British Police Demand Access To Encryption Keys 814
flip-flop writes "In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, police here in the UK have asked for sweeping new powers they claim will help them counter the threat. Among these is making it a criminal offense for people to refuse disclosing their encryption keys when the police want to access someone's files." From the article: "The most controversial of the police proposals is the demand to be able to hold without charge a terrorist suspect for three months instead of 14 days. An Acpo spokesman said the complexity and scale of counter-terrorist operations means the 14-day maximum is often insufficient."
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the police really going to believe "I don't have it, they're not my files"?
Guantanamo Bay? (Score:3, Insightful)
umm, Guantanamo Bay? [amnesty.org]
Re:Safe or private? (Score:1, Insightful)
Where are civil liberties truly valued? (Score:5, Insightful)
demand encryption keys ? *yawn* (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not familiar with British law, but I do know American law is based on the same doctorines as the British(from a historical perspective at least).
In the U.S. the court can order you to provide encryption keys and if you do not you will be held in contempt of the court [wikipedia.org]. This usually means the judge puts you in jail until you decide to provide the keys. To me(IANAL) it seems like the above just formalises the practice. Via the wikipedia reference it appears as though the U.S. did this in 1981.
Being held in contempt of the court is a very normal tool for judges to use with uncooperative court subjects, cryptographic keys aren't special or different.
Re:Guantanamo Bay? (Score:3, Insightful)
People let it happen (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not happy that New Yorkers are willing to subject themselves to 'random' searches. I'm pretty sure the London terrorist attacks will be the catylst for widespread CCTV in the U.S.
From TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see what that problem is, as long as due process is respected. Murder suspects can't turn away search warrants of their property, and if the proper warrants are filled out electronic files should be treated as physical property.
Secret warrants or police officers "going fishing" is another story.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:pfft (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally, if you don't trust any methods above you allways have one time pad that is provably 100% secure. Drawback is that keylength equals to message lenght and key can't be reused.
Isn't a subpoena good enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Safe or private? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And if you do not have the key? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well Chomsky is in order here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Be British and very very very very very afraid:
Noam Chomsky [zmag.org]
The western world is in its worst decadence since the Medieval times...
Re:Guantanamo Bay? (Score:0, Insightful)
You must be new here. Ever hear of Jose Padilla?
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you'll be found to be aiding and abetting.
If you're holding data for someone that you don't know what it is or how to decrypt it, you will be perceived as an accomplice. Or, just summarily assumed to be the original source of the data and just recalcitrant.
Interesting to see would be if you can have your lawyer hold onto these things and have them covered under privelege.
It's scary that in so-called free societies it can become a crime to keep (possibly legal and innocuous) secrets from the government.
Rights of the accused (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there's no friend like a friend who talks you into criminal complicity, I always say. I mean, what are friends for, if not to help you launder money or hide assets? And what ever happened to the bad guys just writing down the key, laminating, and burying it in a coffee can three paces south of the big oak tree on old man Smith's back forty? You know, where you used to go and smoke pot and dream of the days when you'd have enough ill-gotten assets to have to hide them from the court? Ah, those were the days.
Incidentally, what would you have the cops do while they're sitting there looking at the hard drive from a guy they just arrested, who yesterday was having some trouble blowing himself up? Ask him ever so nicely? OK, so he was willing to die in order to kill you and your kids, so he's probably not going to be big on cooperating, but the owner of the cyber cafe where he often runs chats with his equally inept fellow bombers - is it worth being able to crack his encrypted leavings so that maybe we can stop his buddies from smearing more innocent people all over the inside of a tunnel? You are aware that actual people are actually spending their days actually thinking up and acting on ways to kill people that run yogurt stores, work at rehab clinics, build web servers, teach grade school, and have families that depend on them... right? This isn't a game, it's actually happening. And as the prime minister of Autstralia put it so eloquently yesterday, we're using 19th century approaches to dealing with bad guys happy to use 21st century technologies (um, even as these twits condemn modernity - always a telling little bit of confusion on their part).
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
Attached to this email is a file containing the details and photographs of the series of crimes that we are in the process of committing. Be careful, it has personal idenfiying information, documents, and photos that could send us both to jail for a long time! You've got the encryption key already, so you should be able to access it. Also, attached is an unencrypted photo of the most recent crime (all personal identifying information is cropped off, as you'll notice - that's all in the encrypted contents so that we don't get caught.)
Sincerely,
A. Criminal
Attachments:
EncryptedFileOfGarbage.zip.pgp
CrimePhoto.jpg
----
Dear Prosecutor,
I have good evidence that A. Victim is part of some sort of crime ring; I sniffed an email containing such discussion off my network, and it contained the picture attached below, and some encrypted attachment. I don't want to get involved, but thought I should pass this on to you.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
Attachments:
EncryptedFileOfGarbage.zip.pgp
CrimePhoto.jpg
Re:pfft (Score:5, Insightful)
And how exactly would you know this?
From the PGP FAQ:
Sure it is unlikely, but unless you have some way of proving what you say, it would be unwise to believe that no one can / will in the near future be able to crack or intercept your encrypted messages.Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And if you do not have the key? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Safe or private? (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't eliminate terror to the point of "victory"
I've never once heard any definition on conditions for "victory" in the war on terror. Actually that's the whole point isn't it.. The government is waging a war where their goal is the right to define things for the people, thus creating a ruling government rather than a representative one where the people define the issues at hand.
Or better (Score:1, Insightful)
But seriously, I find it ludicrous that they can even charge you for not handing over "encryption" keys.
What if the file really was corrupted?
What if you just have some random garbage on your drive? (output from "cat
Imagine creating one of these files from
I use an encrypted swap partition. It's encrypted with random keys, if they asked me for them there is no way for me to comply.
I also sometimes delete encrypted swap files. Lets say they look through the deleted files on my drive. Those would be considered encrypted files but I would have no way to access them.
I have encrypted data from backups I did years ago that I have long since forgot the key for. I should probably just throw it out but I'm hoping I will remember the key one day (or find the scrap paper I wrote it on, or computers become fast enough to crack it, or whatever). I couldn't give them the key for that stuff if I wanted!
It just seems insane to charge people with stuff like this. Computers are so flexible and loose it's hard to tell what is really going on. You could string innocent people up so easy with stuff like this.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:1, Insightful)
Right. Because he was a more familiar problem, and only killed people in the hundreds of thousands. Definately a superior situation. I'm sure they'd also like to give back the 1,500 new independent newspapers and media sources they've started in the last two years, the improving electrical and water systems (producing more than when Saddam was running it into the ground), the actual relations with other countries. No, better to go back to a guy that killed that many on purpose some months, let his sons put parents through industrial chippers while their kids had to watch, and tortured their soccer teams for losing games. No question, that's a better scenario. Definitely morally better.
Why not ask the families of the people dying there (at the hands of Islamic extremists) what they think about the Syrian, Jordanian, Iranian and Saudi sponsorship of that slaughter. Your 25k number includes people killed in combat zones, certainly, but also includes huge numbers of people killed by fellow Muslims looking to prop up a mysoginistic, medieval theocratic way of life that most Iraqis are showing they don't want. Ask the average Iraqi if they're ready for their own military and police to entirely deal with the foreign insurgents, or if they'd like US and British troops to continue to do the hard stuff while the locals learn the ropes and flesh out their constitution.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually he would be guilty of not releasing the encryption key and that's what he would go to jail for. Not the aquarium, baby sharks, laser pointers, and duct tape. So he's not completely innocent.
GoodGuy has probably already broken the law anyway (to some degree) by helping his friend hide the information. It's just he wasn't caught yet.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
You're screwed.
Remember, you're guilty until proven innocent. If you have data files on your computer that look suspicious or the cops can't read, then you must be trying to hide something. Therefore, you're guilty of something.
Re:Encryption key (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the exact same combination as my luggage!
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:2, Insightful)
All said- the issue is this- we need to prevent these events, because my friend, if there is a big incident in the US, no citizens will have any civil rights... This doesn't require a tinfoil hat- the Patriot act was just one of thousands of bills that are sitting around, waiting for an event- after something happens, they just pull one out and push it through.
We need to find a happy medium between secruity and privacy. But there is an issue when terrorists in the US are taught that if they are arrested, call the ACLU.
My Request (not a response to the above post- just in general): If you have never served in the military, please, please, please don't beat your chest at other people, especially not the British. I get so sick of hearing people make fun of France or whatever for "cowardice" yet the person making fun has never served or shown bravery. It is sort of like bragging because the pro sports team you cheer for won the Super Bowl, even though you never played....
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want to hide something under the new rules, encrypt it and store it on a network of zombie computers, or a p2p network. That will cause real problems for others, but you'll never have possession to be charged with not providing the keys.
Or, just compromise your enemy's computer and store some encrypted files there and then turn them in as a concerned citizen. Even if they manage to get aquitted, the implied guilt during the process will destroy their lives. It's sort of scary if they're gonna assume you are the one who did the encryption simply because you possess the file.
~Security - ~Liberty (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't have liberty without security, so what's the point of talking about preserving all your civil liberties when you're not free anyway? In reality compromises must be made to maximise freedom.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:2, Insightful)
One of those rights is the right of silence. If when someone's arrested they don't have to answer any of the questions the police ask them, why the flying fuck should they have to give them their encryption keys?
Standard IANAL disclaimer applies.
Re:Guantanamo Bay? (Score:4, Insightful)
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed....
Either you have to charge them or you have to let them go. This crap isn't even legal under the geneva convention, not that this administration seems to give a damn.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of people who're more comfortable with the monster we know. Hell, look at US foreign policy.
Islamic extremists are hardly the only people killing anyone in Iraq. Iraq was *not* a misogynist medieval theocracy under Saddam! Get your blind prejudice out of your ass and actually take a look around!
The US are not the good guys here. There aren't any good guys here. Especially when ignorant fucks like you spread this same diseased prejudice about the state of Iraq before the war, and especially before the sanctions. I half expect to start hearing people talking about the White Mans Burden. Current US policy is to play legal games so that we can torture and hold people in ways that should be illegal, but duck out through loopholes (gitmo, civilian (read: mercenary) "interrogation specialists", shipping suspects to Syria).
History will show whether or not the Iraqi invasion was better or worse for the country as a whole. I'm not prepared to make that judgement, and I'd pity our president for having made it if I thought the import of it actually touched him. The average Iraqi is substantially worse off today than he was before the invasion. Some (Kurds, most obviously) are much better off. Some are worse off but believe it's for the better and move on. A great many are just pissed off.
Are you seriously going to tell people that the US is better because we don't kill and torture as many people? Thats our big claim to fame as the moral guiding light who will bring true democracy to Iraq?
Re:Safe or private? (Score:3, Insightful)
The goal isn't to end terrorism, but to convert the democracies into police states.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kind of amusing that we defended Brittain against the fascists sixty years ago and now we're encouraging them to adopt our fascism.
The US entered the second world war in the December of 1941, a full year and a half after the Battle of Britain in summer 1940. Hitler abandoned Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain, when the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe for control of Britains skies during that long summer.
As the other poster says, you didnt defend us, you fought with us.
Re:Well Chomsky is in order here... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would rather be:
USA government = bad
and it is not a matter of belief but of fact. He doesn't tell nice feel-good patriotic stories of heroes and scoundrels but presents steel arguments and ice cold facts to make his case.
Do you have any objection to the facts? Can you point to an inaccuracy? Most likely not. Now if his views do not settle right with your feel-good ideas that is a problem you have to deal with...
what we need is a multi-key system (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, if somebody demands/coerces the key from you, you can simply provide one of the alternate keys, which decrypts the cipertext to reveal an innocuous message.
Obviously the system would have to be designed such that it would be impossible to detect how many messages are simultaneously encoded, and no way to determine any one key using knowledge of any of the other keys. But it might be mathematically possible.
Has any work been done on this?
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
If America cared so much about Hussein killing Iraqis, then why did they give him weapons to do it with? The United States never, ever, cared about the livelyhood of Iraqis. That's why they supported Saddam until he got uppity, and then (with the help of the UN) imposed sanctions that strangled the nation.
Don't give me a song and dance about how you helped free the Iraqi people by deposing Hussein. You helped subjugate them in the first place by propping him up.
Why were you propping him up? Because just a little while back, the other murdering dictator you propped up in Iran got overthrown.
Who else were you funding around that time? Oh, right.. your good friend Osama Bin Laden the freedom fighter.
Your country has its dirty, grubby little fingers all over the mess in the middle east. Why is that? Because the middle east has the substance that you need like a crackhead needs crack. You'll do anything to get it. You'll support dictators, you'll support terrorists, and you'll be friends with the country that the terrorists who attacked you came from.
And now I'm sure you'll be prepared with justifications for why it was OK for the US to support Saddam, and why it was OK for the US to support Osama - but then, people who do horrible things always have justifications for the things they do. Osama has a justification for flying planes into buildings full of civilans, and you have yours for supporting mass murderers.
But aside from tube junkies in America, few people in the rest of the world buy your story. You had an opportunity to show you had changed. You had an opportunity to gain the support of the world after 9/11. You blew it.
Have fun fighting your old friends.
-Laxitive
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a leftist. I just think you're stupid.
Turn on the TV...look at the situation they were in. The only ones prosperous were the ones in power. That $$ (even the oil for food $$) went straight to Hussein and was not spent on food or upkeep of utilities. And don't do like the rest of the left and leave out all of the facts except the ones that support your case. He ATTACKED A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY. He left the oilfields burning when he realized he couldn't keep it for himself. He murdered so many they may never find all the mass graves. He fired upon allied airplanes in the no-fly zone more times than most people know. The list goes on and on.
Right. During the sanctions, the economy went to shit. I said that. Thats kinda what happens in sanctions. I'm not sure what the hell attacking a neighboring country is supposed to mean. Does it matter if it's a not-neighboring country? I mean, we attacked Afghanistan. And frankly, I'm not really going to condemn a leader for fighting back, in whatever minimal ways, against military force being used against his country. Theres plenty of bad things to say about Saddam, claiming that he was evil because he shot at enemy military forces is not one of them.
So how many hundreds of thousands would he need to murder to fit this profile? Millions like Hitler?
Iraq was a democracy (nominally), and not in the least ruled by the church. Fuck, that was a major cause of the whole Iraq/Iran dispute. You know, back when Saddam was a good guy, supported by the US? Because he was fighting Iran, which was, and is, a misogynist theocracy.
You seem to have already made that judgement based on your comments...
No. I object to the characterization of the US invasion as an unconditionally good thing. Some good has come of it. A great deal of evil has come of it. In the end, the good may outweigh the evil, but that is not presently the case.
Huh? How? Utilities coming back online, jobs, women aren't stoned to death for showing their face....
This is Iraq we're talking about, not Iran. Iraq has (had?) the highest standard for sexual equality in the Middle East. Women weren't stoned for showing thier face there. They could drive, recieve educations (and Iraq had excellect education infrastructure), own property, hold jobs. All the same stuff they can do in the US. Iraq wasn't some sort of barbaric wasteland the way you seem to think. The current state of society in Iraq is directly attributable to US action. You might argue that it's for the long term best, but it's just insuting that you're claiming a moral justification because we're slowly curing things that our actions caused.
Okay, so what makes the US good and Saddam evil? Everything you've said was nasty and horrible about Saddam are things the US has been responsible for in Iraq as well. So it has to be a matter of scale, right?
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
So let's compare. UK wants 90 days. US wants Guantanamo, military tribunals, zero access to lawyers for suspects, indeterminate holding periods without convictions of crimes...
UK wants encryption keys. US makes it illegal to break any encryption, unless it's the government, which can ignore such laws.
UK wants the power to close websites. US already does this.
UK wants clearer threat levels. US uses crayon colors.
UK wants a discussion on better wire-tap access. US has the Patriot Act.
UK says ""The evolving nature of the current threat from international terrorism demands that those charged with countering the threat have the tools they need to do the job." Ben Franklin has been forgotten in the US.
Doesn't appear that much different to me. (I live in and love the US, by the way.)
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:2, Insightful)
you realize that terrorists are human beings too right? they are EXACTLY the same as you. I love the sheer ignorance that people like you perpetuate. the differences between you and me and a terrorist is motivation. these are some highly motivated people. you cant fight motivation with laws, or draconian police action. If that worked isreal would never get hit by terrorists right?
the problem is that terrorism is not the actual problem that people need to be fighting. the problem people need to be looking at is why. why do terrorists want to bomb america? why do they want to bomb the UK? the answer, is more complicated than "because they are evil" or "because they hate us". why do they have so much will and determination. You probably have never even considered DIEing for something you believe in have you? these people obviously have problems with the current system and are working in the only ways they can to try and change it. the ways they are trying, killing themselves, is pretty extreme wouldnt you say? does that not say that maybe theres some pretty big fucking problems with something that they care about? should we not be looking to address those complaints instead of fuelling the fires as the UK/US are currently doing in iraq?
I dont buy the crap that the ordinary terrorist wants to "Send us back to the middle ages". the terrorist is merely a pawn doing it out of anger or revenge from years of U.S. torture of the middle east. if americans blew up my house because they wanted the sweet oil underneath id be mighty fucking pissed about it to.
you cannot arrest away all the terrorists. your right, its very 19th century to think that you can fight terrorism with more violence and terror. the only way you can fight it is by sitting down and LISTENING. probably someone who goes to the firing range every week could not understand that so i do understand where you are coming from. your motivated by fear. plain and simple.
I would rather I died in a terrorist attack than have my taxes fund companies/governments that kill people half way around the globe. you do realize you are responsible for the actions of your ELECTED representives right? its what you call moral responsibility. killing is almost always the wrong solution. is dropping bombs on people from a command bunker more humane then strapping one to yourself and blowing a subway?
how can one side be completely evil and the other completely good?
personally i blame religion. that shits gotta go/
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:5, Insightful)
Check out Al Jazeera, if you can find it. Then you might see a sampling of what's really going on over there: shot after shot of dead civilians, including many kids. Many more shots of civilians, barely alive, lying in squalid hospital beds, the remains of their arms and legs wrapped in bandages after being blown off by bombs. Innocent civilians being harassed and humiliated at roadblocks, or worse if they panic and fail to comply with a shouted command they can't understand because it's in English.
You'll see footage of heavily armed US troops kicking in doors of houses, pointing their weapons at civilians, shouting (again in English!) at women and childen cowering in the corners and crying. You'll see picture after picture of abuse of prisoners in US prison camps and hear about people, most of them completely innocent even by admission of the US commanders, who disappear into them for years without charges, without lawyers and without any chance to defend themselves.
Every other day there seems to be yet another suicide bombing in Iraq that kills as many people as the one in London two weeks ago. That attack is still getting saturation coverage on the US networks, but the bombings in Iraq rate, at most, a brief mention each.
Arab culture is quite different from ours, and we can't assume they share our more abstract values like our Bill of Rights (that is, if we actually practiced them ourselves). But they belong to the very same species as we, so it does seem somewhat reasonable to believe that they, no more than we, like being killed or maimed or abused or imprisoned, or having that happen to our friends and families.
Still can't figure out why they hate us? Or are you going to tell me that all that footage is faked somehow?
Re:How else? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlike you - who manage to spend your tax dollars, not on your lazy sick people - but rather to build fanatic "mujahaddin" fighters, who later turn their bloodthirsty sights on the homes of their CIA paymasters!
Good shot. Americins seem to love Ameria so much, but express only contempt for many Americans themselves - as if there were some magical phantasm of "America" that were comprised of something other than the people dwelling therein.
I hope the sand niggers kill you first (Score:1, Insightful)
coming to take you away (Score:4, Insightful)
and I said nothing because I wasn't catholic
Then they came for the witches,
and I said nothing because I'm not a witch
Next they came for the jews,
and I said nothing because I'm not jewish
Now they've come for me,
and there is no one left to say anything for me.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
One of those rights is the right of silence. If when someone's arrested they don't have to answer any of the questions the police ask them
True, but if you're arrested and withhold information which you later rely on in court the fact you withheld that information may be taken into account when deciding if your guilty (or not)
Re:Guantanamo Bay? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that's the point - it was treated more as a ordinary crime rather than another act in an ongoing war being waged on us. This would be akin to treating the attack on Pearl Harbor as a crime and prosecuting the pilots that flew the planes and calling it a day (yes, I know the analogy is not perfect).
I don't know if, without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the US should have done more about the first WTC bombing, but clearly, in retrospect, our response was not very strong relative to the infrastructure that perpetrated it.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
While the wisdom of the US invasion of Iraq can certainly be debated, as can the actual position of average Iraqis on it, thinking that you'll get the full picture on these questions from _either_ Fox News or Al Jazeera is bordering on folly.
Re:Dual Encryption Now Needed (Score:1, Insightful)
Is this Kuroshin? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do they hate us? Well shit - it's not just the US/UK they hate after all! Let's compile a list shall we?
- The Russians (because of Afghanistan and Chechnya)
- The east Indians (because of Kashmir)
- The Isrealis (because of the Palistinians)
- Anyone else who dares to defy 'Allah's Will' - whatever the Imam says it is this week.
The radicalized 'religion of peace' is destoying much progress made in the Arab world. Whole governments are being held hostage by these wackjobs and there is a common thread that a lot of people from the West do not understand - it's all about control.
With Democracy, with so-called human rights, women are given more power. In radical Islam, the women have less rights than most farm animals and here's the thing: THE MEN WANT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. It is one of the many appealing reasons why this way of life is being defended by use of terror and intimidation at every level. It all starts (or started) at home.
When you see these videos (and yes, they were on Fox News also), you need to grasp them in context. Were these shots taken from the Sunni triangle after a few soldiers found their buddies burnt bodies strung up on a bridge somewhere? Were these people themselves intimidated to put up a fleeing suspect?
The images are never enough by themselves to tell the whole story.
Re:Or better (Score:3, Insightful)
The same thought occured to me.
Indeed, if I lived there I would consider preparing several such files and stating publically and in advance that that's exactly what I was doing. They're not encrypted, so it is impossible to provide the key. Assuming it's impossible to distinguish between an encrypted file and a random file, they can't prove that the crime of withholding a key was comitted.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you want me to acknowledge? That other western countries also helped Saddam?
Sure, ok. I'll acknowledge that. There are more than enough kings of the shithill when it comes to supporting Saddam.
That still doesn't change the fact that the US sold him chemical weapons, and warheads - all while it was patently obvious that he was using them to kill and suppress his own citizens.
So you wish to take comfort in the fact that rather than being the only country to support mass murderers, the US happens to be one of many countries to support mass murderers? That's the comfort a lyncher takes from a lynch mob.
I'm not apologizing for the French, I know what they did in Algeria and Vietnam. I'm not apologizing for the Brits, I know what they did in China and India.
That doesn't change the US's lack of credibility one ounce.
As far as Osama, go figure out the difference between the mujahadeen and a rich-kid like Osama before you spout off. They are not all one and the same. Go figure out what Osama's original beef with the US was. (Hint, *he* wanted to be the leader of the army protecting Saudi Arabia against Hussein, he was pissed when the Saudi govt asked the US to do it.)
Of course they're not all one and the same. Last I checked cloning technology was not that advanced yet.
And Osama has a lot of beefs against a lot of people. He'd probably have a beef against me because I like pork chops. He's fucked up. The point is, America gave him, and other people like him, weapons and money.
I know who the mujahadeens are and were. They were Islamic fundamentalists, and they got their start fighting with the US against the commies.
Your reasoning is also shoddy. Just because other US Administrations either tacitly or overtly supported Saddam or Osama means we should not try to rectify that..ever? We are obliged to never call them on the carpet for their misdeeds due to past alliances? What kind of reasoning is that? Nations change, governments change, goals change. The US and the UK sent Stalin literally billions of tons of support in WWII, because of that support the US and the UK should not have opposed the encroachment of the Soviet Union throughout Western Europe in the Cold War? Is that your reasoning?
But the problem is that they're not rectifying it. They're making it worse, and the rest of us will have to deal with the fucked up monsters they help create. Iraq is now a terrorist state. Instead of hidden training grounds, now there's an entire fucking country where terrorists can get real training fighting against the infidels.
They're helping the terrorists out again. This time not directly, but indirectly.
The US is taking a stand and cleaning up the Osamas and Husseins of the world, acknowledging the mistakes of the past, and you *oppose* this?
They're not cleaning up the Husseins of the world. They still support Egypt. They still support Pakistan. They still support Saudi Arabia. Their biggest trading partner is still China. The list of countries in which the US has assisted the overthrow of democraticaly elected governments and replaced them with dictators is long and sordid.
America has no problem with dictators or authoritarian states or terrorists - they just dislike the ones that don't suck up to them.
And right now they're helping Osama gain followers and support. In the wake of 9/11, Americans, shocked beyond belief that the freaks they helped create can come back
Re:russian front (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. I remember when Iraq attacked the U.S. I was scared to death.
Hijackers on 9/11/2001 were mostly from *SAUDI ARABIA*. Bin Ladin attracts newcommers to his cause mainly by expressing a distaste for U.S. presence in *SAUDI ARABIA*.
We invaded Afghanistan, spent 4 or 5 months there, and basically pulled out. Then we, for no justifiable reason, invaded a soverign nation and deposed the elected head of state.
Yes, we were provoked. But, it's time to ask the two critical questions:
1.) Are we attacking the right people?
2.) Why did they attack us in the first place?
Understanding the enemy is the first step to defeating him.
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see, the US has freed the Iraqis from Saddam and delivered them into the hands of terrorists. Here's the difference between Saddam and the terrorists: Saddam had something to lose, and thus he was inherently easier to control than the terrorists, who have nothing to lose.
Now, instead of one madman controlling Iraq - one that could be placated with power - you have a thousand madmen running freely and killing indiscriminately. Now, instead of Iraqis being able to stay alive by keeping their mouth shut, they get to roll the dice on wether they will live or die every single time they walk outside.
Ask a man if he wants freedom and he'll say yes. Ask a man if he wants to choose freedom at the cost of having his country destroyed, losing his job, losing his livelyhood, and risking himself and his family getting blown up by terrorists or shot up by soldiers, and he'll tell you to go fuck yourself.
Here's the crux of the matter: America had no right to invade Iraq. It had no right to destroy the Iraqis' country and kill their citizens in the name of freedom. Nobody has the right to play god with the lives of others, like Saddam did.
I seriously want to know: why do people like you support Saddam Hussein?
For the same reason you support terrorists.
-Laxitive
Re:Oh yeah, that's why we threw their tea away (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy fails. Here's a better one:
The Americans fed and clothed a murderer so that he could help them kill somebody they didn't like. After that, they stayed friends for a while, and the murderer continued murdering a bunch of people, but America didn't care because it didn't affect them. Then the murderer got sloppy and did something to upset his benefactor, and had to be put down.
Saddam didn't become a murderous thug after the Americans helped him. He was already a murderous thug. That's why they wanted him.
I love when people say this. I suppose you do not have electricity in your house? You don't drive a car, or take mass transit? Oil consumption is the evil of the rest of the world, right?
Oil consumption is not evil. Killing and subjugating people so that you can get it is.
It's analogous to many situations in life. For example: sex is not evil, but raping somebody so you can get it is.
Anyone can offer rationale for their position. Child molesters claim that they really love the children they violate. It is up to intelligent people to determine if the rationale behind the action is reasonable or unreasonable. There is a lot of reason to think that the US action in Iraq is reasonable, but zero to think that flying planes into civilian-occupied buildings, blowing up schoolchildren, and shooting brides on their way to a wedding is 'justified'.
Exactly. There are some actions which are not justifiable, period. Blowing up innocent civilians would fall into that category. Dropping nukes on civilians would also fall into that category. Giving money, weapons, and intelligence support to mass murderers would also fall into that category.
I doubt you actually believe any of those actions are justified, you're just so busy frothing at the mouth about the US that you haven't really thought it through. The privilege of the inactive.
Better inactive than to be active in causing suffering in others.
-Laxitive
Steganography? (Score:2, Insightful)
One answer is to use Steganography [wikipedia.org] software to give plausable deniability. With a program like DriveCrypt [securstar.com] you can have an encrypted file or bootable partition with two keys - One, that you can hand over to the police unlocks some harmless (but seemingly sensitive) files like pr0n the other which you don't disclose unlocks your real data.
While the Police can see an encrypted file it can be unlocked with the first key and they cannot prove the second key exists.