FBI Wants Authority To Filter Net Backbone 413
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes "There are places where criminal activity is centralized: the backbone hubs located in hosting facilities across the country. All of the Internet's activity, legal and illegal, flows through these 'choke points,' and the feds, of course, are already tapping those points and siphoning off data. What Mueller wants is the legal authority to comb through the backbone data, which is already being siphoned off by the NSA, in order to look for illegal activity."
Next on his list (Score:5, Informative)
I would say "Welcome to Soviet America" but the feds have had the "we can do what we want in the name of protecting the country damn the Constitution" attitude off and on since the 1700s.
Re:Next on his list (Score:5, Funny)
What, like French? Or just something tedious like Stephen King?
Cheers
It's not a very subtle distinction. (Score:5, Insightful)
New system - skim through the LEGITIMATE transactions of EVERYONE hoping to find something criminal or actionable or
Fuck that.
Re:Next on his list (Score:5, Informative)
That doesnt exist. They have the guns, money and data needed to control everything. Try building a private army to resist and see what happens.
We were given these rights, and people sacrificed more than you know defending these rights. Now we are flushing it all away for security (not a new concept) god (ditto) and 'protecting' the kids/grandma/your sister. (that one is kinda new).
In the good old days (retarded statement) there would have been bloodshed over something like this, and that is where balance would have been achieved. Revolutions are not fought and won in a voting booth.
From my cold dead fingers (Score:5, Insightful)
will they pry my private encryption key passphrase.
Re:From my cold dead fingers (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
So far, you have that right.
See United States v. Boucher, 2007 WL 4246473 (November 29, 2007)
If ^h^h^h When they change the law, you could spend a few months in a luxurious 5' x 5' wire cage if you don't turn over your passwods.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
EXACTLY. Let them read my nonsensical jibba-jabba.. there are damn near unbeatable encryption algorithms that exist today.
My attitude is, if you're not smart enough to encrypt your sensitive data, then you've got it coming. It seems that the US bounces back and forth between a nanny-state and the big-brother state. People, you have to take care of your own, you simply can't trust ISP's, routers, google, the girl that swipes your visa at the corner station, etc etc etc.
Heads up people, its comin' a
Re:From my cold dead fingers (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm sure there are worse things they can do to you. A lot worse than killing you; you're going to die some day anyway, but they won't get or need your encryption key after you're dead.
You talk like a brave man. But my money says they wouldn't even need a waterboard to get you to cough up anything they wanted.
It's only a matter of time (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Public has a short attention span (Score:5, Insightful)
There, distracted yet? Now leave the man behind the curtain alone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Public has a short attention span (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/28/ST2008022803016.html [washingtonpost.com]
Having said that, it wouldn't even bother me that much if there was real oversight on it, but that seems to be a vestigial notion in the US.
What If... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
....by the fuzz, no less.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
These are the lines to break out at 6:30am on a bad day when your co-workers haven't finished their first coffee. The sudden pause in their trains of thought with the impending groan that follows is where the humour truly lies.
Of course, the only defense is to be a soldier in uniform as I'm pretty sure such tactics are against the Geneva convention.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
FY. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
This is how it's done (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is how it's done (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's the slippery slope that bothers me. When we put up no fight for these small losses of privacy, what will we do when the larger ones come along? How de we roll back the intrusions once they're made?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
WE DO NOT receive our rights from the crown, nor the presidency or Congress. They are given rights by the breath we take and the blood in our v
Remind me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
so much for probable cause (Score:5, Informative)
Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)
Which also means they never stopped the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program or Echelon, the NSA worldwide digital interception program or Carnivore, the FBI US digital interception program.
Man, I bet they've got petabytes of freaky porn by now.
FBI Wants Authority To Filter Net Backbone (Score:5, Insightful)
There are places where criminal activity is centralized: the backbone hubs located in hosting facilities across the country.
Yes, they'll solve all those murders, rapes, assaults, robberies, and other violence by monitoring the backbone.
While you're at it, why not tap all our phones and open all our postal mail as well? Hell, walk on into everyone's house looking for evidence of criminal activity! Why not?
Secure (Score:2)
Out smart em-thay... (Score:5, Funny)
e'll-Way ust-jay se-uay ode-cay.
Let's consult the checklist (Score:3, Funny)
(X) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based (X) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
(X) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
(X) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
(X) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(X) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Let other people do the dirty work (Score:2)
Next up: Hiring monkeys at NSA. Details at 11
Misleading Headline (Score:3, Informative)
This is not filtering, this is mining. Both are considered bad, but there is a difference.
Child porn is a big problem, take our word for it (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI would have you believe that it is a huge problem worth drastically expanding surveillance powers over. Yet compared to the 70s, when (afaik) there was legal child pornography being produced and sold, what is the production rate for this type of material today? Are there really any child pornography sites on the internet where people can pay to download child porn? (please no links)
I also worry that the focus of law enforcement's "war on child porn" is shifting from the visual depiction of young children actually engaged in sexual activity with adults, to (1) pictures of naked children not engaged in sexual activity, and (2) material that is made by teenagers themselves. The original intent of having an exception to the First Amendment for child pornography is being distorted. This is especially true when you consider that CGI child porn that is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing is illegal to possess (thanks to the PROTECT Act), and that people are being arrested for pasting pictures of children's heads on naked adult bodies: http://www.theledger.com/article/20080418/BREAKING/453898235 [theledger.com].
Re:Child porn is a big problem, take our word for (Score:3, Interesting)
This is especially true when you consider that CGI child porn that is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing is illegal to possess (thanks to the PROTECT Act), and that people are being arrested for pasting pictures of children's heads on naked adult bodies:
It's worse than that. At least one person [wikipedia.org] has been prosecuted for writing fiction with pedophilic themes. It's all just thoughtcrime, and pedophiles appear to be the backup boogeyman just in case the sheep stop being afraid on cue whenever
Police State (Score:2)
Will my fellow conservatives please speak up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberty and Freedom do not care about political affiliations and political parties. If a federal practice is wrong, it is wrong regardless of which party does it. If we do not want Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama or Bill Clinton reading our e-mail, then we should not tolerate George Bush or John McCain doing it either. Doing so only undermines the very essence of the rule of law and the fabric of our democracy. It is the totalitarian regime that justifies itself through personality, not the free one.
We conservatives have many differences with our fellow liberal americans and we always will. However, the very thing that makes us American, the idea, as Jefferson said, "We are endowed with certain inalienable rights
What is going on now in our country is madness. America is not supposed to be a place where guys with machine guns are walking around train platforms, asking if you have a driver's license with federal approved features. America is not supposed to be the place where the government collects data on all of its citizens.
Yeah, the muzzies blew up the world trade center, and its sad that those people died. But, the British burned our nation's capital to the ground, the Germans sunk the Lusitania, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and captured an army of 80,000 men of ours. We've been attacked before and we'll be attacked again, and what makes America special is that we keep our freedoms, rather than surrender them.
There's a million dead soldiers rolling over in their graves because we have so easily surrendered every freedom they fought for. It's an insult to them, to our national heritage, to turn our country into some sort of crappy police state because a few muslims with box cutters give us the willies.
Support those candidates, regardless of party, that promise to end the Dept of Homeland Security, promise to repeal the USA PATRIOT ACT, and join me in a call for a Constitutional Amendment that bars the Federal Government from intercepting any electronic communications within its borders, unless it can prove before a court that those communications are with another nation with which the USA might be in a state of war.
Why just conservatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we knew better (Score:3, Interesting)
Because we let this go on amongst ourselves for way too long. We were the ones that identified, as Reagan said, "The government is the problem"... we were the ones that argued against the IRS, and a host of other government regulations on the grounds that they were an attack on state and ultimately individual sovereignty and would lead to a police state.
But, wow, Bush gets in, we get into a war, and the next thing you know, we actually HAVE the makings of an institutional
Re:Why just conservatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the "new liberties" we've all gained in the last 100 years have come from the liberal side (think womens suffrage, almost the entire civil rights movement, the right to show belly buttons on TV, etc etc etc), along with most of the original liberties that have been protected (think ACLU, anti-discrimination, unions, free speech, separation of church and state, etc etc etc) The Democrats guilt comes mainly from their nanny state problem. The rights they've taken away are the right to not use a car seat or a helment, the right to keep unregistered loaded firearms under our carseats etc. Overall I think the balance has been a positive one.
Contrarily, the biggest most important rights that Republicans / conservatives were supposed to protect were States Rights with a small Federal Government. Republicans have not only failed miserably at this, but they've done a complete about-face. If any party has been the Big Brother party over the last 70 years or so, it's been the Republicans. Can anyone reasonably deny that?
So please don't swipe at the Democrats because you have to wear a seatbelt and can't put a Nativity Scene in front of a public firehouse. That's the pot calling the microwave-safe plate black.
Beginning with the sentence on madness, I completely agree with him. And I'll add that we need to jettison the current party system and re-do it. We disagree so strongly on the past, but it seems (hopefully) that there's more and more bipartisan agreement on our future.
Re:Will my fellow conservatives please speak up? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which candidates would that be? Ron Paul? Dennis Kucinich? Maybe two or three of the candidates running for Congressional seats? The problem is that none of the major party candidates are running on that platform. As you correctly suggest, the two major parties have become opposite sides of the same coin, two wings of the same party.
No, the problem is in thinking that electoral politics is going to solve our problems. It isn't. It is fine to use it as a tool, but we also need to understand that the ballot is our weakest weapon.
It's the conservatives who are being nannies (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The choice was deliberate. Let's assume for a moment that the vast majority of muslims do in fact hate the west. They don't like our liberal society, they don't like that globalization is forcing a re-examination of their own values and the don't even have a good relationship w
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Brush up on your ability to detect the bigots.
We won't have those citizens organizing against us (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what they say anyway - and it might even be what they really mean. But the uses of this technology will expand and it's just a matter of time until what the monitors are looking for are "undesirable elements" as defined by the administration in power.
Imagine what J. Edgar Hoover would have done with this ability. How about Richard Nixon; breaking into the DNC to gather information got him in trouble - if he could have accomplished the same thing with a wiretap or two do you think he'd have hesitated?
Our Founding Fathers put limits on what government could do, insured the privacy of private spaces and generally did a pretty good job of creating a system that would resist the abuses of a power mad wanna-be dictator. It's sad to see these protections being dismantled; history is being ignored and it's going to repeat itself like it or not.
Misleading Summary Title (Score:3, Interesting)
What was said in the article was:
It has nothing to do with filtering the traffic on the network, which implies blocking/removing valid packets. It only means implementing a search capability that can use keyword filters (like searching in the gnarled mess for the word "Kalashnikov").
It is bad that they are dumping all this data for perusal later, obviously. But what they are asking for in the article is just a better way to search around in that data. It's not really anything new.
Re:There are places where criminal activity is c (Score:5, Informative)
Yes there are. The White House, NSA, Dept of Homeland Security.
What has changed with people? (Score:3, Interesting)
Must I remind all those who don't find stuff like this to be at least a little bit disheartening the following passage from what should be a very important document to all Americans:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
What is really ironic in these times is that to many, "general public and espicially those in power", that my belief in and my quoting that passage probably makes me out to be some bad guy.
These days however if you were to believe in or propose such a thing that our government, the very government founded and established by this document would likely want to question you, harrass you, publicly ruin you, arrest you, deem you an enemy of the state and so on.
Does anyone believe the people of this country could ever rise up again or truly take a stand against our government?
I just don't think its possible anymore.
We will slowly loose our rights as is evident by what has been happening. People will become compliacent in things. People will continue to use and believe the "if you have nothing to hide" argument which in turn just means those that don't believe that (small minority) are simply quacks or nut jobs or criminals looking for a way to maintain their evil ways.
And of course if you even bring up the notion of forming a new government, well your just a non-american, non-patriotic, commie ass and if you don't like this country you should leave.
I suppose the only thing left is for the oil to run out one day, financial crisis looms, those in power and those running the country loose their money / wealth, the military machine and might crumbles with no oil. The people rise, and who knows. Sounds like a mix of movie themes there, who knows it might happen. Oil is pretty much the foundation of everything currently. Its sort of like what water is to life, oil is to industry and the life we all know. It would explain the middle east and why our politico's are so concerned with it the people there right? ;-) Could they be afraid of loosing this resource, and thus what their whole fortunes and futures are based on? Could that be why the prices are going up and these companies are making crazy profits? Maybe they are stock piling money for the inevitable day when it all dries up? And of course the more you can take from everyone else, the less they have and the harder their lives are to sustain and become increasingly depend on those with to give them a helping hand and thus willing to become obidient little lambs to their overlords.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is we?
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course on the internet one can have many names.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
George Walker Bush
Richard Bruce Cheney
Larry Edwin Craig
Oh, you wanted pictures, too. Okay. How about this one [indymedia.ie]? The big banner says it all.
The people who have the most to fear from this are the politicians. After all, if the FBI can snoop it, guess what will inevitably follow? One word: Net-Watergate. Your political enemies won't cave in to your demands on that anti-terrorism bill? Threaten to expose that they visited hot-young-underage-nymphos-with-bags-over-their-heads-and-bushy-underarm-hair.
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Interesting)
George Walker Bush
Richard Bruce Cheney
Larry Edwin Craig
Oh, you wanted pictures, too. Okay. How about this one [indymedia.ie]? The big banner says it all.
The people who have the most to fear from this are the politicians. After all, if the FBI can snoop it, guess what will inevitably follow? One word: Net-Watergate. Your political enemies won't cave in to your demands on that anti-terrorism bill? Threaten to expose that they visited hot-young-underage-nymphos-with-bags-over-their-heads-and-bushy-underarm-hair.com on twelve separate occasions in the last year.
Yikes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or is it just that the internet is relatively new technology [compared with the telephone and mail].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just food for thought.
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Insightful)
But, since there is some illegal activity among the billions of data transactions online, law enforcement (specifically, the Executive Branch) insists on having access to all data.
I'm certain that some of the cars zooming down I-80 across Chicago are involved in some illegal activity. Does that mean that every car should be stopped and searched? It's possible that in one of the houses or apartments on my block there is something illegal to some extent going on. Should the FBI have open access to all the residences then?
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just yesterday, there was the sentiment expressed that hunting pedophiles should trump privacy. [slashdot.org] At one time that post was up to +4 insightful. Slashdotters tend to be very protective of online privacy rights, far more so than the average American, I suspect that the reasoning expressed in that post would have appealed strongly to most Americans. So all that needs to happen to make this go forward to for someone to say that the FBI tap is needed to stop the pedophiles and it's a done deal. Anyone who opposes FBI internet filtering is a child rapist. Any private citizen using encryption is a baby touching terrorist.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Plus , even if it would work , it wouldn't help them , since people would start to use other methods to get things done
Another thing i am thinking about : I'm sure it's easy to detect unencrypted traffic , as one can just apply a filter on it
Encrypted traffic however , can be hard to identify
Imagine sending an encrypted file . It will be binary , ju
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Email message:
Here's my vacation photos
a whole lot of mime-encoded binary that might have
a legal-looking jpeg header at the start.
How are they going to filter this exactly?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's my vacation photos:
a whole lot of mime-encoded binary that might have
a legal-looking jpeg header at the start.
How are they going to filter this exactly?
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, by "backbone" the slashdot article writer was also being presumptuous. The FBI director was talking about stopping bad guys at their "choke point", and Ars Technica gave their own interpretation of what he meant by candidly assuming he meant an Internet backbone (or "hub"). Yes the US government can and does access these hubs (illegally perhaps, that is something the courts may not have the executive power to decide). The FBI also presumably wants access to the information that the NSA does (talk about information sharing between disparate government agencies!). Alas, however, a "choke point" could very well just mean the initial spotting (or IP address, gateway, etc) of a botnet virus that could be garnered from more liberal eavesdropping laws. Let's not make assumptions (in the article topic) and take them as is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone used any of the variety of openVPN providers located outside the country? This is getting asinine and for just general web browsing I'm considering this. My concern is : Those openVPN places could just as easily be fronts for our feds or even worse, fronts for identity thieves, etc.
Besides, if this is allowed how long before RIAA, MPAA, etc tries to get authority to sniff packets. Or Comcast starts doing it on their own.
Rule of Law. (Score:5, Insightful)
I want my country and constitution back. These people have a lot of nerve to ask me for money to be able to read my private papers and correspondence.
Re:Rule of Law. (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider how different things would be if whenever the gov't wanted money, they had to come begging, hat in hand, rather than simply demanding and taking it as they presently do. Any highwayman can do that much -- and would probably spend it more rationally as well.
How'd I put it last week? Something like "Taking from one: theft. Taking from many: taxes."
Re:Rule of Law. (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm, they pay about one third of the taxes, which makes sense in a flat tax kind of way because the top 1% own one third of the assets in the US. [fairfield.edu] Now while that seems fair enough, until you look at the distribution of investment assets (that is assets that are actually earning money and are not necessary for the owner's day to day life) now the richest 1% hold 40% of the investment assets. [ucsc.edu]
Robert Reich has some words on this as well. [blogspot.com]
Re:Rule of Law. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Rule of Law. (Score:5, Insightful)
"We want to film every major turnpike 7/24 so we will always have pictures of infractions when there is one that's commited." They already have for info, so don't need a warrant either, and since the legal status of a backbone done will be needlessly tangled, I'm sure they'll have no trouble getting it classified as a public place. Now encryption would to me, be considered whispering in a public place(so protected speech) but somehow, I doubt that's how the story'll go.
How about anoher example? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's another example that might be more obvious to the ordinary citizen:
"There are places where criminal voice communication is centralized: the telephone switches located in central offices across the country. All of the telephone network's activity, legal and illegal, flows through these 'choke points,' and the feds, of course, are already tapping those points and siphoning off the signals. What Mueller wants is the legal authority to comb through the content of all the telephone calls, which are already being siphoned off by the NSA, in order to look for illegal activity."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You gotta go low tech for best analogies.
"There are places where criminal voice communication is centralized: the post offices across the country. All letters and packages, legal and illegal, flow through these 'choke points,' and the feds, of course, are already tapping those points and siphoning off the letters. What Mueller wants is the legal authority to comb through the content of all the letters and packages, which are already being siphoned off by the NSA, in order to look for illegal activity."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the UK is that camera's are everywhere and they are used to monitor everything. Yes, I admit to myself that I may very well be hypocritical in my statements (I personally don't want to be monitored, but I want bad people to be caught). There-in lies the contradiction.
One must always try to solve the roo
Re: (Score:2)
Vote and Organize. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get the word out and vote. Real change comes from knowledge. The Republicans are going to be run out of Washington on a rail but that won't matter if their replacements don't enforce the Bill of Rights. Vote for people who get it at every level of government, regardless of party affiliation. Write the representatives you already have and tell them what you think. People like RMS already have political action notes [stallman.org]. Join or form your own civic group to get the word out and organize effective rights defense. There will always be people who attack your rights because it makes their lives easier but everyone is always better off when rights are protected. Make noise and the right kinds of things have a chance of happening.
It's not just the Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly it's not just a Republican or Democrat issue. The Patriot act, communications decency act, etc were all pretty bi-lateral. The Bush administration have clawed their way to a lot of executive privileges and trampling of rights, far more than any other president. However the Congress hasn't done much complaining. Where are the changes the Dem's promised when they took back the house?
There are a few individuals who are good on privacy and the rule of the constitution. This election cycle I can think of Paul (R) and Kucinich (D) as candidates who didn't get the attention they deserved since they weren't soundbite only types of people. Upholding the constitution doesn't seem to be generally a popular topic for people when they vote.
The EFF [eff.org] and EPIC [epic.org] are good places to visit regularly, especially EPIC's bill track.
Re:Vote and Organize. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Vote and Organize. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans care about your rights and liberties, and the corporate media are going to continue to brainwash the public into thinking a vote for a Green or Libertarian is wasted, even though my opinion is that a vote for a Republican or Democrat is a vote for someone who wants me in jail, which is worse than a wasted vote.
When I vote, I'm aware that I tilt at windmills, but if I don't I can't see where I have much of a right to bicth about it.
As long as the corporates rule, plutocracy will reign and "freedom" will be meaningless.
Act and Organize. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Try something new. Vote the Party out of office. That would be the first step.
Re:Rule of Law. (Score:5, Funny)
And yet... (Score:2)
Sooner or later government is going to have to take a more active police roll in internet affairs.
Yes, I understand the privacy issues, and I worry about them, too.
I just think today the Internet is much like the Wild West with a hundred miles to the nearest police man.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe we're even talking about this. If you would have asked any of the handful of people who were on the internet back at the beginning if within a few decades it would become the equivalent of television or that the telecoms would come close to creating a fully homogenized, commercially driven theme park for consumers, they would have laughed at you.
Our last chance to save the Internet that has transformed our lives and culture through the use of Net Neu
Re:Rule of Law. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people want Federal intervention. Fine. Get a damn amendment passed.
I believe at least 90% of what the Federal government does exceeds there Constitutional authority. If we could somehow get the Constitution enforced, we could shed a whole lot of government fat. There'd be a big pile of useless bureaucrats looking for honest work, but that's their problem. I understand there's good money to be made picking lettuce in California.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If our only hope is wireless mesh, then we have had it. Mesh is one of those really cool, but over-hyped words...and I shudder every time I hear it. Mesh on a large scale like that would be one huge cluster...and if by cluster you mean cluster $%^&, then yes, that would describe what would happen perfectly.
Transporter_ii
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wireless mesh is the only way I know how. Even Tor and Freenet can't really be trusted.
Oh yes they can be trusted. It depends on how they are used, the educated assumptions behind their use, and ultimately how trustworthy are they really and how fanatical and omnipotent are those adversaries.
Security (and in this case privacy) is only as good as the weakest link (which is almost always the people using these products). So for example, if you are a terrorist (or a democracy activist) wanting to use these anonymous resources to meet up with people in person, then you've pretty much blown your
Re:And how do we break the backbone? (Score:4, Interesting)
This sort of shit just brings it closer.
Current laws make it too scary to have open wifi (Score:3, Informative)