US Wants Upper Hand In Battling High-Tech Bad Guys 81
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Justice this week said it was looking to boost the research and development of technology that could significantly bolster new forensic tools for digital evidence gathering. The DoJ's research and development arm, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) said it was particularly interested in tools targeting forensics for mobile cellular devices; cloud computing environments; VoIP communication and vehicle computer systems."
Translation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Translation. The government wants to invade the privacy of every man, woman, and child. Gotta get those terrorists.
Re:Translation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Terrorist = Person <=> Person = Terrorist.
Re:Oh, no, they won't misuse this (Score:3, Insightful)
>There's a fundamental reason why tax cuts are good: starve the beast.
It would be likely, that starving the beast would first shed such excess fat as health care and social security and other things that would benefit the poor.
This would lead to an even wider gap, which would lead to more crime, which in turn would justify an even stronger police state.
So, even if one would agree with your anti-statism, tax cuts are not necessarily pragmatic.
Re:Keep illegal stuff off the grid. (Score:4, Insightful)
You say that it is the "crappy criminals" that get busted. The vast majority of criminals (not terrorists) are stupid. The clever ones have worked out that crime doesn't pay. If you are clever enough to do all the things you say, which avoid you getting caught, you are also clever enough to make as much money legally as you would illegally, and you don't have the risk of prison. I am sure a lot of big business leaders would make great criminals. But why bother. Some criminals of course do succeed in avoiding the law for a long time - every bell curve has its tails. But overwhelmingly, criminals get caught because they are not clever enough.
And this is not coincidental. We buy enough law enforcement to make it not worth while clever people being criminals, while accepting that the stupid will be with us always.
Re:Oh, no, they won't misuse this (Score:3, Insightful)
"There's a fundamental reason why tax cuts are good: starve the beast."
Idiot. Budget cuts might possibly starve the beast. Or even a balanced budget amendment. Tax cuts alone just mean charging current expenses to a high-rate credit card. That you & I are on the hook for. This is exactly the same kind of reasoning that has personal debt in the USA at obscene levels. Buy now & pay later, yeah, right.
Domestic Spying (Score:5, Insightful)
If the "Justice" departments really wanted to battle "bad guys" in high tech crime, they would be targeting the highest crime rate domains with the biggest losses already. That is phishing and spam/virus networks that already take over $BILLIONS in IT personal property, using it to rob its owners and amass it into bot networks to attack others. Those crimes are committed largely by a relatively small group of crime gangs, largely concentrated in Asia (including Russia) which are also connected to large non-virtual crime in smuggling dangerous drugs, stealing property, counterfeiting brands, slavery, weapons trading (including WMD components), kidnapping, blackmail. The phishing/spam/botnet networks are probably the least bad of their crimes, and the greatest exposure to the public where they could be caught, with most of their traffic passing through the US even if the endpoints are all foreign. They're the obvious place for US law enforcement. Existing law allows US law enforcement to spy on them and catch them, while only small technology innovations might be necessary to do so - even without the PATRIOT Acts and other violations of the US Constitution.
What is required is that US law enforcement actually want to catch "bad guys". Then they'd have the means and opportunity to do everything they say they want.
But evidently they lack the motive. Their motive is to gain ever more power to spy on everyone, regardless of evidence or crimes. They've already been spying on telephone and email comms of every American they can fit on a hard drive, for years. What they want now is just bigger budgets for hard drives, for more secret police, and more laws that violate the Constitution and our rights so they can do so with impunity.
These secret police are the "bad guys".
Re:Translation. (Score:3, Insightful)
And #1 on the terrorist list: College kids who pirate movies and music.
Re:Oh, no, they won't misuse this (Score:3, Insightful)
Starving the beast is the line used once tax cuts fail to produce improved economic growth and the line used when people don't take any responsibility for being part of the government(aka the beast). It is easier to simply remove funding than to trouble oneself to argue and work for constructive change.
What isn't said is that given the concentration of wealth in the United States it is starving one beast to feed another. The beast of democratic bureaucracy would make a fine meal for the beast of capitalist oligarchy.
Useless without effective criminal code (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)
The DoJ wants better evidence-gathering tools?! THEY MUST BE STOPPED!
Seriously, why must every attempt to increase security be viewed as the the end of all democracy & privacy?
I'm not advocating for complaceny, but not every proposal is evil...
Re:Oh, no, they won't misuse this (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't "starve the beast" if the beast can simply print more money (thus making your money worth less, in effect starving YOU)...
Re:Keep illegal stuff off the grid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Crime does pay, handsomely. Both white collar crimes and your normal kinds like theft etc. To just brush the enormous amounts of people doing crimes off as idiots is to vastly oversimplify for oneself and shift the blame away from society.
One of the times crimes pays best is when you dont have anything to lose and not any viable options to get something you even can lose. Those are the people who mostly get cought. For many of them a life in prison isnt much worse than life on the streets.
Educated and smart criminals can go on for many years without even getting near a police. They have something to lose and are not very interested in getting in jail. Those people wont brag about their crimes on the phone or plan something on facebook.
If the USA Wants an upper hand..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then it needs to stop treating IT, CompSci, and It security like the plumber and building manager and PAY FOR IT.
Sorry but it's fact. You want to have a crack IT team that keeps all the bad guys out and the company's data secure? Then you have to pay 6 figures each for Highly skilled and experienced IT staff instead of low 5 figures for the Freshly tested MCSE churnouts from University OF Pheonix. You have to have IT managers that have at LEAST 10 years experience in the IT field and IT security field, not some moron with a BSA degree that knows the CEO's daughter.
The US will forever lag behind the world in IT and IT security if you don't start paying for highly skilled and experienced professionals, and TREAT THEM AS SUCH!
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, why must every attempt to increase security be viewed as the the end of all democracy & privacy?
Because, at least in the model of how the US is supposed to work, the response to a government calling for more power should not be "why not?" but rather "why?"
In this case, that's a very good question to ask. See they [the various three-letter organizations] already have vast powers of surveillance. They have all sorts of legal privileges allowing them to intercept foreign and criminal communications with ease, all contingent on the provision of a warrant (and thus probable cause). Hell, thanks to the last regime, they don't even need that much of the time, especially not to spy on a common citizen like you or I.
So in light of that, the response to a call for even better tools and even more leeway to spy on US citizens should be "Why?" Why do we need these tools? Why are the existing ones inadequate? Can you demonstrate that? What crimes do propose new tools will help you solve -- cite specific examples please, not just "it may us catch some bad guys".
And if the government can't come up with a damn good answer to "Why?", then our answer should be "No."
Re:Oh, no, they won't misuse this (Score:3, Insightful)
Starving public universities and transportation will turn the US into a 3rd world country. We've been seeing this for the last 30 years of relative economic decline, export of skilled jobs and declining public health statistics (compared to all other industrialized countries).
The elites will always find the money to finance surveillance systems - it helps protect them against the mobs. They may privatize portions of the surveillance state to avoid accountability, but you better believe it will be the last thing to go.
Re:Domestic Spying (Score:3, Insightful)
You have presented a false dilemma. The reason you don't worry about regular criminals is because the government protects you from them enough that you don't have to worry. That doesn't mean you don't have to worry about the government committing crimes. These are not exclusive categories in some Sim City world. They are descriptions of groups of people and their behavior, which has substantial overlap and fuzzy boundaries.
Terrorists do affect Americans, including people not in their direct line of fire. The World Trade Center in NYC really was destroyed in 2001, as was the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 along with several other targets in the US - not to mention many more foreign targets of US assets and foreign assets. The actual terrorism is the political use of those attacks as credible threats. So while the US government has practiced more terrorism on Americans using the credible threat presented by bombings, that doesn't mean non-government terrorists don't exist.
Americans did do "something" to see this coming and to stop it. The entire government system is based on distrust of government, limiting its powers. Americans spend lots of time and effort interfering with government's power and activity in political use of fear to control us. What Americans have failed to do is to stop electing people who cooperate in betraying the people, rather than oppose each other with power to catch each other betraying the people. Americans have taken the bribes of unsustainable credit and unlimited entertainment instead of protecting ourselves from government corruption. Failing to impeach Nixon for Watergate (and more) or Reagan/Bush for Iran/Contra (and more), allowing the House to impeach Clinton for practically nothing without replacing those House and Senate representatives who voted to remove him, reelecting Bush/Cheney and their congressmembers who voted to start and continue the Iraq War (and more)... that is where Americans have failed.
And meanwhile actual terrorists, both foreign and domestic, continue to create and use credible threats of violence to produce political action to their benefit that all damages the American people. Just because the government practices its own terrorism on us doesn't mean it's got the monopoly.
Re:Translation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the bad guys have all discovered 2048 bit crypto, that's why.
So I'd say with mobile devices getting more powerful every day it isn't "the bad guys" that have to worry about this, it is the average Joe. They are the ones that'll be running around with unlocked devices or still using the default password, whereas the bad guys will have everything locked up.
Yes, that's exactly the problem. Only the bad guys will be savvy enough to actually lock down their shit so it becomes easy to spot the bad guys and the few not-bad guys who also happen to encrypt their shit get unfairly targeted.
There's no default of encryption or privacy anymore. Countless times around the country do innocent people give up their rights when dealing with the cops and government just because it's a) easier or b) they've "got nothing to hide" and frankly, that scares me the most.
Re:Oh, no, they won't misuse this (Score:1, Insightful)
Defining "acceptable risk" is very unpopular.