More on the working plan for universal net surveillance

[solarbird]

Back here, I posted about a Raw Story article discussing Executive plans to monitor every aspect of every form of communication on the internet - everything you send in email, every file you transfer, every web page you visit, every search query you try, and, in summary, everything done by everyone - without hint, of course, of warrant or oversight. mathmuffin was kind enough in comments here to point to this opinion piece in Wired by Bruce Schneier discussing these plans, and this longer piece in the New Yorker, finally online, also discussing these plans.

It is generally my opinion with the current administration that if they're talking about doing something, they're probably already doing it, and have been, for some time. This assumption has generally proven valid when examined, and I see no reason - given the complete and utter lack of punishment for anything - that this would have changed.

Hopefully you will enjoy the carefully selected range of options allowed you by this, your new form of government, and won't brush against any of the many invisible wires around you, thus upsetting any of the many government employees and the software software packages watching over every aspect of your life for your own good.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I run Linux is that many of the little invisible wires and backdoors and such simply aren't there, or at least we're reasonably confident that they aren't. And if I don't disappear in the next month or two, after all that flailing about Friday night? Then my assumption about being small fry will be correct....

"Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snub fighters going to be against that?" -- Gold Leader, gesturing towards the Death Star.

[solarbird]

One of the reasons I run Linux is that many of the little invisible wires and backdoors and such simply aren't there
That's what packet sniffers are for. They don't need to put anything on your machine; as we now know, through private lawsuit court testimony, the telecoms have been happily building rooms for the Feds for the last several years.

I mean, I'm sure they'll use any tools provided. But they don't need backdoors. They have access to the cables.

And if I don't disappear in the next month or two, after all that flailing about Friday night?
Oh, please. Nothing personal, but you aren't important or wrongly-religioned or dark-skinnedforeign enough. Don't get the wrong idea; neither am I. I have 350 readers on a good day; on the scale we're talking, that's nobody.

For that matter, people like me at this point are completely irrelevant. And perhaps always have been, at least through my life, except as sentinels mostly ignored.

[foibos.livejournal.com]

Well, the smallest fries* of all will be those who actually do threaten national or international security. Terrorist operatives won't be having any significant amount of readers. Good luck finding *them* by complete monitoring of the net.

There's an old joke about different kinds of scientists searching for elephants in Africa: a computer scientist will start at the Cape of Good Hope, traversing the continent in east-west bands until an examined object equals an elephant (naturally, an elephant will have to be placed at Gibraltar first to assure termination). It seems that these guys propose to start at the south pole and traverse the entire globe (or, more realistically, the unforested, low-elevation parts of it) to find a panda. (For that matter, if the terrorists have any kind of brains they will hide their communication inside spam, ads, or porn, so the panda they want probably won't look like a panda at all.)

Still, it would seem obvious that using up resources on this scale to abolish privacy will leave them with not enough resources to ensure security, so maybe it *is* a zero-sum game after all, just not in the way Mr. Giorgio thinks.



* which probably isn't even a valid phrase in the language.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Nothing personal

No offense taken.

As for sniffers, yeah, Starfleet regs apply. *shrug* I remember putting NSA keywords in my USENET posts back in the 80's just to fsck with their heads. Everybody did it...

No, what bothers me really is the fact that they're going after Jim Risen. I know that Ghandi said we're supposed to be the change we want to see in the world. I don't want to be the *only* thing between civilization and chaos; I don't want to have to apply for political asylum just to get the drugs that keep me alive. I'm willing to work my fingers off to get where we need to be.... but I want to know I can take two weeks off and have the world still be here when I get back. That if any one of us gets hit by a beer truck, there will be enough slack that it can be picked up; that if it turns out we were pushed, we can be avenged.

We need Resiliency. I'm not convinced we have our act together well enough to do that yet. Or that we have the time we need to get that way if the Times is silenced. Which is why I'm trying to wake up the frogs before the water gets too warm.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

It may or may not be worthy of note, but I heard expressed very similar concerns out of the mouths of senior Freemasons -- fifteen years ago. Some people had been aware of the dystopian possibilities for a rather long time; as usual, read that on whatever slant is desired and it may well be correct.

We've had substantial resiliency for a long time, but explaining that really calls for a good long walk under the trees some time (or, at least, more attainably, for some creative thinking).

Some have taken the tack of desiring to preserve and pass onward whatever knowledge we can; for my part, I was always deeply moved by the scene at the end of the filmed version of Fahrenheit 451, wherein the young people were listening to their elders, and learning to carry forward -- in memory and voice -- the great works of literature. Same goes for other forms of knowledge. And there I have spoken to the core of it, as I understand things.

Both you and solarbird (http://solarbird.livejournal.com/) are decribing the same truth, but from different angles of it: neither of you are likely to be summoned to the stadium and there shot over what you may or may not be saying to audiences of 350 people. However, you (and many others) may well be denied connectivity (or find that your credit scores had bottomed-out); I saw one form of that isolation already in effect within the PRC, and such ring-fences are easily implented at all scales from the local nets to national nodes.

Problems, sure; also many possible solutions.

Gwyneth

-- who still sings Die Gendanken Sind Frei while waiting her turn through the chicane. Great song, merits an arrangement for, say, flute and dulcimer. //^_^\\