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Analysis of New Internet Wiretap Laws 169

Posted by michael from the body-cavity-search dept.
securitas writes: "The most controversial part of the Combatting Terrorism Act of 2001 is Section 832 (full text) that would expand government powers to capture information about your Internet activities. A UCLA law professor and the former NSA general counsel debate the pros and cons at Slate in a series of e-mails this week (see the upper left hand side for links to each day's exchange). Here's an overview at the NY Times Archive (no registration required)."
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Analysis of New Internet Wiretap Laws More

Analysis of New Internet Wiretap Laws

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  • US control (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dopolon ( 88100 )
    I'm french and getting really worried by these laws. They won't stop terrorists, because these huys are ready to die for their "success", but they will deprive anyone else, especially law abiding citizens, of the freedom and privacy they deserve.
    • The question of whether it should be possible for the government to listen in to our private conversations is old, and I do not it came to rest before because of ethical considerations, but rather due to technical concerns and cost issues. And perhaps because its impact is likely to be very low. Before considering the evils of having, versus not having, escrowed keys, I think we should all ask ourselves what makes *us* so interesting, warranting the government to spend time or effort listening in to our email correspondence. Chances are that neither you nor I would ever be directly affected by any such effort. This is an argument that is likely to be made at some point. The fact that the average citizen would not be e-tapped does not mean that he should not worry. The reason is that one could be indirectly affected by e-tapping. Take Watergate as an example of a small directed tapping effort that could have changed the lives of countless people (by potentially changing national politics, had the outcome of the election been altered). On the other hand, we need to ask ourselves whether this particular type of tapping could be prevented by means of strong cryptography. It probably would not, since (directed) virus attacks and "viral" operaring systems may counter any effects of encryption, either by leaking keys or plaintexts. A second threat is that of "immoral behavior", such as the collection of child pornography, etc. Here, a main threat to law enforcement is if arrested suspects have all evidence encrypted on their hard disk. No escrowing would ever help this case, since the keys may be locally generated and used. Another aspect, of course, is to apprehend the criminal, but this relates more to traffic analysis than the hiding of communicated information. Besides, this is not what has spurred the debate at this point. The reason for again considering escrowing is, of course, the possibility of detecting suspicious terrorist related activity, probably by scanning the activities of a moderately large number of people belonging to high-risk groups, and later, the attentive eavesdropping on conversations between people detected in the scanning. I believe that only dumb terrorists would allow themselves to be detected by an automated scanner. For example, there is nothing suspicious about the sentence "Let's go down to New York City some time soon. We'll fly, right? Let's meet at the WTC". At least, this would not have caught any attention a few weeks ago. This means that the search / surveillance would probably have to be performed by people -- not machines -- which limits its scope severely. This suggests again that most ordinary citizens would not be directly affected. In order to figure out whether "not so ordinary" residents would be affected by escrowing, ;et us consider the following: Escrowing of keys means "escrowing of secret keys whose public keys are certified and associated with a PKI." It does not mean "stopping the use of encryption between parties who have already met and agreed on secret keys". That is something we cannot stop, short of prohibiting cryptography. That makes key escrow a pretty lame weapon against terrorists, assuming these work in small groups of people with some common contact point. Therefore, it seems like ordinary citizens will not be directly affected by escrowing; neither will we be indirectly affected by the way of politicians. Moreover, neither will child pornographers, nor will terrorists. The only situation I can see it making any difference is that of drug trade -- but only for the layer closest to the consumer. This may be a worthwhile reason to introduce it, but does not seem relevant in the context of current legislative efforts. Therefore, I think we should not panic and reduce civil rights when it seems to make no difference anyway. If we want to implement key escrow, we must understand what types of crimes it may avoid, and what crimes it will have no impact on. Markus
  • And it will get worse

    All you can do is ask your congresswoman/congressman to not vote for it... and try to tell people whats wrong. Don't shout- these laws are about hysteria and thats what has to be fought.
  • Obviously wiretapping is not a perfect solution. In an ideal world, all communications would be 100% secure, and would never be read by anyone but their intended recipients. However desperate times call for desperate measures.

    I value my privacy as much as anyone else, but SOMETHING must be done to protect the safety and security of this country.

    Given the choice of having the NSA/FBI read my e-mail, and having more terrorist attacks like those on 9/11, I would gladly concede a bit of my privacy. If it would save the lives of other innocent people, I would personally print out all of my communications and had them to the FBI.

    If you value your privacy more than human life, you should seriously consider reevaluating your priorities.
    • I'm down with them being able to trace the to/from headers on the email, as that's a direct parallel to them tracing phone numbers.

      The URL bit bothers me a little though. Not so much that I'm worried (I mean, how many people regularly visit URLs that are highly illegal?), but if you give up that ground, it might be harder not to give up even more ground in the future.

      The question of privacy vs. human life isn't a very fair one. Should EVERYONE give up their privacy for a single person's life? Or does it have to be a dozen people? Or 50%? Where's the line.

      In a future where privacy was exchanged for security, all they'd need to do is throw some implants in your head that track everything you do and everywhere you go. Any time you do something the government doesn't like, you're instantly busted. It would be a safe world, but it would be a world completely controlled by whoever did the monitoring.

      America's prides itself on freedom far more than on security.
      • "The question of privacy vs. human life isn't a very fair one. Should EVERYONE give up their privacy for a single person's life? Or does it have to be a dozen people? Or 50%? Where's the line."

        I can't believe you actually asked this question. If you can't see that even one human life is worth more than six billion "private" emails (which are anything but if you're not using heavy encryption, anyway), then you have some serious problems.
        • That's such a typical liberal attitude. Willing to give up a little more liberty for the illusion of security (no, I will not use that famous Lincoln quote).

          I'm sure that I'll get crucified for making this analogy, but I think that technology is now having a fate parallel to that of guns. Someone uses a gun to commit a crime, and *bang* (no pun intended), we suddenly need tougher gun laws. Does it change anything? No. Does it stop future crimes? No. The only thing it manages to do is make life harder for (generally) law-abiding citizens.

          The liberals used to push their causes on the basis of "protecting our children". Now they have the ultimate platform: terrorism. Well, privicy was fun while it lasted. I just hope that those terrorists will use our approved technologies so we can prevent the events of 9/11 from happening again.

          Get real.
          • :s/Lincoln/Franklin

            >:)
          • Someone uses a gun to commit a crime, and *bang* (no pun intended), we suddenly need tougher gun laws.

            It may have seemed old, tired and annoying, but remember when us second amendment types warned the rest of you that "after they take our guns away, what of yours will they come to take?"

            Well, it's here. You're next. Welcome to the club.

            In fact, you Slashdotters and fellow geeks have the dubious honor of being an easier target. Who's smart enough to understand the evils being proposed? What average man can understand your argument that banning strong encryption only protects the evil, while making the innocent an easy target? You've got a tougher issue - one that most of America won't understand and won't defend.

            At least we have a lobbying organization (NRA) that fights like a bunch of angry hornets whenever our nest gets swatted at. Who's speaking for you all? The EFF? Nice, mostly harmless geeks. Jon Katz on NPR? He's already sold your souls for publicity (Jon, your 15 minutes are up buddy - especially with lousy performances like the last one. "uh.. umm... err..." You've got a voice for newsprint!).

            So if you want to stand up for your right to live without mind control, you'll do a lot of good by adding numbers to the NRA. Even if that's a bit much for you (we know how the media's portrayed us), at least recognize the common issues we share and perhaps speak up for our rights at election time. We've been fighting for yours for years.

            *scoove*
            Don't tread on me... or my constitution.
            • I don't own any firearms. I've never had the need nor desire to own one. But I've never had a problem with those that do. I live near the ocean. What if next week, or next month, or even next year the next wave of attacks comes in the form of armed terr0rists rowing dinghies ashore and shooting up civilians after commandeering their SUVs at the beach? My state makes it next-to-impossible for anyone to purchase or transport firearms. That leaves me and my family in a potentially vulnerable situation.

              We would be a lot better off if the gubmint would see to it that we are free to exercise the rights we already (theoretically) have rather than attempting to chip away at even more of our liberties. This is a very disturbing trend. I salute the NRA for their determination. Hell, I may even join even though I probably won't be allowed to adequately defend myself in the near future.
            • I also used to compare encryption to guns in a sense that it arms citizens against possible abuses of power by the government.

              Hovewer, there is a HUGE, IMMESURABLE difference between guns and free information: no single person has ever died or been injured because of improper use of encryption. THOUSANDS are killed and injured in gun accidents annualy.

              Government is not afraid of your puny firearms. They are nothing compared to their military machine. So, if you want to protect your right to have effective weapons against government oppression, support weapons that can be very damaging against the government, but don't kill thousands of innocent people. Otherwise, you are a bunch of bloodthirsty hypocrites, using a dead letter of the Constitution to hold to your power over your neighbours' lives instead of fighting for the living spirit of the Constitution.
            • I like the way everyone is trying to use the current situation to push their own agenda; it proves little has actually changed.

              Since it apparently escaped you, let me point out the blatant flaw in your argument: encryption does not kill people. If an elementary school child steals your encryption technology they cannot use it to shoot their teachers or fellow classmates. If you forget to lock up your computer, your toddler will not accidentally blow a hole in themselves or you. No one will ever accost you in a public park wielding a copy of PGP demanding your money or they will encrypt you.

              There is a distinction between that which can harm/kill immediately, and that which could, maybe indirectly assist in the planning. The latter are many and arbitrarily tenuous, while the former is direct and obvious.
          • Where did you get the idea it was 'Liberals' who were pushing this stuff? It's the 'Consevatives' who are always trying to use 'National Security' to quash someone else's rights...

            Time to pull your head out and look around.
            • Look at who's sponsoring the bills on encryption and wiretapping. See that little "D" next to their names? That means "democrat".

              For as long as I can remember, democrat == liberal.

              New! From the people who brought you gun control, Affirmitive Action (tm), and the term "Politically Correct"; it's the Anti-Encryption Act! Act now, before we completely take away your rights to use a computer!
          • No, that's a perfect analogy. I faxed my senators saying as much. Criminals, who by definition break the law, would obviously have no qualms using illegal encryption. I mean really, would terrorists run off and download a new version of PGP that they knew had back doors? If they did, they would be... fucking stupid. Oh wait, Ashcroft is too.

            I urge everybody to go to to the ACLU website and use their web form to email/fax a message to your senator. (all you USians, of course)
      • (I mean, how many people regularly visit URLs that are highly illegal?)
        There is such a thing as an "Illegal URL"??? What, you mean like forbidden knowledge? Is that like, you know: "The Lambada? It is forbidden!" What is with these illegal URL's? Protected by the DMCA?

        Speaking of the DMCA, is it not a crime to decode something that is protected/encrypted? Doesn't that apply to my e-mail too? Are the FBI above the law?

    • "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."- Ben Franklin.

      I think that quote shall stand for itself.
      • I'm sick of seeing that quote on Slashdot lately.

        Just because a famous person says something does not make it correct or accurate. *cough*Falwell*cough*

        I think the key word in that quote is "essential". What exactly defines an "essential liberty"? No one is trying to take away your freedom to voice your opinions. No one is trying to take away your basic human rights in this situation. We're lucky. If we were in China or the USSR, half of the readership of Slashdot would have been summarily executed by now for exercising their right to free speech.

        My point is, and I realize that I'll probably get modded down as flamebait for saying it, but we live in a great nation that was created BY the people, FOR the people. The government is not out to get you. They are trying to protect you. They are not tapping e-mails because they want to read love letters you write to your girlfriend. They are tapping e-mails to save YOUR LIFE. We should all be so lucky.

        • The government is not out to get you. They are trying to protect you.

          What a wonderfully rosy world you live in.

          The fact is that there is no such thing as "the government". Any institution is made up of people some good, some bad, most just self-interested. Government tends to attract a few genuine save-the-world idealists and a lot of power-hungry egotists (I won't comment on which sort is the greatest danger, but it's worth some thought -- the egotists are at least predictable).

          The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood this pretty well, which is why we have a system of checks and balances. Even with the checks, however, abuses can and do happen. Some on a small scale, like an individual policeman who decides that traffic laws don't apply to him and some on a large scale, like the abuses by J. Edgar Hoover or the Japanese internment during WWII.

          The greatness of our nation rests entirely on the fact that the people can and should slap down the government on a regular basis. Inasmuch as we let individuals and groups within the government run roughshod over our freedoms, or to act immorally on the international stage, we cease to have a great nation.

        • No one is trying to take away your freedom to voice your opinions

          Sure they are. How likely are you to criticize the government if you know that that will result in all of you skeletons being put on display? Everybody's got something to hide, and for those who don't, there's always sabotage.

        • I have no tolerance for "big govt.", is what you are calling for. I thought we learned that lesson during the Carter "Administration"? Personally, I'm a gun-totting individual. Heck yea, I like the NRA. I would rather be protected from the government than terrorists. Atleast I know where the terrorists stand and can shoot them. Before I only used PGP/GnuPG a limited amount. I think I shall start using it more. The governemt has NO RIGHT to tap my email/phone/mail!!! This is NOT the Soviet Union or other 2nd world countries (figure that one out ;)), this is the United States of America. And yea, it's supposed to be governemt BY the people, FOR the people. But lately, the trend has been reveresed. They want to take away my guns, my right to privacy. By the way, I usually say desentting stuff about the governemt, and that is my God given right under the Constitution, but won't be anymore once the FBI/CIA/NSA are done raping that document. End of my ranting.
      • I have seen this quote so many times in the past week that it has lost all meaning. Ben Franklin was not a god, nor was he prescient. Trotting out this quote like a parrot doesn't support your case because you _have_ no case: just a cliche!

        Think for yourself, use your own words, and we'll respect your opinion a lot more.
    • I agree to "stop whining" if the additional wiretapping powers given to FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. are limited to preventing terrorist attacks and make it illegal to leak or distribute the information gathered for any other reason.
    • It really isn't these specific examples of privacy that are the problem. The question is: Where does it stop?

      Should there be a federal agency that opens all of your postal mail to make sure you're not breaking any crimes?

      Howabout tracking all of your travels/purchases and maybe a homing device in your body? Then we can make sure you do no wrong.

      While we are at it why don't we ban free speech and a few books. You won't be needing that anymore...

      Add to all of this the fact that this will stop nothing but will take away freedom from our citizens and its just a worthless law.

      Would this have stopped the latest terrorist attack? Perhaps they could've used snail mail with codewords.. or even the telephone talking in codewords. Or even met to face to face (that's it, we need a law requiring a transcript of all conversations to be given to the proper authorities)

      What about 1-time pads for encryption? Completely unbreakable... yet inconvenient to make (and distribute). But it could be done.. of course then the senate would make a law making pads of paper illegal just to stop this kind of thing.
    • Given the choice of having the NSA/FBI read my e-mail, and having more terrorist attacks like those on 9/11, I would gladly concede a bit of my privacy.

      You imply that having the government reading your and everyone else's email will greatly reduce these attacks. That is an unsupported assertion and likely false (especially if terrorists know email is heavily monitored). So you would likely give up your privacy for nothing. Worse, by supporting extensive government monitoring of your actions you risk creating an even stronger police state (with selective enforcement of laws at the whim of those in power) and you risk corrupt government officials or employees using knowledge about you gained through such extensive one-way surveillance for private criminal gain or to satisfy a perverse need to interfere in other people's lives. Note that other laws are simultaneously being proposed to increase government secrecy -- so the monitoring is all one way, thus increasing government power while decreasing government accountability.

      The best way to reduce terrorism is to reduce poverty, ignorance, and injustice worldwide that provides support for extremists in movements which leads to the creation of terrorists through cycles of violence (most would-be-terrorists otherwise might just be isolated sociopathic individuals in a society wealth enough to humanely deal with them). For more background: http://www.zmag.org/reactionscalam.htm [zmag.org]

    • Since it is believed [usatoday.com] that Bin Laden (if he is in fact behind the attacks) hasn't been using the Internet at all, how would this kind of wiretapping crap prevent similar attacks? Isn't it just a cheap excuse for creating a police state?

      If it would save the lives of other innocent people, I would personally print out all of my communications and had them to the FBI.

      If you are not a terrorist, then how does printing out your communication and handing them to the FBI help prevent terrorism?

    • There is a very clear reason why "the law" has restraints put on it and has checks and balances limiting what they can do: History, which so many idiots fail to learn from, show that when you give "law enforcement" unrestrained information and abilities it ALWAYS gets abused, often in ways that lead to crime and/or death. We're not saying maybe, we're saying for sure. Does everyone here truly believe that every FBI agent is clean and isn't busy snorting cocaine while handing over information to the mob? Do you really think that there aren't CIA agents taking information from one pile and putting it in another to help out/screw a buddy? These are just people too, and as such they have all the flaws that people have and need to be never be given such powers.


      In any case this situation after the WTC is an absolute disgrace: I bitched about it in other posts and I'll bitch about it again-> The US is looking for easy, knee-jerk solutions. Hey who cares that they have zero proof that these individuals were using encryption: Ban encryption (yeah pretend that the glaring galaxy sized hole in their human intelligence was just because they were thwarted by encryption). Despite the fact that at most claims of them coming "from Canada" the simple fact is that most, if not ALL, landed at US airports and went through the obviously grossly pourous US immigration checkpoints I'm hearing asshole, quick fix congressmen calling Canada a haven for terrorists! As a newspaper article today stated: "American cries for increased security at Canadian airports goes under the presumption that Canadian security is worse, a dubious presumption given recent events.". Canadian airline safety has far eclipsed US airport security for years and years yet again there was concern about letting those "lax" Canadian planes into US airspace. Unbelievable. A US baseball team complained about playing in Montreal because they wanted to know that we had "US standards" of security in place: Uh, how many times has Canada been attacked? Sorry I just had to gripe a bit, as personally I think politicians in Canada have been far too accepting of US criticism without calling them on it.


      Give me a break! How about looking inwards for once?

      • Give me a break! How about looking inwards for once?

        Hey now! Hollings and other (D) party members (what's in a "D" anyways? Deviant? Dishonest? Duplicitous? Destroyers?) don't speak for everyone in the US (though I did hear the quite unelequent Jon Katz speaking for us geeks on NPR gushing how he wanted to give up his liberties in exchange for a big man protecting him... what a pathetic, spineless wimp).

        Actually, it's getting rather concerning that every time anything happens, one of those "D" letters pops up somewhere and says the only solution is to take away liberties. School shootings? Ban all guns. Terrorism? Ban encryption and secure software/operating systems. Economy problems? Ban wealth (redistribution). Hey, if bans work so well, just ban crime and terrorism and be done with it all!

        Perhaps we need to create a crime of "legislative terrorism" that makes the opportunistic seizure of liberties during periods of national crisis a matter of treason.

        *scoove*
        Don't tread on me... or my constitution.

        • I 100% agree that there are a very large percentage of US citizens that don't agree with a lot of what the "powers that be" say, and that is the true benefit of democracy. You know this whole situation is incredibly disturbing: Firstly you have droves of crocodile tears idiots offering up all of their personal freedoms to "stop the killing" in the future (however dubious and clearly unrelated the freedom restraints will be at preventing terrorism) and to say that is a dangerous situation is an understatement. Secondly everyone with an agenda is coming out of the woodwork to use this situation for their own benefit: Here in Canada I have seen about 40 articles in the National Post (http://www.nationalpost.com) yapping about "America-Bashing" and how it somehow contributed to this situation, etc. Of course "America-Bashing" is honest, relevant and extremely valuable criticism of countries foreign policy and again that is why we live in a free country, but people are coming out of the shadows to squelch free speech. I've heard several instances now of people who stated something publicly about the US getting what it sows or whatever (I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS FOR A SECOND, BTW! I do not prescribe to this belief at all and I believe that violence has seldom in the history of mankind solved problems or earned consensus) and they were basically censored and forced into retracting their statements. I've argued with people who have referred to the terrorists as "irrational psychos", yet when you contemplate that these people have been pursuing this plan for years earning their pilots license and all, only to smash a plane to their death you realize that they probably spent more time thinking about what they were doing than most of us do in our day to day lives. I find what they did abhorrent and extraordinarily unjust, yet at the same time I realize that if you villify them and cast them as simpletons, and you pursue a mandate of basically "killing the head vampire", then you're begging for the situation to happen again, and again, and again. One of the first precepts of warfare is to understand the enemy, and it is extraordinarily sad how many people have no interest in understanding the enemy. Understanding does not mean sympathizing or agreeing with in any degree whatsoever, btw.


          Wow I really digressed there. :-)

    • O.K. I guess I've fallen for this Troll, But...

      "-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity."

      If you're a card-carrying Mensa member, then you should know how to spell "Tolerance".

      "I value my privacy as much as anyone else, but SOMETHING must be done to protect the safety and security of this country."

      I only ask that that "SOMETHING" be something that will actually help. So, let me see... Terrorists don't use curbside check-in. Let's ban curbside check-in. There is no evidence that the authorities need more comprehensive wire-tap laws. I have heard no evidence (some speculation, but no proof) that the Terrorists used encryption/e-mail/the internet to communicate, so let's monitor that.

      "Given the choice of having the NSA/FBI read my e-mail, and having more terrorist attacks like those on 9/11, I would gladly concede a bit of my privacy. If it would save the lives of other innocent people, I would personally print out all of my communications and hand them to the FBI."

      Please report to your nearest FBI office for the surgical attachment of your freedom-cam. YOur Freedom-cam guarantees your security and freedom by making your life available 24 hours a day 7 days a week to your freedom loving friends at the FBI. Don't worry, you are only giving up your privacy, and this might save lives.

      Now are you still willing to do this? Would you rather live a life under constant surveillance, or have SOME privacy?

      I know which one I would choose.

      Z.
      • I just have to laugh everytime someone goes postal about that mispelling
        • Hmmm...

          Well, at least I didn't go postal.

          And considering that the rest of the message isn't free of typos, it's hard to tell if it was really intended as a joke.

          Still, it's nice to see that nobody reads past the first line of my reply to see that that was made in an offhand way, and the rest of the reply was devoted to an actual argument about the original post, not the sig.

          Z.
    • I am reminded of an old song:

      If you're happy and you know it, clink your chains ...

      Sadly, there is a large part of the population, who given the choice, do not choose on the dynamic of freedom vs slavery.The choose on the dynamic of comfoprt vs pain. They would rather have a comfortable slavery.

      Almost any condition can be acceptable if you choose it. What is a pain is when you want to change your mind, and you are not permitted to put that into action. This becomes the option of freedom vs imprisonment, and ultimately slavery.

      The Problem in the proposals is that even in email headers that is substantially more information than in telephone laws. And that is where the potential for abuse comes in.

      In computing, Garbage in = Garbage out. This applies to people. People educated with garbage will make garbage decisions. They do not even have to be evil (though that helps)

      And someone will have the best reasons to abuse the system in some way.

    • I value my privacy as much as anyone else, but SOMETHING must be done to protect the safety and security of this country.

      No offense, but it gets so tiring listening to folks willing to do anything just so they can feel better about doing something. It's probably the same reason we have so many people calling the psychic friends network...

      You want to know what "doing something" does in this case? Holling's "Doing Something" bill will:

      - eliminate strong encryption, effectively disarming you on the net from the bad guys who are already shooting at you (hello China - thanks for targeting my networks)

      - eliminate strong operating systems, allowing Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian or other nationals to take over my networks.

      NT is not permitted here. I tire of having to deal with trouble calls from customers who get owned by exploits in proprietary OS's, and sure as hell would not run them on our backbone. Take away my open source OS and security tools and you might as well surrender the net to to the enemy.

      If you value your privacy more than human life, you should seriously consider reevaluating your priorities.

      Sounds like a typical con telling me to get rid of my gun so I can "value my life"...

      *scoove*
    • This is a well known logical fallacy.

      We must do something.
      X is something.
      Therefore we must do X.

      This can be used as an argument for any X. The scary part is that it is used and that a lot of people actually buy it!

      I wish I could come up with something real funny about an arrogant Mensa member who can't spell, but nothing that's funnier than the naked fact comes to mind...
    • Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither!

      Do you honestly believe that a terrorist would actually transfer sensitve materials in plain text or that the US export laws on encryption have actually stopped anyone from outside the US from useing the same encryption you enjoy? Open your eyes my friend because once the gov't gets an inch they are gonna try to steal mile.

      SilencedScream
    • People who are willing to DIE for their cause are
      NOT going to be "following the rules" and using
      only "approved" software.

      A "card carrying Mensa member" (who can't spell,
      even in his own .sig), should have thought of that!

      Heck, I doubt very seriously (if they were using
      computers at all) that their communications even
      WERE over port 25 (SMTP aka: email). Anyone who
      really wants to keep communications private CAN,
      very easily... use your imagination in that
      officially approved brain of yours!
      • I value my privacy as much as anyone else, but SOMETHING must be done to protect the safety and security of this country.

      Something, but not this. This is a solution to a different problem altogether. This is a solution to the problem of a government having citizens that question its motives and actions..

    • ...Given the choice of having the NSA/FBI read my e-mail, and having more terrorist attacks like those on 9/11, I would gladly concede a bit of my privacy. If it would save the lives of other innocent people, I would personally print out all of my communications and had them to the FBI.

      So would I, as long as I was sacrificing my privacy for the prevention of more attacks. Fact is, these proposals give you neither. Terrorists will use strong encryption (without backdoors).

      When you make wiretapping a law, the only people you can snoop on are law-abiding citizens.

    • The correct quote escapes me, but in denying an individual the right of choice he becomes a clockwork orange -- Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange. So doing good is not worth much if the individual does good without the ability to choose bad.

      I know in the wake of this terrible attack on your country the feelings might seem a bit blurred and scarred, but we are all human beings. The human race (as per bible, and I take it the quoran as well) has been granted with this conundrum of choice. Not only Choice subjectively, but choice objectively. An attack on the United States is painful for Americans. As is an attack on Palistine in an attempt to subdue their culture painful for Palistinians As is an attack on Angola in an attempt to profit from their natural wealth for Angolians.

      Choice should not only depend on your own viewpoint, but on how you fit into the viewpoint of others aswell.
    • If it would save the lives of other innocent people, I would personally print out all of my communications and had them to the FBI.

      And so would I. But it wouldn't help save lives or assist the FBI in any way. There is no useful information in my e-mails. (Useful to the FBI, anyway.)

      And if I were engaged in some nefarious activities, I'd make damned sure to use an older version of my encryption program; one without an FBI backdoor. Or perhaps a copy of something written in another country -- one that is not bound by US law WRT backdoors.

      So in the long run, this invasion of my privacy does not help the FBI, nor hinder the evil-doers. It just places the jack-boot of authority squarely on the neck of myself and other innocents.

      I am not in favour. I am well aware that it will happen whether I like it or not, but I still don't like it.

  • ...that an article on security is publihed by microsoft?

  • In case we haven't all looked out our windows and peeked around recently, this world is pretty fucked up for the most part. As much as I am for privacy and anonymity, I question whether or not I'm willing to trade it for my (and my family's) safety. I absolutely despise the idea of the government being able to peek at what I view and who I send email to, but with the people there are in the world today I question whether or not I really care. I guess anymore I've grown to accept the fact that the government is having to weigh between individual privacy, or universal safety. Which is more important to you?

    Is this something that could open doors and lead to abuse of the law or even more invasion into our private lives? Absolutely. However, I'd prefer the government know which porn pages I visit rather than risk a plane crashing into MY town or my childrens' school.
    • The reason government can do wiretaps? because it's possible.. simple. They cannot force you to speak on the phone, or in a language they can understand, though.

      The government cannot forbid people from whispering in each other's ear in a huge underground cave (I mean, somewhere they can't eavesdrop)... so why should they be able to forbid you to whisper at a distance, using encryption?

      You see.. NONE of these things would have prevented this attack.

      You know.. it's funny. On the movies, the night of the attack, on TV, I saw a show all about some kind of post-terrorism america, where you had to have a license to do *anything*. Buying groceries? You had to have a license, and present it, and everything was tracked... in order to prevent terrorism.
      • Funny. I would have said pretty much the same thing back in high school (not a bash on you, I just meant before I had kids). Now, however, I wonder if we really are that egotistical to think that we as Americans should be "free" to do whatever we like and that it should be totally and entirely private. If this world was full of perfect people, then I'm sure we'd have absolutely no problem with that. It's the few assholes out there that are spoiling it for the rest of us.

        The movie you were watching is definitely an extreme example, however probably not totally out of the realm of possibility (we won't see it in our lifetime though). Is terrorism 100% controllable? Of course not. Turning the situation around, we're discussing how much privacy we're willing to give up for the sake of security. How much security are you willing to risk for your privacy?
        • Having come to the US from the UK I have a slightly different attitude about this...

          I've lived my entire life under the shadow of terrorism (thanks in part to American organisations like NORAID, which fund the IRA) and I am STILL not willing to give up my privacy to have total security.

          A minor accounting of some of the times that terrorism has come close to me... I was in Manchester city centre a few hours before the corn exchange bombing... I lived in Warrington until about a month before a bomb went off in the city centre killing two small boys... About the same time a plan to blow up a natural gas storage tank was thwarted about a mile from where I had been living. I travelled through Lockerbie the day after Pan-Am 103 fell on it (I was on my way home for Christmas Break at the time)... I don't want to get any closer to terrorism than I already have.

          BUT, I do not feel that giving up any of my privacy would have made me any more secure. In fact if I was to give up my freedoms to stop terrorist attacks I might as well just tell the terrorists that they've won and give them what they want. After all, they can't want more from me than O've let the government take away from me.

          Z.

          • Someone mod this post up, and other non-US citizens please speak up on this issue.


            The US has had only minute contact with terrorism compared to other countries. Sure, the attacks on NYC and DC were a terrible thing, but many other countries in the world have had long histories of terrorist attacks. US citizens generally do not know what it is like to live in fear of such things, and do not know what they are giving up to prevent terrorism.


            I grew up as US citizen in Indonesia, and bomb threats to my high school were frequent, while threats to public places were commonplace. And mind you it was never one big conspiracy. Most terrorist groups tend to be small and isolated even if they do share values/actions with other groups.


            Everyone is willing to give up a little convenience for security. For instance, the tube (subway) service in London has no trash cans to be seen at any stop. Why? In the past they have been used to contain bombs. While visiting the UK (I'm from the US) I initially bitched about not being able to throw away my empty diet coke can but given the reason I put up and shut up about it.


            Now privacy is a completely different sort of thing than convenience. Tools like encryption are at this point fundamental to all activities on the Internet. I agree with a few posts above who state that the current reaction to the incident is "knee-jerk". They're right...it's completely impulsive and emotionally loaded. I don't trust that the US government knows what they are dealing with, especially with handling the domestic situation.


            *sigh* I'm tired of bitching about this.

      • They cannot force you to speak on the phone, or in a language they can understand, though.
        Actually, in Britain, as I understand it, if they can't crack your code they can demand you translate it into clear-text for them, and it is a crime to refuse.

        So if you speak in a language they can't understand, they can demand that you translate the recording or go to jail.
        • Right.. this makes sense,though, doesn't it?
          I mean, a court can also demand that you tell the truth about a conversation you had. Of course, if there is no evidence, you can lie...

          A court asking me for the keys to some information they found is one thing.. mandatory snooping on all information is another.

          You could be asked to do the same in the US, I'm sure... unless they plead the 5th ammendment or something.
          • You could be asked to do the same in the US, I'm sure... unless they plead the 5th ammendment or something.
            Well that's the point exactly. If "the authorities" think you have been up to no good, it is up to them to make a case against you. You are not required to assist them by helping them gather evidence. Nor are you forced to give testimony against yourself.

    • ... but with the people there are in the world today...

      There are people like that in government too. They will not hesitate to use the data on you to destroy you, if and when it suits their purposes. Learn from history. For example, study how FBI and J Edgar Hoover abused much lesser powers.
    • I surely hope the government has better things to do than track porn browsing at the moment. It's never the things you expect that get you though.

      Someone explain to me how we can trust all future Presidents to refrain from monitoring the minority parties' communications during election campaigns in future? We do remember Watergate, don't we? It'll sure be easier now, and perfectly legal as well. Everyone knows [party of your non-choice] would be a national security threat if they got in office.

      Someone explain how shinier toys will help when the problem was lack of human intelligence? If we tap e-mail the terrorists won't use it, so what the heck is the point? We do far more damage to ourselves than them.

      I'd be far happier if I saw any motion towards preparedness, but so far nada. No emergency channels, no evacuation plans, no call for volunteers for organization or planning, no public education on ways to respond to threats, no calls for energy conservation. Just a lot of armed guards in Washington, an air cap, and a pack of lawyers after our civil rights with a gleam in their eye.

      Most of all why the unseemly haste? Why not ask for limited extraordinary powers until Congress can listen to us, then vote? Someone is trying to sell us something here, and we could be very sorry if we buy it sight unseen. I'm all for things that make sense like wiretapping people not stations, and correcting flubs like the CIA handing off to the FBI, who passed to the INS who lost two of the hijackers, a week before. But let's talk sense, not agendas.
    1. We must do something
    2. This is something
    3. We must do this
    [QED]
  • As long as we are allowed to have strong encryption your web browsing can still be private. All you need to do is go through a proxy server that many other people go through. As long as your connection with the proxy server is encrypted all the feds will see is one connection to it.

  • Many people.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Saturday September 22, 2001 @10:35AM (#2334029)
    In that news survey, said they were willing to give up some privacy if it would have prevented the attacks. Well.. what a loaded question.

    Would they also be willing to give up that privacy if it would have both prevented those attacks, and meant the government now recorded everything you say? I doubt it.

    What if they had outlawed any interstate travel wtihout a license to be presented at each state border? Hmm.. I doubt it.

    Also... what's with all the buzz about increased airline security? These hijackers could have used *anything* and accomplished their mission. They did not have big, scary guns or deadly weapons. They had tiny sharp objects, and the threat of a bomb.

    I wonder if any changes will be made to FAA regulations regarding travelling without presenting identification (You CAN do this, perfectly legally, by the way... the airlines are NOT allowed to demand identification.. though they have different procedures to follow if you don' thave any, regarding handling of your bags)
    • Moving the level of the people doing the checking to full time well paid and trained people with the same authority as police will help. As will onboard air marshals.

      All the folks involved in airline security need to be treated similar to the police, given livable wages and benefits.
    • In that news survey, said they were willing to give up some privacy if it would have prevented the attacks. Well.. what a loaded question.

      In a related survey, pollsters approached folks in dark alleys to obtain surprisingly similar results. The question was posed:

      Q: Would you hand over your wallet to me right now in exchange for preventing an attack against your person?

      Incredibly, 98.3% (3.5% margin of error) also said they'd gladly give up their wallets!

      Poll researchers concluded that it's amazing what people will give up when you hold a gun at their head.

      Researchers indicated that creating legislation based on this principle (holding perceived or actual guns at citizens heads), however, is another matter and may require changing party affiliation from Republican/Democrat to Totalitarian.

      *scoove*
      • There is nothing amazing about people willing to give up thier wallet to save their life.

        If you actually took a gun into an alley I'd be surprised if one person said no.

        Its bred into you, self preservation. You can't hold your breath to kill yourself, you won't voluntarily give up your own life (especially over a wallet).

        It takes great mental preparation or anguish to overcome this survival instinct.
      • Also... what's with all the buzz about increased airline security? These hijackers could have used *anything* and accomplished their mission. They did not have big, scary guns or deadly weapons. They had tiny sharp objects, and the threat of a bomb.

      My personal opinion is that all airline passengers should be allowed to bring a handgun on board -- then let's see someone try to hijack an airplane!
    • You forgot: "willing to give up that privacy if it would NOT have both prevented those attacks, and meant the government now recorded everything you say..."

  • In section 832, there is a part that expands the circumstances under which the new powers can be used:
    "...(E) an attack on the integrity or availability of a protected computer..."
    How they define 'protected' could have a lot of impact on the scope of the law. Does this only apply to military computers? All government machines? Or how about any machine that is encrypted, eventually important systems on a machine that are encrypted. With the SSSCA (which required built-in copy protection), will every new machine be 'protected'?
    While that is probably not the aim of the framers of this bill, there are plenty of other instances where powers of slowly expanded through the use of such words, and there are other such places in this bill. Interpreting the what the law means will be up to the courts.
  • Baker, Sept. 17, 10:30am: But frankly, I don't hear a lot of calls for sacrificing civil liberties today.

    Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sept. 17, 7:30pm: In a press conference earlier today, Ashcroft indicated that he would be asking Congress to expand the ability of law enforcement officers to perform wiretaps. EFF believes this broad legislation would result in unintended negative consequences for civil liberties of law-abiding ciizens by making it unnecessary for law enforcement officers to obtain a court wiretap order before requiring ISPs to release e-mail message header information and Internet browsing patterns of their subscribers.

    Perhaps Mr. Baker should have said "I didn't hear a lot of calls yesterday," just to be on the safe side.
  • Seemt to me there are two important distinctions which have to be made in these privacy arguments:
    1. Limiting available "secure technology" (e.g. strong ecryption export restrictions in the US) VS something like mandatory key eschrow.
    2. National government having access to communications in its own territory / between its own citizens VS across national boundaries.
    With the first I'm refering to attempts to criple available encryption software (e.g. through US export rules) which would basically mean that communication can only be weakly encrypted w.r.t to anybody (i.e. Joe Bloggs can crack my communications with my mother if he is determined enough). This is different to the UK's RIP laws which aim to force people to give copies of their keys to some government institution. The later solution means Old Joe is locked out whilst the government can still spy. (until somebody cracks the bank of keys...)

    The second point is that it is fine and dandy for the US to wish to monitor all communications - do they expect to do this in China? in Russia? in the UK? Many of the communciations which might be involved in terrorist or illegal activity planned in one country may take in other juridictions. No doubt there is/will be inter government cooperation but it is unlikely to extend to sharing access to all communications in a given country.

    Poor security technology (1. above) puts everybody at risk - governments would not be able to communicate safely, indivuduals would have their privacy compromised to anybody (not just the government). So you might be left with (at best) forced key eschrow and in the long run governments may be able to monitor their own citizens but they certainly wont have global access - those cryptologists will still have work to do.

    "All your keys are belong to us..."

    • To restate my own post:

      • do I have a right to say what I like without the government knowing?
      • do I have a right to say what I like without another government knowing?
      • do I have a right to say what I like without my company knowing,
      • my mother, my neighour, Joe Bloggs?...
      Castrating encryption software takes away all these rights in pursuit of the allowing the first (sometimes). Forcing key eschrow (a la RIP) is also unattractice but at least boss will have a bit of work to do before she knows what I'm saying about her - then you get into the interesting problem of wiretapping across national boundaries...

  • Dishonoring those who died (Score:3, Insightful)

    by guygee ( 453727 ) on Saturday September 22, 2001 @10:57AM (#2334071)
    The acts of the political profiteers in this country who are using the deaths of thousands to push their pre-existing anti-civle liberties political agendas are only surpassed by the heinous acts of the terrorists themselves. Both parties are waging war against the American citizens.

    There is no evidence, nor plausible scenario, in which internet wiretapping of American citizens could have prevented the horrific events of Spetember 11. All of the acts, as well as planning and support, was carried out by non-citizens, many who were apparently here illegally.

  • Any ideas on what exactly this would mean for companies such as Anonymizer [anonymizer.com]?

  • From a news.com [news.com] article [cnet.com]. Congressman Bob Goodlatte equates encryption backdoors to giving you house key to the local police. He's also pushing for more encryption not less inorder to make U.S. companies/systems more secure against cyber attacks.

    Nice to see at he's got the right idea. Check out the article [cnet.com] for more of his comments...

  • IPv6 (Score:1)

    by loz ( 64114 )
    soon we'll have IPv6 where we'll be communicating securely by default. Is the US going to forbid the deployment of IPv6?

  • Quoting Baker on Carnivore: "What is the Internet equivalent of acquiring every phone number the target dials? The Justice Department thinks that's an easy question-it's the Internet address of the sites he visits, the "to" line on his e-mails..."

    But what is to stop the FBI from actually reading the content of the message sent in that email? We need more than congressional oversight on projects like Carnivore. When they have this much technical capability, the ability to ensure that it be used properly must also be stronger. Hell, the judicial system requires a jury of the accused's peers; why can't we call on the same private sector to provide security professionals to verify the legal use of information gleaned from Carnivore. This way, the checks and balances that were built into the government from day one are upheld, and they get their toy.

    In a separate thread, the loudest message I seem to hear so far is regarding the trade of small amounts of freedom for lives. These people seem to be trying to make the point that 'we are in a war, sacrifices must be made from every American.' If this holds true, than the war has been raging for years. The unfortunate sacrifice was the 6000+ people in the WTC. Let us all honor their sacrifice, and uphold our freedoms that much stronger. America is not simply the land, the buildings and the people who occupy it, but also an intangible property that gives it's citizens freedom and rights. To paraphrase a movie, the politicians think the people of this country exist to give them power, but we think the power the politicians wield exists to provide those people with freedom.

    PS - the subject line is as intended.
  • I find this amendment and the analysis by the New York Times really interesting (If you skipped the NYT article, read it, it makes sense of the language in the amendment). It seems, in my reading (note that I am not a lawyer) that this amendment is formalizing a power that has been granted to U.S. Attorneys for a long time, namely that the tracing of addressing information is subject to a lower standard than an invasive search.

    Now, expiration of these powers aside, if my assumptions are correct, much of this boils down to what the expectation of privacy is when you communicate via the 'net. In my opinion, it's very low. That's why I use encryption for private communications (e-commerce, private emails).

    I go back to the post card analogy, especially with respect to email. Email is sent in clear text and through a potentially variable path in attempts to deliver it. I wouldn't send packets containing private data without protection. Encryption is the envelope, so to speak.

    Now, the issuance of new legislation without built in checks and expirations is concerning, but the body of SA 1562, sec 832 doesn't really strike me as heinous. I fear the slippery slope, of course. Perhaps the better argument is that this information is subject to stronger requirements of proof before a warrant is issued (anyone know what case law is the basis for lower standards of proof for this "Tap and Trace" kind of warrant).

    Laws that may affect my ability to keep private that which I want to keep private are more concerning, IMHO.

    This sort of thing will definitely define what I'm going to be thinking about all day. Gotta decide whether to write to my elected officials about this one (Of course, both of the senators from my state (AZ) are sponsors of this). I'm going to have to get a postage meter to keep track of all this snail mail I'm sending to Washington).

    Once again, Ben said it best:

    "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
    Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

  • After these laws are in place, and the fight against terrorism is successful (let's assume), what's to stop them from being used for other crimes?

    We can use it to fight pedophelia. How about monitoring for words that suggest the writer likes young boys and girls, and searching his home, looking for kiddie porn. Maybe he made a joke, maybe he just has a desire for kiddie porn but would never think of downloading any and breaking the law, maybe he was writing an article on pedophelia. Better check him out, just in case. Maybe since it costs us so much money to check these guys out, we better make sure we make a few arrests, right?

    Drug use: careful, if you tell your friends you're going to smoke a few bowls tonight after the show, you might find the police at your door. What's that? You don't smoke pot and never will, just trying to be cool? Son, you've wasted our time tonight. We better put you in jail for the evening anyway..for this bag of pot we happened to find in this drawer. Yeah, we have no idea how it got there either..now come along.

    How about the RIAA/MPAA asking to monitor for illegal copying? It's illegal right? So how could anyone argue against it? Just check filenames and URLs going by and if they match up with a copyrighted work, shut down the ISP account. Since there are SO MANY of these infringements every day, we can't possibly verify each one by hand, so maybe a few innocent people get shut down, so what? You'll have a chance to show that copy of Oops, I did it again [tigerbeat6.com] was actually not by Britney Spears (but thanks for pointing out that trademark violation).

    Another different example.. speeding is illegal. So why not just wire up the speedometer so that when the speed limit is exceeded for 10 seconds or more, you get a small fine. I mean, speeding is against the law so there's no argument here. Sure, you might be passing that big truck and have to gun it for a while, but you'll have your day in court, the surveillence video will show your innocence. Unless of course someone abuses their power, but that never happens in government right?

    So my fear is not so much when we're fighting terrorists, it's when we're at peace again and the power these laws may grant gets abused. Power corrupts.

    Of course this is all a little extreme but we have to be vigilant because corruption comes little by little, piece by piece...
    • I'm with David Brin on privacy -- there isn't any, get used to it. That's not what worries me.

      There are only two possible reasons for supporting goofy laws like encryption backdoors (or for that matter, outlawing hemp harvesting):

      1. The people who support these laws are too stupid to realize that they can't possibly be enforced even-handedly, or

      2. They need yet another way to easily repress, intimidate, and imprison any one they want to, anytime they like.

      I don't really believe our "leaders" are as stupid as option 1 implies. Do you?
  • Salon [salon.com] has an article on its front page [salon.com] addressing these same issues. Check it out.
  • There's no reason for this. There's no reason to believe that giving the government these powers is going to help stop terrorism at all. Do I like the fact that 5000+ people died? Hell no! Am I going to give up my freedom, the freedom that so many more have died trying to protect? Hell no!

    Sure, these people did not ask to die protecting our freedom, but if these people are looking down on us right now and seeing what their deaths are causing to happen to our freedoms do you think they'd be happy? I believe it would be the opposite. I believe that they'd be sickened to know that our government is using their deaths as an excuse to push forth an agenda they've been trying to push forth for as long as I can remember. I think they'd be sickened to know that their families' privacy was going to be thrown away. If it were me that had been killed in that blast I would be looking down and be greatly saddened to see that my death was a catalyst for a large step in the annihilation of our freedoms.

    I have said it before and I will say it again. I'd much rather die defending our freedom than killing it. I hate to tell these people this, but criminals don't care what the laws are. You create backdoors in encryption and the bad guys will simply create one that doesn't have backdoors. You tap phone lines and Internet communications and they'll simply use postal mail or just meet somewhere. They didn't respect the no-fly zone over Washington when they crushed part of the Pentagon! Why should they be scared by laws they can easily get around even if it is illegal to do so?

    All this is going to do is make it easier to control the general populace by discovering all the skeletons in their closets and using it to shut them up, and to keep them from making insulting remarks about the government. I love this country, and I love its people, but I love what America stands for even more. If the government takes away the freedoms that so many have died to protect, then it is my country no longer, and I will leave it for England, Australia, Scandanavia, Switzerland, or some other country which does not have such needless and pointless laws.

    I hear so many of those on here saying that without security you don't have freedom. I say to you that is absolutely false. They can take some of our lives away from us, but there are too many of us to take all of them. They however, CANNOT take away what it is that we stand for. We have to give that up, and I, for one, refuse to do so! Sure, there are some things that need to be improved upon. Airport security must remain tightened as it always should have been. Having an non-uniformed armed guard on all flights should be a no-brainer. Sure, it may make people feel a little anxious, but it doesn't violate their freedoms at all.

    It's also been said that only those that have something to hide should be worried about this. Well, I have some news for you. I'm sure if you dig back way way into your past that you probably have something you'd rather not have revealed. Everyone has skeletons in their closets, no matter how small, and if you've ever looked at some of the former Soviet Union's and Hitler's propaganda from the past, you know that governments have an uncanny ability to make a mountain out of a molehill. Let's assume that you are the one exception and that you do have no skeletons in your closet. Well, all it takes is a slip of the tongue, or a misuse of words in your sentences sometime and it can make you sound really bad. If Big Brother wants to make you look like a bad guy, he can. Make no mistake of that.

    If these revisions are made then I will probably be monitored by the feds because of some of the things I've said in this post because they don't sound very patriotic. Hell, I may be being monitored now for all I know, cuz, what the heck, abuses happen all the time. It worries me, but I'm not going to let it stop me from saying what I feel needs to be said.
  • Would you be willing to tear down the White House and the Capitol, build a big effing mosque from the stones, with the Washington Monument for a minaret, and then invite the Taliban bastards to come and rule over us, if it would make us secure from terrorist attacks?
  • Suppose a terrorist (or other criminal) organization was planning to use the internet to communicate via e-mail. Suddenly, there is a backdoor in the latest e-mail encryption software. And for some reason they can't simply continue using the pre-backdoor earlier version.

    What is to prevent them setting up a WebMail site on a web server somewhere? Only, make the site a "Secure Site" using HTTPS (SSL, is it?)

    Or is there to be a backdoor in secure web documents too? Because it will blow eCommerce out of the water if there is. Just think of all those credit card transactions going to and from "Secure Sites" with a gaping backdoor in them!
  • Will the War on Terrorism end terrorism? No matter how much money you throw at it no matter how much technology no matter how many rights and liberties you abridge or discard both drugs and terrorism will be with us.

    At least Ronald Regan knew he was kidding when he "The Soviet Union has been outlawed. The bombing will begin in 5 minutes".

    Throughout history we've many directors of homeland security: Robespierre, Himler, Lavrenti Beria, Vichy France, Cromwell, the Staasi. Not a good plan for us either.
  • I offer this to you all as an example of free speech. IMHO this is a really gutsy guy who's opinion is a valuble contribution to the situation. To those interested in alternative middle eastern-american views i reccomend the
    Most magicians would admit that it's all done with smoke and mirrors. A few words for slash dot. Damn fine forums and reporting.

    The Iranian
    * Editorial policy
    Truman's legacy

    Presidents become president when they have their war
    By KayArash Serri
    September 21, 2001
    The Iranian
    Few people in the world are not aware that at 8:45 a.m. local time on
    11th of September 2001, a passenger liner, which had been had been
    previously
    hijacked, crashed into one of New York City's World Trade Centre Twin
    Towers.
    Eighteen minutes later another hijacked plane crashed into the Southern
    Tower; subsequently both towers collapsed. The Pentagon was attacked an
    hour later in the same manner. Camp David just missed total destruction.
    The world caught its breath and watched. American airspace was closed.
    The U.S. armed forces were put to high alert just short of war status.
    There
    were reports of more hijacked planes, unconfirmed reports of attacks
    against
    the State Department and the Congress were coming in. It seemed as if the
    mighty U.S. was unable to stop these terrorists from attacking wherever
    they wanted to, whenever they wanted to.
    It was the perfect doomsday scenario Hollywood films were trying to
    portray
    over the years, and the world watched on, mesmerized, while casualty
    estimates
    ran well into four figures at the least, a fact that distresses every
    human
    being.
    Instantly all fingers of accusation were pointed at Osama Bin Laden,
    the exiled Saudi millionaire who's living in Afghanistan. But
    interesting
    enough this mastermind of the 1998 attack on U.S. embassies in Africa, who
    always proclaimed his feats loud and wide, denied any involvement --
    though
    he praised the attacks.
    As the drama ended and the shock subsided, questions started to form
    in the minds of people everywhere across the world. Questions such as
    how,
    in spite of mobile phones from passengers in the planes to the outside
    world
    informing them of their plight and the fact that all four planes had
    changed
    course and all radio contact had been broken, there was no leak of the
    hijackings
    until the first one crashed into the Northern Tower? There were
    reservations
    on how, all of a sudden, at least four planes, and according to some
    accounts
    eight planes, were hijacked at one go with no hitches?
    Hardly 24 hours had passed before FBI officials stated that they had
    caught a number of Arab suspects with many more identified and that a
    hired
    car supposedly used by the hijackers had been found with an Arabic
    manual
    for flying in it. Which itself raises the question that how was it
    possible
    that four groups of hijackers evaded the vast and efficient American
    security
    services successfully for who knows how long and then they leave behind
    such incriminating evidence and that their accomplices are being rounded
    up
    in such a short time.
    American officials are saying nothing on how these terrorists evaded
    their security and intelligence forces for so long, but all of them,
    right
    up to President Bush, believe that this was not act of terror but an act
    of war, a war the likes of which the world has never seen. In their
    opinion
    the whole civilized and democratic world faces an adversary that hides
    in
    the dark and strikes when you are least prepared. A new kind of warfare
    indeed, but then the Americans are used to ingenuity in warfare methods
    as the Cold War bears out.
    On August 17th 1945, just three days after the announcement of Japan's
    surrender, Harry S. Truman, the then U.S. president, declared that he
    would
    ask Congress to approve a program of universal military training for all
    healthy American youth. As he explained a few days later: "If we are
    to maintain leadership among other nations, we must continue to be
    strong
    in a military way." A statement that rang with an interventionist
    policy.
    But the American people were traditionally against interventionist
    policies,
    so much so that Congress resoundingly defeated Truman's call for
    universal
    military training. An end to U.S. internationalist policies? Not so.
    Louis J. Halle was one of the new breed of thinkers in the State
    Department
    in 1945. In Halle's view, which can be taken to represent the State
    Department's
    non-ideological, "realist" approach to foreign affairs, international
    relations deal with "such a distribution of power among a number of
    centres
    as prevents the acquisition by any one of enough power to make itself
    masters of the rest.". Obviously for the American statesmen at least
    no one centre should be more powerful than the U.S.
    "The American people," Halle writes, "shaped by their
    long tradition, could not accept considerations of power politics as
    reasons
    for going to war," either in 1945 or at any other time. Nor Halle nor
    any other American statesman, whose career has been devoted to
    international
    politics, would assume that the American people could possibly be right
    in having such non-interventionist perceptions. Thus, says Halle, since
    the American people would not accept what members of the State
    Department
    felt was a realist's explanation of the need for interventionism, the
    people
    had to be given some other explanation. And so, for example, the World
    War
    I was advocated as a "war to make the world safe for democracy".
    Interestingly even Halle believes that there is "a sort of fatality
    about these matters. If the American people had been told the truth in
    1917,
    if they had fed on the reality instead of on dreams, then" -- so Halle
    asserts -- "'they would not have fought, and the war would have been
    lost, and anarchy" -- open to debate -- "'would have triumphed
    and would have prevailed over the world. So the American people were
    told
    the opposite of the truth, and they fought for it, and the war was won."
    Deception, Halle believes, is not a lamentable by-product of foreign
    relations, but rather an essential precondition of having any foreign
    relations
    at all; only thus will an ignorant people allow their leaders a free
    reign
    to pursue a "realistic" interventionist foreign policy.
    This from the nation that claims it stands for truth and democracy.
    In whatever light one considers interventionism, there is a fatality
    to Halle's way of thought, too: having laid the foundations of foreign
    policy
    on deceptions, it is difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to avoid
    becoming
    the captive of a policy that is untrue and unrealistic. However, Halle's
    basic perception of post-World War II America was nonetheless true. The
    President and his men in the State Department were interventionists; the
    rest of the country was anti-interventionist. The situation looked bleak
    for the statesmen indeed.
    Fate intervened. On Friday afternoon, February 21st, 1947 a member of
    the British embassy in Washington, First Secretary H. M. Sichel arrived
    at the State Department with two notes for General George C. Marshall,
    secretary
    of State. What the two notes reported in essence was the final end of the
    Pax
    Britannica. Rule Britannica existed no more. The
    Empire had, as Hitler intended, bled to death. This was the chance all
    American
    statesmen had waited for, a chance to take over Britain's imperial role.
    On February 27th, Truman met with Congressional leaders in the White
    House. Dean Acheson, the then undersecretary of state, was called upon
    to
    deliver a speech for taking up Britain's role, the undersecretary's
    oration
    left the congressmen stunned and silent. At last Senator Vandenberg
    spoke
    up. He had been much impressed by Acheson's speech, he said, but, if the
    president really wanted to sell this program to the American people, he
    would have to "scare hell out of the country."
    The Truman Administration had long ago commenced to do just that, and
    their first step had been to invite Winston Churchill -- then leader of
    the opposition party in Great Britain -- to deliver his famous "Iron
    Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri on March 5th, 1946. Stalin,
    unwittingly,
    helped advance Truman's plans even further with his desire for more
    power
    and complete domination over Eastern Europe.
    With the world beginning to realize that the end of World War II would
    not bring peace and tranquillity, President Truman addressed a joint
    session
    of Congress on March 12th, 1947, his speech later became known as the
    Truman
    Doctrine: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States
    to support free people... If we falter in our leadership, we may
    endanger
    the peace of the world -- and we surely endanger the welfare of our own
    nation."
    The Cold War, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as its
    prologue, had started. Truman had his war at last and with the full
    backing
    of the Congress and feeble resistance of a frightened nation, he was
    free
    to pursue his interventionist policies as he deemed fit. According to
    Lyndon
    Johnson, war, whether hot or cold, is what enables a President to assume
    maximum amount of power. "Roosevelt," said Johnson, "was never President
    until the war came along." Similarly, Truman was never
    president until he had his war.
    Four decades later, after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. faced the
    same predicament, but was saved by Operation Desert Storm, the conquest
    of Iraq, whose invasion of Kuwait was effected only after they thought
    they
    got an encouraging nod from the American Ambassador in Baghdad. With the
    break-up of the Soviet Union and the subduing of the Middle East, it
    seemed
    as if there were no more excuses for an internationalist policy for
    American
    statesmen.
    Until September 11th, 2001, which was interestingly described by another
    congressman as "Pearl Harbor II", whether he also meant to "scare
    the hell" out of the country is purely an academic question, since the
    instigator of these attacks has succeeded in that aspect at the least.
    This attack also managed to create the perfect public tone for the
    pursuance
    of interventionist policies. With President Bush stating that this, the
    first war of the third millennium, is a crusade that will continue for
    many
    years and with the fact that campaigns against terrorism are a
    never-ending
    battle as several thousand years of experience has shown, it seems that
    the events of September 11th are, for the American statesmen even if for
    no one else, a godsend.
    If one takes a look at that Machiavellian principle of the end
    justifying
    the means, which has been the basis of diplomacy for all governments,
    specially
    Western ones, since conception, one must take into account that the
    definition
    of "means" is not only what we use or do, but also what we refrain
    from using or doing.
    Even if hard fact evidence is procured showing that Bin Laden or some
    other extremist group was the main mastermind behind these events, the
    question
    still remains, Why were the American security and intelligence services,
    which are the most capable in the world and who have shown their
    competence
    in the last week to the full, so dormant in the weeks and months leading
    up to this atrocious episode?
    Comment for The Iranian letters
    section
    Comment to the writer KayArash Serri
    The Iranian
    * Editorial policy
    Truman's legacy

    Presidents become president when they have their war
    By KayArash Serri
    September 21, 2001
    The Iranian
    Few people in the world are not aware that at 8:45 a.m. local time on
    11th of September 2001, a passenger liner, which had been had been
    previously
    hijacked, crashed into one of New York City's World Trade Centre Twin
    Towers.
    Eighteen minutes later another hijacked plane crashed into the Southern
    Tower; subsequently both towers collapsed. The Pentagon was attacked an
    hour later in the same manner. Camp David just missed total destruction.
    The world caught its breath and watched. American airspace was closed.
    The U.S. armed forces were put to high alert just short of war status.
    There
    were reports of more hijacked planes, unconfirmed reports of attacks
    against
    the State Department and the Congress were coming in. It seemed as if the
    mighty U.S. was unable to stop these terrorists from attacking wherever
    they wanted to, whenever they wanted to.
    It was the perfect doomsday scenario Hollywood films were trying to
    portray
    over the years, and the world watched on, mesmerized, while casualty
    estimates
    ran well into four figures at the least, a fact that distresses every
    human
    being.
    Instantly all fingers of accusation were pointed at Osama Bin Laden,
    the exiled Saudi millionaire who's living in Afghanistan. But
    interesting
    enough this mastermind of the 1998 attack on U.S. embassies in Africa, who
    always proclaimed his feats loud and wide, denied any involvement --
    though
    he praised the attacks.
    As the drama ended and the shock subsided, questions started to form
    in the minds of people everywhere across the world. Questions such as
    how,
    in spite of mobile phones from passengers in the planes to the outside
    world
    informing them of their plight and the fact that all four planes had
    changed
    course and all radio contact had been broken, there was no leak of the
    hijackings
    until the first one crashed into the Northern Tower? There were
    reservations
    on how, all of a sudden, at least four planes, and according to some
    accounts
    eight planes, were hijacked at one go with no hitches?
    Hardly 24 hours had passed before FBI officials stated that they had
    caught a number of Arab suspects with many more identified and that a
    hired
    car supposedly used by the hijackers had been found with an Arabic
    manual
    for flying in it. Which itself raises the question that how was it
    possible
    that four groups of hijackers evaded the vast and efficient American
    security
    services successfully for who knows how long and then they leave behind
    such incriminating evidence and that their accomplices are being rounded
    up
    in such a short time.
    American officials are saying nothing on how these terrorists evaded
    their security and intelligence forces for so long, but all of them,
    right
    up to President Bush, believe that this was not act of terror but an act
    of war, a war the likes of which the world has never seen. In their
    opinion
    the whole civilized and democratic world faces an adversary that hides
    in
    the dark and strikes when you are least prepared. A new kind of warfare
    indeed, but then the Americans are used to ingenuity in warfare methods
    as the Cold War bears out.
    On August 17th 1945, just three days after the announcement of Japan's
    surrender, Harry S. Truman, the then U.S. president, declared that he
    would
    ask Congress to approve a program of universal military training for all
    healthy American youth. As he explained a few days later: "If we are
    to maintain leadership among other nations, we must continue to be
    strong
    in a military way." A statement that rang with an interventionist
    policy.
    But the American people were traditionally against interventionist
    policies,
    so much so that Congress resoundingly defeated Truman's call for
    universal
    military training. An end to U.S. internationalist policies? Not so.
    Louis J. Halle was one of the new breed of thinkers in the State
    Department
    in 1945. In Halle's view, which can be taken to represent the State
    Department's
    non-ideological, "realist" approach to foreign affairs, international
    relations deal with "such a distribution of power among a number of
    centres
    as prevents the acquisition by any one of enough power to make itself
    masters of the rest.". Obviously for the American statesmen at least
    no one centre should be more powerful than the U.S.
    "The American people," Halle writes, "shaped by their
    long tradition, could not accept considerations of power politics as
    reasons
    for going to war," either in 1945 or at any other time. Nor Halle nor
    any other American statesman, whose career has been devoted to
    international
    politics, would assume that the American people could possibly be right
    in having such non-interventionist perceptions. Thus, says Halle, since
    the American people would not accept what members of the State
    Department
    felt was a realist's explanation of the need for interventionism, the
    people
    had to be given some other explanation. And so, for example, the World
    War
    I was advocated as a "war to make the world safe for democracy".
    Interestingly even Halle believes that there is "a sort of fatality
    about these matters. If the American people had been told the truth in
    1917,
    if they had fed on the reality instead of on dreams, then" -- so Halle
    asserts -- "'they would not have fought, and the war would have been
    lost, and anarchy" -- open to debate -- "'would have triumphed
    and would have prevailed over the world. So the American people were
    told
    the opposite of the truth, and they fought for it, and the war was won."
    Deception, Halle believes, is not a lamentable by-product of foreign
    relations, but rather an essential precondition of having any foreign
    relations
    at all; only thus will an ignorant people allow their leaders a free
    reign
    to pursue a "realistic" interventionist foreign policy.
    This from the nation that claims it stands for truth and democracy.
    In whatever light one considers interventionism, there is a fatality
    to Halle's way of thought, too: having laid the foundations of foreign
    policy
    on deceptions, it is difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to avoid
    becoming
    the captive of a policy that is untrue and unrealistic. However, Halle's
    basic perception of post-World War II America was nonetheless true. The
    President and his men in the State Department were interventionists; the
    rest of the country was anti-interventionist. The situation looked bleak
    for the statesmen indeed.
    Fate intervened. On Friday afternoon, February 21st, 1947 a member of
    the British embassy in Washington, First Secretary H. M. Sichel arrived
    at the State Department with two notes for General George C. Marshall,
    secretary
    of State. What the two notes reported in essence was the final end of the
    Pax
    Britannica. Rule Britannica existed no more. The
    Empire had, as Hitler intended, bled to death. This was the chance all
    American
    statesmen had waited for, a chance to take over Britain's imperial role.
    On February 27th, Truman met with Congressional leaders in the White
    House. Dean Acheson, the then undersecretary of state, was called upon
    to
    deliver a speech for taking up Britain's role, the undersecretary's
    oration
    left the congressmen stunned and silent. At last Senator Vandenberg
    spoke
    up. He had been much impressed by Acheson's speech, he said, but, if the
    president really wanted to sell this program to the American people, he
    would have to "scare hell out of the country."
    The Truman Administration had long ago commenced to do just that, and
    their first step had been to invite Winston Churchill -- then leader of
    the opposition party in Great Britain -- to deliver his famous "Iron
    Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri on March 5th, 1946. Stalin,
    unwittingly,
    helped advance Truman's plans even further with his desire for more
    power
    and complete domination over Eastern Europe.
    With the world beginning to realize that the end of World War II would
    not bring peace and tranquillity, President Truman addressed a joint
    session
    of Congress on March 12th, 1947, his speech later became known as the
    Truman
    Doctrine: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States
    to support free people... If we falter in our leadership, we may
    endanger
    the peace of the world -- and we surely endanger the welfare of our own
    nation."
    The Cold War, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as its
    prologue, had started. Truman had his war at last and with the full
    backing
    of the Congress and feeble resistance of a frightened nation, he was
    free
    to pursue his interventionist policies as he deemed fit. According to
    Lyndon
    Johnson, war, whether hot or cold, is what enables a President to assume
    maximum amount of power. "Roosevelt," said Johnson, "was never President
    until the war came along." Similarly, Truman was never
    president until he had his war.
    Four decades later, after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. faced the
    same predicament, but was saved by Operation Desert Storm, the conquest
    of Iraq, whose invasion of Kuwait was effected only after they thought
    they
    got an encouraging nod from the American Ambassador in Baghdad. With the
    break-up of the Soviet Union and the subduing of the Middle East, it
    seemed
    as if there were no more excuses for an internationalist policy for
    American
    statesmen.
    Until September 11th, 2001, which was interestingly described by another
    congressman as "Pearl Harbor II", whether he also meant to "scare
    the hell" out of the country is purely an academic question, since the
    instigator of these attacks has succeeded in that aspect at the least.
    This attack also managed to create the perfect public tone for the
    pursuance
    of interventionist policies. With President Bush stating that this, the
    first war of the third millennium, is a crusade that will continue for
    many
    years and with the fact that campaigns against terrorism are a
    never-ending
    battle as several thousand years of experience has shown, it seems that
    the events of September 11th are, for the American statesmen even if for
    no one else, a godsend.
    If one takes a look at that Machiavellian principle of the end
    justifying
    the means, which has been the basis of diplomacy for all governments,
    specially
    Western ones, since conception, one must take into account that the
    definition
    of "means" is not only what we use or do, but also what we refrain
    from using or doing.
    Even if hard fact evidence is procured showing that Bin Laden or some
    other extremist group was the main mastermind behind these events, the
    question
    still remains, Why were the American security and intelligence services,
    which are the most capable in the world and who have shown their
    competence
    in the last week to the full, so dormant in the weeks and months leading
    up to this atrocious episode?
    Comment for The Iranian letters
    section
    Comment to the writer KayArash Serri
    • The FBI didn't "suddenly find" the suspects. They had known of most of them for a long time, and some were under surveillance. They just weren't expecting the mass movement, the attack, to happen as it did. (Probably prearranged long ago, I'd think.

  • As the artical pointed out, this is supposed to be extending the existing phone number logging web access. Given that is the intent of the law, the govt agencies would be well advised to not interpret it literally. If they do, there is a good chance of having their cases tossed out of court... I would think that the most they could conceivably use safely would be the domain name portion of a URL and even that carries some content. The IP address (without the domain name) sounds like it would be covered, though.

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