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..
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.
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.
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)
Re:Sheesh (Score:0, Insightful)
This is where a police state ends. The begin is far behind us.
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.
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.
FOSS? (Score:0, Insightful)
"I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS"
How many phones have a completely FOSS operating system????
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.
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.
Re:I'm In Favor Of This Actually (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
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.
Re:What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The terrorists have already won.
Re:FBI? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's in the realm of those who launder their dirty money through campaign 'contributions'. All policy originates from them.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Time to clean house... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
"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]
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.
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: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.
Re:Sheesh (Score:2, Insightful)
"No software hack can beat a strategically placed piece of duct tape"
-- Ada Lovelace
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.
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...