Police Target Free Email 216
Red Wolf writes "The Australian Federal Police are talking with the major free email providers in the hope of making it easier to trace suspects who use the accounts for crimes like fraud and paedophilia."
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Police Target Free Email
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The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker
fastmail.fm (Score:1)
Re:fastmail.fm (Score:5, Informative)
When it comes to such things as privacy, freedom of speech, and so on, all bets are off and you are at the whim of the government. Traditionally, Australian governments have respected such things, but the current government, in the name of anti-terror, is steamrolling tradition.
Re:fastmail.fm (Score:2)
Off topic, but it seems strange that a British Labor Prime Minister sees eye to eye with an Australian Liberal (ie. Tory) PM. Then again, the right of Australian politics used to be to the left of left wing US politics. What a strange world we live in.
Re:fastmail.fm (Score:2)
I believe their servers are located in the US. Probably because co-lo service is far cheaper there than here in Australia.
Re:fastmail.fm (Score:2)
You may think so but hotmail for instance adds an "X-Originating-IP: [xxx.xxx.xxx.xx]" to the mail headders and that's just a court order away from whatever name you used to register the account at the ISP.
Re:fastmail.fm (Score:3, Informative)
help@nym.alias.net
For instructions.
Geez, it must be early in the morning... (Score:5, Funny)
This is good news! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This is good news! (Score:2)
I hope they get some austrlian spammers in the process.
Can't spammer in a lot of cases said to be fraudulent? Anyway, I'm not sure if I feel that this is good news. On one hand, anything that will make it easier to prevent childabuse and catch those sick, sick peadeofiliacts are a Good Thing (tm) in my book, but isn't the cost too high - stopping a whole raft of legitamate users of the services - in this cause?
I have a couple of free e-mails myself, neither is set up to identify myself from the info
Re:This is good news! (Score:3, Interesting)
ie: DeCSS
Lock picks / slimjims (is that one or two words?)
Guns
Knives
Crossbows (They ARE illegal in Australia excl Victoria)
I once knew a guy at my school who had his head bashed in with a hammer. Maybe we will have to go back to hitting nails with rocks (nope, they should be banned too because they can kill).
Re:This is good news! (Score:2)
because the numbers of the poor are increasing so rapidly
that a mass-extermination will be required soon in order
to prevent a degradation in our quality of life. If the poor
have the resources, they will, of course, defend themselves,
if the extermination becomes common knowledge. It is
crucial that the effective ability to defend themselves, to
organize, etc., must be denied to them.
One word, one header: (Score:5, Insightful)
- Oisin
Re:One word, one header: (Score:2)
If only Hotmail in particular and other free email providers would clue in. Its not that they haven't been told, either. Other ISPs would love it if Hotmail and its ilk would log the x-originating-ip and stick it in the headers.
Re:One word, one header: (Score:3, Informative)
They already do. E-mail I get from Hotmail at least has an X-Originating-IP header, as well as a Received: from xx.xx.xx.xx by whatever.hotmail.com via HTTP.
I'm quite sure Yahoo does something similar too, but I don't have an e-mail sent from a Yahoo account handy.
They'll just move (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really, didn't they think that the minority who are using the accounts in committing crimes will just move to (foreign) services that are not affected by this. While the legitimate users will be inconvenienced...
Re:They'll just move (Score:4, Interesting)
So, for technology-aware people, that commits the most serious crimes (specially fraud), this step will be mostly ineffective, yes.
But there have been lots of people who got arrested because they believed that they couldn't be traced back if they were using an anonymous service. Usually related to smaller felonies, like harassment, threatening, etc.
Aw jeez (Score:5, Funny)
More Accurate Headline? (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't say either way if this was an intentional inaccuracy, but nothing in the article suggests that free email providers are in any kind of trouble or even the subject of any investigation.
Re:More Accurate Headline? (Score:2)
No. One of the officers wants free email to be abolished. That way users have to pay for access with a creit card, allowing them to be tracked.
Re:More Accurate Headline? (Score:5, Informative)
Re-read the article.. they want the elimination of all free email service worldwide.
They, and I quote: '"Do away with free internet (email) accounts," he said. "If they aren't free then people will pay by credit card and that gives law enforcement some starting point.'
They want their jobs to be easier.
Another great quote: '"There will always be rogue states that will provide an internet haven in the same way they provide a banking haven," he said. "This has to be seriously raised at an international level."'
So, the subject line is correct, for once.
Re:More Accurate Headline? (Score:2)
That, of course, puts Switzerland onto the axis of evil list.
Re:More Accurate Headline? (Score:2, Insightful)
The scourge of modern day society! - It seems like every type of law enforcement all over the world are joining forces in the battle cry of: "We want our lives to be easier! - We don't want to do old fashioned police work anymore. If only the net also could catch the criminals physically we'd be doing alright!"
Come on you morons! - Most crimes only hurt someone in real life and that's where you catch the criminals red handed. If you want to catch a pedophile, go for the
Funny that... (Score:2)
Let's see those Aussies come 'n get sum. Lazy bums.
Mwuhahahahahhaaaaa.. (Score:3, Funny)
"Hotmail figures quite prominently in our investigations not because Microsoft is a bad company but because they have provided a good service that can be used anywhere," he said.
Mwuhaa
Mwuhaha
Mwuhahaha
Mwuhahahaha
Mwuhah
More Useful Everyday.
Real Hot mail.
-
A good point (Score:5, Interesting)
hotmail.com
yahoo.com
lycos.co.uk
britneyspe
fcuk-me.co.uk
etcetc
how many of the other big name free email providers out there are gleefully handing out any details that you registered (like any were real) and say to the cops
"theres an adress here you might want to check something_horrible@some-email.com" and then the police sit there and track all the emails for a while.
How much worse would this be is you encrypted your emails so it looked really suspicious ?
Are there any really good free web based email clients out there that you can suggest where this thing might not be an issue, what do you use ?????
S
Now it's personal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Now it's personal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
The article in question is discussing letting the police read your email and abolishing anonyminity. You're standing on the slippery slope, so yeah, you implied it.
Re:Now it's personal (Score:3, Insightful)
No, he didn't, and no, the article doesn't. The article discusses making it easier for the police to track down suspected criminals. That's all. Not monitoring your e-mail constantly, just extracting whatever information they can about a suspect without jumping through miles of red tape. Whether these tactics will actually be useful is besid
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
Re:Now it's personal (Score:3, Insightful)
And how does this differ in any principled way from them using their existing powers to monitor snail mail ? The point is the Australian Police have no power to enforce a warrant on a overseas ISP, so they are seeking to ensure they act responsibly anyway.
You're standing on the slippery slope, so yeah, you implied it.
I would counter that you are standing on a slippery slope to anarchy, or purposefully
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
Now who's over-reacting? We didn't say we'd turn it on. We'll only do that if you're suspected or accused of something, or if the police want to eliminate you from their investigations. As you said, when that happens, you lose your rights.
So, as long as you're not accused of anything, and have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear, right? Don't you want your children to be safe? defishguy, why do you hate your children so much? What are you planning to do to them?
Re:Now it's personal (Score:4, Insightful)
So... given that the numbers pretty much speak for themselves, how can you NOT agree that if anyone is to be "tracked" or otherwise given "special treatment" in these cases it should NOT be parents of girls? I mean, if you are going to single anyone out, who better than those who have access to, and power in the lives of, the most frequent victims?
The local TV station ran a fearmongering "special report" on the evening news outlining all the "dangers children face." They had policemen hang out at playgrounds and filmed them coaxing young girls into a minivan while their terrified mothers looked on. They talked about the "online predators" that will lure your children into real life meetings and then kill them. They talked about all these terrible fates that await any child not held under it's mother's wing 24 hours a day - in short, they talked about all sorts of terrible fates that, according to the FBI's own numbers, only a tiny number of children meet with each year.
Of course, what they didn't mention - and what is rarely mentioned in typical propoganda like this [bravepages.com] - is the fact that tens of thousands of children are molested each year by their own parents, or by a relative, or by a "friend" close to the family (teacher, coach, counselor, babysitter, etc). There is no "typical" when it comes to people who fuck children, and those rapists hanging about in the bushes represent a tiny, tiny sliver of the greater problem. Psychological studies have also revealed that at least (or as much as) a third of the adults convicted of molesting children are not pedophiles, but simply sexual opportunists.
Consider the most violent extreme in this example: [ncjrs.org] of the 2100 children killed in 1997, 40% of the killers identified were family members, 45% by someone known to the child - and a whopping 15% (slightly over 300) were killed by strangers. No, talking about the realities wouldn't do well at all because it would only make everyone much more aware that it's not "those people" doing these crimes, it's anyone you know and there's little way to tell until it's too late. Is your next door neighbor fucking his eight year old? How do you know? The trajic fact is that this witch hunt mentality does nothing at all to protect children and, in fact, only helps blind society at large to the truth; while "concerned parents" (sheep brainwashed by the evening news) go on worrying about the evil "pedophile" lurking in the bushes no one believes Mr. Johnson, the special ed. teacher next door would be fucking his little girl - he's just "not that type."
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now it's personal (Score:5, Interesting)
Are liquor company execs usually alcoholics?
Are drug pushers usually drug addicts?
Are people who create child porn usually pedophiles?
Or is it just about profit?
You seem to be saying that you are paranoid of government intrusion, but at the same time, you want to take away the rights of people who haven't been convicted of any crimes.
That is a huge contradiction. Why should pedophiles be the victims of a witch hunt if they have done nothing wrong?
The simple fact is that pedophilia is not a crime. Pedophilia is what you are, not what you do. And you know, rape is often more about power than sex. What makes you think that most people who rape children are really pedophiles? You don't think it could have something to do with the fact that children are easier to keep quiet? Easy targets, for anyone with a twisted mind?
Does being a heterosexual man mean that you go around raping women? Should every heterosexual man have to register somewhere to "help keep predators at bay"?
It seems that you are just one of those "freedom and human rights for all, except if they are something I don't like" people. You are as dangerous to democracy and human rights as any oppressive government. You are the kind that gets these governments into power in the first place.
The bottom line is that if you are a pedophile but not convicted of any crime, there is no reason why you shouldn't have the exact same rights as anyone else. Say otherwise, and you are a hypocrite and a supporter of a Big Brother society where the government can pretty much do as it pleases to keep the people down.
Pedophiles have the exact same rights as everyone else to protect their identities, unless they have been convicted of a crime.
Re:Now it's personal (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm sorry, this isn't correct. No one loses their rights when they are under investigation; believing that they do is the first step towards acknowledging that "rights" are something that governments give you, a privilege that can be taken away. That's what governments want you to think; and it's exactly backwards.
Your rights are INALIENABLE, you *always* have your rights, no matter what actions the government might take to quash them. They are yours as a member of the polity, or as a member of the human race.
Why, then, can the government break down the doors of those who are suspected of a crime, or arrest someone on probable cause, or imprison them if found guilty? The reason is not that your rights disappear, but because we allow that in certain circumstances, your rights are trumped by the need for a government to police us and maintain public order, functions that we the people entrust to them, and which they have at OUR pleasure. That's it... the *only* reason that rights are superseded (not "lost", or even "suspended") is the presence of a greater potential harm to society than the temporary superseding of your rights would be.
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
There is a certain sadness in this whole thread of argument. People are holding up the governing document, the Constitution, its various amendments, and derived laws saying that our rights are inalienable. That they are given to us. By what? That legal document which is the very basis of the governing body?
Your rights are what you are allowed to do by the powers that be. In America, that would be the federal and state governments. The constitution defined to the government what rights they are not allowed
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
So, aside from verbal attacks and assumptions of my ability to read, and apparently, the ability to reason, what you seem to have proven is the same about yourself; ie, that you cannot or may not have read the prior post and that you may or may not have reasoned out the meaning of it.
If someone is being monitored, what they do or do not do is hindered by the monitoring. The social acceptance of this monitoring results in a gradual increase of its scope.
This in turn subdues what people believe and are able
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
I'm not quite sure how to reply, so I'll start by apologizing.
You have my apologies for my making any flawed assumptions about you and for not focusing on the topic itself. I apologize for letting my emotions lead my thinking in my responses.
Yes, the topic is about people peddling kiddie porn.
I'll be glad when all purveyers and creators of kiddie porn are behind bars.
Re:No (Score:2)
And who or what gives you those rights?
Here's a little proposition for you to think about: the only rights you truly have are those you are prepared to die defending. Anything else can be taken from you.
Re:No (Score:2)
OK. So who states that? And who defends those rights? Is it:
If you think governments can't revoke those rights, tune in to the discussion currently going on between the UK and the US over prisoners still held at Gitmo, where they've been held without trial and arguably in violation of numerous internationally accepted human rights since the previous war.
Re:Now it's personal (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
Here's a moral question for you though: if you can prevent more child abuse than is caused by decriminalizing child pornography, would you decriminalize possession while keeping the production illegal?
This works under a few basic assumptions. One, that there are pedophiles who do not wish to harm children (either physically or psychologically),
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
Do you create 5,000 new cases of abuse to prevent 10,000?
And however you decide, how do you explain your decision to the loved ones of each group?
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
Making up the numbers only means that the question is hypothetical.
"If those numbers can be proven then you try to save the most lives possible. If not you do what seems morally reasonable and most likely to have the best outcome,"
So then it sounds like you're saying 'go with whatever gives the lowest number of abuse cases'? Would that apply to any situation, would you say? How about if I said we could reduce the total number of cas
won't someone please think of the children... (Score:2)
You are primarily responsible for the safety of your own children. Face it--it's an adult world out there. Your job is to protect your children from those things for which you believe they are not prepared.
The rest of us are not responsible for creating a whiffle-society where your children can run around unsupervised and not be hurt.
The conclusion of your argument is untenable. You're going to have a
Re:Now it's personal (Score:2)
of the remaining 20%, 8 out of 10 sexual crimes against kids are committed by friends of the family.
If you think it is "OK" to invade people's privacy in order to protect the kids, then you are really saying it is OK to invade your personal privacy. With hidden cameras in your kid's bedroom, placed there by cops who do NOT tell you.
Are you willing to do this?
If not, then you should shut up about trying to invade MY privacy to protect
You think it is okay because it isn't personal. (Score:2)
You think it is okay to have the police go after one group of people because you feel threatened by them. So in doing so, you are willing to contribute to the tide of people who want to abolish their rights.
So in a sense, you are okay with it not because it is personal to you, it isn't. You are okay with it because it ISN'T personal. Because by doing this, you don't think it hurts you.
See it from a flip side.
You have kids and because of columbine, kids are considered threats so the state decides that mon
Already somewhat tracable (Score:5, Insightful)
telephone comparison (more or less?) (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately for us, he's dramatic- and doesn't read headers. Our other brother was the one who got his terrible goth poem by email, from a free account, and we seem to have narrowly averted disaster- he was out in Arkansas, it turned out, having a breakdown. (The brother who got the email sat down and found out where he sent it from, and checked in with the rest of us to let us know that the kid was alive. We'd called the police and the police were spectacularly unhelpful, we had to call them back and tell them where he was. "How do you know?" they asked us.) If he hadn't been traceable, he might have been dead by the time we got to him.
I have accounts that i use regularly that are free accounts, yes. And I'd resent them being read by strangers (Do we really think that the government are the only ones who want us all to be visible on the map? See my journal entry today on microchip implants in mexico... how long till your email ID is on your chip?) but i was thankful, that once, that anonymous doesn't always mean anonymous. Mixed feelings on this one... i wouldn't want my phone tapped, but i do want 911 to be able to see where i am. There's a differene, but only in degree.
This won't work out (Score:5, Interesting)
Likewise, if you have a criminal intent and use a free address to stay anonymous, you won't give your real physical address unless you're really stupid. But then they won't need that info to track you down, as you probably allready posed for a security camera, and left your wallet on the scene of the crime....
Oh well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess this is just yet another reason to switch from plain text e-mails to more secure alternatives [gnupg.org].
Free email targeted by police? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Internet was founded on the propogation of information as freely as possible. This means that Web surfing, Usenet threads and email messages are all equally valuable and important, and removing free email services would remove the infrastructure of one of the Internet's most fundamental protocols. Though it is true that many free email users are fly-by-night peculiars such as trolls and paedos, we have to understand that they provide a service not unlike those of coin-operated telephone boxes and stamp-operated postal services, and that vigorously spying on free email users is tantamount to removing phone and mail boxes or tapping them.
Besides, keeping an eye on free email services won't reduce the problem. If child pornographers and spammers are determinted to get their messages through, then they can just use encryption, or the Freenet protocol to make them untraceable - or both, in which case nothing can be done. Public key encryption algorithm implementations such as RSA, DES and AES mean that the police would reqire upwards of 75,000 manhours per email message to discover inappropriate content; despite being impossible, this is still a violation of our privacy rights!
In addition to this, by carrying out these actions the police are effectively saying that ISP and other pay email accounts are in some way superior to free email accounts. While they may be superior, there can be no way of saying that an email from someone using AOL is more reputable than one from fastmail.fm or any other ISP/POP3 provider using open source software. Just because an email provider happents to use UNIX/Linux servers doesn't mean that they are necessarily infested with unsavoury characters; in fact, I have received more unwanted email from large ISPs, IAPs and LAPs than from fleeting servers hidden somewhere on Christmas Island.
I could continue, but I think that with more than a cursory notice the other multitudinous incarnadine problems with this new system become clear, and we must make sure that these plans do not become widespread. Fortunately, they are quite impractical, so a few negative anecdotes should encourage most middle managers in service providers and tech support to avoid implementing it.
Re:Free email targeted by police? (Score:2)
What does OSS have to do with any of this? Jeez man, every discussion is not a lead-in for zealotry.
In Malaysia... (Score:4, Insightful)
The implication of this is that many large local portals, like Catcha [catcha.com.my] or BlueHyppo [bluehyppo.com] have an IC field. Whether or not this is mandatory depends on company policy, but if legislation were introduced to make this mandatory, this would immediately provide an easy method of identification should the need arise.
I suppose an alternative would be to allow relative anonymity, but at a price to deter wanton abuse of the system.
Personally, I am intensely concerned about the importance of privacy but this needs to be balanced against the need for social accountability.
Look, you dumb Ozzies (Score:4, Funny)
The price you pay for getting something free (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems ok to me. When you sign with a non government or for profit organization in order to get a free service you should be aware that you will be getting more than you bargained for.
Caveat Empor.
If you want a more secure form of communication just pay for an E-mail address and encrypt with PGP/GPG.
Of course you can also take it to the next level and compose your E-mails on a machine that is disconnected from the Internet. Encrypt the message with a one time pad cipher before removing the message to a Internet available machine. Once on the Internet machine you send a PGP message to your recipient and agree on a time windows of 1 minute sometime in the future. You then construct a secure FTP over SSH and connect it to the Internet for that 1 minute only, logging all the traffic from and to that machine while it was on-line. You sit and pour over the logs and see that your recipient was in fact the only person that made the ssh connection and that it was not spoofed. You can then destroy the hard-drives of the machines you worked with.
Or you can really be paranoid and ...
Sort of missing the point (Score:2)
The reason free email accounts are so useful is not because of their security but becuase of their anonimity. This isn't about people reading your mail. It is about them not being able to trace who you are even if they read your mail. Obviously this isn't the case with something like hotmail that wants to your entire cv to let you sign up but a service like yahoo is relatively anonymous. Given the vast number of people that demand an e-mail address to do anything (even slashdot) you would not have any priv
Re:Sort of missing the point (Score:2)
You are correct in your statement that services like Yahoo and Hotmail are useful because they are anonymous.
In my opinion I do not miss the point at all, quite the opposite in fact. The above mentioned services do not require encryption precisely because that they are anonymous. In order to remain anonymous you must refrain from giving information that can be used to piece together after a period of time your identity.
Anonymity is hiding, nothing else. Hiding is the simplest form of keeping a secr
Re:Sort of missing the point (Score:2)
I think to some extent we are talking at cross purposes. Certainly the contents of a mail might give away your identity, if intercepted, without encryption. But the header of the mail cannot be encrypted or it would be impossible to deliver it, so without an "anonymous" e-mail account even encrypted e-mail is traceable. Also encryption does not help you at all in being anonymous to the recipient of the mail since by definition they must be able to decrypt it.
There is also the case of the e-mail address
Re:Sort of missing the point (Score:2)
All you say is true if you start considering yourself anonymous from the E-mail address on-wards only.
If you step back and look at the entire system you will realize you have to log onto a system somewhere. If it's a private place then you will have your IP and the ISP's logs and accounts pointing at you or your accomplice. If it's a public place then you have had to pay for the service and therefore there are people who could recognize you if you ever came back or give your details to the police. dete
Re:The price you pay for getting something free (Score:2)
make your one-time pad extremely random with lavarand [203.162.7.73].
Re:The price you pay for getting something free (Score:2)
Maybe offenders should... (Score:5, Funny)
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
then some real criminals can be apprehended =d
Way ahead of you... (Score:2)
BTW thanks for the zip...I never knew what it was and so just put 90210.
Re:Maybe offenders should... (Score:2)
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
then some real criminals can be apprehended =d
You mean freedom accounts?
Waste of effort (Score:3, Insightful)
Any criminal who are serious are going to be a bit more clever - open proxies, fake credit cards, etc to hide their identities. Or just a free email provider in a country that is out of the jurisdiction of the AFP.
Forcing people to pay for email just wont work. People have become used to having free email addresses, and there *will* be ways for people to still get it. Sure, MS may charge, as may yahoo, but many other providers wont.
Not what they are for (Score:2)
Who actually sends mail from free accounts? The point is to just have an address. The sort of people I give my free account address to aren't the sort of people I would ever mail. Hell I wouldn't even give them an e-mail address if I didn't have too. The problem is the number of things that require an e-mail address is growing all the time and if you gave out your real e-mail address you would a) not have any privacy and b) be drowning in spam.
The real fix to all this would be a better messaging protoc
Re:Waste of effort (Score:3, Insightful)
And I'm sure it will happen in America soon... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And I'm sure it will happen in America soon... (Score:2)
Anonymail (Score:5, Informative)
Payment for the service is by hash cash, a computationally expensive operation you must perform to be able to register, as a way of deterring spammers and other system abuses. In that respect it's better than conventional e-mail at present - no spam to my mailbox yet.
American privacy in Australia (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing to see here, move along please... (Score:4, Insightful)
Email accounts should all be traceable. It should be legislated that some kind of physical address/person identification is required for any form of email access, free or paid for. It's not stopping you from emailing, or censoring you - it's just making you accountable. It's getting to the stage with spam etc. that really we need a licensing system to be allowed to run a MTA. All ISPs by law should be forced to block SMTP traffic except from their registered MXs, and the administrator of the system should have to be licensed, just like a radio operator. Too much spam coming from your MX? Your license gets revoked. Of course, all the whiners who can't configure sendmail to save their life (but run it anyway, usually as an open relay) would be up in arms about such a scheme, but it's about time it's done.
It seems like so many people are taking principles of anonymity to the levels of zealotry (just look at the responses to this article to see what I mean). When anything ends up getting 'religious' it hurts the cause. What do we want? An accountable email system where the police only have to log/record/watch suspects, or an unaccountable email system where they have to watch much more, with the associated 'collateral damage' of ending up watching some non-suspects because you don't know who they are? You just have to look at the real religions (such as Christian fundamentalists) to realise when anything gets religious, it ends up in destruction. How many people have Christian zealots killed? This can translate to "How many potential Linux users have Linux zealots turned off?" or "How many people who care about privacy have been turned off by the rantings of ACLU zealots?"
Re:Nothing to see here, move along please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite right, and we must leave no haven for this criminal filth by addressing this in a global way. North Korean and Chinese police must be able to track down dangerous criminals like democracy activists!
Would "deep throat" have come forward (Score:2)
Do you present your dirvers license to everyone you talk to on the street? Or on a pay phone?
Why is this any different?
Re:Nothing to see here, move along please... (Score:2)
They aren't banning free email (as some kneejerking Slashdotters have implied in this article), they just want it traceable.
From the article:
Re:Nothing to see here, move along please... (Score:2)
As it stands email is a lot less anonymous than postal mail. Would you propose photo ID every time you send a letter? If email and postal mail need to be identified, what should we do about freenet? Think about what you're saying.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along please... (Score:2)
Nothing MTA specific - just general knowledge like having good knowledge of the RFCs for email, how to check an MTA is not acting as an open relay (it's possible to do this for *all* MTAs by telnet hostname smtp, without any MTA-specific knowledge) etc. plus ancilliary general knowledge (TC
Joe2883 a.k.a. thingboy a.k.a. ravenousbeast666... (Score:5, Funny)
FBI man #1: I think I found another one.
FBI man #2: Who is it this time?
FBI man #1: JohanSBach@freemail.ms -- he claims to be 4 years old and living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
FBI man #2: I think I got one too! GWBushy@mailrus.gov claims to live in the same place!
FBI man #1: You know, when I started this project, I thought it would be a little easier than this.
FBI man #2: I know what you mean...we've gone though 150,000 email accounts so far and have found only 5 accounts that weren't fraudulent.
Free E-Mail not the point (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue at hand is the fact that law enforcement (police AND the politicians that support them) are operating from a, "Take away the rights of innocent citizens to catch the criminals" mentality.
While I recognize that my view is American and not Australian, this is not the way to do things. This is the equivelent of arming the police exclusively with grenade launchers and fragmentation grenades.
"We got the criminal, and the 20 innocent victims around him...."
Re:Free E-Mail not the point (Score:2)
Privacy Is Ancient History (Score:4, Troll)
Not saying its right, but its today's reality. Until the people ( that's ALL of us ) decide its not going to be tolerated and stop it.
The few of us that are willing to do so, cant do it alone.
Re:Privacy Is Ancient History (Score:2)
In this 'brave new world' don't expect to have any rights, unless you are the government. It is all about total control of the populace an the pace is quickening.
As seductive as this statement may be, it's also patently false. Are you truly suggesting that a corrupt government has ever existed for anything but its own power? There's nothing "new" about that. And to suggest that things are getting worse is to deny any accounting of history. Go back even through a mere sixty years of American history,
Ultimate logical step? (Score:4, Interesting)
No running - or writing, or trafficking in - SMTP and POP3 software without a World Government licence, you GNU/lunix using terrorist.
When (if ever) will Plod realise that it's all just IP packets, and that anybody in the world can run any service they want? You want to ban anonymous email? Right, you go ahead and try and find my SMTP server running behind my firewall and accepting SSL encrypted connections from my friends over a non standard port and logging to /dev/null. And at least I know I'm doing that. How are you going to find and stop all the Joe Sixpack trojaned machines running SMTP proxies, all across the globe?
These guys are either breathtakingly ignorant, or are wilfully trolling. Budget time again, huh?
Flawed archaic logic (Score:3, Insightful)
RIGHT! The elimination of all innovation that small minded/sighted fools and archaic organizations cannot compete with is surely the only way to reestablish our utopian society. (because we know that child explotation NEVER happened before the internet!). While international boundaries can complicate investigation I find it difficult to believe that it makes it impossible. There is always the question that the case for the investigation is not substancial enough but thats something for another day. Perhaps the solution lies not in the elimination of service but in the responsability of parents to their children.
Free things are bad! Nothing should be free, all you free software users are going to hell and sending the rest of the world to hell with you!
Ok, enough venomous humor. Is it me or does this whole thing sound like something Ashcroft would do/say? I'm truly concerned about protecting children online as well as in the real world, but I don't believe that our technology has surpassed our ability to protect without stripping away our global commons. But I have the IQ of an empty shoebox, so what do I know....
Remember, it's the law! (Score:2)
Australia a technology TryHard (Score:4, Interesting)
We have a task force that deals with Nigerian Scams and public complaints in regard to loosing money therfore as the comment says they want premium access to information from anyone and everyone.(make them pay big $$$$ in administration is a great start)
If you are a free e-mail provider please think before you act on behalf or possibly cooperate with Australian loosers,They are very small and many have noidea what a line of HTML is that run our policing/crime system.
In the spam department I have been an Innocent Victum via Hotmail of which I replied to a bulk mail by mistake and had my account terminated without question.
I could go to jail for this if Australia had anything to do with the way things are run.
The latter dose not matter as my spam dose cost many a ISP in being blocked and hence alot of cash however Australians certainly have noidea WHY spams happens or why crime happenes.
Identification to use the Internet is Australias best chance of battling against the whole world and its self to combat computer crime.
We are being banned from certain TV stations which means certain imports so I see no reason as to why they should not start restricting Internet unless you have a passport.
They are just plain dumb.
I contacted my Local Australian Police about thousands of dollars in Illegal software with a full traceout and address and information on how to track this market down as they never even moved from their seat.
The e-mail was opened for 3 secs then deleted.
How much easier can it get? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the AU "problem" is simply a matter of technological ignorance on the part of the police.
Not that I'd be in any hurry to enlighten them, the AU government seems to be establishing the kind of legal framework to legalize actions that will put them in the "worst human rights abuser" category someday.
"People always get the kind of local goverment they deserve"
E.E. "Doc" Smith
Privacy versus security... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why Australia (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet, on
Re:Why Australia (Score:2)
I think a more pertinent question would be ... why NOT Australia?! I mean, honestly, do you really want to be narrow-minded with no idea of what happens outside your own little space? It's good to hear news from _everywhere_, as it gives perspective on our own situation.
... well, do you rea
As for why Austraila doesn't appear in the regular "world news"
timezone (Score:2)
Current (Brisbane time)3.07pm 22/7/03
July 22, 05:07:47 UTC
July 22, 01:07:47 AM EDT
July 22, 12:07:47 AM CDT
July 21, 11:07:47 PM MDT
July 21, 10:07:47 PM PDT
July 21, 09:07:47 PM YDT
July 21, 07:07:47 PM AST
and 2.
Re:He has a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like arresting drug addicts in no way helps stop drug abuse, arresting pedophiles or even monitoring them because you expect them to fuck some child is just stupid.
Like with drugs, the motivation behind child pornography is profit. To stop child pornography, you have to find the people who profit from them. And just like the ones who profit from drug abuse aren't really drug addicts themselves, don't automatically assume that those who profit from child pornography are actually pedophiles.
child porno isn't big business (Score:2, Informative)
The trade in child pornography is almost entirely non-commercial and therefore your assertion is incorrect. Most child pornography is traded over newsgroups, IRC, IM, or on egroups, where only in-kind renumeration is required.
Most commercial child pornography websites are actually fronts for police sting operations. I scanned about 15 so-called Russian child porn websites and found that all of them were hosted within the US.
Because t
Re:He has a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
And there are plenty of naïve youngsters ready to try "something new and exciting", thereby creating more demand for it. The only way to stop the demand is to stop the supply, since the supply is what's used to create demand in the first place.
So does dealing with drug addicts work at all? Sure. You want them to come off drugs, and to r
Re:He has a point. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like beeing an alcholic doesn't mean you're a drunk. If someone live out their alcoholism, s/he will become a drunk - if someone live out their paedofiliact tendencies, s/he will become a childmolester.
Please do not interprent the avbove statement as as defence for paedofiliacs. I find the idea sick and twisted - but I aslo belive that like beeing homosexual, some people just can't control what they are turned on by. Controlling their urges on the other hand, is something all grown-ups should and could be capable of.
Beeing a peadofile is a bit like beeing an alcoholic. If you got it, you have a problem you must work with to overcome.
Re:What???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Former NCA member Greg Melick told the committee there was an easy way to eliminate the anonymity that protected criminals online.
"Do away with free internet (email) accounts," he said. "If they aren't free then people will pay by credit card and that gives law enforcement some starting point.
The key word here is former. His comments and opinions are irrelevant.
Note: if you want to assume that there are obviously others in the NCA who share his ideas, you can just
Re:age old problem (Score:2)
The real crime is child molestation. Paedophilia (without child molestation) is essentially a thought-crime. In the USA, the opinion of the majority of law makers