New antiterrorism bill: your thoughts?

[Paul Victorey]

On the one hand, the bill allows LEAs to more conveniently wiretap, and the like. And, it will always require a court order, although it may require fewer court orders, and there is some funny stuff about allowing the LEAs to stretch a court order beyond its original bounds, which seems questionable.

But, it also allows use of the Carnivore email scanning program, which scans ALL email which passes through a server. So, in other words, with a court order to do surveillance upon one person, they gain the right to scan all email from any user of the target's ISP. So, they can (indirectly) conduct surveillance upon US citizens WITHOUT a court order.

Now, it's pretty obvious that email is not, and has never been, a secure medium for conversations, but any wiretapping of a US citizen without a court order is illegal, and a serious invasion of privacy.

Further, I question the ability of such a system to catch ANY real terrorists. Any terrorist organization that has any minimal level of funds could easily counteract this by simply providing their own POP3 and SMTP servers. It would cost about $1500 to set up, plus internet access. And, if the person doesn't use their ISP's mail servers, Carnivore will read only the legitimate users' mail.

This system might catch total amateurs, but any real terrorist organization can so easily circumvent this, it's hard to see why Carnivore can even be considered at all useful to LEAs, except as a way to get around the necessity of a court order. So, IMO anyhow, Carnivore is only useful as a loophole to illegally intercept messages, not as a legitimate way of stopping terrorism. Anyone with the resources to conduct a real terrorist activity has the resources to easily sidestep these measures. For goodness sakes, I'm a poor college student, and *I* have the resources to sidestep Carnivore, if I so chose. Anyone with DSL and a computer could sidestep Carnivore with relative ease.

So, what do people think about this? I basically see it as an intrusion on constitutional rights for no gain at all.

[Paul Victorey]

Fore much more information on the bills which will soon be law:

http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_7.10.shtml

Some of the things that this could mean, to you:

1) If they have reason to believe you have done something illegal, for example, broken copyright laws by downloading an MP3, they no longer need any kind of court order if your ISP agrees to allow them to put you under surveillance.

2) Under this authorized surveillance, they can monitor any and all internet activity of yours for as long as they want. They are no longer limited to only consider content that is relevant to a search warrant, nor are they limited by time.

Their argument is that the ISP retains all rights to do whatever it wishes with information travelling through it, and thus the 4th amendment
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"
is considered not applicable because the ISP is voluntarily turning over data.

3) The government would have increasing power to search your home or office WITHOUT informing you. They could seize items without your knowledge.

4) The government may not intercept the "content" of web pages, etc. that you view, but they CAN intercept the destination server, and perhaps the full URL -- the law is very nebulously defined as to what is "content" vs. "routing, addressing, or signalling". This is a tricky way that they use to get around the laws which required a court order to view your activities.

By expanding an aready nebulous law (one which allowed them to obtain records of phone numbers dialed without judicial review) into allowing them to obtain internet sites visited without judicial review is a huge leap. Knowing who someone called tells you nothing about the conversation they had -- knowing what site someone went to tells you a HUGE amount about what they did.

5) None of these law enforcement beef-ups are restricted to only cases where suspected terrorism is involved. This means that LEA in any criminal investigation can use these techniques, which in the past have all been illegal.

IMO, this bill is a HUGE violation of our rights to privacy, and, what's more, IT'S NOT GOING TO CATCH TERRORISTS. Anyone who spends a little time and effort could circumvent these laws. Any terrorist organization with at least a few thousand dollars in resources could do this EASILY. All they'd need to do would be set up a secure proxy server, and encrypt emails. It would cost next to nothing, they could keep their servers in any country they felt like, and every single extra measure that this bill provides would be worthless.

Bills like this frighten me. Yes, something needs to be done about terrorism, but a bill which has no practical usefulness in fighting terrorism, and which has significant possibility of being misused to violate Americans' rights to privacy, is not the answer, and never will be.

[SARGE]

They know they can't stop the cotton pickin' terrorists, but passing laws at a time when everyone's spooked and paranoid, is their way of showing the folks something is being done. We're fixing to find out how easily it is to be labeled a "terrorist". A few years ago, neighbor boy was shooting pellets into my yard, with kiddos close by. After I warned him twice, I threatened to break the gun over his head. His dad came over fuming and I told him the same. Brat was endangering my kids. Cops showed up and was fixing to charge me with making "terroristic threats". They didn't say Jack to neighbor with shootist son. Today, I'd go into the book as "suspect", and have e-mail read.

[OOPS!]

Paul, I definatly agree with you. I am begining to think I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists. At least I could protect myself from them. These "relaxed" servialence laws will not go away ever. Big Brother wants total control. And this is a good excuse to get more of it. You are right, any terrorist group isn't going to be hampered by any of these laws in the least. Lord, you don't even need a computer or encryption of any kind to defeat Carnivor. Just an old fashion pencil and paper.

People are forgetting that freedoms given up are not only hard to get back, but also damn expensive in blood to take back. I pray that people remember why this country was founded.

OOPS!

[bob]

SARGE don't do something that will get your e-mail monitored. That could lead them to me. :D :D :D

[Stubby]

You know Paul and Sarge, I don't know what scares me more; the terrorists or our government 'attempting' to stop terrorism. I personally feel that what they purpose will not stop a damn thing and only intrude on our privacy as US citizens. I guess it's like Sarge said, the American people are worried and this is one way that our government is showing it's 'resolve' to combat these terrorists and to put the American people at ease. To me, that's like putting a band-aid on a complete amputation, it's fruitless. Being ex-military, I think we are doing what needs to be done. Route the cowards from their holes and totally obliterate them while protecting the innocent victims of the Taliban regime!

[troysvihl]

On the one hand, the bill allows LEAs to more conveniently wiretap, and the like. And, it will always require a court order, although it may require fewer court orders, and there is some funny stuff about allowing the LEAs to stretch a court order beyond its original bounds, which seems questionable.

What makes the need for this even more questionable is the fact that it's fairly easy to get a court order under current laws. I think it was the year 1999 where the FBI wasn't turned down for a wiretap or search permit even once out of tens of thousands of requests.

Does anyone else think that the name "Home Land Defense Agency" sounds like something right out of a communist or facist country?

[Paul Victorey]

Sounded to me a lot like the "Ministry of Peace", aka minipax.

[mairving]

Yeah, I wonder how valuable the intelligence will be. Right now the NSA reportedly records every phone/radio conversation in the world. Then the software filters it by searching for keywords like 'terrorist' 'Bin Laden', etc. Of course, terrorists know this, so they don't use these words. If they scan the email, then they will only send coded messages which they do any way so what good will it be.

[Paul Victorey]

A lot of it also has to do with the fact that the CIA simply hasn't ever had to deal with this TYPE of intelligence gathering, and it's actually a lot harder to deal with.

The CIA was born in the Cold War, when our enemy was one single group, and very large. It's completely different trying to spy on a large enemy, who are caucasian, who conduct their business relatively openly, and whose troop movements are so large they're easy to see. In any direct, our army vs. yours - style confrontation, we'd easily win. This is the kind of war the CIA and army are best prepared for.

What we have NOT been prepared for are small, completely closed and mostly independant groups which use hit-and-run tactics.

It makes finding them, and eliminating them, especially difficult. Bin Laden runs one group himself, but allies and former members of his group run about 40 other terrorist groups. He's not even necessarily the worst of the terrorist leaders, although his resources makes his group more of a threat than others.

If our previous enemies have been like lions, trying to win by force, these terrorists are like roaches -- there's a lot of them, they can't all be killed with one fell swoop, there's no absolute chain of command, and they rarely show themselves. It will take an adjustment of tactics to be successful at this war -- you don't hunt a roach the way you hunt a lion.

[troysvihl]

Don't forget how the CIA has been demonized by the left over the last thirty years (especially in the 70's and early 80's) and have systematically deconstructed their personal intelligence network by eliminating the practice of paying people to spy for us.

[bob]

Time to look at a map. ;)

[troysvihl]

Check out this:

http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47518,00.html


This bill should be stopped. It's being passed so hastily and by people that are either purposely trying to cram crap like this into it or people that are acting with a hot-head and not thinking clearly.

[LoneWolf]

What we need to do is pressure our elected officials not to let these crazy bills pass. We should call, email, fax, write letters to, etc. our senators and congressmen and to the prez. We should also try writing to the Justice Dept. and tell them we don't want this. We should stand behind organizations who are against this, such as the ACLU and Libertarian Party.