    by hypergeek ( 125182 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @03:29PM (#1143695)
    For the longest time, I've been excrucatingly paranoid online. Not that I've got too much to hide, but I've always had to rationalize the knowledge that countless third parties could monitor all of my electronic communications with the thought that I'm probably not that important to them, so I'll be lost in the noise. You know, security through obscurity and all that rot.

    Recently, I started a small SourceForge [sourceforge.net] project (erm... my project's not much yet, I'll talk about it more later...), and to administer the project, I finally had to get around to downloading OpenSSH [openssh.com] ( the Linux Port [ibs.com.au] ), and felt a strange feeling as I watched it compile... the thrill of the would-be forbidden... that which the Powers-That-Be fought tooth and nail to supress.

    Finally, after logging into SourceForge with SSH, a profound realization hit me: no third party can intercept my communications. Even if they did, it'd all be gobbledlygook to them. I laughed. True privacy, the most wonderful feeling in the (online) world...

    After that, I can't wait until strong encryption becomes ubiquitously integrated into all communications software, (and all new Linux distributions! ;-).

    The day when every person can communicate freely, without being spied upon from above, or snooped on from below, will be the greatest day in a very long time.

    And don't give me that crap about "criminals" using it to coordinate terrorism. Any serious organized criminal or terror group in all probability has strong crypto, as well as countless other safeguards. Although, I'm not an authority on the subject. (Like Nixon, IANAC ;-)

  • Outlaw espionage!!?!?! (Score:4)

    by Ray Yang ( 135542 ) <.RayAYang. .at. .gmail.com.> on Saturday April 08, 2000 @11:46AM (#1143696)
    Some memorable similar sentiments in the past:

    "Rule number four: no cheating!"
    -- Merlin, Disney's Sword in the Stone

    "The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another."
    -- Article I, the Kellog-Briand Pact of 1928, outlawing War.

    "Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an equilateral rectangle is to the square on one side. "
    -- A bill introduced in Indiana c. 1897

    "Your actions are illegal!"
    -- Anonymous British officer, c. 1776

  • Re:I'm sick of the US (Score:4)

    by cheezehead ( 167366 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @10:23PM (#1143697)
    Flamebait indeed, as the reactions prove, but interesting nonetheless. I can't resist the urge to react to this. I have lived and worked in three different countries in my life, 34 years in Europe and the last four years in the US, and I like to kid myself that I can have an informed opinion on this.

    Thinking they have some God-given right to stick their noses into the rest of the world's business.
    There is some truth in this. The USA has been laying mines in harbors in Nicaragua in the '80s, clearly an act of war. Americans feel they are justified to do this kind of stuff, because "we're the good guys", and "who's gonna do anything about it?"
    The invasion of Grenada is another example. You don't have the right to invade another country just because you don't like their internal politics (it would be a different story if gross crimes against humanity were committed, but that was clearly not the case here).
    As despicable as Noriega is, the invasion of Panama also left a bit of a strange taste in my mouth. Apparently you can just invade another country to arrest someone. Never mind about innocent until proven guilty.

    I'm sick of them trying to make macho posturings about their military on the world stage, whilst not commiting a single soldier in Kosovo.
    That's not entirely correct, I think. Also, I don't completely disagree with the argument that Europe has the first responsibility here.

    I'm sick of their "moral" centre, whilst at the same time their Red Cross "missionaries" disrupt the lifestyles of villages across SE Asia which had been happy for hundreds of years.
    I thought the Red Cross was a Swiss organization originally. Anyway, you can't credit/blame the US for what the Red Cross is doing.

    I'm sick of the US and it's stupid lawsuits - the latest being the woman suing Nike for tripping over her shoelaces.
    True, it's stupid, but it generally doesn't bother people outside of the US.

    I'm sick of the US way of spelling things, and then trying to claim that it's England that are spelling it wrong.
    That's too silly to get worked up about, but I guess you could argue that since US English is derived from UK English, Americans can not reasonably claim that the English spelling is wrong.

    I'm sick of the US claiming it is the greatest nation on Earth, when any number of other countries could in reality nuke the fuck out of it.
    I'm not sure about the nuking part. Fact is that, however horrible nuclear weapons are, they do act as an equalizer in the sense that no country can be protected from them. Not even the USA, and forget about SDI part II, it won't work.
    More interestingly, what I have found in the last four years is that Americans truly believe that the USA is the greatest and most wonderful nation on earth, in every aspect imaginable. You can't really blame them for this, since they have been brainwashed with this idea since they were born. Even so, even the most educated, intelligent and open-minded American cannot completely divorce himself from this idea. Although they can accept on a rational level that some things might be better in some other countries, there is always this subconscious part of them that can't fully accept the notion. I have found this rather disturbing.

    And I'm fucking sick of the US proclaiming that they are the only nation who are "free", when they know nothing about any other country in the world, and precious little about their own.
    Yes, and to give you some examples: even though there is freedom of speech, you cannot say 'excrement' on national television (see, even I'm afraid to use the proper word)
    Less than 5% of adult Americans have a passport. So, 95% have never been ouside the US/Mexico/Canada. You can't live in every country, but a little travel now and then greatly helps to see issues from more than one side.

    To balance this out a little, consider the following:

    - The US Constitution is a brilliant document. Especially the part about being able to amend it is evidence of great vision.

    - Americans are not shallow minded. This is a European prejudice that I had myself when coming to the US, and it is not justified.

  • What a misquote (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08, 2000 @11:07AM (#1143698)
    What the guy was saying is that out of all the government agencies, the FBI is the one that has the resources and can legally investigate US citizens. The CIA can't do that, at least not legally.

    What he was not saying is that the FBI does spy on people. He's only saying that the opportunity is there, but if you read the article, he goes on to say that there are strict laws regarding what the FBI can and cannot do, and those laws are in place for a reason.

    Okay, so the FBI can go outside of the law. So what? So could Bill Gates. So could anyone with enough money. It's even more likely that a private company would be acting as big brother -- because there are fewer people watching the backs of private companies. No one is scared of a medium- or large-sized corporations, because they are all over the place. They are part of everyday life. But they are where the danger lies.

  • Peer review (Score:5)

    by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @02:02PM (#1143699)
    I think the intelligent half of Slashdotters could put together a better system than the FBI is today. As computer geeks and scientists, we're familiar with the extreme benefits of peer review. It is the only way to get exactly what you are looking for, whether it is a piece of software, an accurate scientific theory, or a fair and just policing force.

    You cannot run a democracy in the middle of a shroud of secrecy. Every American needs to know exactly what its government is doing, otherwise democracy falls apart because we can't make any informed decisions. Since the days of JFK we've been voting for a pretty face and a smooth talker. The reason we're resorting to superficial means is that we really don't know what our leaders and agencies are doing. If we knew what decisions our president made behind closed doors, we might not have reelected Clinton, maybe not even Reagan.

    It's easy to argue that a degree of secrecy is required to run a government, that we have to keep secrets from other nations, but I think this arguement falls apart under close scrutiny. The method of government by secrecy is no different from the concept of security-by-obscurity that has been ripped to shreds so many times by computer security experts. It simply is not the best way to do it.

    We are entering an era where we need to start acting like a planet rather than a huge tribe trying to make sure the other tribes don't step on our land. The internet has done some wonderful things for international communication, and it's just getting started. Once the communication infrastructure is in place, it starts to redefine the way people think. Within the next 50 years, nationalism will fall apart. People will not define themselves as Americans, British, French, or Japanese, but as people. Boundaries between people can only exist so long as boundaries to communication exists.

    When people start thinking as one, the governments must follow suit and stop trying to function by isolation. The U.S. has traditionally been the slowest to notice this. We have blatantly stupid crypto laws because our government thinks for some reasons that only American programmers can write good crypto software, and if we isolate them from the rest of the world, the rest of the world won't get crypto. Yeah, maybe America used to be the software center of the world, but as the internet boomed, suddenly the shift focused. Everyone was shocked when no U.S. universities scored in the top ten at the ACM World Programming Finals. I would have been more shocked if we had maintained dominance.

    There have been talks on here before about getting some sort of geek political action committee. We need way more than that, we need to get our ideas and philosophies, the wisdoms we take for granted, and apply them to our system of government in a practical way. The concepts we consider obvious aren't just for world domination of our operating systems, they can actually improve the world. The FBI could learn a lot from slashdotters if we could only teach it how to effectively apply what we know.

  • Re:If you are legit, you have no worries (Score:5)

    by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @03:45PM (#1143700) Homepage Journal
    Quoth the poster:
    I can see that everyone is worried about privacy and a "Big Brother" coming to get you, but if you aren't doing anything to arouse suspicion, you shouldn't worry.
    to which the best reply is the classic
    In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
    Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
    Then they came for me -
    and by that time no one was left to speak up.
    Pastor Martin Niemöller [hoboes.com]
    (as found on this site [fitug.de], which includes an Internet version, too).

    More directly, the poster also says:

    I care a lot more that the e-mail of terrorists is being read at my small sacrifice than I care that the FBI sees that my friend and I are talking about burritos or whatever.
    First, I happen not to feel it's a small sacrifice at all. I recognize your right to feel differently and I respect your exercise of that right ... but I still think your valuation is wrong here.

    Second, if these hypothetical terrorists are stupid enough to transmit in plaintext over unsecured routes, then they're so inept that the FBI would capture them without the email surveillance. Let's face it -- the proposed measures won't be effective against true, dedicated opponents. But they'd be perfect against the large, undereducated, unmotivated public.

    Existing laws on surveillance, wiretapping, etc., have been (easily) extended to cyberspace. They protect, nominally at least, the rights of citizens. Although the FBI guy intended the oppositie, he's right: These things must be balanced. What worries me is that many (upper) law enforcement officials seem to place no value on citizens' privacy at all. They don't seem clued in as to why people get edgy about this.

    Until the government does understand that privacy is a valuable right, I'd rather it not get any more powers to poke around my life.

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