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Ethiopia Criminalizes VoIP Services 255

An anonymous reader writes "The Ethiopian government has passed legislation criminalizing the use of VoIP services like Skype and Google Talk. Anyone using these services within the country now faces up to 15 years in prison. 'Ethiopian authorities argue that they imposed these bans because of "national security concerns" and to protect the state's telecommunications monopoly. The country only has one ISP, the state-owned Ethio Telecom, and has been filtering its citizen's Internet access for quite some time now to suppress opposition blogs and other news outlets. ... Reporters Without Borders also reports that Ethio Telecom installed a system to block access to the Tor network, which allows users to surf the Web anonymously. The organization notes that the ISP must be using relatively sophisticated Deep Packet Inspection to filter out this traffic.'"
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Ethiopia Criminalizes VoIP Services

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  • Devolution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bananatree3 ( 872975 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:04AM (#40335087)
    You're looking at it. Great Britain, USA, Ethiopia, China, Saudi Arabia... are there *any* countries where an internet connection can be had with complete freedom of access and no censorship?
    • Re:Devolution (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:05AM (#40335113)

      There is no such thing devolution, only evolution in a direction you don't like.

      • Thank you for the proper english correction.
      • by JustOK ( 667959 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:18AM (#40335289) Journal

        Are we not men?

      • by adisakp ( 705706 )

        There is no such thing devolution

        Convergence into the form of a 70's band? [youtube.com]

      • It's in my dictionary:

        The process of declining from a higher level to a lower level of effective power or vitality or essential quality. Syn. degeneration.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          It's in my dictionary:

          The process of declining from a higher level to a lower level of effective power or vitality or essential quality. Syn. degeneration.

          See this is why I come on here and post "nigger" and other racial jokes, troll about politics or operating systems, ask anybody who mentions an intelligent woman if that woman is fat, and just generally fuck around. It's the only way to have fun around here anymore.

          Do you know why? Do you know why that is?

          Because you motherfuckers will get into crazy-ass passionate fights over stupid shit like whether "devolution" is a word.

          For. Fuck's. Sake. You. Motherfuckers. You know exactly what the guy

          • Re:Devolution (Score:4, Informative)

            by Dishevel ( 1105119 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @12:21PM (#40336885)

            lol.
            Best post yet.
            Yelling at people on a forum that you choose to visit about how they are all fucked for posting the way everyone in this forum does.
            Getting all bent out of shape on purpose all the while yelling that we should all have better shit to do.
            You are priceless.

      • I take it you never watched the Super Mario Bros movie
      • by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @01:23PM (#40337509) Journal

        A friend of mine was doing development work in Ethiopia and Somaliland back in the 90s. He's Dutch, and his wife's Somali, and he often worked from Addis Ababa, the capital. At one point he was having a phone call, and the phone operator came on and told him to stop speaking Dutch - speak English, Italian, Arabic, Amharic, or one of the other local languages the police could understand. We talked about whether he should use PGP, but he decided it would just give the police more of an excuse to "confiscate" his PCs, which they'd been wanting to steal anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Gotung ( 571984 )
      There was never a time or a place where what you describe existed.
      • Re:Devolution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:30AM (#40335499) Homepage

        Bull. You are revising living memory. Of course it existed. It existed fifteen years ago, everywhere. The tech to listen in on all calls did not exist, nor was it legal. It was absolutely, constitutionally ILLEGAL to spy on citizens in the USA. We talked on the phone and messaged each other in the happy knowledge that it took a court order or Scientology operatives to obtain phone conversations or internet activity. Such things are possible today because our citizens are technologically and politcally illiterate and have absolutely no cultural memory past ALF reruns. The US is stupiding itself to death. OF COURSE WE HAD PRIVACY!! You gave it up!

        • but if you have a thought, and you put it on a wire that leads to a public network, you have just given up your right to privacy

          not legally, but logically

          even if the government was passionate about not snooping on the network in its borders, what of corporations? what of rogue government operatives? what of technically proficient and strangely motivated individuals?

          it's a NETWORK, not a closed box in your garage

          if you want something private, don't put it on a public network. once it gets out there, it is beyond your control. and you are the person who put it out there. so don't put it out there if it is important for you to keep private

          this has nothing to do with legality. it has to do with a common sense understanding of the nature of the subject matter you are dealing with: a wide open public network. there is no such thing as privacy on that

          • by Githaron ( 2462596 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @01:20PM (#40337477)

            but if you have a thought, and you put it on a wire that leads to a public network, you have just given up your right to privacy

            not legally, but logically

            Do you not expect your (snail) mail to be private? Can your privacy be potentially compromised? Yes, but most still expect it to be private. If it is compromised, the trespasser, when found, is be held accountable. Any communication channel can be potentially compromised. The problem is that most nations don't hold their government accountable.

            • I do not expect my snail mail to be perfectly secure from prying eyes, no.

              Legally, it is. In point of actual reality, it is not.

              Legally, the House of Commons can pass a resolution saying that the her majesty the Queen is capable of levitation.

              Just because something is legal or not does not necessarily have any bearing on the reality of the situation.

              Now proceed with the same understanding when you volunteer private information on a public network.

        • Re:Devolution (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Tharsman ( 1364603 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @11:14AM (#40336015)

          Bull. You are revising living memory. Of course it existed. It existed fifteen years ago, everywhere. The tech to listen in on all calls did not exist, nor was it legal. It was absolutely, constitutionally ILLEGAL to spy on citizens in the USA. We talked on the phone and messaged each other in the happy knowledge that it took a court order or Scientology operatives to obtain phone conversations or internet activity. Such things are possible today because our citizens are technologically and politcally illiterate and have absolutely no cultural memory past ALF reruns. The US is stupiding itself to death. OF COURSE WE HAD PRIVACY!! You gave it up!

          There has been technology to wiretap calls for as long as there have been telephones. All you needed was access to the telephone company. Heck in the extreme early days, before phones were able to dial, a cop may simply sit by the operator and listen in.

          There was a middle ground where it took a bit more legwork to get the wiretapping done, but there was no point where it became impossible if desired.

          Yes, you “need” the court order, but that order can be granted in secret and is granted if no other ways to prove you are guilty of the investigated "serious" crime is available. If you are innocent, that usually means they will wiretap you because they wont find anything else to tie you up to the crime.

          Over the decades warrants have been given to investigate even people just vaguely related to the real target of an investigation, as they may shed light on the target himself.

          This is nothing new, and these computer monitoring is being implemented by many countries that simply don’t want to lose their ability to keep monitoring everything at will.

        • Ultimately this is about this sentence:

          "to protect the state's telecommunications monopoly." Government are monopolies and the politicians or bureaucrats therein desire to keep that monopoly. Whether it's a monopoly over power or money (or both). The U.S. government doesn't allow any other company to deliver letter mail. Why? Because it's protecting its monopoly. Another example is Comcast which, in many cities or counties, has been given a monopoly by their favorite friend: the government. Nobody el

        • We never really have had privacy in my lifetime BUT at least back in the good ole days they didn't have the resources to spy on every single person as they do today with cheap computers and surveillance equipment.

          Now legally you are probably right. But if it doesn't work legally they work extralegal (Hoover), so it really doesn't matter. So you are right in the sense that we now have no sense.

          Now it's pretty cool if Hoover had a file on you. Now they just have a file on everyone and they now also have compu

    • WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're looking at it. Great Britain, USA, Ethiopia, China, Saudi Arabia... are there *any* countries where an internet connection can be had with complete freedom of access and no censorship?

      What the F are you yammering on about, you nob? It is completely common to have a completely free(from a libertarian perspective) and uncensored internet connection from a plethora of ISP in the United States and the United Kingdom. Genuine issues abound in many countries, including Ethiopia and the risk of the erosion of freedoms in many other places does exist. But, you hyperbolic patent falsifications erode people's willingness to take these matters seriously. In the long run, you are doing far more harm

      • doesn't exist, sorry.

        Considering NSA taps on the backbone for the gov't "Free" is a strawman.

        What they are focusing on is "is it monitored?" and the answer is: yes. If the ISP doesn't that has no bearings on gov't decisions. Does that mean anything will come of it? Probably not.

      • There are those who would prohibit by default access to all legal, consentual pornography: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/04/pornography-online-cameron-opt-in-plan [guardian.co.uk]
        Sure, it's "opt-in"... until someone decides in 10 years to tighten the noose tighter.
      • Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @11:20AM (#40336083)

        What the F are you yammering on about, you nob? It is completely common to have a completely free(from a libertarian perspective) and uncensored internet connection from a plethora of ISP in the United States and the United Kingdom. Genuine issues abound in many countries, including Ethiopia and the risk of the erosion of freedoms in many other places does exist. But, you hyperbolic patent falsifications erode people's willingness to take these matters seriously. In the long run, you are doing far more harm than good.

        Please feel free to STFU!

        Seconded. There are real issues, but saying "OMG teh USA is just like China!" is really not helpful. The situation is a lot more complex than that. The United States has actually done a pretty amazing job promoting free speech on some fronts- the U.S. government invented the internet after all, and private U.S. companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook have provided the means for people to engage in free speech. The article mentions Ethiopia trying to block Tor... well, the Tor anonymity network was actually developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

        At the same time, you have to ask where all of the technology to censor the internet is coming from in the first place. China doesn't really need any help, but for countries like Syria, Iran, and Ethiopia to monitor the internet, they need outside help. The answer is that this help comes from the west- there are companies in Silicon Valley and in Europe that are willing to sell the equipment and software needed to hack into, store, and analyze the communications of their citizens. They make a profit, and they don't ask too many questions about whether this technology might lead to the arrest and torture of dissidents.

        The article mentions that Ethiopia is using Deep Packet Inspection to filter out the internet and block Tor. The question becomes, who's providing them with this technology? If we want to make a difference that's how we could do it- figure out where this technology is coming from and then apply pressure to the company selling this technology. If the companies selling this technology are held up to public scrutiny and faced with the prospect of boycotts and negative press, a lot of them will back off.

      • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        Not true, internet in the UK blocks pirate bay and other websites that the government doesn't like. Such as child porn and the like.

        If we should even have such a completely free internet is a whole other kettle of fish.

      • a completely free(from a libertarian perspective) and uncensored internet connection from a plethora of ISP in the United States and the United Kingdom. [...]

        Oh [torrentfreak.com], really [billboard.biz]? Please define "libertarian".

      • Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fa2k ( 881632 ) <pmbjornstad.gmail@com> on Friday June 15, 2012 @12:40PM (#40337089)


        [fa2k@blackhole tmp]$ wget http://thepiratebay.org/ [thepiratebay.org]
        --2012-06-15 18:37:01-- http://thepiratebay.org/ [thepiratebay.org]
        Resolving thepiratebay.org... 194.71.107.50
        Connecting to thepiratebay.org|194.71.107.50|:80... connected.
        HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
        2012-06-15 18:37:01 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

        [fa2k@blackhole tmp]$ traceroute thepiratebay.org
        traceroute to thepiratebay.org (194.71.107.50), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
          1 192.168.1.250 (192.168.1.250) 0.312 ms 0.403 ms 0.465 ms
          2 O2WirelessBox.lan (192.168.1.254) 106.684 ms 106.668 ms 106.560 ms
          3 * * *
          4 * * *
          5 * * *
          6 * * *
          7 10.1.1.98 (10.1.1.98) 27.569 ms 23.957 ms 24.665 ms
          8 10.1.1.101 (10.1.1.101) 26.545 ms 25.573 ms 27.624 ms
          9 10.1.1.141 (10.1.1.141) 26.972 ms 24.243 ms 26.153 ms
        10 10.1.2.114 (10.1.2.114) 26.168 ms 25.883 ms 24.447 ms
        11 259.ge-1-2-2.mpr1.lhr3.uk.above.net (213.152.232.65) 25.520 ms 25.485 ms 25.535 ms
        12 xe-4-0-0.mpr2.lhr3.uk.above.net (64.125.27.154) 26.041 ms 25.472 ms 25.535 ms
        13 above-gblx.lhr3.uk.above.net (64.125.12.154) 25.629 ms 24.365 ms 26.040 ms
        14 power-och-tandom-t-lane.tengigabitethernet1-3.ar1.arn3.gblx.net (208.48.1.246) 61.445 ms 64.784 ms 64.557 ms
        15 gi-1-6-nano-demarc.sto1.se.portlane.net (80.67.1.42) 60.103 ms 64.794 ms 61.531 ms
        16 194.68.0.202 (194.68.0.202) 67.593 ms 61.923 ms 62.026 ms
        17 sthix-ge-0-2.moria-cr-1.piratpartiet.net (192.121.80.181) 59.776 ms 59.833 ms 62.935 ms
        18 thepiratebay.piratpartiet.se (194.14.56.2) 63.485 ms 63.542 ms 60.908 ms
        19 * * *
        20 *^C

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Youre lumping vastly different situations into one bucket, throwing up your hands, and despairing.

      US, UK, etc have their own censorship and "entering the 21st century" issues, but lumping them together with Ethopia and China is a pretty big stretch.

      The fact that we have outlets like the Onion, Jon Stewart, and all the talking heads (Beck, OReilley, whoever else) which build their reputation on skewering powerful political figures shows you just how different we are.

      If youre asking if there are any countries

      • by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:55AM (#40335787)
        I felt that your post on internet censorship makes a refreshingly reasonable, coherent, and well-informed argument, without resorting to ridiculous exaggerations or references to 1984 and the Nazis. It suggests a nuanced worldview that goes beyond simple black-and-white thinking about complicated issues.

        Please hand in your Slashdot ID.

      • thank you

        you said better than what i said in a sister comment

      • GPL is needed because of Copyright laws .... an artificial monopoly

        Without copyright and patents the GPL would not be necessary .... the GPL is there for something already free and open, to keep it free and open ...

        The USA and UK are not perfect (by a long way) but are reasonably free ... unlike Ethiopia with most definitely is not ....

        But there are freer counties, so they are definitely not the best examples of a fairly free and open system

      • Wasn't Ethiopia where Obama was born? Donald Trump wants to know.

      • I just noticed that where I live that apostrophes are now being censored.

    • Re:Devolution (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Krneki ( 1192201 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:33AM (#40335531)
      Slovenia

      Albeit we had 2 censorship incident done via DNS blocking.

      They didn't last very long, were unconstitutional and easily circumvented by replacing the DNS server address and no one was ever persecuted by circumventing the protection.

      To this date, not a single charge or court order has been issued for private usage of the internet for whatever reason. The only incidents were regarding "hate speech" and rightfully so.

      • You know there is a fine line between hate speech and free speech. Most of it all lately seems to be coming for campaign speeches but whatdya gonna do bout it?

    • every city in the world has a police force. in some cities the police force is corrupt and inefficient. in other cities, there's still corruption, but policing is efficient and they do their best to root out the corruption

      but because you can find corruption in any police force, let's go after the very idea of police itself as unnecessary and essentially wrong

      or: because they found one corrupt cop out of a mostly good police force in city X, no one in city X can criticize the completely corrupt police in cit

  • of TOR being blocked on an ISP level??
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by JustOK ( 667959 )

      no

    • No, and... (Score:5, Informative)

      by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @11:25AM (#40336141)
      Not only is this not the first case, but it is a problem that the Tor developers have been addressing for some time. There are two techniques that are known to be used to block Tor:
      1. Blocking all entry nodes; China, for example, does this. Bridge nodes mitigate this problem, but a determined government like the Chinese government can compile a list of all bridge nodes, and block those too.
      2. Distinguishing Tor from an HTTPS connection; this is a more technically advanced method that is favored by governments that lack the resources to compile lists of bridges. Since Tor has a unique pattern of TLS connections, it can be identified and blocked by a national firewall; fixing this problem is an ongoing effort (the goal is to make Tor look like Firefox).
  • by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:11AM (#40335187) Journal

    National Security is a threat to National Security. Anyone who uses National Security as an excuse should be locked up to protect National Security.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:12AM (#40335191)

    "The organization notes that the ISP must be using relatively sophisticated Deep Packet Inspection to filter out this traffic."

    There is zero reason people *need* to use DPI to block Tor Traffic. You simply run compatible Tor connectivity software (i.e. The Tor Client) and create a list of those users who can accept communications with you--compare the nodes on that list with nodes that are within your networks; done.

    • Sure, if you get lucky and the users within your network happen to connect to your entry node. Except that there are hundreds of thousands of Tor nodes in the world and they are not all in Ethiopia.

      The standard ways to block Tor are:
      1. Block publicly listed entries, which is why bridge nodes exist.
      2. Block TLS connections that match the Tor fingerprint, which the Tor developers are constantly working to thwart i.e. by making Tor look more like Firefox. This is the DPI approach mentioned in TFA.
  • by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:14AM (#40335205) Homepage Journal

    Now who will complain about evil carriers in US after you will get a perspective of what they do in Ethiopia? :-)

    Jokes aside, Islam (Ethiopia has 3 times more Muslims than in 100% Muslim Somalia) prohibits prying and spying on civilians, so any snooping, any PATRIOT act, any FISA laws would be impossible under Islamic government.

    They might prohibit certain services altogether to prevent spread of lewdness, but they won't spy on you.

    A man peeped through a hole in the door of Allah's Apostle's house , and at that time, Allah's Apostle had a Midri (an iron comb or bar) with which he was rubbing his head. So when Allah's Apostle saw him, he said (to him), "If I had been sure that you were looking at me (through the door), I would have poked your eye with this (sharp iron bar)." Allah's Apostle added, "The asking for permission to enter has been enjoined so that one may not look unlawfully (at what there is in the house without the permission of its people)."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      They might prohibit certain services altogether to prevent spread of lewdness, but they won't spy on you.

      Wanna bet? If it suits their interest, they will. There is no doubt about it.

    • by dcollins ( 135727 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:28AM (#40335475) Homepage

      Wikipedia > Internet censorship by country > Pervasive censorship (the highest level) in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and of course, Iran.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country [wikipedia.org]

      • All of those countries are ruled by deviants. Iran is ruled by Shiah polytheists. Saudi Arabia rulers only pretend the obey only Allah, the rest are just plain vanilla Western lackeys.

        There are only two places that follow Sharia: al-Shabab controlled territory in Somalia and Taliban controlled territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    • It also says that killing an innocent person is a horrible sin, but since you can redefine innocence any time you wish....
      • >It also says that killing an innocent person is a horrible sin

        Wrong quote:

        5:32
        Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul

        unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land

        - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely.

    • "They might prohibit certain services altogether to prevent spread of lewdness, but they won't spy on you."

      Or say they won't...

    • by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      Jokes aside, Islam (Ethiopia has 3 times more Muslims than in 100% Muslim Somalia) prohibits prying and spying on civilians

      In theory, so does the US Constitution.

      • There are more Muslims percentage wise acknowledging that their governmetns do not follow Shariah, than Americans acknowledging that US government does not follow constitution.

    • Politicians talk a big game when it comes to religion, but practical matters of government almost always leave religion in second place, at least at the national level. You see it here in America, with Christian politicians talking about how faithful they are, then turning around and decrying any attempt to end the death penalty (as if they are without sin). Do you really think Muslim politicians are better than Christian politicians?

      It is easy to reinterpret or ignore religious traditions when they ge
      • >but practical matters of government almost always leave religion in second place

        Yes.

        >Do you really think Muslim politicians are better than Christian politicians?

        No, but Muslim religion is better than Christian. At least Islam has a coherent system of government rules built in.

    • by Yvanhoe ( 564877 )

      They might prohibit certain services altogether to prevent spread of lewdness, but they won't spy on you.

      That, they can outsource to one of the thousand heathen American or European companies that will be happy to do it for them.

      • It does not matter who manufactured a hammer that made a whole, it's the one who is peeking through it that gets his eye gauged.

    • No, they will just lock you up on mere accusation instead of proof. Wait a minute....never mind.

  • are they also under this law?
  • by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:22AM (#40335377) Homepage

    What are they afraid of? They are the government. Oh wait ...

  • Waste of money (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:22AM (#40335379)

    Imagine the number of starving people they could feed, or development projects they could fund, with the money they channel into running computers to control the citizenry...

  • by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:24AM (#40335395) Homepage

    Who is providing the software and hardware for the deep filtering? Who are the scum? It's like peddling POS tablets for pedophile brothels. Who the hell is providing police state software to imprison the population?

    And this is what happens when you really make a tool to end-run police states, such as the US or the UK. They make it illegal and imprison you. Ask Assange.

    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:39AM (#40335593) Journal
      Well, Sandvine is the big name in DPI tech, though there are others. Googling 'Lawful Intercept capability' brings up a fair list of vendors, pretty much everybody who sells networking gear, along with a few specialists.

      Empirically speaking, there would appear to be a lot of competent techies who are either actively authoritarian or very good at the yuppie Nuremberg defense; because this stuff doesn't build itself, and it doesn't get built by throwing jackbooted morons at the problem...
    • Most organizations use DPI to block specific protocols from entering or leaving their network. This technology is not the black market malware you think it is. Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil.
  • by Hentes ( 2461350 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:28AM (#40335461)

    so the prince can't contact people to get his money out.

  • Since Ethiopia is part of the UN, don't they have something to say about this ?
    • by raydobbs ( 99133 )

      Ethiopia is probably on the Human Rights Council of the UN, which means they are the poster children of ethical governance. You know, the seat the United States -used- to occupy that has been open for countries like Myamar, Sudan, and other wretched rat-holes to be elected in.

  • backwards (Score:2, Funny)

    by pak9rabid ( 1011935 )
    holy FUCK what a backwards country.
  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @10:39AM (#40335605) Journal
    ..famine issues within the country, overall standard and quality of living issues, along with all forms of violent crime and corruption have, apparently, been solved by the Ethiopian government because they now have time to worry about what the fuck is going on with Facebook.</sarcasm>


    *facepalm*
  • Here's a plan: make your relatively poor country as inhospitable to outside investors as possible, let it spiral into despair until the people either revolt/civil war or relocate to Marklar, but, hey, *you're* still in charge.

    Somebody try transmitting a treatise on game theory through their firewalls - maybe it'll end up in a report on somebody's desk. Oh, and knock the evil assholes out who implemented this firewall.

  • Satellite Internet? I guess Im being too simple...

    • "What is that?"

      "A dinner plate!"

      "Why is your dinner plate transmitting UHF at such high amplitude?"

      "To keep the food warm!"

      "Why is that boom sticking out of it?"

      "It's a traditional tribal design!"

      "Why is it hooked up to your computer?"

      "Just a fancy oven!"

      "It seems to be pointed at something over the equation..."

      "Pure coincidence!"

      Radio is not a universal solution to censorship.
  • by cvtan ( 752695 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @11:08AM (#40335939)
    So stealing 1 song worth $1 is worth $155000 in damages and making a phone call over Skype is worth 15 years in prison. Maybe I'll sell drugs or kill people instead; this other stuff is just too dangerous!
  • National Security (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alexo ( 9335 ) on Friday June 15, 2012 @11:59AM (#40336581) Journal

    Ethiopia, Schmethiopia...
    What do you do when *your* government treads all over *your* rights in the name of "national security"?

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"

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