Obama Wants Broader Internet Wiretap Authority 646
An anonymous reader writes "The White House plans to deliver a bill to Congress next year that will require Internet-based communication services that use encryption to be capable of decrypting messages to comply with federal wiretap orders. The bill will go beyond CALEA to apply to services such as Blackberry email. Even though RIM has stated that it does not currently have an ability to decrypt messages via a master key or back door, the bill may require them to. Regarding this development, James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology commented on the proposal, saying, 'They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.'"
Bad timing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a few days ago they raid the anti war movement and now right before the election they want to discuss this? This is a politically stupid time to talk about broader wiretap authority!
Re:Bad timing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? The average voter has NO clue about stuff like this. In fact, they'll probably vote FOR it, if someone calls it anti-terrorist.
CHANGE!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, right, America's attention span is so low that they forgot that they were holding hands in a circle chanting all the slogans and catch-phrases spewed by his campaigners.
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
America, you'll get fooled again
As long as they have their Sunday Night Football, we won't have anything to worry about.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, the "Troll" is right. I voted for Obama, and either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
This would basically make things like SSH illegal unless you turned over the master keys ahead of time. Or heck, gpg/pgp - even http over port 443 with TLS (better known to the masses as https or ssl).
This is straight up insanity.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Show of hands here, who could write a communication program in an hour that would defeat all attempts at decryption if the two "terrorists" exchanged the program in person? I know I could! Maybe someone who can needs to testify to Congress as a software/communications expert and knock some sense into them.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:4, Insightful)
I voted for Obama, and either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
These are really the only two options you see? That's pretty naive. Seems more likely to me that like every other president in the past few decades, he promised to do what sounded good to the most people to get in, and now he's doing whatever his handlers tell him to.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:5, Interesting)
either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
Option number 3, put forward by Jesse Ventura of all people: Obama's not calling the shots when it comes to issues around the three-letter agencies.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly, the "Troll" is right. I voted for Obama, and either he doesn't know what he's saying (very possible), or he's lost his mind.
Or perhaps he knows EXACTLY what he wants - a totalitarian State where you work for the State, the State pays you, and the State gets to know everything it wants about anything without repercussion.
Think about it: we've lost 2.5 million private employment jobs, but added 500,000 Government jobs. Two of the largest companies in the nation are majority owned by the Government. Many of the largest financial institutions are owned by the Government. Not a single privacy or legal issue that so many attacked the Bush Administration on (renditions, Gitmo) has been overturned or reversed. Obama wants the right to decide an assassination list in secret, even if it contains US citizens who were not tried in court. And now wants unfettered access to anything and everything you communicate.
No, there is a third option: he lied through his teeth to get elected and is now carrying out his dream of a totalitarian State with Obama and friends at the top of the pyramid.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I get for not reading the article first. Faux News. Where's my salt lick?
This will cause me mod damage, but I'm going to dive in here one more time: numbski, don't be a jerkwad.
There are several [nytimes.com] other [cdt.org] sources [npr.org] for this same story. And yet, you are going to deny that it is true because the single link above is from 'Faux News'.
Forget Google, logic, or even a mild interest in the actual article itself, it's FOX BASHING TIME. WHOOOAAAAHHHHH!
Partisanship is a disease of the mind, and it just made you do something stupid. Reflect on that.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:4, Informative)
Well Fox news is pretty bad as a sole source but your point is brilliant and true.
When I found out that Obama wanted to end the manned space program during the election I told some of the faithful Obamaians at work.
The flat out refused to believe it.
The questioned the source first "Wired" and then criticized me for believing it.
When I took the link from the wired article to the Obama website and showed it to them then they said, "Well he must have a good reason".
Then after the election when he tried to kill the Ares they where shocked and said that they never would have voted for him if they knew!
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:5, Insightful)
According to everything I've read, this is *not* an attempt to achieve "broader Internet wiretap authority" but rather to force providers to put systems in place so that they can easily and quickly comply with *existing* authority. You can argue that the existing authority is overreaching, but that's a separate matter.
Except it doesn't work. The makers of this proposal don't understand that, contrary to the telephone system, encryption on the internet is implemented at the endpoints of a connection, not in the middle. It may well be that that reduces the government's ability to decrypt such communication, but the ISPs are the wrong party to address this bill to, because, generally speaking, they're not the ones who do the encryption. They're just the ones who deliver the bits. The people (the end users) are the ones who do the encryption, so they would be the right addressees for this law, and if this were implemented, it *would* amount to an "attempt to achieve broader wiretap authority" -- of truly Orwellian proportions.
Re:CHANGE!! (Score:4, Informative)
They were doing this under Clinton as well (Score:4, Informative)
While the Bush Administration certainly pushed for major increases in intrusiveness, it wasn't new with them either - Louis Freeh from the FBI were pushing this kind of thing under the Clinton Administration as well, and presumably the Bush 41 and Reagan administrations. The civilian surveillance enthusiasts aren't just up in the political structure of the Executive Branch - they're down at the operational levels in the FBI and NSA, and of course the kinds of people that get picked to run the FBI are part of that. The NSA wanted to prevent Communists from having eavesdropping-resistant conversations, but they've long since figured out that there aren't really any significant Commies around any more. On other other hand, the FBI is heavily into eavesdropping, primarily for the Drug War, secondarily for Gambling(!), and also for other crimes which make up a high fraction of their rhetoric but only a few percent of their actual reported wiretap approvals.
Re:Bad timing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama is now arguing they need the ability to assassinate Americans, but keep details of why and who a complete "state secret" [salon.com] and free from any oversight. If that is not the Orwellian future right now, then I don't know what is... Broader internet wiretaps pale in comparison to this. For those that think this might just be for those Americans congress labels as a "terrorist" - then this politically expedient death might give you pause [google.com]
.
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Insightful)
It warms my heart to all these comments. I'm glad I'm not the only one who realizes that Americans (us) are fat, sloppy and feeble minded. If we have time, we might glance at a ballot and pencil in the oval next to the name we've seen the most on the national news (all of which spin the news to fit their own political bent). Our rights and freedoms are being swallowed right and left in a beautiful, bi-partisan orchestration, of elected (read: purchased) officials who believe more laws are better.
We need smaller government.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What exactly is he saying that is bullshit? And how have you determined it to be bullshit?
Do you claim that Obama doesn't want the authority to assassinate any US citizen with no court oversight and is hiding it behind "state secrets"?
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't want smaller government, you want to fragment the USA.
Well, dear Coward, you seem to have overlooked a simple fact: the USA is fragmented.
In fact, it was designed that way. Brilliantly so, I might add. We're the land of the free, with freedom of speech and freedom of religion. How on earth would it be possible to bring together people from all cultures and allow them to coexist without fragmentation? Are we really to decide on a single religion/race/etc, to avoid fragmentation of culture? That's fascism. And yet if we don't how are we to dictate that the minor variations in culture that occur must all adhere to the same rigid standards? Impossible, without simply playing to the majority, and allowing two wolves and a sheep to vote on dinner.
No, the very tenets of freedom are around 'live and let live'. The notion of one all-powerful authority at the whims of a two-headed-dog is rather the opposite of what we were founded to be. The Second Amendment is supposed to safeguard against this kind of a monopoly occurring, as it provides us with the right of rebellion. Or at the very least, the threat of it.
And while I do realize that the 'war to free the slaves' has trampled on that part of the Constitution, bear in mind that there aren't any slaves today. The price for that conflict has long-since been paid, and I think it's high time the local people got their power back, thanks.
The order of the boxes is thus: soap, ballot, ammo.
Welcome to America.
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Informative)
>>>"favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism."
Sounds like big government and anti-consumer to me. AKA crony capitalism. Let the Whigs live in the past and instead vote Libertarian - as close to Jeffersonian ideals as you're likely to find in the modern world. The L Party's views can be succinctly defined as "put the 9th and 10th Amendments above all else".
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's them just trying to get Republican votes...just like Democrat politicians are all about equality except for themselves, who require bigger and better things, Republican politicians advocate smaller government...except when it comes to invading your personal life.
There's a Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
The list can go on. Thinking that the Democrats are for personal freedom is outdated thinking. Both major parties are led by totalitarian control freaks.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:There's a Difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am in agreement with the stated goals of the Tea Party, but any group that has Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as its unofficial spokespeople is not a group I would ever want to associate with. It makes it hard to know if I can take a story like the one reported in TFA seriously, since I heard Glenn Beck talking about it this morning on the radio. Given his reporting on other things (for example, the Fannie Mae outlet patent... Google that if you don't know what I'm talking about), it's obvious you can't trust anything he says. But if he reports on something that is genuinely scary, I'm now instantly predisposed to downplay its significance.
His fans will unquestioningly listen to everything he says, and his enemies will unquestioningly disagree with anything he says, which means that all of his lies and half-truths will be wrongly accepted by too many people, while the few things he gets right will be ignored by too many.
Can we have a Tea Party that isn't based on outrage and anger? A moderate Tea Party? People who don't like government spending, but who would also attend Jon Stewart's "Restoring Sanity" rally?
Re:There's a Difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the discrepancy between what the Tea Party claims as its official beliefs (small government, less taxes) and what the Tea Party actually believes (Obama is a Socialist Marxist fascist dictator who worships Hitler and Allah and wants to take all the rich people's money away and give it to all the poor people and sell us all out to the world government).
That isn't what the Tea Party movement actually believes. That is a minority viewpoint that is overplayed by the media to discredit the movement and neutralize its effectiveness. The conservative news outlets like Fox play up this caricature of the movement while the liberal news outlets use the provided caricature to tear it to shreds--it's kind of like a straw man, only behind the scenes it's the same oligarchy setting it up and tearing it down. The official beliefs are by and large what the Tea Party movement is actually about; you just don't get to see it because that isn't where the cameras are pointed.
I am in agreement with the stated goals of the Tea Party, but any group that has Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as its unofficial spokespeople is not a group I would ever want to associate with.
Painting Glenn Beck as a Tea Party guy is a brilliant move by our plutocratic overlords. His popularity with the group, if I'm not mistaken, took off when he made a turnabout regarding Ron Paul, someone who really does represent Tea Party ideals--in fact, it was Ron Paul supporters who popularized modern-day tea parties. Fox latched on to and perverted the idea, using Beck and others to push their own agenda and to de-fang the movement from making any changes that would benefit average Americans over corporations and the political class.
Paul himself has said exactly what you did: that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin ought not to be spokesmen for the movement, and that people who listen to them are being taken for a ride.
Regardless, the damage is done and the Tea Party movement has very little respect. What may save the movement despite itself is the continued recession despite numerous bailouts. Word has it that Democrats are in trouble come November, and there are lots of Republican candidates running on the Tea Party staple of small government. The fierce primary election infighting between them and the more established Republicans gives me hope that the party may be forcefully reformed from the big-government warmongering monster it's become.
Re:Bad timing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Republican politicians advocate smaller government...except when it comes to invading your personal life.
Actually, conservatives, not necessarily "Republicans" simply want the federal government to follow the Constitution, limited by the 10th Amendment. That means less government when dealing with stuff like farm subsidies and corporate bailouts, and could mean more government with things specifically spelled out in the Constitution, like national security.
Anything not spelled out in the Constitution as a federal government power is a power belonging to the states... period!
Re:Bad timing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Just a few days ago they raid the anti war movement
To be fair, they probably think "Well none of our supporters are in the anti-war movement anymore, so everyone left must be the real crazies!"
(Hm... I know I was just kidding around, but that almost sounds like a brilliantly evil idea.)
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bad timing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't the previous slashdot post about "Man gets 10 years for VOIP hacking [slashdot.org]" ? But when the gov does it it's all dandy and fine and necessary and indeed obligatory ?!?
In our current environment, it is fine and dandy.
That is the danger of ignoring the Constitution for things that just happen to jive with your goals, and then getting upset when someone else ignores the constitution for something you oppose.
It's why a liberal or elastic interpretation of our Constitution is a damned dangerous thing. Not because any individual goal is wrong, but our Constitution simply breaks down when you allow it to be interpreted in a flexible manner. It simply wasn't designed to be able to withstand such interpretations. The result is a bit like cutting a hole through a fence that surrounds your yard. It certainly makes it easier for you to go in and out, but it also means that you lose control over who else will use that hole.
The limitations on power in our Constitution simply fail if it is interpreted as a flexible document. Power should only be granted in very specific and limited ways. Especially when you are granting it to an entity that claims to be sovereign and universal.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, who are you going to vote for? Who do you think gave this government the ability to abuse it's power indiscriminately? Who do you think gave the prior government it's abusive power? Who do you think this government will give it's power to?
Vote any way you want. You'll still get basically the same result, just different posturing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyday I am reminded of why I got fed up with this crap and left the USA. I served my 4 years in the military. I did my part. America really is like herding cats. Big fat, lazy, ignorant Cats who only care about today's meal.
The more things 'Change'... (Score:4, Insightful)
the more they stay the same (or get worse).
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order," Ms. Caproni said. "They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.
What hey're trying to legalize is rather heinous on the part of our government. Just because it's been made legal doesn't mean it's right or good. Seriously, between the ability to declare even American citizens terrorists because of what they've said (not necessarily what they've done), the ability to try anyone classified as a terrorist outside a civilian court, and now the "needed" capability to decrypt encrypted messages over the internet...what's to stop whoever is in the White House from 'disappearing' outspoken people they disagree with, without breaking the law?
I'm an American, and I value my freedom over a false sense of security. If you aren't comfortable with that, perhaps America isn't for you.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an American, and I value my freedom over a false sense of security. If you aren't comfortable with that, perhaps America isn't for you.
Given recent trends, I'd say the opposite - since you value your freedom over a false sense of security, perhaps America isn't for you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>>>I value my freedom over a false sense of security. If you aren't comfortable with that, perhaps America isn't for you.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety [until the next tyrant comes along and uses his power to imprison you] deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>I value my freedom over a false sense of security. If you aren't comfortable with that, perhaps America isn't for you.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety [until the next tyrant comes along and uses his power to imprison you] deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Way to take that WAY out-of-context.
Franklin was referring to settlers who refused to use firearms to defend themselves from raids by French-allied native tribes during the French and Indian War (US name)/Seven-Year's War (IIRC the European name).
That quote is nothing more than part of an anti-pacifism rant. Given that Franklin would later be a leader of an armed rebellion, it's not surprising he vehemently disagreed with the philosophy unarmed pacifists.
Besides that, you're misusing the quote anyway. Franklin's "essential liberty" was the keeping and bearing of arms by individuals. The "temporary safety" was the settler's false hope that by being unarmed they wouldn't be attacked. Franklin was not referring to tyrants or governments relationship to their own citizens - he was referring to isolated individuals' self-defense ability/responsibility during a war.
The fact that your two-hundred-fifty-year-old completely out-of-context sound bite get modded +5 is more a reflection of the ignorance of the moderators than anything else.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that your two-hundred-fifty-year-old completely out-of-context sound bite get modded +5 is more a reflection of the ignorance of the moderators than anything else.
To put that into context, dear Coward, are you purporting that Franklin would disagree with the use of his quote in this manner?
Are you in fact saying that he held the right to bear arms, ONLY, as essential? Because I'm just not seeing him turning over in his grave over this one. In fact, I'm not even willing to get on board and say that this is out of context, because the concept applies equally well.
You're essentially saying that "don't hit your brother" is WAY DIFFERENT than "don't hit your cousin", and I, for one, disagree.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:4, Informative)
The entire context of the quote is the problem that the colonial Pennsylvania legislature of the 1750's was having with Crown-appointed governors, and the then-current governor in particular. He had a habit of not responding to the legislature's requests, and when he did saying that they were at fault for not contacting him earlier. The specific issue was the funding of ammunition and arms for the poorer families on the frontier so that they could fight if they chose to. Those people only wanted the government to help in how they tackled the problem, because they only wanted the government to be involved so far, and no further. They were not willing to give up essential liberties to get temporary safety as the governor always wanted to do things in a way that reduced the rights of the people in exchange for help. He was always looking for ways to make them more dependent on England.
Saying that this is an anti-pacifism rant is ridiculous. It's nothing of the sort. It's a rebuke to a British Crown-appointed governor who is playing games with the lawful colonial power structure and the people.
You're the one who is taking the quote out of context and then claiming others are doing it when it clearly is applicable to the situation and has been applied to this type of situation for centuries.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:4, Insightful)
They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.
What they're trying to legalize is rather heinous...
I'd call it ridiculous.
When I read the Caproni quote, I hear: "US Intelligence services aren't intelligent enough to figure this stuff out. You need to do the work for us and spell it out in big block letters. We need it to be as clear as purple crayon."
So, now might be a good time to really promote PGP and teach people to use it. If the service providers aren't providing the encryption service, they cannot provide the plain text. Anyone who is sufficiently concerned about their privacy can take responsibility for it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an American, and I value my freedom over a false sense of security. If you aren't comfortable with that, perhaps America isn't for you.
Odd how Obama seems to be becoming Bush, isn't it?
Illinois has a Governor's race coming up, I'm voting for Whitney. Green Party; Whitney recently suggested legalizing marijuana in Illinois as a way to reduce spending and raise state revenues. The Democrat and Republican are both agast at this stance.
Sorry, Governor Quinn, I can't support a candidate who is for the continued outlawing of a beneficial plant. California's Governator is right -- there's no difference between most Republicans and Democrats, even though their respective wingnuts are different.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Informative)
...what's to stop whoever is in the White House from 'disappearing' outspoken people they disagree with, without breaking the law?
Legalized assassination of Americans you mean? In fact, they are already doing it [slashdot.org] - it's in court right now.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
let's not resort to slippery slope arguments.
First I didn't resort to slippery slope arguments.
Then I didn't denouce fallacies. ...
When it came down to basic logic, and by that time it was too late.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this has little use except to spy on the general public, while proposing encryption law that has been suggested and shot down in the past (think Clipper Chips?). It makes corporate/private encryption weaker, the entirety of our internet communications more vulnerable to attack, and could quite possibly restrict our ability, in the future, (yes, slippery slope) to encrypt our own data, as has already been done in the UK. This essentially serves all internet communications providers with the same order as the UK served their entire citizenry: you encrypt something, you have to give us the keys to decrypt it.
Hope that satisfied you logically.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way:
If you outlaw guns.... I mean secure keyless encryption, then only the criminals will have encrypted messages. (And the rest of us will be defenseless sheep.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you outlaw guns/encryption, only outlaws will have guns/encryption...but perhaps more importantly, those who do have them will now be criminals as well. How convenient.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between guns and encryption is that a modern economy can function without guns (at least on the inside), while it can't function without encryption. Banks could not work without secure communication, no trade secrets could be kept, and so on. If you mandate that every form of encryption must have a government back door, then you are making it easy for an underpaid civil servant (or someone who blackmails a civil servant) to cause massive damage to the economy and make a large profit in the process. You also have the problem that it can't possibly work. You can get secure encryption software from a variety of sources, including some textbooks that include code listings.
The end result is that terrorists and other people who actually understand cryptography (at least, in broad terms) will use secure encryption, while the average person using Internet Banking won't.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
It was only a matter of time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now they want to direct all the spy agencies on the new "terrorist" the American citizen. They want to bug our houses, tap our phones, point satellites and drones at us, have informants stalk us, and feed the information back to the local police so that if we break even the slightest most esoteric arcane law we get raided, arrested etc.
Replace "Obama" with "Bush" and it's "Bush Wants Broader Internet Wiretap Authority." and the reason is to help law enforcement? Privacy and civil liberties should be given up to help the police put us in jail easier? They have to do a better job justifying the unlimited surveillance powers they claim to need. There aren't that many terrorists, unless they plan on going back to the 60s and raiding all the anti war movement hippy types and Alex Jones listeners who happen to know what encryption is.
There is an FBI already. There is an NSA already. If it's a national security concern the NSA already can crack the encryption so why do we have to make it so easy that any 2 bit local cop can do it? If it's about national security I'm sure they already can crack most of it if not all of it. If it's about law enforcement then it's not worth the sacrifice. There aren't enough criminals to justify it and most criminals aren't using encryption.
The only way they can justify this that I can see is with the "It's more efficient, it saves money", unfortunately even if it does save money it doesn't offer anything to the citizen. It doesn't make us feel safer and probably doesn't actually make us safer either. For a lot of us it will make us feel less safe because whenever a person feels under the microscope they usually feel less safe.
Re:It was only a matter of time. (Score:4, Funny)
Natural tendency (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the natural tendency of political power to expand and consolidate over time. History has confirmed this over and over again. Like a mega-corporation hungry for more control over the market, government will keep pushing to expand their revenue and power over the people, like clockwork, year after year.
There's a reason why the elite at the top of the pyramid are swimming in wealth, and it's not because they're satisfied with the amount of control they have over the populace. Government is a business, and like any business, their primary objective is profit. The difference, of course, is that government holds the special right to generate market share through coercion, rather than persuasion.
Re:It was only a matter of time. (Score:5, Interesting)
The really scary thing is just how broad the reach of the NSA really is. I read James Bamford's The Shadow Factory [amazon.com] a while back and was shocked at how little I appreciated what they could (and routinely do) really do. Basically, if you make a phone call to any of the targeted regions (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.), the NSA is recording it--whether it's by cell, landline, or satellite (they have agreements with all the major satellite communications companies). Doesn't matter if you're a terrorist or not, they're monitoring you and archiving all your calls, period (they've even been transcribing the calls of U.S. journalists to their families, prompting at least one operative to quit the agency).
I was particularly surprised to learn that they routinely monitor the calls of the major UN officials and all the other security council members (they've bugged the shit out of the UN building and associated offices too). During the buildup to the Iraq War, when Collin Powell was getting ready to "make his case" for the war, they were carefully monitoring the calls and emails of all the permanent and non-permanent security council members, including the Secretary-General of the UN himself. They even sent out a memo to the intelligence services of several of our closest allies (the UK and associated countries) asking them to help us out on the spying (though we were even spying on them too). Pretty creepy stuff, especially for anyone who still foolishly doubts that the Iraq War was anything but a foregone conclusion for the Bush administration.
Re:It was only a matter of time. (Score:5, Insightful)
To follow along similar path. Who is our government protecting us against?
The government protecting itself from people like you.
Re:It was only a matter of time. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd follow your advice, but I can't seem to find any politicians running on a platform of looser security / tighter privacy. At least, no one with a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting elected. (And yes, I do tend to vote for the unelectable minor-party candidates. For all the good that does.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
http://xkcd.com/538/
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It is true, if the NSA encountered someone using cryptography, they would probably use their signals intelligence capabilities to discov
Technically Not Just Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.
Of course, the New York Times article is way better than the Faux News article but my submission this morning turned into a paywall.
Bad, bad, very bad idea. Every academic says this is stupid, again from the original article:
Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.
The government is trying to protect us by forcing us to be less secure and more vulnerable. That logic simply does not follow. I'm not against responsible internet wiretaps but this is the opposite of responsible.
Only it makes no difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
The terrorists will develop their own encryption schemes so using wiretaps would be completely worthless anyway. The mafia is smart enough to outsmart this, street gangs are smart enough, terrorists are smart enough. This is to watch the civilian population like you and me.
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The government is trying to protect us by forcing us to be less secure and more vulnerable. That logic simply does not follow. I'm not against responsible internet wiretaps but this is the opposite of responsible.
Responsible wiretap is not trolling through arbitrary communications simply because it can be done, and this statement I fully agree with. Similarly, the U.S. 4th amendment came into practice not because it was at the time impractical to spy on everyone directly, nor does it end simply because t
MSNBC Is Running the Same Story Everyone Else Is (Score:5, Informative)
What does the DNC-NBC say about it?
Nothing.
I'm guessing that's some regurgitated joke about MSNBC. If it is, you didn't even bother to check their front page. They seem to be running the regular AP story about it [msn.com]. Look, when the New York Times are the only ones willing to get off their asses and actually do some work in order to garner eyeballs, it's hard to find other sources. Even the Fox News article appears to be entirely based off the New York Times article. Even the MSNBC article (and I'm guessing AP at large) cites them:
The Times said the Obama proposal would ... The Times said that some privacy and technology advocates say the regulations would create weaknesses in the technology that hackers could more easily exploit.
Blackberry terrorists? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I don't get about all this Blackberry-encryption-fuss: if Terrorists really care about encrypting their communications, there are free tools on the interwebs that will let them do so. These tools can not in any way be breached by the government or the service provider. The fact that this is so, is also well-known.
Thus I am forced to conclude that any terrorist that understands the need for encryption, also understands the need for encryption that he himself has total control over, and thus would not be relying on RIM to secure his communications.
In conclusion: this will not prevent terrorists from communicating securely. Now, Obama, go back to your health care reform and struggling economy.
Clipper Chip 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Hahah (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope. Was not that the so called banner from 'Democrats' during their endless waa waa about Bush. Not much needs to be said. Gitmo? Ha. Iraq? Ha. Afganistan, Ha.
Obama is gone after 4 years, and will be hated by both sides.
Re:Hahah (Score:4, Informative)
It just kills me that the voting public is so abjectly stupid when electing the POTUS. They can never see through the campaign rhetoric, the "my team" mentality, and the cults of personality. They fall for them every single time.
Rather than voting for principled politicians like Kucinich or Ron Paul (or hell, even Nader), the public goes for the flashy salesmen who just tell the voters what they want to hear to get elected. Then they just screw us all over as much as the last guy did.
So sad...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what the proper solution is; but I can see that what we have isn't it.
If your problem is: How do we put the right leaders in place to control our lives?
Then you're right, there is no solution. That control will always be abused, maybe not by every politician in ever circumstance, but that's the tendency.
That's why I always vote for politicians who advocate increasing freedom by decreasing the power of government. Government will always abuse its power, so the only thing we can do is work diligently to limit the power we give to it. Whenever you vote for a guy to get money
Re:Hahah (Score:5, Interesting)
The "whackjob" personas are figments of the same frat boy mentality that dominates politics, the media, and most of the rest of society.
No, they're not. Both Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich hold beliefs that are *far* out of step with average American politics. The former is the craziest kind of libertarian whacko, and the latter is practically a communist when compared with his contemporaries in the US (and I'm Canadian, I know my communists). Are they both intelligent, interesting people with good ideas? Absolutely. But relative to their compatriots in American politics, they're fucking nuts.
We could use more principled whackjobs in politics.
No, you just need people with principles. You don't have to be on the extremes of the political spectrum to object to the dangerous precedents set by this and the previous administration.
Unfortunately, like business, politics rewards the power-seeking sociopath.
Miss me Yet? (Score:4, Funny)
Hey America,
How is that Hope and Change working out for you?
Sincerely,
George Bush
So (Score:3, Insightful)
how is all this "Change" working out for you?
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you sure? Seems like a continuation of the old.
As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
I, like so many others, had the audacity of hope that Obama was a good man and interested in a better America... a second coming of JFK. (Yeah, I know there are people who will say JFK was the anti-christ.) But, instead of his promised removal of Bush administrations attacks on our freedoms and privacy, he persisted in it and defended it. Some people said "but this is normal! He is probably reviewing it before he makes changes!" How about now? No? Illegal wiretapping program is still running. And now he wants MORE.
So, Obama and other players in government HATE our freedom and HATE our privacy and will stop at nothing until both are gone. They make claims of defending and protecting our freedoms while they take them away. They make claims of "terrorists" hating our freedoms, yet the only ones who are attacking them are our own government. ... and still no one cares. We are all too busy trying to figure out how and why we are all getting obese and getting diabetes to concern ourselves with where the government and big business is taking our country.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"I, like so many others, had the audacity of hope that Obama was a good man and interested in a better America"
Why did you think this? Because he said so? Anybody with half a neuron saw through his bullshit. He is a lifelong professional politician. Professional politicians ONLY serve the Almighty State, not the people.
People like you have destroyed this nation. Gullible, useful idiots like you are more complicit in bringing about fascism than any ACTUAL fascist.
And many of us will never forget this.
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics is like that. The great advantage JFK has over others today is that he was assassinated. Had he not been killed, people would be criticizing him for escalating the US intervention in Vietnam, for starting/bungling the Bay of Pigs incident, for nearly triggering WWIII or for not going far enough in the Cuban missile crisis, and so on.
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's so black and white. If he didn't care about the plight of the common citizen, why extend unemployment benefits? Why push for health care? If he loved big corporations so much, why did he try to publicly humiliate the Supreme Court justices for their ruling on corporate free speech? Whether Afghanistan is an unwinnable war or not is a matter of debate -- Iraq looked hopeless before the surge.
As for wiretapping, I won't defend him. This is just the Clipper Chip from the Clinton administration all over again. I wonder if any President ever pulled back from more invasive law enforcement.
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
I, like so many others, had the audacity of hope that Obama was a good man and interested in a better America..
The clues were all there before the election. You, "like so many others", just didn't want to listen. You wanted your rock star and you didn't care that he had no experience, ties to some pretty unsavory characters, and no real plusses besides that he was well spoken. The pass that the mainstream media gave him meant that you needed to seek out contrary opinions and journalists if you didn't want to make a poor decision.
Instead of looking for the next JFK next time, try for someone more straightforward and ethical. I don't care if he's from the left or right of the political spectrum, just elect someone who is smart and has a track record for fairness and following through on his/her campaign promises.
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:4, Interesting)
Horseshit. What I wanted was someone who sounded like he actually thought about something before acting. He also had the advantage that he wasn't Campaign-McCain or Palin. The fact that he was turned into a rockstar had more to do with how abjectly bad Bush had been for an entire 8 years. After him, LISA and a poo-flinging ape would have gotten a rock-star billing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I, like so many others, had the audacity of hope that Obama was a good man and interested in a better America
Meanwhile, those of us *more* than six years old knew the new boss would always be the same as the old boss.
Hope is not a strategy.
Welcome to Cynicism. It is the only rational philosophy left.
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
How do otherwise intelligent people put themselves into a political fantasy-land?
You avoid it by looking beyond the cheerleading from the mainstream media. Everyone like to bash Fox News (and justifiably so), but refuses to admit that CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post (and most others) do the same thing for the other side.
As another poster points out above, the clues were all there. Anyone with access to the Internet could see the warning signs. Even with Obama's extremely abbreviated voting record, you could see exactly what he would do -- and he hasn't strayed from that path.
Re:As if there were any doubt, HOPE is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
You're aware that only from the Fox POV are CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, the NY Times, Washington Post on "the other side." Most of us on the continuum of the liberal-progressive-radical left see them as being 2/3rd Fox Lite establishment apologists, and 1/3 real reporting at best, with even that careful to avoid going outside of centrist consensus.
The only exceptions to that list are Rachel and Keith on MSNBC, but neither of them represents the farther reaches of the left. Neither is Noam Chomsky, by a long shot. Neither represents the far end of the spectrum the way Glenn and Bill do on Fox.
The difference between conservatives and liberals (Score:5, Insightful)
When (if?) conservatives say "the government should not have that power", what they mean is "the liberals currently in government should not have that power, but it is okay for our side".
When (if?) liberals say "the government should not have that power", what they mean is "the conservatives currently in government should not have that power, but it is okay for our side".
Both conveniently forget the problem of not whether YOU will not abuse the power when asking for it, but once granted whether or not those elected AFTER you are gone will abuse the power. For those playing at home, the answer is invariably "YES".
Not a single attack foiled... (Score:5, Insightful)
A) Natural stupidity. Terrorists aren't exactly smart, remember the "times square bomber" who used as his detonation device.... firecrackers? Yeah, it takes planning to pull off an attack and quite honestly the terrorists don't have that ability.
B) Passengers in public transit. If you look like you are going to blow up or hijack a plane, the passengers will take you down. Ever since 9/11 people associate hijacking = run into a building rather than the pre-9/11 mindset of "do nothing, wind up in Cuba, get on a plane back home".
C) Terrorists aren't common. This idea that there are millions of terrorists trying to kill you all the time is laughable and has no basis in fact.
Granted, these laws are pure BS no matter how many "terrorists" they've caught, but if the government can't even show a single terrorist caught using these, and a real terrorist that could actually cause serious harm, the citizens should strike these laws down even faster.
Plain fact (Score:3, Insightful)
If a user wants unbreakable encryption, it is easy to do. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it.
Unbreakable encryption predates the modern computer by about a half century. It was invented by the US Army Signal Service for use in World War I. It is commonly called the "one time pad".
It has to be used correctly, or it becomes breakable. It also has logistics issues. The key material has to be physically transported and physically protected.
However, the technology is well known and has been for nearly a century.
Somebody ought to tell our technology-challenged public officials about it.
How could this work? (Score:3, Interesting)
The genie's out of the bottle already [wikipedia.org]: with Android and a crypto package, any determined person can put together a mail client good enough for a "dark communication" (or find someone to do it... quite cheap, it's like no more than 3-4 men*days worth of work).
Either they are stupid enough (to even attempt to legislate PI=3) or... what the hell I'm missing from the picture?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My Public Response as part of GNU Telephony (Score:5, Informative)
I want to be very clear on this statement, on behalf of GNU Telephony. It is not simply that we will choose to openly and publicly defy the imposition of such an illegitimate law, but we will explicitly continue to publicly develop and distribute free software (that is software that offers the freedom to use, inspect, and modify) enabling secure peer-to-peer communication privacy through encryption directly to the public worldwide as it is needed especially in nations, such as the United States, where basic human freedoms seem most threatened.
To fully understand the nature of such surveillance and societies, imagine being among several hundred million people who each wake up each day having to prove they are not a "terrorist" by whatever arbitrary means the government has decided to both define the terms of such a crime and whatever arbitrary means they might choose to define you as such. It is a society who's very foundation is built on the idea of everyone being guilty until proven innocent. It is the imposition of an illegitimate society, and one that probably will ultimately require a revolutionary response.
David Alexander Sugar
Chief Facilitator
GNU Telephony
So the Arabs Can Spy on Us (Score:5, Insightful)
The United Arab Emirates, followed by their huge cousin Saudi Arabia, are shutting down Blackberry until RIM lets them spy on its data [guardian.co.uk] in realtime. RIM has been able to argue it doesn't have such a backdoor feature. Obama has the clout to force this Canadian company to create one. And then the Saudis and the rest of their medieval tyranny neighbors will spy on us. They don't need no steenkin' warrants. And neither does Obama, if he personally decides it's a "state secret".
Clipper + UK key escrow (Score:4, Informative)
As betterunixthanunix says above, we've already seen the abject failure of the Clipper chip in the US. In the UK they tried to pass a "key escrow" bill which would have made it illegal to send anything encrypted without lodging a copy of the key with the government first. Campaigning got this bill defeated several times, and so instead we got RIPA which means law enforcement can oblige you to hand over decryption keys (or you go straight to jail).
Huge amount of material here:
http://www.fipr.org/rip/ [fipr.org]
Phillip.
Nothing about this announcement makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
First things first: the encryption horse has left the barn so long ago that all traces of the barn's foundation have turned to dust. Any reasonably competent adversary will have unbreakable encryption. The US government has helped with standards like AES, even. A large potion of the 'net traffic is already encrypted - every SSL session is encrypted at the ends of the chain, untappable once it's in the network. Changing that mechanism now into something that can be tapped will recreate the whole key escrow debates of the early nineties. The infrastructure required then was enormous, it would be exponentially harder now.
The only thing that makes sense is forcing large scale commercial communications companies to escrow keys, so that casual terrorists can have their communications hoovered up with everybody elses, and then analyzed by NSA in their spare cycles. This will catch a few proto-terrorists, I presume.
With this proposal I have crossed two lines, the first is questioning the governments motives, and the second now questioning their competence
This increases my respect ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... for the slashdot community. As a part of the conservative slashdotter minority, I came to this thread fully expecting to see most people coming out in Obama's defense on this, or trying to excuse it somehow, but I saw nothing of the kind. Rather than pile on, I'll just say that I admire people who consistently back principles rather than personalities.
Write your representitive (Score:3, Insightful)
And get all your friends to do the same. If enough people start writing in and telling the government that they DON'T want their civil liberties violated, maybe the government will start listening. Especially if you put a couple of bits of paper with pictures of presidents on them inside the envelope...
Disingenuous title (Score:5, Informative)
I love how the OP gave this article a title of "Obama Wants . . ." (well, the submission used "US President wants. . ."). Not the FBI or the DOJ or the NSA, or even "Feds Want . . ." in order to be comprehensive; but Obama. As if this was some devious idea Obama had while dining on babies, rather than something the law enforcement and national security comunities have been working up for more than a half-decade. Of course he's responsible for the actions of the administration while he's president; but that's a long way from this being part of his nefarious plan for fascism. I looked for the quote from Obama or a spokesperson of his in TFA -- something, *anything* indicating this was an initiative specifically coming from him -- but couldn't find it. Nonetheless, just as the OP intended, 90% of the replies have been about Obama, rather than about the actual regulations. Way to be manipulated, folks. Given this, how unsurprising that the story link accompanying the submission was to Fox News, even though that Fox News story does absolutely nothing more than quote a story in the NYT.
And to head it off at the pass -- it shouldn't be necessary, but someone here will try it anyway -- I can't stand Obama. I think he's been terrible in a variety of ways. I just also can't stand people who are intellectually dishonest in an effort to score political points.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Patriots trying to protect the Constitution from "domestic enemies""
And if their fertilizer bomb happens to kill all the kids in a daycare center that happens to be in a federal courthouse, well, I guess the ends justify the means.
Motivations don't make a terrorist, tactics do.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Disagree with the government, you end up in jail/raided/etc."
People who agree with the government tend not to use car bombs.
Is everybody who disagrees with the government a potential terrorist? No. Do all potential terrorists disagree with the government? Yes.
Criticism of the methodology and implementation will be far more effective than criticism of the intended targets.