Change You Can Believe In! (online wiretaps)

[ShadowOfMadness]

All I know is....that is reason enough for me to leave the country, permanently, when the opportunity presents itself.

[Zaune]

You know, in a perverse kind of way this could actually increase one's personal privacy, or at least not hurt it as severely as it might first appear.

As things stand, the FBI and the various interested intelligence agencies (I think this would fall under the NSA and/or the National Reconaissance Office, and the armed forces probably have their own cryptanalysis people) have to throw a lot of time and resources at breaking a specific encryption system. They'll get there in the end, even with one-time encryption keys -those either have to be written down somewhere or follow a pattern, or the intended recipient won't be able to decrypt them- but the vast expenditure of effort means that their own bosses have to police probable cause at least as tightly as a judge would.
But suddenly the government mandates a backdoor to every encryption system made or used in the USA and its client-states. (Not sure what they're supposed to do about people using encryption systems bought and downloaded from overseas; make it a felony, I suppose.) "Yippee!" cry the more totalitarian elements in said agencies. "We can trawl the whole country and filter out the evil terrorists in one swoop, and true patriotic Americans need never fear anything again! All we have to do is... Have an agent open and read every single email going to or from a server in the US and eavesdrop on every single instant messenger conversation and IRC chatroom a US citizen is participating in.
"Uh... So, how 'bout them Cubs?"

This is going to get them nowhere. Trying to monitor everyone who's even been on a protest march or joined a union or whatever counts as vaguely suspicious these days would require hundreds of thousands of personnel and a couple of exaflops of processing power. Worst case is some kind of keyword filter like the British government allegedly uses on unencrypted emails, and they're so easy to circumvent that even our civil-liberties activist groups can't be bothered to complain.

[General Zod]

You know, in a perverse kind of way this could actually increase one's personal privacy, or at least not hurt it as severely as it might first appear.

As things stand, the FBI and the various interested intelligence agencies (I think this would fall under the NSA and/or the National Reconaissance Office, and the armed forces probably have their own cryptanalysis people) have to throw a lot of time and resources at breaking a specific encryption system. They'll get there in the end, even with one-time encryption keys -those either have to be written down somewhere or follow a pattern, or the intended recipient won't be able to decrypt them- but the vast expenditure of effort means that their own bosses have to police probable cause at least as tightly as a judge would.
But suddenly the government mandates a backdoor to every encryption system made or used in the USA and its client-states. (Not sure what they're supposed to do about people using encryption systems bought and downloaded from overseas; make it a felony, I suppose.) "Yippee!" cry the more totalitarian elements in said agencies. "We can trawl the whole country and filter out the evil terrorists in one swoop, and true patriotic Americans need never fear anything again! All we have to do is... Have an agent open and read every single email going to or from a server in the US and eavesdrop on every single instant messenger conversation and IRC chatroom a US citizen is participating in.
"Uh... So, how 'bout them Cubs?"

This is going to get them nowhere. Trying to monitor everyone who's even been on a protest march or joined a union or whatever counts as vaguely suspicious these days would require hundreds of thousands of personnel and a couple of exaflops of processing power. Worst case is some kind of keyword filter like the British government allegedly uses on unencrypted emails, and they're so easy to circumvent that even our civil-liberties activist groups can't be bothered to complain.

The problem is hackers love exploiting these kinds of backdoors. Even if the government magically didn't abuse it, you can guarantee someone would be finding a way to exploit it in order to make off with all your financial details.

[Zaune]

The problem is hackers love exploiting these kinds of backdoors. Even if the government magically didn't abuse it, you can guarantee someone would be finding a way to exploit it in order to make off with all your financial details.

Fair point, but the same factors are at work for hackers; trawling at random for anyone and everyone would make for a lot of false positives before you found anyone rich enough to be worth ripping off; they'd either have to pick their mark carefully, and likely find out enough about them to open up simpler and lower-tech alternatives to wire-fraud anyway (ie blackmail or waterboarding), or attack a large institution like a bank and nail several thousand people en masse.

Though now I come to think of it, that last example is a pretty big problem.

[General Zod]

The problem is hackers love exploiting these kinds of backdoors. Even if the government magically didn't abuse it, you can guarantee someone would be finding a way to exploit it in order to make off with all your financial details.

Fair point, but the same factors are at work for hackers; trawling at random for anyone and everyone would make for a lot of false positives before you found anyone rich enough to be worth ripping off; they'd either have to pick their mark carefully, and likely find out enough about them to open up simpler and lower-tech alternatives to wire-fraud anyway (ie blackmail or waterboarding), or attack a large institution like a bank and nail several thousand people en masse.

Though now I come to think of it, that last example is a pretty big problem.

What makes you think they'd have to do it all by hand or with such a scattershot approach? They could always target geographically according to IPs known to be in rich neighborhoods to narrow down the likeliness of getting a big hit, on top of automating the system once they've got it down. Maybe they don't even want your money, maybe they just want your identity so they can sell it to illegal immigrants.

[Ryan Thunder]

Why are you so hopelessly naive, Ryan? I've never seen anyone actually make the "if you've got nothing to hide" argument seriously.

Uh... sorry?

What exactly are you worried that they're going to do?

The US is founded on a basic mistrust of authority.

That's because the United States is fucking insane. You put limits on what powerful people can do for good reason, but Jesus Christ...

Why would the people who keep guns in case of tyranny be okay with this shit?

I didn't say that they would be. Then again I'm the sort of person who'd locate a nuke plant based first on where it fits best and second on where it was most vehemently opposed out of obvious ignorant NIMBYism. Then watch the little retards go all apeshit only to either acknowledge that there's really nothing wrong with it or become obvious jackasses.

I guess corruption doesn't exist in Ryan's world. I'm sure government employees would never use that power to shut down political dissent after receiving proper bribes donations from various corporations.

Because that's totally legal and wouldn't require several levels of conspiracy to carry out.

I guess better intelligence is all that's preventing the CIA/FBI from becoming some kind of hilarious gestapo.

[Shroom Man 777]

Why are you so hopelessly naive, Ryan? I've never seen anyone actually make the "if you've got nothing to hide" argument seriously.

Uh... sorry?

What exactly are you worried that they're going to do?

Wasn't it not too long ago when the George Bush administration had goons harassing left wing groups? I swear I heard about that.

Anyway, be that as it may, the concept of governments and authorities abusing their powers or being incompetent and screwing up majorly to the expense of the common man, is apparently an alien idea to Ryan Thunder.

[General Zod]

Because that's totally legal and wouldn't require several levels of conspiracy to carry out.

I guess better intelligence is all that's preventing the CIA/FBI from becoming some kind of hilarious gestapo.

They're doing it in Russia with copyright laws already, and as Shroomy said Dubya was harassing any political group he didn't like and keeping non-sycophants out of his rallies. Combine a freedom of wiretapping with terrorist laws and it's incredibly easy to trump up the charges on any political group you wanted to quash. We have California officials paying themselves $800,000 a year and you want to tell me we shouldn't be worried about corruption? There's also my point about hackers exploiting this kind of backdoor that you seem oblivious about, but I guess identity theft isn't a concern for you.

[Ryan Thunder]

There's also my point about hackers exploiting this kind of backdoor that you seem oblivious about, but I guess identity theft isn't a concern for you.

You'll notice that I acknowledged earlier that it would be a bad idea anyway solely for that reason.

[General Zod]

There's also my point about hackers exploiting this kind of backdoor that you seem oblivious about, but I guess identity theft isn't a concern for you.

You'll notice that I acknowledged earlier that it would be a bad idea anyway solely for that reason.

I didn't really notice since I was too busy being incredulous that someone could be so naive as to think "If you have nothing to hide why are you worried" is a good justification of sweeping wiretap and search regulations.

[aerius]

We wouldn't be able to hide our personal things that nobody gives a shit about from certain people we'll never meet unless those personal things prove that we've done something dreadfully illegal. How awful and draconian!

Am I missing something here...?

If that's how you feel then you won't mind if I setup a full live streaming video camera system at your place and put the feed out on the net so everyone can watch you jack off in the shower and laugh at the size of your pecker. You got nothing to hide right? You also won't mind if I get a camera crew to stalk you around all day with a telephoto lens, cause hey, you ain't doing anything illegal are you?

[Uraniun235]

If that's how you feel then you won't mind if I setup a full live streaming video camera system at your place and put the feed out on the net so everyone can watch you jack off in the shower and laugh at the size of your pecker.

Man, customs and border agents are even more fucked up than I thought. No normal person wants to see a dude with a small dick jacking off in the shower.

[Shroom Man 777]

Once upon a time J. Edgar Hoover set up COINTELPRO to find out who were homosexuals, and to find any communist sympathies in civil rights groups and so ons and so forths. But of course, this is all behind America and this will never ever happen again. So who cares if wiretapping laws and privacy-invasion laws are rife? I am 100% sure that power abusing assholes will never ever come into power in the near or distant future of glorious Spartafreedomerica, and that even if they do, these precedents won't be used to fuck people over. Am i rite, Jack Ryan Thundors?

[Ryan Thunder]

If that's how you feel then you won't mind if I setup a full live streaming video camera system at your place and put the feed out on the net so everyone can watch you jack off in the shower and laugh at the size of your pecker. You got nothing to hide right? You also won't mind if I get a camera crew to stalk you around all day with a telephoto lens, cause hey, you ain't doing anything illegal are you?

Oh, cool, strawmen!

FBI/CIA/CSIS/RCMP looking for criminals under a warrant != absolute and invasive public access to your private shit for no purpose.

Of course, I suppose you're free to imagine that the two are somehow equivalent. I've seen people do sillier things.

[Shroom Man 777]

The logics is the same. If you've got nothing to hide, then why worry?

[Ryan Thunder]

The logics is the same. If you've got nothing to hide, then why worry?

Maybe if you want to create a false dilemma it is.

Hilariously, people do want to keep things from each other in their social circles. For instance, my conversations with my girlfriend are not for my moderately puritanical parents to hear. On the other hand we aren't doing illegal shit so I don't care if some jackass in the FBI pokes into MSN because we started talking about the war in Iraq or whatever and she said "bomb" like 50 times and she's not white. I'm never going to meet them. They're never going to meet us. They'd read it, find nothing and move on to whatever else they're supposed to be doing.

Of course now you'll probably attempt to equate hiding things from people in my social circle to hiding illegal shit from law enforcers. I can't wait to see what mental gymnastics you have in store for me.

[General Zod]

The logics is the same. If you've got nothing to hide, then why worry?

Maybe if you want to create a false dilemma it is.

Hilariously, people do want to keep things from each other in their social circles. For instance, my conversations with my girlfriend are not for my moderately puritanical parents to hear. On the other hand we aren't doing illegal shit so I don't care of some jackass in the FBI pokes into MSN because we started talking about the war in Iraq or whatever and she said "bomb" like 50 times and she's not white. I'm never going to meet him. He's never going to meet me. Or my girlfriend.

You know what other countries monitor their citizens online communications? China and Saudi Arabia. Requiring software developers to allow this kind of back door is a great way of enabling more oppressive laws in the future even if it isn't immediate.

[aerius]

Oh, cool, strawmen!

FBI/CIA/CSIS/RCMP looking for criminals under a warrant != absolute and invasive public access to your private shit for no purpose.

Do you know how long it'll take to break the "government only" backdoor? About as long as it took for hackers to break the Windows XP verification system so that everyone can pirate the damn thing. Or about as long as it took to break the copy protection on DVDs. Once that's done your online privacy is gone, period, and everyone will have access to your private shit if they feel like it.

Whenever you put a supposedly secure device in the hands of the user where it can be studied and taken apart at will, it will be compromised.

[HarrionGreyjoy]

Not to mention, any remotely intelligent criminal or terrorist organization would likely start using an additional layer of encryption (ie, encrypting the input before it goes into the email in the first place; probably using a variant of the current schemes that have the government all in a tizzy right now). Admittedly, there would still be a reasonable number that wouldn't, just as there are those who conduct their business regularly through - for example - Verizon cellular networks despite them being known to be compromised.

The difference is, Verizon's cellular phone system is not readily accessible to outside penetration, as far as I know; the first confirmed incidence I could find of them sharing access with the government was over a landline from their (hopefully secure) network to the federals' (hopefully secure) network. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/0 ... eblower-f/

Internet decryption, meanwhile, does not work that way.

edit: phrasing repeat in my first parenthetical

[Shroom Man 777]

The logics is the same. If you've got nothing to hide, then why worry?

Maybe if you want to create a false dilemma it is.

Hilariously, people do want to keep things from each other in their social circles. For instance, my conversations with my girlfriend are not for my moderately puritanical parents to hear. On the other hand we aren't doing illegal shit so I don't care if some jackass in the FBI pokes into MSN because we started talking about the war in Iraq or whatever and she said "bomb" like 50 times and she's not white. I'm never going to meet them. They're never going to meet us. They'd read it, find nothing and move on to whatever else they're supposed to be doing.

Of course now you'll probably attempt to equate hiding things from people in my social circle to hiding illegal shit from law enforcers. I can't wait to see what mental gymnastics you have in store for me.

The thought of maybe, just maybe, in the future the government may or may not end up becoming a bunch of shits who might end up abusing this unnecessary authority to fuck people over for doing things that aren't "illegal shit" today but might be illegal shit tomorrow, hasn't occurred to you? Just because the government may be all cool and rad and zing-it today, doesn't mean it'll be like that tomorrow.

Man. If only Nixon and CREEP had this, then there wouldn't even be a Watergate and we won't get any more stupid -gates in scandals. No more Ryangate Thundergates.

[Phantasee]

What if society changes (gasp!) and social norms and mores become more...puritanical? Now your past history of getting fucked in the ass by your strap-on wielding girlfriend is a liability, isn't it? Wouldn't you want to keep those sorts of things a secret? Or you sympathize with a political party today, only for it to turn into some sort of extremist party that gets banned for the good of society. Now your past political leanings could come back to haunt you, possibly costing you your chance at employment, or other nice things in life.

I mean, I don't know if you value your privacy or not, but if I was in your shoes I wouldn't want my private information to be accessible at all. I'd settle for making it as difficult as possible if that's the best I could do, and this policy is a step in the opposite direction.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That's because the United States is fucking insane. You put limits on what powerful people can do for good reason, but Jesus Christ...

Some of it yes. Others, not so much. Learn a bit about US history before you start flapping your fucking gums. Our government has a LOOOONG and proud history of ignoring the law and using its monopoly on force to crush political dissent and generally any group it did not like. The entire Nixon administration for example used the FBI internally like the Russians used the KGB. Spying on political dissidents, planting moles to foment violence etc. Imagine how easy it would be for a similar individual to target people for this sort of behavior through the use of mass warrantless wiretaps. Were you aware that we have those now? Yeah. Warrantless wiretaps. In fact, our government datamines most non-encrypted traffic anyway.

So all we need is one paranoid asshole who does not like free speech. It is not as if we have not had presidents before who flat out ignore the rulings of SCOTUS. Jackson, Bush 2...

[Shroom Man 777]

If you've got nothing to hide, then what's so bad about giving broad privacy-invasion powers that might be exploited in the future when things changes and the government may become draconian? You have nothing to worry if you have nothing to hide, its not like people actually abuse their broad powers in the real world, that only happens in other places and has never happened and will never ever happen again in America because... because... well, if they do, they'll be struck down by lightning and (ryan) thunder.

[Ryan Thunder]

The thought of maybe, just maybe, in the future the government may or may not end up becoming a bunch of shits who might end up abusing this unnecessary authority to fuck people over for doing things that aren't "illegal shit" today but might be illegal shit tomorrow, hasn't occurred to you? Just because the government may be all cool and rad and zing-it today, doesn't mean it'll be like that tomorrow.

That's like saying cops shouldn't have guns because one day they may be called on to use them to enforce a law you disagree with.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The thought of maybe, just maybe, in the future the government may or may not end up becoming a bunch of shits who might end up abusing this unnecessary authority to fuck people over for doing things that aren't "illegal shit" today but might be illegal shit tomorrow, hasn't occurred to you? Just because the government may be all cool and rad and zing-it today, doesn't mean it'll be like that tomorrow.

That's like saying cops shouldn't have guns because one day they may be called on to use them to enforce a law you disagree with.

No moron. it is like saying that there should be rules police must follow so that when they shoot someone they can be held accountable, and that laws should be passed with representatives so that when something goes wrong, it can be fixed.

What you are doing is saying "Oh we dont need rules for police, or rules prohibiting abuse of prisoners in a time of war. After all, police and soldiers are and always will be honorable individuals who will always act with pure intent"

When the reality is, we have literally thousands of years of government abuse of power, of wartime rape, and magistrate offices all over the world abusing the power invested in them. The emperor Augustus and Aurelias were good emperors... but they did not prevent Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Commodus.