FBI Considers CALEA II: Mandatory Wiretapping On Every Device 318
Techmeology writes "In response to declining utility of CALEA mandated wiretapping backdoors due to more widespread use of cryptography, the FBI is considering a revamped version that would mandate wiretapping facilities in end users' computers and software. Critics have argued that this would be bad for security (PDF), as such systems must be more complex and thus harder to secure. CALEA has also enabled criminals to wiretap conversations by hacking the infrastructure used by the authorities. I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS."
Time to clean house... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how well the intelligence agencies have 'protected' us these last two decades...
Isn't it time to get rid of these assholes? Or at least save some money on our fake no help agencies?
You could cut half of the people at the FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS, FEMA, TSA, DOD, And several others i can't think of...
And we wouldn't notice any difference at all. None..
Re:Time to clean house... (Score:5, Funny)
I suggest merging & optimizing the letters used for agencies. All those agencies could be covered with just the letters A.S.S.H.A.T.S.
Re:Time to clean house... (Score:5, Funny)
American Security State/Homeland Anti-Terrorists System?
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Sounds good to me. And make sure they wear bright red uniforms so their easy to spot. *ducks
Re:Time to clean house... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds good to me. And make sure they wear bright red uniforms so their easy to spot. *ducks
*they're
-A.S.S.H.A.T.S. SPELLING & GRAMMAR DIVISION
Re:Time to clean house... (Score:4, Insightful)
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good luck enforcing that on Linux. What are they going to do?
Tap into the other side of the conversation, where granma is running Windoze or OSX?
Which reminds me, you know how many times a year I get asked for a public key for email? About 0.2.
Re:Time to clean house... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bbut.. they will protect us. After we all get hacked because the backdoors they forced the vendors to put in our machines, we will need some agency that intrudes everywhere to find who were the culprits.
The best way to have enemies to worry about is to create them. And thats their work.
Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where a true police state begins. An ear and eye in every device. Wake up before it's too late.
Never allow laziness of police forces to erode your civil liberties and freedoms.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
But what about your off-device life? Clearly, a camera mounted in your forehead and bedroom is needed too.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
Solved. Google Glass, and Microsoft Kinect, and that camera in your laptop (but I guess you have some control over that for now)
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And a lot of those sets are out of warranty. That means no updated software for the already available hacks. That means some clever hacker could drive by your house and watch you. I admit it's probably not likely, but it can be done if some pervert was willing.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sheesh (Score:4, Insightful)
CALEA II: Brought to you by Intel and AMD Trusted Computing Platforms.
Coming soon to an ARM chip near you.
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Via calls their integrated Trusted Computing hardware "Padlock"
http://www.via.com.tw/en/downloads/whitepapers/initiatives/padlock/VIAPadLockSecurityEngine.pdf [via.com.tw]
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Trusted computing by itself is not a problem if you're the one holding the master key to it. In fact, it makes it that much harder for someone to install a rootkit or something similar into your OS and use it for wiretapping.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Interesting)
We, europeans see you like living in a police state, much like the movies show about nazi germany, soviet russia, etc. You live in the type of country your army and your parents once fought (Hitler Germany). But The European government is going in the same direction and I'd like you to stand up against your tyranny, because I still see the american people as brave and having a sense of fight for freedom, much more than we europeans. So I expect the real spirit of your founding memebers make a comeback someday but only the american people can bring it. 15 years ago, I met a computer researcher who was giving a conference at my university. He took out his wireless mouse to connect it to the laptop, and suddenly he realized he wasn't in his country, he quickly switched it off and asked for permission or ifnormation because he didn't want to break any law regarding radiofrecuency emissions due to his mouse being from other country. During some seconds I felt he was worried about the time he had had it switched on. While I admire the eduated behaviour of americans, I really got sad to see how afraid of the system you can go at any simple, naive action of your daily life.
Life in America is much worse nowadays than most of the rest of the world. But your TV keeps you entertained and narcotized, and like muslims do when worshiping their god contiuously not to be misstaken by an infidel by the rest of the belivers, you americans worship your country not to be taken by a antiamerican-terrorist-comunist-anarchist- etc. The same lybia you bombed to the grounds to "liberate from tyranny" had on average a better living standar than your beloved america (this sounds strange, I know, but have you ever been to libya? or is it just that you've been TVBRainwashed ?) But 99% of americans were efectively driven to think they were in the free rich world, and Lybia was in the poor tyrannized world. Don't you ask yourselves how can the CIA be helping alquaeda en Siria while the FBI is considering wiretapping every device in America? Is your governmetn fighting the terrorism to protect you? Or is it fighting you to protect them?
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Informative)
Good points, though I felt it necessary to comment on the wireless mouse issue: RF-related laws do differ from country to country and there can be serious consequences (not just legal consequences) to breaking them.
While there's wide international agreement on certain bands, like the 2.4GHz ISM band, not everything is so unified. I'm an American living in Switzerland. One of my fellow Americans here in Switzerland had brought a Skype-capable cordless phone from the US and had used it for a few weeks. Eventually, some Swiss government officials with direction-finding equipment showed up at his house and requested entrance to his home. He allowed them in and they homed in on the phone. It turns out the frequencies used in the US for certain types of cordless phones are used, in Switzerland, by the Swiss military and his phone was causing interference. They gave him a ticket saying that there was no penalty this time, but if he continued to use the phone he would be fined 10,000 Swiss francs (about $10,000 USD/8,000 Euro).
While the use of a wireless mouse isn't likely to cause enough interference to bother anyone, it's still a good thing to check first to ensure it is appropriate to use.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
In America today, a foreigner with a radio device "accidentally" operating on military frequencies would win a lovely all-expense paid vacation to Cuba.
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It turns out the frequencies used in the US for certain types of cordless phones are used, in Switzerland, by the Swiss military
I guess it was a Swiss Army phone?
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Americans' version of freedom is something like "if I'm not obviously breaking a law, leave me alone." And for the vast majority of people, that's true.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
More laws are passed in this country than any person can keep up with. I'd have to dig it up, but there was some research done on the number of laws the average American breaks every day without doing anything truly "wrong" and doesn't even realize it.
Re:Sheesh (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx [threefeloniesaday.com]
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
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That they force mandatory backdooring every software will mean that even you in europe will have your computer backdoored too, by US law. And of course, all the services that you use that are hosted or goes thru US will have all communications monitored, even yours. And if you do something they don't like, they are a lot of precedents that they could get you in a way or another. They are spreading their version of "freedom" all around the world by now.
either they would have to ship different computers to europe or europeans could ask the companies for all the collected data..
and yeah russians would surely buy those computers too and china would as well!
Re:Sheesh (Score:4, Insightful)
We've been headed towards a centrally controlled police state ever since the Civil War. Actually, since long before that, but that was the point of inflection.
The problem is that governments want to control. In fact, that's almost the definition of a government. So they tend to be run by people who are interested in control. Those people may have other goals, but control is their common goal. And advancing technologies have made increased amounts of control realisticly possible. (Please note that I didn't say anything about "human rights". Libertarian societies can be incredibly oppressive in that area. And controlling governments can be rather generous.)
FWIW, I distrust all centralized locii of control. Each one is a single point of failure. This is why I consider the GPL to be the best license. And this is why I would favor a democratic government. (It's not because democratic governments don't make truly horrendous decisions.) But do note that democratic governments are unstable. Simple democracies tend to yield to tyrannies. (Both "tyrant" and "democracy" are from the Athenian dialect of Greek...and Athens oscillated between them.) A constitutional democracy was an attempt to stabilize it. Reasonably successful as such things go. But "plurality rules" voting was a major blunder. It needs to be "majority rules" so that the voices of those with non-central intrests are represented.
The potential benefit of monarcy is that the government will look after the long-term interrests of the country. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a very good track record in that regard. At least not when the monarch has been powerful. (Weak monarchs have a much better record in this regard.) The US government shows no more regard for the future of the country, however, than did Louis de Roi Sol. Perhaps less.
To make a sailing ship go you need both sails and a keel. (You also need a few other things that would extend the metaphor too far.) I.e., you need a propulsive force and a stabilizing force. If you lack either, then you are guaranteed disaster. OK. You also need a rudder, i.e., you've got to be able to steer a reasonable course. But governments tend to steer for increased control. Always. The only exceptions I can think of involve either incompetent hands on the rudder (which Britain was blessed with) or the collapse of the government.
If you grant the prior paragraph, then the obvious conclusion is that we need to decrease the strength of the sails. Perhaps the currents will carry us to a better destination. (Not likely, admittedly, but possible.) We don't want to destabilize things, as that yields massive fatalities.
But there are lots of problems with this simple solution. The main one is that it's not likely to lead us to any place better. But I don't think I can do anything better with this metaphor.
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Nonsense. They don't want control, they want to make a mockery of life. And they've been succeeding at it.
Who the f*ck needs half this sh*t anyways? Every metric in the universe says it's increasing complexity, increasing costs, decreasing happiness, shortening lifespans, and overall sucking. What do I really want in life, my own tropical island filled with attractive girls around my own age who think I am awesome, or the ability to read serial numbers off a discarded piece of paper at 30 feet? Because I kn
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The same lybia you bombed to the grounds to "liberate from tyranny" had on average a better living standar than your beloved america (this sounds strange, I know, but have you ever been to libya?
Whatever credibility you had was utterly lost here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index [wikipedia.org]
US is number 3, Libya is number 64.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom [wikipedia.org]
US is number 10, Libya is something like #175.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income [wikipedia.org]
US is number 2, Libya isnt on the list.
And i think the idea that Americans are afraid to speak out against the government is absurd. Have you not watched the news? Are you unaware that there are two
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That is very interesting.
Now tell us about the isolation zones where your police are too scared to do their jobs for fear of immigrants killing them?
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, look at this stupid IRS scandal. All the people screaming about the abuses of power are very closely intersected with the people who wanted ACORN investigated. If we allow or demand that the IRS investigate the entities we don't like, that means they have the power to investigate whoever they want, depending on the political winds.
The trouble is in Congress for their lack of oversight and forethought. Compromise is supposed to more or less cancel out partisan lunacy, but instead they just act like children and "Casablanca" inspectors. Shocked, they are, that abuse is going on.
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Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't blame a dog for licking you.
That's because it is a *dog*.
Law enforcement wants every tool it can have to do its job.
Law enforcement consists (largely) of people. They are not dogs. We expect people to be able to make moral decisions. So yes we can and should blame the people.
If I was a signals intelligence person, of course I'd want to be able to tap ALL the phone lines.
Why? Do you have no moral compass or do you just not believe in a right to privacy? If your moral compass switches off as soon as your employer changes, then it's not a moral compass, it's a moral yo-yo.
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Demanding that the IRS follow its existing rules as long as those rules exist isn't the same as endorsing those rules. Conservatives want the IRS to have less power overall and to collect less money.
The trouble is that people like you don't understand that we will nev
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Congress did what their paymasters told them to.
FTFY
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where a police state ends. The begin is far behind us.
No, you have no idea what a police state really is. Ask the East Germans for that.
Mandatory wiretapping in consumer devices (with the outlawing of FOSS because it simply wouldn't be able to comply) is where the State of Law ends, and the police state begins.
And incidentally democracy dies definitively once and for all.
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And incidentally democracy dies definitively once and for all.
There are plenty of democracies in the world. I doubt a bunch of power-hungry lunatics can destroy a system that has been tried repeatedly for more than 2000 years.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe you miss the point, which is that the Police state started creeping in long ago. For posterity, it had to creep in.
Long ago, a Police state could occur in a swoop because a massive army of police could run down on an unsuspecting public. Advancements in communications have made the level of secrecy required to build up such an army nearly impossible. To think that the people in power didn't realize that fact is sheer idiocy.
This is why it's a progressive amount of force and liberty erosion combined with a massive media campaign, and has been for at least 20 years. The amount of propaganda is increasing with every EO that erodes some civil liberties. In addition, the rhetoric to pit average people against each other has been increasing from media and politicians as well.
It is, a very well coordinated attack. Lots of people have been catching on and voicing alarm calls. Others are clueless as they simply live in the proverbial cave (Plato/Socrates). Still more hear the alarms but fear cognitive dissonance and change so much that they deny what is very plain to see if you care to look.
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Re:Sheesh (Score:4, Insightful)
Long ago, a Police state could occur in a swoop because a massive army of police could run down on an unsuspecting public. Advancements in communications have made the level of secrecy required to build up such an army nearly impossible.
Which is exactly why it's actually more dangerous.
You swoop in suddenly and everyone knows the deal; every citizen is more or less participatory in a resistance. But build it up gradually, creating an increasingly fascist atmosphere in small steps and you have only a minority as dissenters that the mostly docile and agreeable public will dismiss and even deride as extremist nutjobs and alarmists.
Frog in the pot, as it were...
FOSS (Score:3)
I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS.
The same way anything is implemented in FOSS. It'll be written into the source. Lots of people will modify the code to disable the backdoors. People will post versions of the software with the backdoors missing, many of which actually still have them or have different backdoors installed. Governments may lead an automated search for software without the backdoors, or may simply ignore it uniless they have a reason to target the individual using it.
In other words, what a fucking mess.
Re:FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy solution: Lifetime imprisonment for anybody that disables this. And the death penalty for anybody that instructs others how to disable it. After all, these people are dangerous privacy-terrorists that want to keep things from the government!
I am quite serious. The idea at all is the last stage of a surveillance state, where nobody gets any privacy, the government is the final arbiter of what behavior is acceptable and what is not, and though-crime becomes real. They can then threaten, remove and kill anybody they do not like at their leisure. Low-tech versions of this have existed before, namely in the 3rd Reich and in Stalinism. Say something the authorities do not like? Go to the KZ or Gulag. Quite a neat solution to a population that may have its own ideas on how it wants to be ruled.
Re:FOSS (Score:5, Informative)
Thre is already a name for it - totalitarianism, the involvement of the state in all aspects of life.
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Re:FOSS (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference was that under the Third Reich and Communism your neighbor who did not like you for some reason could also report you and have you put into a concentration camp. Unless there is a huge culture change in the US, where squealers and informers are still looked down upon, that system is not likely to work, because there would not be enough squealers and informers.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way, informers can report anonymously and then everybody fears everybody. I lived the first 22 years of my life in such a state and I was taught early about things that must not be spoken. It was sad to find out after the Cold War that in the East Germany it was much worse, almost every 3rd comrade was an informer for STASI.
Please don't say "It can't happen to us" because it can - and then it's too late.
I never said that it can't happen here, but that it is unlikely unless the American fundamental attitude toward tattle-tales changes dramatically. When the founding fathers of this country threw off the authoritarian yoke of the British king, the country was infected with a spirit of individual freedom that has never existed in Europe. Germans always acceded to authority and the power of the state far more readily than the much more independent-minded Americans. That is why there is no other country on earth that has the equivalent of the Second Amendment in their Constitution. Maybe this will change in a generation or two.
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Its what they really designed TPM and Palladium/NGSCB for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base [wikipedia.org]
Astoundingly bad idea (Score:3)
Re:Astoundingly bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember this with the Clipper Chip, and FBI Director Freeh. It is understandable that they want this -- makes their job a lot easier, and makes a lot more material to sift through.
However, there were the same issues with this wiretap stuff as with the Clipper Chip:
1: Bad guys getting access to the backdoor, just like back then, bad guys getting access to the LEAF (law enforcement access field, part of the key escrow mechanism.) When (not if) this happens, every single endpoint is wide open, and this becomes a national security issue when companies start getting hacked wholesale and there is nothing they can do except power off and unplug.
2: Abuse. Of course, this would allow anyone with access to this a lot of material they can scoop up, and sell.
3: There would be -billions- spent by rogue nations, criminal organizations, and others to get at those master keys. When the money is at stake, it will turn into a game of finding out what people are even close to the master keys, and kidnapping their family. The billions spent on compromising an update repository in order to get backdoored programs into the target would reward the rogues with trillions.
Securing the master keys is one thing. Keeping them secure while in use for massive eavesdropping and protecting them from leaks is a very difficult task. Someone in the chain can be compromised eventually, which leads us to point #1.
Plus, we already have a shitload of ways that an endpoint can be compromised. A lot of software updaters send a unique computer ID. It doesn't take much to have a certain ID get a slightly modified signed update while everyone else gets something else.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do critics need to argue anything? A simple no, get lost, should suffice. You don't need reasons to refuse law enforcement access to your communications, they need reasons to access them in the first place.
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Ahem, that is what they want to change?
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't understand. They aren't going to ask you. They're going to ask the people who make your communication devices. If they get their way, every one who makes phones, computer, and so on will include backdoors for law enforcement because they are required to. And they will not be removable by the user.
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All they need is to scare the people into believing them and taking their side.
If they do this however, I'm quite sure all the big tech companies will set shop anywhere else. They are already "international" and manufacturing mostly in Asia. They will still sell modified tech to the gvt. but anyone else won't get anything because it will not comply with the law. That is a scary scenario indeed. Actually, I would say that it
No possible way this goes anywhere (Score:3)
This is such a wildly inappropriate idea that if it gets any legs at all the reasonable powers that be will jump on it and squash it good.
I cannot allow myself to believe we as a country are willing to seriously consider implementation of anything like this.
Re:No possible way this goes anywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
This is such a wildly inappropriate idea that if it gets any legs at all the reasonable powers that be will jump on it and squash it good.
I cannot allow myself to believe we as a country are willing to seriously consider implementation of anything like this.
That's the exact thing I said with all of the illegal wiretapping and privacy eroding laws they've been passing. The fact that someone thinks it's a good idea is scary enough.
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Funny, I was never at any point in my life tempted to say that about any of the erosions of my guaranteed rights. Maybe because I have never been a naive fool.
Re:No possible way this goes anywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
"America is great because America is good, and when it ceases to be good it will cease to be great."
Of course America has made mistakes. But I always believed they were honest mistakes, by people who wanted to do good, but were wrong, or misguided, and we would eventually feel shame about these mistakes and work to correct them. Think Japanese internment camps, segregation. Awful things that show the inherent goodness of America by their correction.
The day that idea died for me was the day in 2005 when Alberto Gonzalez's DOJ letters became public. That we're going to use mealy-mouth lawyer words to call obvious torture "not torture." That's pretty much it. Game over. We are not the good guys anymore, who can make any claim to a moral high ground.
The slippery slope is so far above us we can't even see it anymore. Of course all the PATRIOT Act powers that were "just supposed to be for terrorists" got used for regular criminal investigations of drug dealers. And then we've got Obama assassinating people with drones, and it takes a Rand Paul filibuster to get the White House to say "meh, maybe we won't launch missiles at Americans on American soil." Of course a few weeks later some bombs go off in Boston and even Paul changes his mind and says its just fine to shoot missiles from the sky at a robber fleeing a liquor store. The RoboCop dystopia isn't even tongue-in-cheek anymore. At least the ED-209 told you to drop your weapon before it shot you anyway.
Oh and when the criminal bomber was caught (allegedly, etc etc) we've got John McCain recommending "enemy combatant" status so we can indefinitely detain and torture him. When that happened I had just finished reading McCain's memoir, "Faith of my Fathers" a large part of which is about his own imprisonment and torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese and I had a really tough time reconciling the man in the book with the man on the TV screen.
Our "rights" don't really exist anymore, because the state can just lawyer language them away. Of course you have a right to a fair trial! Unless you're an "enemy combatant." Cruel and unusual punishment? Torture? Absolutely forbidden! Thankfully waterboarding and sleep deprivation aren't torture, they're "enhanced interrogate techniques." And of course you're secure from search and seizure of your papers where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, your email doesn't necessarily count as "papers," and they're stored on somebody else's server. And while you may assert a reasonable expectation of privacy over your email, the DOJ says you don't, so they can just read your email as they want, because they get to decide your level of expectation for you.
So today, that the FBI want a backdoor into our communications? Not surprising in the least. I'd be surprised if they didn't. Par for the course.
And now, thanks to this post, I'm probably on a watch list somewhere.
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Nonsense.
Apple and Microsoft will happily comply. After all, they've already take away the end-user's control of their mobile devices.
As long as it is open source (Score:3)
Otherwise I have to oppose the idea entirely.
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Otherwise I have to oppose the idea entirely.
You are willing to allow it if it is open source? You are willing to trade freedom and privacy for FOSS?
May I ask why? If it is because you have the technical know-how to remove or disable it if the source is available that is a self-centered and elitist view.
What about people who do not have this ability? In this view the techno-crati and the rich and powerful have nothing to fear as they can sidestep the loss of freedom.
The plebes however still get stepped on, more and more. This is the antithesis
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Reread what I said very clearly. Apply logic. I never said I would accept it as open source. I only said that if it is not open source, I would oppose it.
If it turns out to be open source, I have the confidence that it would end up opposing itself by exposing its own absurdity directly. It is not a matter of whether I can disable it, or just not include it. It's not about the people without the ability to do this. What will become clear and obvious is that the evildoers the LEAs want to target will be
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Regardless, I still disagree, if it is mandated, it does not matter if the source is open. It has the force of law, and if you are found to be circumventing, your freedom can be just as curtailed as by using it and being found to be doing something illegal or impolitic.
What the US gets we all get (Score:2)
The US will lobby the world to ensue a level export market for its expensive compliant hardware.
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What problem with FOSS? (Score:2)
Of course, open source software that behaves according to some law can be modified by anyone with the source code and the necessary expertise to break that law. If creating such software is illegal, then the perso
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No, but I guess any development team with non-US members will have a strong problem with that. Or to put it more simply: how should this whole thing even be enforced? Non-US developers do not have to comply with US law and will not contribute to this surveillance - the only option is to make using such software illegal in the US (something else that cannot really be enforced). Additionally, this will push people away from software written in the US as it would violate the requirements of any company not wil
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With the open source, some people will "mess" with the system. They will have to sift out all the "noise". Of course they do fully understand this. So it will never be an open system. It might be a chip, but that will be so easily defeated with encrypted apps that don't use the traditional dialed number phone network.
there are 190+ countries (Score:2)
and only one of them is under the jurisdiction of the FBI.
meanwhiel, most FOSS is developed cross border by people in various locations
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The terrorists have already won.
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Too Late (Score:2)
DoJ is either stupid ... (Score:2)
They will see no fallout from the AP wiretapping (Score:5, Interesting)
The most you can hope for is a civil suit. The process and any penalties will be paid by tax dollars to the reporters.
Its over. The entire justification for when we STOLE the states from the king of England was that we were going to live system where the people govern themselves.
But thats over now:
1. The ratio of citizen to congress critter has risen steadily so that they can walk or run away from their constituents
2. The function of the Senate has drastically changed and more decisions are made there, further eroding the power of popular vote. 2 per state/6yr terms
3. The things we used to laugh at the Russian people for: Corrupt press, Corrupt travel restrictions, Reading Mail, Wiretapping, corrupt law enforcement are all S.O.P for our government now.
4. We used to laugh at the Russians for electing their leaders. Both candidates came from the same party and there was no real choice. Which is what we have here now.
5., We used to laugh at the Russians for infiltrating and subverting democracy groups. Thats what we do here now.
6. We used to laugh at the fact that no one there "owned" anything. With the value of everything here based on an arbitrary currency, it essentially the same thing.
7 There is a defacto get-out-of jail free card for every president in office or after term.
I have worked with the people who "watch over us". They are relentlessly dishonest and always convinced they are right. And they have only one lens to view anything: us vs them. And once you are 'them", they have no morality at all.
Try to enjoy your life. Try not to have kids.
"All Nixon’s Crimes Against me now Legal" (Score:4, Insightful)
Watergate whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg:
“Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal.
http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/ellsberg-all-nixons-crimes-against-me-now-legal.html [juancole.com]
eat a bag of dicks (Score:4, Informative)
dear FBI,
a certain portion of your managament are stupid douchebags.
while there are agents risking their lives to stop criminals, you are sitting around jerking off on a whiteboard about pie in the sky bullshit that nobody with two nickels worth of brains would find useful or even interesting
fuck you, fuck your mother, and fuck everything you stand for.
FOSS? (Score:3)
But Android is FOSS!. Hear you buddy, dream on. Even if you have the skills to compile Android from scratch, don't need any closed drivers and can manage to install it on your cellphone... even then you're just a few in a billion users market. For all practical purposes there is no FOSS getting in between the feds/govt and your privacy.
Better: we need PRIPA (Score:3)
How about a "Privacy-Reqiurement In Principle Act", mandating that all devices should be secured to protect the user's privacy so that EVEN Law enforcement cannot ever get access. Backdooring should be a criminal offense, as should excess logging, and facilitating wiretapping. Product safety laws should be updated to treat software vulnerabilities the same way as toxic components.
Then instead of going around with the fantasy that law enforcement can fix problems, politicians might devote some more energy to fixing the underlying causes (such as foreign policies that cause "blowback" and the war on drugs). It will also make the country much safer against "cyber war".
Trivially easy to defeat with 2 PCs and "air-gap" (Score:3)
How many PC's ya got at home? 2 will do.
* Keep one offline at all limes; no ethernet cable or wifi or whatever
* Encrypt/decrypt your messages on that one
* Copy encrypted message to USB stick
* Move USB stick to your "regular" online computer
* Send message via regular online computer
* Recipient copies encrypted message to a USB stick
* Moves USB stick to their offline computer and decrypts there
Net result; internet-connected computers never see the unencrypted message. Yes, Joe Blow cheating on his wife might not bother, but you can rest assured that mobsters and terrorists will take that extra step. How could the FBI be so braindead as to not think of this?
Bad for OS... (Score:3)
FTA:
Many of todayâ(TM)s communication tools are open source, and there is no way to hide a capability within an open source code base
Which, sadly, is all the justification they'll need to make open software illegal - or if not, equivalent to having "terrorist materials" on your computer.
And why, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, would the accused have hacking tools (read: Linux) on his computer if he *didn't* intend to hide his activies from the government?
If they can't make OS illegal outright, they'll make it a secondary offense, for example, obstruction of justice, or similar. The only ones using it would be those who could make a good case in front of a jury that it was *necessary* - i.e. engineers, sys admins, etc...
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I think having these wiretap backdoors is a worth the tradeoff of my liberty in favor of a better and safer world.
And Thomas Jefferson continues to spin aces in his grave.
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And what about the scammers that will be using this back door to control you phone and run up your bills. Is this the cost you are willing to pay, literally? How about just having the evildoers put in jail with less strict requirements on what the evidence needs to be ... like maybe catching them in the act.
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The real evil people go dark understanding they have to change methods quickly, tipped of by tame experts and corrupt officers.
Support for 'freedom fighters' by the CIA becomes tricky.
Local courts are flooded with telco intercept cases and slowly most people of interest work out a phone, VoIP, computer, nav system is not so healthy to have around.
Thats why the GCHQ and NSA
Moderation Abuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is the parent comment rated -1? You might not agree with it but that is not a valid reason for moderating it down. It is on topic opinion, not flamebait or troll.
This is censorship, plain and simple. I see how how moderation is used to enforce the groupthink here. Shame, for shame.
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It's modded troll because Slashdot doesn't have a Stasi/KGB mod.
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And that's what you get when the technology allows it. But not in the case of the backdoors. No, the government would never abuse its powers...
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Here is news for you: "evildoers" will basically not be affected, as they will just work around these devices. It is ordinary citizens that are the target, as they do not have this opportunity. "Evildoers" will just experience a slight increase in the effort needed to do business. ON the other hand, this will create a nice set of possibilities to extort said normal citizens (sheep as yourself).
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terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles.. (Score:4, Funny)
you mean the CIA and the Catholic Church?
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I think having these wiretap backdoors is a worth the tradeoff of my liberty in favor of a better and safer world
I think that most of us would also gladly trade your liberty for a better and safer world, since that would kill two birds with one stome. :-)
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I don't think this is a good thing where drug dealers, terrorists, pedophile and assorted evildoers can commit their nefarious activities without impunity.
Would you prefer that they commit their nefarious activities with impunity?
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Or quite the troll.
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No, it's in the realm of those who launder their dirty money through campaign 'contributions'. All policy originates from them.
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Why is the FBI considering anything? Isn't something like this in the realm of the elected politician?
they're considering it because they view the possibility to eavesdrop anyone they want as their lawful right that they already have. the problem is that they were given that right long ago... and if they have that right, then logically they view that they should have that right forever - damn the consequences.
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Technically true. But there is at least one that is open enough that end-to-end network apps cannot be spied on beyond the IP header needed to deliver its traffic somewhere. Encrypted talk apps already exist. These are end points the proposal would also "require" be backdoored (not just the blob that runs the "telephone" part). These are the apps the evildoers WILL use (after a few of them do get caught).
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There are polls that have asked in several ways questions about privacy and rights versus giving up some more of that for what is claimed to be more security and safety. The results from the past few show that an increasing number of U.S. citizens want less intrusion into their lives. That is, they do not accept blanket promises if it means less privacy and even more erosion of the basic rights spelled out in their constitution, most especially in the Bill of Rights.
That's to the good.
However, in reality,