Yet again; proposed internet monitoring

I thought they already monitor this? Anyway they will be catching only terrorists and hardcore hackers, right? So whats the problem?

Originally posted by Megaquad
I thought they already monitor this? Anyway they will be catching only terrorists and hardcore hackers, right? So whats the problem?

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I bet they've been doing it for years, but they are just saying this so they can go public.

Originally posted by W-_-W


I bet they've been doing it for years, but they are just saying this so they can go public.

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Or we are just a bit too paranoid

Let's let the government take away our last form of free communication.

If you want people watching your activity online, that's fine, but I don't. I think the government can find better things to use time and money for.

What's next? USE WINDOWS OR THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON!

Originally posted by dricci
Let's let the government take away our last form of free communication.

If you want people watching your activity online, that's fine, but I don't. I think the government can find better things to use time and money for.

What's next? USE WINDOWS OR THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON!

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Feel a bit melodramatic? Considering that most adequate hackers/comp geeks can trace, intercept and otherwise follow information on the internet, you don't feel concerned about that?

While I don't think that they want to "control" the internet, monitoring does you no harm if you are doing nothing illegal...

Honestly, nobody has anything to worry about if they're not doing anything illegal.

The government wants to monitor the Internet like they do the phone lines. They're only looking for keywords in text. A certain number of keywords combined in a paragraph will popup an alert.

Originally posted by pgwalsh
The government wants to monitor the Internet like they do the phone lines. They're only looking for keywords in text. A certain number of keywords combined in a paragraph will popup an alert.

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That's going to be a hard thing to do.

The words: Bin Laden, crash, aeroplane, kill, bush.

Could just be:
Person 1: I wonder how long until they catch that Bin Laden dude.
Person 2: Hey my grandmother was in a car crash!
Person 1: Was she killed?
Person 2: No, just a little shaken up, the other person was distracted by an aeroplane going over.
Person 1: Did she hit anything?
Person 2: Just a bush.

A little far-fetched, but not easy.

What makes the gov't think that terrorists communicating in this fashion wouldn't use a code of some sort...or that they'd even communicate in English for that matter?

*goes back to work at underfunded educational facility for foreign language instruction*

I saw a show a while ago detailing how the terrorists could stay without being detected using those digital monitoring programs. One way was, using a text editor to look at a jpeg and to view all the code that gets the picture to show up. Then you can add text in without effecting the image. This image can then be sent, and the receiver can open it in a similar program to reveal the message. They demonstrated this method and it seemed rather easy to do.

SCARY!

Originally posted by diorio
Honestly, nobody has anything to worry about if they're not doing anything illegal.

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What about privacy? I don't really want the government watching over my shoulder as I dredge the net for hardcore porn. What about when I research information on drugs i'm about to experiment with? Some activities are illegal even when they shouldn't be.

This is like granting the power of God over people's digital lifestyles. Internal Intelligence at this scale has never existed before; who knows how it will be wielded. If knowledge is power, then omniscience is omnipotence.

SCARY!

Re: SCARY!

Originally posted by Mblazened


What about privacy? I don't really want the government watching over my shoulder as I dredge the net for hardcore porn. What about when I research information on drugs i'm about to experiment with? Some activities are illegal even when they shouldn't be.

This is like granting the power of God over people's digital lifestyles. Internal Intelligence at this scale has never existed before; who knows how it will be wielded. If knowledge is power, then omniscience is omnipotence.

SCARY!

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The government doesn't care if you're into porn. They can't use that against you and why would they. Are participating in illegal activity against the US? However if you were into kiddy porn then I hope they do put you away.

Re: Re: SCARY!

Originally posted by Mblazened


What about privacy? I don't really want the government watching over my shoulder as I dredge the net for hardcore porn. What about when I research information on drugs i'm about to experiment with? Some activities are illegal even when they shouldn't be.

This is like granting the power of God over people's digital lifestyles. Internal Intelligence at this scale has never existed before; who knows how it will be wielded. If knowledge is power, then omniscience is omnipotence.

SCARY!

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Well you see the goverment likes to know what your doing every day. Did you have a bad day? Maybe a good day, did he give exact change or not enough.
Is he a good person?
Does he like to look at pron when he is mad or happy, does he have friends, is he single, married, kids?
This is all one big system.
Ah, some of you might remember I said i was being personally taped, well I still am and it seems I have a 'yellow flag' on me which means any gov't office should stop me if I have more than a wallet on me.

Originally posted by pgwalsh

The government doesn't care if you're into porn. They can't use that against you and why would they. Are participating in illegal activity against the US? However if you were into kiddy porn then I hope they do put you away.

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Anyways... This means they can Monitor you, I don't belive they can use it in a Case Against you, they need warents and maybe hard proof.
Besides, WHO WATCHING KIDDY PORN.
[Warning The Dept. Of Homeland security is now monitoring this Topic]

If this happens I am going to go walk down to the capitol and throw my own poop @ senators.

I wonder if I would make the evening news? ;-)

Anyone who thinks internet monitoring is a good idea should read 1984, because you obviously haven't yet.

Originally posted by alex_ant
Anyone who thinks internet monitoring is a good idea should read 1984, because you obviously haven't yet.

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I really should read that book! I hear so much about it, but have never read it. Sounds a bit like Minority Report.

Well, if you have nothing to hide then the government can watch all they want and you will have no way of knowing it, but the fact that they would be watching everything and you would have knowledge of it poses some serious moral issues. Just imagine sending IM's to your girlfriend and having some guy hunched over a computer watching everything you say. There would be nothing to stop him from watching your love-infused conversation stream by on his screen. He would be legally there to watch everything on the internet, in search of suspicious activities, but as someone mentioned (sorry, i didn't remember who you were and didn't want to lose everything I had written) terrorists could post a picture of their favorite car in that post and encode secret messages to their fellow evil-doers. Would someone monitoring the router that it passed through suspect that there was anything going on. I think not. There are so many Jpeg images on the internet that the government could never possibly monitor all of the image traffic for suspicious coding. Unless we have elected some very strange congressmen, I believe that the opinion of the general public will be to turn down this proposal, and that the congressman should support the views of the public and turn down this proposal.

Thats My 2¢

In addition to my last post...what happened to the "less government in our lives" that GWB peddled in his campaign. If this were to go through this would be a major breach of his "Philosophy."

Originally posted by zarathustra
monitoring does you no harm if you are doing nothing illegal...

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That's a very idealistic point of view.

If I'm doing nothing illegal they have no reason to be watching me. They're watching me because they're assuming I'm going to be breakign the law. I'm guilty already, all they need is evidence. Is this what a government is suppossed to do?

its actually called carnivore. and its not powerful enough to scan the ENTIRE internet. TIA will try to accopmlish this.

you may not be looking at kiddy porn or downloading warez, but what if you're badmouthing Bush or the gov't in general? Bush himself said "Dissent is treason." So if somebody talks bad about him, they could be tried for treason doesnt that BOTHER you??

i hope you all remember what ari fleischer had to say

"watch what you say"

Who says you have to be doing something illegal for it to be private? I don't want the government to be watching me no matter what I'm doing. Next they'll have camera's in our bathrooms (didn't you guys see the Daily Show the other day?). Maybe we're being paranoid, but this how it starts. Pretty soon you have a police state where even the innocent are not safe.

And it's not "the government". It's a bunch of people working for the government. Do you trust some strange person watching you, judging you? Monitoring what you do? If you don't care, think about it for a second. You might start to realize how creepy it is (unless your voyeuristic or something).

Then they're telling you what to do, how to do it, how to think, what to believe. Don't think it could happen? Anyone heard of Iraq? Anyone notice when someone is accused of something in this country, especially if it's broadcast on the news, they're automatically assumed guilty. People believe what they hear. Read 1984. It's a pretty scary thing, but mostly because of how easily it could happen.

Anyone heard of Nazi Germany?

America is supposed to be about freedom. Innocence before being proven guilty. It doesn't always work, but "give me liberty, or give me death". When we start to give up our freedoms for our safety, we really begin to lose sight of what this country suposed to be all about. People should be more p*ssed about this.

Besides, I prefer KITTY porn:

Originally posted by Megaquad
I thought they already monitor this? Anyway they will be catching only terrorists and hardcore hackers, right? So whats the problem?

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If Bush said "Dissent is treason," and you didn't agree with his tactics, where is the line drawn between free speech and dissent? Solvs is right in saying "this is how it starts." Change doesn't occur in miles, it starts in inches. You give up one, and another, until you've headed over a mile. Monitoring me is an invasion of privacy, whether I'm doing something illegal or not, because my life is my business, not theirs. Monitoring assumes that I have done something of suspicion. I thought we were all innocent until proven guilty.

Originally posted by OutThere761
In addition to my last post...what happened to the "less government in our lives" that GWB peddled in his campaign. If this were to go through this would be a major breach of his "Philosophy."

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Honeyed words said during a campaign are no promise that the leader will stick to them. Unfortunately.

Originally posted by dricci
I think the government can find better things to use time and money for.

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Agreed.

principiis obsta