US Gov't Assisted Iranian Gov't Mobile Wiretaps 161
bdsesq sent in a story on Ars Technica highlighting how the US government's drive for security back doors has enabled the Iranian government to spy on its citizens.
"For instance, TKTK was lambasted last year for selling telecom equipment to Iran that included the ability to wiretap mobile phones at will. Lost in that uproar was the fact that sophisticated wiretapping capabilities became standard issue for technology thanks to the US government's CALEA rules that require all phone systems, and now broadband systems, to include these capabilities."
Meh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meh (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, it does allow for an interesting scenario: The Olsen Twins choke on fast food because they were kept too intrigued (or drowsy) by 'Must See' TV to wash it down as they ate, and NBC and the food guys then permanently shut down their businesses in tribute to the ex-Michelle Tanners.
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Well, it does allow for an interesting scenario: The Olsen Twins choke on fast food because they were kept too intrigued (or drowsy) by 'Must See' TV to wash it down as they ate, and NBC and the food guys then permanently shut down their businesses in tribute to the ex-Michelle Tanners.
And it was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out for joy, and were never silenced.
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That's not true. They'll let you have the invention of the nuclear bomb, because then they can blame you for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although they'll be quick to point out that you couldn't have done it it without "Zionist scientists".
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I'm pretty sure Lindsay Lohan is all our fault too. Fortunately, in the case of Justin Bieber, we can always blame Canada!
No way! He's a result of your "culture"! It's not our fault that you Americans have completely saturated our entertainment networks in order to brainwash our children!
Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
What's next? Are we going to get blamed for fast food? The Olsen twins? NBC 'Must See' TV?
I don't know about being blamed for everything, the USA can be blamed for quite a few nasty things, you don't get to be a superpower without doing nasty things, it comes with the territory and so does being blamed for it. As for the rest of your comment: yes, yes and yes.
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I don't know about being blamed for everything, the USA can be blamed for quite a few nasty things, you don't get to be a superpower without doing nasty things,
The US didn't want to become a superpower. It became a superpower because Europe's and Asia's superpowers imploded and left behind a worldwide mess and power vacuum. The US just filled the vacuum. Unlike France, Germany, the Netherlands, or the UK, the US didn't need do "nasty things" to achieve that position. The US has made plenty of mistakes si
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Fast food has been the staple of US bashing for ages now. No, I'm not joking.
Double Standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you believe that the story features alarming reactions to Iran being able to spy on its citizens, without worrying that the US is doing the same thing. There is an implication with this /. post that the technology wasn't dangerous until it fell into Iran's hands. The US isn't guilty of enabling Iran. The US is guilty of intrusive policy.
-d
Re:Double Standard (Score:5, Insightful)
The US isn't guilty of enabling Iran. The US is guilty of intrusive policy.
No, it's actually guilty of both. Iran wouldn't have this capability without the intrusive policy pushed by the government.
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Why stop at wiretapping equipment? Without the efforts of the US, Iran wouldn't have F-14 Tomcats either.
Re:Double Standard (Score:4, Informative)
Or a nuclear research reactor in Tehran, for that matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Research_Reactor#Tehran [wikipedia.org]
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And they're having a heckuva time keeping them war-ready, I'll bet...
that's bull (Score:2)
If the technology wasn't developed for the US, it would have been developed for the other countries. Greece, UAE, Iran, Saudi Arabia, whatever.
This technology was put into the systems because the companies wanted to sell systems in these countries and they wouldn't have been allowed to do so if they didn't put it in.
Iran's tapping of phones in their country can be placed squarely on the shoulders of Iran's government, not on the US.
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We're all in this together. Soon we'll win them over, and those pesky people will learn NOT TO FUCK WITH THEIR GOVERNMENTS!
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No, it's actually guilty of both. Iran wouldn't have this capability without the intrusive policy pushed by the government.
Now that is something you can only assume, but without the policy Nokia would have a lot more explaining to do.
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Can you believe that the story features alarming reactions to Iran being able to spy on its citizens, without worrying that the US is doing the same thing.
Of course I can. This country focuses on things like should we extend tax breaks, and for whom, and should the government require health care. No one seems to care that the NSA is still wiretapping phones without a warrant. I especially like how the tea partiers carry around signs decrying "big government", and their examples of that are things like health care. Those people don't care that their phones are being monitored without court supervision. So apparently they don't care much for the separation
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correction: its not 'the US' its ANY powerful country that has the will and means to 'monitor' its citizens.
any country. name one (seriously) that you think is above this.
I really can't name a single tech-aware country that has not tried or succeeded in tapping its general population to whatever extent it feels necessary.
this is not a bush thing or obama thing. its a HUMAN NATURE thing and has always been this way. the only thing new is that we have the tech means to easily invade each others' privacy.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "The US isn't guilty of enabling Iran. The US is guilty of intrusive policy."
It seems to me that the US is enabling the US to spy on Iranians. ;)
Unfair to just put the blame on the US (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm Iranian and I'm very pissed off about the regime abusing the the technology, however, I can't put all the blame on the US government. A lot of the tracking/wiretapping tech (well, virtually any technology) have dual uses. For example, if a family member of mine gets kidnapped I'd like the police to be able to locate him/her easily by tracking a cellphone. Or if a bunch of suspects are doing something against the law and there's justified need to tap their phones and/or internet I'd like the police to be able to obtain a warrant and have access to the technology to do their job. So it's not funding the development of technology or requiring it's inclusion in the products that is the problem.
Now, if the US had the ability to prevent the regime from accessing the tech and they didn't do anything about it, well, that's not really nice.
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Exactly! It is not the tool, it is the arm that wields it.
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Not to mention removing increased capabilities prior to foreign sale is common practice for a lot of hardware. Ultimately, the government has zero culpability here. The fault lies squarely with the manufacturers of the equipment. Besides, even if it was an add on feature, chances are countries like Iran would pay the up charge.
There are only two solutions which would have prevented this situation. One, allow no manufacturer to sell their telcom equipment to Iran. Two, don't allow Iran to have telcom equipme
Re:Unfair to just put the blame on the US (Score:4, Insightful)
The fault lies squarely with the manufacturers of the equipment.
The fault lies with the people who were forced by the US government to put backdoors into their products so that the government can spy on people? lolwut?
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Not at all. For that line of argument to have merit you'll first have to prove countries such as Iran, North Korea, China, almost endless list, etc., have neither the inclination or clout to establish demand for such features in the first place. Without a doubt, they absolutely do.
No matter how you look at it, this is not an US government problem. Even if the US government did not have such a mandate, I'm 100% certain there is enough interest from other governments around the world to justify such features
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Nonono. It's all the sun's fault.
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As I said, the fault squarely rests with the manufacturers.
I agree. If nobody made cell phones, then there wouldn't be backdoors in cell phones. Now, if on the other hand, you're claiming that these manufacturers forced the US government to force them to install backdoors, then that's an interesting pretzel of logic. I'm sure some future AI historian will get a kick out of it.
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Guess people don't like knowing their useless excuse to blame the government is just that - useless. Especially then they are, gasp, not to blame.
Overrated? How is a thoughtful, polite, and completely topical post which is fairly unique in its view point, over rated? Moderators need to do a much better job that this.
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Blame isn't binary, despite every effort by lawyers to convince you otherwise. Your responsibility is directly proportional to the degree your action contributed to the result, no more and no less. If the US Government's actions were 25%, 33% or 50% responsible for the feature being present in the hardware exported to Iran, then the US Government should be accorded 25%, 33% or 50% of the blame respectively.
Nor is responsibility limited to immediate one-step cause-and-effect. Distance dilutes responsibility
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If there exists at least one direct chain of causes-and-effects, regardless of how long that chain is,
Read my other replies. Blaming the US Government is completely arbitrary. Do you seriously believe every other government in the world has wiretap facilities ONLY because of the US's mandate? Nothing could be father from the truth or more silly would you state it plain and simply. But, that's what the article and others would have us believe.
I'll happily agree the US' guilt is greater than zero, but its still so small, its not worth discussion in the least. To then create an article whereby guilt is 100%, i
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I wish I had mod-points. Awesome couple of posts there, man. It's sad that I am no longer surprised when the only intelligent comment on the entire thread manages to receive a score of zero.
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But to add up to that, you picked up on my rather weak first example and failed even to consider second one.
Also, thanks to the moderators for giving +3 insightful to a comment that includes nothing but ad-hominem and according to signature is possibly just a troll.
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life is not enough reason to violate our rights (Score:2)
The frustrating thing about the holes punched in our constitutional rights in America is that decisions of when to trample privacy rights are made by the feds. They're not so keen to preemptively foil a kidnapping or murder plot. If your family members are held, you can passionately beg
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Yes technology always gets the bad rap. A hammer can be used to build a house for someone, or bash someones brains in. When it comes to newer technology people are fearful when they can't understand the tools as easily as a hammer. But it's the same premise, the tools can better humanity or be used to destroy it.
I believe the US has a motive for allowing all regimes to track their people. I believe at the heart of most government in the world today is hatred against it's enemy the people.
Hot off the press! (Score:2)
More at 11"
everything has two sides (Score:2)
Of course the US is not using their spying technology on its friends and allies! Never ever - or maybe just when its necessary?
to get the one or the other contract before the others do....
Look up whats in you router and switch firmware - maybe you too have a Trojan Boot Loader in it!
Re:everything has two sides (Score:4, Insightful)
Increasingly Tyrannical Rule & Imperial Arroga (Score:5, Insightful)
A very interesting story. I wasn't aware of this CALEA law until I just read about it in a previous story in Slashdot, and it's very disturbing that the increasingly tyrannical rule (albeit a mostly soft tyranny for the time being) of the US Federal government and it's concomitant level of imperial arrogance has supposedly endowed an even more evil regime to further terrorize the world. If the US made Ahmadinejad's (YM"SH) life easier, government officials should be prosecuted and punished under the anti-treason provisions of the Constitution, but then again that can be said about many aspects of the US's ruling elite.
We must strenuously oppose any more encroachments on liberty and privacy, including the latest attempts by the Barack Hussein Obama regime to mandate backdoors in nearly all communication devices. This is a far more severe threat to our lives than ACTA. I can live without secular entertainment, but I don't want to live in a perpetual police state. We have to be mindful of the possibility that multi-national tyrannical forces are coordinating their efforts to bring a form of superlative form of international fascism (think 1984) in which all of humanity is shackled and enslaved.
Call me an alarmist if you wish - I am very alarmed.
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I work in the 'comms' (networking) field in the bay area. I can't interview for a job that doesn't seem to *include* some form of DPI or calea side to it.
if you are using any kind of networking gear that is rackmount and more than a month's rent, chances are it has calea wiretapping 'modes' to it. or, its purchasable if you are the right kind of entity, so to speak.
there are also networking boxes that intercept the SSL transport and give users a false sense of security (ignore the mitm, that cert looks ve
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Yes I've had to read on CALEA too. Scary stuff. I think multi-national/international is a key point that no one, even alarmed people, like to admit might be possible.
How do we raise the alarm for others?
Money, Guns and Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Here on Slashdot there tends to exist the mindset of "blame the shooter not the gun" and the corollary "and certainly don't blame the maker of the gun". For most civil libertarians, those are axioms: that tools are value-neutral, and you criminalize their improper use, not their mere existence or the act of manufacture. Good so far. Lifetime NRA member here. Gun-totin' agnostic clinging to the Constitution.
In this case, though, we are blaming the tool AND the user AND the manufacturer. Why is it different to blame tools collectively (governmental) compared to individually? I have my own thoughts on this, and I believe it IS different. However, it takes a couple of layers of abstraction to reach that difference (specifically, that collective actions are almost always restrictive in nature while individual actions are almost always permissive in nature, and that freedom requires that permissiveness wins over restriction in all but the most severe cases).
I'd like to believe that the reactions against the existence of CALEA are reasoned rather than reactive. When you ask someone whether they favor or oppose something, if the answer you get is a frothing hind-brain reaction, that person's opinion is instantly valueless. And if that person was on the "correct" side (strictly by chance, it would seem), it becomes that much easier to dismiss ALL people with that opinion. "Yeah, you're a jingoistic , just like all the rest. I'm not even going to listen to you."
The good guys have to be the adults.
In the land of the free ... (Score:2)
im wondering, what needs to happen, before someone can realize that they have been lied to.
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You do realize that "best" is not synonymous with "perfect" right? And that what you value in a place to live isn't the same as what everyone else values?
Is the USA perfect? Hell no. Would I want to live anywhere else? Not really -- everywhere else that I'd even consider has more tradeoffs than I'd like.
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if you think everywhere else you'd 'even' consider has more tradeoffs than you'd like, it means you either dont know shit about countries other than your own, or a zealot, brainwashed rightwinger that has been conditioned to hate various things, so that you wont wake up.
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relevance ? 'best' means the top place in a group. and in the group of 250 or so countries (or whatever) on earth, america doesnt have that title. but it is touted.
Yes, the US is best (or close to it) if you value both civil liberties and a high standard of living. And it is probably the only one of those countries that you can realistically immigrate to and become part of (Norway and Switzerland, for example, are nice in many ways, but you can't really become Norwegian or Swiss, even if you are lucky enou
Grammar Police (Score:2)
Requiring providers to only offer encrypted communications unless they have a way to decrypt them? Shouldn't that say "..to only offer encrypted communications if they provide a way to decrypt them?"
I'm just an engineer, so what do I know about grammar.
That's kind of been the point... (Score:2)
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PROMIS (Score:2)
It's been alleged that the PROMIS [wikipedia.org] software was backdoored by American spy agencies (or somesuch) and sold abroad.
The Wikipedia article referenced above doesn't mention the backdoor allegations; you'll need to dig deeper (into less reliable sources?) for that.
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Sure you could have it ask are you MS, Unix
On the other side you would be in control of some huge dumb plaintext database no matter the OS/code/language?
It sounds more like a search device for a set of known US databases at the time.
They would be exported to friendly nations around the world, so it would seem epic to 'google' for someone at
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"It sounds more like a search device for a set of known US databases at the time."
That sounds about right.
Re:This. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that we don't trust our government
You would be wrong.
Re:This. (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's not that we don't trust our government"
That's wrong. I don't trust any government with that kind of power. It will be abused, and I'll do everything in my power (what little I have) to prevent them from getting such a power.
Re:This. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the biggest reason why we fight against greater wiretap rules in the U.S.
Ummm... no. The biggest reason we fight wiretaps is because they are wrong.
Letting the tech get into the hands of other governments is a far, far secondary reason. Maybe tertiary...quaternary... hexadenary... it's way down the list, anyway.
Re:This. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the biggest reason why we fight against greater wiretap rules in the U.S. It's not that we don't trust our government
Uh, no, I'm pretty sure it's actually because the 4th amendment makes what the government has been doing illegal. A side-effect of that is that other governments also don't get to use the loopholes our government would like, but I'm not fighting for their rights, I'm fighting for mine.
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Uh, no, I'm pretty sure it's actually because the 4th amendment makes what the government has been doing illegal.
Actually it's because the courts read the word "reasonable" very narrowly, and insists on deciding it before the fact, otherwise what the government had done (but is not now doing) would have been legal.
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(but is not now doing)
Really? You actually believe that?
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You want evidence that Obama is not using the FISA court? How about evidence that he is? Feel free to find something newer than this:
http://utdocuments.blogspot.com/2008/07/obamas-new-statement-on-fisa.html [blogspot.com]
Obama's statement only addressed the objections to the telecom immunity provisions of the bill, while ignoring the objections to the (at least) equally pernicious new warrantless eavesdropping powers the bill authorizes.
The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.
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Otherwise, your paranoia is unfounded.
What is unfounded is your blind trust in an organization which has proven, repeatedly and over decades, to be untrustworthy.
I didn't make accusations, because I don't have evidence--what I do have however, is the power of inductive reasoning, something you seem to lack, alongside the ability to distinguish between 'unfounded' and 'founded'.
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Obviously that was supposed to be a reply to the parent, got the wrong button there.
Re:This. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm... no. The biggest reason we fight wiretaps is because they are wrong.
I, sir, see your "ummm...no" and raise you another "ummm...no".
Wiretaps, used with proper judicial oversight, for legitimate law-enforcement purposes, are not wrong. If a wiretap provides the proof that a violent criminal actually committed the crime for which they are being charged, then that is a good thing. The problem exists when a government -- any government -- uses wiretaps for illegitimate purposes. For example, to spy on the population in general (for example, the NSA wiretapping), to maintain a party in power against the populace's wishes (Iran), or without receiving the proper warrants to listen in on private conversations (NSL's).
While I think O.P. might be going a bit far to say, "It's not that we don't trust our government..." because I don't trust any government with unchecked power. However, you come off sounding like either a complete wacko or a naive 12-year old when you make a blanket statement like that. There is precious little in the world that's *THAT* black and white.
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Wiretaps, used with proper judicial oversight, for legitimate law-enforcement purposes, are not wrong. If a wiretap provides the proof that a violent criminal actually committed the crime for which they are being charged, then that is a good thing.
Your argument is a case of the ends justifying the means, and the law agrees with you - I do not. I would argue that wiretaps are an invasion of privacy and are wrong no matter the reason. The bottom line is that compromising privacy is a slippery slope that can lead to unintended consequences, as this article shows.
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BUT ONLY as long as I also get to watch and record whoever in Government I want and at anytime I want - that includes top political leaders, and other big shots in the government, police force etc.
If they can legally record me in public, then I should legally be able to record them in public.
If they can legally record me in private, then I should legally be able to do so too.
Golden rule and all that.
If they think it's wrong or unsafe for me to watch them like th
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If a wiretap provides the proof that a violent criminal actually committed the crime for which they are being charged, then that is a good thing
The fact that if you were to shoot into a crowd of people, occasionally you might hit a murderer, doesn't make shooting into crowds of people a good thing.
Wiretaps are bad because their costs to society today far outweigh their benefits. That didn't use to be the case; when phone service was analog, wiretapping didn't require modifying the infrastructure, but it di
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if the 'bad guy' can't be caught using above-board means, maybe you need to try harder?
So you want to live in a society run by organized crime and corrupt corporations? How do you prove bribery without wiretaps or other similar methods? You allow a power vacuum and someone will fill it in, the government is usually the lesser of many evils.
Re:This. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's go another direction. You say wiretapping is unethical. Is it unethical to kill someone? Then, what about having armed police officers? In the U.S., your average cop is armed. As another
"The end justifies the means" is an argument for doing something unethical for the "Greater Good." Your argument presupposes that wiretaps are unethical. I disagree. Rather, I think it is a compromise that recognizes the fact that there are grey areas. That compromise is necessary because the alternative is anarchy. And if you think that's a viable option ("heh, heh...no one tellin' *me* what to do!"), you might want to look at what's been happening in places like Uganda [invisiblechildren.com] for the last thirty years.
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Or maybe we should recognize that our government is the good guys and can help us change the Iranian government, because tapping people's phones is probably one of the least egregious things Ahmadinejad and Khameini are doing.
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Au contraire. You're mistakenly assuming that wiretaps are an end unto themselves. In fact, they are a means to an end, and those ends are often pretty horrible, up to and including executions. Since those executions would not have occurred without the wiretaps, the wiretaps are, in effect, about as egregious as you can get.
Put another way, a bolt fails on a tricycle because of poor manufacturing. The wheel falls off. A second bold fails on a bridge because of poor manufacturing. A school bus falls of
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But the US government has absolutely no interest in spying on Iranian citizens. It wants backdoors to spy on US citizens. (And the Iranians want them to spy on Iranian citizens).
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Nobody fully trusts any government. That's not really the point. There are governments that we trust more or less than others. I generally trust the U.S. government to mostly do something sane at least 75% of the time. I generally trust the Iranian government to do something sane at least 7.5% of the time. And therein was the point. It's not that we're a bunch of nutjobs who distrust the government and think that they're all out to get us and will abuse wiretapping authority frequently. It's that if
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I, for one could care less if the Iranian government spies on me as long as we bomb them back beyond the stone age and turn that garbage pile into a lake.
Leaving aside the non-sensical "could care less" phrasing, you call it a "garbage pile." Why? Been there? Know many Iranians? Any familiarity with Persian history or culture?
Re:Wait, what ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait, what ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
Re:Wait, what ? (Score:4, Interesting)
One man's misleading headline is another man's truth. Interesting, that.
Re:Wait, what ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
To further refine your point: At the core of this lies the implication that, because of such policies, there is very little to separate us from authoritarian regimes. It's a quantum distance, to be sure, in the sense that although it's very small it would require something fundamental to change. But the distance between where we are today and a digital version of the Alien and Sedition Acts [wikipedia.org] is short enough to make many people uncomfortable.
One point that irks me, though, is the contention that we're only now seeing this link. That, frankly, is bullshit.
The head of GCHQ (Britain's SigInt agency) under Tony Blair wrote an entire book [amazon.co.uk] on the topic last year. I myself wrote a series [imagicity.com] of three [imagicity.com] columns [imagicity.com] on the topic, all of them dealing with the diminishing gap between authoritarian policies and those of more democratic nations. Forgive me while I quote at some length...
Precedents (Score:2)
"One point that irks me, though, is the contention that we're only now seeing this link. That, frankly, is bullshit."
Agreed. We should not be surprised: the general principle that "authority tends to breed more authority" is an old story.
Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.
Lincoln warned us about the banking/corporate complex and its corrosive effects on the Republic.
Earlier, we had the Alien and Sedition Acts, as you mentioned.
And of course there's that old saw: "Absolute power te
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Well, yeah, if you revolt, they'll stick your hand in the government's "piracy/privacy fixer", which will chop your fingers off. Completely digital!
Weird that the only difference between those two words is a "v". For victory!
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I'd say it's one authoritarian regime, sharing with another authoritarian regime.
No real difference, both governments are using it to illicitly spy on you.
Yeah, because those constitutionally mandated warrants that the US government uses are one of the most egregious abuses of power ever devised. No real difference at all.
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You forgot about the illegal wiretaps [nytimes.com] already ?
Re:Wait, what ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, awesome. So I guess any day now I should see an article titled "Albert Einstein assisted North Korea in acquiring Nuclear Weapons", or "Movie Industry instrumental in helping Oppressive Regimes conduct surveillance of dissidents".
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Well, the Einstein one maybe not, but RIAA aiding opressive regiemes seems to be the general consensus around here.
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It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.
I'm not so sure it's "unintended".
After all, President Obama endorses and co-sponsors, through Organizing For America, the upcoming 10/2 rally at the Mall in D.C. which has some very interesting official co-sponsors.
You can find out more about the rally at the Young Communist [yclusa.org]
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Young Communist league USA, New Black Panther Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, the International Socialist Organization, the War Resisters League, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, La Raza, and the American Muslim Association of North America,
Me too. Those are exactly who I'd expect to try to ensure freedom and justice.
Or would you expect the Tea party and the Republicans to do it? Dream on.
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Young Communist league USA, New Black Panther Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, the International Socialist Organization, the War Resisters League, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, La Raza, and the American Muslim Association of North America,
Just the kind of people I'd trust to ensure freedom and justice.
Me too. Those are exactly who I'd expect to try to ensure freedom and justice.
Or would you expect the Tea party and the Republicans to do it? Dream on.
-----
Republicans!?!? You
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End-2-end encryption. (Score:2)
Iranian Gov Uses Telecom Backdoors Required By US Gov
and as usual, if one expects any form of privacy, the only solution is to use end-to-end encryption.
so for voice communication, setup an encryption supporting app on a phone you trust (i.e.: one with an open system). Slashdot recently mentionned such a privacy app, using standardsas SIP+ZRTP for voice and OTR+SIMPLE for chat/SMS.
otherwise, even if the cellphone-to-celltower communication is scrambled,you're always vulnerable to eavesdropping at the cell tower (if not encrypting end-to-end), or at the phone
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Thanks for keeping us posted. Please be sure to let us know as soon as you have an update, we'll be waiting.
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"Let's see... The US exports Arms, Telecomm gear, and a host of other modern technology to intermediaries that in turn end up selling said products to entities we, the US, consider our enemies."
That's one way to keep tabs on them.
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They got addicted to Enigma, Enigma like devices in the hands of sloppy European and Soviet code in the 1930's, ww2 and 1950's.
Thats inter generational addiction to reading plaintext on anything that passes on their networks.
The thought of a single master key makes people think twice before speaking their mind. Best to let people dream that cellphone manufacturers like privacy too.
To be a cellphone manufacturer