FBI Wants to Tap The Net 503
Majik was among the stream sof people submitting this story about the FBI wanting to
tap the net. Makes carnivore look like a baby monitor since this tracks all packets, and would be placed at key locations on the net.
FBI just wants all the good pr0n (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FBI just wants all the good pr0n (Score:3, Funny)
> You know that's what they're after. Hoover left a more lasting legacy than we know...
I dunno, transvestite pr0n may be your thing, but it's not mine. Then again, I don't work for the Feebs.
("When I asked for a color TV in my hotel room, this is not what I meant!")
This is much more sinister that it seems (Score:4, Insightful)
After a while, these people will be rounded up and questioned, intimidated and possible detained. And if the current set of laws that just passed gets any worse, then you might even get jailed without due process, and incarcerated for life based on these information retrieval practices. Sound ominous so far? It should. This stuff is right in line with Nazi Germany too. Lets just hope they don't start lining us all up and shooting us because we are "terrorists, hackers, druggies", etc. Never forget that it was Orrin Hatch who called for the Death Penalty for anyone caught using drugs.
Welcome to the future (Score:3, Funny)
Detainee: But i didn't do anything wrong.
FBI Agent: Acording to the data from our tracking systems, your toilet paper consumption rates, the number of gardening books you buy per year and the number of bad jokes about CmdrTaco that you post on Slashdot per week match those in our profile for "Higly Dangerous - Possible Megalomaniac Persons". To prevent any crimes from your part we are hereby detaining you for psychiatric treatment.
Go ahead. (Score:4, Interesting)
You have a point (Score:5, Interesting)
For the FBI to pull this off, they would certainly need quantum computers... And what of speling myst-aches? This requires more computing power... Even Caeser cyphers become effective means of defeating these because of computational limits...
Re:Go ahead. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lamers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lamers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lamers (Score:2)
One reason the proposal would degrade performance is that it calls for changes to the backbone architecture to concentrate traffic to a handful of central points, for the FBI's convenience in tapping you. This reduces redundancy and network intelligence.
The second reason it will degrade performance is, as you begin to get to, they won't be able to monitor current traffic levels in real-time (it's all that billions of dollars in routing hardware can do to inspect packet headers), so they'll have to intentionally degrade performance in order to have half a chance.
Re:Lamers (Score:2, Insightful)
That would just be a matter of duplicating the packets; the Feds would presumably need to provide the bandwidth for getting that traffic load to their own network.
But I must say it's disturbing that many seem to think the worst thing here is the possible degradation of network performance...
FBI considers torture (Score:2, Interesting)
"AMERICAN investigators are considering resorting to harsher interrogation techniques, including torture, after facing a wall of silence..."
The Times is one of the most respected, conservative papers in the UK. The FBI really are considering this abomination. Even Robert Blitzer, a former head of the FBI's counter-terrorism section, has criticized this in public!
Re:FBI considers torture (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree.
Torture takes effort - an FBI permitted to use torture would be physically unable to use it in the violation of the civil liberties of 300,000,000 Americans, simply because it'd take too long to work their way through the population, even if every FBI agent went berzerk and started torturing everyone they met for the sheer hell of it.
Passive electronic monitoring doesn't take effort - every citizen's right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure is violated the instant they flip the switch on the Mother Of All Carnivores.
Put another way - there's a reason why people get dozens of spams per day (sometimes per hour), while still only getting three or four telemarketing calls per week.
always assumed this is being done (Score:2)
Re:always assumed this is being done (Score:3, Interesting)
NSA does not spy/eavesdrop on US citizens.
Read their charter; i'm pretty sure it's not classified. When I was a contractor at Ft Meade, I wrote a lot of extra code to specificially make sure of things like this for my project. I can't speak of the FBI, CIA, or DIA however...so draw your own conclusions people. Things may have changed in the last year, but as of a few years ago this was a top priority for each project I was on. If someone can convince me I'm wrong (project names, people, etc, not random web links), I'd love to know about it as I still talk to many friends at the agency (about unclassified things of course).
Re:always assumed this is being done (Score:2, Funny)
Re:always assumed this is being done (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that NSA is an intelligence organization, not a law enforcement organization.
That is, NSA doesn't care about who you slept with last night, your tastes in g0at-pr0n, whether you may or may not have indulged in recreational pharmaceuticals in your misspent youth, how many MP3z and warez you download, or whether you traffic in copy control circumvention devices. Even if you assume (incorrectly) that they want to spy on US citizens, keeping track of jaywalkers is not their mandate, and they're busy enough with the stuff that is their mandate.
It is, however, entirely within the FBI's mandate, as enforcers of the law, to "sweat the small stuff". Today, they hunt terrorists with guns, when they're gone, they'll scour the database to find the terrorists with drugs, and next year, they'll start earning their keep by nailing the copyright terrorists.
Spooks have better things to do with their time. Cops don't.
Whoa, this is getting confusing!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, it's nice to know we Americans are finally catching up with our freedom-loving friends in Russia and China!
I was beginning to worry we were gonna be left behind on the information superhighway!
Authentication? (Score:2, Insightful)
Without stronger security/authentication in general, this will be useless for the purposes of stopping actual criminals.
Just one point... (Score:2)
Welcome to 1984... (Score:2)
Re:Welcome to 1984... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Welcome to 1984... (Score:2)
Confession: ;-)
I read this and thought it was really good satire. I have already contacted Miniluv to report my thoughtcrime, or rather, they have already contacted me
Re:shut up (Score:2)
"I'm a US citizen, but why would I care?
The DMCA is only enforced against criminals, right?
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.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945"
That is a bit from Rev. Martin Niemoller, a european Reverend who suffered under the Nazi oppression. Ever see a cartoon where a snowball rolling downhill gets bigger and bigger? The same thing happens when the government starts going after freedom. It has happened time and time again throughout history. It led to the horrible conditions of feudal Europe, where government progressed from:
Everyone own land, and elects some people to protect it and them.
Some people own land, and they chose who protected it and them.
One person owned the land, and decided to how to protect everyone on it.
One person owned the land, and everyone who lived on it.
Another example to look at would be african slavery. At first the tribes of Africa enslaved their wartime enemies, treating them like members of the tribe, but with no freedom to leave or choose work. It progressed to slaves being possessions. Eventually slaves could even be sold. After a while the Africans were selling each other to the people colonizing America and the Carribean, where the slaves were regularly raped, tortured and murdered.
What it all boils down to is simple: Never trust your leaders. The best way to keep America free is to remind our leaders that they are public servants, and to do so by whatever non-violent and constitional means are necessary. Bitching about it in online forums is doing little good.
Performance, price to consumers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Performance, price to consumers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you need to do that? The idea is just to route every packet through a couple of points, then you look for packets to or from a.b.c.d.
It seems achievable (or at least sellable to a gullible legislature). The funny ha ha is that it introduces insane vulnerabilities into the 'net. Picture the effect of taking out one of these monster router farms.
Re:Performance, price to consumers? (Score:2)
Yeah, that's the other reason I prefer leaving stuff like this to spooks instead of cops, namely that if it's gotta be done, NSA's geeks can probably do it without bogging down the 'net. (I have a hunch that if by some miracle FBI does it without screwing up performance, they'll bog down the 'net on purpose just to ask for more funding next year ;-)
Awright feebs, I've ragged on you enough for one day. I'll stop now before you knock my door down in the middle of the night.
Get in the habit of using Crypto now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Breaking 2048 bit DH compression on one packet or transmission is feasible, given time and a (very) powerful computer.
If the FBI were to have to crack even 2-5% of the billions of packets that went through their system, however, it would make this system completely unworkable.
Use PGP or GPG. Sign your messages. Let other people know that you prefer messages sent to you in encrypted formats. Surf and download from sites who use SSL. It's not that hard, and once you get in the habit of encrypting data, you'll feel safer and more secure.
Re:Get in the habit of using Crypto now... (Score:5, Insightful)
If even 2-5% of active voters wrote to their elected representatives telling them to knock this on the head, it would get stopped and stopped hard. That might be a more achievable goal.
Re:Get in the habit of using Crypto now... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mass decryption just isn't feasible and certainly not in real time so they have to try to do one of two things:
Someone please refresh my memory... (Score:2, Interesting)
That could really put a dent in the ability to snoop (they still may crack it, but its going to cost a hell of a lot more processor cycles to do so).
Re:Someone please refresh my memory... (Score:3, Informative)
So let them. (Score:4, Redundant)
How the other nations gonna like this? (Score:2)
Hopefully this is all just talk that will get rationalized out. Then again, we are a nation in fear (don't let the red, white, and blue fool ya), and fearful people don't do rational things. How much further do we have to go before we get a big wake up call in the form of not being the #1 nation technologically?
Wiretapping (Score:2, Informative)
There are roughly a billion computers on the Internet, and each one sends out a heavy stream of packets, which contain any number of encryption and steganographic schemes.
To actually stop would-be terrorists from using the internet to transmit thought crime or seditious materials, they would need a very very big computer that filters out various pieces of traffic. No matter how hard you try, this will increase network latency, and piss off the average user.
If a massive, unprovoked attack on our rights to privacy, freedom of expression and thought doesn't stir the people to action, imagine Joe Sixpack when he can't view streaming porn as quickly. He'll be calling his congressman immediately.
Hey, FBI: FUCK YOU. (Score:2, Interesting)
When you think about the FBI wanting to tap the entire internet, think about it this way: Would you be okay with the FBI wiretapping EVERY PHONE IN THE COUNTRY without getting a warrant for each one first? Because that's essentially what they are doing.
And they want to CENTRALIZE DATA as well! Yep, nevermind the whole idea of a distributed network (not that the backbone providers give a shit about that anyway), let's just put all the data on one server so that the FBI can easily listen in to every conversation in the country!
What a bunch of fucking bullshit. </rant>
Carnivore *IS* a baby monitor... (Score:3, Insightful)
It shouldn't really be that shocking that a device like Carnivor exists, is used, and has analogs in other jurisdictions as well. The Canadian RCMP have something like that. They don't have an equivalent to Echelon, but then again Canadians are passive and wouldn't dream of plotting to overturn our ineffective government. No need to spend money on that, might as well setup more social assistance programs to help "refugees" setup a few more terror cells.
Centralized network means single point of failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Centralized network means single point of failu (Score:3, Insightful)
Port mirroring or silimar tactics would be used to send copies of data to the collectors. Another big question raised by this is will these collectors be accessibly on public address space? How will they be secured? When (not "will") they become targets for crackers, info-terrorists, and hostile foreign governments?
Re:Centralized network means single point of failu (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unthinkable that terrorists would dare to target such a potent symbol of US power and authority.
No... wait... that was before September 11th.
This proposal is vile and ahborent in moral, technical and security terms. Three for three.
Encrypt everything but the misinformation. (Score:2)
I would also suggest organizing mock terrorist and organized crime cells. Have fun with the cops by sending logistics data back and forth between friends about assasinations, pipe bombs etc. Don't encrypt these, but make them sound serious. If they want to read our emails, then we should fuck with them.
This kind of stuff is especially serious for activists. Increasingly in Ontario at least, activists are being painted as terrorists. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is being labled as a terrorist organization for its campaign to defeat the nasty provincial government. Police powers really scare me, because I organize direct action which could be construed as terrorism by authorities trying to keep dissent in check. The actions that I organize are all nonviolent, nobody ever gets hurt, nothing ever gets damaged, but my rights to dissent actively (ie. more than just letter writing) could quickly disappear in this climate.
Re:Encrypt everything but the misinformation. (Score:2)
There's a word for such irresponsible pranks: "mischief." It's a crime. There are better ways to fight an invasion of privacy.
What would this accomplish? (Score:2, Insightful)
I would assume that any self-respecting bad guy will be using good strong encryption to protect any sensitive data. That would make the resulting packets read like garbage until decoded, which would make sifting through the data stream very difficult indeed. So widespread, readily available encryption will make this of little use to the Feds.
And I don't really worry about the threat of 'big brother' watching me any more than I currently worry about crackers getting at my stuff. Afterall, the measures one should take to protect yourself today (using SSH instead of telnet for example), will also protect yourself from being snooped upon by the government. So there's nothing new here.
The big concern is the tax dollars will be wasted by the feds to put this in place.
Re: (Score:2)
we do something simular (Score:2, Informative)
web traffic alone we see about 500G a day, just from 250k workstations surfing and such.
I think we're looking at 50-500TB per day, but prolly more. time to buy some hard drive stocks.
Massive amount of Money (Score:2, Insightful)
Complain all you want... (Score:3, Interesting)
I run a webserver (as a business) and have run shell servers in the past. I don't think ANY of these people who have been on the receiving end of a 2 day DDoS attack. Now, if such a system would be put into place, there would be other advantages than just searching for "key words" in text. It would most likely be a enterprise integrated intrusion detection system used to find and stop DDoS attacks and the such. If these systems could use formulas to determine a DDoS and black hole routes before it can cause thousands of dollars of damage to an ISP, then it would save LOTS of money!
At one provider, I was received a bill of a few grand of bandwidth charges when my shell box was hit with a DDoS for several hours... image what it would cost Yahoo! and such sites in lost revenue.
Also, the FBI isn't interested in your e-mail. Sure, it would allow them to look at it but it's no different than being able to tap your phone now. So what's the difference between tapping your phone and tapping your internet connection? Nothing. There is no difference. They'll need a wire-tapping order to do it, still.. And yes, someone will respond "but they won't need one to do this!" and you're right... they also don't need one to tap your phone, but it's illegal without it. Hence, we would be protected under the same laws as the current wiretapping law.
They can't tap your phone at will (Score:2)
The phone eqivalent of this proposal would be that the FBI taped every phone call ever made. It's like being in permanent arrest. Everything you say can be used against you, or anyone you may talk about.
And while it may save some people thousands, it will cost billions to do so, so it's probbaly not that great from that angle either.
Another reason to vote correctly. (Score:2, Flamebait)
An obviously unconstitutional government organization, one that spends so much of our tax dollars but has done relatively little to help us (if at all).
If this isn't a reason to vote Libertarian and only Libertarian, and shut this group down, I don't know what is.
There is no need for an FBI. If a crime extends past state lines, there is nothing preventing the two police agencies from working together to solve it.
Re:Another reason to vote correctly. (Score:2)
Re:Another reason to vote correctly. (Score:2)
Being policed by our government is probably the scariest idea that has ever passed through the Supreme Court's checks and balances. Its obvious that the Supreme Court doesn't do its job anymore.
What kind of crime (I'm asking a serious question here to form my own opinion) do you think the FBI currently truly helps in where the police can't?
Re:Another reason to vote correctly. (Score:2)
And then the police determine if it's in their jurisdiction or if they need to get the FBI involved.
Without the gov't "policing" us, it would be anarchy. And how does that help anyone? Law enforcement is just that.. it ENFORCES THE LAW. WITHOUT LAW THERE IS ANARCHY. The Supreme Court does it's job just fine. We may not always like a particular decision, but nonetheless it does it's job as it's supposed to
The FBI tends to have more sofisticated testing techniques than most local police departments (those that aren't in major cities). For instance, the FBI runs programs to do research on decaying bodies and such (forensics). This research is provided to the police departments locally. The FBI also hires psychologists, medical doctors, historians, etc... they are true professionals... a lot with masters and doctorates in their fields. Sergant Joe Shmoe ain't going to be able to figure out what a FBI agent with a doctorate in chemical biology can. The FBI just has a lot of resources it can use and can request such things as tests of different stuff from the CDC and get FEMA involved if need be. No local police department can do that.
Re:Another reason to vote correctly. (Score:2)
As opposed to how many found by the FBI? YES I'd rather trust locally accountable law enforcement to do this. I'd assume that they were grown ups. And I'd give them the FBI's budget.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Another reason to vote correctly. (Score:2)
Until the last 2 or so years, it was near impossible to get a Libertarian on the ballot because of illegal ballot laws. The LP has been diligently getting these illegal laws over turned, state by state.
The outcome in the 2000 Election?
Well, first of all, we fielded candidates in 255 of the 435 seats in the house, the first time in 80 years that a third party has contested a majority of the Senate.
Our seats won over 1.7 million votes. That is the FIRST TIME in history that a third part has won over a MILLION votes. We almost doubled it.
The outcome?
Libertarians occupy over 200 elected office seats nation wide. That is over double of ALL the other third parties combined. Sure some of the seats are small positions, but that is how you build.
Most intelligent people are shocked when they find how clear the Libertarian position is on getting rid of all government corruption.
If you're interested in reading more about the party, drop me an email at dada@dnginc.com
Guess no more CounterStrike for me (Score:5, Funny)
They'll track everything soon (Score:2)
"9 Filet-o-Fish sandwichs ordered at Drive-Thru. SWARM!! SWARM!!"
Connecting the dots (Score:3, Insightful)
Without the ability to act private and say what we want, the corporate interests controlling the congress will enact more and more bad law, creating a behavioral minefield in our land of freedom.
Does a citizen have a right to hold a private conversation?
Perhaps the FBI can use its packet sniffing capability to identify pockets of resistance to the DMCA. Black helicopter forces can be dispatched to deal with said resistance.
Or, much scarier, they just might pass additional laws that make it illegal to conspire to defeat the DMCA. The packet sniffer will detect your illegal motions, even inside the room.
Remember Fidonet? (Score:2)
Re:Remember Fidonet? (Score:2)
Re:Remember Fidonet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Net Architecture (Score:3, Insightful)
Just curious...
Maybe it's not so bad? (Score:2)
It's definately an invasion of privacy and that sucks, but we should be able to trust the FBI and know that our private information isn't going to get into the wrong hands.
I mean, what NEW information are they going to get on us? Our ISPs already know where we browse the web.
If there were some extreme control that could be put on this sort of project I don't know that I'd be intimidated by it.
For instance, if they had it in place everywhere but were only authorized to use it on a case by case basis after getting a warrant and having good reason, what bad could come from it?
If they catch a bunch of terrorists or a bunch of child molesters and don't interfere with my rights, more power too them.
I guess a lot of the slashdot crowd is worried about "hackers and crackers" being caught.
Well, I guess I'd be a little worried about them going overboard in that area. If they catch crackers, more power to them. Keep them out of my bank account please. However, I can see them abusing this power when it came to situations where people would stand up against the DMCA, etc.
What other real world situations prove that this truly is a bad idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Maybe it's not so bad? (Score:2)
We can be pretty sure that no one would abuse the system when it's first installed...but what about 20 years down the line? We already have piles of stories about secret FBI files made on political dissidents during the cold war...do you honestly think that none of the justifications or emotions that caused those actions will never return to the minds of people in government? I simply don't trust humanity that much.
Monitoring is inevitable (Score:2)
What we need to do is establish firm limits as what the gov't can do with the intercepted data. I don't know how such limitations would work, but the events of Sept. 11 make it necessary to accept more government involvement in the Internet than any of us would like. Since 99.999% of us are not terrorists, we need to establish reasonable policies on network monitoring so that the authorities can go after the bad guys without having the FBI turn into the RIAA's counterinsurgency division.
Re: (Score:2)
elusion (Score:2)
confirmation? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can totally believe that the FBI would love to do this, given the chance. I just need a little more evidence before I am to go around saying that they *are* doing it.
Re: (Score:2)
SSL may not be secure much longer (Score:2, Interesting)
Normal SSL allows the server to send a hunk of bits to you. If they an get a key signed by one of the CA's that is installed in everyone's browsers, then they can fake you into believing that you are talking to the end customer.
From the end web-sites point of view, they would never know that a man-in-the-middle style attack is in progress, since 99.999% of SSL does not use client side certs.
As for them getting someone to sign their bogus key, a little pressure can go a long way. You might even expect to see the next Microsoft service pack to have a new CA that is a front for the "We are just looking for terrorists and anyone else who is doing something that the current regime does not approve of" folks from the FBI/CIA/NSA/...
Time to start using GPG with long keys to protect anything you really care about, since there YOU are the CA, not the folks that we know we can trust.
In short, SSL does not make it safe to download your k****e p0rn.
SSL (Score:2)
In short, unsigned SSL certs are a great way to secure http communications where money is not involved. Let's get cracking throwing that little 's' in front of http. That should give those gubmint creepazoids something to play with.
Information is useless without interpretation (Score:3, Insightful)
I can just see it now. Start sniffing on an ATM backbone and analyze those packets 48 bytes at a time. You go G-man!
ELINT has its uses but some perspective is needed here.
Those poor FBI agents... (Score:3, Funny)
Agent 1:"Turn on your monitor. The sniffer is receiving something."
Agent 2 wipes the crumbs off his hands against the leg of his jeans and flicks the switch on his flatscreen.
Agent 2:"It's coming in. It says: 'ALL...YOUR...BASE...ARE...BELONG...TO...US...' What the fuck does that mean?"
Agent 1:"I don't know, but add it to the MOVE ZIG and FOR GREAT JUSTICE files. I think we're onto something.
Meanwhile, down the street, a ten-year-old geek chortles and crawls under the covers.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! _MOD_THIS_UP_!!! (Score:2)
Oath violations (Score:3, Interesting)
When you take a position in an elected, appointed, or law enforcement position with the government, you make a sworn oath to uphold and protect the Constitution.
The FBI agents and elected officials supporting them who are planning on implementing this overt violation of the IV Amendment of the Constitution [cornell.edu] either:
a. Didn't understand the oath they took. Which makes them very stupid, and are therefore unfit for their position.
or
b. Are knowingly violating their oath. Which makes the dishonest, and are therefore unfit for their position.
I leave it to you to decide which one applies.
It's a police state. (Score:3, Interesting)
Law enforcement can now 'dictate' to data communication providers what types of functions their service MUST incoproate, in order to comply with the needs of law enforcement.
How does this NOT equate to the government telling you how to run your business?
Wouldn't hold up in court (Score:2)
The feds cannot tell an ISP how and where to route it's traffic. That's an illegal seizure. Never mind the privacy violations.
I can see (but not agre with) the government getting a court order to tap someone's e-mail, web traffic, etc,. but that's an entirely different matter. It's not hijacking every citizens private communications. But a blatant spying on our citizens is a no no and has been shot down by the Congres and Supreme Court many times. It won't happen.
Re:Wouldn't hold up in court (Score:2)
Who says it will ever go to court?
Honeypot for Feds? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no real way to catalogue every packet on the internet this without some sort of computerized searching technology. They may even call it 'AI', but what it will boil down to is an application looks for suspicious strings to flag for human eyes.
Therefore, it would be very possible to fool and overtax any kind of system like this by building a new kind of honeypot-style server.
Some Ideas:
Have this server connect to different IRC nodes bot style and create suspicious sounding chanels like '#BombUSA' or something similiar. Have it talk to itself Eliza style through IRC, but with terrorist keywords like 'Anthrax', 'Jihad', 'Hijack', etc... You could also substitute keywords for other kinds of illegal activity. Drugs, Pr0n, and other illegal/questionable vices all have keywords which would raise any LEO's eyebrows.
If two servers happen to meet on a chanel like this, they can exchange POP email addresses and start sending smtp packets to eachother with the same kind of information. Maybe throw in a few uuencoded attachments of the Osama and Bert poster.
One last thing. Have each server that does this engage in plaintext dialogue 4/5ths fo the time, and then, psuedo-random bitstreams the rest to simulate encryption. If/when they do try to crack those streams, it will use up their resources so that they can't as effectively be used against individuals who do have valid reasons to use crypto.
Encrypted Everything (Score:3, Interesting)
- by default apache should use https instead of http
- fork the email protocol so it *only* uses PGP/GPG and retrieves the public key of the recipient
- telnetd and ftpd should be removed from all open source distros
Perhaps LUG's could even offer certificate signing. I really would like to have an parallel email protocol that only allowed signed and encrypted emails.Your Rights Online (and everywhere else) (Score:2, Interesting)
The fact is, our government had the infamous Mr. Atta in its grasp earlier this year and broke our own existing laws to give him a free pass. See the URL below if you want more info.
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2001-10-18/fe
Granted that these people had good intentions, too, but the transfer of rights and responsibilities to govenment isn't just words. It results in actions taken by people no more prescient than you or me, but with consequences on a much grander scale.
We all probably agree with the principle that choices should be made at the lowest level possible in a business organization, so why not apply that same wisdom to our country and society at large?
Speaking of business, I wonder if the business forces at work trying to transfer intelligence from the nodes of the net to a more centralized architecture like the FBI proposal?
Self caused DoS (Score:3, Funny)
I give it a week before the packets flood the data storage and crash the spying hardware.
I give it a day before it starts loosing data to keep up.
I give it an hour before someone figures how to bypass it
I give it 15 seconds before somebody finds a way to trigger a national alert that there are terrorists at a former employers location.
I give it a month before Microsoft realises the Windows in testing is crashing due to packet moddifications by FBI due to a minnor defect in FBI software. Blame the FBI Os.. retract when they discover it's Win 2K.. and clame the problem is still there when the FBI fixes it by switching to BSD... (Thought I was gona say Linux didn't ya?)
Here is the official stance (Score:4, Informative)
RFC2804 [ietf.org]
So now we have the group that defines internet standards saying that requirements to implement wiretapping should not be included in protocol design discussions. That does not mean that the FBI couldn't put a BIG HONKING device in a couple of places on the internet and globally adjust all routing tables so that packets went to it... but then there is something about too much information hidding the data
Re:What's the big worry? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's the big worry? (Score:2)
In the 1900's, in the US, alone, off the top of my head, we have people who opposed US entry into "the Great War" being imprisoned for life, people who didn't agree with the conventional wisdom concering communism being imprisoned or hounded, people who J. Edgar Hoover didn't approve of being spied upon, harassed, intimidated, and blackmailed (by the government!), people who Richard Nixon didn't like being targeted by the IRS, people who Richard J. Daley didn't like being spied upon and shot, and so on.
sPh
Re:What's the big worry? (Score:3, Insightful)
You've got it backwards. The question should be:
Why is the government all worked up about watching us if we're not criminals?
Re:What's the big worry? (Score:2)
Would you trust both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon with that kind of power ??
Both of them DID get elected.
Re:What's the big worry? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does everyone here get all worked up about the governement watching us if they truely have nothing to hide?
Because we have something called The Bill of Rights that was designed two centries ago to limit the power of the federal government. See Amendment no. 4 [findlaw.com]. [findlaw.com]
How would you like if if the Police stopped by every day and searched your house without a warrant? You have nothing to hide, right, so what's the worry?
I'll tell you the worry: Where is it going to end? Can they listen to my phone conversations? Make me take a lie detector test? Force me to turn over my PGP keys to some type of gov't clearinghouse?
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Re:I don't remember who said it, but (Score:2)
It's all about the Benjamins... (Score:3, Insightful)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
For some reason this quote keeps coming up a lot lately. I wonder why
Non-centralized archetecture (Score:2)
Not that this already isn't the case, thanks to consolidation by backbone providers, but...
Say that the internet in the US is routed through 20 or so central hubs. I think this is about how many DNS root servers we have, but feel free to correct me. Hitting any one of those hubs with a 'terrorist attack' could knock massive sections of the internet offline.
Who multihomes their website? There are maybe a double handful of ISP's who multihome, and only a very few commercial websites.
Internet consolodation is a very bad thing. Instead, let's get in the habit of using wireless connections.
Re:Holy... (Score:2)
Wasn't there an Internet-Draft a few years ago that involved adding surveillance to basic router function, that was shot down loudly by the IETF community?
Re:This has to stop (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:waste of time (Score:3, Insightful)
Conclusion obvious: Because it's plainly obvious that this will not locate terrorists, the logical conclusion is that finding terrorists is not why they want to implement this.
So, next step (Score:3, Insightful)