How long until Knowledge is illegal?

The US goverment is tapping your compuer, Elvis is alive and well and living on Mars and Lord Lucan just nipped out for a bag of sugar. I have heard this rumour in lots of variations over a number of years. They were all urban myths.

No one can blame the American phyce for its paranoid streak. Let's face it, you boys have been lied to often enough by sucessive goverments, but to suggest that the Internet is in some way 'bugged' by CIA, NSA or which-ever flavour of paranoia-driven Boogey-man you prefer, is in reality absurd.

Ceratinly if either agency were as well funded or organised as the civilian population like to believe then the intelligence community should have forseen the tragic events of 9/11. But the decimation of American HUMINT assets in the 1970's has left these agencies lacking in both regards.

_NO-ONE_ can view your data in real time off the internet. It's like listening for a pin fall in a thunder storm. There is just too much data. Lets say for the sake of argument however we managed to get a packet sniffer on to a box high enough up the heirarchy of ISP's to actually get some good data (without hundreds of private and commercial IDS systems lighting up like christmas trees). Rather than watch the data in real time we could TCPDUMP the data to a file. Does anyone here realise how /much/ data is recorded? I tried it once and a filled 20 gig HDD in under an hour. And these are compressed binary files so probaly multiply the data footprint by 10 to get anything that you could grep.

So sifting through this information would a mamouth task. And you would have to have specific information to look for or else you might as well not bother. So ask yourself - if you, the individual, are doing nothing wrong, why would the goverment go to all the trouble?

This is the reason why most minor transgressions on the Internet (including those of copyright) are ignored. They don't make a loud enough bang against the background din to get noticed. It is only when you do something really, really stupid like a DoS attack or other kiddie scripting stuff that you come to the attention of the authorites.

Tracing the individual is, as I have suggested, very difficult. But rest assured that if you do something bad enough then it will become very difficult to hide from the scrutiny of a nation state with the power of the United States. They have the resources to go through server logs until they find you. But tough **** - you knew the risks. You made a concious decision to use your knowlede in a specific way. You could have chosen to make things rather than break things. The same knowledge could have been used to do either. So we are not talking here about the sanction of knowlede or information, just the abuse of that knowlede. It is, after all, people who kill people. Guns cannot be blamed for their misuse and neither can knowledge.

So if you break the rules you might get caught. But in the light of the events of 9/11 is that a bad thing? We're not talking about Orwell here. /Every/ society reserves a right of sanction against individuals who step outside the boundaries of what that particular civilistation regards as civilised. I would contest that the Internet can be no different. And whilst I read here a great deal about the constitutional freedoms afforded you, we should remember that with all such freedoms there is a price tag of responsibility. If you use your knowledge irresponsibly or abuse the power that you have (because, after all, in this society knowledge /is/ power) then you would face sanction from even the most liberal of goverments (which let's face it your isn't).

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by ntsa
The US goverment is tapping your compuer, Elvis is alive and well and living on Mars and Lord Lucan just nipped out for a bag of sugar. I have heard this rumour in lots of variations over a number of years. They were all urban myths.

---

Not true ... Elvis is alive and well, him and Lord Lucan are living in their lovenest in San Francisco. (I know Shergar told me) :D

My 2p worth ...

There seems to be a case for not trusting your government, IMHO ours is run by the rich, largely for the rich... But I can change that, I can stand for parliament, put over a good case, and maybe win a seat. ::: coughbullshitcough ::: Party politics is a great way to stop this happening, you don't keep your party happy, you're de-selected, you get de-selected you're out at the next election. It also looks to me like all of the parties are the same, so what choice do I really have???

Currently our great leader spends far too much time kissing arse, and running round trying to screw up world politics (In this league he's a lightweight) If our press/people complain they are villified as being terrorists, knockers or subversive.

Govt services, private contracts, etc, etc, etc are given out to the people who bunged the party the most cash at the last election, if someone's caught they close ranks.

but enough of my anti govt garbage, for the purposes of my point i will assume they are well meaning idiots.

Are they bugging my computer??? I think there is a time when this will happen (If it's not now) and it's not the fact that this might be the case that scares me, it's the fact that there is no control over how this is done that worries me the most.

MI5, MI6, CIA, NSA, Stazi, KGB, or whatever, are/were all autonomous organisations that have been tasked with protecting their countries from harm, either internally or externally. How much control do we have over these organisations, NONE! so we can rely on on our elected leaders to do this! errrrrrrrrrrm NOPE. the press??? Guess again. I know i've heard our leaders on TV saying "we know this from intelligence sources and I will not discuss intelligence" I suspect it's because he doesn't know, so I normally end up screaming at my TV "JUST ****ING TELL ME" (yeah I know debating with a TV is weird) :-P

So what are we left with, to protect us from abuses by these people. the judiciary ?? well i have an example http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/24477.html here we see some (admittedly sketchy) evidence of the Australian security forces trying to get a possible electronic keylogger to hide the fact that it was ever there (Why???). So it'll come out in court ... Errrrm also not for definate. Recently there have been a handful of court cases where the offender was convicted partially due to interception of key strokes, some of these were held in a closed session so the jury never saw how the evidence was collected, it was just placed there, and they were told to accept it. IMO this is not democratic.

I know there are flaws in my argument, and the reasearch is not brilliant but it's my 2 cents worth.

I also accept that i might be full of ****

Regards

Of course there is distrust of the American government by its citizens. The laws that are passed are done so behind closed doors and laws such as the ignorant RIAA friendly ones are passed in the dead of night when no one is watching. Congress is now full of shady, self serving arses. Who would trust them? They have forgotten what PUBLIC SERVANT means.
I work for the government and all I can say is DCS1000 a.k.a. Carnivore, Eschelon and most insidious D.I.R.T. Do the research and come back and chat.
I am far from paranoid but the US initially created the Internet in the 1960's.
It was called the ARPANet then. It was a network designed to keep the universities, research labs, and military connected after the bomb. Since it was decentralizied and there is no way to turn it off it would survive for those who survived. Trust me the US government has keys fpr keys you would never think to ask or look for. But since the "cracker|hacker|IT professional" came on the scene it became that much harder to eavesdrop on people. We would modify our OSes and machines so they were nonstandard. We would fortify our machines so that encryption and FIREWALLs and routers could and do deny nonauthorized users. Think the govenment is so innocent? Why was the PGP founder arrested a few years ago? What about the Clipper chip debacle of a few years ago? What happened with Adobe and the Russian? Dimitrov (I believe...) did nothing but show Adobe how weak their copyright protection was. He was FLUNG in jail faster that a broadband connection. NO BAIL. He IS NOT a US citizen. Why was DeCSS such a big deal? I think it is cool. I DARE you to publish the source code. See what happens to you.

???.........,,,,,,,,,,!!!!!::::;;;.... <--- all the punctuation i left out of my last post.

sorry for the reading issues you might have had

These points are all, I feel sure, valid and in the case of 'bofhandpfy', quite amusing aswell (!!;;,, - very good ;). Sorry to hear about the redundancy :( I'm sure a sexy, well educated gent such as yourself will have no problems in finding an alternate position. I hear the Labour Party are looking for socialists. Or if you can do real joined up handwriting then you have a good shot at being a trade union leader.

But I degress.

The point is that in each of your examples evidence was found to /support/ a conviction - ie the accused had actually been guilty of an abuse of their knowledge (I'm talking specifically about hackers here - and I don't mean my sort of hacker either - I'm refering to Black Hats and Kiddie Scripters).

Now if the authorities already suspect an individual then the use of a key logger is in effect no different from any other type of ELINT in that is has a focussed target. Is it a bad thing that the authorites use every means at their disposal to track suspected criminals/terrorists? Not really. And remember, key logging is up close and personal. You have to suspect someone to know which keyboard to log.

My point was that because of the volume of data involved - and we are talking here specifically about the govt tapping into the Internet datastream - there has to be a /target/ for any such ELINT. If you break the laws of the online society then you become such a target.


Oh and for accuracy - the ARPANET was actually derived from a version of Berkley BSD sockets developed by Berkley University in the late 50's. Yes, CIA were involved, but at the time this wasn't so unusual because in those days CIA had the money to hire all the rocket scientists. Plus it was a government funded project.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by zigar
to be honest i've never quite understood the american obsession/distrust/fear of government. On one hand, american democracy is held up to the world as a model that countries should strive to emulate...and on the other hand...there's this complete distrust (warranted or not)...

i'm not saying one should trust the gov't (and probably shouldn't)...just that it's a strange circumstance...

to me, it comes down to one thing that is truth for all democracies...and especially rings true in the US, is that there are an awful lot of people who are up in arms about what gov't is "doing" to them..and yet most don't take the time to vote...what was the turn out in the last presidentials ...30%?...seems to me that something like 100 million people didn't vote...i've always been of the opinion that if you don't vote you don't have a right to complain...

as my ex-hippy american wife says...you want to change the system...you gotta be involved...

http://www.eff.org/
http://www.efc.ca/
http://www.pff.org/
http://insight.mcmaster.ca/org/efc/p...le/censor.html
http://www.oneworld.org/internatpen/
http://www.pencanada.ca/
http://www.hrw.org/
http://www.pfaw.org/
http://www.aclu.org/
http://www.cdt.org/index.html

and many more....

volunteer some time..make a donation...write a letter...

---

i'm with this person.

but, i do not see how things like knowledge could get anyone in trouble.

thruout the years, i've seen two things
ONE:
idiots, just using this knowledge as morons.
TWO:
people actually trying to take this knowledge.. and do something with it.

Hacking is knowledge, i'd say. Its like the more you know, the more you can share. Hacking is security, take wut you know, turn it around and bam! you got a new secure server.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by ntsa
These points are all, I feel sure, valid and in the case of 'bofhandpfy', quite amusing aswell (!!;;,, - very good ;). Sorry to hear about the redundancy :( I'm sure a sexy, well educated gent such as yourself will have no problems in finding an alternate position. I hear the Labour Party are looking for socialists. Or if you can do real joined up handwriting then you have a good shot at being a trade union leader.

---

At risk of starting a UK love-in, 1000 X positive antipoints for you. not sure about the TU thing tho.

Love in?? Well if that's your thing then I'm sure the Tories have vacancies. ;) And if you /can't/ do real joined up writing then might I interest you in a postion in local government? lol.

Apologies to our colonial cousins for the copious Anglo-in-joking (I think I made that word up. If so I have dibs).

Back on topic tho - I agree with fr0z3n (cReW?). It is not the knowledge that is the issue here but the misue of that knowledge.

An example. I recently wrote a command line telnet style WSH script. (TCPUtil - see www.adminscript.net on the experts choice page ;)) Having written the code for this perfectly legitimate application I could have changed (literally) a couple of lines and I would have been a very handy little hacking tool.

It's not the knowledge. It's the application thereof.

_/CORRECTION/_

Sorry - the link in my last post should have read (for anyone who was actually interested) - www.adminscripts.net (note the plural of scripts)

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by Mankan


Heh. Everytime I get into a discussion of freedom the americans bring their gun control.
I'm having a really hard time understanding this because what's libertarian bullshit to me is a constitutional right for you.

I don't understand why you'd wanna carry a gun or why you should be allowed to. In Sweden very few guards with special training, the police and the armed forces are allowed to carry a gun. Nobody else. In Sweden it takes over a year to get a licence for a pistol and it's almost impossible to get one for an automatic rifle. Why? Because these aren't guns for sport or hunting, but for killing people.

---

I'm not arguing if most people should be allowed to carry guns... they shouldn't... as my father used to say, there are a lot of people in this world who "couldn't pour p*ss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the bottom of the heal" - you think I'd trust them with a gun?!? My main point is that a "freedom" is/was/has been that it is "legal" for people to carry guns in this country (within a few stipulations, sure)... now, the government has decided that, because of the mass stupidity of people, it's ok to take away that right from the overall population instead of just penalizing the idiots out there. This doesn't affect criminals, it only affects so-called "honest" people.

On a separate topic, however, I'd also argue that it should be much tougher to get a gun than just having a clean past and the money to do so... much as having a driver's license, the training and tests involved should be much more difficult and time consuming than they are (if you can even call them that).

You wanted an example where the government is limiting personal freedoms... I still think gun control is one such example, be it a reasonable thought or not... I'm sure there are other similiar examples - reception of particular radio waves, perhaps.

Quote:

---

The thing with gun control is, I belive, that it stops alot of people from getting into bad business in the first place. I can understand the argument that since every criminal owns a gun you should be allowed one too, to defend yourself. But the day you get burgled and they steal your gun, your gun is next gun in a criminal hand. The day you loose your job, get pissed and decide to blow your wife's brains out I thnk gun control makes a difference.

---

Technically, gun control wouldn't exactly solve this problem... you'd just know who did it or where the gun originally came from... a step to better solving the burglarization problem, at least, would be for guns to be able to "recognize" their owners through hand prints or whatever else (though that brings up problems with sweaty palms in a tense situation, the possible black market for "changing" that identification inside the gun, etc).

Quote:

---

I know there have been times in my life when, If I had carried a gun, I would've used it and I would've regretted it for the rest of my life.

---

I am sorry to hear that... I truly am... and, in a way, can indentify with it.

Quote:

---

Also, I think gun control is a political issue that can be lobbied against, protested against, worked on or changed. This is something that you as a voter, or as a politician can change.
I ask you once again, give me an example of freedom taken away from you.

I appologize if I appear narrow minded or ignorant, the thing with guns is a cultural difference that is hard for me to get over.

Cheers,

---

Well, going down the "you can vote it out of / in to the system" is yet another can of worms... personally, I think most votes count for naught when the trend there isn't common sense and/or thinking for oneself, it's being a sheep and doing "what's popular" (a good example of how Clinton originally got in to office, for example). As I've said in the past, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

(And no, not narrow minded by any means... I can understand the cultural biases here, too; and, to me, they serve as complete other valid perspective on an already complex issue...)