Cyber Security Enhancement Act Passes Senate 112
XorNand writes "The Cyber Security Enhancement Act (which was attached to the Homeland Security Act) was overwelming approved by the U.S. Senate today. According the EFF this soon-to-be-law allows "any government entity (federal, state, or local) to request email and voicemail from your ISP or telephone provider without a warrant or probable cause." The passage of the Homeland Security Bill is covered here on CNN.com. Yippee."
Ouch. (Score:1, Troll)
Please don't dump your freedom rhetoric on me; you're no 'more free' than the rest of the western world.
Re:Ouch. (Score:1)
"All persons running a none state sponsored OS (with built in state spyware) must wear a large yellow patch of a penguin at all times while in public. Non-compliance is subject to capital punishment."
Seriously though...
This is getting out of hand...
Hmmm... Sorry Uncle Sam, my M$ windurs box crashed and I lost the only copy of my private key! Worse yet, all that pot smoking when I was a teenager has caused me to forget my password too...
Guess I'll just "say hi to Bubba".
What a glorious time to be alive... huh?
Heil Bush and all that :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not even going to mention the fact that he's using national upset over a terrorist act against a national symbol to fuel lust for a totally fucking unrelated foreign war (Iraq). Same as Hitler.
Of course, the people being detained and having their civil rights as regards imprisonment ignored so far are Islamic, rather than Jewish. But it also took Hitler a while while in unopposed control of the government to gain complete control over the country.
If Islamic people start getting deported, then I'm going to start worrying. (And it's not like we haven't put a race in camps before -- we grabbed Japanese-Americans out of their homes and dumped them in big guarded, barbed-wire-fence-surrounded camps during WWII.) We hover a lot closer to serious nastiness than most people would like to admit.
I mean, for chrissake, we've a father and a son on the "throne" of the Presidency at the minute! Who buys into the "meritocracy" claims any more?
And we just established a massive domestic monitoring organization specifically built to bypass the restrictions placed on the FBI after decades of abuse of powers. Of course, this one can grab wiretaps w/o needing warrants, has the powers of the CIA, FBI, and INS, and is extremely well-funded.
Don't be so glad you don't live in the United States of America. France, Poland, and friends felt the brunt of radical German political changes as much as Germany. You get a shift towards a empire-building dictatorship (except this time bigger, with nukes and the most powerful military in the world) and you can be damn sure that it will impact you.
Heil Bush and all that addendum (Score:2)
Violent solutions will not work (like shooting politicians involved in this). At this point, most Americans are swept up in anti-terrorist nationalistic propaganda, and martyrs would make matters worse.
Protests? Useless. There have already been people speaking out against the use of anti-terrorist resources to start a war in Iraq, talking about the disturbing power grabs over the last twelve months. Nothing. In Vietnam, you had untold numbers of students being drafted for war, vast numbers of parents with dead children, and still it took years for protests to be paid attention to. And in the process there was FBI intervention (thanks to the strengthening of federal powers, it would be worse in a case like this), abuse of local police powers, federal influence over the press...and this is not a situation that can be tolerated for nearly as long.
Remember Pastor Martin Niemoller, convicted of treason by the Nazis:
In Germany they first 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 trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
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 no one was left to speak up.
Sage advice, from a man who has seen this before -- and yet who are we to speak out to? Who is to hear what we have to say with the power to do anything?
There are no countries, no one on earth that can do anything if this goes wrong.
Time to up the size of your gpg keys!!! (Score:1)
Re:Time to up the size of your gpg keys!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Writing a fully functioning RSA implementation from scratch is the work of a couple months; if you're really paranoid (which you must be if you want keys longer than 16Kbits) then you should be able to spare a couple months.
Re:Time to up the size of your gpg keys!!! (Score:1)
Re:Time to up the size of your gpg keys!!! (Score:2)
Re:Time to up the size of your gpg keys!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Time to up the size of your gpg keys!!! (Score:2)
Thank God for crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
neo-email (Score:3, Interesting)
There's been a lot of talk about canning our current email system and going with a semi-p2p replacement. This replacement should include cryptography.
Re:Thank God for crypto (Score:2)
Re:Thank God for crypto (Score:3, Interesting)
Read: Can I encrypt two messages into one, and with two different keys, one when used reveals MessageA and the other when used reveals MessageB?
That way, you can encrypt your message and include some spam in the other message, encrypt them both to one file, and give them your "spam" key. Thus, you give up your password to be legal and it doesn't help them with nothing
Re:Thank God for crypto (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not aware of any actual implementations, but it's certainly possible. All that is required for generation is to GPG the two alternate messages, stick the two bits together in an envelope and transmit. What is required is for the decryption engine to be able to determine which half of the message has been decrypted to the original and silently discarding the other half.
A fairly obvious way of acheiving this is to MD5 checksum the two plain text messages and append that to each message before encryption. Upon decrypting both parts with the available key, only one "plain text" message should match the MD5, and the other could then be safely discarded.
Of course, law enforcement isn't totally dumb and it's not going to take them long to realise that they need to ask for both keys when confronted with this kind of message. Also, there are probably issues with obstruction of justice by deliberately giving the wrong key to an authorised party. Your legislative system may vary of course...
Re:Thank God for crypto (Score:2)
Yes, and there is even a stronger result. The one time pad has this property, because it is essentially just an XOR with random (known) bits. In fact, there exists a key that will produce ANY message (of proper length) from the cyphertext.
The problem, of course is that the one-time pad is impractical for mass use.
Better yet .... (Score:2)
Impractical, but should be really funny. And if we can do this so could Saddam. There's no possible way to know the message. Thee know this, but spying on people has a lot other advantages to US. Imagine, spying on what everyone that is not a terrorist (99,999%), all the information you can gather for whatever. That is power.
Re:Thank God for crypto (Score:1)
Well here in the United Kingdom the fuckers (.gov) already have! Three years porridge, IIRC, if you don't cough up your keys, even if you have genuineley forgotten/lost them. So no, it doesn't matter whether they have anything on you. If they ask and you don't bend over for them, then hold on to that soap!
Thank goodness for university boffins [mit.edu] and government stupidity!
My favourite quote from that txt? "As usual, the policy debate about regulating technology ends up being obsoleted by technological innovations."
Ali
Re:Thank God for crypto (Score:2)
Not today, but it can be stored till they can. (Score:1)
They might not be able to decrypt all of it today, but if they store enough of it, you might find that they have decoded all of it before the statute of limitation on whatever you might have been discussing runs-out.
Who knows what kind of amazing decryption tech they'll employ in a couple of years? I know there are some really incredible storage technologies they could put to use today, so it's a valid concern if crypto users still don't comprise the bulk of Net traffic - there's not an amazing amount to store.
Re:Frontpage? (Score:1)
Re:Frontpage? (Score:1)
The truth hurts, don't it?
http://www.copvica.com
http://www.pi911.org
Am I missing something... (Score:1)
Re:Am I missing something... (Score:2)
So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:5, Interesting)
I swear Bush sounds more and more facist and like a smooth talking Hitler every day. "We're in danger. We'll protect you and preserve your freedom. All it will cost is your freedom."
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment tsarkon (Score:2)
They ALREADY HAVE suspended large portions of it, in the Patriot Act, and the Fatherland Security Act, which is why people are outraged.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
President Bush is not mentally capable... (Score:4, Insightful)
President Bush is not mentally capable of being a leader of a country. He only participates in selling parts of the government to the highest bidder. As Senator John McCain [senate.gov] says, the U.S. government has been corrupted by money disguised as campaign contributions.
This is not meant to be excessively negative about George W. Bush. There are many people who are not mentally capable of being a leader of a country.
George Bush's performance is typical for someone who has been an alcoholic: 1) Many alcoholics are extemely likeable. 2) Alcoholics don't like conflict; they resolve conflict in crude ways. 3) Alcoholics don't like to be expected to think.
President Bush delivers the statements that are written for him. Have you noticed that the coherence of his statements has improved now that he has a staff of more than 5,000 in the White House? He didn't suddenly develop ways of thinking more clearly.
The U.S. is experiencing a social breakdown. Few good leaders are available. For example, President Clinton was the child of two alcoholics. His crude adjustment to sexuality is typical for a child of alcoholics. It must be said, however, that President Clinton was mentally capable of understanding the issues of running a government, and he also had spent many years teaching himself government policy.
Other aspects of the social breakdown in the United States are: 1) The U.S. has the highest percentage of obese people in the world. People in the U.S. eat when they are not hungry, a sign of unhappiness and social disfunctionality. 2) The U.S. has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison of any country in the history of the world. European countries have one-sixth the percentage of their citizens in prison. 3) The U.S. government lacks social skills. The government's answer to conflict is often violence. The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries in 33 years, killing more than 3,000,000 people directly. The number killed indirectly is credibly estimated to be more than 3,000,000 additional people. 4) The U.S. government has at least two world-wide police forces that are authorized to kill anyone anywhere -- the FBI and the CIA. This also shows poor social skills. 5) The U.S. government is the biggest manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. government is also the government that talks most about using its weapons.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:1)
Of course now that the entire government is controlled by Republicans, the supreme court soon will be too. Boy these checks and balances really work well!
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
On a more serious note, remember that the Supremes are nominated by the President for life, so unless one of them goes wacko or kicks the bucket, Bush won't be appointing any more Republicans.
Yes, I am a bitter liberal. So what?
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the hole I put my faith in
What about the information?
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
Many Democrats did vote for it. However, the vote was 90 to 9. Among those voting against was Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:1)
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
I know that there have been and are bad Democrats (Fritz Hollings [D-SC], anyone?), just like there have been and are bad Republicans. Still, I must present this one rebuttal to your statement: The Kennedys were/are lecherous assholes with way too much money and power for their own good. But they are nothing compared to John Ashcroft, who is quite frankly evil.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
For instance, ever consider how tough the Democrats have made it to do business in this country? No wonder everyone's leaving! And as for the Republicans, I think we've all had enough of privacy abuse and basic civil rights infringement.
I say support a third party candidate who thinks outside of the confinements of media-blips and dried-up dead-horse issues.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:1)
I have been thinking this every time I browse clothing in the stores.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
civil liberties when they consistently vote
in favor of grossly anti-constitutional laws,
such as the PATRIOT act and this latest
treasonous abomination?
It's called a false dichotomy. Republican vs.
Democrat is simply a divide-and-conquer strategy,
and the American electorate has fallen for it
largely because of the role of the mass-media
oligarchs in playing up this false dichotomy.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because you can only truly control the US Senate with 60 votes. A simple majority won't do. The Democrats (Or indeed, any single senator) can stop and legislation dead in it's tracks with the filibuster.
The only exception has to do with laws concerning revenues. Senate rules allow a simple majority to stop a filibuster w/ laws concerning revenues. But clearly, a Supreme Court confirmation does not meet that test.
checks and balances (Score:2)
The times we've had national debates that included third parties, the third parties did well in the polls and elections. Several election cycles in a row who knows what might happen. They don't do that anymore now, they realised that too many people would see that yes, there are alternatives. And that "waste your vote" nonsense both parties use to scare their brainwashed sheeps back into the herd. We have globalist_traitor_goon party A and B. They keep their little minions faked out "lookout, just you lookout now, don't you dare be wastin' your vote! If you don't vote for our goon, the other guy's goon will get in!". Well, duh. Result is we keep electing goons from the globalist_traitor_goon parties.
There's no checks and balances when a combo of the crips and bloods run the show. A criminal gang is a criminal gang, those retardo labels they give themselves are the biggest scam going, there's a pittance worth of difference over all in the long haul. More big government, more taxes,more intrusiveness, more laws that aren't constitutional, on and on. It won't end until people stop voting for those people, local to federal, until enough people see you get the same thing if you keep electing the same thing. And it hasn't mattered, back and forth, this goon is a prez, these goons run the house, the other goons run the senate, both of them pick tame goons for the courts, always distills to the essence of "goonishness".
It's too far, most people won't wake up until there's tanks in the streets, armed mercenaries on the corners with full auto rifles, "camps" of the work and re education and concentration variety, and the whole nine yards then they STILL won't realise that it's mostly their fault for voting for it and putting up wityh it as they went about their daily entertainments and amusements..
Bread and circuses works, divide and conqueor works, and mass psyops and propoganda and brainwashing work. Look how theyuse popular television, theyhave people seeing police routinely breaking the law and violating rights, they have tv shows with the cia engaged in domestic work, they constantly link anyone who espouses constituional mandates as somehow being "fringe" and a 'domestic terrorist", they link gun ownership-not misuse, just plain ownership-with being a drug dealer or worse. They are breainwashing the children in public schools, demonizing home schoolers, getting the doctors to find out who owns guns by asking little billy and sally "do your parents have guns? where are they, how many do they have?". Just all sorts of little chunks of creeping fascism and snitchisms.
People just must really enjoy this sort of thing, they really put up with it. Why I don't know, but they sure do.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
Congress is powerless to change the constitution. That's why it's called a constitution. So the 4th Amendment is safe. One thing Congress can do is raise the bar higher, placing more stringent requirements on law enforcement. It can also decide to provide effective remedies for privacy violations.
Whether a conversation or piece of property is protected depends on a complicated analysis called "reasonable expectation of privacy." That is, was there an expectation of privacy that was objectively reasonable, as opposed to what you privately desired.
However, the Supreme Court already trashed the 4th A. over the last couple of decades. It has more holes than cheesecloth, ask any drug defendant.
The one area where the rules have been fairly strict is wiretap, and the reason for it is a federal statute on point. It would be a shame to see this undermined. American sensitivities to abuse of wiretap were heightened by the Vietnam and Watergate era. But that indignation has faded over the years.
The tension between liberty and security is perennial.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
I wish this were so. De facto it may be but in Du Jour practice we have these lovely things called Amendments (hence the 4rth Am.) which can add and subtract from the content of The Constitution. They may not be able to reword the title of the Article and/or Amendments (though they can certainly ratify a repeal), but they most definitely can reword the method of recognizing and implementing them.
The rest of your statement is sound. A simple contradiction in the beginning.
Constitutional amendments (Score:2)
For history buffs, note the prohibition of amendments before 1808 to clauses concerning _______.
Article V [cornell.edu]
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
Actually, I had in mind the far less sinister but very annoying lyrics to a hit song [nih.gov] by Bobby Mcferin. (I'm unclear why this is on an NIH site, or what therapeutic effect they think the synthesized tune could have on any but the already insane.)
But go with your gut reaction to discover within.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
Or the Pentagon building.
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:2)
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:1)
And if the mexican drug lords, mexican army, and all the independent militia (in southwest US) joined forces they could put up a fight.
This assumes that all groups resort to distributed (hit-and-run), organized guerrilla warfare (similar to the first checynian offesive when they drove out the russians and had autonomous rule, for a little while)
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:1)
Are you always this paranoid?
Re:So Much for the 4th Amendment (Score:1)
Who passed the bill?
The Senate! 90 people voted for it. The President can't make law and he didn't make law. Blame the right people.
GOODBYE AMERICA! (Score:1, Redundant)
"May I see your travel documents?"
Voicemail and Email (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about the potential for abuse and misuse when it's put in that scope. The idea of just allowing an agency like the FBI the power to do this is daunting enough. But now were giving this power to regular cops.
Re:Voicemail and Email (Score:1)
Re:Voicemail and Email (Score:5, Insightful)
Which prompts me to wonder whether this 'no probable cause' clause also includes the cell phone conversation archives which (given some media reports re: backtracing Sept. 11 hijackers) are purportedly being kept (and if so, would be kept in perpetuity, the costs of data storage being what they are).
I daresay that a fishing expedition with even today's rudimentary voice recognition software could pick up a decent number of drug dealers, both large and small scale.
Incidentally, I would also like to remind anyone who begins to respond that they're glad they don't live in the US that their own nation more likely than not has essentially equivalent laws either on the books or waiting to be passed. I'm talking to Canadians especially, here, since a) they gloat about not being American whenever given the chance; b) they're normally ignorant of their own nation's politics; and c) because I know, thanks to personal research in the past, exactly what Canada's current laws regarding government surveillance are, and have read the outlines of the newer bills which will be passed sooner or later by our "friends" in the federal Liberal Party of Canada)
Unbelievable (Score:4, Insightful)
This is insane. More email is delivered than first class mail in the US today. The interception of first class mail requires a federal warrant. How did this bill pass, in it's current state, with a 90-0 vote?!
This is exact the reason I gave up being a SQL DBA and went back to school to get a law degree.
Re:Unbelievable (Score:1)
The vote was 90-9, not 90-0.
Your right... (Score:2)
Re:Unbelievable (Score:2)
Re:Unbelievable (Score:1)
Re:very clever of them (Score:1)
I think it probably has something to do with this:
Deuteronomy 7:6-10
6 For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God: Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.
7 Yahweh didn't set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples:
8 but because Yahweh loves you, and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, has Yahweh brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 Know therefore that Yahweh your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with them who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations,
10 and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him who hates him, he will repay him to his face.
Obviously we are a God-fearing nation... Or at least our leaders are.
This will probably get moderated down, but I don't care, it's a valid question with a valid answer.
When speaking of killers, don't say "we". (Score:1, Offtopic)
"Does anyone know why we continue to support Israel?"
Should be: "Does anyone know why the U.S. government continues to support Israel?" When speaking of killers, don't say "we".
The U.S. government donates over $900 per Israeli per year of taxpayer money to Israel to buy weapons from U.S. weapons manufacturers.
George Bush could not have been elected without the support of poorly educated religious fundamentalists. These people have a goal. (I'm not kidding about this. Consider, for example, the recent 60 Minutes show on CBS TV in the U.S., in which this was discussed.) The goal is that all Jews either convert to "Christianity" or be killed. Since no well-educated Jews will convert to become ignorant Christian fundamentalists, that means that the true goal is to kill all the Jews. What better way is there to kill the 14 million Jews (total world-wide population) than to encourage them to get into a bloody battle with 1.1 billion Muslims?
The religious extremists in the U.S. don't fight the religious extremists in other countries directly. The U.S. religious extremists encourage the religious extremists in Israel and Muslim countries to fight each other. In this they are supported by the biggest weapons manufacturers in the world, for whom killing is profitable. The are also supported by those who want to accomplish hidden goals to increase their oil profits.
See this article for more about the violence of the U.S. government: What should be the Response to Violence? [hevanet.com]
Re:When speaking of killers, don't say "we". (Score:2)
Better look out. Now that you're on to their conspiracy they're coming to get you.
They said, "Jews must convert or die." (Score:2)
On the 60 Minutes show, there were several prominent fundamentalist "Christians" who said that was right, their goal was that Jews must convert or die.
Re:They said, "Jews must convert or die." (Score:1)
The "silly minority" did elect Bush. (Score:2)
The "silly minority" did elect Bush. He was elected by only a very small percentage of the votes. Without support from "Christian" fundamentalists, he could not have been elected.
You are right, the amount of money donated by the U.S. government to Israel to support buying from U.S. weapons manufacturers has been quite stable.
Re:The "silly minority" did elect Bush. (Score:1)
Fundamentalist Christians are not a tiny minority. (Score:2)
Fundamentalist "Christians" are not a tiny minority in the United States. If you put them together with people who work in the HUGE U.S. weapons industry and the people who work in the huge oil industry, that's a lot of people. The first two groups think that violence is "justified" as long as they themselves are not at risk.
Bush is the president solely because Al Gore is so clueless when it comes to what he should say and he should not say. Al Gore said that he supported "a woman's right to choose". That killed his chances with a lot of Christians and a lot of "Christians".
Someone with some understanding of the issues, for example Bill Clinton, would not make such strong statements about something over which he has no control. (Abortion rights in the U.S. are determined by the Supreme Court. A president has little immediate influence.)
Re:Fundamentalist Christians are not a tiny minori (Score:2)
Many politicians don't know to play that game, it's very demanding and need a lot of intuition. Some parties don't have an option, they need to piss of a vast mayority securing the votes of a minority. It's better than nothing at all.
Re:Fundamentalist Christians are not a tiny minori (Score:2)
Yeah, but the ones that think jews should convert or die are. I'd bet there's less than 100,000 of them in the US, and they're spread out, so they don't really have a giant influence on very many electoral votes.
Bush is the president solely because Al Gore is so clueless when it comes to what he should say and he should not say. Al Gore said that he supported "a woman's right to choose". That killed his chances with a lot of Christians and a lot of "Christians".
There are way more things Al Gore said to loose votes than that. Ever read his book? Do you really want to live in a world like the one he wants? I think it's scarry.
Personally I think Bush is doing a fairly good job overall. There are a few things that piss me off, but nobody's completely perfect. The only thing that really bothers me is that he's ignoring some importand domestic issues because he's too preocupied with Iraq. He should be pushing his energy plan and overcoming all the undue negative press it was given.
Someone with some understanding of the issues, for example Bill Clinton, would not make such strong statements about something over which he has no control.
There's something to be said for conviction, which is something President Clinton was lacking. Fortunatly for him, a president that didn't really do anything was exactly what the country was looking for at the time; Otherwise we may have elected Perot!
Abortion rights in the U.S. are determined by the Supreme Court. A president has little immediate influence.
People who say "I vote pro-(life|choice)" annoy the hell out of me. A narrow minded view doesn't do anybody any good. Someday a mentailty like that really may get us elected leaders who will want the jews to convert or die. That should be something people pay attention to instead of blindly voting pro-(choice|life).
Re:The "silly minority" did elect Bush. (Score:2)
And without support from the non "Christian" fundamentalists, he could not have been elected either.
They are still a minority. The thing is, Bush should have never been elected in the first place. He wasn't even the one with the most votes.
See my comment above: (Score:2)
(#4718671) [slashdot.org]
I agree, he should never have been elected.
They were waiting... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the near-unanimous Senate vote, you can imagine the fear of those who had qualms -- in the next election they'd have someone shaking a finger at them, accusing them of undermined the nation's security. It would be ludicrous if only it didn't work. Amazing how much political mileage a few bastards with boxcutters can provide.
Encrpyt now! And when the FBI drops by to interview you (the ones I've met have been unfailingly polite), give them the number of a lawyer (it doesn't have to be *your* lawyer
Seriously, the privacy issue demands active engagement by U.S. citizens (non-condescending foreigners are welcome to weigh in, too). Pick your favorite advocacy group as your antenna and tune in, this ain't over yet.
Re:They were waiting... (Score:2, Interesting)
That is exactly the case with the USA Patriot Act. It's also why the justice dept used everything in it's power to keep it from being circulated to congress before the vote. It was a wish list of everything they had wanted and failed to get at some other point in the past all rolled into one bill.
I've got a better idea to protect our privacy -- they want to read our mail? Okay. Lets send it to them! Everytime you write an email, or recieve an Email -- BCC it to president@whitehouse.gov, someone @fbi.gov, your congressmen, the secret service, the CIA, TIA, the DEA.
Get a million people doing that every day and they just might get annonyed with getting what they want.
Cyber Disobedience (Score:2)
assassination (Score:2)
They not only are cowards, but they abrogated their responsibilites and turned over constitutional duties that aren't their's to give away. But it doesn't matter, the bulk of the US code is unconstitutional anyway. It's a joke. they took the commerce clause and the duty to promote the general welfare to heights not even imagined by the founders. And even with the delineated bill of rights, it hasn't mattered, they just do what they want to do. We have a government comprised of bribe takers, blackmail reciepients, and blackmailers. Murders and assination happen, and nothing is ever done about it. From waco to chandra levy to a president to senators to "friends of bill" to "friends of the bushes", people get whacked. It's a dictatorship with window dressing teevee melodrama "politics". In some nation that has "one" party, people can see this easily, but for some reason, when you have "two" parties, but the results are constantly the same as those "one" party nations we all like to point at, the residents of the "two party" nation keep insisting they have choice and freedom, more from fervently wishing it than actually enjoying it.
Expect the roadblocks, the military troops all over in the streets and patrolling schools and factories and other businesses, and the camps soon,too, because it's coming. Oh ya, and the "disappeards". First it will be only partly disappeard, we are seeing that now, to "military tribunals", but eventually the numbers will get high enough they'll just vanish and not even bother with any niceties like that.
There is just an overwhelming parallelism with past tyrannical regimes, it's impossible to ignore it now unless you go way out of your way and apply blinders, which most people are doing.
Re:assassination (Score:2)
There are a thousand reasons this kind of thing is silly, and the most prominent is the myth of Washington competence to keep a secret. Oh yeah, and the lack of evidence.
And we did land on the Moon, so there.
subject or soverign, man or ostrich, choices (Score:2)
And oh ya, oswald wasn't the only dude involved in kennedy's whack, "so there". Take your warren commission "report" to the outhouse with ya, it's the appropriate place to use that paper it's printed on.
neener neener
%^)
ahhhhh (Score:2)
Every one of the allegations you throw out has been debunked, including the hilarious ones about the bin Ladens. Start at any urban legend site (e.g., snopes) and go from there.
Re:ahhhhh.....sooo (Score:2)
Just remember, the "nuhremberg defense" is not a valid excuse. Tell your boss that too.
Important details... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a very important distiction.
Everyone seems intent on the government reading your email. This article seems to say a lot differently.
Indeed, the rights granted seem to make a little sense, even.
Local gov't?!? (Score:1)
-minimum- local gov't -size- before opening the
Act's power to use by local gov'ts.
In a small town, local gov't very likely lacks
the personnel to monitor/interpret/utilize any
info received (eg from ISP's).
Also, I think there's a big risk that such info
would be misused, no matter how great the pen-
alties that such misuse might attract.
The text of the Bill, and the amended US Code (Score:4, Informative)
(House of Representatives version) of H. R. 5710, the Bill in question.
Section 225 is found on page 51 of H. R. 5710
I've removed the line numbers, but kept the original lines breaks. The quoted text begins after the three dashes, and ends before the four dashes
---
(d) EMERGENCY DISCLOSURE EXCEPTION.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--Section 2702(b) of title 18,
United States Code, is amended--
(A) in paragraph (5), by striking ''or'' at
the end;
(B) in paragraph (6)(A), by inserting ''or''
at the end;
(C) by striking paragraph (6)(C); and
(D) by adding at the end the following:
''(7) to a Federal, State, or local governmental
entity, if the provider, in good faith, believes that an
emergency involving danger of death or serious phys-
ical injury to any person requires disclosure without
delay of communications relating to the emer-
gency.''.
(2) REPORTING OF DISCLOSURES.--A govern-
ment entity that receives a disclosure under section
2702(b) of title 18, United States Code, shall file,
not later than 90 days after such disclosure, a report
to the Attorney General stating the paragraph of
that section under which the disclosure was made,
the date of the disclosure, the entity to which the
disclosure was made, the number of customers or
subscribers to whom the information disclosed per-
tained, and the number of communications, if any,
that were disclosed. The Attorney General shall pub-
lish all such reports into a single report to be sub-
mitted to Congress 1 year after the date of enact-
ment of this Act.
----
Below is the text of Section 2702(b) of title 18, United States Code, as provided by findlaw.com. As I note below, the version found through findlaw differs slightly from the version to which H.R. 5710 appears to refer. Please unsderstand that nothing in this post should be construed as legal advice, and do not rely on the below as neccesarily accurate.
Italics indicate text removed from 18 United States Code 2702(b) by H.R. 5710, Section 225, part (d)
Boldface indicates text added to 18 United States Code 2702(b) by H.R. 5710, Section 225, part (d)
* United States Code
o TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
+ PART I - CRIMES
# CHAPTER 121 - STORED WIRE AND ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSACTIONAL RECORDS ACCESS
U.S. Code as of: 01/02/01
Section 2702. Disclosure of contents
(a) Prohibitions. - Except as provided in subsection (b) -
(1) a person or entity providing an electronic communication
service to the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person
or entity the contents of a communication while in electronic
storage by that service; and
(2) a person or entity providing remote computing service to
the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity
the contents of any communication which is carried or maintained
on that service -
(A) on behalf of, and received by means of electronic
transmission from (or created by means of computer processing
of communications received by means of electronic transmission
from), a subscriber or customer of such service; and
(B) solely for the purpose of providing storage or computer
processing services to such subscriber or customer, if the
provider is not authorized to access the contents of any such
communications for purposes of providing any services other
than storage or computer processing.
(b) Exceptions. - A person or entity may divulge the contents of
a communication -
(1) to an addressee or intended recipient of such communication
or an agent of such addressee or intended recipient;
(2) as otherwise authorized in section 2517, 2511(2)(a), or
2703 of this title;
(3) with the lawful consent of the originator or an addressee
or intended recipient of such communication, or the subscriber in
the case of remote computing service;
(4) to a person employed or authorized or whose facilities are
used to forward such communication to its destination;
(5) as may be necessarily incident to the rendition of the
service or to the protection of the rights or property of the
provider of that service; or
(6) to a law enforcement agency -
(A) if the contents -
(i) were inadvertently obtained by the service provider;
and
(ii) appear to pertain to the commission of a crime; or or
(B) if required by section 227 of the Crime Control Act of
1990.
The copy of 18 US 2702(b) available through findlaw.com has no paragraph (6)(C)
''(7) to a Federal, State, or local governmental
entity, if the provider, in good faith, believes that an
emergency involving danger of death or serious phys-
ical injury to any person requires disclosure without
delay of communications relating to the emer-
gency.''
Is it just me or.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have figured that he would've loved to have more power to chase after pirates, especially in the name of "Homeland Defence"
Oh well, I guess he just didn't get his asking price this time round.
I'm sorry, but I really find it concerning that someone so vocal in his support of other laws that are just as draconian, would then turn around and vote against this one. It just doesn't seem to add up.
Wow (Score:1)
TERRORISM WORKS
This sh*t is not going unnoticed by the media... (Score:2)
The Reichstag BURNS (Score:2)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Subject: The Reichstag BURNS
From: vsync <vsync@quadium.net>
Organization: quadium.net
Date: 20 Nov 2002 06:11:19 -0700
Message-ID: <87u1ic2xoo.fsf@piro.quadium.net>
Content-Type : text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Lines: 105
Well, they just got done raping the 4th amendment, among other things.
The Senate just approved the "Homeland Security" bill, granting the
government the right to read mail without warrants, as well as
stuffing INS, Customs, and others into one giant department. The bill
(law now) also includes such provisions apparently unrelated to
security as refusing government contracts to US-traded companies based
in the Cayman Islands, with no justification given.
They were forced to back down from some of the most explicit corporate
pork (but only as a promise to rescind these provisions later; they're
law now):
* Shield Eli Lilly only from future lawsuits based on claims that
thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, caused autism in children; as
passed, the bill makes moot a number of pending suits.
* Restore a provision from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone that would
ban companies from getting federal homeland-security contracts if
they reincorporated abroad to avoid U.S. taxes, unless an
administration finds national security is at stake. The GOP language
now in the bill broadens the waiver power.
* Drop an earmark that would have put a new homeland-security
research center at Texas A&M.
-- WSJ, "Bush Wins Senate Passage Of Homeland-Security Bill",
2002-11-20
Last night I found this speech by Senator Thomas rushing the bill to a
vote without further debate or discussion:
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I just listened to the two Senators who
are probably most involved with the details of this homeland
security bill--very interesting comments. I have been, frankly,
disappointed that it has taken us as long as it has. We have been
on this measure, I understand, now for about 7 weeks, and we are
still not finished--a bill that needs to be finished. It needs to
be there for security. Yet we continue to debate and worry over
issues that are not as significant as the passage of this bill.
-- [Page: S11243],
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r107:./temp
And here I thought people were concerned about the unconstitutional
aspects of this bill and worried about the amount of power being
placed into the hands of the Executive Branch. Now I know that
getting a bad law passed is more important than fixing the issues it
has first, passing a better law instead, or even determining if a new
law is needed.
I'd like to quote from an article about 1930s Germany:
In Jan., 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor without an
absolute majority, the Reichstag was dissolved and new elections
were set for Mar. 5; a violent election campaign ensued. On Feb. 27,
1933, a fire destroyed part of the Reichstag building. Hitler
immediately accused the Communists of having set the fire. President
von Hindenburg proclaimed a state of emergency[...]
Sound eerily familiar? I pray that the second half of that last
sentence never comes to pass in the United States of America:
[...]and issued decrees suspending freedom of speech and assembly.
Now, look at how Hitler got all his power. Did he seize it in a
military coup? No:
On Mar. 23 the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave the
government, i.e., Hitler, dictatorial powers.
-- http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/Reichstg
I say that the World Trade Center is our Reichstag. Yes, the United
States was attacked. Yes, there are those who wish our doom. But
shifting power between the branches of government and giving the FBI
power to read our mail without warrants and browse our library reading
lists freely does nothing to stop someone flying another plane into a
building, shooting random people as they go about their business, or
sailing a ship with a nuclear weapon aboard into a harbor. No, it
merely clears the way for more
I'm surprised that this wasn't passed by secret voice vote, the way
the DMCA was. At least we know the names of those who sold us out,
abrogating the constitutional rights which define the freedom they
are so eager to protect. Whether the Supreme Court will intervene is
an open question.
As citizens of the United States, we share a solemn responsibility in
that we allowed this to happen, the same responsibility we place upon
those who gave Hitler his power. And should we see our government
take further steps along the road to establishing a tyrant, and do
nothing, we are not merely careless and apathetic, but fools. For we
have seen this happen before, and we know the potential results.
God bless America.
[This email may be reproduced and redistributed verbatim and in its
entirety.]
- --
vsync
http://quadium.net/
Save man-years by not saying things like "mature software process
concepts" when you mean things like "good plan."
-- http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44717&cid
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The Lameness Filter Is Requiring Me To Have _More_ Characters Per Line; Interesting... I Thought It Was Supposed To _Fight_ Page Widening. Lalalalla--MEEPT-- CmdrTaco Can'T Handle Losing Control, Doo Dah Doo Dah, CmdrTaco Can'T Hack Perl, Doo Dah Doo Dah, How Are We Supposed To Post Meaningful Comments When Lists And Blockquotes And Indentation Are All Considered "Trolling", E-I-E-I-O
Encrypting mail servers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Once this step works, then outgoing emails could search for a public keys of recients, and if possible encrypt before sending. This would incrementally move the encryption closer to the sender, as adoption permitted.
I suggest using this along with features for verification of the sender as an anti-spam feature, to enhance adoption of the new protocols. An incremental approach is the only feasable one, IMHO.
--Mike--
The Last Straw! (Score:2)
I don't have to pick a Party til 2005.
Pundit-surfing (Score:3, Interesting)
On the one hand, I've heard a lot of folks on the radio and read no few columns by smart people saying we need to be paranoid [townhall.com]. Rational paranoia's not a bad thing, I think. Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
On the other hand, another writer [townhall.com] I like to read has pointed out that, as far as political, legal, and material freedoms goes, we're a lot more free than we have ever been in history, and the very fact that we have a number of people who are incredibly sensitive to violations of civil liberty means that civil servants have to keep on their toes about it. And the Heritage Foundation has published a memo [heritage.org] explaining that DARPA's Total Information Awareness isn't quite what Safire of the NYT said it is, and it's not quite what everyone (rightly) fears.
Still, I won't budge from my first point. A little rational paranoia is a healthy thing to have. I've been doing my best to be 'safe', and to teach good habits to my not-so-tech-savvy friends. Now that I've got most of my family Back Home using PGP-friendly e-mail clients, I'm going to take some time to show them just how easy it is to use these nigh-impossible-to-forge signatures when I visit for the holidays.
Thank You Republican Voters! (Score:1, Flamebait)
Welcome to George Bush's America. It's going to be a very long two years.
eric
Time To Implement "Project White Noise" (Score:3, Interesting)
It was meant to be like the old usenet practice of adding "spook fodder" to the end of posts. Also, like type II anonymous remailers, it was designed to help thwart traffic analysis.
There'd be a set of scripts (or easy to compile programs) that would sit on a client machine. These scripts would have a list of email recipients (either static, or snarfed periodically from a current source), and it would send out an encrypted "message" to each address according to a set of rules defined coupled to that address.
Messges could be sent at random intervals or with a specific frequency.
The payload could either be encrypted, plaintext, or crypto-grade random garbage.
The encryption could be symetric, asymetric, or even with a throw-away one-time-pad (generated on the fly and then discarded).
The payload of encrypted messages could be plain text, garbage, or another encrypted message.
Of course, this could be done with the current anonymous remailers. But I've found the remailers to be already overloaded and unreliable. Because the project's goal is primarily to add noise to existing email traffic, it would lend itself to be served by clients with sporadic connections.
There's the possibility of propogating real messages in this system, but running SMTP servers on sporadic clients seems like a bad idea (even discounting the potential for abuse by spammers, etc.). I was thinking of a store-and-forward type of system, using P2P networks. The software could be a P2P client. It would queue a "real" message by sharing it out. Other clients would search for a designated string to find these messgaes and download them (there'd obviously need to be some sanity checking to prevent garbage inputs). Once the originating client knows that the message has been downloaded "x" number of times (some redundancy would be desireable, I would think), it would remove the message from the queue so the recipient doesn't get thousands of copies of the message.
I know, this idea is really rough around the edges. I had a really nice write-up a while back, but I lost it. The fact that my coding skills don't extend beyond half-page sed/awk/perl/bash scripts (don't laugh, I'm just a sysadmin) hasn't helped in my realization of this idea. :)
If anyone knows of a project that even remotely comes close to what I have described, please post links!
Cyber Security Enhancement Act Passes Senate (Score:1)
Re:Hail Georgeler (Score:2)
OHS - "Office of Homeland Security"
I'm starting to agree with you, disturbing as it sounds to say aloud. Political solutions can do little at this point, with complete Republican control of the legislative, executive and judicial branch, and popular support fully behind the anti-terrorist propaganda that's been so useful to the government in gaining unprescedented powers.
A 90-9 vote shows massive support for the thing. Remember how long the Vietnam protests took to do anything (*And* the FBI surveillance of protesters and attempts to break up the antiwar movement...and that wasn't with the help of the Office of Homeland Security).
What's a guy to do?