Aren't Gator and Adbot doing this already?

Ladies and Gentelmen of the jury, I present to you the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

"So what we are looking for is strictly telephone--what is said over a telephone?" Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., asked.

Freeh replied: "That is the way I understand it. Yes, sir."


I farking hate politicians like that. The senator didn't ask how you understood the law, he asked how it was intended to be used. Ambiguous cockbite.

Ultimately, the balance between enforcement powers and the rights of citizens is complex and muddled. But I think feasibility should be factored into any such decision. That's why I am against prosecution of "victimless" crimes, such as drug use. Certain laws require so much loss of privacy and freedom for the degree of safety that they provide that they are not worth the cost.

In this case, tapping communication at midway points is easily defeated by encryption. So now the other surveillance (sp?) are impotent unless they stop people from using encryption. But this debate has already been hashed out in the discussion of export restrictions on cryptography. Cryptography is too easy to create, and too difficult to defeat.

Taking the powers that the FBI, et al. want to their natural conclusion, would require treating personal use of information and technology with such restrictions that it would be analogous to attempting to make water not wet. It is better to embrace the intrinsic characteristics of information than to try and fight it. Yes, it will mean that society changes, but all progress involves change. We have the choice of how this change is to be guided, and I think it is clear in this case that one path is better than the other.

When things look glum, sit back and say to yourself "at least I'm not an inmate in a Brazilian prison."

Yeah...you'll just be an "unlawful enemy combatant" in Camp X-Ray.

wiretapping != keylogginng

Welcome to a police state.

fark them. To quote george carlin, "fark them with a big steel dick."

I miss my privacy already

If you've got something to hide it must be bad

/typical nazi

because terrorists are dumb enough to talk in plain-text... fark off fbi

It's true that the FBI has a difficult job to do, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, but is this proposal necessary, let alone wise?

Maybe I'm missing something, but what about 9/11 made the FBI's job harder? Did they crash a plane into the FBI headquarters and kill 90% of the force or something?

Why is the government so insistant on wiping its arse with the bill of rights?

In all seriousness, do yourself a favor. Read The Patriot Act. Then read the aborted Patriot II proposal. I mean really read them. Then read this copy of the The Joint Petition for Expedited Rulemaking. They are working very hard to get everything they wanted in Patriot II. If we this happen, we deserve the consequences.

OMG WTF ROTFLMAO!!@#!#@@#1@

/Flicks middle finger
//Obscure?

No sir; don't like keyloggin' OR teabaggin'

This keeps up, I'm turning off and going underground. The Internet is an essential part of my life now (long-distance relationship and all), but when everything I need in life is within close enough range to use old-fashioned methods, I'll be off the face of the planet, sacrificing "convenience" (bullshiat!) in the name of running my life invisible as a Stealth bomber.

/fark the gummint, fark the corporations, fark 'em all, just leave me the fark alone.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Oh yeah, this is gonna stop them. Its worked so well in the past.

LOL, I do not understand the preponderance of people who allow their government to bully them around like the US does.

Did you people not elect these people into power? And they created the laws right? And now your FBI or local cops are trying to change things...

Makes me laugh, in Canada people have tried to gain access to internet information, you know what happened. They lost, why? Because unlike the US we believe in peoples rights, and the right to privacy is important. To bad no one down south under stands or cares about this.

I say let Darwin meet the guy who came up with the idea... and take care of the issue for you all, or I guess you can lie back and cower as your government tramples all over your rights and wishs because some people are to chicken to stop them.

I think these two links are appropriate:

American Civil Liberties Union
Electronic Frontier Foundation

/nuff said

l34qfm
You wouldnt happen to be a beautiful 23 year old Canadien girl looking to marry an american strictly for Ann Frank type reasons, would you?

Call me naive but as I'm reading the fourth amendment, I'm thinking that they'd need a warrant to tap your AIM conversation as much as they'd need a warrant to tap your phones or search your house, if this happens. Which isn't to say that a warrant guarantees everything is on the up and up, but it tends to suggest that. The only problem I see with it is the possibility of your cybering getting leaked out somehow. Hopefully whoever was responsible would be fired but that wouldn't do much for you after the fact.

Although you could sue the government and become a millionaire.

/eyes rolling back in head, flashing $$$ signs... tap me!

Every telephone call, e-mail, instant message, and so on, is already monitored, and with good cause they are five seconds from a warrant to tap someone's line besides, this serves no other purpose than to allow them to bypass good cause, I think that for all of the talk about fighting a new war in a new age and we need to protect ourselves, really, if we remove so much privacy and so many freedoms, which realistically we don't have only they don't openly say it, but they know we know, we just fake we don't know, but they know that as well, anyway, if we remove it, wtf is the point of having America coined as the land of the free. It would just be another country.

Scattershot,

Now there is a concept I was waiting to come up. Its perfectly find for your government to try and bend you over, why? Why because then you can try and sue them! YEP! You heard it here folks, you can SUE your government because THEY mad a law saying they could do something that you couldnt stop..

Better keep collecting those pennies you find on the ground, as i sincerely think this is the only way you will be making money from that idea.

/sigh, you just know im baiting now cause im bored at work

Wow... that was one long-ass sentence, Vangor.

Vangor knows that all the wiretapping is bypassed by speaking in run-ons.

(it has something to do with the buffer)

/just kidding

I don't pretend to be an expert on how such things work, but in our litigious society it seems likely that you could take 'em to the house for defamation of character, likely among a slew of other things.

The crux of it for me is that I don't see what the big deal is. I understand people wanting to protect their rights/privacy, and once again feel free to call me naive, but I just don't care if they're monitoring my AIM chats and, chances are, they don't care to anyway.

I got three words for this.

FARKIN' HELL NO!

Freedom is Slavery!
Ignorance is Strength!
War is Peace!
Big Brother is Watching You!

Maybe I skimmed the article too fast..Is the FBI trying to validate this throught the FCC? It seems to me that the FCC is one of America's most obvious problems. A group of people not chosen by the public making decisions concerning the freedom of information should not exist.

Ah yes, thanks for reminding me Jamara. THAT, I have a problem with. I'm rather apathetic to the concept but sidestepping Congress for approval is wrong. At least go through the right channels, jeez.

But that is the whole crux of the problem Scattershot, once they start down this new road where will they stop?

Do you not value you any privacy in your life? Yesterday was your phone, tomorrow your chat, day after?!?! What will they take away from you then?

I am shocked and amazed at the disregard, and incomprehension that is displayed by the everyday American. You are supposed to be the worlds Super power but yet at the same time, you cannot even protect your selves from each other. You make it seem like it is fine for your government to stomp on your rights, impose new rules, and to make everyone live under a microscope.

It is no better than when you go to the airport and have to deal with the TSA who can just stop you from boarding because your government has you on a secret watch list, and you dont know how to get off it, or how you got on. Is that idea ok as well? I dont think so, and I think that it would be a sad day for me to have to say that there is even more reasons for why America is not really a super power, more of a cowering shell of itself, hiding and sneaking everywhere because its people are not strong enough to stand up and demand whats right.

for whatever jackass thought up this idea, they could copy and paste words and letters into a message to get by unnoticed.

Having read the article, it seems to me this is more like packet sniffing than keylogging... not that it's a big difference. Anyone know of any public SSL proxy server-type boxes out there? 128 bit encryption should slow the NSA - SIGINT guys down by a little bit... just a little? please?

Big deal.

So what are you hiding?


/Flame on Wayne.. flame on Garth

Scattershot

Call me naive but as I'm reading the fourth amendment, I'm thinking that they'd need a warrant to tap your AIM conversation as much as they'd need a warrant to tap your phones or search your house, if this happens.

Download that copy of the Patriot Act I linked above. Search for FISC. The FISC is a court made up of 11 federal judges scattered around the country. Their identities and proceedings are secret. The Patriot Act ammended the wiretap laws. Wire-taps are very difficult to get, but warrants are not. FISC warrants can be used to seize electronic communications, and these warrants carry a built in gag order. If you witness or are party to the execution of a FISC issued warrant you will go to prison if you talk about it.

This is all public information. Most people have become too apathetic to give a shiat.

/sad

avelyn11-
Why is the government so insistant on wiping its arse with the bill of rights?

Because we are their cattle.

Scattershot, ever hear of boiling a frog without him noticing?

Vangor, and what makes you think the government doesn't let/aid and abet things like pearl harbor/9-11?

Roguelike, I still think Jefferson said it best. But then cattle can't hold rifles.

If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.

l34qfm, Secret lists are not right, no. But the article in question here implies that they'd need a warrant to employ this tapping ability for internet-related stuff, whereas the guys at the airport can stop you for any old reason they like.

Also, you're making some pretty sweeping generalizations about the "average American". Apparently my apathy isn't shared by anyone else who has posted here so far. That's fine, if it bugs everyone, protest it in an effective manner. Apathy != consent, it just means I don't care one way or the other. :) If they want to watch my every move online, it just doesn't bother me. All they'll get is a lot of MUSHing at TF2k5, the occassional fart joke IMed to friends and whatever nonsense occurs to me throughout the day.

Finally, as per your yesterday/today/tomorrow point, to my knowledge I've never been tapped by any means. Once again, I'm left to my apathy over the situation. Now, if they were to suddenly decide, "Yeah, we don't need a warrant to do any of this (phone tapping, Net tapping, search/seizure) anymore," my apathy would evaporate rather quickly.

nonexistent,

Not really, those are my views on the subject. The fact that i am up at 5am just gives me more reason to talk about it. A frank conversation actually does make the rest of my day go by faster.

And ya it's been a slow night on fark!

The article says nothing about keylogging. With good encryption no amount of wiretapping is going to help. The only way to snoop on someone then would be to sneak in, over a network or physically and install monitoring software or devices on the targets computer.

So I suppose my problem with the rather incessant theme of "fight for your rights" is, well, how exactly does one go about fighting for their rights in this day and age? It all looks nice ideologically, but ideology alone won't repeal the Patriot Act.

It's very late and I need to get to bed here, but I thought I'd end with a final thought. I guess I'm just picking my battles, here. There are more important things to me that are worth fighting than whether they can watch me MUSH all day. I'm just not convinced that it's a big deal, but that's my perspective as someone who doesn't do anything terribly important online. I see a lot of others don't feel this way so I encourage you to fight this (although I'm not sure how you'd go about doing that since they're trying to negate Congress).

/pleased this hasn't turned into a flame-war yet

A constitution is a contract between the people and their government. When the government violates that contract - in letter or spirit - it is time to renegotiate.

Scattershot, my point was that they would be able to tap anything you did, they could "claim" that they just wanted to check your email, but could "find" other information in chat logs, FTP activity, file sharing, pretty much anything you do on the net. To me i find that a huge problem. As Roguelike explained (and yes i Canada we have heard of this), you have secret courts down there. You might never know if they are, or are not monitoring everything that you are doing. I personally do not agree with the 'Big Brother Is Watching' idea.

If you feel confident that any of the information that they may glean from you, will only come from what they might put on a warrant, then you can live in that cocoon. I for one have to beleive that no matter how they apply a warrent to watch some parts of your activity online, if there is something else outside the scope of it, they will take it and use it and say they got it the correct way.

And again, with secret courts, who's to say the FBI doesnt become brave and walk in and say they want to now monitor everyones activity online? Do you really think a secret court is going to come out with an announcement about this? no. Why? because's it's secret and no one would ever know if a request was made, or if it already has been made since they do not have to tell anyone that they have issues the warrent.

It really is quite funny. You septic tanks get worked into a fervour over the terrorist trying to destroy your way of life and take away your freedoms. Then in response to this you allow your own government to destroy your way of life and take away all your freedoms.

Um, maybe I'm overlooking some side effect here, but...as I see it now, I don't see what's wrong with this (or any other kind of government surveillance) if it is STRICTLY used for the purpose of catching illegal activity, and is only acted upon if there is hard evidence thereof--i.e., they should kick down my door if I email a Saudi address about when and how a nuke shipment is coming through, but not if I just look up info about how nukes work. Of course, there could be abuses, misuses, and ways to foil or plant evidence, but I'm talking about a perfectly righteous system here. I wouldn't mind being watched by feds if it meant that some terrorist was also being watched, and thus could get burned.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the
public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses
over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age
of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These
nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage
to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from
courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to
selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to
apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

Alexander Tyler,1787