U.S. Proposes Centralized Internet Surveillance 746
Mr.Intel writes "The Times is reporting that President Bush is 'planning to propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users.' The recommendation is part of a report entitled 'The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace'. It is due to be published early next year."
IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:0, Insightful)
It's about time (Score:0, Insightful)
Bummer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm still fond of being reasonably anonymous and having the ability to conduct conversations in privacy though; imagine the uproar if people were told that they wouldn't be allowed to privately converse with friends over the phone or even in their own homes! At the very least, I feel that citizens should not be trackable except without due cause; sort of like getting a warrant, I suppose.
Hey George Bush! I accidentally ran over your pet cow yesterday. Personally, I hope the system gets filled with garbage. ^_~
Ummmm No... (Score:0, Insightful)
The internet is so open and not private that it doesn't make a good form of secure communication with out a lot of effort. And it should be pretty obvious when those methods are used since encrypted traffic looks, well, encrypted (DUH).
How can the ability to track every persons usage of the interent help with finding and fighting terrorism. How about convincing people that anger, killing and destruction may get attention but they don't solve problems.
Alric The Mad
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
What monitoring everyone all the time does is make everyone a suspect, thus in the eyes of law enforcement a criminal. Everyone's Internet usage is automatically monitored regardless of probable cause. Blanket surveillance regardless of guilt or cause is the foundation for the police state that Bush, Ashcroft, Poindexter, etal. wish so desperately to establish.
Difference with a phone ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, any terrorist communicating message not encrypted over, hidden in picture or other data, or using a code word system is already a dead or arrested terrorist. How THIS system is supposed to rpeevtn another 9/11 when the FAILURE of theuautorithy was to INTERPRET THE DATA and NOT get the data ?
Call me a paranoid , but if you control the communication between people, you control the people too. It looks more like population control than terrorism fight.
stop raping the memory of the 9/11 victims (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, does anyone believe that the Feds could actually get through all the data? Sure natural language processing could analyze some of the data, but all of it? And really, do we believe that terrorists really so stupid as to put "Attack this Thusday at Place X--Bring Explosives" in their subject lines?
Apart from the practical nature of the collecting and analyzing data, are we just a little too nutty about wanting to feel safe? Homeland Security, watching our neighbors, analyzing what sites I surf, will that really keep terrorists out of the US? Is this all just a bunch of fear motivated policies that will keep us placated while we go about our day, at least until the next event.
Sure we need to be prepared and all, but at least lets demand a little intelligence and thought.
My little rant.
Can Liberty Survive? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Tiffany Olson, the deputy chief of staff for the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, said yesterday that the proposal, which includes a national network operations center, was still in flux. She said the proposed methods did not necessarily require gathering data that would allow monitoring at an individual user level." [Emphasis added]
Just another chip off the mantle of Lady Liberty.
Riggghhhhtttt (Score:4, Insightful)
How many visits does slashdot get? How many page views? Ebay? MSNBC? Weatherchannel? Tom's Hardware?
Does anyone here actually understand the magnitude of pages, sites, and information that they are proposing on watching and filtering?
The number is mind boggling.
We have folks comparing this to another step twords 1984. In readiong their comments, I wonder if they've even read the book?
All this "surveillance" of the web will accomplish is a useless oversized database with statistics that will take people years to get a grasp on. It'll be a case of "too much information" that won't be easily collated - and hence , pretty useless.
Re:States are asserting their rights (Score:1, Insightful)
There's something wrong with all of this.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think they could. Sure, they can tell in hinsight that they detected communication that indicated something was going on. But, realizing beforehand what is significant and what is not, not even 100000 trained monkeys could do that.
The problem is "too much information". The problem isn't getting the information, the problem is realizing what is important and what is not. Of course, going big-brother is going to help sooo much on the information overload... :-P
Thanks, Bush! (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, nothing assures freedom like constant, unchecked surveillance.
Re:Difference with a phone ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Although this isn't really an English sentence, I'll respond. You missed it. Several laws have been enacted in the past few months so that law enforcement people don't even need a warrant (aka: "special judge writing"). They can already listen to/watch anything we say/do without any kind of warrant or even reason. Orwell's 1984 arrived several months ago, they're just tidying up the details now.
Suck me off and swallow, Ashcroft.
Re:First thought (Score:3, Insightful)
NSA spends lots of money decrypting it to reveal a looping video of me laughing at them, telling in Soviet Russia jokes, and http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com about 10 times.
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Insightful)
1.The nature of internet makes it fully possible to create secure channels for communication that is practically untappable. Teorrists are able to hide their communications and its content from this kind of survielance.
And since they KNOW everything is unsafe, there will be less chance for crucial slip-ups. Remember that the goverment was able to establish enormous amounts of facts very shortly after the 9/11. So this will simply be enhancements and publicity to a existing system
2. Survilance do not solve *ANYTHING*! 9/11 is the biggest wake up call saying this. Looking for somthing without knowing what, will always be futile. Criminals and terrorists have to be properly investigated to stand trail. If the goverment had put more resources to investigation than to surveilance, 9/11 might never happened.
3.Criminals doesnt loose in internet surveilance . You do. Its your privacy that is threathen, and its your life that can be simply destroyed by any computer literate that want to hurt you by using your computer.
The good news is that when I get tired of my goverment, I can retire it with a carefully crafted message.... (its impressive to see what the press can do if they get a hint about childporn on a goverment computer
RIP act, and other animals (Score:2, Insightful)
The regulation of investigtory powers act (RIP act) in the uk is trying to achieve the same thing. But no one has worked out who is going to pay for it yet. I can imagine an 'online security' tax being added to my ISP bill. So I pay to be spied on. Great.
How long do you think it will be before you have to show ID before you log on at an internet café
In fact in today's news [bbc.co.uk] there is an article about the phone companies being flooded with request for information on mobile calls and locations. Half a million in a year. Over 1% of phone users in the UK would have been checked up.
This will not stop terrorism, it will just mean that the terrorists will have to find some other way to communicate, or a more sneaky way of doing it online.
Not in America (We Pray) (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going to cite details as I don't currently have the block of paper in front of me.
However, I do feel I have to comment. This document is based in fear, not hope. It is not a workable proposition in the United States of America, but would have been very well accepted in the former East Germany or in almost any coldwar eastern block nation.
Under the proposals all persons accessing information or making transactions electronically, or having transactions made for them, would be monitored, recorded and archived at all times for later retrieval under unstated conditions, by unstated persons, for vague purposes of security.
Stalin would have loved it.
The next step beyond this would be to outlaw any and all transactions that were deliberately masked to try and hide from the evesdroppers the origin, content, or time of the communication, because if you feel the need to hide, you must have something to hide, and you are assumed to be a criminal.
I can't speak for everyone, but I do know that I felt safer on September 12th 2001 than I will on September 12th 2005 if all this continues.
We Can Stop This (Score:4, Insightful)
So with this on our radar, privacy advocates and reasonable-minded citizens can practice good ol' democracy, and stop this thing in its tracks.
It's worked before (c.f. Clipper Chip), and can work again.
"The Times" (Score:2, Insightful)
The Los Angeles Times? Seattle Times? London Times? High Times? ;-)
It's good to remember that the New York Times, although a very good newspaper, isn't the only "Times" and that not everyone is fixated on the East Coast.
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Insightful)
(Quoted again) The international and unregulated nature of the internet has, up until now, enabled communication that was completely untappable.
(Ergo, in order to provide security for the people, government needs the ability to monitor law-abiding citizens.)
The underlying assumptions to this argument are that (a) government would be unable to perform its primary function, which is to protect the people from the initiation of force, without the continuous monitoring of peaceful, law-abiding citizens, (b) the freedom destroyed by this legislation is worth less to the average citizen than the security gained by implementing the program, and finally, (c) the legislation *will* actually increase the security of the average citizen.
Naturally, anyone who favors this sort of oppression can and will offer definitive proof for assumptions (a), (b), and (c).
Re:I'm sorry but... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for G. W., I doubt that he's going to get voted in during the 2004 elections, since it's doubtless by now that he's going to have half the country nuked by screwing with Iraq.
And now, for the story... this man has been using the Terrorist Protection trademark to invade our privacy, step on our constitutional rights. And he still didn't catch bin Laden.
that means ... (Score:2, Insightful)
So essentialy this plan means another taxation of internet acces while it also means (as ussual) loss of some privacy and (as ussual) higher potential for abuse for (as ussual) not that big increase in safety (if any increase at all) for (not just, as ussual) US tax payers.
(By "ussual" I mean "as was alredy reported on ./ with regards to some other attempts". Or at least I hope those were mainly attempts.)
What About the Merits? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bummer. (Score:5, Insightful)
FEAR (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush et. al don't know what to do. The idea that disenfranchised individuals from a foreign nation might sacrifice themselves and find some domestic support for their cause has him baffled. Like anybody else when he is scared, he is doing anything he can think of, no matter how useless.
Homeland security seemed draconiun, redundant, but understandable considering what the Army/Navy/AF/Marines have been doing over the past few years. Then unlimited detention without arrest, INS prisions, refusing entry for stage performers, a dangerous smallpox vaccination program, a symbolic war with IRAQ, threats against North Korea...
Bush is scared, and helpless. He knows that the information was available to law enforcement before the attack, but he doesn't have enough finesse to understand that processing information is harder than gathering it. So, by the "Bigger is Better" American mentality, he is trying to fix America's intelligence agency by gathering tremendous amounts of basically irrelevant data. Not that this president sees the elegance of checks and balances: let's be honest, if he could get away with Ashcroft declaring him emperor, he would have done it a long time ago. But all that information and power will at some point be used wrongly. Not that it will be abused, but it will be used wrongly. History has proven that.
It's funny, but if the terrorists were attempting to shread American values and traditions, thus making it an unliveable country and reducing it's power on a world stage, then they have succeeded. And by not reappearing and therefore presenting an elusive target, the service their cause even further.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
-C
Re:What About the Merits? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the bright side (Score:3, Insightful)
(OK I know they'll set it up so the "little people" get fucked while "trusted" big businesses can do whatever they want, but at least I tried to present what is IMO the logical outcome of this...)
Re:States are asserting their rights (Score:2, Insightful)
If the Constitution had erased all the authority of states, it would never have been ratified.
The Federalist Papers are a fascinating look at how people were thinking at the time. They actually saw state power as a hedge against a tyrannical national government.
The Tenth Amendment, paraphrased, says that the Federal government doesn't have any powers beyond what's explicitly in the Constitution. It's not completely a dead letter even now. Today's Supreme Court has overruled parts of Federal laws (Brady Bill, Violence Against Women Act, another whose name I forget) on the grounds that the national government was usurping state prerogatives.
That's why we needed the Fourteenth Amendment. When states became the oppressive ones, the only way for the national government to intervene was to add a provision to the Constitution that would allow intervention.
That's why the tag end of so many amendments is "Congress shall have power to enforce this amendment by apropriate legislation". Congress wouldn't have the power otherwise.
The AC is right that the Civil War and Reconstruction made a huge change from what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Once "state's rights" become a code word for racism, things were never the same.
So is there hope of using state power to block Internet surveillance? No. Legally, the Federal government has jurisdiction over interstate commerce. That definitely includes the Internet. Practically, can you imagine how your state police would stop your packets from being logged?
Just like the TIA - Same arguments apply (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately when you live in the day where Bob Barr supports the ACLU, I don't think this'll get off the ground (or if it does, it'll be crippled or shot down shortly after).
Re:It's about time (Score:1, Insightful)
And it is already well-established in their foreign policy.
Proof-of-concept underway (Score:3, Insightful)
Giant waste of effort. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:great news!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, it would be against the Canadian Constitution's provisions on privacy and security of the person. Any citizen could then sue their ISP and require that all packets not specifically bound for the US not be routed through an American-monitored node.
Third point - this will just spur people to use encryption and/or anonymizers.
Last point - As a matter of sovereignty, other governments may then decide that all packets passing outside their borders be encrypted by the local ISP.
Re:The Transparent Society (Score:2, Insightful)
Total Information Awareness (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does it all end? Do I get accused of being a terrorist because I believe that George W. Bush and his administration are a bunch of fascist criminals who are wiping their ass with the Bill of Rights -- and dare to publish said information? Am I "encouraging terrorism" and thus a "person of interest" for saying such?!
Next Step: Doors! (Score:4, Insightful)
SSL and SSH (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:great news!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Which means that if/when this monitoring system is in place, it would be in the US government's "security" interest to try to make all traffic of interest go through US-controlled territory at some point.
Which, in turn, means that the US government would be very happy to see US-based multinational corporations gain control of all the main routing points worldwide, because those corps would already have the monitoring technology in place. Even though the monitoring laws should only require monitoring in US territory, what would prevent the US government from making secret deals with those companies to monitor non-US traffic, too? Only if the monitoring can be detected and revealed by third parties can we be sure that this is not happening.
In other words, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - unless there is a simple, reliable way for us peons to monitor the monitoring, the potential for abuse will only be restrained by the conscience of those using the monitoring. Not a good situation.
Re:Is this not espionage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a realworld example. Guy emails me from San Francisco. I'm in Los Angeles. For reasons that escape everyone, his email usually goes thru Singapore, where presumably anyone with the tools and the urge can read it.
How would the U.S. gov't feel about other countries monitoring what is nominally U.S. traffic, but thru the mysteries of internet routing, didn't happen to stay within U.S. borders enroute? How does this differ from the U.S. monitoring say British or Chinese traffic that happened to get routed thru the U.S.??
(Hint: There is no *logical* difference.)
Re:Bummer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Transparent Society (Score:2, Insightful)
District attorney Mike Shrunk is the one city leader who seems amused by having his trash stolen but he maintains that police have a legitimate reason to take trash, whereas the media does not.
"If I'm engaged in criminal conduct, perhaps I give up some of those privacy rights. And this is what's it's all about, and it's a legitimate place for the courts to weigh in," said Shrunk.
The whole issue here and in this referenced article is that the police, under existing law, could, for example go through people's trash, if they first obtain a warrant. If for example, Mr. Shrunk were, as he says, engaged in criminal conduct, it should be simple for the police to obtain a warrant, and then search his trash.
It seems that none of these officials have common sense... Do not waste my tax money on new laws or organizations when we have what we need already. Lets let the existing organizations perform their duties using existing laws.
(I am not a lawer.)
Re:We Can Stop This (Score:1, Insightful)
This is evident in the fact that many elected officials voted recently to go to war with Iraq despite the overwhelming majority of feedback they recieved demanding the opposite. Some (California) even stated that if they had relied only on what the people had offered as feedback they would have voted against the war, not for it as they had.
Boy, sure doesn't sound much like a democracy to me
Re:Bummer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did you come up with this nugget of wisdom? Non-US citizens, at least while within US borders, are supposed to be extended the same rights and protections afforded citizens, with the exception of those rights afforded exclusively with citizenship - such as voting, serving in elected office and on juries, etc.
The Constitution and Declaration of Independance do not suppose rights because of fortuitous national origin, but because these are asserted to be the inalienable rights of mankind. It is this concept of rights afforded to all that made the US potentially more promising than other attempts to define what civilization means.
It is now this basic concept which is being callowly disregarded, as manifest in the suspension of habeus corpus, etc., that we have recently witnessed. These things are now so poorly cherished, and so carelessly transmitted by systems of news and education, that you are even in ignorance of them. These rights are not the ephemera of US nationality, they are its raison d'etre.
Every right and every respect denied someone because they are a foriegn national, is a right you, as an American, are being denied too...
Why is it that non-Americans are better informed and educated about the US than its own natives?
Think hard. You know who betrayed you.
The Ideological Time At The Tone is 1954 -- beep! (Score:5, Insightful)
The phrase of the day is "chilling effect," brought to you by the letters H, U, A, and C.
Or isn't anyone else thinking that TIA (and friends) is a little closer to the HUAC [upenn.edu] than Orwell's book? Just alias "Commies" to "terrorists," and it works just fine.
I mean this new plot is like, well, imagine -- naah, hold on, I have to say it -- imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Joe McCarthys...
Re:great news!! (Score:2, Insightful)
But it can be attempted. Maybe you don't have 100% coverage. But the fact of the matter is, large chunks of the net do flow through finite points. Witness the concern in previous months over Worldcom's business problems -- their pipes carry a significant percentage of internet traffic.
Besides, it would be against the Canadian Constitution's provisions on privacy and security of the person. Any citizen could then sue their ISP and require that all packets not specifically bound for the US not be routed through an American-monitored node.
And how that has stopped CSIS (the canadian security equivalent to the CIA) in the past? Or, for that matter, how would that stop a US government agency operating outside of the jurisdiction of Canada? And, finally, how many citizens would have the time, resources, and commitment to 'sue their ISP'?
Third point - this will just spur people to use encryption and/or anonymizers.
I seem to recall people claiming this point when PGP first came out. Has widespread adoption of encryption tools come about? No. Will it? Don't think so -- it's too inconvenient for regular usage.