How do you feel about being monitored on line?

This may seem like stupid question to as in a forum such as this where civil liberties are high on the agenda. I also know that in the US you are far more vocal on the subject than people in the UK.

In an ideal world I would prefer that people did not monitor my traffic. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world and people do evil things like fly into the side of buildings and kill thousands of people, molest children etc.

Crime is getting ever more sophisticated and I am aware that encryption is readily available and things can be hidden within jpg images etc. Nevertheless, I feel in order to stand a chance of controlling these hideous crimes some sort of monitoring facility has to be available.

Is it to much to ask for an impairment on your civil liberties in order to even slightly reduce suffering. If even if it stops the abuse of one little girl doesn’t that justify the entire project.

If the answer is no then you are a very selfish person. If you are that person who gets in the way because of a selfish obsession with privacy then I hope you can do it with a clear conscious.

This does not mean that I approve of a floodgate approach. I mean proper regulated monitoring where a regulatory body can go back and check what the agencies have been doing.

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Originally posted by S_Tsirtonis
This may seem like stupid question to as in a forum such as has to be available.

Is it to much to ask for an impairment on your civil liberties in order to even slightly reduce suffering. If even if it stops the abuse of one little girl doesn’t that justify the entire project.

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Yes, I believe it is too much to ask. Im all for putting criminals away and ending suffering just as much as the next guy but I fail to see how reading my personal email and monitoring my Internet activity is going to achieve this.


Sure, you could argue that if Im innocent and guilt free then what do I have to worry about? But who decides if Im a criminal or not?

Does reading the anarchist cookbook thread on this very site make me a criminal? Will I be monitored now?


I think laws like this will see an INCREASE in terrorist activity. How? Well the US is already full of malita groups etc etc and then denying people their privacy is just going to antagonise these people further. They already feel victimised by their Government and I fail to see how removing peoples right to privacy will rectify the situation.


Anyway, thats just my opinion and everyone is entitled to their own.......for now!


And remeber.......only the paranoid survive!!!

For the most part, I have no problem with being monitored by a government. My government (Canada), however, doesn't think the Internet is worth monitoring. They don't spend enough on it.

Now that said, is it an invasion of privacy? I think not. It's quite accepted that the Internet is a public place. Anyone can listen. Anyone can monitor for words, phrases, etc. We only know of what the US Government has done with Carnivore because the public was told about it.


What about agencies that aren't as forthcoming? What about crime organizations? Do you think they are using Carnivore-like applications to listen in on the Net? I'd say yes.

The reality is that if we want a safe and sane internet (something as a woman I'd like to see.. being asked if I do "cybering" every time I log onto IRC is just a tad irritating) we have to give a little to get the protection we need. I would like to see a regulatory body for the Internet. It is becoming very much a part of our regular lives, far more so than I think most people realize.

Right now, it is not regulated beyond what the impositions the ISPs put on you and, if you are lucky, what local laws, if any, exist in regards to what people can and cannot do.

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Originally posted by MsMittens
I would like to see a regulatory body for the Internet. It is becoming very much a part of our regular lives, far more so than I think most people realize.

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You'd like to see the 'net regulated!? In my opinion thats one of the most offensive things I've heard. It's like saying "you can't look after yourself and you can't make decisions on whats appropriate to view so we'll make them for you"


This is the last fontier so to speak and the last thing I want is someone "regulating" what i can and can't do whilst on the 'net....

Maybe regulatory body is the wrong word. I suppose I want to see somewhere that if I have an issue like fraud or something, there is someone I can take it to. The biggest problem in dealing with issues like that is that local police/governments can only go so far. Which means that those that are "out of the reach of the long arm of the law" will never get punished.

I'm not talking about doing an inch-by-inch monitoring of every packet. No organization could monitor that. But honestly, I'm tired of being harassed by guys (who don't understand no for an answer even if I do put them on ignore and oppers who won't do anything if I complain) as well as tired of getting spam (my government has NO laws about spam). If I didn't sign up for it why am I getting it, especially porn spam and child porn spam?

On one hand, I can hardly say that MsMittens isn't right with her opinion of a sort of regulatory body, but on the other hand, the mere thought of it scares me shitless. Why, I hear you wondering? Well, such a body would change the internet completely. Forget the underground sites, throw away vulnerability DB's ( one can never know, these things could be dangerous for the structure and order of the Net, what if someone ould actually try one of those vulnerabilities out?), and last but not least, forget your privacy.

I oppose, although the idea contains some very true and good points.

But I love my privacy. And will be ready to defend it.

Grtz,

The arguments to this point are more constructive than I was expecting.

Yes I can see how you would wish to defend your privacy, Information on your web usage, is already stored and can be handed to the authorities on demand (in the UK). This can be justified for billing and all manor of things, it is generally gathered as Radius Logs. There is no reason why this can’t be done for emails, it will just look like a phone bill.

You are one of many millions of people talking over the net so why do you feel your communications will draw attention? I feel that I can trust the UK government to respect my privacy.

Let me give you a good example of what can be done.

The prime place for illegal activity to take place is on news groups.

What if it was legal to record every single transaction on a news group server, if an illegal group is formed why not see who is downloading/uploading illegal material and focus investigations on those people.

The technology is available to do that and I feel the advantages far out way the disadvantages.

I can say the same for chat rooms, record everything that happens on a chat room server. There was a case in the UK where a you girl had arranged to meet an older man on line. There was no trace of what had been agreed, I do not recall what happened but I don’t believe the outcome was positive.

Imagine how much that would increase the survival chances of that individual if you know where they had agreed to meet, tied up with the identity of the individual via the Radius logs from the ISP.

This subject is serious; saving lives is not a game.

Well, I can see that you have a point here. Indeed there isn't a thing I would want to hide deliberatly, but think different. Let's say one of the investigators has a malicious nature. It's possible, after all we're all human. This person could do great harm to alot of people, he could even "invent" crimes and let them happen, frame someone he doesn't like, and get promoted because of his excellent prestations. He could gain power and money on cost of innocents. This is a thing which is quite difficult to achieve for an individual in today's situation. If such a body would see the light, there will be people with power on the Net, and if there's one thing which isn't good for people, it's power.
To conclude: I don't even want to begin thinking of what could happen if individuals, cops or otherwise, get real power on the Net. It scares me big time.

Grtz,

Ok lets drop in some assumptions.

Your primary fear is of abuse of power, how would that be achieved.

In an unmanaged environment lets say the various agencies have a national network in place where from a single location they can assign capture filters on a whim. Then you would have the potential to easily conduct a malicious campaign against an individual or group.

However if the system was well managed with the ability to audit peoples actions, if there was no secrecy involved in the system in place and it worked, then would that still cause you the same degree of concern?

The internet is a powerful infrastructure where there is a potential for great harm, if we can’t trust our respective governments to try and control crime over the internet then it is quite a sorry state of affairs. What do you expect them to do, say ok every man for himself, free for all. Go ahead, place instructions for developing biochem weaponry, it’s the internet I don’t mind. Go hack into a system, get people personal details and publish them. After all everybody should be able to defend themselves on line.

That is not the case. As in every environment steps have to be taken to control the militants of our world. It is unfortunate that we have to for fit some of our civil liberties for the greater good.

Ok, let's turn this on it's head a little bit.
The main concern here seems to be the use of the internet by "criminals".
How many "criminals" do you think use mobile telephones?
Do you think it's a coincidence that the sale, in the UK, of the pre-paid non-traceable mobile phones has gone through the roof over the past couple of years?
No it's down the the fact they they are one of the best tools for the budding crime lord to use.
GSM digital encryption prevents the casual evesdropper from hearing the calls palace on the network. The fact that you can buy the handsets from a petrol station forcort with out having to produce any ID or have a billing address makes the users untraceable.
OK, the point I'm trying to make here is - Would you want the secret service or whoever to monitor every mobile telephone conversation, including yours and mine, just incase it picks up a conversation about a big crack deal?