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Technical Risks of the US Protect America Act
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 29, 2008 02:48 PM
from the holes-and-sherman-tanks dept.
from the holes-and-sherman-tanks dept.
A group of respected security researchers has released a paper on the security holes that would be opened up if a broad warrantless wiretapping law is passed. The subject could hardly be more timely, as Congress is debating the subject now. Steve Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Whit Diffie, Susan Landau, Peter Neumann, and Jennifer Rexford have released a preprint of Risking Communications Security: Potential Hazards of the Protect America Act (PDF), which will appear in the January/February 2008 issue of IEEE Security and Privacy. It will hit the stands in a few weeks. From Matt Blaze's blog posting: "As someone who began his professional carrier in the Bell System (and who stayed around through several of its successors), the push for telco immunity represents an especially bitter disillusionment for me. Say what you will about the old Phone Company, but respect for customer privacy was once a deeply rooted point of pride in the corporate ethos. There was no faster way to be fired (or worse) than to snoop into call records or facilitate illegal wiretaps, well intentioned or not. And it was genuinely part of the culture; we believed in it, even those of us ordinarily disposed toward a skeptical view of the official company line. Now it all seems like just another bit of cynical, focus-group-tested PR."
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Politics: Telco Immunity Goes To Full Debate 154 comments
Dr. Eggman notes an Ars Technica analysis of the firefight that is the current Congressional debate over granting retrospective immunity to telecoms that helped the NSA spy on citizens without warrants. A Republican cloture motion, which would have blocked any further attempts to remove the retroactive immunity provision, has failed. This controversial portion of the Senate intelligence committee surveillance bill may now be examined in full debate. At the same time, a second cloture motion — filed by Congressional Democrats in an effort to force immediate vote on a 30 day extension to the Protect America Act — also failed to pass. The Protect America Act has been criticized for broadly expanding federal surveillance powers while diminishing judicial oversight. While the failure of this second cloture motion means the Protect America Act might expire, a vote tomorrow on a similar motion in the House will likely bring the issue back into the Senate in time. It seems, according to the article, that both parties feel that imminent expiration of the Protect America Act is a disaster for intelligence gathering, and each side blames the other as progress grinds to a halt."
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Call your senators (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Call your senators (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly hope this scenario is incorrect, but that is the impression I got from that little conversation.
Parent
Re:Call your senators (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
spot on (Score:4, Interesting)
heck I've written our 'good' senator Schumer a number of times on big issues and all you ever get back is a form letter written by an office intern, no big deal there but you have to know he never reads any of those emails, they get read by the same intern and if you're lucky he summarizes a few of them to his boss later.
Parent
Re:Call your senators (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Call your senators (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. We have always been at war with Eastasia. It used to be called something else, though.
Re:Call your senators (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone complains about "the congress", and yet, everyone keeps re-electing the same scumbags back into it!
"Oh, no!" they say, "_my_ congressperson is doing a fine job! It's everyone _else's_ that's a problem!" Which really means "My guy brings the pork home, and that's good; but yours brings YOUR pork home, and that's bad!" And with the way the rules in congress works, a junior member has a lot less pull to bring that pork home; so 90% of the time, the incumbant wins.
Or they say "I would, except, $MY_PARTY keeps putting up the same choice for re-election, and I'm certainly not going to vote for $OTHER_PARTY," which is an appeal to how poorly the First Past the Post method of adjudicating elections works. With any more-robust voting method, parties could run multiple candidates without risks of spliting the vote and losing, or, *gasp*, third-party candidates could have a real chance, without acting as spoilers (damn you Ralph Nader!)
But again, that's just pointing out the problems. How do you fix the bylaws in congress, when those who benefit from them are the only ones with the power to change them? How do you change voting practices when all the lawmakers in power owe their position to the current method?
All I can think of, is start at the bottom. You can't change the nation before you change your state, and you can't change your state before you change your town. So, in order to fix the US Congress by, oh, 2020, run for town council today.
Parent
Re:Call your senators (Score:4, Insightful)
I've done this with my entire legislative delegation (congressman and 2 senators) at some point or another, and my results are at least as decent as calling or emailing: My congressman actually did what I asked him to do, which was to impeach Dick Cheney first.
Parent
Re:Call your senators (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really, so I can't take a typical politician in general and compare his campaign promises to his actions in office and find blatant inconsistencies that most reasonable people would believe indicate lies? Last time I looked it into, I was able to do just that. Maybe there's a new breed of politician out there I'm not aware of that has suddenly infiltrated the mainstream. I understand there are exceptions to this, but the last time
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Call your senators (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Police State Coming (Score:5, Insightful)
First the Patriot Act - no more do you have show probable cause and get a search warrant. The enforcement branch is now unfettered by little things like the Bill of Rights.
Second the Emergency Powers Act - this allows martial law to be declared and turns the President into a military dictator if there's "catastrophic emergency" but utterly and complete fails to define what qualifies as a "catastrophic emergency"
Third is this - Now they have the unlimited ability to spy on the average citizen.
Am I seriously the only one who sees a pattern in all of this? Shall I start citing historical examples? Wake up people!!!
2 cents,
QueenB
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Edmund Burke Updated (Score:5, Funny)
As a bonus, pass a law giving evil men immunity.
Re:Edmund Burke Updated (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
I don't think it'll help (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you Matt Blaze (Score:3, Insightful)
The U.S. government is very corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. government has become extremely corrupt. One method is the one mentioned, testing for weaknesses in public understanding, or willingness to act, and exploiting those weaknesses.
Here are others:
Making sure that honest, public-minded leaders from both parties are defeated.
Giving bills in Congress misleading names, like "Protect America".
Giving bills misleading features and widely publicizing the misleading features. For example, the "economic stimulus" bill only causes the government, which is deeply in debt [futurepower.org], to print more money. That will make the value of the dollar go down even further. The "economic stimulus" bill also contains provisions to funnel money to banks. The banks apparently deliberately created the mortgage finance crisis doing so was profitable, and because banks were sure that the U.S. government would pass a bill to lessen the losses.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The U.S. government is very corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
More recent information about U.S. government debt (Score:4, Informative)
U.S. Government Debt Graph (2007 Budget data) [zfacts.com] (Good for a quick view.)
U.S. Government Debt Clock [brillig.com]
U.S. Government Debt [zfacts.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Welcome to the 1800's.
MMMMMM (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave,
o'er the Land of the Free,
Or the home of the SLAVE......
Re:MMMMMM (Score:5, Insightful)
Where at least I know I'm free
As long as I follow the party line
And carry my ID...
(With apologies to Mr. Greenwood)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I want this passed. Then... (Score:4, Funny)
Everything from making dentist appointments to arranging for private meetings.
Live streaming if possible.
Re: (Score:2)
I doni't think people should be laughing (Score:2)
By creating a monitoring system, the US corru^H^H^H^H^Hgovernment legistlators will create the means necessary for other governments, nefarious organizations, and plain old criminals to listen to your phone calls, monitor your emails, track your Internet usage.
If there is a way, there will be a will... trust me on that.
On the bright side, forget archiving
In typical slashdot fashion... (Score:5, Funny)
In typical slashdot fashion, I have not taken the time to read the whole bill. I have not even read a summary of it. However, having read the title, I can say that I, living in America, support this whole concept of "protecting America." Go on Congress, allocate the funds for some more tanks or something, I'm behind you!
In typical congressional fashion... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I is a congressperson? Yippe! I get hot wife like Kucinich [did] with job?
Re:In typical congressional fashion... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Actually, its... (Score:2, Insightful)
Spin on name of Protect America Act (Score:2, Insightful)
"The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control."
I don't like the acronym (Score:4, Funny)
Hoover, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no faster way to be fired (or worse) than to snoop into call records or facilitate illegal wiretaps, well intentioned or not.
Bull*shit*, chief. Hoover wiretapped and bugged whatever and whomever the hell he wanted, and nobody dared complain- he was 'fighting' communism. Hoover did it entirely on the premise that, as director of the FBI, it was his purview. That's it. No fancy legal mumbo-jumbo. "I'm the boss."
I hate the current wiretapping as much as the next guy, but let's not get caught up in "when I was your age, candybars cost 5 cents and the phone company didn't tap your phones illegally."
Our phones have been tapped almost since their inception; all the changes is who's calling the shots, what "evil" group is being targeted, and whose definition of "legal" is being used.
believe it or not young-unz, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
But those were the good ol' pre-9/11 days.
Wake up and smell and the realized nightmares of the founding fathers, and don't waste your time thinking that whatever is left of their foundation of democratic principles can help us.
We are sliding full speed down the slippery slope already. The only hope is that america will survive the impact at the bottom, and that the result will be painful enough, that the constitution gets ammended, and a new dawn of liberty arises.
I was the longest holdout in believing that intelligent debate could actually help. It is clear to me that the only thing to do is to sit back, suffer the consequences along with everyone, and hope that people are capable of learning from their mistakes.
O what a brave new world. Human cloning, animal-human hybrid research, warrantless wiretaps. Someone could really write a good book about all of this... But these days you probably wouldn't want to purchase it or check it out of a library, lest your name be put referenced in database queries for threat index assessments.
-dmc
Amend the constitution? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is that people don't give a crap about the constitution.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, it allows a police officer to harass you. If you do something (or are something) that they simply do
Telcos More Important than Security (Score:4, Insightful)
So Bush and his Republicans say that telco amnesty, retroactive immunity, is worth going without FISA at all. Even though they say it's our most important defense. So telco immunity, even though telcos would be immune under current law if they can show evidence that Bush assured them they were immune, is more important than our security.
If you're a Republican, it is.
Doesn't sound very convicing... (Score:3, Funny)
Domestic traffic that leaves the country (Score:4, Interesting)
On around page 28 of the PDF, it talks about domestic traffic (where both participants are inside the US) that may cross the border, due to network routing that goes through Canada, Skype relay nodes, etc. If you intercept all traffic that crosses the border, you may end up intercepting US-citizen-to-US-citizen communications.
But wouldn't Big Brother counter that the mere fact that the traffic crosses the border, makes it fall under their 'legitimate' border-protecting authority anyway, regardless of the apparent endpoints? So what if it's "virtually" domestic traffic -- physically it's not, and that alone possibly makes it fall under their authority. And we have a (regrettable) historic precedent that even US citizens lose some rights when they interact with the border (e.g. You can be searched for drugs w/out a warrant, whenever you enter the country).
Also, keep in mind that of you're communicating through a proxy, then that's an opportunity to set up a covert channel to a third party. For example: I talk to grandma through a foreign proxy. My conversion seems to be "Hello grandma, I got the cookies you sent me last week." A steganographic bit is seen by the proxy, and I just transmitted "0" (meaning: "sorry, I will not have collected the resources in time for next week's attack") to my mission control in Afghanistan. (Not that the NSA, even if it had legal authority to tap my call to grandma, would be able to detect whether I'm doing that or not...)
I'm strongly opposed to warrantless domestic eavesdropping, but I think the argument that sometimes domestic traffic leaves the country, is not a valid argument against spying on border-crossing traffic. A lot of other good points in the PDF, though.
Framing (Score:3, Insightful)
Not primarily a question about privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
If there are no independent records, what is there to stop agents from spying on their neighbors? Only the personal integrity of the individual agent, and while most may be decent people, some aren't. And much worse than that, it will be a lot easier for powerful interest groups to infiltrate and abuse the system - do we want, say, Scientology to have agents in a position where they can tap our private communications? They aren't exactly know for their respect for their fellow humans, and there are many other groups exactly like them.
Oh I'm so bored of this. (Score:3, Insightful)
A few intelligent people will tell you in no uncertain terms that you MUST NOT LET THIS ACT PASS. They will explain that it'll smash your privicy into tiny peices, they'll say its up to YOU to speak to your representitive to get it thrown out. And you know what? You'll all do fuck all.
Then four months down the line thousands and thousands of you will be back here, whinging about "yet another affront to our privicy" through a act they "sneaked through".
You vote a Paranoid Texan Oil Baron into office, TWICE, so what the hell do you expect? The man's a joke the world over, so if I was you I'd try and stop him passing any laws (that will be very hard to revoke when you finally get a President with two braincells to rub together).
Yet all you seem to do is COMPLAIN. Fucking do something about it.
Oh yeah, and to the torrent of "Bush cheated his way in! Recounts were fixed" comments coming up, I say "What? Twice motherfucker? And if the country is REALLY that against him, why did it all come down to Florida."
Your president is terrible, the American public are worse.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then the administration was caught doing an end-run around the FISA law by doin