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The Coming Censorship Wars 197
KentuckyFC writes "Many countries censor internet traffic using techniques such as blocking IP addresses, filtering traffic with certain URLs in the data packets and prefix hijacking. Others allow wiretapping of international traffic with few if any legal safeguards. There are growing fears that these practices could trigger a major international incident should international
traffic routed through these countries fall victim, whether deliberately or by accident (witness the prefix hijacking of YouTube in Pakistan last year). So how to avoid these places? A group of computer scientists investigating this problem say it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine which countries traffic might pass through. But their initial assessment indicates that the countries with the most pervasive censorship policies — China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — pose a minimal threat because so little international traffic passes their way. The researchers instead point the finger at western countries that have active censorship policies and carry large amounts of international traffic. They highlight the roles of the two biggest carriers: Great Britain, which actively censors internet traffic, and the US, which allows warrantless wiretapping of international traffic (abstract)."
to paraphrase a quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually the internet will treat the USA as damage and route around it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
then what of Britain or Australia or france, which already use censorship on it's people.
Soon there won't be places to route the damage around.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
So what? Here's another quote:
As Confucius said, if rape is inevitable, lay back and enjoy it.
Re:to paraphrase a quote (Score:5, Informative)
Australia doesn't _yet_. The govt is trying to set up a system, but hasn't got there yet
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really they have a blacklist that has been blacklisted itself.
if you have a list and are actively adding sites to that list. then your simply waiting for the hardware updates to enforce said list.
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And they wont. They don't have the majority in parliament, Labour relies on the minor parties to get anything through, with Greens and Xenophon (Independent) offside they have no chance of getting this through. It's dead already.
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In addition, Australia is not geographically positioned to have a high volume of international traffic flow through it.
Eh? It's one of the major nodes on the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean. One of two, the other being Japan.
Australia has always been a major player on the 'net.
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Australia doesn't censor the internet.
We still have the right of free-speech for now.
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Australia does not have the "right to free speech".
Nowhere in our constitution do residents have "free speech". we've assumed it comes from the UN's Human Rights, but it hasn't been enacted in law, so courts are not required to acknowledge it's existence.
For a sobering read : http://www.aph.gov.au/LIBRARY/Pubs/RN/2001-02/02rn42.htm [aph.gov.au]
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We DO have free-speech that is granted to us by our societies moral codes.
Just because it isn't on paper it doesn't mean it is not there. However not being on paper means it is under constant threat, this threat is now being highlighted for us.
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Actually I didn't think about that. I did post a bit quickly.
We don't have an automated filter yet but it is on its way.
Re:to paraphrase a quote (Score:5, Informative)
You are labeled a Troll, but I do distinctly remember reading an article that explains that a lot of ISPs do actually route around the USA because of its surveillance policies. Actually, it was quite easy to Google for information: The Internet interprets the USA as damage and routes around it [itwire.com]. Your Troll moniker is certainly unjust.
skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
A society that uses Censorship must have something or someone to hide.
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm kind of on the fence about my country's censorship (The UK, that is). As far as I know, it's only child porn that is actively censored, and whilst I don't mind it being censored due to what it is, it does spark the question "Where will it stop?"
The other problem is that they don't censor everything else that's illegal - so should they continue to censor child porn and nothing else, or censor everything illegal? Or abandon all censorship? It's a tricky conundrum once it starts to involve the law :/
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:skibaldy (Score:4, Interesting)
Well you might go back to Lincoln or a bit later to the national fireamrs in the 1930's act or the 1968 gun control act or the 1986 out ban on new NFA registries or the go back to the era of the NFA and the tax on hemp which became a ban because you can't pay the tax.
Governments are made of two kinds of people, those that really serve the people and those that serve the system. Those that serve the system end up running it. That's Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view408.html#Iron [jerrypournelle.com]
You can't change it, you can't steer it with any precision and you can't make it go away easily.
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Do you really think that in government (at least above the local level) there are some that mostly want to serve the people?
To quote Lazarus Long
Political tags-such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth-are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those want people controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are curmudgeons, s
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Terrorism could be in quotes if three thousand people had not died on 9/11.
-1 disagree with everything you said, including your sig. 8-)
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Same to you.
The word terrorism is put into quotes most often because it is perceived to be bullshit that the government is actually using it to fight terrorism. Now I understand that it might offend you if it was put into quotes and you interpreted that as somehow trivializing the loss of 3,000 Americans on that day. However, your are wrong about why he was doing it.
In any case, I don't find the death of 30,000, 300,000 or 3,000,000 Americans ca
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You don't like the the truth, so you change the standard.
The US is a tyranny. No one can know the law or how it will be applied. Honestly pleading "not guilty" can be punished more than most felonies are. Anyone can be imprisoned indefinitely on the basis of unsubstantiated secret allegations. Financial transactions and private communications are heavily monitored. Property can be seized without due process - having more than $10000 in cash is considered prima facie evidence of guilt - you have no property
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No one can know the law or how it will be applied.
There are quite a few excellent lawyers out there, they do know the law and how to apply it.
you have no property rights, since they are suing the cash itself, not you.
I don't think that it's possible to sue a stack of cash, no matter how big it is.
The ability to travel is no longer a right but a privilege contingent on showing your government-issued papers and not being on the "terrorist watch list", which is really just an alleged enemies list.
Travel is a right, within certain guidelines. True it has gotten worse lately, for some people at least, I know many people that travel without a problem at all.
No other countries except Russia and China imprison more people.
Check your figures again, I'm pretty sure that the U.S.A. imprisons
Re:skibaldy (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that I agree with the other side of the argument, but there have been US cases where money (or other asset) was the defendant.
It's really weird.
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Not that I agree with the other side of the argument, but there have been US cases where money (or other asset) was the defendant.
It's really weird.
I've seen cases in which cash is the respondent, but not a defendant. Typically, these were property seizure recovery cases handled in administrative court.
So although I, personally, haven't seen property act as a defendant (which isn't by any means to say it doesn't happen), I can confirm that it can be a party to a case.
USA vs. $30,000.00 in US Currency (Score:5, Informative)
> I don't think that it's possible to sue a stack of cash, no matter how big it is.
Actually it is. I picked the first example I could find from a little Googling, but here's the docket for the United States of America v. Thirty Thousand Dollars ($30,000.00) In United States Currency [justia.com] for your reading pleasure.
I also found this news article [thenewspaper.com] about how this works in another case, which is more than a little disturbing. You're simply not allowed to have too much cash these days. They think it proves you're doing something illegal. Even if they're right most of the time, I think it's terrible what they can do to the innocent.
What's wrong with you Quantos? (Score:2)
Pull your head out of the fucking sand, Quantos. (Score:2)
What a fucking idiot, Quantos. This has been going on for DECADES, so stop spewing your bullshit propaganda. That's how civil asset forfeiture works. Read this and learn something, dumbshit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#Asset_forfeiture_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]. And I quote: "In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues the item of property, not the person". You want some other examples? HERE [stopthedrugwar.org]
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Good point.
A tyranny? That's laughable. This fellow, if he isn't a troll is so twisted by his hatred that he has long ago lost touch with reality.
Go visit the hermit kingdom (N Korea) if you wish to see a tyranny. Or talk to the folks that lived under the thumb of the Stasi just a couple decades ago.
This used to be a good tech site with a libertarian bent, but its now becoming overrun with wannabes and knee-jerk haters.
The sad thing is, that sort of hate filled anti-US troll is becoming less and less di
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Can you cite anywhere in the world, at any point in history, that was not a 'tyranny' by your standard?
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I hate about some Americans. They actually believe the propaganda they have been fed about being so free. Meanwhile they can be sent to jail for possessing a seed. And if that isn't bad enough they also still have the left over feudal concept of felony where after getting caught with that seed their whole life is ruined, including having most of their possessions taken away.
They can't vote to change the unjust law that put them in jail. The rights that Americans consider basic like owning Firearms are taken away forever. And they call it freedom.
Even the way they appoint a new tyrant^w leader is totally corrupt with vote fraud considered OK, the politicians themselves put in charge of the election process so even basic things like the shape of a riding is totally corrupted.
In some states it is illegal not to show ID as well as how difficult it has become to simply travel.
It is considered perfectly fine that their overfull prisons are a hotbed of anal rape and they actually kill people.
I guess what it is is some Americans have a warped view of what freedom is.
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The thing that most drives this attitude is the disconnect from government. Where the government is the enemy, something that should be fought against, rather than the idea that you are the government and it is something that you need to do you part in controlling it. The idea of disconnections from government is driven by the rich and greedy, basically corporations that do not want the majority of people attempting to control their government rather they oppressed masses either accept being downtrodden as
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Governments, even the best of them, should be viewed as a necessary evil.
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I have to disagree with your first assertion. The problem is that there are too many people that holds your view, without actually reading and understanding the history.
For the founding fathers, government is not the enemy, power is the enemy. Their distrust is not of government per se, but the risk that the power that government holds would be used tyrannically, oppressing people who do not have representation in government.
This is the reason that power is divided amongst the three branches of government,
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No he is not fighting for tyrany. He is fighting its most insidous form; mind control. Your line of thinking amounts to "I am doing good because others are doing so much worse."
This is just wrong. Its an attitude that leads to resting on one laurals and deterioration. Freedom is something that must always be persued with diligence. Things are BAD in the Unitied States right now; you are correct in the fact they are much worse elsewhere but that does nothing to make things better here. If we stop fight
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By that standard the US govt is tyrannical, the EU is tyrannical.
I would agree with both. The U.S.A starting in the 1860s with the wanton expansion of federal power; and accelerating over the last 100 years there abouts with the national bank has become what its founders would have defined as a tyrany. I am very much of the opion most of the current government should be voted out. Probaly the majority of federal law is either unconsititutional or only applicable on federal land if you don't take crazy li
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm kind of on the fence about my country's censorship (The UK, that is). As far as I know, it's only child porn that is actively censored
The trouble is with that "as far as I know". Even the government doesn't actually know what's being censored. It's been completely handed over to a self-appointed body, with no oversight, no accountability and no appeal process. And why do you think it's only child porn being censored? Because the censors say so. What's wrong with this picture?
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Informative)
We know for sure one thing that the UK tried to censor: the album cover image on Wikipedia. We only found out about that one by chance. Presumably they censor many more things like that, that we haven't found out about. And since the item in question had been openly on sale for many years, we know that it is certainly not illegal.
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Informative)
I found the Australian and Danish block lists on Wikileaks, and a random sample weren't blocked by my big-name UK ISP. I checked all the ones that looked like they shouldn't be blocked at all (shock sites, anti-abortion etc). I didn't want to look at all the child porn, but I tried about 5 and the home pages all loaded.
The censoring in the UK is at the level of the home user's ISP anyway, so there's no need to "route around" anything. It's inaccurate to say Great Britain (well, the UK) censors Internet traffic. The government has asked ISPs providing connections to home users to filter DNS requests for some websites. This is nothing like the Chinese Firewall, for instance.
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And since the item in question had been openly on sale for many years, we know that it is certainly not illegal.
Yes, because we've never made something that was legal in the past be illegal now. Some of that good like say end of slavery, probably some of it bad but to deny it happening requires truly profound ignorance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I know, it's only child porn
"Where will it stop?"
As far as you know, only child porn. What you don't know is the problem with censorship in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Well if you want to get into technicalities...
Making child porn is a result of an illegal act. I would assume that things such as 'rape' would also benefit from such censorship as well. Taping an illegal act and distributing that tape and/or selling it is an illegal act itself because you could not have done such without committing a crime in the first place.
Making a bomb/explosive is generally illegal (usually there are some exceptions which permit making of small harmless amounts for pyrotechnic and firew
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
Have you not seen throughout history that those who censor end up censoring *everything*? Sure, first everyone can agree that child porn is bad, but if we don't speak out against this who knows what will be next.
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem. Some censorship is critical to national security, or other types of security. Right now nuclear devices are too hard to build for any single idiot. Fusion research may change that. Would you want THOSE plans public ? Or censored ?
There is a difference between non public or under a NDA than censored. For example, is an author's work that he never published censored? No. Its simply not published. While nuclear blueprints would certainly be non-published, and in the contract to which you sell your soul to a country when you become a government officer, they may forbid you to release such documents. That is not censorship, that is just not publishing them.
Now if, someone were to write "How to make a weapon of mass destruction for under $200" and the government forbid people to buy the book or the book to be published and the creators did not sign a contract that forbid such action, yes, that would be censorship.
And for your comment on flaw finding, you assume that the average person can simply find a flaw by looking at detailed blueprints that an entire team of architects could not find. That is unlikely, most terrorists are average people having little to no specialized skills, they aren't a professional architect, they aren't going to be able to find these said flaws. Give a script kiddy the source to the Linux kernel and tell them to find a buffer overflow, they won't be able to do it. Similarly, an ordinary terrorist isn't going to be able to find these magical faults in buildings with the blueprints.
In DNA manipulation, some procedures aren't all that difficult, even to do in your own garage. Preparing a bioweapon isn't hard (it's not killing yourself in the process and delivering the weapon that are the problematic parts), perhaps it should be published how it's done, with extra emphasis on those parts where the terrorists that have tried had real trouble with (e.g. an ineffective delivery device for sarin gas was the only thing that prevented the tokyo subway from being filled with that gas. Can't have that ... let's publish a few DIY plans).
Exactly, so what though? It is improbable to impossible that an ordinary person could successfully make a devastating bioweapon. Even a skilled biochemist would have much, much, difficulty. Its equivalent to saying that an ordinary person could somehow make effective weapons that took a large team of scientists many years to do, and even then it rarely worked.
You assume that someone could, and would publish "How to make a bioweapon 101" and assume that the average terrorist could read, comprehend, and carry out the steps if they were in fact correct. You can't buy Anthrax at your local store, you aren't going to find old bottles of smallpox in an abandoned warehouse, etc.
Child porn stimulates abusing children sexually for financial gain. Censorship can prevent the financial gain, thereby lowering child abuse. Of course this is a good thing.
Sure, lowering child abuse is a good thing, but censorship is not the way to go. Already, child porn has been elevated to a thinkcrime. Where by not doing any action that directly harms anyone, you are committing a crime. You are, in effect making information illegal. Now, non-free governments always start by restricting things that are "bad", but soon "bad" encompasses more, and more things until you get a situation like China. What do you think that the Chinese think that their government is censoring? Not free speech, but immoral, and generally "bad" things.
Let's face it, censoring some things should be done. Basically anything that crosses a certain threshold of criticality and cannot easily be modified should be a secret, and it should be a crime to divulge such information to anyone who does not need to know. Everything from building weaknesses to certain scientific results ...
Nit: (Score:5, Informative)
... most terrorists are average people having little to no specialized skills, they aren't a professional architect, ...
You shouldn't make that assumption or use it in anti-censorship arguments. In fact a non-trivial number of the planners in terrorist organizations ARE such experts.
Osama, for instance, is/was a civil engineer and owner/operator of a major civil engineering firm. Not only is he such an expert but he had many more working for him aboveground and thus plenty of potential recruits for underground work.
It's pretty clear that the attack on the Twin Towers was well designed to take the building down, probably by experts working with the building plans: The building had a failure mode that could be exploited by heat (weakening the floor structures, which braced the supporting walls against buckling, so the floors would drop away and leave the walls unbraced) and the planes were fully fueled and banked just before impact so their fuel would be deposited on several consecutive floors.
Planners in terrorist organizations don't necessarily ever end up on the operations. Thus they aren't expended and a few of them can plan many attacks.
If only Oz existed..... (Score:2)
"The building had a failure mode that could be exploited by heat (weakening the floor structures, which braced the supporting walls against buckling, so the floors would drop away and leave the walls unbraced) and the planes were fully fueled and banked just before impact so their fuel would be deposited on several consecutive floors.
Dood, you are soooo right...of course those terrorists were super-geniuses with the world's most superior intelligence network - or how else could they have planned and fully
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Not that I disagree with you, but you should avoid making such assumptions yourself.
Yes there are highly skilled/educated people involved in terrorist organisations, but they are the minority. Much like the US Army the highly skilled make up a small sub-set of the overa
Re:skibaldy (Score:4, Informative)
And for your comment on flaw finding, you assume that the average person can simply find a flaw by looking at detailed blueprints that an entire team of architects could not find. That is unlikely, most terrorists are average people having little to no specialized skills, they aren't a professional architect, they aren't going to be able to find these said flaws.
1. Many of the leaders in terrorist movements are (western) college educated engineers, scientists, doctors, or they received a practical education on the ground. /. discussions about it
Here's two
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/01/29/1614206.shtml [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/04/03/1943247.shtml [slashdot.org]
2. The growing fear is that educated westerners (i.e. white people) are going to be radicalized and disrupt the :cough:non-existent:cough: racial profiling that exists.
So while "most terrorists are average people having little to no specialized skills", the reality is that the people planning attacks are educated people with specialized skills.
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That really goes without saying, that would be true in almost any military organisation, its greatly exacerbated in any paramilitary organisations, this is why attrition never works against terrorist organisations, the gunmen and bombers are cheap cannon fodder and are easy to replace as they don't require much in the way of educa
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There's only a difference between non-public/nda/non-published and sensor as long as there are no leaks and no traitors. After that, it's censorship.
Unless you'd agree that under your definition of censorship killing off wikileaks.org would not be censorship. Once the information is out, it requires censorship to bring it back in. Contrary to what idiots will claim, this has a good chance of success.
O RLY? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll answer that.
I'd like to point out that I fully agree with the grandparent, and yet also fully support gun ownership. Anything short of a lethal virus, chemical weapon, or fissionable material is fit for use by the average citizen, as far as I'm concerned.
I never understood the move to ban guns, myself. It doesn't make people safer, only less safe. People with no respect for the law or the rights of others are going to get their hands on guns anyway, so why disarm the general public and leave them to th
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Anything short of a lethal virus, chemical weapon, or fissionable material is fit for use by the average citizen, as far as I'm concerned.
Lethal viruses are -not- censored. Not in the US, not even in Europe. This has only been abused 2 or 3 times in 50 years and is critical to university research. You basically have to ask the CDC to send you some, and provide some justification (they merely store it, you could literally state that you want to kill your mother in law, and they'll still send you the viruses you request). Heh, in the US the taxpayer even pays for the stamp and the packaging of potential lethal weapons.
Fissionable material is ce
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As for your comment of physical censorship, I would like to point out that censorship is the banning of ideas or information
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Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
Child pornography is the rape of a child for the sexual entertainment of an adult.
Child pornography may be documentation of said rape, not the actual crime.
Distribution of the video is an added kick for the rapist
How do you know this? And should something be a crime because a rapist enjoy it?
a lasting hurt for the victim
I'm not a psychologist, but I have a feeling a victim of child abuse have much worse things to worry about than searching the web for images of themselves.
and can be quite profitable as well.
A lot of things are profitable, most of these are legal.
You are not an innocent when you download and retain evidence of a rape.
Is it illegal to own a copy or image of every type of crime evidence?
You are not an innocent when you are a client - a customer - who is in the market for more of the same.
What if you're not a client or customer, but just get everything for free?
The feeling I get here is that you simply think it's morally wrong, and want to ban it because of that. Then inventing random arguments to support it.
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
Child pornography is the rape of a child for the sexual entertainment of an adult.
Child pornography is also a 15 year old girl recording herself nude on her mobile phone and then sending the video to her boyfriend in his 18th birthday.
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Child pornography is also a 15 year old girl recording herself nude on her mobile phone and then sending the video to her boyfriend in his 18th birthday.
In the US, maybe. There are countries with saner laws in that respect.
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Interesting)
triple j (an Australian government funded radio station) had a segment late last year where they interviewed a bunch of school students and asked them about this. a large number of them admitted they'd been involved in such acts in the past and had no idea it was even illegal.
it's a perfect example that there is way too much focus on how the law is written instead of what it is supposed to achieve
prove it (Score:2)
Post a link to any charge - any conviction - in any US jurisdiction - based on such evidence.
Re:prove it (Score:4, Informative)
Police say the Newark Licking Valley student was arrested Friday and held over the weekend. On Monday, she entered denials to juvenile charges of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material and possession of criminal tools.
A spokeswoman for the Ohio attorney general's office says an adult convicted of the child pornography charge would have to register as a sexual offender, but a judge would have flexibility on the matter with a convicted juvenile.
A prosecutor says Licking County authorities also considering charges for students who received the photos." (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434645,00.html)
True, I don't know if she was convicted, but she was charged with a felony.
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http://news.cnet.com/Police-blotter-Teens-prosecuted-for-racy-photos/2100-1030_3-6157857.html
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-sexting-030809,0,2010500.story
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/20/teen-couple-who-phot.html
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m1d14-Teens-charged-with-child-pornography--for-photos-of-themselves (I believe this is the one that was discussed on
your skepticism shows how naive you are (Score:2)
http://www.wpxi.com/news/18469160/detail.html#- [wpxi.com]
Crap. The other link is dead. Stupid internet. I'll never understand why news organizations take the news down. It doesn't stop being news -- ever. Suffice to say -- many other examples of this exist. That was j
Re:skibaldy (Score:5, Insightful)
Child pornography is the rape of a child for the sexual entertainment of an adult. Distribution of the video is an added kick for the rapist - a lasting hurt for the victim - and can be quite profitable as well.
It can be all of those things. It's also the 17 year old girl I fucked all last night (age of consent is 16 here) sending me a sexually explicit pic of herself. Or according to the even more fucked up laws of Norway it can be a cartoon someone draw, any girl playing to be under the age of 18 or a story or any other form of work that sexualizes someone under 18. Censorers love people like you, because you take the worst possible a law can cover and use that as justification for the most overbroad censorship.
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Yet another person who doesn't understand the difference between a digital copy of something and a physical object. That analogy is really bad, and by using it you only make yourself look like a fool.
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Except that in real life the world isn't binary, my friends.
Maybe it is all binary -- just a lot of bits.
Begun (Score:5, Funny)
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Now the REAL war on terror must begin.
simply put (Score:2, Interesting)
In few years the Internet as we knew it will become a Frankennet made of closed bubbles that will talk each other only through heavily filtered pipes. Every nation will spy on its own citizen and impose filters to limit or stop connectivity when necessary.
Freedom of communication is simply a too dangerous weapon to be left in the hands of common people.
AFAIK, this process already started a few years ago.
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If your so sure of your self tell us who you are :)
I may have British heritage...
Dude, I'm 100% American
http://www.otossystems.com/
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Says the man hiding behind an alias :)
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There's some validity to that, but remember that routing protocols designed for ad-hoc networks can be used in what is called an "over-net" to bypass these restrictions. Censored paths would be detected the same way that broken ad-hoc paths are, and simply bypassed. I imagine techniques such as TOR already use routing concepts either along these lines or (by now) more advanced.
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Not just the US, pretty much everybody (Score:3, Informative)
Any country with an active sigint program is snooping international internet traffic coming through their pipes. After all, that is the job of an intelligence agency. Only questions are to what degree and sophistication. Oh, and here's a list of countries with SIGINT programme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGINT_by_Alliances,_Nations_and_Industries [wikipedia.org]
Who needs to avoid these countries? (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering the countries actively censoring or monitoring I'm aware of are: USA, UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Austria, Australia, China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I'm sure there also many more.
Are we talking about Latvia trying to route to Luxembourg here? Who?
Surely... The sane thing to do is to actually stand up and stop governments censoring and monitoring, rather than talk about some small country re-routing to another. Look at the list above, that's probably 75% of the internet there (I'm guessing that figure).
Re-routing is a sin of commission. Lets actually fix the fucking problem, rather than step over it. Our Governments do not represent us any more. Get them out of office. Make your voices heard, while you still actually have them.
Or are you just going to sit there and take it? The time to act is now, not soon, nor when it gets really bad.
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Considering the countries actively censoring or monitoring I'm aware of are: [...] I'm sure there also many more.
I'm sad to say that my country, Denmark, also belongs on that list.
Wikileaks has a list of 253 names^W^W 3863 sites (http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Denmark:_3863_sites_on_censorship_list%2C_Feb_2008 [wikileaks.org]), though I've successfully accessed some of those sites (just to test the censorship, mind you).
Also, an ISP has been ordered by the supreme court to not allow access to the pirate bay.
I'm not happy about that. At all :(
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Considering the countries actively censoring or monitoring I'm aware of are: [...], Germany, [...].
Care to enlighten us on that one. Because I live in Germany, and follow such stuff very closely.
There was our Nazi-douchebag Schäuble together with some Bavarian politicians (Bavaria is our Texas), trying to put this into place. But he got beaten down after constantly coming up with even worse stuff.
So, because I saw others wondering why their country was included, I demand some source for this, other than your ass. ^^
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http://www.beskerming.com/commentary/2007/08/12/249/German_Security_Professionals_in_the_Mist [beskerming.com]
voluntary, domestic censorship only in GB (Score:1)
I was under the impression that Great Britain does not censor the internet. ISPs operating within it can, and several do, choose to sign up to a voluntary scheme (which includes ISPs on the board [iwf.org.uk]).
Regardless, to my (limited) knowledge filtering is done by blocking certain addresses to the consumer, nothing that would hit through-traffic.
As for snooping, wherever your traffic is passing through, either you have good encryption or someone can look in. Perhaps with varying degrees of (il)legality, as if that
Re:voluntary, domestic censorship only in GB (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:voluntary, domestic censorship only in GB (Score:4, Informative)
How is that voluntary? In most cases you can only slightly "choose" your ISP, and even then you simply have to get the least evil. Voluntary for the ISPs, but that is not voluntary for the end user, not in the least.
In the UK, if you can get ADSL you can choose *any* ADSL provider. All the phone lines are owned by the ex-monopoly (BT), but BT are required to lease the line to any broadband provider the customer chooses.
At the moment, the ISPs that don't censor are the smaller ones, which tend to be slightly more expensive -- but also provide better customer service etc.
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Censorship NE WireTapping (Score:2)
They highlight the roles of the two biggest carriers: Great Britain, which actively censors internet traffic, and the US, which allows warrantless wiretapping of international traffic
Wire tapping isn't censorship last I checked. Censorship requires active suppression. Perhaps wiretapping may cause self censorship because one could think that they shouldn't say something?
That being said - the fact that traffic is monitored should be a given. Thus the raison detre for encryption. Anyone that worked in the
It'll never happen... (Score:2, Insightful)
There will always be one ISP that does not monitor it's traffic. Why? Because that's where the business will lie once all the other ISPs have monitoring equipment in place (even if it is imposed upon by the government). Not to say this will be in the U.S., but there will always be that one country. And on top of this, who is to say that encryption techniques won't make this argument obsolete anyway? If monitoring does break out on a wide scale, I see many, many websites turning towards things such as IPSEC
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Well a non-monitoring ISP in Japan is not going to help US customers much. Even if they'd lay a cable from the ISP directly to the user's house - once the cable enters US territory it's under US jurisdiction. I grant you - encryption, proxies etc can help (provided it won't be outlawed again) but that works regardless whether the ISP monitors traffic. Also mo
Wiretapping != Censorship (Score:2)
Every government watches communications and Internet traffic. It's their job. But it doesn't constitute censorship if it just watches instead of filters or even modifies the content.
Total frickin encryption, all the time (Score:3, Insightful)
If these piss-ant dictators and foaming moralists won't leave well enough alone, we'll just have to encrypt (TOR) the lot of it.
I am really serious. If we don't start using encrypted traffic
routinely and by default on the Internet soon, then doing so
will without doubt be made illegal.
An incident all right. (Score:4, Interesting)
There are growing fears that these practices could trigger a major international incident
Just wait until the print newspapers are gone. When the only source of news is via the internet...
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Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not about the censorship, that is an issue if you live in a country that does it, but the monitoring? I mean really, do you assume your traffic is private? If so that's a really bad idea. I've always assumed that my traffic going over the net could be watched. Governments aren't the only people who could watch you. For example at work, we have a packet sniffer to help diagnose problems. Usually it sits idle watching nothing. However we can watch any traffic we like, and can do so invisibly. If I want I can mirror a port and watch everything someone does.
So you should always operate under the assumption that your traffic could be watched. Your ISP, another ISP, your government, another government, a crafty hacker, etc all could watch what you are doing. That means that if what you are doing needs to be kept secret, encrypt that shit. Don't send passwords. credit card numbers, etc in clear text. Use things like SSH/SSL for important stuff. Heck use them for non important stuff too if you like, it isn't as though encryption hits modern computers that hard these days.
Point is I don't see why as an individual you'd worry if a foreign country is monitoring your traffic. They could just be one of many. I can see concern if your government is monitoring your traffic, and especially if they are censoring your traffic, but in general, assume shit you do on the Internet is watched.
Let's look at it from this perspective... (Score:2)
[This Comment Was Deletey By The Slashdot Censorship Moderation Panel]
Circumvention (Score:4, Interesting)
In the end, anyone with an IP address can act as a host or relay. If something wants to get through, it will.
There was an advantage to the uucp forwarding network, in that routing could be managed and the number of possible paths was immense. Anyone with a basic PC and a modem could install Waffle and become a uucp node. For two years when the wall was still up, I had an ongoing conversation with a mathematician/cryptographer in Minsk (no Tom Lear jokes, please). I was always concerned that the Soviets would find him out, but he never shared my concern. Messages between us usually took more than twenty hops, one of which was a diskette hand-carried between East and West Berlin.
A little-known fact is that the fall of the Soviet Union was in part coordinated via email carried on uucp and fidoNet [wikipedia.org]. Mainly this was because these networks ran "below the radar", from one phone to another and could change their locations at will. There also was an advantage in these networks' use of Zmodem for exchange. Zmodem's error correction, rate adjustment and pig-headed retry made sure the message got through in spite of the really poor state of Soviet phone service.
The Internet's biggest weakness right now is that most of the traffic ends up on a small number of backbones. The only thing standing between the current tree-structured internet and a true network is incentive. Censorship would probably stimulate a change in topology.
All Censorship Sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
This article points to one very real problem with censorship. Once one party assumes the right to censor then all parties, everywhere assume the same privilege. The simple fact is that any censorship, no matter how seemingly innocent, is an attack upon the freedom of all people in all nations.
All censorship is about control of information (Score:4, Insightful)
Before the internet the only way you could have a voice that told a story to a large amount of people was to publish it, which cost a LOT of money and had a gatekeeper (editor) to decide if it was suitable. If your story was exposing corruption within a corporation and that corporation sponsored that publishing house, you have zero chance of it getting published. Publishing is not just the cost of printing, but the distribution network to get it to a large number of widely spread out locations. You could print the story yourself which would cost a small fortune, then drive around delivering it yourself which would cost another small fortune in fuel bills. Then your next problem is how to recoup your money. That's just the print industry. TV and radio are even tighter controlled and much more expensive to break into.
The point is that before the internet the elite had control over the gatekeepers; the gatekeepers can now be bypassed by anyone with access to the internet.
Even when PC's were still very expensive and programs were still complicated, knowledge like how to put up a website was seen as having skills beyond the normal user, internet censorship wasn't really an issue. From there grew some things that weren't illegal at the time but gradually became illegal like publishing child porn. The only reason these types of things weren't illegal in the first place is that when the laws were written they didn't foresee this "internet thingy" and had to be amended to take it into account.
As PC's get cheaper and easier to use, as services pop up that make it easier and easier, not to mention cheaper or even free for average non-technical users to set up some web presence. Throw a stick and you find plenty of examples from MySpace, Facebook, WordPress etc. This means that all those voices who had knowledge of some wrongdoing now have a voice and are increasingly willing to use it. It means that everyone willing to try and scam someone from a safe distance now has a way to do it. It means that everyone with an agenda (good, bad or just sad) now has a way to organize and recruit.
As people spend more and more time with online services which they are interacting WITH other people instead of being a target being sprayed with adverts from corporations in the hopes of leeching some cash for shit they didn't really need. Not only does that take their time and loyalty away from the traditional media companies, it also exposes them to different stories than they see in the mainstream, or different versions of the same stories. That's not to say everything they see / hear / read online is true, but then again that is also true of the mainstream media corporations who they previously DID believe to be true......before the internet made them skeptical.
Without this free access to publishing online, sites like wikileaks would never have gotten than knowledge to the masses. By "the masses" we're not just talking one country, we're talking "the whole planet". Well the whole planet who have not censored them. Without the internet that knowledge would never come out, and the corporations involved would continue to get away with murder because they control the gatekeepers of the knowledge. Any who step out of line have work addresses which can be visited by some "re-educators" with baseball bats. The internet has changed all of that, it's no surprise that the elite are scrambling around trying to silence stuff, they have a LOT of skeletons in their closets which would seriously damage their liberty, money or their reputation which they've carefully managed over the years by controlling the gatekeepers. In short, they have lost control, internet censorship is the only response they have to regaining that control.
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I had a few more thoughts while making coffee and since /. won't allow editing of your own posts I'm forced to reply to mine, sorry.....it would have been in the post above if I chose not to publish before making coffee.
When people can set up as bloggers and gain credibility as a reliable source of information based on what they say, this has to be seen as dangerous to the mainstream. It can cut though a lot of money slushing around to get a controlled message out, only to find the controlled version is bei
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When your conversations are monitored most people self-censor.
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Remember that all phone lines are marked "AC 240v" and make sure to use good steel wire cutters.